I See Dead People (no. 2)

[koganbot]

Look, this is really sad. No list of all-time great movies whose top ten includes only movies I've already seen can be credible.* Or if it is credible, this is a sad world. Not to denigrate my own tastes, judgments, and habits, but round '78 I decided that I didn't have the time or money to watch a lot of movies. And in 1999 I made the decision, I

Comments

my vote

[dubdobdee]

Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947

Re: my vote

[koganbot]

Seen four o' yours (Lady, Goodbye, Eraserhead, Police Story). No name recognition on another three (Sir Henry, Communion, Maborisi).

What do you mean by "get it" when you say, "Sometimes other people get it (Police Story; Maborosi); sometimes everyone does (Eraserhead; The Thing)"?

I do recommend this one, if you've not seen it (but is more about human dynamics than about alien strangeness):

What's the next flick on your queue?

Re: my vote

[dubdobdee]

"get it" = grasp why i might vote for this without me explaining at length (and "everyone" is rhetorical)

My LoveFilm queue is clogged with old Doctor Whos I haven't written up for FT. I have about 25 films recorded on my TiVo ready to watch, but to be honest recording something is generally more a recognition of anxious duty -- I ought to watch this -- than desire. It's deferred homework.

Re: my vote

[koganbot]

Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain]

Here's 15 in alphabetical order:

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Spielberg, 2001)
The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966)
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938)
The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988)
Election (Payne, 1999)
The Elephant Man (Lynch, 1980)
F for Fake (Welles, 1973)
Fargo (Coen, 1996)
Groundhog Day (Ramis, 1993)
A History of Violence (Cronenberg, 2005)
The Treasure of the Sierre Madre (Huston, 1948)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Demy, 1964)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Zemeckis, 1988)
Young Frankenstein (Brooks, 1974)

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain]

Ah, forgot one that might belong here, La Cienaga by Lucrecia Martel. And I've kept off short and near-feature films in experimental and documentary modes that I'm not sure how to classify. Those include things like Dennis O'Rourke's Cannibal Tours, Hollis Frampton's Nostalgia, a number of other ones.

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[koganbot]

Have seen eight of your fifteen (the seven I haven't are A.I., Election, Fake, Fargo, Violence, Umbrellas, and Rabbit). What's next in your queue?

Re: Haven't done one of these in a while.

[skyecaptain]

Hm, haven't watched a movie in a while! But will probably go see The Expendables 2 when it comes out. Most recent movie watched was Thor, next in the queue is Griffith's Intolerance, but will probably shift things above it before watching it.

Library

[ext_878085]

As a librarian that used to work in a public library at the reference desk, I can confirm that the focus is on newer films with very little interest in the classics. The exceptions were classic holiday films, classic children's films (Parent Trap), the major American Hitchcock films, and some of other classics through the years (The Godfather films, Cary Grant films, James Stewart films, Wizard of Oz, etc.).

For me no list is complete without "The Night of the Hunter". The rest changes all the time but would likely include a Hitchcock or two, a bunch of film noir, and maybe my favorite guilty pleasure, "The Brady Bunch Movie".

Re: Library

[skyecaptain]

"Night of the Hunter" has the distinction of being a film that I saw once, didn't really like, and then perpetually grew in fondness in memory that I don't really want to see it again, although I probably should. Ditto Daniel Reeves's Obsessive Becoming, an uneven experimental film about childhood abuse and about a hundred other topics. (The latter was the first film that I "argued" myself into liking -- i.e. I wrote a paper about it that was better than I remembered the movie being, and my new "liking" of how I remembered it seemed to trump the actual experience of watching it. This rarely happens with music because it's too easy to re-listen.)

Re: Library

[ext_878085]

I know what you mean, skyecaptain. Hitchcock's "Vertigo" and Fellini's "La Strada" are the same for me. I even wrote a paper about "La Strada" and "8 1/2" in film school but I have no desire to ever see either film again. "Vertigo", like "Citizen Kane", has always struck me as a great film to study but not a film to love.

On the other hand, I have watched "Night of the Hunter" probably 10-12 times since first seeing it in the early 1990's.

Re: Library

[koganbot]

My friend Rob saw Vertigo on my instigation and thought it was extraordinarily great but he knew he'd never want to see it again, the way it captured the latent pathology in his own romanticism.

Impossible to talk about that movie without creating spoilers; watching it, I was thinking to myself "This is hooey" for the first two-thirds of the movie - albeit eerily gripping hooey - but then of course the last third makes you rethink everything. I imagined doing a remake set in the '70s punk rock/no wave Lower East Side, with the lead characters regularly dropping in at a bar so that they can play "Hunter Gets Captured By The Game" on a jukebox full of new punk, reggae, and old soul. They joke that it's their song, the male lead taking the song one way, having no awareness that the female lead is taking it differently.

professional fact-checker checks in

[dubdobdee]

the reason frank doesn't remember henry fonda being in "the man from laramie" is that he isn't: it's james stewart OF COURSE but for some reason i have a persistant mental glitch abt these two rather dissimilar people

Re: professional fact-checker checks in

[koganbot]

Well, they're both most famous for roles in which they're nice guys taking on evil that seems to be beyond them - which of course doesn't nearly capture their range as actors. Anthony Mann was a director who got Jimmy Stewart to ramp up the bitterness and ruthlessness, in movies like Thunder Bay, The Far Country, and maybe Bend In The River, as well ("maybe" because I barely remember it, except that I remember liking it); other characters need to draw him back to his better self. In The Naked Spur, his goodness and self-righteousness are twisted into something almost ugly, and again he needs drawing back (Robert Ryan is an excellent antagonist, the way he needles Stewart).

Mann directed Fonda in The Tin Star, but I never saw it.

[ext_878085]

In any event, what's the next movie you're gonna see?

I'll hopefully make it to the theater to see "The Queen of Versailles" but will most likely see it once it's available as a download at home.