Top 5 Movie Lists, Part 2
RECAP: Amelia and I purchased a 5-disc DVD changer over the weekend, to celebrate our generous tax return. In honor of this, I wanted to list my five favorite movies, as though deciding which movies I would choose if I could only put 5 movies in the DVD player. However, after pouring over all of my favorite flicks, I realized that it would be completely impossible to pick just five. Therefore, I narrowed it down to my top five movies in each of twelve genres (some of which I made up myself). A lot of time and effort was made in compiling this list, and I’d like to thank Netflix, IMDB, and Wikipedia for their tireless help in my review. Also, due to the size of this list and the time it is taking me to compile it, I have decided to split it into four installments to be posted here over the next few days. Check back all week, and be sure to add comments detailing all the different ways in which you disagree with my assessments.
Comedy
L.A. Story
In most movies where he’s playing the typical comedic character, I don’t think of Steve Martin as ridiculously funny. However, in L.A. Story, a movie he wrote and starred in, Martin lets loose with his more cerebral and whimsical side, rather than resorting to the slapstick and idiocy that made him famous (I in no way intend to say that slapstick and idiocy aren’t funny; there is certainly a time and place for it). Though I have never been to Los Angeles, his take on the unique city and how it relates to life in general—whether it be through a talking traffic sign, a Shakespearean gravedigger, a chicken dinner at L’Idiot, or a rollerskating trip through the local museum—is both touching and funny.
The Big Lebowski
“Nobody fucks with the Jesus,” announces bowling pedophile Jesus Quintana in the Coen brothers’ singular comedic masterpiece The Big Lebowski. That line really sets up the quirky humor of the film, which is irreverent, offensive, unique, and ingenius. It essentially takes the film noir detective story of years past—complete with intrigue, shady characters, kidnappings, money laundering, nihilists, and sex-kittens—and inserts the absolute unlikeliest of heros in the middle: Jeffrey “the Dude” Lebowski, a professional slacker, bowler, pothead, and bum. While the Coen brothers have made several other comedies, as well as equally impressive crime dramas, I believe The Big Lebowski to be my favorite of the bunch.
Office Space
Anybody who’s ever worked in a cubicle knows why Office Space is one of the most important cinematic centerpieces of the late twentieth century, or at least one of the funniest. The scene where the trio of heroes takes the fax machine out to pasture with “Still” playing (with such inspirational lyrics as “Die, muthafuckas, die, muthafuckas!”) may be one of my favorite scenes in all of film. It’s blatant satire of the modern office politic are so spot-on accurate that if you were to walk into a cubical farm like the one depicted in the movie, I guarantee you at least half of the people there will tell you they love Office Space. Unfortunately, Mike Judge, creator of the film—along with Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill, and the underseen Idiocracy—has become something of a Hollywood pariah due to his incessant need to have creative control and artistic vision.
PCU
In 1994, two years into the Clinton presidency, political-correctness was in full swing. It’s important to note that, because in the same year, PCU was released. Billed as a modern-day Animal House, PCU was a college movie about Port Chester University, a campus so overrun with protestors, hippies, feminists (sorry, womenists), vegans, and academic liberal nutjobs that the few meat-eating, cigarette-smoking, beer-chugging, rock-loving, partying, horny young people (including the likes of Jeremy Piven and Jon Favreau) are outcast as subhuman degenerates and protested to the point where all they can do is live in the basement of an abandoned frat house (dubbed the Pit) and bide their time until the storm passes. That is, until the secret fraternity of Balls-and-Shaft—an old-school frat of stuffy Republicans that would make Neidermeier proud (ruled by a hilariously obnoxious David Spade)—hatches a plan to get the Pit back by encouraging the heroes—along with George Clinton and the Parlaiment Funkadelic—to make the most offensive party in Port Chester history. Not only is it a brilliant satire of the ludicrously polarized American political landscape, but this film is one of the straight-up funniest movies I’ve ever seen.
What About Bob?
Listing this movie as my favorite comedy is not without controversy, because Amelia, my wife, doesn’t like it. She thinks pop-psychologist Dr. Leo Marvin (played by Richard Dreyfuss) doesn’t deserve the hell that visits him in the form of relentless patient Bob Wiley (Bill Murray), who believes so much in Dr. Marvin that he takes all of his advice a little too literally. A good example from the beginning of the movie is when Bob starts walking around Dr. Marvin’s office with baby steps after the good doctor explains how you can do anything in life if you take it one baby step at a time. Maybe it’s my own hatred (and personal animosity) for cheap and self-agrandizing psychology, maybe it’s how Dr. Marvin treats his family, or maybe it’s how he looks at Bob Wiley as a patient rather than a human being, but I personally think Dr. Marvin deserves everything that comes to him. And it’s a ride that puts me on the floor in fits of manic laughter every time.
Honorable Mentions: all Monty Python movies, Airplane!, Being John Malkovich, Death to Smoochy, Evolution, Galaxy Quest, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Heathers, High Fidelity, The Last Supper, Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human, The Muppet Movie, National Lampoon’s Animal House, Noises Off!, Orgazmo, The Producers (1968), The Ref, Spaceballs, Swimming with Sharks, Team America: World Police, To Be or Not To Be, Toys, Real Genius, Very Bad Things
Crime
The Silence of the Lambs
You all know how creepy Hannibal Lecter is, even if you’ve never seen any of the films about him. Let’s face it, The Silence of the Lambs is more than just an ingeniously inventive and well-crafted crime drama or a psychological creepfest, and it’s more than just a brilliant exercize in adaptive screenwriting from master Ted Tally; it’s an epic battle of acting heavyweights Scott Glenn, Jodie Foster, and Anthony Hopkins. And though it was certainly a tough battle, Anthony Hopkins is the clear winner, even going on to do battle in future films in the franchise with Julianne Moore, Ray Liotta, Gary Oldman, Edward Norton, and even Voldemort himself, Ralph Fiennes. Assuming you’re not squeamish, it’s a great battle to watch, and Sir Anthony’s portrayal will haunt you forever.
Memento
Christopher Nolan may have skyrocketed to superstar status with Batman Begins, but his earlier effort in experimental film noir, Memento, is just as deserving of credit. Guy Pearce (who will appear again in this very list) plays Leonard, a victim of a brutal home invasion that left his wife (played by CSI hottie Jorja Fox) dead and his mind hopelessly broken. Though he can no longer form long-term memories, he lives his life through a series of brief spurts and breadcrumb trails, Polaroid snapshots and instructive tattoos, driven by the singular desire to track down the man who raped and murdered his wife an unknown number of years ago. Told unconventionally in reverse order, Memento is an eye-opening exploration of the depths those around you—even yourself—will go to fool you for their own selfish needs.
The Usual Suspects
***SPOILER ALERT!*** It’s impossible to discuss what makes The Usual Suspects such an amazing film without discussing the ending. While the movie that leads up to it is still a great movie—in tone, structure, acting, and excitement—it is the ending that makes it onto this list. Sure, untrustworthy narrators have been done before, but the twist at the end, sold so convincingly by acting guru Kevin Spacey, put my jaw on the floor. Nowadays, many directors and storytellers (I’m looking at you, M. Night) think that the twist is essential to good storytelling, but even the master of the plot twist, Hitchcock, knew that it should be used sparingly. The Usual Suspects is not a movie that feels like it needs a twist, which is why the twist is so ingenius it requires you to immediately watch the entire movie again. It thematically ties the entire story together, lifting up its own mythos to grandiose proportions. Without the twist, The Usual Suspects would be a fun flick, but with the twist, it’s storytelling at its finest.
L.A. Confidential
No modern movie captures classic Hollywood noir like L.A. Confidential. Surrounded by an epic story of a massacre at a diner, an underground prostitution ring that surgically alters women to look like movie stars (including Lynn Bracken, played by Kim Basinger, who looks astonishingly like Veronica Lake), and the warring remnants of a mafia whose leader had recently been put away for tax evasion, it’s actually the story of up-and-coming police detective lieutenant Edmund Exley (played by Memento’s Guy Pearce), who learns that the road to nobility isn’t nearly as cut and dry as he thinks. Vowing to never beat a confession out of somebody, plant evidence, or shoot a man in the back, Exley starts the film as the cleanest of the clean, who has made enemies of other cops, including Officer White (Russel Crowe) and Detective Seargent Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey), by reporting every misstep they make. Against the advice of Captain Dudley Smith (James Cromwell), Exley vows to solve the case of the Night Owl Massacre and eventually uncover a conspiracy so deep it threatens to destroy the reputation he has worked so hard to earn. L.A. Confidential is an ensemble masterpiece that explores seemingly simple characters so deeply they become four-dimensional enigmas that are completely relatable. Staggeringly good film-making like this should not be ignored.
Zodiac
Early in David Fincher’s career, he made a mark on the serial killer film with his intensely dark Seven. However, the years have clearly changed Fincher’s outlook on the aging subgenre, as last year he gave us Zodiac, a movie that could not have less in common with his earlier film. Zodiac tells the true story of the Zodiac killer in 1960’s San Francisco, a historical event that my parents actually lived through, but it tells it with an unabashed dependence on accuracy and historical detail. It gives you such a realistic portrayal of what serial killers are really about that it makes it hard to watch the more fantastic films about them, like Fincher’s own Seven. Zodiac is an important movie, a damning challenge to Fincher’s contemporaries, and a provocative dare for its viewers to face reality for a change. A maddeningly well-made film, Zodiac was completely robbed by this year’s Academy Award nominations, but I will not deny it a place in my list as the finest crime drama out there.
Honorable Mentions: Breach, Eastern Promises, Fifteen Minutes, The Godfather, The Godfather: Part II, Killing Zoe, Natural Born Killers, Payback, Ransom, Red Dragon, The Score, Snatch, Suture, Training Day
Drama
Searching for Bobby Fischer
Until I saw this movie, I didn’t understand what was so great about chess, but really, Searching for Bobby Fischer isn’t just about a classic board game. It’s actually a story about parenting, of all things, and what to do with an awkward child who has an almost savant-like talent in something you may not understand. With an all-star cast that includes Laurence Fishburne, Sir Ben Kingsley, Joan Allen, and Joe Mantegna, Searching for Bobby Fischer is the mostly true story of Josh Waitzkin, a prepubescent kid many thought would succeed Bobby Fischer (may he rest in peace) as the most talented chess player of all time. It may not sound all that exciting, but the climactic battle between Josh and bratty Jonathan Poe, who race their last remaining pawns across the board in search of a queen to win the game with, is filled with anxiety, not necessarily for the outcome of the game, but for what it means to young Josh and the life he has in front of him. This is a movie I think all parents need to see.
Awakenings
Awakenings has a special place in my heart, because it is one of the movies that lent inspiration to my award-winning novel, Thesea. Still, the two stories only share superficial similarities, as they both deal with comatose patients in a special psych ward. Beyond that, however, they are very different. Awakenings is about the will to live, and has the carpe diem theme that most of Robin Williams’ dramatic efforts are known for. Robert DeNiro puts forth a brilliant and tear-jerking portrayal of childlike wonder at the world followed by a painful descent into paranoid psychosis and powerlessness, and the incredibly sedate Robin Williams does a fantastic job playing the socially inept doctor charged with watching it all happen and figuring out which man is really living in a coma.
Wonder Boys
If I ever suffer from writer’s block, watching Wonder Boys will cure it. It’s a movie about writing, but also about living, and much like Awakenings, it challenges you to stop observing life and start making your life worth living. However, Wonder Boys is not as trite or depressing as Awakenings can be. In fact, it is utterly original and totally unique, and it’s definitely one of my favorite films. Oh, and Tobey Maguire proves he doesn’t need a spandex spider suit to act.
Big Fish
Tim Burton’s underappreciated Big Fish has a lot in common with Wonder Boys in that it is about storytelling and is ridiculously inventive. Part fairy tale, part heartwarming romance, and part family drama, Big Fish is about the stories we tell and why we tell them. It’s about how the truth is often more elusive than we think, and how lies aren’t as dishonest as we believe them to be. It’s a movie very dear to me, because I see layers upon layers of meaning in it, each one giving me a reason to write. On top of that, it is a beautifully stylized movie.
Rounders
Finally, there’s Rounders, which rest assured has nothing to do with storytelling or seizing the day. Rounders is about being true to yourself and damning the consequences, no matter what anybody tries to tell you. It’s about integrity and dreams, and it’s moral is surprisingly unexpected as the movie plays out. Matt Damon plays reformed cardshark-turned-law student Mike McDermott, whose best friend from the old poker-playing days, Lester “Worm” Murphy (played by Edward Norton, a god of acting), has just gotten out of prison. In order to help Lester pay his former debts to an unsavory Russian, Teddy KGB (John Malkovich), Mike starts playing cards again, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend and professors, and winds up putting his own life on the line. ***SPOILER WARNING*** What I think makes this movie deserving of the top spot on this list is the end, where Mike wins his inevitable poker battle with Teddy KGB but doesn’t get the girl, instead learning that he has to be true to who he is by driving to Vegas and entering the World Series of Poker. Rarely does a movie dare to give the audience that kind of an ending, but it is a wholly appropriate and poignant conclusion to the drama.
Honorable Mentions: Crash (2005), Dead Poets Society, Falling Down, Fight Club, Legend of 1900, Mr. Holland’s Opus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Phenomenon, Shallow Grave, The Shawshank Redemption, The Trigger Effect
-e. magill 02/05/2008
Check out the other installments:
| PART 1: | Action/Adventure
Animation
Classics |
| PART 3: | Drug Movies
Fantasy
Historical Drama/Epic |
| PART 4: | Horror
Science-Fiction
War/Politics |
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