The Films That Mean The Most To Me

REPOSTED FROM MYSPACE BLOG EARLIER TODAY



"I believe your name will be a household word when you'll have to go to the War Museum to find who Allenby was. You're the most extraordinary man I've ever met!"
-- Major Allenby from Lawrence Of Arabia

"Let's go."
-- Pike Bishop from The Wild Bunch

"I have often thought that in the hereafter of our lives, when I owe no more to the future and can be just a man, that we may meet, and you will come to me and claim me as yours, and know that I am your husband. It is a dream I have..."
-- King Arthur from Excalibur


The things I will do for Dr. Royce Clemens. I really must like him a great deal because I am not that fond of most people. He is my kind of son of bitch. He and Miss Movie Fan did their top ten favorite films list. He tagged ten of us.

I do not have a top ten or even a top fifty favorite films, but I do have a group of films I keep going back to again and again. I see something new in them every time I watch them. Why is not the Star Wars Saga or The Godfather Trilogy chosen here? Those are a give! Like Indiana Jones, James Bond and Jaws-- those films make up a permanent cinematic DNA that exists forever. There are many more films I could have picked, but these are special to me and the major reasons I do what I do. It is hard to narrow it down to ten, even a hundred films is hard because so many films mean so much to me. Ask me to do this list tomorrow and I promise you it will be different. This is why we are all here in the first place-- a real love for films, all kinds of films. I can tell you that I am not here to buy and sell my friends as Tom believes we should. Here are the films that mean the most to me in no order at all…

1. Excalibur-- John Boorman's 1981 epic is more Wagnerian than Arthurian. It may be the best use of Richard Wagner's music ever (besides the helicopter attack in Coppola's Apocalypse Now.) My parents took me to see this film at the Mercado in the fifth grade. Why do I still like it-- everyone gets what they deserve! It plays like The Godfather set in medieval times. Helen Mirren gives one of her best performances as the evil Morgana and Nicol Williamson is divine as Merlin. Nigel Terry is the definitive King Arthur. John Boorman is one of my favorite directors. As much as I like Point Blank, The Emerald Forest, Deliverance, The Tailor Of Panama, Hope And Glory and Hell In The Pacific, I always come back to this one.

2. The Road Warrior-- Max Rockatansky will always be Mel Gibson's best role. The Road Warrior is one of those cases where the sequel is better than the original. George Miller's post-apocalyptic masterpiece is the ultimate action film. The Mad Max films hit all the right notes. I had never seen anything like The Road Warrior in the summer of 1982. From the opening 16mm prologue to the tanker chase at the end, it was and remains a hypnotic rush. It was on cable last year; it holds up very well. Kevin Costner needs to stay away from this genre. After seeing it, I told a friend I liked it more than Star Wars. He thought I was nuts. I knew I watched something special. For a kid frightened by the threat of nuclear war, this had a strange, calming effect on me.

3. The Wild Bunch-- There is a reason they called Sam Peckinpah "Bloody Sam." This is one of the main reasons. According to David Weddle's biography, If They Move..Kill 'Em, it was the only film that Peckinpah made clean and sober. That says something right there. William Holden's Pike Bishop was playing against type as the ultimate anti-hero. Bishop is like an older and jaded Shears from The Bridge On The River Kwai. The film is quite simply about men who have outlived their times. The loyalty and friendship among this group of aging outlaws says it best. The chemistry between Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson and Warren Oates is priceless. Robert Ryan was never better. Ryan is playing against type here too. The climatic shootout at the end is the very definition of wargasm. The climatic bloodbath makes Brian De Palma's Scarface look like Mickey Cohen's Bar-Mitzvah. Peckinpah is my favorite director. I like his sons too-- Quentin Tarantino, John Woo and Johnny To.

4. National Lampoon's Animal House--
"Miss, do you know this is an R-rated film?"
"We love John Belushi, I really don't care."
That was the exchange on the opening day of Animal House between my Mom and the lady at the ticket counter. I was seven years old at the time, but Belushi was an early comedic idol of mine. My Mom loved SNL as well. She took me and my older brother Saul to see it. We couldn't stop laughing. It is the original subversive comedy. Stripes is right up there with it. When Belushi died, a lot went with him. Still, this film has aged very well-- not just the food fight but the Death Mobile and even the Toga party. Bluto's speech remains one of the best:

"Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
I wish John Landis still made films like this one. One of college's great disappointments was that it was never as much fun as this film… not even close.

5. Lawrence Of Arabia-- David Lean's 1962 epic. Why? I tried to watch this on home video in 1984. I was bored. My parents took me to see the restored version in 1989 at the Uptown theater. WOW!!! This is why movies were meant to be seen in the theaters. Every time I watch this film, I find something new. It works on every level. The direction, the acting, Maurice Jarre's score, the script, the cinematography and everything else works in this film. This was Peter O'Toole's first starring movie role. He had done some television work and lots of theater before this iconic role. Thank goodness Marlon Brando was doing Mutiny On The Bounty and Albert Finney was too short. For O'Toole, a blessing and curse-- how do you top this role? Given the subject matter, it will not be dated anytime soon. It is the ultimate cinematic adventure. You can have your CGI wastelands. I miss these kinds of films. I saw this in the theater the same week I saw a re-release of Gone With The Wind in the theater. That was a great week.

6. Where The Buffalo Roam-- This is where I fell in love with Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Long before Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch rediscovered Bill Murray, he played Dr. Hunter S. Thompson in Art Linson's Where The Buffalo Roam. It may feel dated and lack the visual daring of Terry Gilliam's Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, but in the summer of 1984, this was the equivalent of discovering gold. I love Bill Murray in Stripes, Meatballs, Ghostbusters and Caddyshack, but he is perfect in this film. It had Peter Boyle as Carl Lazlo who stole the film. This is my favorite Peter Boyle role. He and Murray have such great chemistry. This film made me seek out all of Hunter S. Thompson's books for the rest of my life. The film made me want to become a writer eventually. Johnny Depp is the only other actor who could inhabit the good doctor. It is my favorite Bill Murray film.

7. The Wind And The Lion-- I make no secret of my love for this John Milius film. He was in full John Huston/David Lean mode when he made this film. I think he always lived in Lean and Huston's shadow, just as Walter Hill always lived in Peckinpah's shadow. Sidney Lumet managed to break Sean Connery out of the James Bond mode with films like The Hill and The Anderson Tapes. Milius gave Sean Connery his greatest part as El Raisuli, a Berber chieftain in Morocco who kidnaps Candice Bergen and her children in 1904. Forget Murphy Brown, Bergen was never better than as Eden Perdicaris. Connery and Bergen have great chemistry together in the tradition of The African Queen and Heaven Knows Mr. Allison. Brian Keith is awesome as Teddy Roosevelt and John Huston is great as John Hay. It has one of my favorite Jerry Goldsmith scores of all time. I saw this the same time as The Man Who Would Be King which is another excellent film and would be on this list if I wanted to do more than ten. It always saddens me when people talk about Sean Connery; they have never heard of these films that truly proved he was a great actor. Everything that made Connery a great James Bond is on full display in this film.

8. The Night Of The Generals-- Peter O'Toole is at his most sadistic and crazed best as the Nazi General Tanz with a passion for killing prostitutes. What a cast: Omar Sharif, Tom Courtenay, Donald Pleasance, Charles Gray and Philippe Noiret are in the film as well. I could have easily picked Cross Of Iron and everyone knows I would, but this film is one of the great rematches of Sharif and O'Toole. It was the Heat of its day. Sharif's Major Grau is an obsessive Wehrmacht intelligence officer on the trail of a serial killer during World War II. He narrows it down to a group of Nazi Generals. The final showdown between O'Toole and Sharif is classic. The supporting cast is great. Jarre's score is out of this world.

9. Apocalypse Now-- Francis Ford Coppola still talks about making On The Road into a film. He already did it with Apocalypse Now which is really just an updated version of Homer's Odyssey set during the Vietnam War. Like Kubrick's Paths Of Glory, it shows us the insanity of war throughout the film. It holds up better than the two other Vietnam films of its era-- Coming Home and The Deer Hunter. It is more than just a war film and that is why it holds up so well. The film is a series of happy accidents that truly made the film a masterpiece. Watching Coppola's Youth Without Youth the other night was a painful reminder that the Coppola who made Apocalypse Now is no longer making great films. Martin Sheen's voice over narration is perfect and I quote from it too much. Willard was his best role without a doubt—even more so than Badlands or The Dead Zone. Was Redux necessary? Yes, if only to see it on the big screen again, but the French Plantation sequence does not need to be there. As Kurtz, Brando's weight has never been more an asset than in this film. He does not have to move at all. His voice is all we need in the film. Apocalypse Now never gets old. Like Lawrence Of Arabia, it feels as fresh as when it first opened. Human nature never changes.


10. Once Upon A Time In The West-- It is not just a western, but a mythological epic about America. Just watch Gangs Of New York to see how much of an influence Sergio Leone's epic was on Martin Scorsese. It is not just Ennio Morricone's beautiful score or Charles Bronson's greatest role. It is not because Henry Fonda plays against type and shoots a kid. It is not just because Claudia Cardinale is the most beautiful screen goddess since Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago. It is not just because Jason Robards seems to be having the time of his life. It is not just because of the fantastic opening credits sequence. It is all of those reasons and many more. It is between this film and The Wild Bunch as my all time favorites. Sergio Leone, like Kubrick and Lean, did not make enough films, but like those other giants, he left us jewels. Once Upon A Time In The West is his jewel in the crown. Leone managed to take all the things that made The Man With No Name trilogy work and expand on them further with this film. The film is chock full of precious moments. Another reason I like it so much; Gabriele Ferzetti as Morton. He was perfect in the film and knows how the world works. Even Fonda's sadistic Frank knows he is most powerful man in the room. Bronson gives a once in a lifetime performance as Harmonica. This film is another reason films were meant to be seen in the theater.

These are ten films that mean a a great deal to me. This list is only the beginning. You have been warned.