your top five movies

(In no particular order)

Akira
Aliens
District 9
Idiocracy
Office Space

This probably shoulda been a Top 10 thread IMO. I see Apocalypse Now!, Mother, and Taxi Driver mentioned above, with which I concur. Also Blade Runner, Donnie Darko, any Kubrick film, etc...5 just isn't enough dammit

I know if I make this list, I'll remember later one film I've forgot about. I refuse to list only titles, because the body of work of certain authors stands on its own.

in no order goes to:

- The Matrix (absolutely mindblowing; story, screenplay, visuals, action....)

- 12 Angry Men (everything about the film is superb, but what really got me was the final scene, when the camera shows the table after everyone leaves. Since I was a kid, I'd always look at areas, things, places, rooms,... after people left or finished using them, especially if something interesting or significant happened)

- Grapes of Wrath (after reading the book, I watched this and relived it again in visual form. Loved the characters, especially the Preacher, and the movie was a word-to-word translation of the book)

- Ingmar Bergmann (I was completely captivated with every movie I watched - Persona and 7th Seal both sharing the first spot)

- Jim Jarmusch (same reasons as the above. Whereas Bergmann requires that special mood to get into, Jarmusch plays on every string in my body regarding stories and depicting life and freedom - Down by Law and Night on Earth)

Honorable mentions go to:

- Godard's Le Mepris (the most naturalistic depiction of the breaking of marriage) and Pierrot le Fou (chaos of two uncompatible lovebirds)

- John Cassavetes Minnie and Moskowitz, Faces, Husbands... (I was kind of in love with Gena Rowlands, can't explain why. Cassavetes' movies capture those fleeting moments in interpersonal relationships that maybe only snapshots or polaroids can somehow freeze in time)

- Chaplin's City Lights (because of that night when we snuggled and watched it together with the lightest of hearts)

- Kusturica's Arizona Dream (living the dream)

- The Duelists (fucking A)

- Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon

The Shining

The Dark Crystal

Princess Mononoke

A Clockwork Orange

The Fisher King

... I'm sure most of you have seen a majority of these but perhaps not the Fisher King. It is a brilliant Terry Gilliam film i couldn't recommend more highly.

  On 8/1/2017 at 8:39 PM, ambermonk said:

This probably shoulda been a Top 10 thread IMO. I see Apocalypse Now!, Mother, and Taxi Driver mentioned above, with which I concur. Also Blade Runner, Donnie Darko, any Kubrick film, etc...5 just isn't enough dammit

It's an old thread and not mine, but anyway: the point was to explain what you like about the movies, and I feel like the longer the list needs to be, the less likely people will be to say lots about each movie.

Maybe it could have been something like "name 5 movies you love and explain why", to avoid the abundance of choice problem. Would be less stressful too, I usually hate choosing "top" anythings and end up immediately regretting my choices.

  On 11/10/2009 at 8:07 PM, Conor74 said:

 

It's hard to put the finger on it - I guess it's just so eerie and unsettling. Can remember watching it for the first time 25 years back, and still love it - so maybe nostalgia colours my view a little.

Oh God this movie was so fucking good. After watching this and (10+ years later) Walkabout, I really want to watch more Australian 70s movies.

Schizopolis - Steven Soderbergh just completely indulging himself and giving into his worst impulses. Made up language and everything. I love this kind of the same way I love Wire's "Pink Flag". It totally falls apart at the end, pacing is terrible, but there's moments in there that couldn't happen in any other movie - every scene with Elmo Oxygen, Soderbergh's conversation with his neighbor across the street, the romance with his wife's doppelganger. Also there's this weird 90s video-art aesthetic to it with this cheesy drum machine soundtrack that I enjoy. There's probably some nostalgia factor too, honestly.

  On 8/2/2017 at 5:55 AM, sweepstakes said:

 

  On 11/10/2009 at 8:07 PM, Conor74 said:

 

It's hard to put the finger on it - I guess it's just so eerie and unsettling. Can remember watching it for the first time 25 years back, and still love it - so maybe nostalgia colours my view a little.

Oh God this movie was so fucking good. After watching this and (10+ years later) Walkabout, I really want to watch more Australian 70s movies.

 

Schizopolis - Steven Soderbergh just completely indulging himself and giving into his worst impulses. Made up language and everything. I love this kind of the same way I love Wire's "Pink Flag". It totally falls apart at the end, pacing is terrible, but there's moments in there that couldn't happen in any other movie - every scene with Elmo Oxygen, Soderbergh's conversation with his neighbor across the street, the romance with his wife's doppelganger. Also there's this weird 90s video-art aesthetic to it with this cheesy drum machine soundtrack that I enjoy. There's probably some nostalgia factor too, honestly.

Try The Last Wave

akira

apocalypse now

fear and loathing in vegas

terminator 2

american psycho

maybe not the best but def the ones i seen the most

TETSUOOOOOOO

the thing-  i was already deep into horror when i first seen this,and everyone knows how good the fx are,but it was the tension that got me,that scene with the blood test totally blew me away and changed my outlook on what i look for in horror/thriller movies and movies/tv in general

blade runner- again,nuff said about the visuals and the world building,but that combined with the soundtrack and rutger hauers performance,plus i so wanted to live in deckards apartment with that balcony to chill on watching the cars fly by

an american werewolf in london- being a brit the moors scenes seemed extra real when i was younger,plus top gore and fx,it was funny as fuck,and jenny agutter of course!

pulp fiction- still to this day the only film i have watched in the cinema twice in a row,we literally walked out and paid to go straight back in again,everyone is amazing in this movie,so many memorable characters and shocking twists and turns

the exorcist- the most realistic horror film for me,must have been so shocking to see in 1973,and ellen burstyn is so convincing in this,you really believe that regan is her daughter,oscar worthy performance from her

I started on my list and then I gave up. I only managed to agree with myself on one film:

The French Connection

agree that Terminator 2 is an absolute classic

love that scene when he cuts his forearm off with the flick knife to reveal the robotic arm, and Miles Dyson hyperventilating at 100mph and his eyes popping out

​now listen to me veery carefully

Is this cheating? P.S. See you in another five years or so for whatever the top five is then.

• The Terminator. Could be that I've become biased by reading the thread so far but I feel like I had to have one of RoboCop, The Terminator, or Terminator 2 in my list. Now RoboCop is tremendous, but I couldn't pretend to love it as much as the other two.

   

  Terminator 2 is another great movie, and 25 years on I still feel like no action blockbuster has significantly bettered it in terms of its plot and universe, set pieces or effects. (I remember The Matrix coming up here in earlier related discussions, but I've probably never even finished a Matrix movie, despite several attempts.)

   

  The Terminator gets the nod though. The context from the second part makes it more interesting than it would be by itself, but to me Sarah is the real main character in the series and this is the most interesting movie Sarah-wise. It sets her on the path towards becoming the badass she already is by T2, and then that movie, as far as she is concerned, is more about dealing with the accompanying batshit craziness she developed because of the events of the first one.

   

  But really, the original Terminator has it all, 80s Sarah, Reese and their bizarre romance, Technoir, the police station sequence with the chief, the psychiatrist and Lance Henriksen (who I believe was to play the Terminator himself at one point), a perfect ending, and just an all-round different feel than the big budget 90s sequel which was almost more of an event than it was a movie...

   

  Add in the nostalgia bonus points for this being one of the very first movies we had on tape when I was a kid, and I don't see how I could ever stop loving it.

   

   

• Le Mépris. Of the movies on my list, this one may have had the most mentions so far, but for good reason. After several viewings I feel there is more left to get out of this movie. Half the time I still don't catch the drift of whatever it is Fritz Lang's going on about for instance, but it's not even that important to me.

   

  What's sure is that this is a gorgeous movie, purely visually it already takes you to another world, the soundtrack is so good that Godard's deliberate attempts to run it into the ground fail miserably, and there's compelling drama at its core.

   

  When I think of Brigitte Bardot and "contempt" it reminds me of the ending to Et Dieu... Créa La Femme where she's drunkenly dancing in front of her husband and throwing him the most disdainful looks, but what ensues eventually makes her snap out of it. In Le Mépris this becomes much more of a point of no return, once respect is lost they are just passengers headed for the inevitable. Powerful stuff.

   

   

• Casino. Surprisingly easy choice for me among Scorsese's films, another visually stunning movie too, opulent without being garish, and a (or "the") career highlight for all involved. Sharon Stone never did anything quite as memorable as this again, James Woods is perfect as the sleaze ball she almost inexplicably loves, and Joe Pesci goes into his final form.

   

  Ace is a fascinating character; on the one hand he is a complete lowlife criminal with an impossible personality, but him being "not like the others" in this movie makes him disturbingly easy to empathize with, compared to say The Wolf of Wall Street where everyone is an unredeemable piece of shit.

   

  Added bonus, the indestructible theme from Le Mépris reappears and keeps on giving, as the relationships in this film too inevitably deteriorate.

   

   

• Le Cercle Rouge. I love all of the final four Jean-Pierre Melville movies. Le Samouraï is definitely the one that initially caught my eye and I can see why it is so highly rated, it's practically perfect. But I like the next three too much, how they became even weirder and more idiosyncratic, maybe more flawed too but somehow better for it.

   

  L'Armée des Ombres is a return to the WWII backdrop and a different cast, at a time when it looked like he'd settled into doing crime dramas with Alain Delon. Showing heroes of the resistance in all their ambiguity and imperfection, probably a very important movie to Melville himself too, it's to die for. I'm close to changing my mind and picking this one, but whatever.

   

  Le Cercle Rouge then. All the elements that make Melville so great are there, plus you get Bourvil, cast against type and delivering maybe his best ever performance, and Yves Montand as Jansen who might be the character that single-handedly made me pick this movie over the others, I'm not sure. Irresistible either way.

   

  Honorable mention for Un Flic, too. Try and imagine him living and making movies for another twenty years after this, which was certainly his weirdest, we missed out on some crazy shit there. The opening bank heist might be the best thing he ever filmed. Makes me want to curl up into a ball and just roll right into movie world, but maybe this one ultimately took the "flawed" aspect too far.

   

   

• L'homme de Rio. Besides Rio, also stars the city of Brasília which was essentially a construction site at the time. Total Tintin homage and kind of foreshadowing Indiana Jones too, it's one of the better adventure movies ever and a spoof of the genre at the same time.

   

  The twist is that the "adventurer" here, Adrien, really doesn't care about the adventure and does it all to save his capricious girlfriend Agnès from the villains. The movie finds some great humor in this, and within its own little world really makes you believe the dude would do anything for her.

   

  It probably has the most problems of any movie on this list, it's weirdly paced and feels longer than it actually is because the director had to add another Tintin tribute here and a Hitchcock tribute there and so on, the dialogue is really hard to understand in several places... but it's got undeniable charm. And it put Françoise Dorléac, Belmondo, and a comedy into the top five all at once, score.

this thread is so gay

Yeah a bit lol but f@#k it

1. Alien

2. Dead mans shoes

3. Predator

4. Akira

5. Princess monoke

  On 8/7/2017 at 11:34 PM, zaphod said:

this thread is so gay

Brokeback Mountain

Dallas Buyer's Club

Moonlight

The Danish Girl

I Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

  On 8/7/2017 at 11:34 PM, zaphod said:

this thread is so gay

that's why I like it

  On 8/7/2017 at 11:34 PM, zaphod said:

this thread is so gay

that's not what yo mama said

blood in blood out

kids

star wars

goodfellas

lord of the rings

French Connection

Weekend

Paris, Texas

Rope

Alien

Edit: I think I'd like to swap Rope with Rear Window please.