- Nashville
- Prospero's
Books
- Jacob's
Ladder
- La Dolce
Vita
- It's a Wonderful
Life
- Catch-22
- To Have and To Have
Not
- Breaking the
Waves
- Rear
Window
- West Side
Story
Here's my tentative Top 10 list. I make
no bones about the tentative part: These things seem
to shift around daily. One day I think that all my favorite
films should be life-altering cathartic experiences like
Jacob's Ladder or Breaking the Waves, and the next minute I
think they should be the last film I've seen. But the whole
reason why I decided to make this list wasn't simply to show
off what an intellectual I think I am but to be a listing of
my suggestions for movies to rent if you're on your way to
the video store and don't know what to rent. Though I would
wish everyone to see these movies the same way I've seen
most of them; on the big screen, in a half-empty theater,
with someone you love.
Nashville
Here's a movie that seemed to do everything I want a
movie to do: It changed the way I look at things forever, it
introduced a new way of watching a movie to me, it made me
laugh, it said profound things about the world and people,
and it gave me a precious snapshot of a moment in time that
encapsulates unconsciously the zeitgeist of 1976 in a way
that will always be far more truthful than any backward
glance could ever be.
The strange thing about a lot of movies is that they're
so often set in the past or the future instead of the
present. We take it for granted without ever questioning it:
Do Hollywood executives ever stop to ask if anyone would
want to see another movie set in the forties, the fifties,
the sixties, etc? Everyone seems to agree that the past is
always interesting, and, since Star Wars, the future seems
like a pretty safe bet too. But Nashville examines the
present of the year the movie was made, 1976, with the kind
of fiendish attention to detail you usually see in a period
piece.
Watching Nashville is like watching 1976 through the eyes
of an alien being. It's obvious I've watched it recently,
but the first time I saw it, as a new film in a real theater
in the 70s, I was blown away by it. Plus it has a hilarious
soundtrack, most of which was composed or improvised by the
stars of the movie. The Henry Gibson songs are sarcastic
country masterpieces.
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Prospero's Books
The first time I saw this movie I was sitting in a movie
house in Paris after living in Italy for 4 years and I could
barely remember English at all, and this movie swept me up
in a confused whirl of outrageous imagery and poetic song. I
had no idea what was going on up there on the screen. I had
no idea what all those archaic English phrases meant. The
plot was completely unknown to me. And it was one of the
most beautiful things I've ever seen. If you want to see
something completely European and incomprehensible, see this
movie.
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Jacob's Ladder
I entered into the theater to see Jacob's Ladder
expecting some weird horror movie and left it feeling like
I'd been through an LSD overdose of massive proportions.
This movie upset me so completely that at times I felt like
I wasn't even watching a movie at all, but that something
had gone terribly wrong in my head and I just thought I was
watching a movie, and someone was trying to snap me out of
it somewhere in another reality I refused to acknowledge.
Your mileage may vary, of course. I saw it alone in a
theater, you might have to watch on your couch with constant
interruptions.
I'll never forget the alienation this movie created in my
head. It was as close to schizophrenia as most people would
ever want to get, and all of the normal defenses of your
mind will be fighting against the effect that I got from
this movie. So I don't exactly wish that you agree with my
assessment of this movie, but I hope that you can at least
see how I might have felt that way, and appreciate this film
as I do, as a masterpiece of mental manipulation.
Few films break through the century of assumptions we've
constructed about what a film is and how we should interpret
what is presented like Jacob's Ladder. Since we assume that
we are to believe that what is presented is what's
happening, Jacob's Ladder consistently undermines everything
that happens through flashbacks, jump cuts, and sequential
chaos.
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La Dolce Vita
Fellini! Fellini! How could I have a top 10 list without
il Maestro? Who is the most original director of all time?
Fellini! Who won more Oscars than any other director?
Fellini! Who transported you into the bizarre alien world of
make-believe, the fantasy, the carnival, the circus tent of
Cinecitta and taught you that nothing ever needed to be
real? And of course, what film other than this, his classic
tale of post-modern alienation and disillusion, La Dolce
Vita? It avoids the self-referentialism of 8 and 1/2,
arguably also his greatest movie, while still making the
same important points he made in that classic.
Everything happens in La Dolce Vita. Like all Fellini
films, it's an out-of-control ride careening at a thousand
miles an hour through the Italian countryside in the middle
of the night with all kinds of crazy grinning freaks and
beauties racing alongside of you. Never boring. Even with
all those pesky subtitles. The sheer verve of it all carries
you along. Don't miss my favorite Italian pop singer,
Adriano Celentano, in the prime of his Rock'n'Roll glory!
- A page about
Federico Fellini
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It's a Wonderful Life
I went most of my life without even suspecting this movie
existed, and the first time I saw it, at Brown Auditorium at
Washington University (the backbone of the internet through
which you might be reading this page), I was totally
floored. I was too surprised by this movie to regard it as a
cornball classic like someone who grew up catching casual
snatches of it all over cable TV like kids today. The
bittersweet life of regret lived for others, the helpless
railing against fate in this movie, and the clear-eyed
populism are all deeply held moral values of mine. The
beauty of Donna Reed in this movie was for many years my
ideal of feminine form incarnate, until I met Marnie K.
Mills, when several other older dream girl fantasy forms
came together in a total package of love.
George Bailey missing out on life in his little town is
too poignant for words, and the impact this movie had on me
was as profound as can be. If you've never seen it, watch it
with attention: It's filled with incredible detail and
resonates with the mythos of the American Dream.
- A page describing
It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
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Catch-22
The technique of adapting a great novel to the screen is
all over the place in Hollywood; it goes from throwing the
baby out with the bathwater to transliterating line by line.
But Mike Nichols captured the soul of Catch-22, and made it
one of the best films ever made. The cast is a huge ensemble
from one of the brightest assemblies of male talent ever.
This movie is at once sad and funny and insane and cogent.
But mostly it is absurd and amazing, like the book itself.
I read the book before I saw the movie, and it's filmed
in such a way that if you see a non-letterboxed version you
often won't be able to tell what's going on.
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To Have and To Have Not
Hemingway was wrong for once, and here is the only movie
from one of his books that is better than the book. Not that
there's anything wrong with the book; but it's a sad little
desperate book with characters that aren't full-blown and
alive compared to this movie, which is a monument to how
sexy Lauren Bacall was when she was courting Humphrey
Bogart, and how overwhelmed he was by her. This is one of
those movies that I wish I could see for the first time
again, because I've seen it so many times that it could
never be fresh for me again. But I also can still vaguely
remember the delight I felt when I first saw it, and that
memory is strong enough for me to put it up among my 10
favorites.
- A page describing
To Have And Have Not (1944)
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Breaking the Waves
A movie about the wild cruel injustice of our
misinterpretations of goodness, and about the depths of
martyrdom only true innocence can attain. A movie so
intimately about good versus evil that it touches on the
most basic aspects of our moral assumptions and asks
profound and terrible questions about the true meaning of
right and wrong.
While i watched this movie I was so horrified that I
almost wanted to run out of the theater several times. I
loved the protagonist so much I couldn't bear to see her
hurt. But the director strangely and wisely inserted all
these long, quiet still scenes of landscapes of rare beauty
between acts with music from the seventies that really help
to calm you down and they helped keep in my seat where the
unceasing barrage of a normal movie might have driven me
from my seat.
Breaking the Waves devastated me emotionally and almost
overwhelmed me to the point where I can barely even
recommend it. But if you do see it, make sure you see it all
the way through to the end. It's the only way to survive it,
I think.
- The Internet Movie Database page for
Breaking the Waves
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Rear Window
- A page describing
Rear Window (1954)
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West Side Story
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