From: Rex Broome
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 1999 20:15:27 EDT
Subject: Rex's 10 Films That He Thinks Are Pretty GoodRegarding them there "Top 10 Films of All Time" lists:
Well, it must be said that I appear to have far less mainstream tastes than most of you (or perhaps just more eclectic; I dunno). My other big disclaimer is that I doubt that I could really put together a real "Top 10" list, for a number of reasons. Most importantly, I feel it's inane to posit a "10 Best" of anything when the whole idea of "best" (at least where art & entertainment are concerned) is by definition a matter of subjective opinion. It follows that most attempts to argue these kinds of points are more or less akin to juvenile pissing matches based on emotional, unreasoned loyalties (you know, "My dad can beat up your dad", "Ford vs. Chevy", etc.)... Oh, and one more personal caveat: rare is the film that I have seen more than twice, at least since my teenage years. I listen to records over and over again; that can at least be a passive experience, but films and novels seem to me to demand ones full attention (if they're any good, that is). So while I've seen a hell of a lot of movies, I'm always conscious that there are millions I haven't seen, many of them alleged masterworks, so I almost always opt for a new experience rather than revisiting an old favorite. I think I have it in the back of my mind that someday, in my dotage, I'll be able to sort through everything I've seen and make the real, final pronouncements of ultimate greatness. Then and only then I'll start watching the really good stuff ad nauseum (because maybe when I'm that old, TV resolution won't be the joke it has been for the past 50 years...)
That said, what I did here was jot down a list of about 35 films which seemed important and also pretty great to me, just off the top of my head, and whittled it down to 10 which A) I thought I wanted to say something about, and B) hadn't been mentioned often. In alphabetical order, then:
1) Bedazzled. Yep, one of my faves has Dudley Moore as the lead. If you're not familiar with Moore's early work with Peter Cook, that may seem insane, but if you have the slightest interest in absurdist British humour like Monty Python or Douglas Adams, you owe it to yourself to check out this crazed swingin' '60's vintage take on the Faust story. It makes it clear that Moore & Cook were the missing link between Sellars and Python; here they're easily equal to the best of both. The title song alone is worth the price of admission. If you dig Austin Powers, here's the genuine article for you.
2) Delicatessen. Jeunet & Caro made a much bigger splash with the more expansive and quite swell City of Lost Children, but I prefer this, their more scaled-down but equally quirky debut. (It's a personal tic of mine; I also believe that the original Terminator handily mops the floor with its mega-budget sequel.) Set almost entirely within an apartment building, its brilliant visual design nonetheless conveys a whole world's worth of post-apocalyptic imagery. The claustrophobic setting also means that the art direction and camerawork are not so much showy in and of themselves, but used to develop the characters, portrayed by a wonderfully expressive cast of comic actors, and provide a number of unforgettable set pieces. This film is also dear to my heart because I discovered it while living in Paris, during its original release, while it was doing merely so-so business. I saw it without subtitles, and my just-passable French was no obstacle to becoming thoroughly engrossed in this little gem. That's high praise indeed.
3) Fireworks. I'd have a hard time deciding whether Beat Takeshi's Fireworks or Soderberg's Out of Sight was my favorite film of last year. But Takeshi's other '98 release, Sonatine, was easily my third favorite, so I'm going to give the man his due and include this one. Okay, maybe it's just me, but I'm burned out on gangster films of both the Coppola- and Tarantino-derived stripes, and it takes something truly fresh to really involve me in yet another guys, guns Īn' guts picture. Takeshi does it here by injecting a breathtaking lyricism into a deceptively simple tale, and controlling it to the point where it not only coexists with the borderline nihilism of its protagonist, it becomes an intrinsic part of an inseparable whole. The film effortlessly achieves that fusion of the brutal and the beautiful that so many filmmakers struggle towards in vain. Takeshi is a real auteur, and makes quite an impression as his own lead, but whoever that actress playing his mute wife was deserves 10,000 Oscars.
4) Out of Sight. This is simply the most perfect straight-up Hollywood film in ages, grossly neglected by the public and the academy. It should not be as startling as it is to see a film that is smart enough to remember that crackling dialogue and good old fashioned romantic chemistry are all it takes, but that's what we've got here, and what a breath of fresh air it is. The sparks that fly between George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez here made me into an instant fan of two performers to whom I'd previously been rather indifferent. Steven Soderberg cashes in his chips and makes the movie we always know he could, and the goes us one better by crafting a classic. The only bad thing about Out of Sight is that it makes you hate every other recent Hollywood romance that much more. I'm not convinced we deserve this film.
5) Raise the Red Lantern. Okay, I'm a sucker for visual metaphor, and films that do the kinds of things only films can do, like the creation of a contained, controlled environment that constitutes a world of its own. That means I'm always interested in the latest experiments of freaks as diverse as Peter Greenaway, Lars Von Triers and Tim Burton, just to name a few. But those types of geniuses seem too easily distracted by their own cleverness, too often at the expense of emotional resonance. Zhang Yimou has no such problem here. Raise the Red Lantern is almost mathematically precise in its construction, and yet it's beautifully, gut-wrenchingly involving and rich in feeling; credit that to the director's wonderful sympatico with his lead, the amazing Gong Li. This is the kind of film I dream of making.
6) The Red Shoes. My wife introduced me to this one, and it is a trip; I include it largely to implore those of you who haven't seen it to seek it out. Unquestionably the most psychedelic film to be released in 1948, this Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger extravaganza (there is no other word) would be enjoyable enough just for its mind-boggling visuals and proto-camp melodrama. But there's also something very real at the core, especially if you've ever tried to balance romance with a deeply felt artistic calling. If you get the chance to see it on the big screen, do not pass it up.
7) Stop Making Sense. Since so much of my life is devoted to expending too much intellectual energy on both movies and rock & roll, you can bet that's its singularly vexing to me that almost every attempted synthesis of the two has sucked major ass. You've got Elvis movies, overblown rockumentaries (take Rattle & Hum, PLEASE), lousy vanity projects for rockers trying to act (a genre which has given rise to such diverse abominations as Freejack, Labyrinth, and Shanghai Surprise), and their inverse, films featuring movie stars embarrassingly pretending to be able to play guitar in a band with no bass player while you clearly hear a bass on the soundtrack (check out Jack Nicholson in Psyche Out). Add to these such hideously masturbatory biopics as The Doors, and most recently the crassly commercial modern day phenomenon of selling films based on "soundtracks" of songs "from and inspired by" (read: "from or performed by artists on a record label owned by the same multinational corporate entity as the distributor of") the film, and you've got bad news all around. The exceptions that prove the rule are the pretension-puncturing This is Spinal Tap, and this film, Stop Making Sense, wherein Jonathan Demme takes the unorthodox step of just turning a buch of cameras on a great band at the peak of its powers-- Talking Heads-- and lets them play a fantastic show. Whaddaya know, it works! Visceral and smart at the same time, it's an exciting work that even non-Heads fans can get caught up in. It makes you wanna go see a concert, that's for sure.
8) 2001: A Space Odyssey. I assume you all know why this film is great, and also that you can understand why Kubrick must be represented here. But my personal attachment has to do with the fact that this is the first film I saw on the big screen outside of its original run. When I was growing up, it was a 45-minute drive to see ANY movie, and then you had the choice only of the #2 - #9 top grossing films that week. Video was a saving grace; my family had two VCR's before most people had one, and we pirated shitloads of stuff, three films to a tape. I had seen 2001 on tape many a time and it was already a favorite when I moved to LA at the ripe old age of 18. My first week on campus at USC, I heard of a screening of 2001 at the campus theatre, and, unable to interest anyone else, I went by myself and sat right in the front row center. It's hard to describe how exciting this was; I guess I knew of the existence of repertory theatres, but it was a completely different thing to actually see an "old" film, in giant cinemascope no less, unfold for me and me and me alone. By the time I was craning my neck to look up the face of the monolith at the sunrise, something equally big had happened to me inside. Can't watch this one on TV anymore.
9) Waiting for Guffman. Yes, Spinal Tap is brilliant, but it had a dino-size target and all its best bits have been run into the ground-- if you don't believe me, join a rock band and see how fast "this goes to 11" gets old. So for now, give me Guffman. Maybe you have to have been around small-town theatre to realize how dead-on this film is. The performances are just plain incandescent here. Chris Guest is brilliant and gets the most memorable lines-- "I hate your ass face!" and whatnot-- but every character here is remarkably real and finely developed, clearly existing on levels outside the loose framework of the film. It's particularly gratifying to me to see SCTV'ers Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara not only back, but in top form, and to see the less comedy-improv-oriented Parker Posey and Bob Balaban more than equal to the task of hanging with the very best. SCTV's Dave Thomas recently wrote that the brilliant comics of SCTV and early SNL all have to live with the private knowledge that, however much money they make on Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Ghostbusters, they did their best work early on in late night TV, making fun of the kind of crap that they now purvey. Guffman shows that that just plain doesn't have to be the case.
10) Yojimbo. I love almost every Kurosawa film I've seen, but this one particularly stands out in my mind for a number of reasons. First of all, it's structurally airtight without being overly mannered. Repeated viewings allow you to appreciate ever more the craftsmanship without detracting in the least from the emotional impact or the humor. That to me is a sign of ultimate greatness and grace - I've made that clear by now, I'm sure-- and here it's largely a credit to the characterizations and the performances (Mifune's recent death was a rough one for me). This film also occupies a kind of unique cultural niche: the space where Samurai cinema was showing the influence of westerns, and westerns in turn were about to be reconfigured in the Samurai mold. There's a very special feeling to that place.
Honorable Mentions:
Apocalypse Now. Most devastating war film bar none, in my opinion, owing equally to the astute decision to rely on a perfect literary framework in Heart of Darkness, and the less well-advised circumstances of a director having a psychological meltdown every bit as harrowing as his story's antagonist's.
Blade Runner/Brazil. Heretical to glom them together, I'm sure, but the influence of these two great pictures is so prevalent that it's easy to forget that they're not only seminal, but infinitely superior to even the best of their progeny. Just wait until the next so-called definitive director's cut of either comes around - take a look and see how quickly you forget about The Matrix. (I must admit, however, that Time Bandits is my favorite Gilliam film.)
Blue Velvet. David Lynch's best film was a rallying point for budding cineastes of my age, at a time when we all seemed to realize that we were ready to graduate from genre rubbish. So what if we just moved on to a more abstract grade of trash? It was a key roadsign for us.
Jerusalem. I have little to add to Audra's description of this wonderful film, other than to ask - what the hell was Jesus up to?
The Kingdom I & II. The best TV I've ever seen on the big screen, a gripping Danish equal to the best of its spiritual kin "The Prisoner", "Twin Peaks" and "The X-Files".
To Die For. An overlooked comic tour-de-force and my unlikely pick for best Gus Van Sant film.
Unforgiven. Smartest Western I've ever seen and my gateway to realizing that Clint Eastwood is a genius, not a yahoo, which has yielded rich rewards. (Didja know: "Clint Eastwood" is an anagram for "Old West Action"!!!)
Others, including The Empire Strikes Back, Jaws, Manhattan, Midnight Cowboy, Raising Arizona, The Road Warrior, Tampopo etc. about which much eloquent ink has been spilled already.Whew! If you've made it this far, here's a bonus: my 10 favorite records, culled from my library of 1,500 odd CD's and in approximate order:
1) Loveless, My Bloody Valentine
2) Fables of the Reconstruction, R.E.M.
3) Throwing Muses, Throwing Muses
4) Rust Never Sleeps, Neil Young & Crazy Horse
5) Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan
6) Sister, Sonic Youth
7) Blue Lines, Massive Attack
8) Marquee Moon, Television
9) Remain in Light, Talking Heads
10) When I Was Born for the 7th Time, Cornershop
A topic for future discussion, eh?
Thanks for yr patience!
Yr Pal,
Rex