15 films challenge
- September 11th, 2014
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I got tagged on the 15 Films challenge. Consider yourself tagged, or don’t – I’m not fond of that part, and besides, this goes a zillion places.
But here, my top 15 favourite/personally influential films of all time – don’t consider these in order, or maybe do, if you want. I don’t. Also, I’m leaving out films I love in the ironic sense – the works of Ed Wood, Jr, the original Gamera trilogy, Robot Monster, Radar Secret Service, and so on.
1) Casablanca. How can it not be? It is a perfect film.
2) Brazil. Let’s take 1984 and h́̚a̢ͪ̉͐̽͜͏l̎̃ͪ̀ͨ͌̑͘l̑̇̋ͭ͏uͫ͆̆̂̊̏̚c̸̴ͨ̀ͯ̀̄̈́̀iͣͥ̉ͯ͡ņ̸̂ͯͩ̐ô̸ͦ̊g͆̈̾̎ͫ̚e̴ͤ̇́͐̒̐͏nͯ̈̿͞͡sͤͮ͒́̂ͩ҉ and see what happens. Answer: brilliance.
3) Spirited Away (千と千尋の神隠し). Transcendent in every way. For years, I was emotionally ready to dump everything and go work at Yubaba’s bath house if the opportunity arose. Magic lessons required, of course.
4) The Manchurian Candidate (1961). I would argue possibly the best cold war film, only matched by Doctor Strangelove. So paranoid, so relentless, so sad. Angela Lansbury is brilliant, perfect evil. I’d like to see her go up against Davros in Doctor Who. (Spoiler: she’d destroy him.)
5) O Brother Where Art Thou? If you don’t feel the gods intervening in the radio station, you aren’t reachable.
6) The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson trilogy), because how do you even realise this? And yet, they did. Astounding.
7) Pacific Rim, because I have never walked out of a theatre in a daze like that before, with my brain still going, what the fuck did I just see and can I see it again?!
8) On the Beach, probably the third- or fourth-best cold war film. (See also the last great one: Threads (1984).) Why this and Manchurian Candidate and not Doctor Strangelove? To be honest, I can’t quite tell you why. Strangelove is fantastic. But I had the unfortunate confluence of seeing that and reading Fail Safe at about the same time, and the mix is… hilarious? But not intentionally. And why not Threads? Different era, different world, I guess. I dunno.
9) Princess Mononoke (もののけ姫). I will possibly never watch this film again, because the first time destroyed me. I think… this is where I learned to love a film about losing.
10) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. Welcome to my sense of humour. Population: me.
11) Captain Blood (1935). Welcome to my sense of adventure! Population me, and a bunch of pirates. “You speak treason!” “Fluently.”
12) The Lion in Winter. Welcome to my idea about family! Population me, and all my horrible memories. Made beautiful by tremendous acting and actual razor wit. And occasionally, actual razors. Ah, family.
13) The Monolith Monsters. If an alien invasion film could be a procedural, this would be it. A minor film, but Science! and Rationality!
14) The Maltese Falcon (1941, the one with Bogie, the one you know about). The perfect detective film. Often overlooked; Elisha Cook Jr. as Wilmer, the gunsel. A small part, but watch him barely control – barely control – his crazy rage. There’s one point in particular where he is so angry he can barely move. It’s great.
15) Lilo and Stitch. A film I did not expect out of Disney, a love song to Hawai’i, funny, smart, poignant.
That’s my list right now. It’d probably have different items on it if someone asked again later. What’s yours?
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Knocking at the doors: Blade Runner (Director’s Cut, please), Swordsman II (a.k.a. The Legend of the Swordsman (1992)), When Worlds Collide (a.k.a. Whitey! In! Spaaaaaaaaaace! a.k.a. I’m so ashamed), Urusei Yatsuri: Beautiful Dreamer (うる星やつら2 ビューティフルドリーマー) (see also: so ashamed), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (underrated as noir, in my opinion), White Zombie (Bela Lugosi’s best role, and legitimately contains the single creepiest scene I’ve ever watched), Goldfinger and/or Skyfall in the superspy genre, Project A-Ko (despite all the problems, because see earlier me going, “wait, they’re lesbians, and that’s… just fine?” That shit matters), Kiki’s Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便), Drunken Master (醉拳), and and and yeah lots.
Oh yes. The ones I have seen I love, the ones I haven’t I now want to see. For myself, I could never put a list like this together; how does one compare films? I was asked for my favorites a couple of months ago, and among others Constantine popped up in my head. Yes, it’s awful, but there are moments in it that are just perfect. So how does it compare to The Thin Red Line or Kiki’s Delivery Service? Um… have a nice day.
Peter: These… how do I even talk about it? I don’t see the challenge as Best Films. Aside from how impossibly subjective that is, I think most would agree there are a lot of films which deserve to be on that list which aren’t on this one. (e.g., The Godfather, Parts I and II.)
So I see it as more personal. The 15 films that affected _me_, as an individual, shoving me around and shifting my ideas about art. And not in any particular order, this isn’t a ranking.
The more I think about it the more films I come up with. Susperia maybe should’ve been on here. But what would I remove? I have no idea. Prince of Darkness deserves a knocking-at-the-door nod. But, by contrast, while I _love love love_ The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, I utterly adore it and think it’s one of the greatest films of its era, it shouldn’t be, just because I didn’t see it at the right time to affect my ideas about art. Maybe if I’d seen it before Unforgiven. But I didn’t. And kind of which I had. (Which isn’t a knock against Unforgiven, which I still quote. “Deserve ain’t got nothin’ t’do with it.”)
Yeah. It’s difficult. But that’s the approach I took.
Buckaroo Banzai! Someone else liked that film-coinkydinxially, I just got the comics as a gift out of the blue a week or so ago…( Many Thanks, Melody!). I wonder what happened to the Jet Car (well, truck) and Hong Kong Cavaliers bus?
Scott: You didn’t know I love Buckaroo? Oh yeah. 😀 Hell, I did a song! I taught myself how to use a digital audio workstation by making a song out of the first one they start to perform in the film – I scraped every note off the soundtrack and put it together into a thing, with more instruments from me (zouk, mandolin, drums, vocals) and my own lyrics.
Here, it’s a totally free download. I can’t ever license it, there are too many confused licenses floating around, so it’s free for the fandom. 😀