Here are some of my favorites. I have too many to name them all.
(Kubrick)
Dr. Strangelove
2001 A Space Odyssey
A Clockwork Orange
The Shining
(Lynch)
Blue Velvet
Lost Highway
Mulholland Drive
(Film Noir)
The Asphalt Jungle
Nightmare Alley
The Maltese Falcon
(Everything Else in rough chronological order)
Modern Times
Citizen Kane
The Seven Samurai
The Seventh Seal
The Apartment
Lawrence of Arabia
High and Low
Seconds
Midnight Cowboy
Five Easy Pieces
Deliverance
The Parallax View
The Conversation
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Apocalypse Now
Alien
Blade Runner
Once Upon A Time In America
Drugstore Cowboy
Goodfellas
Barton Fink
Pulp Fiction
Dead Man
The Usual Suspects
The Big Lebowski
Spirited Away
The Life of Pi
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@mksun , good deal--another vote for Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid! And Apocalypse Now! And Goodfellas too! And I’ll go along with Deliverance, I was never a fan of Burt Reynold’s movies before that though. I also like your pick of Drugstore Cowboy with Matt Dillon, but perhaps because I used to know someone that often got his product from someone else who broke into pharmacies.
How about Electra Glide In Blue with Robert Blake? There was a time when I think I would have put it on my list. That time has passed.
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Goodfellas +1
I know we have gone very high brow/low budget (relatively), let me take it down:
Bowfinger
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Trading Places
My most watched movie, I can annoyingly quote most lines from:
Midnight Run
I am a sucker for cross-country movies.
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@immatthewj Gotta love Sam Peckinpah and Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid was recently released on Blu-Ray by Criterion. Drugstore Cowboy will also be released by Criterion on Blu-Ray within the next few months. Have not seen Electra Glide In Blue but I will check it out. Have you seen Lost Highway by David Lynch? Robert Blake has an incredibly creepy role in it.
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@grislybutter , I thought Planes, Trains And Automobiles was hilarious! A great movie! However I am not ashamed to admit I have been a Steve Martin fan for a long time. And Steve Earle got some acclaim for his cover of Six Days On The Road. There is a good youtube of him doing it on someone’s TV show, and this was back when Earle was in his heyday of drug abuse, and judging by the gleam in his eyes he was lit up then. I remember when that came out I had a job in southern Illinois and my niece who was more like a little sister to me back then got to come down and spend the X-mas holidays with us and we all went to the theater to see that movie.
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@mksun , I am not putting Electra Glide In Blue on my suggested list . . . it was just that some of your picks from that era made me think of it and at one time it had an impact on me.
But Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid! Yeah! The fact that Bob Dylan wrote Knocking On Heaven's Door for it all by itself makes it great! What a classic! I love the duel at ten paces that Kristofferson (Billy The Kid) has with Jack Elam: Kistofferson turns around at pace one and when Elam turns around at six or seven Kristofferson shoots him and then says, "That wasn't ten, hoss."
Anyway, I remember my middle sister (I was the youngest) took me to see that when it came out. I think she wanted to see Bob Dylan, but my oldest sister was out of town and my middle sister was an introvert and didn't want to go alone so she took me. The violence, which was graphic for its time, made an impact on me.
I have not seen Lost Highway, but I'll look for it and see if it is a rental on 'on demand.'
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Something About Mary is a great comedy. Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz.
Young Frankenstein.
Strange Brew.
Mouse Hunt.
All comedies. Beer makes them better. 😅
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Something About Mary is a great comedy. Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz.
And don't forget Matt Dillon!
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@immatthewj No, I am not ashamed to love Steve Martin either. (aside from Father of the Bride stuff)
I love a lot of comedies. John Cusack too.
some romcom/comedy stuff
27 dresses
All Relative
Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong
Blame It On Rio
Bowfinger
CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE
ENOUGH SAID
FRENCH Kiss
Good Luck Chuck
HOW DO YOU KNOW
HOW TO STEAL A MILLION
JUST FRIENDS
LAGGIES
MUST LOVE DOGS
MY BEST FRIENDS GIRL
MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING
NOTTING HILL
SAY ANYTHING...
SOMETHING BORROWED
THE FAVOR
THE FIVE-YEAR ENGAGEMENT
THE HEARTBREAK KID
THE PILL
THE SURE THING
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY
Trading Places
WAITRESS
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@grislybutter ...Midnight Run is a classic. Might have been DeNiro’s first comedic role and he surprised the crap out of me he was so good at it. Another great DeNiro romantic comedy was Mad Dog and Glory with Bill Murray and Uma Thurman.
Trading Places is an all timer too....Terrific cast with Ackroyd, Murphy, Curtis, Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy. I also loved Jamie Lee in A Fish Called Wanda with Michael Palin, John Cleese and a wacky Kevin Kline.
Also a John Cusack fan. His best role may have been in the underrated Grosse Point Blank where he played a hitman.
I mentioned The Quick and the Dead earlier, another top notch Western was Silverado. A few other good modern Westerns: 3:10 to Yuma, Hell or High Water, Hateful Eight.
Steve Martin in Roxanne! And don’t get me started on The Princess Bride.
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If you like classic comedies but have seen the "usual suspects," my wife and I really enjoyed "The Devil and Miss Jones" with Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn. I thought I'd seen them all but not this one. As far as that goes, *any* Jean Arthur movie is worth watching. ;-)
If you have a hankering for vintage musicals, don't miss "Romance on the High Seas." I know, I know--Doris Day?!? It was her first movie, extremely well directed by Michal Curitz, who discovered Day and could direct just about anything, including "Casablanca" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Day is charming and sings like an angel, and Oscar Levant delivers some terrific one-liners. It's quite fun.
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Going back to Albert Brooks in Lost in America, I love the scene at the casino where Albert tries to talk the casino boss into giving back the "nest egg" his wife had lost. Classic.
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@ezwind I am not a huge fan of Gross Point Blank, charming but the script a bit lazy, relying too much on the stars.
@immatthewj The Favor is a delightful comedy with Brad Pitt.
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Gattica: hidden gem
October Sky: uplifting
My Cousin Vinny: still pretty darned funny.
August Rush. Near the begining is a scene where the "soul mates" connect as his live concert synchs up remotely with her classical recital. Nicely done.
Stardust: Great musical soundtrack where the music is perfect for the visuals on the screen.
Flash Gordon: just because
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I watched Anora last night. Loved it. Mikey Madison deserves the Oscar.
Also, excellent house / dance soundtrack that gave my 12" Velodyne some exercise :)
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Spielberg is rightly being ignored here, but Duel felt like a pretty darn good movie at the time.
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@dogearedaudio
"...my wife and I really enjoyed "The Devil and Miss Jones"
Oops....Misread this at first and thought you said "The Devil in Miss Jones"
NTTAWWT
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The late great Peter O'Toole has been neglected here thus far, so I'll list a great trilogy of his films:
The Lion in Winter
Lord Jim
Lawrence of Arabia (imo, one of the ten best movies of all time)
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A favorite actor of mine is Sam Rockwell. Any film I've seen him in was made better by his character acting.
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"Ulee's Gold" ...such a great Peter Fonda film.
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"The Furnace"
...a great Woody Harellson role
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I've been enjoying a Ken Burns documentary on America and the Holocaust (2022). It's on PBS and other places.
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Almost everything by John Williams. Look all the way back to the fifties with Gidget. Or the sixties with Lost In Space, Diamond Head, Nightmare In Chicago, How to Steal a Million, Valley Of The Dolls and on and on. The seventies with The Poseidon Adventure, The Long Goodbye, Cinderella Liberty, The Towering Inferno, JAWS, Midway, and of course Star Wars and Close Encounters, Superman and Dracula. The eighties gave us more Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark and E.T.
I’m getting tired of typing, but you get the Picture. 😆😆😆
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@slaw ,
He was great in 'JoJo Rabbit'!
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"The Accountant"....on steroids.
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Wow, so many great titles!
One not yet mentioned (unless I missed it) is Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, a parody of Noir movies. Co-written by Carl Reiner and Steve Martin, directed by the former and starring the latter.
An odd little movie I saw long ago and loved is Rubin & Ed, starring Crispin Glover. Delightfully twisted! I recently found a used copy of the DVD for a coupla bucks.
I love everything Christopher Guest has done, especially Best In Show, A Mighty Wind, and Waiting For Guffman.
I love 1960’s Don Knotts, and after he left The Andy Griffith Show he did two silly comedies: The Ghost And Mr. Chicken and The Reluctant Astronaut.
I’m looking at my DVD rack as I write this, and here’s some favorites I see:
Ain’t In It For My Health (The Band drummer/singer Levon Helm)
American Graffiti
The Bank Dick (love W.C. Fields!)
Black Swan (Natalie Portman is amazing in this beauty of a film)
Chinatown (of course)
Crumb
Detour (maybe the shortest running length of all Noirs)
Don’t Look Back (which chronicles Dylan’s 1965 tour of England)
Ghost World (co-written and directed by Terry Zwigoff, who also did Crumb), starring Steve Buscemi
Hall Pass
Happiness (a very twisted little film)
Hard Eight (written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Philip Baker Hall. You may remember him as the book detective in one Seinfeld episode)
Kingpin
The Machinist (a very dark movie)
Melvin And Howard (Howard Hughes is at the center of this one)
Napoleon Dynamite
Papillon (Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman)
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
The Producers (original). Genius movie!
River’s Edge
Shadow Of The Vampire (Willem Defoe was robbed of an Oscar for his performance in this movie)
Something Wild (Ray Liotta is great in his role)
Stranger Than Paradise
Sybil (Sally Field’s performance is just as good as it gets)
Taxi Driver
The Silence Of The Lambs
The Three Faces Of Eve (Joanne Woodward is a great actress!)
To Kill A Mockingbird
Touch Of Evil
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
The Wizard Of Oz
Young Frankenstein
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Doing the above list made me realize I have W.C. Fields’ It’s A Gift (my favorite of his) on Laserdisc but not DVD. Gotta correct that.
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@bdp24 +1 for Detour, Black Swan, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Touch of Evil, Silence of The Lambs, The Machinist, Rivers Edge, and Shadow Of the Vampire. These are great picks.
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@bdp24
Something Wild (Ray Liotta is great in his role)
Love this movie. Jeff Daniels and Melanie Griffin are terrific as well. Amazing how many great films Jonathan Demme has directed. Another one was Melvin and Howard starring Paul LeMat (from American Graffiti).
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Great Lists. thanks for this post. The Fisher King ..... Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Amanda Plummer........
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So many....The Verdict, Sand Pebbles, Last of the Mohoicans, Twelve Angry Men (w/Henry Fonda), On The Beach (w/Peck), Caine Mutiny. Thirty SecondsOver Tokyo, Bataan.I could go on.
Really sad that the new movies today are aimed at children and idiots.
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Anyone mentioned Dead Man Walking ? Great soundtrack too 👢
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Can't believe I left this off......the recent Ripley series. In B+W, and is better than the Matt Damon movie (which I quite liked. It's a very dark movie, but extremely well done.
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"Mr.Saturday Night" Billy Crystal
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Michael Douglas "Falling Down"
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Good movie, great Herbie Hancock soundtrack! Part II is also good, OST by Jimmy Page.
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For it's Bowie/ Deneuve/ Bauhaus opening scene, and for it's later Iggy Pop ambush I do hold dear The Hunger.
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For it's Bowie/ Deneuve/ Bauhaus opening scene, and for it's later Iggy Pop ambush I do hold dear The Hunger.
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I don't own this one, but have seen it twice and love it:
Hereafter, starring Matt Damon as a true clairvoyant. I watched it not knowing it was directed by Clint Eastwood. Two other favorites by Eastwood are Unforgiven and Gran Torino.
Two movies I really like that star Robin Williams are One Hour Photo and Insomnia, the latter with Al Pacino and Hilary Swank.
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Here are a couple with a musical theme that I would add to my list:
Sid And Nancy (Chloe Webb as Nancy Spungen and Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious) is a classic. I just did a google and Courtney Love had a part that I do not remember, but seeing as how it was about junkies, I am sure she was convincing.
Georgia starring Mare Winningham as the vocally talented Georgia Flood, and Jennifer Jason Leigh as her younger sister, Sadie Flood, who is either of lesser talent or perhaps, in my opinion, talented in a different way. Sadie has demons, that's for sure. And that's an understatement. The movie also features Ted Levine (whose acting I really enjoy) as Georgia's partner, John C Reilley played in the group with Sadie (I think he was the drummer), and Max Perlich played Sadie's boyfriend for a period of the film. This film completely won me over the first time I watched it, and it was one I watched a few more times.
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I love it when horror films are so good that they become real cinema, classics to return to from time to time. 2 recent examples starring the great Maika Monroe:
IT FOLLOWS: The plot is unusually nuanced and thought-provoking. Adolescent sexual longing becomes a metaphor for vulnerability and extreme consequences of opening one’s self up to chance. This was her first film--astounding performance
LONGLEGS: A more overtly horrifying film, but also very atmospheric, menacing and touching the viewer’s subconscious mind. Maika is older and even better, another astonishing performance. The part played by Nicholas Cage is simply beyond belief. I doubt this very strange, surreal actor was ever better used in a film than here.
And a third that starred Scarlett Johansson (so good as a teen actor in THE MAIN WHO WASN'T THERE -- UNDER THE SKIN. This film truly got under my skin and never fully left my mind. I've never seen anything like it. The soundtrack is just as unnerving and brilliant as the film itself.
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I thought Syriana was an intense and well cast movie. I don't always like George Clooney, but I did enjoy his portrayal of the CIA spook who I understand was actually intended to represent Robert Baer. It was a movie I could watch more than once. Matt Damon was good (as usual) in this movie.
I also liked The Kingdom with Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, Jamie Foxx, Danny Huston. . . . I guess I may have enjoyed it because going way back I spent a couple of years as a civilian working in Saudi Arabia, so it took me back a bit . . . but even without that I think I still would have enjoyed it.
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One little film I like is The American. George Clooney stars as a hitman, and though he isn't (imo) very good in the role, the movie is very interesting. I've watched it three times.
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Speaking of George Clooney, I thought that The Ides Of March had a pretty quick moving and tight plot with some good acting by Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marissa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood. . . .
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I don't blame Clooney for being a forgettable actor for acting, his boyish sad smile is sufficient. But I would pick Ocean's 11 and the Descendants as his best
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@grislybutter
Up In The Air was very good. And Out of Sight with JLo was enjoyable fluff, as was Intolerable Cruelty (another Coen Bros movie) with Catherine Zeta- Jones.
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Evil Under the Sun
Babette's Feast
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).