Okay, Ive got two people, Christopher C. Crain and Sammy LeAnn Glenn, requesting my fifteen films that have most influenced and stuck with me, so here you are. Im a stickler for rules, so this list of fifteen films is definitely not my favorites (theres a little overlap) but they are all films that had an impact on me and that I still think about periodically; good and bad. I will be mentioning major plot points so here is your blanket spoiler warning. 1. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans. A horrible opportunist throws true love away for excitement and almost loses everything. This heartbreaking picture makes me cry. Man tears, of course. 2. The Unknown. Lon Chaney pretends to be an armless knife thrower in the circus to elude authorities and Joan Crawford in her first role plays a woman with a fear of being crushed by dude arms (hairyhugnophobia?). So Chaney has his arms removed for real so he can be with her and while hes recovering she gets over her fear, tips her pendulum all the way in the other direction and falls for the frickin Strong Man at the circus! Chaney finds out and flips out in a tight close-up that has to be seen. Im a sucker for Gift of the Magi-type stories. They do me in. 3. The Blue Angel. Marlene Dietrichs first film but its Emil Jannings portrayal of a principled man who piece-by-piece loses everything for the love of a forbidden woman until he snaps in one of the most shocking scenes Ive ever seen. 4. King Kong (1933). My favorite film. Still one of the most special effect rich pictures of all time. Some shots are rear projection behind live action with a stop motion superimposed overlay! Whenever I get a new TV, I christen it with King Kong. Ive owned it five times on three different formats. 5. The Fly (1958). A scientist invents a teleportation machine and some gangsters send him through it with a fly. Not knowing how to handle two separate entities, the machine does some mix and match and the guy comes out with a fly head and right arm and the fly comes out with a guy head and right arm. Silly 50s sci-fi, right? Except my kid mind was expecting it all to be sorted out in the end, happily ever after. But instead the guy never catches the fly with his needed parts! And he DIES! And whats worse, Vincent Price finally finds the fly much too late and its in a spiderweb with an approaching spider. Just as it is occurring to me that there is no hope for this little guy, Price picks up a rock and smashes the white fly. Another Gift of the Magi thing. It was a punch to the gut for me. 6. The Exorcist. Watched this initially peeking around a corner at the free cable in the temporary housing while my family waited for our military housing home to be available. I had never been so scared by a film in my life and still refer to this as my default answer for scariest film ever made. 7. Phantasm. The *trailer* for this film scared me. The movie itself was almost unbearable. It rivals David Lynch for capturing dream logic on film and I mean that. 8. Midnight Cowboy. I was angry at this movie for days for not only depressing the hell out of me, but also scaring me about my future. I thought of myself as no more worldly than Joe Buck. I just knew I was going to end up a statistic. 9. A Chinese Ghost Story. My first foreign language film (The Red Balloon doesnt count; no dialogue). Opened up a whole world for me. 10. When Harry Met Sally. Still quote it. 11. Meet the Feebles. My best friend drove me all the way to Austin so I could see this at a midnight movie. It made her physically ill and she still watched the whole thing and drove us back. I decided then that I better hang onto that girl (it was how she took care of me during a back injury that made me decide to marry her). Its ironic that this movie she hates is partially why were together. 12. The Big Blue. Turns out all teenage boys feel like awkward aliens in public and only confident in themselves when submerged in their own world. Of course, this film felt like it was tailored for me alone though. If wed had a boy, he was going to be named after a character in The Big Blue. 13. The King of Comedy. Even more than Taxi Driver, I was appalled at how the anti-hero not only gets away with breaking laws both written and social, but even gets rewarded for it. At least in Taxi Driver you get the sense that his triumph is short-lived; Travis Bickle is broken and hes gonna snap again and next time it wont be heralded. But Rupert Pupkin will probably have a long career as a hacky late night comedian whos audience will watch even though hes terrible just because hes *consistent*. Like Jimmy Fallon. Thats a tragedy. 14. Back to the Future. Seen this more than any other movie. Wanted to have the kind of self-confidence Marty McFly had. Not the dont call me chicken bravado from the sequels, though. 15. Fargo. On my short list of perfect films. Halfway through the first time I saw it, I mentally took a step back and thought to myself that I was experiencing something truly special. Frances McDormands last line is truly profound. This is a list off the top of my head. It might be fifteen different ones tomorrow. Say, like, The Fellowship of the Ring, maybe. Or something by Terry Gilliam or Sam Raimi or Fritz Lang. Who knows. Now I want to read Anne Vassar, Michael Glenn, Tina Trana and Ryan Gills.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 02:23:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015