Top Ten Films
Oct. 30th, 2013 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormsewerSo, me and my best buddy from college are applying for this year's Butt-Numb-A-Thon. One of the application questions is to name your top ten favorite films of all time. I discovered with some shock that I've never made such a list before, and it was surprisingly hard to do. (The top three were easy, but after that...) So, I thought I'd share the results with you.
10. Nosferatu (Murnau version!) I don't imagine there ever being a vampire film that surpasses this. I watch it pretty much every Halloween (and the best Halloween ever was seeing it at the Alamo Drafthouse with an original score performed live). Someone (who hadn't seen it) once asked me if its spookiness was due to the intentions of the filmmaker or merely a product of the film technology at the time. The answer is, of course, both. They sure don't make them like that anymore.
9. Ghost Dog You may know that I have rather a thing for Japan, minoring in Japanese as an undergrad and living there for three years afterwards. This film does a beautiful job of displaying the best and worst aspects of traditional Japanese culture (which are often exactly the same aspects), while drawing parallels with modern American gangster culture that are surprising at first but seem obvious once pointed out. Such thoughtful violence! Forest Whitaker can do wrong, ever, in my eyes on the basis of this film alone.
8. Fight Club Yeah, yeah, okay. This one is a bit over-exposed, and I understand the criticisms, but I still love this film. To me at age 21, with my freshly broken faith, attending a conservative religious university, this was like a light from the sky. If it seems cliché now, that's only because it nailed the zeitgeist so well at the time.
7. Army of Darkness This film just gets it. The aforementioned buddy and I watched it almost every night during our freshman year of college, and it just never got old. So inventive, so dark, so hilarious, it hits every note perfectly.
6. Wayne's World This came out when I was twelve years old, and I now see it as my gateway into adolescence. It introduced to me Queen and Jimi Hendrix and can be assigned more than a smidgen of the responsibility for my keen interest in assertive Asian women. Wayne and Garth, you taught me what it means to be a man.
5. Billy Madison I'm sorry, I'm at a loss to explain why I love this film so much. I just do. It's stupid in such a genius way. Isn't there a little Billy in all of us? This is the best comedy ever made (well, besides my number one pick, but that's in a class by itself), and it grants Adam Sandler a free pass for life in my eyes.
4. The Empire Strikes Back Do I have to explain this? As a nerd born in 1979, of course Star Wars had an enormous impact on my development as a human being. And this is the film that has aged the best. Yoda, Boba Fett, scruffy-looking nerf herders, carbonite, the iconic reveal... Perfect. Not to mention no one-in-a-million photon torpedo shots or Ewok shock troops to the rescue. This time, Luke, you're gonna get what's coming to you!
3. The Seventh Seal Alright, folks, we are seriously on hallowed ground now. This film showed me the way forward when it seemed like there was none, and probably more clearly expresses my fundamental worldview than any other film on this list.
2. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind This movie has a meaning to me beyond what I could ever express in words. I saw the original English repackaging of this, which was called Warriors of the Wind, when I was very young. I must have been six or seven. I only saw it once (I think I came upon it accidentally on cable), and I had no clue what it was. But many of the images from it, most especially that scene near the end where she's trying to stop the baby Ohmu from crawling into the acid lake, stuck with me forever afterwards. As I grew up images of Ohmu would often come to me, and I wanted so much to rediscover that mystery magic. In my late teens it occurred to me that the film was probably Japanese, but it wasn't until I was 20 that I came upon it again. That was around the time I started studying Japanese, and I became friends with an apartment of six Japanese-speaking females. One evening I was visiting them, and they put a movie on, and... Seeing that film again was like a religious experience for me. It was everything I ever remembered it was or hoped it would be. The Ohmu are the most wondrous, terrible, beautiful imaginary species ever created, and Nausicaä is my ideal human being. (I would seriously consider naming a daughter Nausicaä. There's some otaku street cred for ya.) And that scene, that scene... It still makes me want to cry every time I watch it. I love this film, and it made me who I am. (PS I regretfully advise you don't bother with the manga, and THAT'S NOT HER BUTT SHE'S WEARING LEGGINGS.)
1. Popeye (You know, the 1980 film starring Robin Williams.) If you didn't already know this was coming, you may be surprised. Shocked, even. Perhaps a string of WTFs is parading through your mind. And admittedly I've never met another person remotely close to sharing my esteem for this film. But my favorite film it is, always has been, always will be. Seriously, this has been my favorite film since I was three years old. I watched it every day, and laughed and laughed, every single time. And as I grew older my esteem for it never dimmed. This is the most intricate, lovingly crafted film I have ever seen. There are so many little details to catch in every shot, so many overlapping and interlocking dialogues flashing by. Crowd scenes apart, every single extra's character is named in the credits, and careful observation shows each one was carefully crafted. To this day, every time I watch this film I notice something new, something I'd never picked up on before. The humor works on all different levels, and it's all great. The music is amazing (I made a YouTube playlist of all the songs in the order they appear). And of course it's an excellent guide to life. Simply put, the rewatch value of this thing is off the charts. It rewards repeated viewing by revealing ever more and deeper layers. I don't care for other instantiations of Popeye. I am not a Robert Altman fan, generally (I read once that McCabe and Mrs. Miller was supposed to be similar, and while I can see why you might say that, it's not). I find Harry Nilsson's other music uninspiring. I can't say I'm even that big of a fan of Robin Williams. There's just something special about the combination of elements that went into this particular film. There are very few things in this plane of existence that make me as happy. It is a masterpiece.
Or maybe I'm just insane?
10. Nosferatu (Murnau version!) I don't imagine there ever being a vampire film that surpasses this. I watch it pretty much every Halloween (and the best Halloween ever was seeing it at the Alamo Drafthouse with an original score performed live). Someone (who hadn't seen it) once asked me if its spookiness was due to the intentions of the filmmaker or merely a product of the film technology at the time. The answer is, of course, both. They sure don't make them like that anymore.
9. Ghost Dog You may know that I have rather a thing for Japan, minoring in Japanese as an undergrad and living there for three years afterwards. This film does a beautiful job of displaying the best and worst aspects of traditional Japanese culture (which are often exactly the same aspects), while drawing parallels with modern American gangster culture that are surprising at first but seem obvious once pointed out. Such thoughtful violence! Forest Whitaker can do wrong, ever, in my eyes on the basis of this film alone.
8. Fight Club Yeah, yeah, okay. This one is a bit over-exposed, and I understand the criticisms, but I still love this film. To me at age 21, with my freshly broken faith, attending a conservative religious university, this was like a light from the sky. If it seems cliché now, that's only because it nailed the zeitgeist so well at the time.
7. Army of Darkness This film just gets it. The aforementioned buddy and I watched it almost every night during our freshman year of college, and it just never got old. So inventive, so dark, so hilarious, it hits every note perfectly.
6. Wayne's World This came out when I was twelve years old, and I now see it as my gateway into adolescence. It introduced to me Queen and Jimi Hendrix and can be assigned more than a smidgen of the responsibility for my keen interest in assertive Asian women. Wayne and Garth, you taught me what it means to be a man.
5. Billy Madison I'm sorry, I'm at a loss to explain why I love this film so much. I just do. It's stupid in such a genius way. Isn't there a little Billy in all of us? This is the best comedy ever made (well, besides my number one pick, but that's in a class by itself), and it grants Adam Sandler a free pass for life in my eyes.
4. The Empire Strikes Back Do I have to explain this? As a nerd born in 1979, of course Star Wars had an enormous impact on my development as a human being. And this is the film that has aged the best. Yoda, Boba Fett, scruffy-looking nerf herders, carbonite, the iconic reveal... Perfect. Not to mention no one-in-a-million photon torpedo shots or Ewok shock troops to the rescue. This time, Luke, you're gonna get what's coming to you!
3. The Seventh Seal Alright, folks, we are seriously on hallowed ground now. This film showed me the way forward when it seemed like there was none, and probably more clearly expresses my fundamental worldview than any other film on this list.
2. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind This movie has a meaning to me beyond what I could ever express in words. I saw the original English repackaging of this, which was called Warriors of the Wind, when I was very young. I must have been six or seven. I only saw it once (I think I came upon it accidentally on cable), and I had no clue what it was. But many of the images from it, most especially that scene near the end where she's trying to stop the baby Ohmu from crawling into the acid lake, stuck with me forever afterwards. As I grew up images of Ohmu would often come to me, and I wanted so much to rediscover that mystery magic. In my late teens it occurred to me that the film was probably Japanese, but it wasn't until I was 20 that I came upon it again. That was around the time I started studying Japanese, and I became friends with an apartment of six Japanese-speaking females. One evening I was visiting them, and they put a movie on, and... Seeing that film again was like a religious experience for me. It was everything I ever remembered it was or hoped it would be. The Ohmu are the most wondrous, terrible, beautiful imaginary species ever created, and Nausicaä is my ideal human being. (I would seriously consider naming a daughter Nausicaä. There's some otaku street cred for ya.) And that scene, that scene... It still makes me want to cry every time I watch it. I love this film, and it made me who I am. (PS I regretfully advise you don't bother with the manga, and THAT'S NOT HER BUTT SHE'S WEARING LEGGINGS.)
1. Popeye (You know, the 1980 film starring Robin Williams.) If you didn't already know this was coming, you may be surprised. Shocked, even. Perhaps a string of WTFs is parading through your mind. And admittedly I've never met another person remotely close to sharing my esteem for this film. But my favorite film it is, always has been, always will be. Seriously, this has been my favorite film since I was three years old. I watched it every day, and laughed and laughed, every single time. And as I grew older my esteem for it never dimmed. This is the most intricate, lovingly crafted film I have ever seen. There are so many little details to catch in every shot, so many overlapping and interlocking dialogues flashing by. Crowd scenes apart, every single extra's character is named in the credits, and careful observation shows each one was carefully crafted. To this day, every time I watch this film I notice something new, something I'd never picked up on before. The humor works on all different levels, and it's all great. The music is amazing (I made a YouTube playlist of all the songs in the order they appear). And of course it's an excellent guide to life. Simply put, the rewatch value of this thing is off the charts. It rewards repeated viewing by revealing ever more and deeper layers. I don't care for other instantiations of Popeye. I am not a Robert Altman fan, generally (I read once that McCabe and Mrs. Miller was supposed to be similar, and while I can see why you might say that, it's not). I find Harry Nilsson's other music uninspiring. I can't say I'm even that big of a fan of Robin Williams. There's just something special about the combination of elements that went into this particular film. There are very few things in this plane of existence that make me as happy. It is a masterpiece.
Or maybe I'm just insane?
