on My Favorite Movies

Here's a list and some notes about my favorite movies.  Perhaps one of them is a favorite of yours too?  I won't list movies that have affected me greatly like Cherry Blossoms or Somewhere In Time, because they are not movies I'd ever want to see again.  They were exceptional and great, but are not something I'd want to own.


1.  The Satyricon: because I have multiple copies of the ancient book and find it still fascinating.  Fellini did a wonderful, if artful job in his composition.  You can see a (nearly) scene by scene breakdown in an earlier post.


2.  A Place in the Sun:  The look on Montgomery Clift's face when he sees Liz Taylor for the first time is priceless and made me fall in love with him.  Clift's character actually saw her, but didn't know it in the first scene of the movie when she whizzed past him in her convertible as he looked at the billboard.  Shelley Winter's whiny character is superb.


3.  The Last of Sheila:  I love mysteries, especially ones a person can actually figure out, as James Coburn's character says: "if you're smart enough".  Written by Anthony Perkins (of Psycho) and Stephen Sondheim (the composer), it's a crafty and intriguing mystery within a mystery.  You have to get past the extremely 1970's style, fashion and acting by the likes of Raquel Welch, Richard Benjamin and Dyan Cannon, but the wonderful voice of James Mason makes up for it.


4.  The Price of Milk: an Australian surrealist comedy - that's right, you read that correctly, it's a surrealist comedy.  It's funny and strange and endearing at the same time.  The strangeness is mild and easily overlooked because the comedy and love story take top billing.  My favorite scene is when the female lead is dressed in a red Indian wedding gown that unfurls behind her as she runs down a green hill.


5.  Dark City:  Alex Proyas (the Crow) delivers a special effects laden sci-fi drama about aliens who can manipulate reality in a city that never sees the sun.  Some of the denouement is a bit cheesy, but Rufus Sewell (who I loved in Cold Comfort Farm) and Richard O'brien (from Rocky Horror) really make the film something great.  Even Keifer Sutherland's halting stammer grows on you.


6.  Casablanca:  I know this is a classic, but I really have a deep appreciation of this film.  I listened to an audio tape of a then-famous cinema class which broke the film down scene by scene.  There are techniques used in this movie that are ingenious, for instance, when the police come for Peter Lorre's character, multiple shadows fall over him and are cast against a wall where none were there before, simply to add a more intriguing shot.  The entire entrance to the film is completely false, yet believable.  I also love that the main characters are introduced methodically and not right at the very beginning.  The subtext in the script could fill another entire script.


7.  Brazil:  Another surrealist comedy, this one is also a science-fiction. I think this is the penultimate film by Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam.  You have to view the entire thing as if all the technology we enjoy today, computers, etc. were actually invented and in use back in the 30's.  Therefore there's a strange blend of modern tech with old world charm such as old typewriters with magnification screens.  It's dark and bleak but yet very interesting.  I love the main character's mother who wears shoes on her head like hats.


8.  Dune:  Even though the DeLaurentas and the studio kept interfering so much that David Lynch took his name off the film, I still love the look and feel and think it fits the best with my vision of the book.  My favorite scene is when the Atreides family first steps foot on the desert planet Arakis, with the Lady Jessica in her finery and Paul and his father Leto in their finest dress suits.  The extended "director's" cut is the best since a huge amount of footage had been cut out by the studio and replaced with a kind of stupid narration.  I'm amazed at how nearly every sentence uttered by a character was truncated in the theatrical version.


9.  Memento:  I couldn't believe this film when I first saw it.  I didn't catch it in the theaters, but had to wait until it came out on DVD. I think I immediately watched it a second time just to make sure I understood what happened.  My father refused to watch it once I told him the entire film is told in reverse chronological order.  His loss, because this is an incredible film.  Christopher Nolan became a household name after this film (although he had quite a lot of buzz from his earlier wonderful work "Following").  I became a big fan of his and he hasn't let me down yet (ie: Inception).


10.  Lord of the Rings Trilogy:  I absolutely adored the books as a child.  Peter Jackson and his crew did an absolutely amazing job recreating the worlds and characters I knew and loved.  So now maybe someone can tell me why Gandalf didn't have his giant Eagle friends simply carry Frodo and Sam to the volcano instead of just retrieving them after the arduous journey?


11.  Drowning by Numbers:  I know this movie is pretty quirky, dark and off the wall, but it really struck me and stuck with me.  It was one of the first times I realized a story can be told in a complex way with a sideline such as putting numbers into the films as a counter.  I still think the acting in this film was superb.


12.  My Dinner with Andre:  Here's a movie that I wouldn't probably see again for a decade or so, but I think I'm finally ready to watch it again.  I never thought that little squeaky bald guy from the Princess Bride could be interesting, but the script is so engaging he just pulls you right in.


13.  On a Clear Day You Can See Forever:  This is one of the only musicals I've watched more than once.  I'm really not a musical fan, and really I think this film would have been better without the singing.   Barbra Streisand is at her best here, playing the befuddled but lovable Daisy who has ESP and can make plants grow but is otherwise plain and simple.  Once the psychiatrist played by Yves Montand starts probing into her mind he discovers she has lived multiple, exciting and complex past lives.  He falls in love with one of the past lives named Melinda.  Yves' strong accent renders the song "Melinda, are you real?" laughable as "Mewinda, awr you weel?", but otherwise it's an outstanding script based on the play.


14.  Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory:  Not the updated nightmare made by Tim Burton, but the delightful musical starring Gene Wilder.  The award winning songs by Anthony Newly are still brilliant today.  I don't think a morning shower goes by without the Oompa Loompa song going through my head.


15.  The Wizard of Oz:  Something about the change from black and white to technicolor still makes my heart leap.  This is one of only a few musicals I like, and I even actually like the songs.  I'm not an old queen who worships Judy Garland, but you have to admit she was quite something in this film!


16.  The City of Lost Children:  I pretty much like everything  Jean-Pierre Jeunet has done including the incredible Amelie, Delicatessen and MicMacs, but not so much Alien Resurrection.  City has outlandish sets, intricately interwoven tales, and a terrific and purposeful pace.


17.  North by Northwest:  I have always liked Alfred Hitchcock movies but quite a few of them are not what I would call masterpieces, contrary to what critics and filmbuffs claim.  However, this one film is by far the exception.  My favorite scene is when James Mason says he'll have the bodies taken up in the plane and "dropped from a great height", Hitchcock has the camera rise up to the ceiling, looking down on Mason.  Many scenes in this film are ingeniously put together and delightful to watch.  Of course the suspense is thrilling, but that should go without saying.


18.  Citizen Kane:  This is an incredible classic with outlandishly beautiful sets and terrific acting.  It has been named "the best movie ever made" by many, many critics and associations.  I mostly love this film for its unique cinematography.  My favorite scene is when the camera looks in through a doorway at Dorothy Comingore, Kane's mistress and future wife.  The camera then pans up the facade of the building, over the roof and then down through a skylight to see Dorothy again instead of simply going in through the original doorway.  It's scenes like this that really make my heart leap.


19. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  I didn't actually like most of this movie at first.  It's one of those films that's difficult to watch.  The technique, camera angles, lighting, sets, etc. are not all that well done.  This is a film that whose merits lie in the script and acting which are brilliant.  I didn't fall in love with the film until after I'd finished watching it.  


20.  Murder by Death:  Okay, this is an extremely silly movie written by Neil Simon, but I've always liked it and have actually been inspired professionally by it.  It's about a collection of the world's most famous sleuths (like Sam Spade and Hercule Poirot, but thinly disguised as Sam Diamond and Milo Perrier, for instance) who come to a mansion for dinner and a murder.  The house is nearly one of the characters as it is a marvelous English style mansion full of ingenious mechanical devices.  Peter Sellers does a stand out job as Inspector Sydney Wang, an obvious allusion to Charlie Chan.