Preferred Films

A few jobs ago, we were shooting the breeze one day, and a Chinese-born co-worker asked, “So what are some good American movies?”

Alas, most of the recommendations from the rest of the staff programmers depended on meretricious special effects or barnyard humor.

So first I prepared this annotated list of my favorites for my co-worker Ru Zhongwei. As I looked it over, I realized that it revealed something about my tastes, predilections, and viewing habits. (By a rough estimate, I figure that I’ve probably seen 3500 movies in the past 30 years.) There are somewhat less than 100 entries here; the dingbats mark my indispensable sixteen.

And, yes, I prepared this list before the American Film Institute got the same idea.

But what would be more interesting, I realized, is a list of bad movies that I once thought were great. That list is at the bottom of the page.

Winners

• The African Queen (1951): There’s a lot of Bogart on this list.
• Alphaville (1965): Sci-fi w/o the trappings.
• Amour (2012)
• Annie Hall: It’s like seeing Hamlet: it’s just full of all the good quotes.
• Atlantic City (1980)
• An Awfully Big Adventure (1995): And a plot twist at the end to break your heart.
• Apocalypse Now Redux (1979/2001)
• Beetlejuice: Probably Tim Burton’s best work.
• Beverly Hills Cop
• Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey: You have to love a movie that, in a spoof of The Seventh Seal, challenges Death to a game of Twister.
• The Big Sleep (1946) The 1945 cut that was running recently is an eye-opener.
• Blade Runner (1982) I am so happy that we can now view this movie without the dumbing-down voiceovers.
• Blood Simple: It often happens that an artist’s best work is his first work. As much as I love the Coen brothers’ later work, this one is still the superlative.
• Blue Velvet: I once had a director tell me that my character should have a little Frank Booth in him. But I hadn’t seen the movie yet, so I didn’t understand. Ultimately, I think I disappointed my director.
• Brazil (1985) Welcome to Terry Gilliam’s nightmare.
• Bringing Up Baby The absolute best of the 1930’s-era screwball comedies.
• Bull Durham: Maybe the only good movie about baseball ever to be made. Certainly the last time that Kevin Costner didn’t take himself too seriously.
• Cape Fear (1991): Another remake that I liked better than the original.
• Casablanca (1942)
• Catch-22
• Charade (1963): Diane Patterson and I disagree strongly about this flick. I think it’s charming and paced just right.
• Children of Men (2006): Bang!
• Chinatown (1974) Jonathan Benair writes: “Los Angeles… is the city of eternal sunshine where prayers are answered, but it is also the dead end of the continent,” and he compares this film to They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and The Day of the Locust, in which L.A. is the place people come to die.
• Choose Me: Alan Rudolph’s musings on romance and identity. Who wouldn’t fall in love with Geneviève Bujold’s voice?
• Citizen Kane Props to Gregg Toland’s cinematography.
• A Clockwork Orange: Holds up well.
• Cocoon: I’ll tell you a story about this one, sometime.
• Columbus (2017)
• The Conversation Harrison Ford as a baddie! Every time I see this on Encore as I’m surfing by, I have to stop and watch at least 10 minutes.
• The Day of the Jackal (1973)
• The Day of the Locust: One of the few films of a book to get it exactly right.
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• Dr. Strangelove
• Double Indemnity (1944): Edward G. Robinson on the right side of the law. Fred MacMurray as the patsy, long before he was TV’s Steve Douglas. And the goddess, Miss Stanwyck!
• The English Patient
• Fantasia: My world is a Disney-free Zone, but I do make exceptions.
• Fantastic Planet: I saw this again recently on video, and it doesn’t wear all that well. I guess it’s here to remind me of midnight movies at the Victory Theatre in Dayton.
• A Fish Called Wanda
• Forbidden Planet: 1950’s Eastmancolor space opera with a plot transparently taken from Shakespeare’s
  The Tempest. Hacks borrow; the great writers steal.
• Four Weddings and a Funeral: Not even Rowan Atkinson could mess this up.
• The French Connection: Cat and mouse on the Grand Central Shuttle.
• Galaxy Quest: A perfect comic role for Alan Rickman.
• Ghostbusters
• Gone with the Wind: I saw the new, clean print that was released recently, and it won me over.
• Hannah and Her Sisters: Still reminds me of Susan.
• High Noon: This film opened my eyes to what Gary Cooper could do.
• His Girl Friday
• The Hours (2002): David Hare’s screenplay is masterful, giving shape to what would otherwise be an unfilmable book.
• It Happened One Night (1934): Forget the derivative Forces of Nature; this is the real thing.
• King Kong (1933)
• Klute
• Leaving Las Vegas: It’s funny how alphabetical lists make for happy juxtapositions.
• Lost in Translation: A very delicate touch, like cherry blossoms.
• M (1931): In the early morning of the talkies era, Fritz Lang used Adolf Jansen’s sound in this picture so effectively—it’s astonishing.
• The Maltese Falcon (1941) It’s hard to believe that this version was the remake.
• Midnight Cowboy: One of the first pictures for me that was ambiguous, about complicated relationships. The first hint that the glamour of New York wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
• Memento (2000): I had something really clever to say about this movie, but I’ve forgotten what it was.
• Nashville (1975) Maybe the only movie that my mother and I agree on.
• Network Paddy Chayefsky knew how to write a script, didn’t he?
• Nine 1/2 Weeks: What’s this trashy thing doing on this list? A candidate for the bad movies list below.
• North by Northwest A roller coaster of a movie. Hitchcock at the top of his game.
• On the Waterfront
• Once (2006): It is indeed possible to make a good movie about making music.
• Open Hearts: Quite possibly the best of the Dogme 95 films.
• Psycho (1960): Once again a remake (this one by Gus van Sant) largely serves to burnish certain highlights of the original.
• Pulp Fiction
• Ratatouille (2007)
• The Red Shoes (1948): Why is it so difficult to make a good dance movie? This is one of the very few.
• Repulsion: Beyond creepy.
• Reservoir Dogs
• Richard III (1995): Resets Shakespeare to Britain between the World Wars. Chilling.
• Rocky (1976): Another one with sentimental value: I saw this at a time when I still enjoyed living in Philadelphia.
• Roma (2018)
• Rosemary’s Baby
• Safe (1995): The first generally-available film by Todd Haynes. Julianne Moore is brilliant in a role that would crush the life out of a lesser actor.
• sex, lies, and videotape: Where have you gone, Steven Soderbergh?
• The Silence of the Lambs: Beyond beyond creepy.
• Singin’ in the Rain Something Leta and I can watch together.
• Some Like It Hot (1959) Marilyn sings.
• Speed (1994): Well, I had to include at least one action picture.
• Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring (2003)
• Stage Door (1937)
• Star Wars: But no, I was not first in line to see The Phantom Menace.
• The Sting (1973): There’s a connection to Audrey from Rockford, Illinois, who played all of the Scott Joplin songbook.
• Sunset Blvd.: Julie Kirgo writes: “The fusion of writer-director Billy Wilder’s biting humor and the classic elements of film noir make for a strange kind of comedy, as well as a strange kind of film noir. There are no belly laughs here, but there are certainly strangled giggles….”
• The Sweet Hereafter: Atom Egoyan continues Tarantino’s experiments with narrative structure, and a gamut of human emotions. Gabrielle Rose plays a perfect cameo.
• Sweet Smell of Success: Glossy work from James Wong Howe, but the sound editing is a little dodgy.
• Synecdoche, New York (2008): Charlie Kaufman’s 8-1/2.
• Taxi Driver (1976) Bernard Herrmann’s last score.
• Thelma & Louise: Silver and Ward write: “In the noir tradition, fugitives die because they must, because fate, mischoice, or the burden of their crimes compels it. Occasionally there is a redemptive context to death; in Thelma and Louise, there is a freeze frame emblematic of futility.”
• They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?: I’m also a sucker for casting against type, and Gig Young wins the lollipop for this flick.
• The Third Man: Exquisite details: an accusing tyke, a carnivorous cockatoo, a betraying calico cat. And a new print.
• Three Colors: Blue, White, Red
• To Be or Not to Be (1942)
• To Have and Have Not: Has almost nothing to do with the book it was based on, and yet it succeeds.
• Tootsie (1982): You know, inventing Dorothy Michaels just to get a job is exactly the sort of thing that I can imagine the real Dustin Hoffman doing.
• Top Hat: They say that Ginger Rogers was the better dancer because she did everything that Fred Astaire did, but going backwards and in heels. Don’t believe it: Fred was simply the best.
• 2001: A Space Odyssey: R.I.P. Stanley Kubrick.
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg: See this movie, and I guarantee that its theme song will stick in your mind. And that’s probably a good thing.
• WALL-E (2008)
• West Side Story: Makes me cry, what can I say?
• Where the Wild Things Are (2009): Offbeat music, puppet creatures that can act, and terrific work by Max Records.
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit Yet another top movie that is a genre unto itself.
• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: It’s also hard to film a stage play: this one works. Stark and claustrophobic, like the original.
• Women of the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: My friend Tel points out that not everything on this list is American, but I never planned on listing just American movies.
• The Wizard of Oz (1939)

I intentionally restricted the list to feature-length movies, which unfortunately cuts out a lot of the best animation. I also excluded silents. There should be something from the Marx Brothers on the list, but I have to confess that all of their movies run together in my mind. I also fiddled the list so that most of my favorite actors are represented, even if that means Walter Matthau checks in with Charade.

Quotes from Jonathan Benair and Julie Kirgo are from Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style, Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward, eds.

As promised, here are the movies that I’m embarrassed to admit that I liked at one time.

turkeys

• At Long Last Love: Cybill Shepherd and Burt Reynolds sing Cole Porter. It could happen.
• Crack in the World: I think they’re remaking this movie as The Core.
• Friends (1971): Adolescent lust in sunny France and dire consequences. A drippy soundtrack by Elton John, or did I say something redundant?
• Harold and Maude: Ruth Gordon in a December-May romance with a kid who habitually commits suicide to get attention. Sort of a Penn and Teller meet Mrs. Robinson.
• Rollerball (1975): I don’t know why the sport never caught on. And I don’t know why anyone would want to remake this movie.
• Zardoz: Not to be outdone by Rollerball‘s pretentious Bach-driven soundtrack, this silly futuristic meditation on the noble savage features the Beethoven Seventh Symphony. But hey, Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling—why complain?

Last updated: Tuesday, 27 August 2024 22:03