MY TOP TEN MOVIES

 

RANGE-FINDING

Like most people, I’m fairly partial to movies and have been ever since I was a sprog. Movies operate on lots of different levels- even the bad ones- and I’ve always thought that they are markers for the societies in which they’ve been developed and made. They might not be mirrors but they don’t have to be. Revisionism, back mapping and brazen opinion often fill that void.

One of the first movies that I can remember was The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and it left an almost permanent post-it note on my skull regarding the power of movie making. The gill man scared my pants off as he lurked amongst the underwater reeds while an unaware Julia Adams activated a weird type of Australian crawl/ backstroke combo on the surface above. To a seven year old, the lass was not so much shapely as potential bait for the terror below. Strategic bubble-generating and the murky lagoon value-add to the experience.

But terror is only one attention-getter. Working out what the apes signified in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), attempting to tag Burt Lancaster’s motivation in The Swimmer (1968) and wondering whether Gregory Peck and Diane Baker will find true happiness in a mixed up New York City (Mirage- 1965) all bring ambiguity, dissonance and complexity to a vacant two or three hours.

Even the ordinary can be fascinating at the movies. Ernest Borgnine’s Marty (1955) and that Oz staple, The Castle (1997), portray punters facing complications that are not easily manoeuvred around. Resolution comes at a price and it’s often a choc top followed by coffee debriefing once the curtains have been drawn.

I’m from simple stock and I’m buggered if I know what makes a great movie. Simon Cade (from the DSLR Guide) lists script, character, acting, timing, sound and visuals as the essential building blocks. Ted Hope (2009) illuminates 32 (yes 32!) qualities including ‘singularity’ and ‘emotional use of technique’. Jean Cocteau once alleged that a top shelf flick ….. is a petrified fountain of thought while Tarantino divulges that ….if a million people see my movie, I hope they see a million different movies. ‘Film-making 101’ appears to have competing primers to say the least.

However, the ten films I’ve listed below have all had one effect on me as a viewer and that entailed immersion. They left an aftertaste that sticks and that’s why they’re IN.

THE FILMS

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

When you have a western that’s not a western with a cast that includes Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin, you just know that something grand’s about to happen. Add the director John Sturges to the mix and Escape from Fort Bravo and Gunfight at the OK Corral will have to take their seats in the back stalls.

Bad Day at Black Rock is pure dress circle and epic in both malice and drama. Set in 1945, Black Rock’s secret starts to reveal itself through Tracy’s nosing around but not before Ryan, Borgnine and Marvin form a terrifying defensive block to the one-armed hero. The CinemaScope format heightens the battle and the whole film pulsates with an atmosphere of confrontation. I’ll leave the argument about whether it’s a film noir or not to others higher up on the intelligence scale.

The skill of some sequences, the mood and the symbiosis between man and nature makes this film sometimes superior to ‘High Noon’. (G.N. Fenin)

The Night of the Hunter (1955)

Charles Laughton’s one attempt at playing the real life role of director. The film’s release garnered a lukewarm reception from critics and audiences and Laughton would never again be seated at the puppeteer’s chair based on this reaction.

It’s a pity. By my reckoning, this is the greatest movie ever made. The Night of the Hunter is an extraordinary film which explores good, evil, love, hate, black, white, depravity, humanity and any other dichotomy you can think of. Much of the film’s notoriety rests on Robert Mitchum’s psychotic Reverend Powell character but Shelley Winters’ performance is stunning and unfortunately cut short by her relatively early exit from the payroll.

I’m tempted to suggest that only an actor of Laughton’s standing could direct a film so graphically and expertly. There’s an eight minute sequence where Mitchum is chasing the kiddies across the countryside and Laughton depicts it in fairy tale mode without losing one ounce of terror and menace in the pursuit. The monochrome world of the sound stages used in these scenes (at the director’s insistence) enhances the tension and effect.

The Night of the Hunter is Charles Laughton’s film and it’s jaw-dropping.

One of the most daring, eloquent and personal films to have come from America in a long time. (Derek Prouse)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)

If the dot point of ‘performance’ is any indicator of a great film, then Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton drag Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? into the upper atmosphere. Taylor is astounding and Burton’s not far behind. Their interplay as a middle-aged married couple coming to grips with the state of play in their lives forms the foundation for a late night debriefing with the younger Sandy Dennis and George Segal as unwilling counterpoints. Dennis won an academy award as best supporting actress but the whippersnappers really just witness the action taking place.

A magnificent triumph of determined audacity. (Bosley Crowther)

Blow-up (1966)

Any attempt at a precis for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up should be resisted. Originally marketed as the Italian director’s first major English production which highlighted ‘swinging sixties’ London, Blow-up challenges even its own publicity.

There’s a tangible ‘feel’ to this movie that permeates the locations and the players. The signature scene where David Hemmings keeps on enlarging photographs to peg some unscrupulous behaviour is dramatic, exciting and remarkable all in one. Whether you buy into the ‘reality’ versus ‘fantasy’ explanation or perhaps the ‘image’ against ‘reality’ take, the movie itself stands as one of the best pieces of cinema that I’ve encountered. Antonioni, after all, may be having the last laugh.

It was the most sophisticated film I’d ever seen. Though I couldn’t claim to have understood it, I knew I was on to something. (Jon Dennis)

Five Easy Pieces (1970)

Whether Five Easy Pieces has a place in the vanguard of a new age of stateside film-making is debatable but its significance has everything to do with Jack Nicholson and the powerhouse performance he delivers in his first starring role.

A road trip of sorts, Five Easy Pieces highlights a vapid America that reflects Nicholson’s own journey and both are infected by the past. A career best effort from Karen Black only adds to the whole show. The final scene in the movie says it all. Brilliant.

‘Five Easy Pieces’ has the complexity, the nuance, the depth, of the best fiction. (Roger Ebert)

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Often referenced as a superior ‘coming of age’ narrative, even a cursory viewing of The Last Picture Show should demonstrate that it is much more than that. Bogdanovich presents themes of change and decay as the backdrops to every scene within the film.

You wouldn’t believe how this country’s changed. Sam’s monologue by the fishing tank ranks as one fine example of movie ‘art’ in my humble opinion. Barren and denuded landscapes litter the two hour journey and there’s an unrelenting sense of remorse throughout…and it’s compelling. The American dream may not be assassinated but it’s seriously bullied.

Colour always had a tendency to prettify, and I didn’t want that. I didn’t want it to be a nostalgic piece. (Peter Bogdanovich)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

From all accounts, the making of Apocalypse Now amounted to a shambles. Budget overruns, cast problems and the odd on-location heart attack peppered the burgeoning production time lines. Moreover, the film-making chaos was reflected in the movie itself.

Nothing can prepare you for Apocalypse Now. Insanity, dread, stoner lingo, tribes, debauchery and even tigers present themselves as hashtags to this almost three hour epic. Marlon Brando is awful but that’s trumped by a stellar performance from Martin Sheen.

Francis Coppola reckoned that the first half of the film followed a storyline while the second half was more of an ‘experience’. It really doesn’t matter what the label is because Apocalypse Now is irresistible with any prompt.

‘Apocalypse Now’ is not merely the greatest film to come out of the Vietnam experience but one of the great works about the madness of our times. (Philip French)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Pulp Fiction is all over the place and that is where its strength lies. Quentin Tarantino uses every film-making trick in the book to entice, immerse and shock the audience. I’m pretty sure that you could run a training and development conference based solely on discreet scenes from this movie and it wouldn’t much matter what the theme of that conference might be.

Pulp Fiction moves mountains in terms of entertainment and the eclectic cast enhances the whole thing. It’s almost impossible to sit through the extravaganza and not wonder who could have thought all of this stuff up.

A very funky, American sort of pop masterpiece, improbable, uproarious, with bright colours and danger and blood right on the surface. (David Denby)

L.A. Confidential (1997)

There’s a perceptible mood throughout L.A. Confidential that captures a city on the verge of becoming a metropolis and the profile isn’t all positive. It’s a cops and gangster film for sure but the content sample includes a lot more than guns going off and punters hitting the pavement.

Wonderful performances from Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe as good cop/ bad cop cut-outs in many ways reflect the nature and competing banners of the 1950s America portrayed in the film. There’s something quite unsettling about ‘orange groves’ bordering dope dens and Curtis Hanson exploits this to full effect.

It’s a movie of shadows and half lights, the best approximation of the old black-and-white noir look anyone has yet managed on colour stock. But it’s no idle exercise in style. (Richard Schickel)

Trumbo (2015)

Trumbo channels the role of the media, duplicity, subterfuge, the Hollywood Ten, Hedda Hopper, a cold war, the foibles of democracy and, of course, Dalton Trumbo himself……and that’s just for starters.

Criticised for misrepresenting the witch hunts of the late 1940s and 1950s, Trumbo, at worst, portrays an era where marginalisation was the key game play and you have to ponder whether we’re revisiting those times over half a century later. Now there’s a complication in itself.

Roach’s film may be light in places….. but any reminder of the past and its impact on the future is a welcome one. (Bill Goodykoontz)

TO CONCLUDE

If you ask me tomorrow, my ten may be quite different. The notion of a ‘top ten’ in anything- especially the arts- is pretty silly. Maybe my choices are a function of my age or leanings. Who knows? But they’re all great films and worthy of investigation.