Well since you waited, here’s my irrelevant list. I don’t have time to type up something and add a gif from the films this time so I’ll just go ahead and disappoint.
1. Leprechaun
2. Pumpkinhead 2: Blood Wings
3. Groundhog Day
4. The Nightmare Before Christmas
5. Dazed and Confused
6. Robin Hood: Men In Tights
7. Dragon Ball Z - Broly the Legendary Super Saiyan
8. Adams Family Values
9. Hard Target
10. Return of the Living Dead 3
the writing's hard to take seriously, never quite specific enough to convince nor self-aware enough to work as a deconstruction of scarface, revolving around a tragic romance that only works for me when nobody's talking. thankfully, de palma has other priorities as always: the colourful drugs 'n disco mid-'70s vibe, the set pieces (those final forty minutes are so breathless and liquid they may as well be a single take), a romantic rooftop scene straight out of a golden age musical, an unexpected, the shining-referencing rape-fantasy sex scene, sean penn killing it as a coked up smarmball. which actually covers most of the runtime now i think about it.
19) Body Snatchers(Dir. Abel Ferrara)
“just act like one of them, billy.”
“don’t worry, i’ve been practising for this my whole career.”
everything from suburbia to the military to the education system to, most scarily, the family unit is implicated in this film's satire of conformity and fascism, with ferrara having fun taking spielbergian shots from unnatural angles, playing with extraterrestrial tropes like unnatural light slipping through windows and tentacles slithering toward orifices, deriving maximum discomfort and menace from a pretty tired story. further proof that it's often the guys with no interest in "studio films" that are capable of making the most banging genre refractions when given the money.
18) Short Cuts(Dir. Robert Altman)
altman transposes carver to los angeles, of all places, ramping up the showmanship and dolloping on some extra layers of snide, glib misanthropy only to gradually bring out the pathos of the original source. that's the intention, anyway, and the transition doesn't really land a lot of the time, at least not for this what we talk about when we talk about love fanboy. the reason i'm listing it anyway is for the sheer verve of the editing and the entertainment value of the cast, with julianne moore letting her inner clown run riot, madeleine stowe as the world's most dispassionate phone sex operator, frances mcdormand being frances mcdormand, and tom waits spitting lines like "you're the one chippin' away at our mansion of love, baby" in the direction of an equally awesome lily tomlin.
17) Totally Fucked Up(Dir. Gregg Araki)
another crumbling queer teen apocalypse from gregg araki, fragile and alienated and despairing and doomed. it's a little more juvenile and slack than his truly great films like mysterious skin and nowhere, more of a personal, DIY effort that earns its cult classic status not by being profound but by distilling the mood of a generation and outsider subculture.
16) Frameup(Dir. Jon Jost)
a hilarious, cringeworthy meta-spoof of the bonnie & clyde sub-genre, so fucking demystified and awful it makes you feel like a retard for ever buying into a single one of those romantic lovers-on-the-run movies.
15) M. Butterfly(Dir. David Cronenberg)
not everything works here, but this is much closer to the spirit of dead ringers and the fly than i had anticipated; another perverse, tragic, even homoerotic confrontation of the ways we rationalise our most biological drives. jeremy irons is seduced by a quintessentially masculine, western fantasy only to be destroyed by its obliteration; for cronenberg there is no more fatal mistake than a love which bypasses the flesh.
14) Arizona Dream(Dir. Emir Kusturica)
emir kusturica is known primarily for his batshit four hour commie war movie underground, but his one and only american film is just as unhinged and memorable in its own way. if you aren't already enticed by the idea of a love-square involving johnny depp, faye dunaway, lily taylor and vincent gallo, stick around for the bizarre magical-realist imagery, the rambling pynchonian digressions, jerry lewis as a car salesman uncle. i'm not even sure what to compare it to; there's a little of huston's the misfits, a little greenaway, a little classic hawksian screwball, a lot of references to other american movies (most overtly north by northwest and the godfather II), but it's one of the weirdest evocations of america i've ever seen and there's nothing else out there like it.
13) The Music of Chance(Dir. Philip Haas)
james spader and mandy patinkin try their luck at defeating a pair of rich dudes in a poker game, and the forfeit is to build a wall for them on their grounds for some arcane purpose. based on a novel by paul auster, it's a terrific bit of absurdism which in spite of its unpretentious, mouthy NY vibe gradually reveals itself to be considering such lofty themes as the origins of capitalist society, progressing into one of the most odd, menacing allegories i've seen since woman in the dunes.
12) Dottie Gets Spanked(Dir. Todd Haynes)
a film about pre-pubescent repression which itself feels like something bubbling up from beneath six inches of brainsoil. there’s a kinship with gregg araki here, except that while he’s all dreamy delicate crumbling shoegaze this feels like that one korn video with the TV, albeit with some excursions into camp maddin-esque surrealism. fuck carol and far from heaven, early haynes was the best haynes.
11) Two Small Bodies(Dir. Beth B)
a sarcastic, erotic two-hander in which fred ward conducts a series of interrogations of suzy amis to decipher whether or not she murdered her own children. it's intimate, deadpan funny as hell, going to some real dark places without ever really tipping its hand as to what's driving it. if tom noonan directed a porno it might look something like this.
10) The Wrong Trousers(Dir. Nick Park)
this was the one time nick park got everything right, a sublime short which conjures such a detailed, lived-in, relatable world in just half an hour. it's hardly anything profound of course, but there are some interesting textures there if you look for them. there's the loneliness of a single middle-aged guy who talks to his dog all day, and the sad understanding--never realised by gromit, who takes wallace for granted just as much as the reverse--that the reason this guy's so glad to have a guest is that he's lonely as all hell, as well as sorely needing the money. and let's not forget he's in financial trouble in part because of the expensive birthday gifts he's bought for gromit, again unappreciated, along with their expensive "modern lifestyle", which amounts to a perverse overdependence on technology (and probably way too many fancy cheeses). there's the iconic villain, introduced in the above shot which is burned into my brain and continues to give me the creeps to this day. there's all the visual jokes, such as gromit reading the republic by pluto, or the fact that the penguin despite all his cunning and malevolence adorably replaces gromit's bone wallpaper and bone painting with fish equivalents. i have a lot of love for this movie.
9) Sonatine(Dir. Takeshi Kitano)
yall know by now that i’m pretty into my revisionist, existential genre movies, where the thrill of violence is overwhelmed by emptiness and doom. what’s interesting here is how the bulk of the film is devoted not to the gang war itself but to a temporary paradise, suspended on the edge of an impending apocalypse in a kind of stasis that's served perfectly by kitano's tranquil minimalism. it's a place which enables a return to innocence, and yet it seems misguided to call it escapist; rather, it's transformative, because the hijinks which take place there are not removed from the violence of the outside world so much as childish caricatures of the same, from the iconic game of russian roulette to a takeshi’s castle-esque shootout with fireworks standing in for guns. in turn, i spent some of the film thinking of the act of killing, as these games are essentially memories of past violence therapeutically reconstructed as something nostalgic, fun, cinematic, contrasted with the blunt, detached real-world violence that’s begun to weigh so heavily on murakawa's spirit. his eden is not functionally dissimilar to a movie theater, and one wonders whether the real life kitano would still be alive were it not for the outlet of cinema.
8) The Bed You Sleep In(Dir. Jon Jost)
if short cuts was more altman than carver, the bed you sleep in is as legit a carver approximation as i’ve found in movies, while also reminding of twin peaks and, one of my favourite albums of the decade, ‘a small turn of human kindness’. it's an earthy, world-weary film of the type that seeps into the bones and weighs upon the spirit, a stripped down log of blue-collar americana about grace and truth, or the absence thereof. its idyllic oregon locale slowly proves deceptive; the trees are piled high for profit, a rose bush is filmed through a wire fence, the fisherman’s paradise probably hides a few bodies if you look closely enough. jost is so soothing until he’s terrifying.
7) Green Snake(Dir. Tsui Hark)
hark despairs that to be human is to suffer due to the imposition and internalisation of oppressive power structures, so he righteously subverts a conservative folk tale, spurting motion and colour into its every orifice and committing a dazzling, sensuous violence against its denial of the corporeal, with buddha the repressed megalomaniac thoroughly humbled by erotic hysteria. politics aside, this thing is just beautiful and insane and everyone should see it.
6) Dangerous Game(Dir. Abel Ferrara)
ferrara goes all in on this raw, withering assessment of moviemaking, casting harvey keitel as his personal stand-in and having him, along with ultra-game stars madonna and james russo, flagellate themselves and one another in the name of art/bullshit. it's one of those slippery art-imitates-life-imitates-art meta-dramas, except where those things are usually playful this is a spiteful and ferocious exorcism of every pent up frustration and desire and regret in his life, most of which seem oriented toward madonna (with whom i would wager ferrara was obsessed to hitchcockian levels). it's so intensely personal as to be uncomfortable, going so far as to cast his own wife as the woman his stand-in is fucking over. if a magnum opus is a film that captures its creator with complete honesty and comprehensiveness, then this film owns that label as hard as any ever has.
5) Matinee(Dir. Joe Dante)
loony though he is, joe dante deserves to be held up alongside the likes of tashlin and verhoeven as one of the great hollywood satirists, and this may be his definitive work in the way it attempts to validate his whole career. it's a joyfully daft but shrewd piece of pop filmmaking which uses a cold war meta-premise to explain its own appeal, arguing that unpretentious genre movies which play to our most base emotions are as important as any capital A Art. beyond that, it's simply a love letter to the movies, one which inspires the very love it expresses. john goodman as william castle is glorious, and so is his ridiculous film-within-the-film. then there's harvey's poem, which made me laugh so hard i had to rewind and listen to it again. i wish i'd seen this when i was a kid, but even now it's an instant favourite.
4) The Age of Innocence(Dir. Martin Scorsese)
scorsese once described the age of innocence as his most violent film. not literally of course, but this restrained, elegant 19th century period piece hides within its opulent frames a cold-bloodedness and psychological arsenal beyond anything available to travis bickle, jake lamotta or henry hill. like many of his films at base, it's about a man who believes himself to be above and beyond the society that surrounds him, believes himself to have control over his life, and who intends to use that power to sculpt a fantasy life for himself, a movie-life. but sean gilman said it best over on letterboxd--"poor Newland Archer, always thinking he's the smartest person in the room when in fact he's the dumbest..."--and as it turns out, arguably none of scorsese's many doomed protagonists got their beliefs and desires shot down as brutally as daniel day lewis does here. that this lands as tragic rather than mere karmic justice is a testament to scorsese and lewis, whose work is full of shades and textures, although pfeiffer and ryder are every bit their match as well.
3) When Pigs Fly(Dir. Sara Driver)
i love jim jarmusch--to a point, anyway--but only lovers left alive can’t touch the charm, mournfulness and dopey sincerity of his wife’s ode to lost things. not unlike coppola’s twixt, it’s an extremely personal, idiosyncratic ghost story which grieves victims of the AIDS crisis and the demise of jazz, yet celebrates how we carry them with us still. the showpiece is a quiet, creeping four minute tracking shot through a ghost town that’s as affecting as anything you’ll find in the arthouse.
2) Jurassic Park(Dir. Steven Spielberg)
i've seen jurassic park more times than i would care to count. when i was a kid, wanting to be a palaeontologist and hoarding a huge collection of dinosaur toys and magazines (what a cliche, right?), i spent countless hours rewinding my VHS and watching the best parts over and over. many of my mum's best ornaments were broken after a friend and i were inspired by this film to play a game where the floor is dinosaurs, and in climbing on the furniture to avoid them we knocked over a cabinet. it's so fundamental to my memory banks that experiencing it now is almost surreal, to be so intimately familiar with the most inconsequential little sounds and movements.
and yeah, watching as an adult i do wish spielberg used his great cast better, and developed character and theme beyond the perfunctory family unit good unchecked capitalism bad shit, although jake cole's suggestion that hammond is "a wry autocritique of spielberg's worst impulses" has a surprising amount of truth to it. regardless, the spectacle is so masterfully paced and structured, so tactile, so awe-inspiring that none of that shit really matters. when the rain starts coming and the goat vanishes i still get goosebumps, and i'm returned to childhood again for the entire ensuing set piece, which is indisputably one of the greatest ever, and comes after probably the longest extended tease i can remember in a blockbuster--nobody would fucking dare drag out the initial disappointment so long today. nedry's death is fucking amazing, just beautifully thought through from start to finish and genuinely unpleasant. samuel l jackson's arm, 'clever girl', the kitchen, the finale... i mean, people complain about character depth in a film with ideas and sequences as brilliant as those? go read a book or something.
1) Naked(Dir. Mike Leigh)
mike leigh's great post-apocalyptic epic is first and foremost a dumpster dive through the rubble of thatcher's reign. it's also a loose retelling of the odyssey, translated for the london of the nineties. on a more literal level, it follows a rapist called johnny as he flees manchester for london and proceeds to wander the city, waxing droll and philosophical like the devil incarnate, assaultively imposing his snarky, witty observations and existential ponderings on passers by, infiltrating the lives of an ex-girlfriend and her housemates, and ultimately getting some degree of comeuppance. he might be the most fascinating scumbag in the history of movies, and david thewlis deserves much of the credit for that; his performance is as singular as any recorded on film, and should be shown to harry potter fans across the world just for the fun of it. alex delarge is the closest comparison i've been able to think of, but johnny's a greater wit, and his world is grottier and more authentic than anything kubrick or burgess could muster.
every moment revolving around johnny is, for me at least, unparalleled in british cinema, a visual and verbal tour-de-force. whenever the film switches its focus toward jeremy, a character designed to be an even more unpleasant contrast for johnny, it fares less well, and there's a particularly annoying, gimmicky side-character who turns up in the third act as the film loses some steam. that i still consider naked one of my fifteen or twenty favourite movies is a testament to how strong the first hour is.
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1. naked
2. jurassic park
3. when pigs fly
4. the age of innocence
5. matinee
6. dangerous game
7. green snake
8. the bed you sleep in
9. sonatine
10. the wrong trousers
the 60s is probably my least favourite decade for movies anyway tbh, although i like the variation. 2010s is a new decade for our polls too though right? aside from that 2018 thread i'll eventually close lol
and yeah, watching as an adult i do wish spielberg used his great cast better, and developed character and theme beyond the perfunctory family unit good unchecked capitalism bad shit, although jake cole's suggestion that hammond is "a wry autocritique of spielberg's worst impulses" has a surprising amount of truth to it. regardless, the spectacle is so masterfully paced and structured, so tactile, so awe-inspiring that none of that shit really matters. when the rain starts coming and the goat vanishes i still get goosebumps, and i'm returned to childhood again for the entire ensuing set piece, which is indisputably one of the greatest ever, and comes after probably the longest extended tease i can remember in a blockbuster--nobody would fucking dare drag out the initial disappointment so long today. nedry's death is fucking amazing, just beautifully thought through from start to finish and genuinely unpleasant. samuel l jackson's arm, 'clever girl', the kitchen, the finale... i mean, people complain about character depth in a film with ideas and sequences as brilliant as those? go read a book or something.
Garn giver sumadat =9th (a tie for 1st wouldn't be numbered =2nd). =10th would be when the 10th & 11th films tied. In future I'll just respond to quirks with a GIF of a film from the given year and you can decipher it.
Garn giver sumadat =9th (a tie for 1st wouldn't be numbered =2nd). =10th would be when the 10th & 11th films tied. In future I'll just respond to quirks with a GIF of a film from the given year and you can decipher it.
this was the one time nick park got everything right, a sublime short which conjures such a detailed, lived-in, relatable world in just half an hour. it's hardly anything profound of course, but there are some interesting textures there if you look for them. there's the loneliness of a single middle-aged guy who talks to his dog all day, and the sad understanding--never realised by gromit, who takes wallace for granted just as much as the reverse--that the reason this guy's so glad to have a guest is that he's lonely as all hell, as well as sorely needing the money. and let's not forget he's in financial trouble in part because of the expensive birthday gifts he's bought for gromit, again unappreciated, along with their expensive "modern lifestyle", which amounts to a perverse overdependence on technology (and probably way too many fancy cheeses). there's the iconic villain, introduced in the above shot which is burned into my brain and continues to give me the creeps to this day. there's all the visual jokes, such as gromit reading the republic by pluto, or the fact that the penguin despite all his cunning and malevolence adorably replaces gromit's bone wallpaper and bone painting with fish equivalents. i have a lot of love for this movie.
I'm pleased to see you also included this movie in your list. At first, I was a bit hesitant to include it in my list, because it is not a full-length movie, but then I thought that it is simply too good not to be inlcuded. Furthermore, in the yearly album polls, EPs and demos are allowed, so one could say that a short movie in a film poll equals an EP in an album poll. By the way, I agree that there's something creepy about the penguin. I wonder if it has got something to do with his facial expression and the fact that he doesn't speak.
If I had extended my list to a top 15 or top 20, another two of your choices, namely "Short Cuts" and "Arizona Dream", would also have shown up.
