I'll be coming back to this thread as well.
Here, in no particular order, are 10 of my all-time favorite movies.
Psycho (1960) In the late 1950s, director Alfred Hitchcock noticed that several small, independent production companies (American-International Pictures, Hammer Films) and directors (William Castle) were making low-budget horror films that turned in tidy profits. Hitch wondered what it would be like if a name director, such as himself, made a similar film, on a low budget and with a limited shooting schedule. Using the crew from his TV series,
Alfred Hitchcock Presents, shooting in black and white (instead of the glossy Technicolor pictures he had been making) and using a small, but talented cast (Anthony Perkins and Janet Leigh were the only real "names"--and even they were overshadowed by Hitch's previous use of movie stars like Cary Grant, James Stewart and Grace Kelly) Hitch assembled his film, based on Robert Bloch's recently-published novel, in 30-odd days. The result was probably his most famous--or infamous--film. Although a hit with audiences (who lined up around the block at all hours of the day in all kinds of weather to see the film--when a theater manager wrote to Hitchcock and told him his patrons were getting soaked in the pouring rain while standing in line, the director told the manager to buy the people umbrellas), a lot of critics panned the film, calling it a blot on an otherwise spectacular career. Only several years later did the film get its due in critic's eyes. Despite the rather macabre story, Hitchcock considered
Psycho a comedy. The film was such a hit, that it began being imitated or "remade" almost instantly...by many of the same people Hitchcock was "influenced" by: Hammer Films, William Castle, etc. A brilliant film, with a classic, memorable score by Bernard Herrmann, and a fascinating, multilayered performance by Anthony Perkins as troubled motel keeper Norman Bates.
Phantom of the Paradise (1974) Probably my favorite Brian De Palma film. A crazy mix of comic-book visuals, comedy, melodrama and music, courtesy of Paul Williams, who also plays a major role in the picture. De Palma mixes elements of
Faust, The Phantom of the Opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Frankenstein, Beauty and the Beast, Touch of Evil, Psycho and the works of German expressionistic filmmakers such as Robert Wiene and Fritz Lang into his tale of naive young composer Winslow Leach (William Finley, a De Palma regular) whose music is stolen by a Phil Spector-like music impresario (Paul Williams). When Leach is disfigured in an accident, he becomes the phantom, haunting Swan's rock palace, the Paradise, and tries to turn back-up singer Phoenix (Jessica Harper) into a star. De Palma has fun with film styles: split screen, sped-up action, POV shots (before they became a staple of slasher films) and long, tracking shots. An underappreciated film when it was released in the fall of '74. A year or so later it was re-released with a new ad campaign, but still failed to find an audience. The French, however, loved it. It wasn't until the early 80s when
Phantom came out on video and aired on television that it was finally discovered by a U.S. audience. Paul Williams's music and lyrics are excellent, and span almost 20 years of rock and roll, from 1950s doo-wop to the surf sound of the early 1960s, to the macabre, then modern rock of Alice Cooper. Probably De Palma's most "fun" film,
Phantom is a feast for the eyes and ears.
Blow Out (1981) After the success of
Dressed to Kill the year before, Brian De Palma was able to make
Blow Out, a more personal project. A movie soundman (John Travolta in his first "adult" role) is recording new sounds one night (the wind in the trees, the croak of a frog, an owl hooting) when he captures on tape what sounds like a tire blow out. Next thing he knows, a limo is screeching off the road and crashes into a lake. Jack (Travolta) dives in, finds the driver dead, but finds a young woman in the back seat. Jack saves her, and takes her to a hospital, where he learns that the driver of the car was the next presidential hopeful. When Jack plays back the tape, he realizes something isn't right. The sound is more like a gunshot than a blow out. With the help of Sally (Nancy Allen) the girl he saved, Jack starts an investigation into the death of the candidate. When a magazine publishes shot-by-shot photos of the car, from its serve off the road to its crash in the lake (taken by a sleazy photographer who just "happened" to be on the scene that night), Jack assembles the pieces into a film, and, using the soundtrack he recorded, is able to prove that the candidate was actually assassinated. Sally was planted in the car by the photographer as an escort, although he claims he didn't know there would be an assassination. He was just there to get incriminating evidence - the married candidate with a woman in his car. Jack begins to ignore his work and obsess over the accident, convinced it was a murder. But the evidence has been covered up. The tire with the bullet hole has been mysteriously replaced. Soon Jack and Sally are followed by a silent, mysterious assassin (John Lithgow) who knows a little something about the death of the candidate, and is willing to silence Jack and Sally at any cost.
Blow Out begins as a comedy and ends as a devastating tragedy. The final few minutes of this film always give me chills. This is De Palma's take on the paranoid conspiracy thriller, using elements from Antonioni's
Blow-Up (1966) and Coppola's
The Conversation (1974). The JFK assassination is referenced, as is Ted Kennedy's tragedy at Chappequiddick. De Palma's direction is smooth and assured. Using split-screen, tracking shots, slow motion and POV shots, De Palma heightens the tension and increasing paranoia. John Travolta is brilliant in this film. In my opinion, nothing he did before or after ever comes close to his Jack. Jack is a haunted man, an ex-wireman for the police department, who once inadvertently caused the death of a colleague when an undercover assignment went horribly wrong. By the end of
Blow Out, Jack is so convinced and consumed by the truth, he is willing to put Sally, the woman he's trusted the most, through the exact same procedure in order to get evidence from the Lithgow character, who is posing as a reporter. It's really a shame Travolta and De Palma haven't worked together since this film. One of Travolta's first films was De Palma's
Carrie (1976). After
Blow Out, the actor and De Palma were planning on a biopic of Jim Morrison, but for whatever reason, plans fell through. Then Travolta was considered for the sidekick role ultimately played by Steven Bauer in De Palma's
Scarface (1983), but that didn't work out either. As late as 1997 De Palma still wanted to work with Travolta, and offered him the lead in
Snake Eyes, but the part went to Nicolas Cage. Nancy Allen, a regular in De Palma's films (
Carrie, Home Movies, Dressed to Kill) and later his wife, is heartbreaking as Sally, an innocent woman who initially wants to forget everything and leave the city before Travolta lures her back to help him. John Lithgow plays one of his darkest roles as a psychotic working for the unseen organization behind the assassination, and Dennis Franz plays the sleazy photographer/blackmailer.
Blow Out failed at the box office when it was released in the summer of 1981. That probably wasn't the best time to release a personal, dark film of this kind. It certainly isn't escapist entertainment. De Palma still considers it one of the best films he has ever made, and Quentin Tarantino, on the basis of this film, cast Travolta in his "comeback,"
Pulp Fiction.
Bringing Up Baby (1938) A classic screwball comedy, starring Cary Grant as a stuffy, upright "egghead," and Katharine Hepburn as a free spirit who causes all sorts of havoc in his straight-laced world. Baby is a leopard owned by Hepburn. Grant is at his pratfalling best, and Hepburn keeps up with him, in probably the loosest role of her career. Masterfully directed by Howard Hawks, who worked in almost every genre,
Bringing Up Baby is a comedy classic that never lets up for a minute. The film was the basis for Peter Bogdanovich's 1972 tribute to screwball comedies of the 1930s,
What's Up, Doc? (another favorite of mine), with Ryan O'Neal in the Grant role and Barbra Streisand in the Hepburn role.
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) Another great screwball comedy with Cary Grant, based on the popular stage play about two innocent old women who think their doing the charitable thing by poisoning old men and burying them in the cellar of their home. They have three nephews: one of them thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt, another is a homicidal maniac on the run from the police who hides out in the home, and the third is a "normal" theater critic, played by Cary Grant. Once Grant finds one of the bodies, he goes off his rocker, and spends the rest of the film whinnying, running all over the place, falling over furniture, and ignoring his new wife. The film was directed by Frank Capra
(Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It's a Wonderful Life), but has none of the director's trademark sentiment or "Capra-corn" as some critics call it.
Arsenic is a laugh riot all the way. Capra completed the film in a breakneck pace in 1941, just before he entered the service, and the year the play opened on Broadway. He was able to get Josephine Hull, Jean Adair and John Alexander from the production to appear in his film. However, he was unable to get the star of the show, Boris Karloff, who was playing the homicidal nephew. Karloff was too big an attraction to let go, so Capra cast distinguished actor Raymond Massey
(Abe Lincoln in Illinois) in the part. The producers of the Broadway show also insisted that Warner Bros., the studio behind the film, not release the picture until the show finished its run. So
Arsenic sat on the shelf until 1944. The cast includes Peter Lorre, Jack Carson, Edward Everett Horton and Priscilla Lane.
GoodFellas (1990) By far my favorite Martin Scorsese film,
GoodFellas is the true story of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), a poor kid whose ambition in life is to become a gangster, just like the guys in the neighborhood. He is taken under the wing of Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), and finds his dreams coming true. Joe Pesci won an Academy Award as a trigger-happy loose cannon, and the film is filled with a classic rock soundtrack. A powerful crime-doesn't-pay epic.
The Producers (1968) Mel Brooks's first feature film as a director,
The Producers is about a shady Broadway producer (the larger-than-life Zero Mostel) who is kept afloat by the checks sent to him by little old ladies for non-existant shows. "Cash. That's a funny name for a play." When a meek accountant (Gene Wilder, in his second film) informs Mostel he could make more money with a flop than a hit, the greedy Mostel begins a search for the worst play ever written, and finds it in
Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp with Adolf and Eva, written by Franz Liebkind, an ex-Nazi. Unfortunately for Mostel and Wilder,
Springtime is a hit. This is a brilliant comedy. In my opinion, Mel Brooks never topped it, although he came close with
Young Frankenstein. The cast is outstanding, from Mostel to Wilder to Kenneth Mars as the insane Liebkind to comic Dick Shawn as L.S.D., a hippie who is cast as Hitler. The film also features future Mr. Belvedere Christopher Hewitt as Roger DeBris, a flamboyantly bad director. Not too surprisingly,
The Producers laid an egg when it was first released. A majority of the public found it in bad taste. But Brooks stood by his film, and once future successes such as
Blazing Saddles and
Young Frankenstein made Brooks a household name,
The Producers won the acclaim it deserved the first time around.
American Graffiti (1973) George Lucas's second feature as a director, chronicalling one night in the lives of four friends, two of whom are supposed to leave town for college the next day. A nostalgic look back at Lucas's youth (he said the four characters all represent a part of him), the film is crammed wall to wall with vintage oldies from the 1950s and early 1960s. The large cast includes Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss, Paul LeMat, Charlie Martin Smith, Cindy Williams, Candy Clark, Harrison Ford, Suzanne Somers and DJ Wolfman Jack as himself. IMO, this is by far the best film George Lucas has ever done, either as director or producer. This was one of the first films to use a soundtrack made up exclusively of pre-recorded songs. There is no score. Each song sets the tone of the scene. At the time, only Lucas and Martin Scorsese in
Mean Streets had employed this device, something that would be common in years to come
(Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, GoodFellas).
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) Danny Kaye's fourth feature, and his best, IMO. Based on James Thurber's short story about a man who lives in his daydreams, the source material was expanded and turned into a big-budget, Technicolor musical, courtesy of producer Samuel Goldwyn. Kaye displays his many talents in various roles, and sings one of his later standards here, "Anatole of Paris," for the first time. Like most of the songs in his films, "Anatole" was written by Kaye's wife, Sylvia Fine. The film was directed by veteran Norman Z. McLeod, who also directed the Marx Brothers when they were running amuck at Paramount in the early 1930s.
Willard (1971) Based on the novel
Ratman's Notebooks by Stephen Gilbert,
Willard is the story of Willard Stiles (Bruce Davison), a young man who lives with his widowed mother (Elsa Lanchester) in a crumbling old mansion. The Stiles family business has been taken over by the late Mr. Stiles's partner, Al Martin (Ernest Borgnine), who has reduced Willard to a lowly position. Willard is constantly humiliated and overworked by Martin. In fact, Willard is so behind in his work, he is forced to work weekends to catch up. His mother tells him there are rats in the yard. Willard investigates, and instead of exterminating them, he becomes fascinated by them. Soon the rat family expands, and Willard finds he is able to communicate with them. Because he has been so kind to the rats, the mother rat gives Willard one of her offspring, a white rat Willard names Socrates. Socrates becomes Willard's only companion, and as the rat population grows, Willard soon meets Ben, a rather large black sewer rat, who is more aggressive than Socrates. When Mrs. Stiles dies of an illness, Willard brings his ever-expanding rodent friends into the house, keeping them in the cellar, with the exception of Socrates, who is given the run of the house. But Ben wants the run of the house, too, competing with Socrates for his master's affection. When Martin starts pushing Willard harder, Willard retaliates by having the rats disrupt a party he's throwing. When Martin goes even further, Willard snaps and becomes psychotic. This unlikely little film made on a small budget ultimately earned more than $20 million dollars at the U.S. box office in the summer of 1971. When you calculate the cost of the film (which was rather low) with its box office performance in 1971 dollars, you have a smash. A sequel,
Ben, followed almost exactly a year later, and spawned the hit single "Ben's Song," sung by Michael Jackson.
Willard also paved the way for a series of imitations, none of which matched the box office success of the original:
Stanley (1972) a virtual remake of
Willard, with snakes instead of rats;
Frogs (1972) a nature-run-amuck story with frogs, snakes, lizards, and other creatures disrupting a family;
SSSSSSS (1973), a mad scientist keeps deadly snakes to use against his enemies;
Squirm (1976) after a storm, legions of killer worms attack a small Southen town.
Willard was remade in 2003 with Crispin Glover in the title role and R. Lee Ermey as the evil Mr. Martin. I saw it opening day, and sadly, I was the only one in the theater. The film ended up grossing a paltry $4 million total in the U.S. I think part of the problem was, the film was heavily recut to secure a teen-friendly PG-13 rating. Glen Morgan (who directed the film) originally made a hard R-rated picture, with more gore and colorful profanities from R. Lee Ermey. Morgan's cut also retained the original ending, faithful to the novel and the 1971 film. New Line Cinema (the company producing the film) demanded cuts to speed the film up, to cut the gore, to cut the profanity, and, even worse, to totally change the ending. Since this was Morgan's first feature as director, he didn't fight back, and recut the film, tacking on a reshot watered-down ending in place of the original cut's more powerful finale. Before the remake opened, several preview screenings were held. The R-rated version was shown first. This was what prompted New Line to demand cuts and reshoots, as the preview audience didn't care for the film. When Morgan submitted his new, PG-13 cut, it actually scored LESS with audiences than the R-rated cut, but New Line went ahead with the PG-13 anyway. On the DVD commentary and documentary with Morgan, you can hear the sadness and bitterness in his voice that his film was tampered with. Luckily the cut scenes (including the original ending) were included on the DVD...but as stand-alone scenes. They weren't put back into the movie as they should have been. In these days of alternate cuts, special editions, etc. you would think a film such as this would be presented on DVD in the best way possible. The current disc has an excellent picture and sound, and a lot of really great extras (including a music video for "Ben's Song," directed, starring and sung by Crispin Glover). The only "alternate" version of the movie is on side 2 of the disc, and is simply a pan & scan version of the theatrical cut. Whatever its faults, I like the
Willard remake. It's (mostly) faithful to the book and 1971 film; it includes several in-jokes, such as an oil painting of Bruce Davison (as he looks today) as the late Mr. Stiles; Michael Jackson's original version of "Ben's Song" is set to a creepy scene in which the rats pursue a cat around Willard's house; and a great performance by Crispin Glover. I only wish the original cut was available. The 1971 film has never been released on DVD, which is strange, since it was a popular film back in the day, and is still a cult classic (ebay always has used VHS copies that sell quite frequently, and homemade DVD Rs -- taken from VHS copies).
Well, those are 10 films that I can watch over and over again. Here are 10 more.
The Long Goodbye (1973) - Robert Altman's adaptation of the Raymond Chandler novel with Elliott Gould as a slovenly, mumbling Phillip Marlowe in 1970s L.A.
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) Sam Peckinpah's take on the Garrett-Bonney legend, with Kris Kristofferson as the Kid, and James Coburn as Garrett.
Duck Soup (1933) Leo McCarey directs the Marx Brothers in their last film for Paramount (and their last with brother Zeppo). A true classic, in my opinion the brothers' greatest film.
Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles directs and stars in this film noir about corruption in a south-of-the border town. With Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh.
Young Frankenstein (1974) A great Mel Brooks flick that lovingly spoofs the Universal horror movies of the 1930s.
East of Eden (1955) The first (and best, IMO) feature film of James Dean in Elia Kazan's adaptation of the second half of John Steinbeck's massive novel, a modern-day Cain & Abel story.
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) Roger Corman quickie (allegedly shot in 2 days) about a man-eating plant. Later the basis for the hit musical and Frank Oz film.
House of Bamboo (1955) Samuel Fuller's brightly-colored travelogue, set in Japan just after the war, in which an undercover cop (Robert Stack) joins a gang of veterans-turned-criminals (led by the great Robert Ryan) in order to put an end to their crime spree. Pulp fiction at its finest, but a lot of fun.
Ed Wood (1994) Tim Burton's tribute to the so-called "worst filmmaker of all time" with a great Johnny Depp as Wood, an excellent Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi and a hilarious Bill Murray as one of Wood's friends. Plays with the real-life facts, but it's very entertaining.
What's Up, Doc? (1972) Zany screwball comedy by critic-turned-director Peter Bogdanovich is a throwback to comedies of the 1930s, specifically
Bringing Up Baby.