Summer trips, Halifax, actually Peggy's Cove, in 2008.What movies do you never tire of?
(Thanks to Jeff Meyerson for the idea).
BRINGING UP BABY
SOME LIKE IT HOT
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
DIRTY DANCING (guilty pleasure)
REAR WINDOW/NORTH BY NORTHWEST/THE LADY VANISHES
PILLOW TALK
THE GRADUATE
MANHATTAN/ANNIE HALL/HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
CASABLANCA
THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR
ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN
IT'S A GIFT
Okay, way over so sue me.
67 comments:
Shrek
Notting Hill, Love Actually (most Richard Curtis, truth be told)
Bull Durham
Caddyshack
Casablanca
Nobody's Fool
Grosse Point Blank
Sabrina (original)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Arsenic and old Lace
Most of these are, for me, comfort food. Films to watch when I am sick or down.
Rio Bravo
Casablanca
The Big Sleep
Animal House
Ride the High Country
The Adventures of Robin Hood
A Night at the Opera
King Kong (Original)
The Maltese Falcon
Chinatown
See I hate seeing your lists and thinking of the movies I forgot. Arsenic and Old Lace and Rio Bravo. Rio Bravo just knocked me out when I saw it for the first time a few years ago. Chinatown, I love but it scares me too much. I will never forget listening to my son laugh his way through Caddyshack about a million times.
I'll see you in court, Abbott!
Hmmm.
ORPHEUS (the Cocteau film)
HIS GIRL FRIDAY
CAT PEOPLE (the original, though the Kinski remake if I'm in the right mood)
WOMAN IN THE DUNES
THREE CASES OF MURDER, at leat the first segment
KING KONG (the original) as a child...thanks to tv stations running public-domain prints, I saw it about twelve or thirteen times by the time I was 10yo.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND
BOUND (particularly since I lived with my room/housemate for twelve years and she was enchanted)
HEATHERS (ditto, only my brother)
BULLITT
--many others, and not a few tv and radio shows, plays, etc....
Here's one of the radio shows, thanks in large part to Maria Bamford and Paul Gilmartin as the happy political couple, starting about ten minutes in:
http://www.blip.tv/file/2205019
Woman in the Dunes-I will never recover from that one. And I should have included HIS GIRL FRIDAY, too. Just put me down for any movie with Cary Grant. Even if he did play himself mostly.
Gettysburg. I don't expect one soul to follow me there. It renews my understanding of the mission of the American republic.
And Rio Bravo.
Cary Grant, yes. North by Northwest. And Breakfast at Tiffany's. It's the last film depicting a civilized New York. It reminds me how good life was when I was young.
Well, we have seen it. Jeff Daniels is a Michgander and we love him and his theater in Chelsea. Plus my son's childhood best friend is in it--Matt Letscher.
Plus my husband and son are great devotees of that battle in particular. Quite a good battlefield to visit.
Except I am now reading the novel by Capote which is quite different from the book. She is definitely more of a prostitute than the movie played it. A bit shocking to me.
Bringing Up Baby
Arsenic and Old Lace
Jumpin' Jack Flash
Antonia's Line
The Birdcage
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Persuasion (1995)
All Through the Night
the three good Alien movies:Alien, Aliens, Alien Resurrection
Duck Soup
Some of the ones mentioned above, for sure.
The wannabe secret agent in me has to mention From Russia, With Love and Goldfinger, the two best Bonds.
Palm Beach Story
Maltese Falcon
Duck Soup
The Time of Their Lives (Abbott's alive while Costello is a Revolutionary war ghost)
Blues Brothers
Dr Strangelove
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1979)
Time Bandits
The Good THe Bad and The Ugly
Charade
Dan Luft
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN
FERRIS BULLER’S DAY OFF
THE GREAT ESCAPE
GOLDFINGER
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
GUNS OF NAVARONE
CASABLANCA
CAPE FEAR
A MAN AND A WOMAN
BULLITT
1995 Persuasion is the best Austen ever. Palm Beach Story-love it. Cape Fear is the scariest movie without a true monster. And Charade is always fun. I think I've seen it a dozen times. Yep, they are the two best Bonds.
Yes, Capote caught Holly Golightly perfectly. Just about then, a wealthy friend of mine in LA was approached by beautiful twins pursuing acting and modeling careers. Would he pay their rent? They would clean his house and cook for him-- and both would be available to him any time. He accepted. It was very important to them that they cook and clean; it was the veneer they needed. That is just what Capote caught, back there in the late 50s, early 60s.
Only two for me:
GROUNDHOG DAY
THE DEAD (dir. John Huston)
Wow now I am totally embarrassed not to have remembered Groundhog Day-which may be my very favorite movie and repetition is its theme. Great choice.
Richard, you have led an exciting life.
Jaws, The Big Lebowski, Goodfellahs, The Godfather, The Godfather Part 2, Dog Day Afternoon, The Getaway, The Drowning Pool, Life of Brian, The Usual Suspects
Man, how did I forget IT'S A GIFT when I made my list? Doh! What a classic.
"Sit down, Mr. Muckle honey, please."
"I told him I wouldn't do that if I was him!"
"Carl LaFong. Capital L, small a, capital F, small o, small n, small g. LaFong."
Genius.
Jeff M.
Of course all of these movies are actually among my favorites, Kieran.
The lightbulb scene, Jeff. That one knocks me out every time.
Of the others listed, I do like LOVE ACTUALLY though it's uneven. I loved Rodney's parts of CADDYSHACK but too much is too stupid (and not in a good way) for my taste.
Bill got another two of mine, RIO BRAVO and MALTESE FALCON (I don't think we need to say it is the 1941 version). ALso add THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER.
Todd, we had Million Dollar Movie on Channel 9 in New York when we were kids. They'd run the same movie every afternoon and then over and over on Saturdays. My brother and I watched KING KONG and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG a zillion times each.
Patti, I never read TIFFANY's until a couple of years ago and was also surprised at how she was in the book. I like the movie but Mickey Rooney is an embarrassment. Was Jerry Lewis not available?
Dan Luft: THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES is one of my wife's all-time favorites so we've watched it many times. ("Didn't I see you in REBECCA?")
Others mentioned that I forgot:
GROUNDHOG DAY (can't believe I missed this; almost as bad as missing IT'S A GIFT)
GUNS OF NAVARONE
THE GREAT ESCAPE
NORTH BY NORTHWEST
THE BIG LEBOWSKI ("Shut the f*ck up, Donnie.")
Jeff M.
Who has a huge pile of bare lightbulbs in the middle of a store? What a mind.
Jeff M.
I had a dream about 3 Days Of The Condor last night..
Okay, off the top of my head...
Kes
Key Largo
Goodfellas
Resevoir Dogs
Saturday Night, Sunday Morning
Barfly
Bad Timing
It's A Wonderfull Life
Ealing Comedies
The Rebel
Casablanca
The Big Sleep
Rear Window
Since You Went Away
Roughly Speaking
His Girl Friday
Charade
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
The Goodbye Girl
Billy Budd
Gosh, three of these are in color. Maybe I'm slowly dragging myself into the 1960s!
Oh, ROUGHLY SPEAKING is new to me. And I have always wanted to see Kes. Have to check if it's on netflix yet.
Usual Suspects
Apocalypse Now
Casablanca
Reservoir Dogs
Seven Samurai
Spinal Tap
Chinatown
Dream w/ the Fishes
Alien
Blade Runner
I'm surprised no one has mentioned A CHRISTMAS STORY.
Jeff M.
Oh yeah, A Christmas Story and Christmas Vacation -- :) nice call Jeff
DIE HARD
A FISH CALLED WANDA
INDEPENDENCE DAY
THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY
THE TERMINATOR
MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Blazing Saddles
Animal House
The Godfather
The Maltese Falcon
The Hustler
Jaws
LA Confidential
The Usual Suspects
I find two votes each for (the Peckinpah, I gather) THE GETAWAY and for (ID4, I gather) INDEPENDENCE DAY croggling, to say the least, but de gustibus. But...really? Whereas MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL...of course. And the Amanda Donohoe debut, more or less, film, CASTAWAY (not the Tom Hanks and volleyball film)...not the greatest of films, but so beautifully shot, and Donohoe so breathtaking as well as talented.
Jeff, I think I might've mentioned before, in response to your fond memories of the WOR MILLION DOLLAR MOVIE (me, I remember SCTV's parody of it, never having lived in the NYC metro area), but Chris Steinbrunner, the film columnist for ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE in the '70s, was the WOR film guy, making those choices.
Todd, I knew Chris Steinbrunner through the mystery field and have a couple of stories from friends who went to his house to watch movies with him. He was quite a character, especially when he was drinking apparently. He sure knew movies.
Jeff M.
Funny how some of these lists include movies I could watch over and over, and on the same person's list will be one that was a sleep-inducer for me the one time I watched it! I love that. Here are a few of mine:
The Last of the Mohicans
LOTR trilogy
The Warriors
Meatballs
Conan the Barbarian
Alien/Aliens
Pitch Black
No Country for Old Men
Black Robe
Rocky
When We Were Kings
As you can see, my movie choices are strictly high brow in nature. I hope I'm not coming off as too pretentious.
Ok, I stopped reading the comments because it kept making my list bigger.
Who's Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?
Big Sleep (46)
Double Wedding
Mad Miss Manton
Support Your Local Gunfight (or Sheriff)
Diplomaniacs
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
You Only Live Twice
Trouble In Mind
Highway 61
I know I watch too many movies because I have seen all but two or three of these. Diplomaniacs is new to me.
If there was a film version of your Friday's Forgotten Books series one of the first featured would be Wheeler and Woolsey. "Diplomaniacs" has some PC issues but a great example of the surreal humor popular in the 1920s and 30s.
Someone started one a few years back but it didn't get going. Certainly forgotten by me. I'll look for it.
Fargo, Miller's Crossing, The Big Lebowski (yeah I like the Coens), Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, Pulp Fiction, Caddyshak, Blazing Saddles, Casino, any James Bond
As I mentioned in my last comment, Patti, I can watch NIGHT AND THE CITY (1950) and UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG endlessly.
In addition, I would add the following:
THE WILD BUNCH
DETOUR
A FACE IN THE CROWD
KING CREOLE
THE HURRICANE (1937)
ACROSS 110th STREET
OUT OF THE PAST
THE NARROW MARGIN (1952)
ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST
THE LOST HORIZON (1937)
In no particular order, just as they came to me.
The Searchers
Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
The Outlaw Josey Wales(favorite Eastwood)
Caddyshack
Casablanca
The Maltese Falcon
The Big Sleep
Bullit(favorite McQueen)
Animal House(with Caddyshack, maybe the two goofiest comedies ever made. This is how it's done, Will Ferrell)
Jaws(the greatest summer popcorn movie for THE scene)
Let's stop there. Ten. I could sit here all day, think, and add movies. There are so many I hated even watching once, so many good for a few viewings. It takes time to think about the ones one keeps returning to over the years. I long ago stopped counting up the times I've watched them.
Blue Velvet
Barfly
The Pope of Greenwich Village
La Vita e'Bella
Goodfellas
Casablanca
Popeye
The Gambler
Cinema Paradiso
2 Days in the Valley
Charlie-You are the only person I know (besides me) that loves Popeye. Why do most people dislike it? It is such an invented world.
I have never seen KING CREOLE. Viva Las Vegas is my only Presley movie.
YOu can never go wrong with the Cohns except for Ladykillers. I have seen parts of PULP FICTION more times than its entirety, but I did like his first four movies a lot.
If I'm channel-surfing and I come across any of these, I don't care how far into the movie it is, I'll watch the rest:
JAWS
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS
MOONSTRUCK
ANIMAL HOUSE
BULL DURHAM
SOAPDISH (so funny and so underrated)
PRIDE & PREJUDICE (Olivier & Garson)
THE BIG SLEEP (Bogart's version, of course)
There are others, but these are off the top of my head.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was so magical I've been afraid to revisit. But the others, I watch often. Except Soapdish, why don't they show that more often.
POPEYE is a fine film. Kind of a nothingy ending, but otherwise fine.
BLUE VELVET, among severa other Lynch films, is definitely among my second or fourth ten. 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY is a fun choice that won't occur to most people. JACKIE BROWN is the only Tarantino, except perhaps FROM DUSK TILL DAWN, that I'm much interested in revisiting at the moment, and Elmore Leonard and the cast make the first, and the cast certainly helps with the second.
WOMAN IN THE DUNES was magical...how did it devastate you, Patti?
It's fascinating to see what other people love. I'm happy to report almost no movies (well, a couple maybe) on other lists that I really can't stand. There are many that I enjoyed once or thought were OK, but not things I'd watch repeatedly.
I do want to add a few that were mentioned:
Support Your Local Sheriff
Blazing Saddles (despite the weak ending)
The Searchers (which we just rewatched last year)
Plus one that nobody has mentioned:
The Commitments
And as long as I'm doing rock & roll movies:
American Hot Wax
Jeff M.
watching people shovel sand for two hours kind of did me in. Claustrophobia-I guess I missed the metaphor.
Oh, I am glad Popeye is being recovered from its mothballs. I loved the invented world it inhabited.
I still play my CD from THE COMMITMENTS. And THE SEARCHERS is my favorite western.
You know that American Hot Wax was just on and I passed it up. Next time.
The follwoing are ones that I will watch or end up watching when they show up on TV:
Body Heat
The Deer Hunter
Diner
Field of Dreams
North Dallas Forty
Play Misty For Me
Some Came Running
The Hustler
The Joker Is Wild
The Last Picture Show
True Confesssions
and Paperback Hero if it ever appears again or I can find a DVD.
Shoveling sand = quotidian life. To be reductionist about it.
I get the metaphor but didn't really enjoy watching it played out. Just too much like life.
DINER-excellent one. Only vaguely remember Paperback Hero.
Microcosms. I can't stand anything too cutesy or too certain of the utter vileness of us all...so POPEYE yes (because of the complexity) but CLOSE ENCOUNTERS no, the mixed emotions of the entymologist about his plight in WOMAN IN THE DUNES (and her about hers) yes, the utter and unbridled misogyny above even the other misanthropy in the Peckinpah version of THE GETAWAY no.
Man, the post-DINER crush on Ellen Barkin...
But it's all over now.
Sorry, five to ten choices won’t do it:
Casablanca (which seems to be on the most lists)
Falstaff
Magnificent Ambersons
Magnificent Seven
Dr. Strangelove
Paths of Glory
Duck Soup
Charade
Tunes of Glory
A Taste of Honey
Lavender Hill Mob
The Wild Bunch
The Great Escape
Best Years of Our Lives
Thief of Bagdad (1940)
Man Who Would Be King
The Fallen Idol
A Thousand Clowns
Close Encounters
Annie Hall
Two for the Road
Seven Days in May
Grapes of Wrath
and a hundred more I will think of five seconds after I post this.
Oh, these are good lists. The Fallen Idol. Great one.
The silent THE THEIF OF BAGHDAD also not too shabby (Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. and Anna Mae Wong, the two actors you think of as typifying Arabia, no?), and I was hoping against hope it was included in my recent purchase of the Korda-produced film cited here, in the Criterion package...a la their fine package of THE KILLERS...but no such luck.
Even with bad plastic surgery, that Barkin crush hasn't completely disappated...happily for her, it's unlikely she'll ever have to wonder where the next thousand meals are coming from.
Good one, indeed. Ones I do watch over and over: selected Coen brothers, Pontecorvo, Woody Allen, just about anything by Werner Herzog, Luis Buñuel, some Sergio Leone, Sean Connery Bond. Blue Collar, Affliction.
Re-watchability is indeed a peculiar quality. There was no way I could limit myself to 10. This is in no particular order:
Romy & Michele's High School Reunion
Alien
Ladykillers (1955)
Duck Soup
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
American Graffiti
The Producers (1968)
Slap Shot
Whatever
10 Things I Hate About You
Tremors
Gimme Shelter
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1954)
Christmas Vacation
Repulsion
Hairspray (1988)
Psycho (1960)
The Man on the Roof
The Long Goodbye
The Asphalt Jungle
Escape from New York
I nearly chose American Grafiti. Man on a Roof--don't think I have ever seen it.
Affliction-I love Russell Banks and thought that film did a great job in capturing his novel.
Patti: My wife claims I have the mind of an eleven year old (and that's giving me credit for a few years) ... but I agree, Popeye rocks. I can watch that a hundred times. It's one of those movies when I'm flipping through channels, if it's on, I'm watching the rest of it.
"He's large."
"Place your bets."
"Olive oil, sounds like some kind of lubricants ..."
It's GREAT!
And Robin Williams, who normally makes me nervous to watch (his frantic energy sometimes gets in the way for me), was BRILLIANT in that role. So was the rest of the cast. GREAT movie. GREAT!
He was born to play Popeye but not much else. How can you not love that weirdly colored, peopled world.
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