name your top 5 favorite movies of all time
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No......thank you, gjorg!!!!!! It is the only movie I have ever walked out on. I have tried watching it again several times since, I understand what it's about, what Quentin Tarantino was trying to do and what influenced him, but, I HATE that movie. To me it's like watching slapstick comedy with Jerry Lewis or the Three Stooges. I just don't see it.
Oh dont feel that way. You? never! Ok? Im sorry. What is it about Quentin Tarentino that everyone loses their minds over? I just am not feeling most of his movies.
Before Hitler took power in 1933, Germany was on a par with Hollywood. For a brief time, from 1917 to about 1933, Germany was the place for innovative film making. After Hitler came to power, many of the German filmmakers left for Hollywood and created the American school of film noir. One of the top German directors went to work for Desilu and developed the three-camera system for sitcom filming that is still used today. Karl Freund, that man, is also responsible for demanding that I Love Lucy be filmed, not telecined. That's the reason it still looks so good today despite its age.
Nosferatu (1922) - The images of Count Orlok in Nosferatu are not pleasant. This vampire isn't suave and handsome, he isn't even plain. He's hideous and frightening and if you haven't seen this film, you're sure to have seen his face over the years. This is a film about atmosphere more than anything and it's great to watch on a Halloween night. The special effects of the time were amazing, but Orlok is the real deal. The first great cinema vampire. Watch for Lugosi's hand movements, they're from Count Orlok. The black and white cinematography works very well in high contrast and makes the landscapes stark and forbodeing. This is a short but wonderful movie, barely saved from a single print and the horror film that started all horror films.
Sunrise (1927) - Also made by the same director as Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, Sunrise is a Hollywood production but don't let it fool you. It is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful films ever made. Consistently on critics' Top 10 lists, with three Oscars, this is one of the few films that you do not forget.
It has been said that the perfect film has yet to be seen even if it is has already been made, but once in a very great while fate gets cheated and the miraculous happens:
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928): This is the grand-daddy (or grand-mama) of cinema. Easily on Top 3 lists since it was released, nothing like it has been made before or since. The lead performance by Rene Falconetti is lauded as the finest performance in the history of cinema. This is her only film and given the ordeal she went through to make it, there is no wonder why.
To celebrate the canonization of the Maid of Orleans, France commissioned a few film makers to film the life of Joan of Arc. For one film they hired Danish director Carl Dreyer. This is his film.
Dreyer spent lavishly on sets but at the last minute, decided he would focus on the final days of Joan, from her trial to her execution. Compressing the story into one day, he used the actual trial transcripts for his dialogue. He then dispensed with all makeup and decided to film nearly the entire film in sxtreme close-ups using the German Expressionist style for the acting, sets, art, and cinematography. He worked with Falconetti and the other actors, more as a slavemaster than a director. He demanded take after take, forcing Falconetti to kneel for hours on hard stone floors until he got precisely the performance he wanted. The set life was not pleasant and Dreyer was fairly despised by his cast and crew.
At its first screening, the French government was shocked and unhappy with the results. After a little editing, Dreyer took the film to his native Scandinavia where it received astonishing reviews with people saying things like, "life changing," "shocking," and, "divinely inspired." Pleased with these results, Dreyer returned to France to show the government his new cut but a fire at the film vault destroyed everything in it. Film in those days was nitrate-based and highly flammable. Working from second takes, Dreyer worked again to reassemble the film, taking over a year. At its completion, Dreyer was happy but yet another fire destroyed all his working negatives. The Passion of Joan of Arc was lost.
A few surviving scraps of film were circulated under Dreyer's title but he disowned all those hack edits as nothing like his original and he bitterly resented that people were circulating something under his name that he had nothing to do with.
Decades passed and film scholars finally got an idea of what Dreyer intended and wrote about the film as best they could, imagining what it must have been like. Like the other famous lost silent, Greed, The Passion of Joan of Arc had to be reassembled and imagined like a dinosaur with only a handful of fossils left to recreate it.
In 1981 a janitor at an Oslo mental hospital was cleaning out a closet and found some cans of film.
It was Dreyer's original cut of The Passion of Joan of Arc.
It was in exceptional condition, which is all the more amazing considering nitrate film turns to dust after just a few decades.
Criterion worked with film restorers in Scandinavia to clean-up the scratches and rebuild the film.
The result blew everyone away. The Passion of Joan of Arc was really as amazing as the first reviewers thought it was, and maybe then some.
Orignially The Passion of Joan of Arc was not to have a score, but Richard Einhorn saw one of the first restored prints and decided to create an oratorio for the film together with Anonymous 4 and named it, Voices of Light, creating a libretto based on the works of medieval feminist and misogynist writers. It is agreed that even if Dreyer didn't intend a score, that Einhorn's work has contributed something very powerful to the film itself. With Criterion's DVD you can choose to view the film with or without the score, but everyone recommends to listen with it.
When I first bought the DVD, never having seen the movie, it was with money I set aside to buy DVDs of movies I've never seen. The night I watched it I could barely sleep. I was riveted by a performance and experience so emotionally draining that I found myself unprepared for the effect it had. I had no idea film could be used in such a way. I had always seen film as narratives, not as a bare, raw, device to tear away the facades of acting and staging to peer unadulterated into souls. Watching The Passion of Joan of Arc is still not easy. Put away the popcorn, keep the tissues at hand, and put your therapist on speed dial. This is an exhilerating but terrifying film, more to do with mysticism and experience than any other I've seen.
If you care anything for film and what it can do, then you have to see this. While not violent by today's standards, I wouldn't let young children watch it. The intensity is overwhelming. Do watch it through a home theater system to get the entire effect of the score.
The Scarlet Empress (1934): A long time ago, Hollywood had no rules, no censorship, and made the sort of movies we wouldn't see again until Bonnie and Clyde. Just under the gun, The Scarlet Empress is a bizarre spectacle of grotesque sets, sexual predation, high camp, costumes that Trisha Biggar would harken back to in the Star Wars series, sensuous black and white cinematography, and the nova-like beauty of Marlene Dietrich. Supposedly about the rise of Catherine the Great, The Scarlet Empress has a brilliant and beautiful cast slipping into a Wonderland vision of imperial Russia. The images stay with you for a long time, particularly the uncensored scenes such as when a court physician dives under Dietrich's gowns to assure her virginity, and when Dietrich reviews her troops and it's clearly not their swords she's measuring-up. It's all very strange but very fun, and loaded with iconic images that Hollywood would go back to again and again in later films.
I'm going to cheat here because I think the following two go hand-in-hand in many ways:
The Films of the Lumiere Brothers (1895-1903): Remarkable not for what they told, but for what they are. The earliest films were little more than moving postcards where the camera didn't move and there was no plot. So what? These films are over 110 years old and show us slices of history slipping further away every second. Each is very short, often less than a minute, but they show a Europe long gone from anyone's memory. Fascinating to see at least once.
Films of Georges Méliès (1903-1908): Méliès was the Spielberg of his day. Where the Lumieres thought that cinema was an artistic dead end, Méliès immeidately saw its potential. Méliès was among the first to create stories to perform for the camera. It may sound obvious to us, but at the time it was revolutionary. A stage magician by training, Méliès used elaborate sets to tell stories of fantastic adventures and used all his tricks to pioneer special effects. His stories took people to the races in Monaco, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," magical fairy realms, and, in his most famous work, "A Voyage In the Moon." All were done on set where Méliès could control the lighting and effects precisely. Though primitive by our standards, audiences were amazed and astounded by what they saw. Remember that previously, audiences panicked and ran out of the theater when the Lumiere's, "Arrival of the Train at the Station," was first shown because people actually thought a train was going to break through the screen and run over them. Even if the effects are old and obvious, the stories are still charming, told with humor and showmanship. Though made less than a decade after the basic Lumiere films, Méliès films are light years ahead.
Nosferatu (1922) - The images of Count Orlok in Nosferatu are not pleasant. This vampire isn't suave and handsome, he isn't even plain. He's hideous and frightening and if you haven't seen this film, you're sure to have seen his face over the years. This is a film about atmosphere more than anything and it's great to watch on a Halloween night. The special effects of the time were amazing, but Orlok is the real deal. The first great cinema vampire. Watch for Lugosi's hand movements, they're from Count Orlok. The black and white cinematography works very well in high contrast and makes the landscapes stark and forbodeing. This is a short but wonderful movie, barely saved from a single print and the horror film that started all horror films.
Sunrise (1927) - Also made by the same director as Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, Sunrise is a Hollywood production but don't let it fool you. It is one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful films ever made. Consistently on critics' Top 10 lists, with three Oscars, this is one of the few films that you do not forget.
It has been said that the perfect film has yet to be seen even if it is has already been made, but once in a very great while fate gets cheated and the miraculous happens:
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928): This is the grand-daddy (or grand-mama) of cinema. Easily on Top 3 lists since it was released, nothing like it has been made before or since. The lead performance by Rene Falconetti is lauded as the finest performance in the history of cinema. This is her only film and given the ordeal she went through to make it, there is no wonder why.
To celebrate the canonization of the Maid of Orleans, France commissioned a few film makers to film the life of Joan of Arc. For one film they hired Danish director Carl Dreyer. This is his film.
Dreyer spent lavishly on sets but at the last minute, decided he would focus on the final days of Joan, from her trial to her execution. Compressing the story into one day, he used the actual trial transcripts for his dialogue. He then dispensed with all makeup and decided to film nearly the entire film in sxtreme close-ups using the German Expressionist style for the acting, sets, art, and cinematography. He worked with Falconetti and the other actors, more as a slavemaster than a director. He demanded take after take, forcing Falconetti to kneel for hours on hard stone floors until he got precisely the performance he wanted. The set life was not pleasant and Dreyer was fairly despised by his cast and crew.
At its first screening, the French government was shocked and unhappy with the results. After a little editing, Dreyer took the film to his native Scandinavia where it received astonishing reviews with people saying things like, "life changing," "shocking," and, "divinely inspired." Pleased with these results, Dreyer returned to France to show the government his new cut but a fire at the film vault destroyed everything in it. Film in those days was nitrate-based and highly flammable. Working from second takes, Dreyer worked again to reassemble the film, taking over a year. At its completion, Dreyer was happy but yet another fire destroyed all his working negatives. The Passion of Joan of Arc was lost.
A few surviving scraps of film were circulated under Dreyer's title but he disowned all those hack edits as nothing like his original and he bitterly resented that people were circulating something under his name that he had nothing to do with.
Decades passed and film scholars finally got an idea of what Dreyer intended and wrote about the film as best they could, imagining what it must have been like. Like the other famous lost silent, Greed, The Passion of Joan of Arc had to be reassembled and imagined like a dinosaur with only a handful of fossils left to recreate it.
In 1981 a janitor at an Oslo mental hospital was cleaning out a closet and found some cans of film.
It was Dreyer's original cut of The Passion of Joan of Arc.
It was in exceptional condition, which is all the more amazing considering nitrate film turns to dust after just a few decades.
Criterion worked with film restorers in Scandinavia to clean-up the scratches and rebuild the film.
The result blew everyone away. The Passion of Joan of Arc was really as amazing as the first reviewers thought it was, and maybe then some.
Orignially The Passion of Joan of Arc was not to have a score, but Richard Einhorn saw one of the first restored prints and decided to create an oratorio for the film together with Anonymous 4 and named it, Voices of Light, creating a libretto based on the works of medieval feminist and misogynist writers. It is agreed that even if Dreyer didn't intend a score, that Einhorn's work has contributed something very powerful to the film itself. With Criterion's DVD you can choose to view the film with or without the score, but everyone recommends to listen with it.
When I first bought the DVD, never having seen the movie, it was with money I set aside to buy DVDs of movies I've never seen. The night I watched it I could barely sleep. I was riveted by a performance and experience so emotionally draining that I found myself unprepared for the effect it had. I had no idea film could be used in such a way. I had always seen film as narratives, not as a bare, raw, device to tear away the facades of acting and staging to peer unadulterated into souls. Watching The Passion of Joan of Arc is still not easy. Put away the popcorn, keep the tissues at hand, and put your therapist on speed dial. This is an exhilerating but terrifying film, more to do with mysticism and experience than any other I've seen.
If you care anything for film and what it can do, then you have to see this. While not violent by today's standards, I wouldn't let young children watch it. The intensity is overwhelming. Do watch it through a home theater system to get the entire effect of the score.
The Scarlet Empress (1934): A long time ago, Hollywood had no rules, no censorship, and made the sort of movies we wouldn't see again until Bonnie and Clyde. Just under the gun, The Scarlet Empress is a bizarre spectacle of grotesque sets, sexual predation, high camp, costumes that Trisha Biggar would harken back to in the Star Wars series, sensuous black and white cinematography, and the nova-like beauty of Marlene Dietrich. Supposedly about the rise of Catherine the Great, The Scarlet Empress has a brilliant and beautiful cast slipping into a Wonderland vision of imperial Russia. The images stay with you for a long time, particularly the uncensored scenes such as when a court physician dives under Dietrich's gowns to assure her virginity, and when Dietrich reviews her troops and it's clearly not their swords she's measuring-up. It's all very strange but very fun, and loaded with iconic images that Hollywood would go back to again and again in later films.
I'm going to cheat here because I think the following two go hand-in-hand in many ways:
The Films of the Lumiere Brothers (1895-1903): Remarkable not for what they told, but for what they are. The earliest films were little more than moving postcards where the camera didn't move and there was no plot. So what? These films are over 110 years old and show us slices of history slipping further away every second. Each is very short, often less than a minute, but they show a Europe long gone from anyone's memory. Fascinating to see at least once.
Films of Georges Méliès (1903-1908): Méliès was the Spielberg of his day. Where the Lumieres thought that cinema was an artistic dead end, Méliès immeidately saw its potential. Méliès was among the first to create stories to perform for the camera. It may sound obvious to us, but at the time it was revolutionary. A stage magician by training, Méliès used elaborate sets to tell stories of fantastic adventures and used all his tricks to pioneer special effects. His stories took people to the races in Monaco, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," magical fairy realms, and, in his most famous work, "A Voyage In the Moon." All were done on set where Méliès could control the lighting and effects precisely. Though primitive by our standards, audiences were amazed and astounded by what they saw. Remember that previously, audiences panicked and ran out of the theater when the Lumiere's, "Arrival of the Train at the Station," was first shown because people actually thought a train was going to break through the screen and run over them. Even if the effects are old and obvious, the stories are still charming, told with humor and showmanship. Though made less than a decade after the basic Lumiere films, Méliès films are light years ahead.
Jason,
YOu are amazing! I am overwhelmed whenever you give us a post. This is such great background information. Are you or were you a film major?
YOu are amazing! I am overwhelmed whenever you give us a post. This is such great background information. Are you or were you a film major?
Pariah as far as incredibly stupid uninteresting films that the population goes gaga for. Don't get your hopes up naughty, I am not that humble. Yes I saw your appology in advance. Gee you moderators are so PC.
barkerfan
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Evil Dead (I love horror and that is one of the best, low bugeters ever made. Cheesy perfection.)
The hunger ( Amazingly stylish vampire movie.)
Dangerous Liasons( Will never tire of it. )
Hair ( Do musicals count?)
Videodrome ( Very surreal thriller by one of my favorite directors, David Cronnenberg. Also love Naked Lunch, directed by him as well.).
The hunger ( Amazingly stylish vampire movie.)
Dangerous Liasons( Will never tire of it. )
Hair ( Do musicals count?)
Videodrome ( Very surreal thriller by one of my favorite directors, David Cronnenberg. Also love Naked Lunch, directed by him as well.).
Hey NJ, I don't have full blown OCD I was lucky enough when I was younger to realise where I was heading and I managed to pull back before it got out of hand, but it does peep out now and then 
If you saw my wardrobe you'd have realised it straight away, colour co-ordinated and from left to right - coats, jackets, trousers, long skirts, short skirts, long sleeved tops, short sleeved tops, strappy tops Now let's go and alphabeticise your shoes.
If you saw my wardrobe you'd have realised it straight away, colour co-ordinated and from left to right - coats, jackets, trousers, long skirts, short skirts, long sleeved tops, short sleeved tops, strappy tops Now let's go and alphabeticise your shoes.
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The Hunger was one of the truly wonderful adult erotica tellings of the vampire tale ever!
Of course it does. End of line.
And I thought I was bad.:biggrin1:YOu are very sweet and kind. :kiss:
Nope; art history. I just love movies
fortiesfun
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For a while there I thought I was the only one who had even heard of this. I should have known that it would be Naughty to list it also.
And I love Orlando! Quentin Crisp is a terrific Queen!
fortiesfun
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Please, don't hurt the kitties... or the DVDs...I don't have a grudge against my ex, if I did he'd now be residing under the patio with the other people I had a grudge against
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I remember reading the book and then seeing Tilda Swinton as Orlando. The movie was wonderful and the Jimmy Summerville credits track was a big bonus.
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yngjock20
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Mine are far, Faaar less in-depth or critically acclaimed as many on here:
*Donnie Darko- Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a off-beat horror/ drama centered around a High School boy and his unhealthy, yet predestined, obsession with time-travel...and rabbits.
*The Fifth Element- Mila Jovovich, Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker star in this intergalactic action/comedy about a former decorated air force captain chosen to save the world by protecting the "supreme being" all while being a guest host on a zany radio show!
*Friday-Ice Cube and Chris Tucker live out possibly the most insane, hilarious weekday one could ever imagine. You'll get knocked "the FUCK OUT!!!" by the comedy!
*The Outsiders-C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayzie, Matt Dillon and every other hot boy from the '80s star in this period movie about life in '50s suburbia. Laugh, cry and jerk off to the less than discreet homoerotic overtones played out by "Dally"(Matt Dillon) and "Johnnie" (Ralph Machio) Either way, make sure to have your tissues ready because this movie is a "jerker" in more ways than one.
*Paris is Burning- This documentary takes place in the early Eighties; focusing on the, then underground, Ballroom scene. Otherwise known as "Voguing." Learn the basics of the scene from Realness, to throwing shade all while taking in the most beautiful trannies you've ever seen.
*Donnie Darko- Jake Gyllenhaal stars in a off-beat horror/ drama centered around a High School boy and his unhealthy, yet predestined, obsession with time-travel...and rabbits.
*The Fifth Element- Mila Jovovich, Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman and Chris Tucker star in this intergalactic action/comedy about a former decorated air force captain chosen to save the world by protecting the "supreme being" all while being a guest host on a zany radio show!
*Friday-Ice Cube and Chris Tucker live out possibly the most insane, hilarious weekday one could ever imagine. You'll get knocked "the FUCK OUT!!!" by the comedy!
*The Outsiders-C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayzie, Matt Dillon and every other hot boy from the '80s star in this period movie about life in '50s suburbia. Laugh, cry and jerk off to the less than discreet homoerotic overtones played out by "Dally"(Matt Dillon) and "Johnnie" (Ralph Machio) Either way, make sure to have your tissues ready because this movie is a "jerker" in more ways than one.
*Paris is Burning- This documentary takes place in the early Eighties; focusing on the, then underground, Ballroom scene. Otherwise known as "Voguing." Learn the basics of the scene from Realness, to throwing shade all while taking in the most beautiful trannies you've ever seen.
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No shame in it my man. I love Friday I honestly think it was the first of the true "life in da hood" comedies out there and set the bar for the others that came after it.
Fifth Element if another fave of mine. Tom Lister as the President of the Known Galaxy? How can you NOT appreciate the humor. To quote Ruby Rod it's hot, hot, HOT!!!
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