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bipolarber -> RE: What are some of your favorite Movies? (6/1/2008 9:18:50 PM)
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I think I'll list the more obscure ones... since I'm sure everyone else will cover the blockbusters.
Tampopo. Japanese comedy about a woman who wishes to become a sucsessful ramen bar owner... and is helped by a handsome drifter. Many call this the best japanese noodle western there is!
The Wizard of Speed and Time. Mike Jittlov's over the top memior of what it was like to work for Disney studios. The bitterness shows through, but he does it in an incredibly upbeat way! Also, if you can find the original short film on YouTube, it's worth a look.
Dracula. No, not the Lugosi original, nor the Chris Lee remakes, nor the Frank Langella version, not even the Gary Oldman one... (althought he Langelle runs a clase second) No, I'm talking about the BBC production with Louis Jordan. It is, without a doubt, the one script that actually follows the book. And Jordan makes an amazingly powerful, smooth incarnation of evil.
Farewell Good Brothers. A Documentary on the "Flaying saucer contactees" of the 1950's. Both funny and sad, it really rams home how much we humans are desperate to believe in something, in this big, scary world of ours.
The Atomic Cafe. Think the government never lies to you? Watch this compilation of old "civil defense" and military training films. (warning: there is a scene involving test pigs at one of the Nevada above ground tests that really, really difficult to stomach. I never knew it was possible for a shockwave to turn something inside out, and that it could still be alive...)
Flesh Gordon. One of those films that the FX superstars of today cut their teeth on, just before Star Wars hit, and catapulted them all into respectability. That, and it's just fun silliness. Barely earning an "R" rating these days, it was considered pretty edgy porn during it's initial release.
Solaris. Yeah, yeah. Everyone hated it. Personally, I think it was one of the best science fiction films to come down the pike in the last decade. Clooney was great, and the story my Stanislaw Lem had a LOT of it's weirdness drained out of it, but it still remains touching, and ultimately true to the novel's original theme: that the gulf between us and an alien inteligence may be too great to cross.
Ghost in the Shell. One part police shoot-em-up, to one part philosophy class, this anime still facinates me a decade later. What becomes of the soul when the lines between flesh and machine becomes blurred? Is cybernetics really the next step in our evolution? I must not be the only one impressed with it... Speilberg is working on a live action version.
Then we can just go into the usual suspects for me: all the Harryhausen films, the George Pal movies, the John Caprenter films, Casablanca, 2001, the original Andromeda Strain, the Corman Edgar Allan Poe films, the Hammer horrors, Toho Kaiju movies, Kurasawa, the Jan Svankmeyer animations, Wallace and Grommit, Python, Princess Bride, Young Frankenstien, King Kong (original) and god knows how many more... (I'm probably the only guy in the state of Arkansas excited about "Robinson Caruso on Mars" finally getting an official release on DVD...)
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