top ten films off the top of your head

[AhabsOtherLeg]

top tip: if you watch Holy Grail then watch Boorman's Excalibur immediately afterwards, Excalibur becomes a very funny comedy

I thought Excalibur was always a funny comedy. You're not telling me that the young guy playing Arthur (and Merlin throughout) were supposed to be serious, are you? It is an awesome film though, and Merlin is great because he is so over the top. It really captured the mythic feeling, and Percival's story was perfect.

My choices might not all be true. It's a lot of years since I watched most of these, and some may in fact be rubbish.

The Servant (1963 - a remake could be good, maybe by Von Trier if he could rein in his more overt excesses for a while)
Taxi Driver
Miller's Crossing
Citizen X
Just A Boy's Game (and Restless Natives)
There Will Be Blood (critically overrated, yes, but I really enjoy it still)
This Is England
Brazil (and Jabberwockie and Labyrinth as a younger, for their similarly grimy aesthetics and tactile special FX)
Dead Man's Shoes
Vincent Ward's Navigator (not the big Hollywood one)

And a load of obscure arty films from like Europe or someplace (maybe Italy, or Sweden) made in the fifties and sixties 'cos I'm really brainy as well.

[gnosticheresy_2]

top tip: if you watch Holy Grail then watch Boorman's Excalibur immediately afterwards, Excalibur becomes a very funny comedy

I thought Excalibur was always a funny comedy. You're not telling me that the young guy playing Arthur (and Merlin throughout) were supposed to be serious, are you? It is an awesome film though, and Merlin is great because he is so over the top. It really captured the mythic feeling, and Percival's story was perfect.

I can still quote Merlin's spell of making from memory But apart from Merlin's amazing performance I thought Boorman was going for over the top, but not slapstick

And a load of obscure arty films from like Europe or someplace (maybe Italy, or Sweden) made in the fifties and sixties 'cos I'm really brainy as well.

Goes without saying really.

Pulp Fiction - I have that film memorized. It infected the vernacular of my circle of friends completely. My social personality is undoubtedly forever changed.

Get Shorty - See above.

Snatch was one of those sort of films for me, it's just so damn quotable suddenly loads of people I knew decided they were cockney geezers innit.

[Project Willow]

There are no films on the top of my head. Ba-dump-bump.

Some of these films are about the head.

The Secret Life of Words
Babette's Feast
Delicatessen
The Hudsucker Proxy
Code 46
Serenity
I've Loved You So Long
The Lover
Dogtooth

The Legend of Hell House (childhood favorite)

Apparently I have a crush on Tim Robbins. I did not know that.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

I can still quote Merlin's spell of making from memory

Anál nathrach, orth ' bháis ' s bethad, do chél dénmha. By which I mean, me too.

But apart from Merlin's amazing performance I thought Boorman was going for over the top, but not slapstick

He's always going for over the top but not slapstick (Zardoz, Exorcist 2) and every time he fails magnificently. He seems to have invented his own genre - melocomedy. At least nobody could ever accuse him of lacking a flair for the dramatic.

[harry ashburn]

movies i loved but can't stand to watch again, too tragic: Romeo is Bleeding and Jacob's Ladder (tim robbins). Last of the MOhicans disqualified 'cause of historical errors, mainly, you cant shoot a running man at 300 yds. with a smooth-bore musket.
Little Big Man. 12 Monkeys and The Jackal. (the Patriot and the mel gibson one about the scottish warrior disqualified also for historical accuracies.) Bullett. Great Escape. Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. 2 to be named.

[harry ashburn]

dear project willow. dont know if hudsucker proxy was tim robbins. he was in the H-something Redemption, long time prisoner who escaped.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

dear project willow. dont know if hudsucker proxy was tim robbins.

Yep, he was the star in that. Though you wouldn't know it, since Jennifer Jason Leigh stole the film from under him. Come to think of it, so did the whole rest of the cast. He was still good in it, though, which shows what a good film it is.

The Legend of Hell House (childhood favorite)

I read the book of that as a kid. I shouldn't have been allowed to. It's great though.

[Project Willow]

dear project willow. dont know if hudsucker proxy was tim robbins. he was in the H-something Redemption, long time prisoner who escaped.

Shawshank Redemption, another very good movie, as is Jacob's ladder. At one time, I had a weak, tangential connection to Robbins, through friends who knew him during the time he and Susan Sarandon were together. The friend's band mate co-owned a bar with Robbins in New York and one year (that we heard tell of) spent Thanksgiving with the pair at their rather large house somewhere outside of New York city. We heard all the tales but were never allowed any closer due to the agreement our friends had with the pair, which prohibited the passing of any type of message. It really made a lot of sense for privacy's sake. It's just unfortunate, because as I began to delve more deeply into my advocacy work, I really would have liked to get survivor's stories in front of Tim or Susan, given their political and creative interests. Ah well, life is filled with lost opportunities.

I read the book of that as a kid. I shouldn't have been allowed to. It's great though.

Are you thinking of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson? It is one of my favorites. If you are referring to something else, please tell me what it is!

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream."

I feel like that right now! As if I can't get away from reality I will perish, at any moment. It's intolerable.

I



hate



this.




Carry on.

[Inkwhyring]

-Night of the Living Dead -In Cold Blood -Schindlers List -Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore -2 1/2 Grams -the Devils' Rejects -the Matrix -Grease -Sin City -the Reader

[AhabsOtherLeg]

Are you thinking of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson? It is one of my favorites. If you are referring to something else, please tell me what it is!

Nope, I meant "Hell House" by Richard Matheson, on which the film "Legend of Hell House" is based (Matheson was accused of ripping off Shirley Jackson at the time, but I think he told a very different story). I warn thee - the film, given the time of it's making and the fact that it was a film, had to tone down the content to an almost unrecognisable degree. It is hard to describe the book and it's (pre-deceased) villain Emeric Belasco, but I would definitely give a trigger warning - the son of an American "royal" dynasty, with an arms dealer father and actress mother, he is the archetypal super-wealthy sociopath; a mesmerist, occultist, psychological manipulator, perpetrator (and voyeur) of just about every sexual perversion extant, and in his own way a scientific genius. He turns his isolated mansion (in Maine, of course, as Stephen King well read) into a sort of Jonestown for the wealthy, where their prolonged degradation of others (including a literal reenactment of the 120 days of sodom) turns inevitably into self-degradation and mass-suicide/murder, all monitored by him (and maybe others) as an experiment in mindcontrol, ego-dominance, and the expression of superior "will" over the victims.

Then the book starts. I can't really say I'd recommend it, but it is a powerful story, and well-written.

I haven't read Shirley Jackson's original though. I haven't even seen The Haunting of Hill House.

I wonder if it's accidental that in There Will Be Blood Daniel Plainview's "dream home" as a boy was "the Hill House". When asked if he would like to own it now, he says - "I think if i saw that house again it would make me sick." Of course the "house on the hill" has sociological and class implications in the US, but the way he says it makes it very definitely sound like he means "the Hill House" - a specifc house belonging to a family called the Hills.

Then i start thinking of The Hills on MTV, the most banal and pointless TV show of all time, and it makes me want to go and read a book instead. Which is good.

[justdrew]

Are you thinking of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson? It is one of my favorites. If you are referring to something else, please tell me what it is!

Nope, I meant "Hell House" by Richard Matheson, on which the film "Legend of Hell House" is based ...

that movie always reminds me of another somewhat similar: The Legacy (1978) ...
boy, that's a creepy movie, see the video theme song on youtube, Another Side of Me sung by Kiki Dee
and thinking about it, I'll just say -warning- on that.

checkout this daffy movie, apparently made for tv? Complete with another in the long long list of cinematic devil worshiping scenes, (and 70s avatar, Ike Eisenmann! who'd apparently been somewhat typecast by this point)


how about a top 10 spaghetti westerns?

1?

full movie here: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yhwrPmh3Qc[/youtube]

A coffin-dragging gunslinger enters a town caught between two feuding factions, the KKK and a gang of Mexican Bandits, and is caught up in a struggle against them.


2?

[AhabsOtherLeg]

that movie always reminds me of another somewhat similar: The Legacy (1978)

It is similar in story terms, but the book of Hell House is a book. A real book. It's like the difference between Richard Matheson's I Am Legend and Will Smith's I Am Legend. They are both the same story, in a way, but only one of them is allowed to be interesting, difficult, angry, problematic, disturbing, and horrible - because Will Smith isn't in it, and it didn't cost $150 million and have an obligation to recoup it.

[Project Willow]

Nope, I meant "Hell House" by Richard Matheson, on which the film "Legend of Hell House" is based (Matheson was accused of ripping off Shirley Jackson at the time, but I think he told a very different story). I warn thee - the film, given the time of it's making and the fact that it was a film, had to tone down the content to an almost unrecognisable degree. It is hard to describe the book and it's (pre-deceased) villain Emeric Belasco, but I would definitely give a trigger warning - the son of an American "royal" dynasty, with an arms dealer father and actress mother, he is the archetypal super-wealthy sociopath; a mesmerist, occultist, psychological manipulator, perpetrator (and voyeur) of just about every sexual perversion extant, and in his own way a scientific genius. He turns his isolated mansion (in Maine, of course, as Stephen King well read) into a sort of Jonestown for the wealthy, where their prolonged degradation of others (including a literal reenactment of the 120 days of sodom) turns inevitably into self-degradation and mass-suicide/murder, all monitored by him (and maybe others) as an experiment in mindcontrol, ego-dominance, and the expression of superior "will" over the victims.

Reminds me of my childhood, except the money part, no wonder I was attracted to it. Reminds me of another film as well, Salo. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073650/

Yikes-a-saurus!

[Simulist]

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

(Because... well, it is.)

Airplane!

(Because it was just plane [sic] funny.)

Peter Sellers' Pink Panther films

(Because Clouseau isn't the only ego-driven official whose success is due to nothing more than dumb luck.)

Mame

(Because "Life is a Banquet, and most sons of bitches are starving to death.")

Ferris Beuller's Day Off

(Because "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.")

The Birdcage

(Because it was one of the first films I ever saw that acknowledged gay people as pretty-much-exactly like everyone else. Just wittier. )

The Fury

(Because... well, we won't get into that right now.)

Star Wars

(Because the Force does have a powerful influence on the weak-minded. And yeah, that was self-deprecating humor. But, um... true.)

Forbidden Planet

(Because the Id plays a far more notable role in our lives than most of us want to consider. My superego made me say that.*)

Dark City

(Because there's something truer about it than I want to consider.)

_________
* If my Superego had a t-shirt made for my Ego about my Id, it might say "I'm with stupid."

[MacCruiskeen]

Bicycle Thieves

Naked

Withnail and I

The Singing, Ringing Tree

Night of the Hunter

White Heat

To Kill A Mockingbird

Another Time, Another Place

Big Night

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

- "Top ten films off the top of your head" is kind of a contradiction in terms, because "top ten films" is by definition something you would really have to think about. So inevitably it turned out to be "ten films that made a very strong impression on me - at some time in my life (including and especially my childhood) - and that I thought of quickly".

So, anyway, I did that exercise in good faith, but then I looked back on it and thought: That's weird, Seven Samurai is not in there, and neither is The Tingler, nor Bad Day at Black Rock, and neither is Twelve Angry Men, and there's nothing by Stanley Kubrick, not even The Shining. No Tarkovski! And what happened to Vertigo (for instance), or M, or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or Jules and Jim, or Die innere Sicherheit, or The Vanishing?

Plus about 53 other films I forgot but will remember tomorrow or next month.

Anyway, it is what it is. I didn't change it after typing it.

PS Willow, I owe you a response in that other thread.

ON EDIT: I added White Heat, because I belatedly realised I had only posted nine films.