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Post by Jeff on Feb 11, 2006 13:17:31 GMT -5
Why don't we do the same thing for film that we are doing for music? Tell us about that gem you love to watch, the one you'd never change the channel on even if it was late on a school night. Why do you love it so much? And what keeps you coming back?
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Post by Tyler on Feb 12, 2006 10:00:24 GMT -5
Starship Troopers. Anything with Michael Beihn or Wesley Snipes or Chow Yun Fat.
Why the hell aren't there kung-fu movies on Sunday mornings anymore?
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Post by Thanin on Feb 12, 2006 15:42:07 GMT -5
Maybe this should be a top 10 movies of all time list.
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Post by Jeff on Feb 12, 2006 16:34:29 GMT -5
Okay, fine… I do not claim that these are the top ten films of all time. I am only saying that right now, I think these are my favorites. They are in alphabetical order:
The Accidental Tourist
Annie Hall
Dr. Strangelove
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Fanny and Alexander
Gandhi
Ikiru
My Dinner with Andre
A Passage to India
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
My list changes all the time. A decade ago, I would have put Brazil and The Last Emperor in the top five, now I would leave them out all together. Like right now I can't decide which to leave off the list A Passage to India or Vertigo...
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Post by Jeff on Feb 12, 2006 16:45:34 GMT -5
Hey, can we also do our most hated films of all time?
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Post by Jeff on Feb 12, 2006 17:55:57 GMT -5
Most Hated List
Okay here are the films that I hate beyond all reason. It’s not that they are the worst films in the world, it’s just I hate almost everything that they stand for.
1. Forrest Gump
2. Titanic
In addition to these two, which earned my everlasting hate from the moment they first burned my retinas, I hate (or at least dislike) everything defined by the following three conditions:
1. Anything DIRECTED BY John Singleton, Baz Luhrmann, Barbara Streisand, Mel Gibson, or Oliver Stone EXCEPT Platoon.
2. Anything STARRING Kevin Costner, Ben Affleck, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Steven Segal, Richard Gere, Brad Pitt, or Will Smith EXCEPT: Fandango, Silverado, A Perfect World, Bull Durham, Dazed and Confused, Rocky, Antz, Victory, The Out-of-Towners, Sin City, Pulp Fiction, Terminator, Total Recall, Predator, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Twelve Monkeys, A River Runs Through It, Fight Club, Six Degrees of Separation, and The Legend of Bagger Vance.
3. Anything STARRING Cameron Diaz, Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Sandra Bullock, Demi Moore, or Gwyneth Paltrow EXCEPT: Shrek, Being John Malkovich, There’s Something About Mary, Election, Walk the Line, American Psycho, Pleasantville, Donnie Darko, Everyone Says I Love You, Batman Forever, E.T., Altered States, Broken Flowers, The Muse, He Said, She Said, Total Recall, Stardust Memories, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Steel Magnolias, Mystic Pizza, Antz, Traffic, High Fidelity, The Prince of Egypt, Deconstructing Harry, A Few Good Men, About Last Night, Blame it on Rio, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Possession, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.
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Post by Thanin on Feb 12, 2006 18:57:00 GMT -5
What about Wall Street (directed by Oliver Stone)?
And I'm not saying it's a great movie, but Basic Instinct did re-orient audiences to that genre,
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Post by jtmx1 on Feb 12, 2006 19:10:14 GMT -5
Didn't like Wall Street and hated Basic Instinct.
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Post by Thanin on Feb 12, 2006 19:49:22 GMT -5
I don't think there's anything wrong with a favorite movie list constantly changing, but it does make me wonder about the relationship between entertainment and art. Anyway, this is my best movies ever list (mainly based off of personal like)
1. Dead Ringers
2. Sex, Lies and Videotape
3. Fight Club
4. Return of the King (or the whole trilogy, if that's allowed)
5. Pulp Fiction
6. Husbands and Wives
7. Muholland Dr.
8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
9. Godfather
10. Napoleon Dynamite
I wanted to put Dr. Strangelove on here, but those 20 minute shots of the model airplane just really annoy the hell out of me. I also I wanted to put Brokeback Mountain on the list, but I've only seen it once and should see it again to know how good it is.
There are a lot of really bad movies out there, so this mostly based off of how disappointed I was with these movies (except for the first one) or that it was so bad it couldn't even be made fun of.
1. Titanic (I've never seen it and I've Always hated this movie)
2. Dungeons and Dragons
3. Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic
4. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones
5. Howards End
6. The Last Days of Disco
7. Until the End of the World
8. Howard the Duck
9. Death to Smoochy
10. The Sweetest Thing
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Post by Jeff on Feb 13, 2006 1:36:39 GMT -5
I feel kinda bad about my most hated list. Over in the pluralism thread I was making the point that this kind of dialogue is ultimately bad strategy. And then here I am over here going on about what I don't like.
When my wife saw my list--and I must admit that I spent a good chunk of the afternoon considering the various films by the actors and actresses that I listed--she had but one remark, "Well, you love to hate, don't you?" And it made me think about what I am doing with such effort.
I don't have a great answer. Maybe what I am looking for, and what others look for generally, are people like myself. It doesn't matter if the topic is something mutually loved or hated. It's the mutual that matters.
Still, I do apologize if my list offended. If memory serves, Rick used to like Forrest Gump quite a lot. I didn't set out to insult your tastes, Rick. Or anyone else's.
In the future, I'll be taking more of my own advice about sharing this kind of opinion. In the meantime, please bear with me. It just takes a while to travel from my head to my fists.
Jeff
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Post by Thanin on Feb 13, 2006 1:59:11 GMT -5
Yeah Jeff I did kinda think you got a little wild with your list. To me it felt like you were trying to make an aesthetic statement and challenging those who differed. Like you were going beyond just merely relaying your opinions, but maybe I was wrong.
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Post by mj on Feb 13, 2006 8:29:47 GMT -5
What about Platoon? I haven't actually seen this movie, but I usually hear good things about it.
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Post by mj on Feb 13, 2006 8:30:59 GMT -5
Sorry. I just noticed your inclusion of Platoon in your original comment.
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Post by rickus on Feb 13, 2006 9:30:15 GMT -5
Still, I do apologize if my list offended. If memory serves, Rick used to like Forrest Gump quite a lot. I didn't set out to insult your tastes, Rick. Or anyone else's. Honestly Forest Gump is a guilty pleasure movie. There are somethings that I just can't bend on. I will always like Forest Gump and it is likely that I will always wonder what the unwavering fascination with Woody Allin is all about. I am not the least bit offended. If memory serves the Motion Picture Academy liked it too. But what does that bunch of hacks know? Right.  |
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Post by kyle on Feb 13, 2006 10:41:14 GMT -5
"The Thin Red Line" is the WORST MOVIE EVER MADE!!!!!!!
Jeff, I got the feeling you were going more with a list of the worst actor/actresses. If I were to follow that, I'd have to say ALL movies with Nicole Kidman or Bette Midler. They are both TERRIBLE!
Rick was kind enough to let me borrow Dr. Stangelove and I just had enough time yesterday to get to the part in the war room when George C. Scott is fighting the Russian. So far, I'm not seeing what makes it so good. I'm trying to keep an open mind until it is over though.
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Post by Jeff on Feb 13, 2006 22:00:44 GMT -5
Kyle, Sorry to hear that you didn’t like The Thin Red Line. I thought that I’d write a little about why I like Terrence Malick’s films so much. So that I won’t bore you, I’ll only talk about the first shot of his new film, The New World, a 40 second shot of a puddle of water. That’s a long time for a shot with no dialogue (only a cryptic earth poem, which I won't discuss) and no action. The credits aren’t even scrolling. Malick wants us to look at the water. So I looked. At first I thought of the old (perhaps apocryphal) story about the first natives who saw European ships. They couldn’t distinguish the ships from the clouds and the water. Because they had no experience of such vehicles, the natives literally did not see them until the ships were upon them. Seeing involves interpretation. So I was watching the clouds reflected in the water to see if they would change into sails. They did suggest sails, but they didn’t really change. But looking at the reflected clouds I noticed the various worlds embodied in the image. There was the world of the surface of the pool populated by bits of floating green debris. And there was the reflected world of the heavens and the clouds. I thought about how that was like the actual encounter between the natives and the Europeans. And I wondered which world was the reflected one. Probably both. I suddenly remembered an etching by M.C. Escher called “Three Worlds” ( people.via.ecp.fr/~jm/musee/escher/ThreeWorlds.jpg ). The third world in Escher’s picture is The Great Below. And it disrupts both the surface of the water and the image of the clouds. Of course, all three worlds are part of a single world. But our smaller worlds, the ones we strain to see even when they are broken, hold our attention. And when the water on the surface is disrupted by something deep and ancient, our curiosity is almost never as strong as our desire for the ripples to die away. And that was my experience of the first 40 seconds of Malick’s new film. I would only add that Jim Caviezel’s spiritual Private Witt in The Thin Red Line is an image of far greater complexity. Jeff |
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Post by Betterout on Feb 14, 2006 0:00:59 GMT -5
I've been unable to jump in and add my own 2¢ until now, but here goes. My favorites are always in flux, but some of the top ten are as follows (in alphabetical order):
Annie Hall
Crimes & Misdemeanors
Dead Ringers
Dr. Strangelove, or ...
Exotica
Husbands & Wives
Manhattan
Reservoir Dogs
sex, lies, & videotape
Star Wars, Episode IV A New Hope
I guess this is probably the most Woody Allen intensive my list has been in awhile, but hey, I gotta be honest about it. He's my favorite director hands down, and I'm probably letting him off easy by leaving off a couple of the early, funny ones. Before I started populating the list around my favorite Allen flicks, it used to be so much more diverse. This list is nearly all American, with the exception of a coupla my favorite Canucks. Older lists included the foreign language numbers 8 1/2 and Seventh Seal. Others featured rotating representations of the Coens, Alfred Hitchcock, David Lynch, and Martin Scorcese. Nowadays, a couple other films from the Soderberg catalag might hover in the low two-digits, too.
Speaking of Malick, I haven't seen much of his very slim output, but I did enjoy The Thin Red Line a great deal. Like Jeff, I thought the Caviezel character was very intriguing, but so too was the Koteas character.
In general, I can say that I love Horror and Science Fiction, but I find that they're almost universally awful; perhaps I just like the idea of them better than the execution. Many of the classics here really do deserve to be called just that, and I keep holding out for the possibility of actually seeing a scary horror movie someday and possibly even a thought-provoking sci fi picture. I also like documentaries as a whole, but I'm fairly selective about which ones I actually watch. I seek out foreign and indie films a lot, too. I'll also go ahead and admit that I absolutely adore trashy softporn! They are without a doubt the silliest batch of movies ever made as a whole, both hysterically funny to watch and fun just to imagine how the concept was pitched to the producer ("No, no, no.. The vampire princess has to have sex with her prey in order to survive, see?"). And, well, sometimes--far less often than you might think--they're kinda sexy, too.
As for my least favorites, there are whole genres that seem to put me to sleep, except on rare exception. Action, Big Summer Blockbusters, Crime, Fantasy, Musical, Romantic Comedy, and Western are the worst of the bunch, in my opinion.
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Post by Tyler on Feb 14, 2006 7:57:24 GMT -5
Dude, see the Grudge.
Scary.
Also, horror movies that are good: In the Mouth of Madness, Hellraiser I, Event Horizon.
Alien, Aliens, Pitch Black, all good.
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Post by Guest Justin on Feb 14, 2006 8:58:47 GMT -5
Tyler, of course I thought Alien and Aliens were both awesome. Hellraiser is a group classic, so I can't say anything bad about it (altough it's much cheesier the older I get). Pitch Black was okay; it was a much better idea. I was seriously disappointed in In the Mouth of Madness, although it did manage to hold its Lovecraftian creepiness throughout. I can't say that I liked either the Grude or Event Horizon. I didn't really find any of these movies scary, though. What I really want is good AND scary...
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Post by jtmx1 on Feb 14, 2006 9:15:18 GMT -5
I saw The Grudge for the first time by myself in my living room at 1 AM. And for me that made it scary.
Hey Justin, do you remember the Plenty Scary Movies? When we were 11 and 6, respectively, we got pretty scared watching some of those.
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