It's Back: Exceelent Movies I've Seen Lately

[Fresno Bob]

Here's my list

The Godfather Saga (1 and 2 in chronological order)
Apocalypse Now
Star Wars
Goodfellas
Alien
Blade Runner
Escape from New York
Rosemary's Baby
Ghostbusters
The Thing
Dr Strangelove
Animal House
The Wild Bunch
Big Trouble in Little China
Tombstone

rounding to 20 would add Cool Hand Luke, The Deer Hunter, The Usual Suspects, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Aliens

films just missing the cut would be things like Heat, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Great Escape, Blue Velvet and The Big Lebowski

[revo]

LOL

9 of the top 20 are color.

He means colors other than black and white.

[DMT]

Some other great ones that would definitely be in my 2nd 20: Goodfellas, Amelie, Departed (well actually Infernal Affairs, on which it was based), Amadeus, Platoon, District 9, and Tombstone. Surprised no one has Bull Durham.

Some others mentioned that used to be in my top-20 but just didn't hold up for me after repeated viewings: Usual Suspects, and Raging Bull.

[johnnya24]

Some other great ones that would definitely be in my 2nd 20: Goodfellas, Amelie, Departed (well actually Infernal Affairs, on which it was based), Amadeus, Platoon, District 9, and Tombstone. Surprised no one has Bull Durham.

Some others mentioned that used to be in my top-20 but just didn't hold up for me after repeated viewings: Usual Suspects, and Raging Bull.

Same with Raging Bull ... that was the last movie I cut from the main list ... Empire, Usual Suspects and Shawshank were next on the chopping block.

[heyelander]

McConaughey is excited to see the new Star Wars.

[johnnya24]

McConaughey is excited to see the new Star Wars.

The crashed Imperial Cruiser was pretty epic.

[heyelander]

The crashed Imperial Cruiser was pretty epic.

it was a neat scene... although I thought it felt a lot like the opening of the Star Trek reboot with kirk on his motorcycle (if I remember correctly).

[johnnya24]

Cobain: Montage of Heck - thought this was very good. Sympathetic and critical at the same time. The private footage gave it a real human feel.

Child 44 - it's a movie that thought it was much better than it was ... they even tried to set up a sequel. It was pretty decent, but nothing special. The acting was good, but the story was nothing special. I felt it was going to be something much more interesting than it turned out to be. But it did give Tom Hardy the chance to do his thing, and that's always worth the price of admission.

[heyelander]

Child 44 - it's a movie that thought it was much better than it was ... they even tried to set up a sequel. It was pretty decent, but nothing special. The acting was good, but the story was nothing special. I felt it was going to be something much more interesting than it turned out to be. But it did give Tom Hardy the chance to do his thing, and that's always worth the price of admission.

I read the book and enjoyed it. The story was pretty good. The sequel not so much. From what I've read they didn't translate the story well, although reviews of Hardy have been good.

[johnnya24]

Avengers: Age of Ultron - I'm not a fan of comic book movies, but I enjoyed the first Avengers movie, and this was enjoyable also. So if you are a comic book movie fan, I imagine it will be amazing.

But I was ultimately disappointed with my Avengers movie going experience. I was really looking forward to the upcoming Mad Max remake ... Tom Hardy + Mad Max ... surely a match made it heaven? That was the first time I've seen the Mad Max trailer, and I just sank in my seat. It looks like an absurd caricature of the original. I was hoping for a reimagining of the series like we've seen with other series, but they seem to have taken all the cheese from 80's action movies, and multiplied it by 10. Remember in the 80's when all the movie villains wore leather jackets, had broadway style punk rock haircuts, ripped jeans, maybe some S&M paraphernalia? ... well that's the new Mad Max x10.

[johnnya24]

I read the book and enjoyed it. The story was pretty good. The sequel not so much. From what I've read they didn't translate the story well, although reviews of Hardy have been good.

He's a boss. I'll pretty much pay to see anything he's in. If Tom Hardy decided to transition into hardcore gay porno, I'd probably have to check that out ... who knows where he would take the field. There are no limits to Tom Hardy.

[heyelander]

He's a boss. I'll pretty much pay to see anything he's in. If Tom Hardy decided to transition into hardcore gay porno, I'd probably have to check that out ... who knows where he would take the field. There are no limits to Tom Hardy.

Child 44 was sort of a fictionalized version of the search for Andre Chikatilo. If you've never seen the HBO movie Citizen X, which was much closer to the real thing, you should check it out.

[johnnya24]

Child 44 was sort of a fictionalized version of the search for Andre Chikatilo. If you've never seen the HBO movie Citizen X, which was much closer to the real thing, you should check it out.

I'll have to check that out, thx.

Need some relief, went on a 25 buy in downswing today ... not sure I've done that before. I've had much bigger downswings over a longer period, but I got murdered today. Every hand ... BOOM! A movie about a child killing psychopath sounds like just to tonic.

[Teenwolf]

I'm a big classic movies buff. This list may not appeal to many of you. But here it is:

1. Casablanca (slam dunk!)
2. Splendor in the Grass
3. The Hustler
4. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
5. Wuthering Heights - 1939 version w Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon (outrageous movie!)
6. The Grapes of Wrath
7. The Red Shoes (yeah, a ballet picture - both the music and the story really got me)
8. Black Orpheus (a rare black love story. Again both the music and the story were gerat)
9. Hombre (Paul Newman again. He's in couple others further down in my top 100)
10. A Tale of Two Cities - British version w Dirk Bogarde (apex of tearjerkers)
11. Waterloo Bridge - 1931 version, w Mae Clark (yeah, I like tearjerkers. The 1940 version w Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor also is great)
12. This Property is Condemned (yeah I like Tennessee Williams' stuff, too)
13. Heaven and Earth (Oliver Stone's Vietnam movie - see, I do like some movies made after 1970)
14. Sahara - original version from about 1943 (I started to watch the recent remake and found it pretty unwatchable)
15. The Four Feathers - original version from about 1943 (I havent seen the recent remake - I'm reading the book now)
16. Treasure of the Sierra Madre (proves that you can make a great movie that achieve great popularity w/o a boy-girl romance)
17. The Godfather I (another "modern" movie - see, I'm not hopeless
18. Requiem for a Heavyweight (yeah I also like stories involving noble sacrifice)
19. High Noon (more noble sacrifice - audience is left pondering why he did it)
20. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (more noble sacrifice - John Wayne in an atypical role in that he's the tragic figure, but he's still the hero)

Some honorable mentions: Seven Samurai (subbed version is much better), Cinema Paradiso, High Plains Drifter (cult classic), Play Misty For Me (Clint Eastwood in an atypical role), One-Eyed Jacks (Brando's directorial masterpiece), Slumdog Millionaire

Just watched Splendor in the Grass on your recommendation. Pretty good film, but hard to watch the way women are treated, driven crazy or treated as such, shunned after unwanted pregnancies, etc.

Have you ever seen That Cold Day In The Park? It's from Robert Altman in 1969, (also starring Sandy Dennis, who had a small part in Splendor in the Grass), and it starts as a relationship drama, but turns into a dark thriller later... awesome film, with really surprising narrative twists. Similar to Splendor in the Grass, in that it's another film about a woman being driven crazy in a male dominated world, I found this film a lot more sinister.

Also from your list, I'm downloading Hombre. I like to see everything Paul Newman did, and The Hustler is also a fave of mine. I'm not super familiar with Tennessee Williams' films, but I know another Newman film Sweet Bird of Youth, that's quite awesome, so maybe I'll do some digging there.

[rhd]

Just watched Splendor in the Grass on your recommendation. Pretty good film, but hard to watch the way women are treated, driven crazy or treated as such, shunned after unwanted pregnancies, etc.

Have you ever seen That Cold Day In The Park? It's from Robert Altman in 1969, (also starring Sandy Dennis, who had a small part in Splendor in the Grass), and it starts as a relationship drama, but turns into a dark thriller later... awesome film, with really surprising narrative twists. Similar to Splendor in the Grass, in that it's another film about a woman being driven crazy in a male dominated world, I found this film a lot more sinister.

Also from your list, I'm downloading Hombre. I like to see everything Paul Newman did, and The Hustler is also a fave of mine. I'm not super familiar with Tennessee Williams' films, but I know another Newman film Sweet Bird of Youth, that's quite awesome, so maybe I'll do some digging there.

Thanx, Teenwolf. I'm glad that I've influenced you to watch some of these great movies. Not a list of the ones I think are the absolute greatest but just my list of personal faves.

Paul Newman is also in "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof", which is another Tennessee Williams classic. Off the top of my head, the other 3 in my Top 100 that Newman is in are " Cool Hand Luke", which you've probably seen, "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid", which you've also probably seen, and "The Long Hot Summer".

Don't really get your comment about "Splendor". It didnt show women being particularly mistreated and there were no unwanted pregnancies in it. It was a pretty accurate depiction of the time in which women were socialized to be more submissive and were more dependent on men financially. The film is sort of a tragic drama about 2 young kids crazy in love each other but whose chances for happy lives were ruined because of the sexual repression of the times and the domineering ways of their parents. The ending scene is one of the most touching in any movie. And it is very realistic in that nobody dies and they each end up w someone else and they meet again at the end and clearly are still in love and are wondering what might have been.