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.<\/p>\n
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<\/i>, Radar Secret Service<\/i>, and so on.<\/p>\n
1) Casablanca<\/i>. How can it not be? It is a perfect film.<\/p>\n
2) Brazil<\/i>. Let’s take 1984<\/i> and h\u0301\u031aa\u0322\u036a\u0309\u0350\u033d\u035c\u034fl\u030e\u0303\u036a\u0300\u0368\u034c\u0311\u0358l\u0311\u0307\u030b\u036d\u034fu\u036b\u0346\u0306\u0302\u030a\u030f\u031ac\u0338\u0334\u0368\u0300\u036f\u0300\u0304\u0308\u0301\u0300i\u0363\u0365\u0309\u036f\u0361\u0146\u0338\u0302\u036f\u0369\u0310\u00f4\u0338\u0366\u030ag\u0346\u0308\u033e\u030e\u036b\u031ae\u0334\u0364\u0307\u0301\u0350\u0312\u0310\u034fn\u036f\u0308\u033f\u035e\u0361s\u0364\u036e\u0352\u0301\u0302\u0369\u0489<\/b> and see what happens. Answer: brilliance<\/em>.<\/p>\n 3) Spirited Away<\/i> (\u5343\u3068\u5343\u5c0b\u306e\u795e\u96a0\u3057). 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.<\/p>\n 4) The Manchurian Candidate<\/i> (1961). I would argue possibly the best cold war film, only matched by Doctor Strangelove<\/i>. So paranoid, so relentless, so sad<\/em>. Angela Lansbury is brilliant, perfect evil. I’d like to see her go up against Davros in Doctor Who<\/i>. (Spoiler: she’d destroy<\/eM> him.)<\/p>\n 5) O Brother Where Art Thou?<\/i> If you don’t feel the gods intervening in the radio station, you aren’t reachable.<\/p>\n 6) The Lord of the Rings<\/i> (Peter Jackson trilogy), because how do you even realise this? And yet, they did. Astounding.<\/p>\n 7) Pacific Rim<\/i>, 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?!<\/i><\/p>\n 8) On the Beach<\/i>, probably the third- or fourth-best cold war film. (See also the last great one: Threads<\/i> (1984).) Why this and Manchurian Candidate<\/i> and not Doctor Strangelove?<\/i> 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<\/i> at about the same time, and the mix is… hilarious? But not intentionally. And why not Threads<\/i>? Different era, different world, I guess. I dunno.<\/p>\n 9) Princess Mononoke<\/i> (\u3082\u306e\u306e\u3051\u59eb). 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.<\/p>\n 10) The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension<\/i>. Welcome to my sense of humour. Population: me.<\/p>\n 11) Captain Blood<\/i> (1935). Welcome to my sense of adventure! Population me, and a bunch of pirates. “You speak treason!” “Fluently.”<\/p>\n 12) The Lion in Winter<\/i>. Welcome to my idea about family! Population me, and all my horrible memories. Made beautiful by tremendous acting and actual<\/em> razor wit. And occasionally, actual razors. Ah, family.<\/p>\n 13) The Monolith Monsters<\/i>. If an alien invasion film could be a procedural, this would be it. A minor film, but Science! and Rationality!<\/p>\n 14) The Maltese Falcon<\/i> (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<\/em> control – his crazy rage. There’s one point in particular where he is so angry<\/em> he can barely move. It’s great.<\/p>\n 15) Lilo and Stitch<\/i>. A film I did not expect out of Disney, a love song to Hawai’i, funny, smart, poignant.<\/p>\n That’s my list right now. It’d probably have different items on it if someone asked again later. What’s yours?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6309\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}