Some of your all-time favorites

Maze Runner

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Any era, genre, etc.

Some of mine:

Unforgiven
In the Heat of the Night
Bugsy
On The Waterfront
Mystic River
State of Grace
Salvador
Godfather II
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
American Beauty
Gotti- made for HBO, Assante
Pope of Greenwich Village
From Here to Eternity
The Graduate
Shampoo
Hud
Hombre

Just for starters-- I'm curious how many of these and others we will have in common
 

Maze Runner

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My top favorite films:

2001 A Space Odyssey
MASH
Woodstock
The Shining
Star Trek The Motion Picture

And I really like Heaven's Gate.

MASH could easily make my list. Heaven's Gate was the one that nearly did in Michael Cimino, right? I've never seen it. He did do Deer Hunter as well, another one of my favorites. Maybe I need to give Heaven's Gate a chance. Thanks
 

underthecity

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They just remastered Heaven's Gate for Blu Ray, and it has a gorgeous picture. The cinematography is breathtaking in HG, but it suffers from a lot of problems that Cimino was responsible for. The movie did almost ruin his career and caused the parent company of United Artists to sell the studio to MGM.

Regardless of the problems, overall I do like the movie because of the things that do work. It doesn't make my top 5 favorite of all time, though.
 

Maze Runner

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I either didn't know or had forgotten that about United Artists. The film must have had a big budget.

A few more of my all-time favorites:

Some of these may or may not be widely considered to be great movies.

Harper- Paul Newman, just love the feel of this- a bit lighthearted- I love the '60's Southern CA atmosphere

Three Days of the Condor- the opening of this movie, or the inciting incident that happens about 10 minutes in, is classic- Redford, a non-operative, CIA researcher comes back from lunch to find that all of his fellow researchers have been killed. He spends the rest of the movie trying to find out who and why, while at the same time trying not to let them finish the job

Affliction with Nick Nolte- James Coburn, his alcoholic, abusive father is perfectly despicable

Nuts with Streisand and Richard Dreyfuss as her court appointed attorney- She's a call girl who kills an attacker, Leslie Nielsen- Karl Malden is her step father who we find had sexually abused her- her mother, Maureen Stapleton lives in denial. The point of this film comes clear when Streisand takes the stand in her own trial to determine if she is in fact, nuts. Who's more nuts, a high priced Park Avenue call girl, or a middle class suburban housewife who sells out her daughter and her soul?
 

kuwisdelu

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The End of the World
End of Evangelion
Arizona Dream
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
Dead Man
Adolescence of Utena
5 Centimeters per Second
...
 

Maze Runner

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End of Evangelion
Arizona Dream
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
Dead Man
Adolescence of Utena
5 Centimeters per Second
...

Only have seen Sunshine and Arizona Dream. I want to take another look at Arizona Dream, and I'll try to find Dead Man. That looks like something I'd enjoy. Johnny Depp is to me a great actor, and Vincent Gallo is a talented guy. His Buffalo 66 is a good one. I loved Depp in Blow and Donnie Brasco.

Eternal Sunshine, I really liked. Jim Carey is one of those rare actors equally good in dramas and comedies. I would add Robin Williams and Bill Murray to the list.
 
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BigWords

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Unforgiven
In the Heat of the Night
Bugsy
Godfather II
American Beauty
From Here to Eternity
The Graduate
Hombre

I would also throw in π (Pi), Suspiria, A Night At The Opera, The Wild Bunch (and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid if we are allowed two from the same director), Dawn Of The Dead (the original, and the uncut US version at that), Bride Of Frankenstein, Eraserhead...
 

druid12000

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This is not a complete list, just off the top of my head:

The Shawshank Redemption
Cool Hand Luke
Star Wars
The Matrix
Aliens
The Big Lebowski
The Boondock Saints
Young Frankenstein
Benny and Joon
Office Space
...this could be a long list so I'll just stop there for now :)
 

Chasing the Horizon

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Flight of Dragons
Natural Born Killers
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
American Beauty

Yeah, they have nothing in common except that each of them captured something that amazed me. I can't even say if they're objectively good movies, because I love the stories and characters far beyond the point of objectivity.

There are hundreds of other movies I thought were good and enjoyed. But those are the four that left me feeling like I'd seen something that truly changed my view of the world and storytelling. All four inspired me to immediately play them a second time when the credits rolled, and I still have an emotional reaction to certain moments in them, even though I've seen them all hundreds of times.
 

Liralen

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Dust
Quills
Ever After
Heavy Metal
Mirrormask
Prospero's Book
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Red Violin
Fantasia and Fantasia 2000
Pride and Prejudice
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
 

druid12000

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Dust
Quills
Ever After
Heavy Metal
Mirrormask
Prospero's Book
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Red Violin
Fantasia and Fantasia 2000
Pride and Prejudice
Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Great film! The animation was lacking somewhat, by today's standards, but the stories were great.
 

BigWords

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The Matrix

Watching that is... problematic. I limit myself to one or two viewings a year, otherwise I would start taking it apart and seeing where the Wachowski Bros took all their ideas from. Some of it is really blatant, but the subtler steals take a few viewings to pick up on.

Office Space

Ah. This. :D

The Red Violin

Given how many times I have seen it, that probably should have been on my list as well. :)
 

Myrealana

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Casablanca
The Princess Bride
Memento
Lethal Weapon
The Indiana Jones trilogy - Shut up. There are only three movies.
LOTR Trilogy
Arsenic and Old Lace
It's A Wonderful Life
Psycho
Life is Beautiful
 

Maze Runner

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This is not a complete list, just off the top of my head:

The Shawshank Redemption
Cool Hand Luke
Star Wars
The Matrix
Aliens
The Big Lebowski
The Boondock Saints
Young Frankenstein
Benny and Joon
Office Space
...this could be a long list so I'll just stop there for now :)

I like a lot of these, too. At this time though, I may have temporarily ruined a couple of them for myself, after just watching them too many times. Cool Hand Luke especially. Paul Newman did a lot of great movies, didn't he? Another one of his I really like is The Verdict.

Oh, and Office Space, which I really like and haven't seen in a while, for some reason reminds me of one called The Baxter- maybe they came out about the same time.

Flight of Dragons
Natural Born Killers
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
American Beauty

Yeah, they have nothing in common except that each of them captured something that amazed me. I can't even say if they're objectively good movies, because I love the stories and characters far beyond the point of objectivity.

There are hundreds of other movies I thought were good and enjoyed. But those are the four that left me feeling like I'd seen something that truly changed my view of the world and storytelling. All four inspired me to immediately play them a second time when the credits rolled, and I still have an emotional reaction to certain moments in them, even though I've seen them all hundreds of times.

What do you think it is about American Beauty? Sometimes beyond story and acting, for me it's just the feeling you get. Something about that movie that is totally realistic, yet with a surreal overtone. In that case, I guess it could just be the dreamlike state of the main character. Also, the father and son in that thing, the Chris Cooper and Wes Bentley characters, that dynamic, that family, was so textbook, especially with the compliant, toowornout or beatendown to complain mother- and yet what was underneath, the fear of the father was for me, a surprise.

And I don't know how everyone feels about scores, how important the music is to a movie. My take on it is, great music can not save a bad movie, but bad music can ruin a good one. The American Beauty theme is haunting, and though what's important is of course the acting and writing, that music only adds to the full effect of the film.
 
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Chasing the Horizon

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What do you think it is about American Beauty? Sometimes beyond story and acting, for me it's just the feeling you get. Something about that movie that is totally realistic, yet with a surreal overtone. In that case, I guess it could just be the dreamlike state of the main character. Also, the father and son in that thing, the Chris Cooper and Wes Bentley characters, that dynamic, that family, was so textbook, especially with the compliant, toowornout or beatendown to complain mother- and yet what was underneath, the fear of the father was for me, a surprise.
Well, part of my love for American Beauty is probably that it was an *exact* portrayal of my life as a teenager (minus the dramatic ending). I felt like I knew all the characters personally, but yet that story let me see it all from another perspective which was so much more enlightening. It just captured that combination of soullessness and beauty that was middle America at the turn of the millennium in such a potent way.

I can't say anything about Ricky's family surprised me. I knew what was going on there very early in the film, because that *was* my ex's family. But I was very surprised by the honesty at the end of the movie, when Ricky's father puts the moves on Lester and Angela turns out to be a virgin. The scope and simultaneous pettiness of the deceptions. There's also the way Jane hates her parents, not for anything terrible, but just because they're so ordinarily flawed. And the movie never tries to make her out to be a bad person for that, or to redeem the family. It just *is*.

I should add that I saw American Beauty for the first time when I was 15 and I hated it. I was still deeply immersed in the dynamics the movie portrayed and couldn't stand that level of honesty, so I wrote it off as artsy crap. I saw it again by accident when I was 22 and it remains the only movie I've ever 100% changed my opinion of on the second viewing.

Something about the way American Beauty was made is so unpretentious, if that makes sense. I've seen other movies that tried to capture the essence of the struggles of ordinary middle-class America and they were all boring or laughably dramatized or just plain wrong. I'm doing a lousy job of explaining this, lol.

Myrealana, I almost put Lethal Weapon on my list too. The performances in that movie are incredible. If only the action sequences themselves lived up to the same quality as the writing and acting.
 

J.S.F.

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So many movies, so little time in which to watch them...

Okay, pre-80's--which is when they stopped making decent flicks :)D) here are my picks.

The Ten Commandments
El Hombre Quieto
The Whole Town's Talking
Anything with Barbara Stanwyck, particularly Remember the Night, Babyface, and Meet John Doe
Will Penny
Bad Day at Black Rock
The Seven Samurai and Yojimbo, both by Kurosawa
Detour (always liked Edgar Ulmer--Eugene Levy should play him in a movie if they ever do a bio-flick)
Night of the Living Dead (the original)

Post-80's

Superman (okay, 1978, but close enough for 80's in my book)
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Gangs of New York
Good Will Hunting
The Shawshank Redemption
The Dark Knight Trilogy
The Spiderman Trilogy by Raimi
The Evil Dead (#3 in the series, the original one, I mean)
Bubba Hotep
Cabin in the Woods
Ironman 1 and 2--eagerly waiting #3
The Avengers--eagerly awaiting the sequel

There are more and all of these choices are in no particular order. I just like these films for the variety they give.
 

Liralen

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I can't believe I forgot to put Sucker Punch on my list.
 

Maze Runner

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Anyone see that Sydney Lumet film with Nolte, Tim Hutton, Armand Assante, "Q&A"? One of those that I can't figure why it's not better known. To me, Nolte's one of those guys, just gets better with age. And Lumet, well, he did another one of my favorites, "Dog Day Afternoon". But I've seen it too many times, so won't watch it now. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q&A_(film)

Lumet also did "The Pawnbroker" with Rod Steiger, and "Serpico". And one of my definite all-time favorites "Network", written by Paddy Chayefsky. Lumet's last film I believe was "Before the Devil Knows Your Dead"- he passed recently.

Also, crazy, but unless I've missed it, no one's mentioned a Martin Scorsese movie. Anyone got a favorite Scorsese flick?
 

BigWords

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Either GoodFellas, Bringing Out The Dead or The Departed - tough to make a decision on which is "better".
 

Maze Runner

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Either GoodFellas, Bringing Out The Dead or The Departed - tough to make a decision on which is "better".

You know, Bringing out the Dead is one I don't know.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bringing_Out_the_Dead

Looks like something I'd like, glad you mentioned it.

You forget, or I do at least, all the great movies he did.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Scorsese_filmography

I'd recommend, for anyone who hasn't seen it, to check out King of Comedy, with De Niro, Sandra Bernhardt, and Jerry Lewis. I just think of some of the scenes in this thing and I laugh. "Mo-om! I'm rehearsing!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3THyEP4c1E
 

Alpha Echo

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The Sopranos
The Wire
The Wizard of Oz
I Love Lucy
Crash
My So-Called Life
The Sound of Music
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Little Princess
Cheers
The Cosby Show
Friends
The Princess Bride
Dirty Dancing
Ever After

I'm sure there are more. But those are off the top of my head.
 

Maze Runner

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The Sopranos
The Wire
The Wizard of Oz
I Love Lucy
Crash
My So-Called Life
The Sound of Music
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Little Princess
Cheers
The Cosby Show
Friends
The Princess Bride
Dirty Dancing
Ever After

I'm sure there are more. But those are off the top of my head.

Hi Alpha- thanks for these. A lot of TV shows in there, but I don't mind, especially when you start it off with The Sopranos- in my mind, the best TV drama ever made. Been rewatching lately- The only problem I have with the show, is every time you started to follow a character line, before you knew it, the character got whacked!

Breakfast at Tiffany's, I really like Audrey Hepburn, but then, what red-blooded, American boy, oh never mind... But, I'll tell you, that Henry Mancini theme, is reason enough to love this one.

Nice tribute to Audrey...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6krFBlOx-M

But the Johnny Mercer lyrics, oh my...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGCEH6hpI-Y
 

Alpha Echo

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Hi Alpha- thanks for these. A lot of TV shows in there, but I don't mind, especially when you start it off with The Sopranos- in my mind, the best TV drama ever made. Been rewatching lately- The only problem I have with the show, is every time you started to follow a character line, before you knew it, the character got whacked!

Breakfast at Tiffany's, I really like Audrey Hepburn, but then, what red-blooded, American boy, oh never mind... But, I'll tell you, that Henry Mancini theme, is reason enough to love this one.

Nice tribute to Audrey...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6krFBlOx-M

But the Johnny Mercer lyrics, oh my...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGCEH6hpI-Y

Oooh...did it say only movies in the OP? Sorry if I missed that.

I'm thinking of another...

Oh! Fight Club.
And American History X.

I love Edward Norton.