Your Top Ten Movies All Time

I coulda swore he said “never try to match wits” or “never have a battle of wits,” instead.

No? Am I totally off or does that also sound more familiar to you?

Yeah, that specific scene was one of the highlights of that excellent movie.

Remember the scene when they roll down the hill accidentally, and the scene is drawn out so long it becomes obvious the directors are being sarcastic. If you remember that directors too are aware of those classic car chase scenes where in one frame the car is like thirty feet away from the wall and going fourty miles an hour- and then a good minute or two passes before the car actually hits the wall. Ha! That’s what you call “movie time.” Extended scenes that build into a climax can be purposely drawn out just a little, passing unnoticed, to increase the anticipation and satisfaction for the movie.

So the directors of The Princess Bride were probably making a parody of the technique of extending segways, and using “movie time.”

Dear Dunamis

You are spot on. What I like is that Kubrick disguises this parody by heavily implying that this is nothing more than the first temptation of many (the prostitute Domino, Milic’s daughter, the orgy in the mansion) for Cruise that night. You may also remember a moment later in the film when Cruise rings up the daughter of the deceased (who doesn’t want to marry Karl) and Karl (the maths professor - as you say a sort of exaggeration of Cruise’s role as a doctor) answers the phone - to whom Cruise has nothing to say. This is possibly meant to symbolise how Cruise cannot actually confront his fear and jealousy but can only wage war against it. He cannot stop the fantasy his wife has revealed, but he can go one better by actually sleeping with someone else.

Unlike many Kubrick movies I’ve never read the novel on which the film is based. Apparently the original was set in turn of the century Vienna, but you can understand why the setting is shifted to the now fashionable city of New York. Though a lot of the movie was shot in Chelsea, London.

One other aspect - the masks at the orgy. The woman who eventually redeems Cruise, and who warns him of the dangers, wears a preposterously large mask with feathers protruding all over the place. I’m sorry but there’s no way a man of Kubrick’s attention to detail would have had such a key character wear such a ridiculous outfit (remembering she is naked apart from a glitzy thong and the mask) unless he intended it to have a comic effect. The masks are yet another common symbol of dreams which pervade the whole movie.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to answer in such a flippant manner. One thing in my defence: that movie is heralded as reviving the British film industry (something which has been dying since its inception) and although I do enjoy it as a movie (plenty to like) I’ve just heard it mentioned too often. You know when you hear a song you like so much that it gets irritating?

Is my opinion more important? No, probably not. It might be somewhat better informed, I’ve spent a long time watching and studying movies. But no, that doesn’t make it better or more important. I actually think that most of the movies in your list are very good choices, better than most here have selected.

detrop,

Another parody of movie time takes place in the second Austin Powers film.

If you’ve ever seen Golfinger (Shirley Bassey et al) you’ll notice a prime example of classic movie time at the end when Bond is trying to defuse a nuclear bomb that is set to blow up Fort Knox.

As though the Americans would let some limey defuse a bomb on their own territory…

On MD,

I figured it out. Lynch said somewhere there WAS an answer… and with the help of my friend and a couple sites I think I got it. I thought about that movie for honestly a week… the sign of a great peice of art. Basically Naomi and the Brunette are both ‘Aunt Ruth’ or whatever the aunt’s name is. I forget exactly now… but basically Naomi represents the innocent ‘get by on talent’ side of aunt ruth… and the other is the ‘whoring themselves out to get ahead in Hollywood’ side. In the dance scene at the beginning we see the aunt winning… notice how Naomi is smiling, with the crowd (the 2 other old people I think) and the brunnette (Carmilla) is slightly off to the side, but there nonetheless? It reprents her state of mind if you will, in other words, she tried hard and won the contest… but in the back of her mind, she knew she could have ‘cheated’ if she wanted. Somewhere in the haze… aunt ruth sleeps with the director to get the part, hence Naomi seeing Carmilla with the director near the end… she eventually shoots herself because that part of Aunt Ruth is dead… it cannot deal with the choices she’s made, and so in effect… Aunt Ruth makes the switch from the ‘let’s do it with talent’ Ruth, to the ‘Sleep with the director Aunt Ruth’. The scene where the guy sees ‘the fear’ is the fear we have for ourselves, hence the familiarity of his ‘dream’. The homeless guy (the fear) drops the box (and I forget what the box represents) and the old couple (innocence) chase after Naomi because they are her conscience… she is no longer innocent. Everything else is to demonstrate the nature of Hollywood

Anyways… I’m in a hurry and that came out with way too many brackets… but there is an answer.

On Kurasowa,

All I’ve heard are good things… I just haven’t gotten around to one of his movies for whatever reason. But I will.

Some,

He cannot stop the fantasy his wife has revealed, but he can go one better by actually sleeping with someone else.

I think you are crediting the character with far too much “substance”, even if in the form of some legitimate existential angst or paralysis, (though I certainly can see where this reading can come from). To me this is just an idiot who takes his own desire seriously, a kind of paper soul. Unbelieveably L.A. I suppose a good film can bear multiple readings. I just am not sure this is a good film, in that sense.

Dunamis

O.G.,

I figured it out. Lynch said somewhere there WAS an answer…

What I suspect is that this confuses what Lynch was thinking about when he made/wrote it, with what it really means. The combinations of images, characters and reversals I believe would be as likely to be reducible to a single meaning or message, as a dream could be. But that is just my way of relating to latter, less narrative Lynch. It is a dream space for me. But I appreciate the effort to dig down into it. As it proved satisfying and meaningful, that is all one can ask.

Dunamis

  1. Matchstick Men
  2. John Q
  3. Man on Fire
  4. Bowling for Columbine
  5. F 911
    6.Suicide Kings
  6. Heat
  7. Lost Boys
  8. American Pie 2
  9. Shot to Kill
  1. Donnie Darko

  2. Stalag 17

  3. shawshank redemption

  4. Hotel Rwanda

  5. Pi

  6. Birth

  7. Les Miserables

  8. Flight of the pheonix

  9. To kill a mocking bird

  10. Anything with pauly shore in it…

  11. Backdoor sluts 13 :wink:

To Kill a Mockingbird

Unforgiven

Apocalypse Now

The Godfather

Natural Born Killers

The Wizard of Oz

Prince of the City

Godfather II

Moonstruck

Leaving Las Vegas

  1. Pulp Fiction
  2. Platoon
  3. Apocalypse now
  4. For a few dollars more
  5. Fight Club
  6. Austin Powers
  7. Scary Movie (1-4)
  8. Airplane
  9. Crash
  10. Legends of the fall

kurosawa movies. …I find them intense, and somewhat untimely.

in no order, save for the number #1 slot:

→ Bourne Identity series (i’ll count both movies as one)
→ Anchorman
→ Apocalypse Now
→ Kill Bill series
→ Edward Scissorhands
→ SLC Punk!
→ Fight Club
→ Dr. Strangelove
→ Dead Poet’s Society

  1. V for Vendetta
  1. Ikiru (A. Kurosawa 1952)
  2. Bright Future (K. Kurosawa 2003)
  3. Bin Jip (Kim 2004)
  4. Nine Souls (Toyoda 2003)
  5. Seven Samurai (A. Kurosawa 1954)
  6. Visitor Q (Miike 2001)
  7. The Ring (Nakata 1998)
  8. Taste of Tea (Ishii 2004)
  9. Peppermint Candy (Lee 2000)
  10. Like Grains of Sand (Hashiguchi 1995)

This one’s an old top 10 I just copied and pasted from another forum.

Special mentions: Dr. Strangelove, Take Care of My Cat, Apocalypse Now, Blue Spring, Go, Sawshank Redemption, Donnie Darko, Good Will Hunting, Infernal Affairs, Lone Wolf and Cub 1-6, Old Boy, Sympathy for Mr./Lady Vengeance, Sanjuro, The Hidden Fortress, Toni Takitani, Trainspotting, Yojimbo.

American Beauty
Life Is Beautiful
Glory
Platoon
Pulp Fiction
The Shawshank Redemption
Requiem for a Dream
Good Will Hunting
Forrest Gump
Snatch

My 10 from the top of my head, in no particular order…

  • The Godfather Trilogy (i’ll count it as one)
  • Scarface
  • Goodfellas
  • Casino
  • Carlito’s Way
  • The Untouchables
  • Silence of the Lambs
  • The Deer Hunter
  • The Hustler
  • Conan the Barbarian

Some honorable mentions…

  • Raging Bull
  • Taxi Driver
  • Men of Honor
  • The Sean Connary, James Bond Collection
  • Cocktail
  • Scent of a Woman
  • The Devils Advocate
  • Predator
  • Rocky I - IV
  • Rambo II
  • Gladiator
  • Apocolypse Now
  • Chopper
  • A Few Good Men
  • The Lone Wolf and Cub Collection
  • Tombstone
  • Sin City
  • Beverly Hills Cop I & II
  • Die Hard
  • Mad max
  • Indianna Jones Trilogy
  • Reservoir Dogs
  • Star Wars Collection
  • Lord of the Rings Trilogy
  • One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest
  • Chinatown
  • …theres a lot more, but I think I’ve posted too many already.

Here is my list (aside from #1, the rest are in no particular order):

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  1. Casino
  2. American History X
  3. Terms of Endearment
  4. The Breakfast Club
  5. Boogie Nights
  6. The Stendhal Syndrome
  7. Fight Club
  8. Dead Poet’s Society
  9. Abre los ojos
  10. Y tu mama tambien
    [/i]

Honorable Mentions (no particular order):


April Fool’s Day
Equilibirium
Metroland
200 Cigarettes
54
Fried Green Tomatoes
Some Kind of Wonderful
Can’t Buy Me Love
Just One of the Guys
Valley Girl
St. Elmo’s Fire
Lucas
Less Than Zero
Bright Lights, Big City
Pretty in Pink
Intersection
The Goonies
Friday
Laurel Canyon
American Psycho
Halloween (the original)
Eyes Wide Shut
A Nightmare on Elm Street (the original)
Blade Runner
Sixteen Candles
Steel Magnolias
City of God
Antoine Fisher
Edward Scissorhands
Heathers
The Silence of the Lambs
The Shawshank Redemption
Stephen King’s The Stand (tv miniseries)
Primal Fear
Saw
The Princess Bride
Ace Ventura
Groundhog Day
The Pallbearer
The Boy Who Could Fly
School Ties
The Rachel Papers
Big
28 Days Later
Last House on the Left
Wrong Turn
Intermission
The Karate Kid
Dumb and Dumber
Circle of Friends
A Clockwork Orange
Night of the Living Dead
Dawn of the Living Dead
From Hell (Johnny Depp)

I have an eclectic taste in movies, but prefer ones that are ‘dark.’ I also have a soft spot in my heart for those cheesy 80s films. Many of these movies are “guilty” pleasures too. :blush: :smiley:

Tough question, these are just the ones I can think of right off the bat in a somewhat particular order…

[size=92]Forrest Gump (Why wouldn’t you like this movie I ASK YOU!! I am also a master of Forrest Gump impressions.)
Blow (So…who wants to sell some coke, you in? Ironic though, the ultimate crime doesn’t pay story.)
The Godfather Trilogy (although the third one was definitely the worst of the three)
Scarface (and a giant pile of cocaine sits on his desk, sticks his face in it an image that will stick with me…)
Pulp Fiction (Very cool, very cool)
Goodfellas (another epic mafioso)
Lord of the Rings Trilogy (I love that dorky fantasy stuff, and the landscapes were simply amazing…gotta go the New Zealand some day)
The Network (Way ahead of its time, and well…a hell of a lot of good monolouges.)
Full Metal Jacket (Just two especially memorable quotes…“What do we have here, a fucking comedian! Private, Joker! I admire your honesty. Hell, I like you, you can come over to my house and fuck my sister!”, “I’ll bet you’re the kind of guy that would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddam common courtesy to give him a reach-around!”
Fight Club (think I read someone say it had a lame twist but good fights well screw that man! The twist was not lame, and of course the fights were good, they were damn good!)
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and there are many more, on my lower echelon of favorites list, though they can morph together at times…

[size=92]Dumb and Dumber (the original funniest goddamn movie ever for me, good quote “Aspen, where the beer flows like wine…”, also the last scene was truly great.)
Giant (its an oldie but an goodie, my sister forced me to watch it)
Friday (“Its a Friday, you ain’t got shit to do…we gonna get you high!”, I always love when they show people getting high in the movies, I only wish it was actually that cool…)
Gattaca (the scene where Uma Thermon says “You are…a god-child!?”, something about it stuck with me, the movie was very beautiful as a whole)
Equilibrium (although a cheap knockoff of Fahrenheit 451…)
Gladiator (Russell Crowe is a badass in this one…)
Carlito’s Way (Oh Al Pacino you just had to fucking die!!)
A Clockwork Orange (I raped and pillaged after watching this one!)
Groundhog Day (Bill Murrey, you are a funny man)
Blade Runner (Nicely ahead of its time, cool cyberpunk film.)
American History X
Casino (fucking classic, Sharon Stone you crazy bitch)
Donnie Darko (Call me stupid, but I had to watch it twice to fully understand it, and…mabye I still don’t.)
Kill Bill 1 & 2 (Uma Thermon is hot.)
the fucking ‘Karate Kid’ (Danielson, you must 'wass on, wass off")
Die Hard (man Bruce Willis is such a hard ass)
Lethal Weapon (and so is Mel Gibson)
Braveheart
Resourvoir Dogs
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mabye I’ll add more later…so many, I love movies!!!

Forgot to mention Boyz in the Hood, suprised nobody else did.
Oh yeah and I Heart Huckabees.

Boyz N the Hood was my favorite movie for a few years, actually. But I was an impressionable youth then. Watching it now, it’s a bit melodramatic, the acting is subpar at best, and opposed to finding those guys ‘cool’ as I did when I was younger, now I just think they’re idiots. Still a good movie, to be sure, but I’d say it ultimately lacks staying-power.