Favorite movies
If you had to name your five favorite movies as of right now, what would they be? Let’s say you don’t have to put them in a particular order unless you want to.
Mine, unordered, would be as follows:
- Scenes from a Marriage (Bergman)
- Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
- 8 1/2 (Fellini)
- Magnolia (PT Anderson)
- Synecdoche, NY (Charlie Kaufman)
(Tomorrow, maybe they’ll be different.)
49 Comments
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War and peace (Russian), Tungalag Tamir, The 12th chairs ( with Andrei Mironov), O Brother where art though
the fifth could be anything i’ve watched lately and liked
Comment by read | June 28, 2009
Excellent choices.
1. Magnolia
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Moulin Rouge
In America
Comment by redison | June 28, 2009
How can you even be thinking about movies at a time like this? Billy Mays died today! He was only fifty!
BTW: any of his infomercials is beats the shit out of any movie listed above this comment. Especially “Moulin Rouge.” (Ewan MacGregor has been dead to me since 2001.)
Comment by Craig | June 28, 2009
The Mission, Dr. Strangelove, Amores Perros, The Fast Runner, Babette’s Feast. Oh Brother Where Art Thou is #6 or #7.
Comment by old | June 28, 2009
Decline of the American Empire, Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Breathless, Casablanca, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Dr. Strangelove is also up there.
Comment by hugh | June 28, 2009
Is this THE most idle sport (making lists of favorite movies, favorite songs, favorite whatevers)? Or is this the MOST favorite sport? Or is this the most FAVORITE way to be idle? Or, the most idle SPORT? There, is that five?
Comment by Lloyd Mintern | June 29, 2009
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Sweet Smell of Success, His Girl Friday, Lawrence of Arabia … what the hell, Sexy Beast. But there’s 4 more above that could easily take one of those slots, and several more that are in my canon.
Comment by Wrongshore | June 29, 2009
* La double vie de Véronique (Kieslowski)
* The Red Shoes (Powell)
* Fitzcarraldo (Herzog)
* Tystnaden (Bergman)
* Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (Lang)
Comment by Bryan Klausmeyer | June 29, 2009
The Magnificent Ambersons
Faces
My Brother’s Wedding
The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
The Asthenic Syndrome
Sixth: The Phenix City Story
Comment by burritoboy | June 29, 2009
Bottle Rocket
It’s a Wonderful Life
Pulp Fiction
Magnolia
The Princess Bride
Comment by Chad | June 29, 2009
Lloyd, It’s a way for me to take stock after a couple years of much broader movie watching and me to get some more movie recommendations.
Comment by Adam Kotsko | June 29, 2009
I probably don’t watch enough movies. Also, my taste is atrocious and incoherent.
That said…
Happiness (Solondz)
Husbands and Wives (Allen)
Mysterious Skin (Araki)
Polyester (Waters)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (Nimoy)
Comment by toops | June 29, 2009
Woman Under the Influence (Cassavettes)
Teorema (Pasolini)
Text of Light (Brakhage)
Band of Outsiders (Godard)
Raging Bull (Scorsese)
Comment by dbarber | June 29, 2009
The Thin Red Line (Malick)
Mulholland Dr. (Lynch)
Malcolm X (Lee)
In the Mood for Love (Wong)
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park)
Of course, tomorrow they may be different.
Adam: you mean Royal Tenenbaums.
Comment by Currence | June 29, 2009
Thanks, fixed.
Comment by Adam Kotsko | June 29, 2009
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov)
Les Enfants du Paradis (Marcel Carne)
The Third Man (Reed)
The Conversation (Coppola)
La Grande Illusion (Renoir)
Comment by grackle | June 29, 2009
I should have had Dead Man (Jarmusch) in there.
Comment by dbarber | June 29, 2009
Holiday (Cukor)
Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock)
Merrily We Live (McLeod)
The Awful Truth (McCarey)
Limelight (Chaplin)
I really want to say Casablanca as well, but I’ll omit it for now.
Comment by Chris | June 29, 2009
Belle de Jour (Brunuel
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (Tanner)
8 1/2 (Fellini)
Trans Europe Express (Robbe Grillet)
The Terminator (James Cameron)
Comment by Lloyd Mintern | June 29, 2009
Pulp fiction is good i recalled, others i’ve watched and didn’t marked them as that much faves, Casablanka excluded
favourites are the movies which i can watch and rewatch and they are never getting boring
should see Magnolia perhaps if this many 3 people like it
or maybe i watched it before but don’t remember the title
eternal sunshine (2) otoh was just plain boring that i didn’t watch it further 10 min maybe
what i absolutely hate is that street car named desire
Comment by read | June 29, 2009
Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen)
The Holy Mountain (Jodorowksy)
Inland Empire (Lynch) (No, really.)
La dolce vita (Fellini)
Fresh (Yakin)
Comment by Will | June 29, 2009
The Big Lebowski
Royal Tenenbaums
Rushmore
The Sacrifice (Offret) by Tarkovsky (go out and watch this immediately)
Bad Boys II
Comment by Hill | June 29, 2009
Two-Lane Blacktop
The Conversation
Play Time
Brick
Sleuth
The last two are just sort of filling things out because I’ve thought about/seen them recently. As perhaps is the first. Sweet Smell of Success, Some Like It Hot, Breathless, Eternal Sunshine, and Rushmore could occupy slots pretty easily.
Comment by ben | June 29, 2009
Cabaret (Bob Fosse)
Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai)
Marie Antoinette (Sophia Coppola)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy)
West Side Story (Robert Wise)
Comment by jms | June 29, 2009
And any of the above could be switched out for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Royal Tenenbaums, but they’ve gotten plenty of love in this thread already.
If my list weren’t so self-conscious, it would probably include Tremors.
Comment by jms | June 29, 2009
Fuck yeah Tremors! Today, Once Upon A Time In America replaces Sexy Beast.
Comment by Wrongshore | June 29, 2009
Tremors is awesome.
Comment by Hill | June 29, 2009
I still need to see Once Upon a Time in the West. (I haven’t seen OUaTiAmerica but don’t feel as if I need to.)
Comment by ben | June 29, 2009
-th
Comment by read | June 29, 2009
I think you would appreciate and enjoy it. I love OUaTiW and The Good, the Bad & the Ugly — especially the essay on Clint Eastwood’s face contained in the latter — but Once Upon a Time in America is a beautiful and weird dream-work cum immigrant epic. Plus, Jewish gangsters!
Comment by Wrongshore | June 29, 2009
(unordered, and at-the-moment:)
The Life Aquatic
The Big Lebowski
The Science of Sleep
My Neighbor Totoro
The Royal Tenenbaums
Comment by stras jones | June 29, 2009
The Big Lebowski was also funny, all that el duderino stuff and his friends, very moving, i just didn’t get the cowboy in the bowling place, he seemed like totally redundant
Comment by read | June 29, 2009
Here are five movies pulled at random from my five-star reviews at Netflix, and presented in no particular order:
The Big Sleep
Blast of Silence
Battle of Algiers
F is for Fake
Life & Death of Colonel Blimp
Comment by Brad Johnson | June 30, 2009
And, what the hell:
Rififi.
Comment by Brad Johnson | June 30, 2009
Stras, have you seen Matt Zoller Seitz’s video essay on Wes Anderson? It’s what the internet is for, after porn.
Comment by Wrongshore | June 30, 2009
Not so much top films of all time, but ones worth adding to your queue:
Lesson 21 by Alessandro Baricco (you should read his books too!)
My Dinner with Andre / Vanya on 42nd St by Louis Malle
Jonah who will be 25 … as referred to above
Friends with money (yes it has Jennifer Aniston, but it’s a good quietly interesting film)
Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d’enfants with Charlotte Gainsbourg
Comment by Gabe | June 30, 2009
I’m somewhat surprised to see stras-love for Wes Anderson, chronicler of the idle rich.
Also, I love Rififi. Nice shot!
Comment by ben | June 30, 2009
Stras,
Couldn’t you find movies more appropriate to your political opinions? I mean, I would have at least hoped to see at minimum a Fassbinder or Weissmuller from you, and ideally why not some Straub/Huillet or Joris Ivens or Dovzhenko or Pudovkin or Makavejev? I mean, Makavejev is great! Much funnier than Wes Anderson. (Also, Makavejev has many many more hawt nekkid women than Anderson, which also doesn’t hurt).
Comment by burritoboy | June 30, 2009
Specific Makavejev recs? You can make them based on humor or presence of naked hotties, as you like.
Comment by ben | June 30, 2009
Mysteries of the Orgasm … great stuff.
Comment by Brad Johnson | June 30, 2009
You’ll get both humor and nudity.
Comment by Brad Johnson | June 30, 2009
Sweet Movie’s good too. Lots of hotties in that one.
Comment by burritoboy | June 30, 2009
Great post/comment (well …). If I’d known there would be so little Scorsese, I’d most definitely have put Bringing Out the Dead, or my favorite even though it’s not classic Marty, The Aviator. A gaggle of Wes Anderson votes and just one for Scorsese? To date, I’ve always refrained from calling people indulgent navel gazers here when I disagree with them, because I thought it would be cartoonish.
Comment by old | June 30, 2009
So, the question now becomes what is Stras’ defense of his (her?) poor cinematic taste. I mean, Stras is very insistent that her opinions on politics are indisputably correct. But her (his?) aesthetic choices betray no impact of his (her?) politics. I mean, if you seriously believe that the US is collapsing……then The Life Aquatic is an idiotic movie, or at the least an incredibly trivial movie.
Comment by burritoboy | July 1, 2009
I’m having trouble deciding whether The Life Aquatic or Inland Empire is the less believable choice.
Comment by Adam Kotsko | July 1, 2009
Note that I have no difficulty with The Life Aquatic as a movie (it’s not a movie I rate extremely highly myself, but it’s not a bad movie by any means), it’s that I’m noting what seems to me to be a political / aesthetic train-crash for someone holding Stras’ stated political opinions. Maybe I just don’t see the depths in Wes Anderson’s work.
Old,
I’m not sure Scorsese’s backlist is aging as well as people once expected. For example, I’m not sure Mean Streets is as profound now as it was when most people couldn’t easily see Elaine May’s Mikey and Nickey or John Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore doesn’t look so notable when you can see Barbara Loden’s Wanda. Taxi Driver is still a singular achievement, but………
Comment by burritoboy | July 1, 2009
Stras is a pessimist. The Life Aquatic is a deeply pessimistic movie.
Comment by Wrongshore | July 1, 2009
Compared to what is The Life Aquatic a deeply pessimistic movie? Compared to I Was Born, But…….? Compared to Kiss Me Deadly? Compared to Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion? Compared to Weekend? Compared to Berlin Alexanderplatz? Compared to Ace in the Hole? Compared to The Friends of Eddie Coyle? Compared to The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May’s version, of course)? Compared to, dare I say it, Citizen Kane?
Comment by burritoboy | July 1, 2009
Compared to Rushmore.
Comment by ben | July 1, 2009