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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Top 10 Movie List



Having blogged nothing in a while I thought I would rise to the challenge of The Late Mitchell Warren and put together my most current top 10 movies. Feel welcome to add your two cents.

First let me say that this was harder than I thought it would be. I found top 5 was easy, so was top 20, top 10 got dicey. So, on the strength of Mitch’s argument for Lion King I went with what movies both influenced me and stuck with me. I also went with what movies I can watch over again more than a handful of times. Oh and I cheated on one…sorry.
No particular order

1. In 1922 Forrest Ackerman saw his first “imagi-film” and he became a super fan. Before dying in 2008 he maintained the largest collection of sci-fi and horror memorabilia in the world. As a young adult I remember hearing that his all time favorite movie was “Metropolis” and lamenting that it hadn’t been re-released in several decades. I vaguely remembered it from watching Saturday Matinee at the Bijou on PBS as a kid but watching it as an adult I could see what he loved in it. It is beautiful. Full of Art Deco imaginings of a future time in which everyone is enslaved and worked below ground for the sky people, it is a very early (1927) Socialist statement. It’s easy to see why it was taken out of rotation in the following era of anti-socialist feelings. Who knows, it will probably be destroyed sometime in the near future given our current leanings. If you have a copy, hold on to it.

2. “Un Chien Andalou”- There are very few movies I can watch over and over and pull something different out of it and this 1928 piece of Dada is one of them. It is intentional, the ambiguity of the script, the Dada-ness allows one to feel and receive whatever they are in the mood or maturity for at the time.

3. If I were to pick a movie based entirely on its soundtrack, and I am, It would be “Repo Man” (1984) However not only does it have my favorite punk-rock driven soundtrack, It was also my very first non-mainstream movie, sending me on a quest for all the Indie deliciousness I could find.

4. Because this task was so hard I tried to look at genres, which is why I chose “Robin Hood”(Disney 1973) I remember this as the first movie I ever went to. I can clearly remember going to what amounted to a drive-in, but was really a walk-up in our little ghost town of Columbia, CA. dangling from the bleachers and memorizing every song. Yes, I know them all to this day.

5. Also along the lines of genres, my favorite Musical to date is “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”. The music is incredible and the story heart wrenching. However everything ends well as it should in a musical

6. We have a long standing disagreement at House Rhuad. Some people here hate Jude Law. They find his hands weirdly small. I was on the fence about him myself until I saw him in “The Wisdom of Crocodiles” (also released as Immortality 1999) which was an excellent portrayal of a Psychopath. I fell in love then and there. He was spot on and I loved and hated his character.

7. Another movie I love that looks into the psyche is “Secretary”. It is also probably the only thing I have ever liked James Spader in. It is not for the kinkiness that I love this move. Okay…not only the kinkiness. I love this movie because it shows so well the torment of people who don’t understand why they want what they do and try so hard in the wrong ways to address it. It also illustrates how embracing parts of you that may be socially unacceptable can set you free for more happiness. This movie is also on my therapeutic movie list.

8. I have to thank my friend Karla for this one. Without her it may have taken me a while longer to come across it. “Boondock Saints” is great good fun, full of everything I love, action, intrigue, comedy, and redemption, spiced up with stereotype. Lovely.

9. No List would be complete for me without “Fight Club”. Not a movie list, not a book list, not a soundtrack list. It is also I think probably the single best book to movie reproduction ever.

10. Okay, here’s where I cheated. All Quentin Tarintino projects. I can’t help it, I cannot choose. I have not been let down yet by something he wrote, directed or heck even lent money to. The guy obviously watched too much T.V. and movies in his lifetime and god bless him for it.

So there it is, I was sad to leave out two of my favorite genres; Horror and Comic Book flicks. I’m a sucker for both. However, when all was said and done those are pure entertainment that is fluid, my favorites in those areas change so easily.