Your Top 3-5 Favorite Films (4 Viewers)

[El Floppo]

Rocky defeats a murderer's row in successive movies. It's borderline religious or mystical experience in each one with a love story to boot. This is less the case with Daniel-san in "KK" but he does need the eastern mysticism of Miyagi to prevail (especially in "KK2"). This kind of ties-in to Spike Lee's "magic negro" premise but whatever.

Stallone for a time seemed to thrive on this kind of subgenre. Anyone remember this?

there was a period of steroidal heroes... yes. the later rockies and first bloods, anything with arnold. I guess those would count... but those revolve around the guys using their strength to win the day. not exactly plumbing any emotional or intellectual depths for themes.

The movies I'm thinking of have "normal" guys just trying to get by, except they exhibit super-powers... unique, computer-like intelligence... super-fast (plus ping-pong super abilities). 

 

[money.never.sleeps]

The Wilder one was "Willy Wonka and the..."

Sorry, must of had the book title on my brain. Good catch 

Regret selling my 1st edition years ago  :(

 

[money.never.sleeps]

Jackie Brown also on my "top _____" list

surprised not more Gladiator on lists

 

[Ilov80s]

there was a period of steroidal heroes... yes. the later rockies and first bloods, anything with arnold. I guess those would count... but those revolve around the guys using their strength to win the day. not exactly plumbing any emotional or intellectual depths for themes.

The movies I'm thinking of have "normal" guys just trying to get by, except they exhibit super-powers... unique, computer-like intelligence... super-fast (plus ping-pong super abilities). 

Forrest Gump is a bad movie as he basically becomes the best in the world at anything he does. 

Karate Kid had superpowers. How long does that movie take place over? A year at most it seems. He goes from novice martial artist to being able to win a tourney against seasoned fighters...even does so with a bad leg. Come on now. I still like the movie, but it's less realistic than a guy just being really smart.

 

[El Floppo]

Forrest Gump is a bad movie as he basically becomes the best in the world at anything he does. 

Karate Kid had superpowers. How long does that movie take place over? A year at most it seems. He goes from novice martial artist to being able to win a tourney against seasoned fighters...even does so with a bad leg. Come on now. I still like the movie, but it's less realistic than a guy just being really smart.

 

[Bob Magaw]

Don't forget Altman's The Long Goodbye. Noir was never wrote better than Chandler and, oddly enough, Chandler was never done better than this. My favorite star turn of all time turned in by the grumbling edifice that was the immense Sterling Hayden just one of the many great features of this masterpiece. Easily the best movie the least have seen.

I liked it (because I like virtually anything noir and am an Altman fan). I realize Altman likes to subvert genres, but after seeing the likes of Bogart (The Big Sleep), Mitchum (Farewell My Lovely), **** Powell (Murder My Sweet) and even James Garner in a more contemporary version (Marlowe) play the Philip Marlowe character, I found Gould's performance offputting. I've seen it like twice? But sometimes I like movies more after several viewings (some of the Coen brothers body of work comes to mind in that context - which reminds me, their debut Blood Simple was just added to the Criterion Collection, I think their first, and is a GREAT noir, M. Emmet Walsh was a hilariously sleazy hit man). Hayden is the best. Interesting dude. He was some kind of naval intelligence commando in WW II, maybe somewhat like Ian Fleming and one of the characters in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. "Discovered" as an actor while he was a sailor as his boat was in port. He was phenomenal in Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, two of my favorite noirs.

If I were to champion a few movies that imo are criminally underrated/neglected (not necessarily noir), probably at the top of the list would be Sorcerer by Friedkin* (an homage to an earlier French Noir, Wages of Fear - which by the way, would make a great, if bleak double feature). Driving, riveting, hypnotic score/soundtrack by Tangerine Dream (one of their two greatest, along with Michael Mann's Thief). Scorcese is a great champion of the work of the unusual British dual credit production/direction/writing team of Powell & Pressburger (they both produced, the former directed and the latter wrote). In fact, his long time editor Thelma Schoonmaker is Powell's widow, she has edited everyone of his films since Raging Bull and won three Oscars, for Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_and_Pressburger

Powell was a co-director of Thief of Bagdad for the great Hungarian producer Alexander Korda, one of the most spectacular children adventures in film history (Terry Gilliam recorded an intro for the Criterion edition). They were at their peak and height of their powers for Black Narcissus '47 and Red Shoes '48 (which Wayne Shorter references in a Round Midnight bar scene aside). Jack Cardiff was their cinematographer/DP and received an honorary Oscar in 2001 for his body of work, but guessing that was his peak as well, and the main reasons for the award. Black Narcissus was in the David N. Meyer 100 Films review collection book noted in the previous page, and he actually wrote if you only watch one film from his recs, let it be this. Anyway, if people are looking for movies like Rambo, these ain't it (about a relocated British convent overwhelmed by the exotic atmosphere of the Himalayas and the sacrifices made in personal commitment to great art, ballet in this case). But for those that appreciate the art of film, they are among the most beautiful technicolor images ever committed to film. Their ability to transform Pinewood Studios into a remote Himalayan locale was eerily and spookily transporting in a way I've never seen before or since (certainly in the pre-CGI days). 

* I can't think of another director that has two of the greatest car chase sequences in film history - The French Connection AND To Live And Die In L.A.     

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

Matthew Vaughn is putting together an impressive body of work but this one (his first feature) may be the best.

He also managed to marry Claudia Schiffer. 

He must be doing something right.

 

[Bob Magaw]

My off-the-board favorite is Cutter's Way starring Jeff Bridges, Lisa Eichorn and John Heard in the role of a lifetime as an alcoholic disabled Vietnam war vet.   It takes place in a sunlit Southern California but is as bleak as the darkest noir.  It was a flop in its initial release in 1980 but has gained a cult following over the years.  It's one of those films that doesn't leave you after you've seen it.

   

Outstanding movie and you nailed the Heard performance. I've seen it twice. Quirky but no less great for that. While noir has a lot of clichés (fedora, smoking, guns, night, shadows, betrayal, the universe conspiring to doom the lead), Chinatown subverted several. Whereas many noirs are shot VERTICALLY in the artificial, man made canyons of urban skyscrapers and cityscapes with stark prison bar shadows, it favored HORIZONTAL shots of sprawling LA and Southern California shot during the day in brilliant sunlight, all the better for revealing the rotten core of the conspirators. This is another somewhat obscure title I discovered through the Meyer 100 films review book noted immediately above. Also noted there (both in my post and the book, I think - in the Wages of Fear review), Friedkin's Sorcerer would probably be my favorite rec for worthy of discovery/rediscovery (Thief pretty good, too). Virtually everybody who knows noir knows Out of the Past, but for those unfamiliar with the genre, it may not be as well known as Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, The Postman Always Rings Twice, etc., and I would give the highest possible recommendation. Not just for the noir genre, but period.  

Ebert 7-18-04

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-out-of-the-past-1947      

"Most crime movies begin in the present and move forward, but film noir coils back into the past. The noir hero is doomed before the story begins -- by fate, rotten luck, or his own flawed character. Crime movies sometimes show good men who go bad. The noir hero is never good, just kidding himself, living in ignorance of his dark side until events demonstrate it to him.

"Out of the Past" (1947) is one of the greatest of all film noirs, the story of a man who tries to break with his past and his weakness and start over again in a town, with a new job and a new girl. The movie stars Robert Mitchum, whose weary eyes and laconic voice, whose very presence as a violent man wrapped in indifference, made him an archetypal noir actor. The story opens before we've even seen him, as trouble comes to town looking for him. A man from his past has seen him pumping gas, and now his old life reaches out and pulls him back.

Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, whose name was Jeff Markham when he was working as a private eye out of New York. In those days he was hired by a gangster named Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas, electrifying in an early role) to track down a woman named Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer, irresistibly mixing sexiness and treachery). Kathie shot Sterling four times, hitting him once, and supposedly left with $40,000 of his money. Sterling wants Jeff to bring her back. It's not, he says, that he wants revenge: "I just want her back. When you see her, you'll understand better."

That whole story, and a lot more, is told in a flashback. When we meet Jeff at the beginning of the film, it's in an idyllic setting by a lake in the Sierras, where he has his arm around the woman he loves, Ann (Virginia Huston). He bends over to kiss her when they're interrupted by Jimmy (Dickie Moore), the deaf and mute kid who works for him at the station. Jimmy uses sign language to say a stranger is at the station, asking for him. This man is Sterling's hired gun, named Joe Stephanos (Paul Valentine), and he tells Jeff that Sterling wants to see him in his lodge on Lake Tahoe.

Jeff takes Ann along on the all-night drive to Tahoe, using the trip to tell her his story -- his real name, his real past, how he tracked Kathie Moffat to Mexico and fell in love with her. ("And then I saw her, coming out of the sun, and I knew why Whit didn't care about that 40 grand.") He tells Ann more, too: How he lied to Sterling about finding Kathie, how he and Kathie slipped away to San Francisco and thought they could live free of the past, how they were spotted by Fisher (Steve Brodie), Jeff's former partner. Fisher followed them to a remote cabin, where Kathie shot him dead, leaving Jeff behind with the body and a bank book revealing she indeed had stolen the $40,000.

The story takes Jeff all night to tell, and lasts 40 minutes into the film. Then we're back in the present again, at the gates of Sterling's lodge. Ann drives away and Jeff walks up the drive to square with his past. In the lodge, not really to his surprise, he finds that Kathie is once again with Sterling. This Sterling is a piece of work. Not only has he taken Kathie back after she shot him, he wants to hire Jeff again after he betrayed him. This time he needs him to deal with Leonard Eels, an accountant in San Francisco who keeps Sterling's books, and is blackmailing him with threats involving the IRS.

The meeting between Mitchum and Douglas opens on a note of humor so quiet, it may pass unnoticed. "Cigarette?" offers Douglas. "Smoking," said Mitchum, holding up his hand with a cigarette in it. Something about that moment has always struck me as odd, as somehow outside the movie, and I asked Mitchum about it after a screening of "Out of the Past" at the Virginia Film Festival.

"Did you guys have any idea of doing a running gag involving cigarette smoking?" I asked him.

"No, no."

"Because there's more cigarette smoking in this movie than in any other movie I've ever seen."

"We never thought about it. We just smoked. And I'm not impressed by that because I don't, honest to God, know that I've ever actually seen the film."

"You've neverseenit?"

"I'm sure I have, but it's been so long that I don't know."

That was Mitchum for you, a superb actor who affected a weary indifference to his work.

There is a lot of smoking in "Out of the Past." There is a lot of smoking in all noirs, even the modern ones, because it goes with the territory. Good health, for noir characters, starts with not getting killed. But few movies use smoking as well as this one; in their scenes together, it would be fair to say that Mitchum and Douglas smokeateach other, in a sublimated form of fencing. The director is Jacques Tourneur, a master of dark drama at RKO, also famous for "Cat People" (1942) and "I Walked with a Zombie" (1943). He is working here for the third time with the cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca, a master of shadow but also of light, and Musuraca throws light into the empty space between the two actors, so that when they exhale, the smoke is visible as bright white clouds.

Mitchum and Douglas think the story involves a contest of wills between them, when in fact, they're both the instruments of corrupt women. Kathie betrays both men more than once, and there is also Meta Carson (Rhonda Fleming), the sultry "secretary" of Eels the accountant. What's fascinating is the way Jeff, the Mitchum character, goes ahead, despite knowing what's being done to him. How he gets involved once again with Sterling and Kathie, despite all their history together, and how he agrees when Meta suggests a meeting with Eels, even though he knowsand even says"I think I'm in a frame," and points out that he's been given a drink so that his prints will be on the glass.

The scenes in San Francisco, involving the murder of Eels, the whereabouts of the tax records and the double-dealing of Meta Carson, are so labyrinthine, it's remarkable even the characters can figure out who is being double-crossed, and why. The details don't matter. What matters is the way that Jeff, a street-wise tough guy, gets involved in the face of all common sense, senses a trap, thinks he can walk through it, and isstillfascinated by Kathie Moffat.

He first reveals his obsession in Mexico, when Kathie claims she didn't take the 40 grand.

"But I didn't take anything. I didn't, Jeff. Don't you believe me?"

"Baby, I don't care."

And later, although he tells her, "You're like a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to another," he is attracted to her, lured as men sometimes are to what they know is wrong and dangerous.

Film noir is known for its wise-guy dialogue, but the screenplay for "Out of the Past" reads like an anthology of one-liners. It was based on the 1946 novelBuild My Gallows Highby "Geoffrey Homes," a pseudonym for the blacklisted Daniel Mainwaring, and the screenplay credit goes to Mainwaring, reportedly with extra dialogue by James M. Cain.

But the critic Jeff Schwager read all versions of the screenplay for a 1990 Film Comment article, and writes me: "Mainwaring's script was not very good, and in one draft featured awful voice-over narration by the deaf-mute. Cain's script was a total rewrite and even worse; it was totally discarded. The great dialogue was actually the work of Frank Fenton, a B-movie writer whose best known credit was John Ford's 'Wings of Eagles.'"

Listen to the contempt with which Sterling silences his hired gun, Stephanos: "Smoke a cigarette, Joe." And "Think of a number, Joe." Listen to Joe tell Jeff how he found his gas station: "It's a small world." Jeff: "Yeah. Or a big sign." Kathie saying "I hate him. I'm sorry he didn't die." Jeff: "Give him time." Jeff's friend the cab driver, assigned to tail Meta Carson: "I lost her." Jeff: "She's worth losing." Jeff to Kathie: "Just get out, will you? I have to sleep in this room." Kathie to Jeff: "You're no good, and neither am I. That's why we deserve each other." And in the movie's most famous exchange, Kathie telling him, "I don't want to die." Jeff: "Neither do I, baby, but if I have to, I'm going to die last."

The movie's final scene, between the hometown girl Ann and Jimmy, Jeff's hired kid at the gas station, reflects the moral murkiness of the film with its quiet ambiguity. I won't reveal the details, but as Jimmy answers Ann's question, is he telling her what he believes, what he thinks she wants to believe, or what he thinks it will be best for her to believe?"

 

[Eephus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powell_and_Pressburger

Powell was a co-director of Thief of Bagdad for the great Hungarian producer Alexander Korda, one of the most spectacular children adventures in film history (Terry Gilliam recorded an intro for the Criterion edition). They were at their peak and height of their powers for Black Narcissus '47 and Red Shoes '48 (which Wayne Shorter references in a Round Midnight bar scene aside). Jack Cardiff was their cinematographer/DP and received an honorary Oscar in 2001 for his body of work, but guessing that was his peak as well, and the main reasons for the award. Black Narcissus was in the David N. Meyer 100 Films review collection book noted in the previous page, and he actually wrote if you only watch one film from his recs, let it be this. Anyway, if people are looking for movies like Rambo, these ain't it (about a relocated British convent overwhelmed by the exotic atmosphere of the Himalayas and the sacrifices made in personal commitment to great art, ballet in this case). But for those that appreciate the art of film, they are among the most beautiful technicolor images ever committed to film. Their ability to transform Pinewood Studios into a remote Himalayan locale was eerily and spookily transporting in a way I've never seen before or since (certainly in the pre-CGI days).      

Powell directed & Cardiff shot "A Matter of Life and Death" in 1946 starring David Niven.  It was re-titled "Stairway to Heaven" for its original US release but has been shown recently on TCM under its original title. 

The story is a preposterous wartime fantasy of a RAF pilot getting shot down and killed but due to some mixup in the afterlife, gets a second chance at life and love.  But the visual style of the film is still extraordinary 70 years later.    The film switches between contemporary scenes in vivid three-strip Technicolor and a black and white heaven but both have a surreal dreamlike quality.

 

[Bob Magaw]

Powell directed & Cardiff shot "A Matter of Life and Death" in 1946 starring David Niven.  It was re-titled "Stairway to Heaven" for its original US release but has been shown recently on TCM under its original title. 

The story is a preposterous wartime fantasy of a RAF pilot getting shot down and killed but due to some mixup in the afterlife, gets a second chance at life and love.  But the visual style of the film is still extraordinary 70 years later.    The film switches between contemporary scenes in vivid three-strip Technicolor and a black and white heaven but both have a surreal dreamlike quality.

Among many other things I could possibly comment on, inspired albeit counterintuitive choice to opt to employ B & W for the scenes representing Heaven.

 

[wikkidpissah]

I liked it (because I like virtually anything noir and am an Altman fan). I realize Altman likes to subvert genres, but after seeing the likes of Bogart (The Big Sleep), Mitchum (Farewell My Lovely), **** Powell (Murder My Sweet) and even James Garner in a more contemporary version (Marlowe) play the Philip Marlowe character, I found Gould's performance offputting. I've seen it like twice? But sometimes I like movies more after several viewings (some of the Coen brothers body of work comes to mind in that context - which reminds me, their debut Blood Simple was just added to the Criterion Collection, I think their first, and is a GREAT noir, M. Emmet Walsh was a hilariously sleazy hit man). Hayden is the best. Interesting dude. He was some kind of naval intelligence commando in WW II, maybe somewhat like Ian Fleming and one of the characters in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. "Discovered" as an actor while he was a sailor as his boat was in port. He was phenomenal in Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, two of my favorite noirs.

If I were to champion a few movies that imo are criminally underrated/neglected (not necessarily noir), probably at the top of the list would be Sorcerer by Friedkin* (an homage to an earlier French Noir, Wages of Fear - which by the way, would make a great, if bleak double feature ). Driving, riveting, hypnotic score/soundtrack by Tangerine Dream (one of their two greatest, along with Michael Mann's Thief). Scorcese is a great champion of the work of the unusual British dual credit production/direction/writing team of Powell & Pressburger (they both produced, the former directed and the latter wrote). In fact, his long time editor Thelma Schoonmaker is Powell's widow, she has edited everyone of his films since Raging Bull and won three Oscars, for Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed.

I can easily see why one would find Gould's Marlowe off-putting, but that was kinda the joke of the movie. The heart & smarts of Marlowe thrown into the body of the kind of 70s guy who invented selfish & whiny for generations to come, baby. I've never regretted that my favorite Chandler book - and i have em all, hermetically-sealed mint pulps worth hundreds of dollars, in one of my very few indulgences (Cain, too),  and reading copies - hasn't had a faithful movie rendition because this is so wonderful. The Marty Augustine scenes - "gotta get a lot of money so I can juice the guys I gotta juice so I can get a lot of money so i can juice the guys I gotta juice" and smashing a coke bottle across his moll's face so he can convince Marlowe to give him the money cuz "her I love, you I don't even like" - alone put it in the alltime top percentile and i honestly believe would make the moribund Chandler weep with joy..

We part ways on Friedkin. Guy leaves me cold when he doesn't flat out disappoint. The emotionally messy way he lays things out leads to a lot of action but little that i can connect with. Just a taste thing.

Have P&P's Black Narcissus on a tape with Lost Horizon. Wish i had a way to play em - been awhile. Will check out some more.

The two Mitchum Marlowe's from the 70s were, for my money, instant classics and the best str8 stagings of Chandler stories. Mystifies me why they're so weakly remembered.

 

[grateful zed]

the sons of katie eldar.

 

[Eephus]

The two Mitchum Marlowe's from the 70s were, for my money, instant classics and the best str8 stagings of Chandler stories. Mystifies me why they're so weakly remembered.

I would have loved to see Mitchum play Marlowe twenty years earlier.  He was nearing sixty by time Farewell My Lovely came out and came off somewhere between world weary and somnambulist.  He was good in The Yakuza which came out a year or two earlier so maybe my negativity is because he doesn't match the Marlowe in my mind's eye.

I thought James Garner was a pretty good Marlowe but the vehicle was hurt by the 1960s setting and sensibilities.

 

[saintfool]

there was a period of steroidal heroes... yes. the later rockies and first bloods, anything with arnold. I guess those would count... but those revolve around the guys using their strength to win the day. not exactly plumbing any emotional or intellectual depths for themes.

The movies I'm thinking of have "normal" guys just trying to get by, except they exhibit super-powers... unique, computer-like intelligence... super-fast (plus ping-pong super abilities). 




3

Like this? Or this? Or even this?

 

[saintfool]

I liked it (because I like virtually anything noir and am an Altman fan). I realize Altman likes to subvert genres, but after seeing the likes of Bogart (The Big Sleep), Mitchum (Farewell My Lovely), **** Powell (Murder My Sweet) and even James Garner in a more contemporary version (Marlowe) play the Philip Marlowe character, I found Gould's performance offputting. I've seen it like twice? But sometimes I like movies more after several viewings (some of the Coen brothers body of work comes to mind in that context - which reminds me, their debut Blood Simple was just added to the Criterion Collection, I think their first, and is a GREAT noir, M. Emmet Walsh was a hilariously sleazy hit man). Hayden is the best. Interesting dude. He was some kind of naval intelligence commando in WW II, maybe somewhat like Ian Fleming and one of the characters in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon. "Discovered" as an actor while he was a sailor as his boat was in port. He was phenomenal in Asphalt Jungle and The Killing, two of my favorite noirs.




1

I think he's lights out fantastic in it and that's one of the best noirs. I'm also a sucker for the original "Night and the City" because Widmark is so good as Fabian. He's a hammy actor - like Kirk Douglas - but he's perfect for the role. Same with him in "Kiss of Death". I also like Paul Henreid in "Hollow Triumph".

 

[El Floppo]

Like this? Or this? Or even this?

no.

 

[saintfool]

no.

Superfast? Check.

Computer-like intelligence? Check.

Superpowers? Check-ish.

Fine. I'm done playing this game.

 

[RedmondLonghorn]

A few others I just remembered:

The Longest Yard (original)

M*A*S*H*

The Player

 

[RandyDB]

How about some Sean Connery?

First off, there is only one true James Bond.

Finding Forrester 
Entrapment 
Rising Sun 
Medicine Man 
The Untouchables 

 

[Eephus]

How about some Sean Connery?

First off, there is only one true James Bond.

Finding Forrester 
Entrapment 
Rising Sun 
Medicine Man 
The Untouchables 

The Man Who Would Be King is timeless entertainment

And I've seen From Russian From Love more times than any of my top five

 

[Bob Magaw]

Phone call scene from Lost Highway is one of my favorites ever.

"How'd you do that?"

"Ask me."

The doubled laugh was like 4 X more evil.

 

[dgreen]

Raising Arizona

True Romance

Stand By Me

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Breakfast Club

 

[Ilov80s]

I would have loved to see Mitchum play Marlowe twenty years earlier.  He was nearing sixty by time Farewell My Lovely came out and came off somewhere between world weary and somnambulist.  He was good in The Yakuza which came out a year or two earlier so maybe my negativity is because he doesn't match the Marlowe in my mind's eye.

I thought James Garner was a pretty good Marlowe but the vehicle was hurt by the 1960s setting and sensibilities.

I would love to see a reboot. Who is today's perfect Marlowe? Jon Hamm maybe. I also really liked "High Window" and would like to see that get a quality production.

 

[Bob Magaw]

Casablanca

Godfather

Pulp Fiction

Freeway

Jaws

Haven't seen Freeway?

The other four that I've seen (multiple times) all great.

The glowing suitcase in PF probably influenced by classic cold war noir Kiss Me Deadly, with Mike Hammer played by a brutal, sneering Ralph Meeker (thought he should have been a bigger star, he had an important role in Kubrick's Paths of Glory, and was also in John Wayne's Brannigan). 

Vintage trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss4AF91KOFw

Great acting talent in Jaws, with Scheider, Dreyfuss and Shaw (great in The Sting, but also the assassin in From Russia With Love). Scheider was one of my favorite actors (died '08). He was in the French Connection '71, The Seven Ups '73 and Jaws was '75, but was also great in Marathon Man '76 and All That Jazz '79 playing famous choreographer/womanizer Bob Fosse, who also directed.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Scheider

MM trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE5iL1NleM4

ATJ trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74Pae3PpMo

 

[Baloney Sandwich]

Haven't seen Freeway?

The other four that I've seen (multiple times) all great.

The glowing suitcase in PF probably influenced by classic cold war noir Kiss Me Deadly, with Mike Hammer played by a brutal, sneering Ralph Meeker (thought he should have been a bigger star, he had an important role in Kubrick's Paths of Glory, and was also in John Wayne's Brannigan). 

Vintage trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss4AF91KOFw

Great acting talent in Jaws, with Scheider, Dreyfuss and Shaw (great in The Sting, but also the assassin in From Russia With Love). Scheider was one of my favorite actors (died '08). He was in the French Connection '71, The Seven Ups '73 and Jaws was '75, but was also great in Marathon Man '76 and All That Jazz '79 playing famous choreographer/womanizer Bob Fosse, who also directed.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Scheider

MM trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE5iL1NleM4

ATJ trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74Pae3PpMo

Freeway is a demented Red Riding Hood story starring Reese Witherspoon and Keifer Sutherland...Witherspoon's best role by far.

 

[Bob Magaw]

I forgot to mention Le Samourai, one of my favorite noirs overall, and probably my favorite Melville noir (even more than Le Doulos). Ghost Dog by Jim Jarmusch and starring Forrest Whitaker as an isolated, principled hit man/contract killer with a Samurai-like code/ethos seemingly a clear homage.

Le Samourai trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs0XYssIlbo

Ghost Dog trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rml5ehAl7SM

Another oversight was the body of work by Sam Fuller, but especially Pickup on South Street '53, Shock Corridor '63 and Naked Kiss '64.  

* Ebert 6-8-97 Le Samouai

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-le-samourai-1967 

"An empty room. No, not empty. In the shadows we can barely see a man on the bed. He lights a cigarette, and smoke coils up toward a wisp of light from the window. After a time the man gets up, fully dressed, and moves to a hat stand near the door. He puts on his fedora, adjusting the brim with delicate precision, and goes out into the street.

Like a painter or a musician, a filmmaker can suggest complete mastery with just a few strokes. Jean-Pierre Melville involves us in the spell of "Le Samourai" (1967) before a word is spoken. He does it with light: a cold light, like dawn on an ugly day. And color: grays and blues. And actions that speak in place of words.

The man hot-wires a car, and drives it down a forlorn street to a garage where the door gapes open. He wheels it inside. A mechanic is waiting, who changes the license plates. The driver waits and smokes. The mechanic opens a drawer and hands him papers. The driver extends his hand. For a handshake? No, for a gun. He pockets it. He hands the mechanic cash. Then he drives away. Not a word is spoken.

The man, named Jef Costello, is played by Alain Delon, the tough pretty boy of French movies. He was 32 when this movie was made, an actor so improbably handsome that his best strategy for dealing with his looks was to use a poker face. He seems utterly unaware here of his appearance; at times he seems to be playing himself in a dream. A "beautiful destructive angel of the dark street," film critic David Thomson called him.

Costello is a killer for hire. The movie follows him with meticulous attention to detail while he establishes an alibi, kills a nightclub owner, survives a police lineup, is betrayed by those who hired him, and becomes the subject of a police manhunt that involves a cat-and-mouse chase through the Paris Metro. All the while he barely betrays an emotion.

Two women help supply his alibis. A woman named Jane loves him, we guess, although she has a rich lover and Jef knows it. (She is played by Nathalie Delon, his real-life wife.) The other woman, a black musician named Valerie (Caty Rosier) who plays the piano in the nightclub, lies at the lineup and says she has never seen him. But she knows she has. Is she lying to help him? Or because she knows the men who hired him, and knows they do not want him caught? This question weighs on Costello's mind after he is betrayed by his employers, and he goes to see the piano player, who is utterly fearless even though he might kill her. Costello's women seem to reflect his own existential detachment: He does his job, he functions at the top of his ability, he has no values, he is a professional, there is no room for sentiment in how he lives.

"There is no solitude greater than a samurai's," says a quotation at the beginning of the film. "Unless perhaps it is that of a tiger in the jungle." The quotation is attributed to "The Book of Bushido," which I was disappointed to find out is fictional--a creation of Melville's. The quotation and the whole pose of the Costello character are meant to suggest a man who operates according to a rigid code. But as Stanley Kauffmann points out in his review, "a samurai did not accept commissions to kill merely for money: honor and ethics were involved."

Here the honor and ethics seem to be Jef Costello's loyalty to himself; a samurai was prepared to die for his employer, and Costello is self-employed. Perhaps he should have taken his text from a real book, "The Code of the Samurai," from 16th century Japan. It begins with words Melville might well have quoted: "One who is a samurai must before all things keep constantly in mind, by day and by night . . . the fact that he has to die. That is his chief business."

The film is masterful in its control of acting and visual style. Against Delon's detachment and cold objectivity, Melville sets the character of the police inspector (Francois Perier), who barks commands over the police radio while masterminding the manhunt. He knows Jef is lying, but can't prove it, and there is a slimy scene where he tries to blackmail Jane into betraying Jef. Meanwhile, Jef tries to find the men who hired him, so he can get revenge.

One of the pleasures of "Le Samourai" is to realize how complicated the plot has grown, in its flat, deadpan way. With little dialogue and spare scenes of pure action (most of it unsensational), the movie devises a situation in which Jef is being sought all over Paris by both the police and the underworld, while he simultaneously puts his own plan into effect, and deals with both women.

The movie teaches us how action is the enemy of suspense--how action releases tension, instead of building it. Better to wait for a whole movie for something to happen (assuming we really care whether it happens) than to sit through a film where things we don't care about are happening constantly.

Melville uses character, not action, to build suspense. Consider a scene where one of the underworld hirelings calls on Costello, to apologize and hire him for another job, and Jef stares at him with utterly blank, empty eyes.

"Nothing to say?" the goon says.

"Not with a gun on me."

"Is that a principle?"

"A habit."

Melville is in love with the processes of things in the movie. The sequence when Jef is tailed by cops on the underground has inspired several other films; police are stationed on every platform, but Costello hops in and out of cars, switches platforms and trains, and toys with them. There is also a lovingly directed sequence where two flatfoots plant a wire in Costello's apartment. And a final scene where Costello returns to the nightclub where the murder took place, and is able to resolve all the plot strands and make his own statement--all while essentially remaining passive.

Thomson wrote that this film is "so tough that its impassive romanticism is not just fascinating, but nearly comic." Some of the comic details are so quiet they could be missed. Consider the bird in Costello's drab hotel room. It is a gray, shabby bird (of course) with an unpleasant chirp. Why would this man have a bird? Is it even his? Did it come with the room? The bird's chirp provides an amusing payoff after the cops wire the room and set up a tape recorder that records only . . . chirps, for a while. Apart from the bird, the room contains the following personal possessions of Costello: His trench coat, his fedora, his pack of cigarettes, and a bottle of mineral water. At one point, he walks over to an armoire, and on top of it, I was delighted to see, were rows of water bottles and neatly arranged packs of cigarettes. You smile because such details are a very quiet wink from Melville, telling you he knows what he's up to.

Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) was born Grumbach but renamed himself after the American novelist. He was a hero of the French resistance. After the war, by starting his own studio and making independent films on small budgets, he essentially pointed the way for the French New Wave. "I'm incapable of doing anything but rough drafts," he once said, but in fact "Le Samourai" is as finished and polished as a film can be.

The elements of the film--the killer, the cops, the underworld, the women, the code--are as familiar as the movies themselves. Melville loved 1930s Hollywood crime movies and in his own work helped develop modern film noir. There is nothing absolutely original in "Le Samourai" except for the handling of the material. Melville pares down and leaves out. He disdains artificial action sequences and manufactured payoffs. He drains the color from his screen and the dialogue from his characters. At the end, there is a scene that cries out (in Hollywood terms, anyway) for a last dramatic enigmatic statement, but Melville gives us banalities and then silence. He has been able to keep constantly in mind his hero's chief business."

 

[Bob Magaw]

Some favorite actors (in no particular order):

Orson Welles (also producer, director, writer, radio voice, magician - he once told a rain impacted, sparsely attended speech "Why are there so many of me, and so few of you?" ) 

Robert Mitchum (favorite roles Out of the Past, Night of the Hunter and El Dorado)

Spencer Tracy (too many to list, but if anybody hasn't seen it, he was not only one of the greatest dramatic actors of his generation, but was great in comedy, too - one of my favorites was the late role in It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World)

Gregory Peck (To Kill A Mockingbird one of my favorite films, another oversight, also one of the best novel adaptations - I liked how the narrator was the voice of a woman and reflected her experience and maturity, but yet she was still so connected to the formative memories and events that contributed to shaping her as a child [[Harper Lee also grew up together and became friends with In Cold Blood author Truman Capote starring Robert Blake, the latter another case of life imitating art]]). Also outstanding with Ingrid Bergman in Hitchcock's Spellbound (dream sequence by Dali), see below.

Mostly for their work associated with Hitchcock:

Jimmy Stewart (Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much and Vertigo), but also of course for the holiday classic It's A Wonderful Life  

Cary Grant (Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch A Thief and North by Northwest), also Bringing Up Baby with Katherine Hepburn maybe the finest example in the screwball comedy genre, underrated dramatic actor but excellent comedic timing and as a straight role foil. What's Up Doc? with Ryan O'Neal, Barbara Streisand and Madeline Khan an underrated screwball comedy. 

Honorable mention - John Wayne (The Searchers gets a lot of critical acclaim for GOAT in the Western genre), Charlton Heston (interesting dual legacy as historical film heavyweight with roles as Moses in the Ten Commandments, lead in the Oscars blockbuster Ben Hur and Spanish hero El Cid, but also go to actor for the late '60s to early '70s post apocalyptic, dystopian nightmare films such as Planet of the Apes, The Omega Man and Soylent Green), Clint Eastwood (how many actors have TWO hit internationally famous characters, such as The Man With No Name in the Dollars Trilogy and Dirty Harry?), Toshiro Mifune (too many Kurosawa classics to list separately, stupefying range, truly inhabits his characters not just in terms of facial expressions but body language, gestures, mannerisms, etc.), Tatsuya Nakadai (especially epic The Human Condition, Yojimbo/Sanjuro, Harakiri, High and Low, Kwaidan, The Sword of Doom, The Face of Another, Samurai Rebellion, Kill!), Peter O'Toole (career defining Lawrence of Arabia, My Favorite Year one of my favorite sleeper comedies) and James Woods (mostly for Videodrome, Once Upon A Time In America, Salvador, Best Seller and Ghosts of Mississippi). 

* Also Alec Guinness for the great Ealing Studios comedies (especially playing eight characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers and later the David Lean epic The Bridge on the River Kwai).   

 

[wikkidpissah]

* Also Alec Guinness for the great Ealing Studios comedies (especially playing eight characters in Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers and later the David Lean epic The Bridge on the River Kwai)   

also had a bit part in an obscure 70s science-fiction series, can't remember the name...

 

[Bob Magaw]

Best bad movie - Toxic Avenger. 

 

[Doctor Detroit]

Blues Brothers: Best "musical" fantastic cinematography, entertaining from start to finish, action, great acting, and probably the best cameos ever

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The standard in cinematography, a beautiful film, fantastic characters, and a subtle view of the past

The Life Aquatic: Quirky and entertaining, I'm a big Wes Anderson fan and of his films this is my favorite but it's close

Escape from New York: Gotta have a B movie in here, I purposely avoid watching this movie often because when it comes on I am pleased.

Godfather Part II: Perfect