From: Mike Donahue
Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 18:40:10 EDT
Subject: Re: (More than) ten movies I dig
Movies that I think are among the best I've ever seen, although many of them are remembered from long ago viewings... and I've left out Lawrence and Star Wars and Wild Bunch, and the other most "obvious" ones I think you've already seen.
Oil for the Lamps of China... 1935, dir Mervyn Leroy w/ Pat O'Brien, Josephine Hutchinson... truthfully, I don't remember everything about the movie, but I do remember I cried the whole way through. I'm a sentimental fool I guess.
The Good Earth Paul Muni & Luise Rainier. Although you have to go very far in 1999 to ignore the fact that Paul Muni is playing Chinese, the film is astonishing, and Muni wasn't playing a stereotype, he was playing a man. Luise Rainier won an Oscar for her role... the best reason to see the movie, it is a tearjerker.
Galipoli - dir Peter Weir, w/ Mark Lee, Mel Gibson... Brilliant film, absolutely devastating. Perhaps my very favorite film of all time- but only on the wide screen, perhaps letterbox DVD.
Billy Budd- dir Peter Ustinov w/ Terence Stamp. If you don't get the big deal about Terence Stamp, you will after you view this movie. One of the few B&W cinemascope films, for the big screen or letterbox DVD.
Phantom of the Paradise- w/ Paul Williams presaged the Rocky Horror Picture Show. brilliant and funny. "Carburetors man, that's what life is all about."
And while we're on Brian De Palma, how about Casualties of War brilliant for its casting of Michael J. Fox. yes, really.
Day For Night Truffaut... the best film about film.
Targets, by Bogdanovich, with Boris Karloff. The second best film about film. Can you say Littleton, Colorado?
The Outlaw Josey Wales dir Clint Eastwood,
Unforgiven, dir Clint EastwoodOnly Angels Have Wings.. dir Howard Hawks w/ Jean Arthur and Cary Grant. The original Indiana Jones film. YES, really.
The Sergio Leone films
The Good the Bad and the Ugly
and Once Upon a Time in the West
The Man Who would be King dir John Huston
w Sean Connery and Michael CaineThe Manchurian Candidate
dir John Frankenheimer w/ Frank SinatraBonnie & Clyde Arthur Penn w/ Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. for the way they look at each other. Dunaway has never revealed so much before or since.
Black Narcissus Michael Powell w/ Sabu. India, on a London Soundstage. amazing.
Dirty Harry... Don Siegel, Clint Eastwood mostly for its brilliant photography and use of camera and San Francisco. And while we're on the subject of San Francisco
Experiment In Terror w/ Glenn Ford and Lee Remick GREAT score by Henry Mancini.
The Year of Living Dangerously. WOW...
Guilty Pleasures...
Shark's Treasure
Assault on a Queen
The Oscar
Tony Rome
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
The Longest Day (for John Wayne throwing the coffee cup)
Kiss Me Stupid