Amph The List Thread: Scenes in Movies You See a Lot on TV but still watch every time you find them on

And you get a cookie, and a nom in the Amphithreatre's Lines of the Week thread...

 

wow. there's a lot of guilt in this thread, nearly all of it unnecessary!

the only one that comes to mind that would cause me some real embarrassment in mixed company would be salo.

 

Next: The First Time I Saw This Movie, I Knew It was Masterpiece List

This is where everything in the movie comes together--direction, script, acting, editing, costumes, cinematography, music, and any faults are few and small...

1. "The Children of Paradise" dir. Marcel Carne--talky but brilliant; character is destiny, and destiny is evil.

2. "Citzen Kane" dir. Orson Welles--a film of great kinetic wit; Welles is only 25 and it shows;

3. "The Godfather" dir. Francis Ford Coppola--like a great novel

4. "The Godfather, Part II" dir. Francis Ford Coppola--like a great sequel to a great novel;

5. "The Empire Strikes Back" dir. Irvin Kershner; here Lucas gets more talented people--than him, that is--to do the work. It pays off;

6. "The Rules of the Game" dir. Jean Renoir--the first time I saw this, my chin hit the ground. Not sure what it's about, but brilliant it is.

7. "The Earrings of Madame de..." dir. Max Ophuls. Romantic tragedy, absurd and painful. Beautifully made; the style exactly matches the content.

8. "8 and a half" dir. Federico Fellini; a film about director's block--satiric and brilliant;

9. "Stagecoach" dir. John Ford--the iconic Western.

10. "The Quiet Man" dir. John Ford, rom com, rustic style;

11. "His Girl Friday" dir. Howard Hawks; screwball farce;

12. "The Wild Bunch" dir. Sam Peckinpah; a melancholy, violent, feral Western;

13. "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" dir. Andrew Dominick--takes its time to get there, but builds to a moving conclusion.

14. "Some Like It Hot" dir. Billy Wilder; screwball farce, Mark #2

15. "Double Indemnity" dir. Billy Wilder, film noir, with great performances, and a sharp eye for the American ethos.

16. "Vertigo" dir. Alfred Hitchcock--dreamlike thriller almost completely lacking Hitchcock's usual elements; his most personal film;

17. "North by Northwest" dir. Alfred Hitchcock--A remake of Hitchcock's early great film "The 39 Steps";

18. "M" dir. Fritz Lang--The protagonist is a serial killer;

19. "Sunrise" dir. F. W. Murnau--silent, but you hardly miss sound;

20. "The Last Laugh" dir. F. W. Murnau--one title in the entire movie. Murnau was a genius.

21. "Day of Wrath" dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer--a film about witch hunting. It's not what you think, however.

22. "Raising Arizona" dir. the Coen Bros. a hillbilly farce with yodeling.

23. "Fargo" dir. the Coen Bros. "And all for a little bit of money...and it's a beautiful day!"

24. "Trouble in Paradise" dir. Ernst Lubitsch--rom com, high style;

25. "The Sweet Smell of Success" dir. Alexander Mackendrick--showbiz is nasty, and Burt Lancaster is beyond nasty;

26. "Black Narcissus" dir. the Archers; hypnotic riotous colour in a film about the wages of repression.

27. "Lawrence of Arabia" dir. David Lean; the desert stars;

28. "Bridge on the River Kwai" dir. David Lean--the competing lunacies of Britain and Japan do battle, to a draw;

 

In recent memory, Children of Paradise, Andrei Rublev, Ordet, ...And Justice for All and Naked would apply.

Crime in the Streets, and Kiarostami's 10 would also apply. And probably The Son as well.

For a more recent film, Exit Through the Gift Shop immediately became my favourite doco ever. For recent narrative features, there have been a handful that I'd put in the upper echelons on first viewing, namely The Social Network, War Horse, and Tyrannosaur.

 

Rogue is a fan of "Naked", too...

 

i am too. saw thewlis in a wholly different light afterwards.

 

WAR HORSE

 

"Fellowship of the Ring": Going in i had my concerns and doubts that Peter Jackson might not be able to pull off LOTR. I admit my buddies and i got a kick out of the director of "DEAD-ALIVE" doing LORD OF THE RINGS (it was one of the most memorable rentals of our lives!), but man.. It seemed like we were asking a lot... I remember the exact moment where i realized this thing was gonna make history: The entire sequence in Balin's Tomb. As they set out, fleeing for the bridge of Khazad?dum, with the score soaring, i realized that this was one heckuva film.

INCEPTION: That hallway fight, man. The last time my jaw was on the floor in a movie theatre.

AVATAR: The scene where Jake has his first flight. I was practically crying in the theatre, it was such a beautiful experience.

 

Oh man, Naked. Yeah, one of the most gripping film experiences I've ever had. Thewlis is like "best male performance of the decade" quality in it. Yup, that's a masterpiece from the word go. Others: Vertigo, The Dark Knight, No Country For Old Men, American Beauty, Casablanca.

 

Also: "Fires on the Plain" It's about cannibalism. You are warned.

 

I'd like to go into discussions but there are too many so here is my grocery list...

A Clockwork Orange.
Jaws.
The Lives of Others.
Star Wars.
The Empire Strikes Back.
Nosferatu.
Dracula.
Frankenstein.
Bride of Frankenstein.
Citizen Kane.
The Godfather.
He Who Gets Slapped
Zodiac
The Producers
The Dark Knight
The Seventh Seal
Inception.
Memento.
The Fellowship of the Ring

 

"He Who Gets Slapped"--yes, that's a good one.

 

Barry Lyndon.

 

Update: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

 

I knew it was great when the credits started and as the days since I saw it have ticked by, it just keeps getting better and better in my mind.

 

Lost in Translation.

Watched it again last night, and it remains as brilliant as it was upon its release. It will always be the real best picture of 2003 in my mind, and it certainly is the best picture of my life so far. I don't expect anything to ever seriously challenge it.

 

I guess art is subjective, indeed.

 

i can't say i've had this happen much at all because i typically watch films after they've gotten all the accolades and i've read a whole bunch about them. there are very few instances in my life where i've walked into a film i know next to nothing about and had this dawning. zodiac was one though. that film had me levitating in-air for most of its running time.

 

Star Wars, of course

Lawrence of Arabia--it was the music and the vast desert landscapes that did it, and it has set the standard for all other "masterpieces" since.

EDIT: I don't think I ever got around to watching Zodiac. I probably should do.

 

Yup, same here. Iglesias' score and the precision framing and the calm, gradual building of that world just burns itself in your memory immediately.

Also, I can't get that final shot out of my head. It's a Crowning Moment of Awesome while also being quietly tragic, all in one. And it's remarkably simple, almost innocuous.

 

I didn't see Lost in Translation until January 31, 2004, which was six months after its release. It was still in regular theaters then, partly because of its Oscar nominations. I was as aware as anyone could have been about its praise, yet I somehow dodged knowing anything essential about what happened in the film, for which I am immensely thankful.

I bought the DVD three days after I saw it. Can't do that anymore.

Ebert's review of it as one of his "great movies" is a must read: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100804/REVIEWS08/100809996/-1

 

Scenes in Movies You See a Lot on TV but still watch every time you find them on...


1. "Do I sould like I'm ordering pizza?!" scene in "Die Hard"

2. The "Men of Harlech" scene in "Zulu"

3. The gunfights in "The Quick and the Dead"

4. Nearly everything in "The Dirty Dozen" up to and including the war games scenes;

5. The guns blow up in "The Guns of Navarone"

6. The 'usual suspect' scenes in "Casablanca"

7. The chariot race in "Ben Hur"

8. The "We Both Reached for the Gun" scene in "Chicago"

9. Ralphie gets his gun in "A Christmas Story"

10. The Wet Bandits invade the home in "Home Alone"

 

Generally I have to sit through the second half of The Birdcage if I catch it on TV. It is a really predictable screwy mistaken identity comedy but Lane is hilarious in it

 

"The Fugitive" up until the escape from the prison on St. Patrick's Day.

 

The Birdcage - absolutely!

Also, the Stephen Sommers remake of The Mummy. Stumbled across it a few weeks ago on TV, round about the time when Rachel Weisz is reading from the book and unwittingly awakening the titular character. I watched it through to the end. How could I not?