Favorite Movies

• 8-1/2 - Fellini's masterpiece about how the creative process entails embracing the unknown and stepping into the void
  
• Cinema Paradiso - a paean to the magic of cinema, and how love transcends the generations
  
• Malena - childhood erotic infatuation, and how it shapes a man's subsequent life
  
• Birdman - performance anxiety, the struggle to remain vital, self-doubt, the fantasies that constantly play out in our heads, all told in a very innovative way
  
• Spring Forward - an older man gently shares life lessons with a younger troubled man, and in so doing learns a few profound lessons himself
  
• Blow Up - sometimes what we think we see and what we think we know turn out to be something else entirely.  A testament for humility.
  
• Catch 22 - very innovative telling of the absurdity of war, and with it the human condition
  
• Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) - a huge story set in a new universe full of archetypes, it rocked my world in 1977.  I think my fondness for it now is probably mostly nostalgia, but I still love the original
  
• Avatar - similarly, a totally created world with archetypical characters in a mythic story of epic scale.  It's a bit preachy and derivative, but visually it still knocks my socks off
  
• Demolition Man - a genre-busting film that is part comedy, part action film, part science-fiction, part satire, with a smart script, endlessly quotable lines and some ideas that resonate even more today than when it was made
  
• Blade Runner - what does it mean to be human?  A very immersive environment where humanity is blurred with replicants "more human than human"
  
• Being John Malkovich - absolutely wack movie that plays like a dream, in other words you wake up afterward and think WTF was that all about?
  
• Station Agent - a quiet film about, well, maybe "not everything can be fixed"?  About how life throws you curveballs sometimes, and the best you can hope for is to get through somehow
  
• American Beauty - another film hard to summarize, it's about obsession, ambition, acceptance....incredible editing and soundtrack
  
• Arrival - if we could see the future would we change the present?  A thought-provoking exploration that only falls together on repeated viewings
  
• Memento - similarly, a story told in reverse order about a man who cannot make new memories.  It only makes sense on repeated viewings, and then packs an unexpected punch which is totally hidden at first
  
• Groundhog Day - a guilty pleasure movie that I've watched countless times.  There's a central core story about not wasting your time on earth
  
• King of Marvin Gardens - a dark disturbing look at the seamy side of life, with many memorable scenes
  
• The Last Wave - culture clashes and differing interpretations of reality
  
• Mirage - a thriller where the audience is kept guessing until the very end
  

There are many many more movies which I would rate as excellent stories well told, but the above are exceptional as works of art above & beyond that.

Just to save time (and what remains of my memory), I looked at a web site of The Hollywood Reporter and got a list of the top 100 movies according to the preferences of those in the business. Of their 100, I have selected those which I think deserve to be in that list.

For me, movies are strictly for entertainment. I do not look for life lessons or any other supposed profundity.
So, in alphabetical order, here are some of my favorite movies.

A Clockwork Orange

Alien

Apocalypse Now

Blade Runner

Blazing Saddles

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Die Hard

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Fargo

Ghostbusters

Lawrence of Arabia

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Pulp Fiction

Reservoir Dogs

Taxi Driver

The Deer Hunter

Young Frankenstein

All good movies... but with the possible exception of A Clockwork Orange, I would not put any of them in the "work of art" category. They are what I implied would be tier two, excellent movies but not films that transcend the medium or transcend storytelling.  YMMV

I would not categorize any movie as a work of art.
(Especially one with Sylvester Stallone in a starring role )

Have you seen it???

NoCoPilot wrote:

Have you seen it???

I have. I wouldn't even put it in what you call tier 2. If you want a Stallone movie, both Rocky and First Blood are more worthy of consideration.

As I said, YMMV.

Both Rocky and First Blood are straight-forward stories, with no overarching message or lesson behind them. Both are what I would call 'flat' movies - you watch them once, you get the story, done.

I like movies that work on two (or more) levels, where after you leave the theater or watch the DVD, you begin to realize there's more to the film than what you just watched. Films that make you think, IOW.

Yes, I have seen the movie.

Alien, Close Encounters and Ghostbusters also feature supernatural themes.

I have TRIED to watch Lawrence of Arabia at least three times. Never made it halfway still awake.

richard09 wrote:

I wouldn't even put it in what you call tier 2.

Okay, it's something of a guilty pleasure -- but repeated viewings have given it something of a deeper meaning for me. It was generally tossed off as a Stallone action flick, but there's more to it than that.

And not just because of Sandy Bullock.

NoCoPilot wrote:

but repeated viewings have given it something of a deeper meaning for me.  It was generally tossed off as a Stallone action flick, but there's more to it than that.

I've got the DVD and I know I've watched the movie at least twice, maybe three times.
I have no idea what the deeper meaning is that you mention. It's just a cop-buddy movie with the absurd twist of suspended animation.

NoCoPilot wrote:

I have TRIED to watch Lawrence of Arabia at least three times.  Never made it halfway still awake.

I've watched that movie many times. Maybe I like it because T.E. Lawrence was a motorcycle fan. In fact, he died in a motorcycle accident. He rode a Brough Superior (trivia of the day).

NoCoPilot wrote:

Alien, Close Encounters and Ghostbusters also feature supernatural themes.

Alien and Close Encounters have no supernatural themes; they are science fiction. There is one science fiction element in Demolition Man - the suspended animation - but there is nothing supernatural.

Ha!  Aliens are just as supernatural as ghosts.

Suspended animation OTOH is real -- it's been tested successfully on dogs and lots of smaller animals.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Ha!  Aliens are just as supernatural as ghosts.

Only if the definition of the work supernatural has been changed.

_Howard wrote:

I have no idea what the deeper meaning is that you mention.

• the degeneration of pop culture, where '60s ad jingles become radio hits
  
• urban sprawl, where Los Angeles-to-San Diego has become one big city named San Angeles
  
• the growth of the nanny state, where mind control over the populace is benign and non-violent but total (cops no longer know how to deal with violence)
  
• the elevation of the absurd to nostalgia, where a dirty gang-invested street scene literally is kept under glass
  
• the degeneration of language, where catch phrases are considered high art and their attempts to use slang from John Spartan's time go horribly awry
  
• the programming of Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes) to become a super criminal while under suspended animation, in order to reinforce the need for total mind control
  
• the programming of John Spartan so he feels the need to knit, while he's under mind control
  
• the existence of a literal underground (Dennis Leary) who resist all government control -- yet they are the ones who safeguard learning and culture
  
• the invention of automatic graffiti erasing

Off the top of my head.

Clever bits in the movie, no doubt, but I don't see anything there requiring deep thought.

Ah well.  I said it was a guilty pleasure.

Nothing wrong with that. I have watched "Austin Powers" several times.

It's necessary for one to differentiate between one's favorite movies and those one considers to be excellent examples of the medium. The venn diagrams will vary greatly from person to person.

Demolition Man's replacement of sex with shared holographic experience is very reminiscent of Woody Allen's Sleeper (with the Orgasmatron) and Jane Fonda's Barbarella (with the Orgasmostron).

And there's one line in Demolition Man where Bullock is explaining to Stallone something about the Schwarzenegger Presidential Library and Stallone says, "Stop!  Schwarzenegger was PRESIDENT?!?!"

This was ten years before he'd even run for governator.

Those two had a long-running good natured rivalry.

I started browsing though my DVDs to see what I have that I would consider among my favorite movies. Before long, I realized that none of the movies I was considering were made in the last ten years - most much earlier than that. In fact, I found a couple dozen new and newer movies that I have not even bothered unwrapping. Is it me or Hollywood?

_Howard wrote:

Is it me or Hollywood?

It's you. Hollywood still makes movies, and some of them are pretty good. Of course many of the best recent movies have been made outside the Hollywood system.

But nostalgia means that older movies have an automatic advantage, even if they're no better (or worse) than current films. I have recently collected a number of movies I remember from my youth, and not all of them have been, shall we say, as rosy as I remembered.

When I sold my LPs I got credit at the store, and used it to buy about a dozen movies that looked interesting but I hadn't seen before. Of those, I still have 5 or 6 I haven't unwrapped yet. Saving them for my retirement.

NoCoPilot wrote:

_Howard wrote:

Is it me or Hollywood?

It's you.

Wrong answer.

_Howard wrote:

Wrong answer.

Wrong question?