Recommendations required - top ten films (no wait - come back!)

ive been meaning to watch jacobs ladder for a very long time, going to download right now actually

craner said:

Talking of Le Orme, Reds was also shot by Storaro, which is one the main reasons I want to watch it, apart from the subject matter of course.

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Not entirely convinced by Le Orme, but I'm glad I watched it. My very first Giallo Sci-fi, for want of a better term.

Storaro's imagery and textures are certainly a highlight. Pleasantly surprised by the appearence of a certain Mr. Kinski, too.

Blackmann!

his girl friday
ferris bueller's day off
werkmeister harmonies
can't choose between any of jafar panahi's films, they're all astonishing and have changed my way of looking at the world/culture.
london by patrick keiller
manhattan
8 1/2
in the mood for love
the cameraman (buster keaton)
fanny and alexander
f for fake

Been trying to place Le Orme but it's that one that's also called Footprints on the Moon right? Good film that, not at all what I was expecting it to be, very slow and not really like a giallo - one of those films that's all about atmosphere.

another vote for jacobs ladder. its def underrated. horror is a genre that really needs to be polled decade by decade.

thoughts skimming last couple pages

-Come and See was about last cut from my list (other near misses: The Sting and Miller's Crossing. also Heathers)
-surprised by how much dudes here like Peter Weir, who is kind of a hack albeit an artful one
-reckon total indifference to old French movies automatically disqualifies me from ever being a true cineaste

also somehow forgot Lawrence of Arabia in my original last. absolutely swapping something out for it.

craner said:

I do admire you for listing Point Break

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are you kidding it's in my top 3. virtually know it by heart. so many classic lines. young Lori Petty. Swazye at the peak of his game. Nolte doing his take on coked-out Apoc Now Hopper. man like Keanu as ex-star Ohio State QB turned g-man Johnny Utah role he was born to play (I AM! AN! F!B!I! AGENT!). Bigelow at her most livewire kinetic (i.e. Scorsese I view Oscar as a belated award for this her true opus). the kind of dumb but totally awesome amoral zen nihilism take on consumerism and modern alienation and male bonding and etc (not hard at all to see the seeds of Fight Club in Boddhi's crew). I could go on but i'll rein it in. just know this: paddling to New Zealand is the 1991 (the very moment where grunge supplants hair metal in national consciousness) waiting for Godot.

also at luka, you're absolutely right all Malick after Days of Heaven has total Nat Geo vibe but it's still great (haven't seen his latest tho). sometimes that stuff is beautiful if it's lustrous. maybe helps for Thin Red Line to read the book it's based on. total antithesis to square jawed Greatest Generation mythmaking. New World stupid on many levels but also has undeniably amazing imagery (Farrell floundering around in primeval swamp in armor. many shots of sunlight thru trees etc) and some kind of weird power, maybe doesn't come across to Europeans, despite being uberintellectual Malick strikes me as ultraamerican filmmaker, endless plains, america as virgin land despoiled etc, paradises lost heavy handed theme in all his work but he plays it so gorgeous, I dunno. and Tarkovsky is just is whole own species so it don't help to compare him to anyway, Malick or otherwise.

Herzog's Bad Lieutenant
Usual Suspects
Seven Psychopaths
In Bruges
Un Prophete
Perrier's Bounty
The Departed
Training Day
Fight Club
The Lives of Others

Could replace any two of those with Full Metal Jacket or Animal Kingdom.

Are all films I enjoy in their entirety. Most other films I watch I enjoy aspects of, or can appreciate without necessarily enjoying.

I prefer TV shows to films these days.

Don't worry Padraig, I love Point Break too. The only real flaw is that the once-in-a-generation waves at the end of the film would hardly be sniffed at by any North Shore veteran. If Bodie was so desperate to surf enormous waves, why didn't he just take the short flight to Waimea Bay? It's a niggle, but it has always annoyed me. "Death on a stick out there, mate." I don't think so.

padraig (u.s.) said:

thoughts skimming last couple pages

-Come and See was about last cut from my list (other near misses: The Sting and Miller's Crossing. also Heathers

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Certainly can't think of another WWII film that could come close to it. The subject matter is so difficult to pull off but it does it somehow. By leaving most of the horror til the end I guess. Maybe 'The Human Condition' is up there too, but that's more in the epic mold than 'Come and See'.

cranerr have you seen the bra boys documentary?

liquid sky
repo man
possession
long days journey into night
king of new york
training day
funny bones
riffiffi
takeshis
showgirls
les enfants du paradis

^^^great list...

nicely free of the usual cinephile/sight and sound canon inclusions.

thanks man, that was off the top of my head. The Doc has kept a list of stuff we've watched - we've been recreating the film festivals, in order, year by year, and these were other ones that reached the heights, more traditional I think. Interesting which ones I remembered and didn't, I'm ashamed of myself for not remembering Female Trouble off the top of my head though :

dumbo
night train
odd man out
pepe le moco
paysan
man of arran
lift to the scaffold
all about eve
a matter of life and death
planet of the apes
brief encounter
in which we serve
fistful of dynamite
pee wees big adventure
carrie
female trouble

and obviously lives of others but loads of people have mentioned that one.

mistersloane said:

pee wees big adventure

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Lol brilliant. Remember going to the pictures to see this. Was dismayed when it's star was arrested for wanking in a cinema.

I wonder about the psychocultural implications of 'listmaking' in this form and what it says about the heirarchy-engendering tendency in aesthetic appreciation. Is there something reactionary about making a list and only prizing those finest. What kind of selection process does one construct when looking at them?
Would be good to get some thoughts from people about why they chose what they did.

griftert said:

I wonder about the psychocultural implications of 'listmaking' in this form and what it says about the heirarchy-engendering tendency in aesthetic appreciation. Is there something reactionary about making a list and only prizing those finest. What kind of selection process does one construct when looking at them?
Would be good to get some thoughts from people about why they chose what they did.

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for me, my first list was only those I could remember off the top of my head and only ones of those that I knew I would without hesitation watch again. I don't believe an aesthetic choice is inherently reactionary, or necessarily hierarchical, or even masculine, or phallocentric, as is often argued.

continuum said:

Lol brilliant. Remember going to the pictures to see this. Was dismayed when it's star was arrested for wanking in a cinema.

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there are 10 minutes in that film that are very close to being the funniest thing in the universe ever, topped only by Divine's trampolining in Female Trouble, at which I genuinely thought my best m8 was going to die when I showed it him. He was laughing so hard he was literally begging me to turn the film off going "no, no I can't take it, I really think I'm going to die, please turn it off."

I quite liked it that he was wanking in a cinema, it's a shame it ruined his career though. I always thought that was dumb. It was a porn cinema. That's what they're for.

Someone mentioned Showgirls which I've not seen but I was having a conversation today about how Paul Verhoeven is so badly underrated (well, trying to, I don't think the person I was conversing with was that interested) and I realised that the film I've probably re-watched the most is Starship Troopers so maybe that should have been in my ten.