5) JFK: It still shocks me to think about the number of times I've seen Oliver Stone's three-and-a-half hour cut of this film. Five times, at least, and portions of it another five. I could watch the scene with Donald Sutherland's Mr. X every day for a year and never grow tired of it. I can't think of a film more packed with expository dialogue, and yet Stone's direction, combined with Robert Richardson's Oscar-winning photography and Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia's editing (they also won Oscars), makes this film absolutely riveting. And it irritates me, nay... infuriates me, that the film is so casually disregarded by so many for it's factual inaccuracies. Look- Oliver Stone doesn't know who killed Kennedy, and he doesn't think he knows who killed Kennedy. What he does is present you with ALL of the things conspiracy theorists point to when making their case (and subsequently published an annotated script indicating the sources- reputable or not- for everything in the script), and says IF some version of this happened, what responsibility would we, as Americans, have to the truth? Never has a film captured the political complexity of the time so completely, and used it as a reflection America's growing distrust of its government. Was Kennedy assassinated? Who knows. But shouldn't we be asking questions like that? Challenging? Demanding answers? Stone clearly feels that it's part of our responsibility as Americans, and so does the astonishing cast he put together (6 Oscar winners among them), and so do I. This is one of the great American films of my lifetime.

4) Annie Hall: A romantic comedy where they don't get together at the end. Not many filmmakers have the guts to do that at all. But only Woody Allen could do it and make it romantic, hysterical, full of outlandish characters that shatter the fourth wall, and yet get at some real truth about the way things work between men and women. The sad truth of it is, it takes more than love to make a relationship work, and the smallest things, minor insecurities ("You don't think I'm smart enough for you!") or personality flaws ("I have to see a movie exactly from the beginning to the end because I'm anal."), can wreck an otherwise happy couple. It's the kind of thing that never happens to Julia Roberts or Hugh Grant, but happens to real people all the time, and that's what Allen gets exactly right here. Crimes and Misdemeanors is deeper, Love and Death is funnier, Manhattan is more romantic, but Annie Hall strikes the perfect balance between all these elements, and that definitely makes it my favorite Allen movie. Well, at least five days a week.

3) The Godfather Part II: Two words, folks. Al. Pacino. I've thought quite a bit about this, and his performance in this film is the finest piece of film acting I have ever seen. Better than Brando in the first one. Better than DeNiro's performance as the young Vito, which won him an Oscar. I actually think the flashbacks bog the film down a bit, although the juxtaposition of Vito's rise to power and Michael's downfall are part of what makes the film so brilliant. But let me give you an example of how good Pacino is in the part. After someone tries to assassinate Michael, he first goes to Hyman Roth and tells him calmly that he knows it was Frank Pantangelli that tried to have him killed. Then he goes to Pantangelli, and nearly explodes with fury ("In my HOME! In my bedroom! Where my wife sleeps! Where my children play with their toys!") while telling him that Roth is the one that tried to kill him. Watching it the first time, you're not sure which story is true. But the truth is in the delivery; with Roth, he's got his poker face on. With Pantangelli, he lets his emotions show, and we know with certainty that it was really Roth. And is there a more haunting shot in all of film than Michael sitting on the bench at the end, just broken. Intricate, brilliant, character-driven, and ambiguous in all the right ways... God, I love this movie.

Posted in Moviegasm by Sutter Cane at 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Last Comment: Vic on May 15, 2007 08:15 PM.

Comments (8)

Donna Martin Graduates! :

Thanks for sharing your top ten flicks of all time... it's a tuff thing to compile.

I have a top ten of comedies (Blazing Saddles, Fish Called Wanda, Some Like it Hot, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and Ferris Bueller's Day Off all make that list).

Top ten of westerns include Red River, Stagecoach, High Noon, The Searchers, Unforgiven...

Top ten thrillers include -- well, almost anything by Hitchcock, also In the Line of Fire, Silence of the Lambs, Alien 1 & 2 (I do like 'em all except Fincher's) plus lots of other flicks...

Basically there are a bunch of films that, if I am clicking through channels and come upon them, I am compelled to watch unto the end.

These include Goodfellas, Casino, Mean Streets, Apocalypse Now, Godfather Part II -- probably one of the best sequels ever made, along with Mad Max II -- Pulp Fiction (which I was lucky to see at its debut at Cannes) 400 Blows, Jaws, virtually any Bond movie, well, the list goes on... Loads of foreign film classics -- too numerous to mention.

My all time fave film *EVA* is Lawrence of Arabia, which I recently caught again in 70mm at the Egyptian cinema (LA) the other day.

Sheer brilliance.

Even on the small screen!

1 of 8 | Posted by Donna Martin Graduates! | Posted on May 10, 2007 5:56 PM

shia0bundan:

I think Godfather 2 should top that list with Godfather 1 as second ;P

Oh yeah. I don't like Jaws. Mostly because I'm young and cheesy/bad special effects are pretty alien to me.

2 of 8 | Posted by shia0bundan | Posted on May 11, 2007 8:25 PM

lesfull :

No offense to anyone, but it always really bothers me when someone says they think the special effects in JAWS are cheesy. The magic of that movie is that are very few special effects used. The mechanial shark is rarely used and most of the shots we see are of real great white sharks and very few people I know are able to tell the difference. I'm probably biased though, because JAWS is my absolute favorite movie of all time as well, and for all the reasons that the writer so brilliantly stated. Great top five, I mut say.

3 of 8 | Posted by lesfull | Posted on May 12, 2007 7:01 AM

Donna Martin Graduates! :

Also in defense of Jaws, this is definitely a movie that had a great deal of impact at the time of its release. Namely, in striking terror into the hearts of pretty well anyone who likes to swim at the beach, which is, uh, pretty well everyone.

For several years after this movie came out, I believe thousands upon thousands of sharks were randomly slaughtered by (amateur) fishermen/average joes and jills, convinced that sharks were evil and had to be destroyed. Such was the power of this story.

The bit with the severed head gets me *every single time*

Jaws is more about deftly handled suspense than anything else, from the terrifying midnight dip that opens the film onwards.

Also, the speech Robert Shaw (Quint) gives about the forgotten seamen who perished in the shark infested waters (an historical tragedy involving the crew of the USS Indianapolis) is truly chilling.

They just don't allow the time and breathing space in contemporary movies for speeches as long and as powerful as that any more, which is a damn shame.

Thanks very much for the Western rec, Sutter. I may have seen parts of Ride the High Country in passing on Turner, but I'll have to make a point of checking it out properly.

4 of 8 | Posted by Donna Martin Graduates! | Posted on May 12, 2007 11:08 AM

lesfull:

Amen, DMG!

5 of 8 | Posted by lesfull | Posted on May 13, 2007 1:23 AM

shia0bundan:

I understand what ur saying.

Just sayin', the terror factor is hard to relate to anyone born in the late 80's when its put up next to a bunch of better thrillers that came out afterwards.

I will admit. It scared me when I first watched it (like 5 years old?) I was all GAH SHARKS! refused to take a bath because I thought the sharks might jump out of the faucet and eat me.

But next/last time I watched Jaws was probably when I was 16 and I was just like. Wow. Total, unbelievable crap and unnecessary shark hating!

No offense to you all. I know that we all like movies of our time... I'm gonna be that one person that awlays insists that The Sixth Sense is one of the best movies of all time when everyone else is like, what huh?

6 of 8 | Posted by shia0bundan | Posted on May 13, 2007 10:40 AM

Vic:

The best stuff in Jaws doesn't even involve the shark anyway! It's the characters! 2001 and Jaws are definitely in my top 10.

7 of 8 | Posted by Vic | Posted on May 15, 2007 8:09 PM

Vic:

My top 10 btw: Jaws, Magnolia, 2001, Cinema Paradiso, Once Upon a Time in the West, Goodfellas, Brazil, Vertigo, 8 1/2, and Boogie Nights.

8 of 8 | Posted by Vic | Posted on May 15, 2007 8:15 PM

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