*sticks hand up and admits to loving Last Samurai too*

Good call on Koyaanisqatsi and Boogie Nights, Taw.
I've been trying to catch some of Kurosawa's stuff, in particular Ran, Rashomon, or Shichinin no Samurai (7 Samurai), but to obtain it legally would require far too much money seeing as it's being packaged for film buffs with lots of money and not a lowly student. They weren't readily available last time I had a look through the less than legal channels either.
Little bit surprised by Eraserhead there, it's not exactly something I "enjoyed" watching but it was good fun just trying to make sense of some of the imagery and have conversations with my friends about it afterwards. (The ideas brought forth are pretty weird!)
Downfall (Der Untergang) was incredible, I watched it the other night. The actor who played Hitler was incredible. Apparently he spent some time listening to recordings of Hitler at some sort of dinner party in Finland to accurately imitate his conversational stylings. The killing of Goebbels' children in particular sent chills down my spine.
Also noticed a lot of Hayao Miyazaki films in the list, I saw Spirited Away in the cinema a few years ago and it reminded me of a lot of the weird fantasy movies and cartoons I enjoyed as a small child that really stretched the imagination.
Forgot to mention City of God in my last list, that was an excellent movie. As well as, Shawshank Redemption, Cold Mountain, Memento, American History X, The Pianist, Rushmore, Trainspotting and Family Guy: The Movie .
Currently I'm trying to get hold of the original War and Peace filmed in Russia in the 1960s which apparently most closely follows the book itself. (I'm finally reaching the end of that enormous book!) I've seen some clips from it and the Battle of Borodino in particular looks nothing short of incredible with what must be tens of thousands of extras involved. Apparently after adjusting inflation over the years it's the most expensive film ever made.

more expensive than Anthony & Cleopatra, or Kolberg? that would be incredible achievement in a perverse sort of way! love to find out..

Downfall blew my mind, I saw it at the pix a few weeks ago. Incredible acting and casting, Magda Goebbels in particular. Weak ending i thought though.

Eraserhead, well there's nothing quite like it is there? it's unique; a very difficult film to watch and it's not *enjoyable* by any means except in it's hypnotic terror and revulsion and it's stunning cinematography.

all Kurosawa's major films are available on Tartan Video and you can get them online from MovieMail. Ran cost me £10.99. as an aside, when i first saw it I was on holiday in italy and it was dubbed into Italian! I didn't have a clue what was going on most of the time as I was trying to translate the italian and missing the action or watching a key scene and missing the words, it gave a somewhat different slant to the experience. but it all came together when the sons started to fight each other and I pretty much figured out what they were on about after that. watching those armies maneuver and flow is like watching some sort of martial ballet, I always think, its actually quite beautiful.

Poul Thomas Anderson is a wonderful director! loved Boogie Nights but never thought he'd come up with something as gob-smackingly brilliant as Magnolia, which was like a breath of fresh air when I was choking in a fog a mediocre Hollywood blockbusters and sequels. And it totally altered my opinion of Tom to the better, so I was happy with him later in Last Samurai as a result. I'm afraid my insurance-selling colleague wouldn't agree though.

I thought the pianist was excellent but I took serious issue with the way Polanski portrayed Szpilmann's meeting with Wilm Hosenfeld and their subsequent starnge relationship. Wilm Hosenfeld was shown as unsure and ambiguous, with the implication that his aiding and saving Szpilmann was opportunistic. In fact Horsfeld was already decided against the Nazis and had intervened to alter the fates of not a few jews already. Polanski chose to ignore this, was it for the sake of drama or was it because he couldn't accept that a German officer would willingly risk his life for a jew for reasons of morality? I feel this was a serious lapse in an otherwise outstanding film and Polanski perpetuated on the memory of Horsfeld a great injustice, one which Szpilmann himself had in former years tried to reverse.

I wanted to say i liked Trainspotting as much as I did when it was first released, but I watched it recently and got nothing from it except a sort of *before they were famous* sensation.

and I'm belatedly including Gladiator 'cos it was a rip-roaring film that I enoyed every moment of and Big Russ was ace!

Edited by - Tawakalna on 11/6/2005 11:59:21 AM

Edited by - Tawakalna on 11/6/2005 12:00:59 PM

battle beyond the stars " hey I'm from earth, heard of it " lol havent seen that one in years.

a friend gave me some movies by tartan fims and I have to say these are really weird.
the ones I got were : oldboy
a tale of two girls
koma

I havent been surprised by a movie in a while but these surprised me lol

Blessed Be to all those that still dream of the flight to the stars.

quote " You wouldn't like my Happy Place it is full of blood, carnage, and destruction" :ME

@druid - lol. ta matee. good choice yourself...I'm loving the inclusion of Last Starfighter, Princess Bride and The Thing...all of which, although critically slated, are top films.

As for Josey Wales, the list of bad quotes to baffle your mates with is endless...

"I ain't your Pa!"

"Don't p*ss down my back, and tell me it's rainin'."

"...it's not fer eatin', it's fer lookin' through."

and my personal favourite...

"Get ready little lady...Hell is coming to breakfast."

EDIT: sp mistakes

Edited by - gromit on 11/7/2005 3:41:45 AM

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that film where Bond was captain of a Russian submarine..

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Hunt For Red October

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and just to annoy Edward and Fear Factor
The Last Samurai (which I enjoyed immensely)

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*mumbles something unflatteringly unintelligible about Scientology*

In no particular order and some additional titles that I think were not mentioned before, not necessarily 10.

Slaughterhouse Five
A Clockwork Orange
Dr. Strangelove
Get Shorty
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tin Men
Five Easy Pieces
Zatoichi
Twelve Angry Men
All of Sellers' Clouseau movies, no matter how horrid





Edited by - Indy11 on 11/7/2005 1:06:51 PM

rambo rambo rambo and um..rambo

, I dont really have a faverit movie...got faverit books..not movies

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All of Sellers' Clouseau movies, no matter how horrid

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ya know, I always forget about those movies, even though I consider them to be pure genius.

ok, top 10 movies-

1) Matrix 1
2) The Time Machine
3) Event Horizon (Screwy beyond all sense of the word)
4) The Matrix Trilogy
5) Star Wars Trilogy
6) Bourne Identity
7) Liar Liar
The Cube
9) Showtime
10) Battlestar Galactica Miniseries (A bit of a letdown from what i expected)

Thats if flash movies dont count, because RvB would be up there.

I reckon it is easy to try and sound high brow when asked to compile such a list. I noticed last night while trying to find something to watch that my real favourites are pretty much what I listed earlier. They are not the most critically acclaimed as Grom noted, nor the most fantastic cinematography, directing, acting etc. They are instead the movies which are always easy to watch, entertaining and seemingly timeless in their premiss.(I left the Shawshank Redemption out of the list by mistake)

some movies I have but have not watched of late:

1: Catch 22
2: One Flew Over the Coocoos' Nest
3: Taxi Driver
4: Apocalypse Now
5: The Deer hunter
6: The Long Good Friday
7: Fight Club
8: 2001 A Space Odyssey
9: Scarface
10:Bullit

hahaha. RvB.

"I'm a pacifist!"
"You're what babies suck on?"
"What, a pedophile?"
*silence*
"Dude, I think he means a pacifier"
"Oh ****, I was thinking about something totally different"

-:-
Kill The Revolution

I couldn’t hold to 10 so I separated by Genre…
Action/Sci-Fi:
Star Wars (all)
Star Trek II: Wrath of Kahn
Stargate
Alien (all)
Equilibrium
Matrices
Predator (all, & AvP)
Abyss
Underworld
Last Star Fighter

Fantasy:
Princess Bride
Pirates of the Caribbean
Lord of the Rings (all)
Dark Crystal
Willow
Excalibur
Batman Begins
X-Men 2
Spiderman 2
Superman

Adventure/Western:
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Goonies
M.I. 2
Back to the Future (all)
Outlaw Jose Wales
Unforgiven
Bourne Identity
Once Upon a Time in the West
A Fist Full of Dollars
Wild Wild West

Comedy:
Caddyshack
Young Frankenstein
Spaceballs
Blues Brothers
Johnny Dangerously
Three Amigos
Bowfinger
BeetleJuice
Ghostbusters
Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail

War:
Kelly’s Heroes
Last Samurai
Saving Private Ryan
Alamo
Last of the Mohicans
Rambo (all)
Soldier
Gladiator
Troy
Patton


Sports:
Replacements
The Natural
Necessary Roughness
Remember the Titans
Major League
Bull Durham
Rudy
Longest Yard (orig.)
Rocky (all but 5)
Best of the Best



"Well, I see your Schwartz is as big as mine."

It's funny because it is my last name.

Edited by - topher on 11/9/2005 6:36:22 AM

I'll just pop up in favour of A Boy And His Dog .

The pathetic wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Boy_And_His_Dog

It's just perfect in so many ways. Conventional methods might show it to be rubbish, but because it's so terribly terribly bad , it's brilliant. I can't exlain it, it has to be watched.

Also, Battle Royale - probably one of the most famous Japanese movies in the west. Once they leave the classroom, it's sheer brilliance.

___Corsair~MMV

in no particular order:

M*A*S*H
Enemy at the Gates
Dracula (The version by Francis Ford Coopola of 1992, which is in my mind, for somone who has read the book six times, the best translation to white screen, asides from the Prologue, which only added to the atmosphere of the Legend of Vlad Draculea.)
Glory
Gettisburg (a four Hour sit really is TOO long!!)
Braveheart
The IRA Informant (I Cannot watch that Movie, its too strong for my stomach, but thats due to other factors...)
Chaplin shorts
Laurel and Hardy shorts (both from the silent age preferably)
Zatoichi

and many more, which I simply can't all remember, but off the top of my head, thats it

mmmm...

Anything with Johnny Depp or Ewan MacGregor. Or Orlando Bloom, purely for eye candy value. So basically Moulin Rouge, Pirates of the Carribean, Down with love...etc.

Or a film which has blood and swords and hack and kill and deaaaath.