The year end prediction and best of lists have been coincident with a series of running gags in our office about a colleague's penchant for 1980's goofball comedies. The timing has led me to think about my own favorite movies, and I thought I'd see if I could actually come up with a top 10 list. I did and here it is:
1. Barton Fink. Written as a way to break out of the writer's block that gripped Joel Coen while he was putting Miller's Crossing together. Funny and horrifying, Barton Fink is pure hollywood on all levels. It's where dreams are made, hopes are dashed, and great talent is either discovered , manufactured, or neither. What's in the box? The death of your soul. Imagery and dialog here to last a lifetime.
2. Blue Velvet. This movie changed the way I thought about many many things, but mostly it changed my expectations about films. I remember walking out of the theater as if I'd been hit in the head with a sledgehammer and thinking "Wow".
3. Mulholland Drive. David Lynch on the list twice, this time with the sad tale of failed actress Diane Selwyn. By reconstituting the demise of Diane's hopes and dreams in mind blowing sequence with time off for the usual cavalcade of Lynch sideshows (dwarf, cowboy,...), Lynch forces you to sit back and live the psychotic border area between fantasy and reality. Remarkable.
4. Bette Blue.Beatrice Dalle gives the performance of a lifetime in this unfiltered tale of woman full of life, passion and madness. Dalle is similarly great as a cab passenger in Night on Earth. The cinematography and direction are first rate, but Dalle makes the movie.
5. Withnail and I. Finally, a comedy appears on the list at number 5. Poverty and alcoholism have never been funnier. Some people find the pace of this film too slow and too depressing, but 18 years after it was made, I'm still remember lines from the movie and laughing to myself.
6. Abre los ojos. Don't think you've seen this if you saw the english language version, Vanilla Sky. This is better and nobody needs to watch Tom Cruise anymore anyway. My favorite among a fast growing collection of spanish language films.
7. The Cable Guy. Ben Stiller takes the premise that too much TV will ruin your life and takes it to its illogical conclusion. This movie is tragically underrated, and I say that NOT being a huge Jim Carrey fan. I have been surprised at some of the really lame films from Ben Stiller after this brilliant directorial effort (zoolander? yikes). Perhaps he took the lukewarm reactions as evidence that people just want their comedies to have more fart jokes and less dark elements.
8. Vampire's Kiss. It's the best Nicolas Cage movie you've never seen. A publishing executive thinks he's turning into a vampire. Hilarity ensues. Another tragically underrated black comedy, Nicolas cage goes over the top in the best way possible. Again, I wonder if this film isn't more widely liked because it is so relentless as it hops back and forth between comedy and some hard to watch tragedy.
9. Touch of Evil. What's not to like. This is film noir at its finest and Orson Welles' real masterpiece. Hard to believe this was made in 1958. I couldn't decide between this and The Big Sleep in the number nine slot, but i think that this is the movie I could watch again and again.
10. Run Lola Run. I think this movie is 80 minutes long or something. It's hard to believe that it can sustain its frenetic opening pace for the entire film, but it does and it works. One of those movies you leave and think "why aren't there more films like this?". Fabulous soundtrack, fabulous editing, which you almost never notice (and probably shouldn't notice most of the time), great mix of media types (still, animation,etc.).
Posted by Dick at January 1, 2006 09:12 PM