So, without further ado, my ten favorite films, listed alphabetically:
I believe this was the first of Werner Herzog's fiction films I saw, and it was definitely the first time I saw Klaus Kinski. It follows the travels of a legion of 16th century Spanish conquistadors down the Amazon river in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado. It is largely based on fact. This film is haunting, beautiful, ugly, absurd and insane. It truly, perhaps more than any other film, captures the madness of the human condition. There are so many unforgettable scenes and images.
It opens with the conquistadors slowly making their way down a narrow, winding mountain path through the jungle, with the mountaintops shrouded in mist. They are dressed in full armor, carrying cannon. Their women, dressed in finery, are born along in sedan chairs. Thus adorned for the royal court, they descend into the heart of the jungle. The music, by progressive German band Popol Vuh (named for the Mayan mytho-historical narrative, including the Creation and the Deluge) is eerie and ethereal.
The expedition is taken over by the madman Aguirre. Aguirre's legendary monologue:
"I am the great traitor. There must be no other. Anyone who even thinks about deserting this mission will be cut up into 198 pieces. Those pieces will be stamped on until what is left can be used only to paint walls. Whoever takes one grain of corn or one drop of water more than his ration, will be locked up for 155 years. If I, Aguirre, want the birds to drop dead from the trees... then the birds will drop dead from the trees. I am the wrath of god. The earth I pass will see me and tremble."
Perhaps the most unforgettable scene for me is when the expedition encounters a native, who gestures vaguely down the river when asked where the city of gold is. They are prepared to part on good terms, when the monk halts them. "Wait." he says "We must tell him about the Lord." He is shown a Bible and told it is the word of God. He holds it to his ear and says he doesn't hear anything. They kill him for blasphemy. If there is a better encapsulation of the absurdity of our civilization, I haven't seen it.
There is a horse, also adorned in royal colors, aboard their raft. Aguirre becomes enraged, punches it in the face, and throws it over the side. I can never forget the image of the horse, standing motionless on the riverbank, seen from the perspective of the raft, slowly drifting out of sight and being swallowed by the jungle. On the commentary track, Herzog says that this shot is an example of why he is a filmmaker: that this shot is a type of art which you could not duplicate in any other art form. Only in film could this exist.
The film depicts madness, and it was madness. During filming, the notoriously unstable Kinski jumped up screaming in the middle of the night, enraged at a loud card game in the neighboring tent, and began blindly firing a rifle through the tent wall. He threatened to walk off the film many times, and this was no empty threat, as he had done this several times before and shut down several productions. Bear in mind here the incredible amount of pain and effort that had already gone into the intensely difficult shoot. By his own admission, Herzog could have shot the film a day or so outside the capitol, but he believes in "the voodoo of location", so they were really shooting in the heart of the jungle, really experiencing what the characters were experiencing. The famous story is that Herzog forced Kinski to continue filming at gunpoint. On the commentary track, Herzog says it did not happen exactly like this, he only threatened to shoot Kinski and was not holding a gun at the time. But, he notes, he was not joking. He absolutely would have shot him. "And somehow the bastard knew I'd do it."
Slowly, the river claims them. Men fall dead, hit by arrows from the riverbanks, the attackers unseen. Finally only Aguirre is left, and he declares he will impregnate his own daughter and found the purest dynasty the world has ever known. The raft is overrun by tiny screeching monkeys, and the film ends with the camera spinning around and around the raft, while Aguirre stumbles like a drunk, covered in monkeys.
"That man is a head taller than me. That may change." - Aguirre
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Would you care to see my teenage years? Here they are. Never has a movie spoken to me so personally. None of the events or characters are parallel, but the lifestyle, the attitudes, and the feeling is my life. I could have been a character in this movie. If I had to pick one, Michael Pitt as Donny is the closest to me. This is set in central Florida, where I grew up, and although it's in a much more affluent area than I'm from, I knew every one of these kids. Especially Donny, and especially Heather, as she's from the wrong side of the tracks anyway. I knew a lot of Heathers.
Remember the line from Fight Club "Our Great Depression is our lives."? That was the theory. This is the practice. This is one of two movies I can say define nihilism (the other being Gaspar Noe's I Stand Alone), and I know that because I lived it. This depicts a life with no ideals, no beliefs, no ambitions, no convictions, no anything but a bottomless emptiness. You satisfy this emptiness on a moment to moment basis, with drugs, sex, cruelty, violence... anything to make you feel something, just for a moment, because there's nothing to feel. Watch the parents in this. None of them are bad parents, except that they are oblivious. They know nothing of their children or their children's lives, but they sleep soundly, because the truth is out of their sight. Until it isn't. That's so true to life.
Ironically, the only one who seems to have a parent who cares and takes an active interest in his life is Bobby, the titular bully. He's played by Nick Stahl, and it's truly one of the great unheralded villain performances I can think of. I like bullies as characters, when they're young. They're very emotionally complex characters. Kiefer Sutherland as Ace Merrill in Stand By Me is probably my favorite cinematic bully, but Nick Stahl here as Bobby Kent is right up there. He's such a perfect bastard, but Stahl wisely makes him, if not exactly likeable, at least charismatic. There must be some reason these people even associate with him. I would say he's undeniably funny, usually at others' expense. And in the scenes with Bobby's dad, you get a sense of another side of him. People are very, very rarely just one thing, and this film shows that.
When the idea of murder comes up, it's treated with no more significance than anything else. This emptiness is real. That's what scares people about this story (which is true), but as someone who's been there, I can tell you it's just telling the truth. This could have easily happened to me, and the only reason it didn't, is that it didn't. It's a serious, disturbing film, but elements of it are also very funny. Leo Fitzpatrick is frankly hilarious in this, playing another character who I absolutely knew in real life: someone who is 100% full of shit. The soundtrack is full of rap glorifying violence, sex and money, and it, like everything else in this film, is totally accurate. The break comes with the use of Fatboy Slim's "Song For Shelter", which closes out the film. This is one of the best uses of an existing song on a soundtrack I've ever seen. The way the sound juxtaposes with the images, and the dialogue which is slowly overcome by the music until all you hear is the closing crescendo, and the significance of what you're seeing and what you have seen sinks in. It's one of the most powerful endings to a film I can recall, made more so by the fact that all of the dialogue in the final scene is totally factual, from the actual court transcripts. It's all a game until someone gets hurt... except I don't think it was ever a game.
"I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing here, I didn't do shit, I don't know what I'm fucking here for..." - Donny Semenec
Con Air (1997)
I saw Con Air in the theater six times. Still a personal record. I love action movies; I am Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz. I am a lover of the cinema, what can I say, and I love genre films. Really overblown, over the top action films are comic books come to life. They are living cartoons. They are such a joy to watch because they are so true to themselves, so unpretentious. There's a very fine line with films like this, a subtlety that doesn't become clear until you watch as many of them as I have. I don't want my action films too serious, because then you lose the fun and escapism that brought you in the first place. I don't want them too self aware, because I'm not watching these films ironically, and I don't need them to be self-deprecating. I appreciate these films on their own terms. Con Air balanced that better than any movie I've ever seen, and I don't think there's a time or a place I couldn't sit down and watch this from beginning to end.
Con Air is a perfect comic book come to life. The characters have supervillain aliases: Cyrus the Virus, Diamond Dog, Billy Bedlam, Johnny 23, Swamp Thing, Pinball. The cast in this movie is unreal. How they assembled such a collection I don't know, but wow... Con Air was either the first time I saw, or made me a fan of, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, Steve Buscemi, Danny Trejo, and Dave Chappelle (I didn't connect him back to Men in Tights until years later). And at the center of it all is Nicolas Cage, Hollywood's stopped clock, who's right twice a day. He's out of his mind, but when he's good, he's good.
Steve Buscemi as Garland Greene ("the Marietta Mangler") is probably the most interesting character. A charming psychopath, he's clearly Hannibal Lecter inspired. He even wears the bite mask (has anything like this ever been used in real life? Even in the novel, Hannibal wears a standard catcher's mask). I love madmen and serial killers, and if you ask me, Steve Buscemi is a better actor than Antony Hopkins (I think Hopkins is one of the most overrated actors. He's done a lot of good work, but he overacts, phones it in, and picks bad roles a lot too. Brian Cox in Manhunter is the definitive film version of Hannibal, for my money). Garland Greene is presented as a totally sympathetic character, and when he "gets away" at the end, the audience cheered all six times. Funny that letting one little girl live is sufficient penance for butchering "thirty-some people up and down the eastern seaboard". But that's just a testament to Buscemi as an actor and the writing/directing team of Scott Rosenberg and Simon West. I do like the idea that a nationally famous serial killer is presumed to be able to escape detection on the Las Vegas strip, which is crawling with more cops than two seasons of Law and Order.
Regarding West and Rosenberg, neither one of them did a single other thing I'm a fan of, which kind of goes to show just how hard this sort of thing is to do right. West later directed The Expendables 2, which is a textbook example of an action film being too self aware. It thinks it's funny, and it thinks it's clever, and it is neither. I make no claims to Con Air being great art, or a great film, but it is great at what it does, and if it wasn't on this list, this list would be a lie.
"This is your barbecue, Cyrus, and it tastes good!" - Cameron Poe
I don't care if it made a billion dollars, this movie was made for me personally. Batman enjoys popularity resurgences every generation, which I think demonstrates that there's something in the very roots and essence of the character that speaks to people. He's gone through many permutations. The Adam West TV show, despite being awful and ridiculous to the point of flat out stupidity, was an accurate depiction of the comics at the time. When I got into Batman comic books, I was fortunate enough to have a guide, someone who could tell me the best stories to read. Batman got really, really good in the 80s. Comics were getting very dark during that time period, and also getting much, much better, because certain visionary writers were raising the bar. Chief among them were Alan Moore with Watchmen and Frank Miller with The Dark Knight Returns. So Batman was right at the center of this comics renaissance, helping to define it. Batman had some good stories in the 70s, but I think Frank was able to tap into that core of what makes Batman really connect with people, and because Frank Miller is Frank Miller, write an absolutely brilliant, twisted story with it. Something else that grew out of this period was Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, which became the definitive Joker story. Joker is, in my opinion (and probably most people's opinion) the greatest comic book villain of all time. The Killing Joke set the standard for Joker stories; if you want to write the Joker, you're going to have to aim high.
Then we got Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman. It was good. It wasn't great. It was dark and gothic, but that was just Tim Burton being himself. He was going for the 60s Batman, that was all he was familiar with. And it was a gigantic blockbuster. Batman was everywhere that summer, on every t shirt, every lunch box, people had the bat symbol shaved into their hair. It was insane. And then came Batman Returns which was also good, but while simultaneously being darker than the first, you can also see how it's closer to the Adam West Batman. And then two more movies, the less said about the better, which killed the franchise dead, so far as movies. Or so I thought. Batman the Animated Series came out, and that was as good as a lot of the comics. It's truly an amazing show and I can't praise it enough. I was satisfied with that. And for the cinematic version of Batman, we had the Burton films. Better than we had any right to expect really. So that was Batman, and I was happy with that. It wasn't the comics, but it didn't have to be. I had my comics, and my animated series, and my Burton films, and life was good for a Batman fan.
Then Batman Begins came out. And it was really serious, and really sincere. I was a fan of Christopher Nolan, although for his smaller films, and I guessed he just didn't have the chops to do that kind of blockbuster just right, but Batman Begins was really good. It wasn't perfect, but I put it together with my comics and my animated series and my Burton films, and I was glad that Nolan understood that Batman was a serious character who should be taken seriously.
The hype for The Dark Knight began months and months before it came out. I remember hearing that Heath Ledger was going to play the Joker and losing all confidence in the project. I went on a long, in hindsight embarrassing rant about how Christopher Nolan didn't understand the characters after all. And I was wrong.
I was wrong.
As more information leaked out, I started to get more and more excited for The Dark Knight. I saw the opening bank scene, and the chase sequence. I heard the amazing Hans Zimmer score. I knew this was going to be good. I came to understand that Heath Ledger understood the Joker better than anyone who had ever played him before. And then he died. "Yes!", I said "That's it! That's it! The Joker is such a great villain he can kill you if you play him in a movie! That's how crazy he is!" And yes, while I'm sad Heath Ledger is dead, I still believe that. I believe Heath Ledger literally killed himself to give me The Killing Joke, the Joker as he truly is, in the comic books.
My expectations could not have been higher. I was a fanboy who expected this movie to live up to Alan Moore and Frank Miller. And it fucking did. Heath Ledger was the Joker, the self described Agent of Chaos, the laughing nihilist. There's nobody who didn't see this, so I don't need to detail to you how good it is, but maybe that can help you understand what it meant to me. It was the one in a million shot where it all came together, and what Batman movies could be was changed, what super hero movies could be was changed, and what comic book movies could be was changed. A dead man won an Oscar for playing the Joker. I cried watching this, and I still can to this day.
To make one such movie is a miracle. Christopher Nolan did it again. The Dark Knight Rises is as good. It can't have quite the emotional impact as The Dark Knight because of the experience I've described, but think about this: Nolan had an impossibly high standard to meet with The Dark Knight, and he did it. And then, after clearing that bar, he had to get up there again. He had to cram that lightning back into the bottle. I fully expected Dark Knight Rises to suck. I really did. And he proved me wrong again. Thank you, Christopher Nolan. And thank you Heath Ledger.
"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We are tonight's entertainment!" - The Joker
Ed Wood is a loving tribute to many things very close to my heart. It's also a great film, and a great story. It is very, very funny, and although there's no straight comedies on this list, this is probably the closest. It's not a comedy because, among other things, it's true. The tragically ludicrous? The ludicrously tragic? Ed Wood (the man) as depicted here reminds me of John Waters crossed with Fred MacMurray.
I am attracted to outsiders. They are my people, and the only place I've ever been able to fit in is with people who don't fit in. Ed Wood is about people like that. I think that's the key to why I love it. Every character in this movie is a freak in one way or the another, but so what? If you asked me to pick a favorite from this cast, I'd have a hard time doing it. Probably the funniest scene in this movie is Bela Lugosi wrestling with a non-functioning mechanical octopus. It stands well for Ed's films in general.
Ed Wood is just a very well done film about a man following impossible dreams. I am a fan of the real Ed Wood, and I don't find his films funny. They were too earnest to be funny. You just can't watch them as films, you have to watch them as the evidence of the making of a film, and that's what Ed Wood is about. It's about a guy who does what he does because he just has to do it. So what if he's no good at it? So what if he can't catch a break? So what if everybody laughs at him? Ed wants to make movies, so Ed makes movies. There's something about that which speaks to me.
I also love black and white films, and I'm glad I was able to include one on this list, even if it was done as a stylistic choice. I love old Hollywood, I love that sort of 1950s sensibility; just the way people talked and carried themselves back then. It's fascinating to me. I love these characters and I love this story, because, like me, they're freaks and outsiders and they're fine with it. I think Werner Herzog or Harmony Korine or John Waters would have gotten along really well with Ed and his friends.
There's an interesting undercurrent of alternative sexuality here which I like, too. Ed is completely unashamed of his transvestism (as was the real Ed, by all accounts), and Bill Murray gives one of my favorite smaller roles of his career here, as the camp queen Bunny Breckinridge. I identify with his contradictory sexuality. He's part of a group of characters I connect with in that way, who I always thought would make a good group of tattoos. Bunny, Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, Eli from Let the Right One In, maybe Eddie Izzard. After the amazing scene with Bela and the octopus, I think my favorite moment in this movie is Vincent D'Onofrio's cameo as Orson Welles. He delivers a line worth taking to heart.
"Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else's dreams?" - Orson Welles
It seemed contradictory to my impulses to have two Werner Herzog/Klaus Kinski films, but I simply cannot have this list without either of these films. They are masterpieces. In a way, they can be seen as companion pieces: they tell the story of a madman who has an impossible dream, and against all odds and no matter the cost, he will not stop until he achieves it.
Fitzcarraldo is the story (based on fact) of an opera lover who wants to build an opera house in the Amazon jungle, and hire Caruso to sing in it. He needs money. Fortunes are made on rubber in this part of the world, so he sets out to become a rubber baron. He discovers an unclaimed parcel of rubber trees, determined to be worthless because they are made inaccessible by treacherous river rapids. He discovered another tributary which comes within several hundred meters of the rubber trees, separated by a mountain. He leases the parcel from the government, and sets out to drag a ship over the mountain into the neighboring river system.
This is a story of madness, of determination. It speaks of quests, of dreams. It is a record of man's foolishness, man's pride in the face of nature, man's ambition and vision... all those things which make us human. There is no other film like it. Because to make this film, Herzog knew that he had to really drag a real ship over a real mountain. Like Aguirre, but even more so, the film itself is the message of the film. It is not enough to tell the story. Herzog has to live the story to truly tell it. If he used a plastic ship, the audience would know it was plastic. No one else in the world could have made Fitzcarraldo besides Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski.
Funnily enough, filming started with Jason Robards as Fitzcarraldo, with Mick Jagger as his goofy sidekick. Robards dropped out after becoming sick with dysentery, and Jagger soon followed. In desperation, Herzog turned to his friend and one time collaborator, Klaus Kinski. This saved the film, in my opinion, because while Jason Robards could certainly play a madman, Klaus Kinski was a madman. This movie is what it is because it is real. The film is more real than the story it depicts, as the real Fitzcarraldo disassembled his ship before transporting it over the mountain. Fitzcarraldo's determination to get his ship over the mountain and make his rubber fortune is Herzog's determination to get his ship over the mountain and make his film. Fitzcarraldo's madness and erratic behavior is Kinski's madness and erratic behavior. When Herzog says that his documentaries are fiction and his fiction are documentaries, Fitzcarraldo is the film the proves the second half of that statement true.
Fitzcarraldo is not a perfect film. It may be disjointed and slightly overlong. It is the reality that makes it perfect. In the same way as I said David Foster Wallace's The Pale King was a perfect book, in that a book about depression was his suicide note, so too is Fitzcarraldo. A film about an impossible dream was Herzog's impossible dream. And it is spectacular.
Fitzcarraldo should not be viewed on its own. You must watch the companion documentary, Burden of Dreams, about the making of the film. They are a two part work, you need each to appreciate the other. I won't discuss it too much, because it will be included when I do a list like this for documentaries, but I will give you one quote, and one image from it, and that is Fitzcarraldo:
Herzog : "If I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams and I don't want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project."
The image: Herzog sunk thigh deep in mud, physically pulling his leg out each time he has to take a step forward.
"I want my opera house! I want the opera house! This church remains closed until this town has its opera house. I want my opera house! I want my opera house! I want my opera house!" - Fitzcarraldo
I did this list alphabetically because I can't order my favorite films, but I can pick my single favorite movie, and it's Jaws. Jaws is a perfect film. Every frame, every second is right. It is everything I want from a movie, and for sheer entertainment, it has never been equaled. It's scary, it's funny, it's interesting, it's suspenseful, I like the actors, I like the characters, the music is incredible. Jaws has it all.
Let's start with the score. Jaws probably has one of the most famous scores of all time, and it deserves to. The deceptively simple score has been reused and parodied so many times, it's more or less the definition of "ominous dread". This was before John Williams ran out of ideas. I've seen clips of Jaws with the music removed, and while I do still find it scary (natural sound is always scary to me in a movie), I can definitely acknowledge the major contribution that score makes to the film.
Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw are all perfect. Jaws is one of the few examples of a movie that's better than the book, and these three central roles are most of why. If you've read the book, you know that Hooper and Quint and unlikable assholes, just unpleasant to be around. The book is much darker, but it almost feels like I'm reading Cujo, a story about how sometimes the world will just decide to kick your ass for no reason at all. That's true, and there's a place for that, but I think every single change Spielberg made was for the better, and now I'd say Quint, definitely, is one of my favorite film characters of all time.
My favorite character in the movie, however, is Mayor Vaughn. I want his blazer with the little anchors on it more than anything, and he has the best lines in the film. "Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody goes 'Huh? What?' You yell shark... we've got a panic on our hands on the 4th of July." "Now why don't you take a long, close look at that sign. Those proportions are correct." "Love to prove that, wouldn't ya? Get your name into the National Geographic?" And even though I just used it yesterday, I have to include my favorite line in this film (or maybe any film): "Fellows, let's be reasonable, huh? This is not the time or the place to perform some kind of a half-assed autopsy on a fish. And I'm not going to stand here and see that thing cut open and see that little Kintner boy spill out all over the dock."
The shark, despite the fact that it barely worked, goes down as one of the scariest movie monsters of all time. Put him up there with Dracula, Freddy, Pennywise, I don't care who, and I would bet you Bruce has caused as many nightmares as any of them. Each kill is terrifying. The opening scene, with the unfortunate Chrissy, was recently determined to be the single most frightening scene in any film, ever. I disagree, but I won't call it a bad choice.
I'm amazed and somewhat jealous that Spielberg could make this when he was only 23. The craftsmanship he put into the film is incredible. For example, the scene where Brody is chumming off the back of the boat and you get your first good look at the shark. It's lost impact over time, but back in the 70s, people would still giggle at profanity, so Brody's line to "Come down here and chum some of this shit." was designed to get nervous laughter, and then, bam, he hits you with the shark when you're not expecting it at all, and the laughter is caught in your throat. He gives the audience a second to catch their breath and then delivers the most famous line in the film: "You're gonna need a bigger boat." That's film-making.
Another great example is when Hooper pulls the tooth out the hull of the fishing boat, but drops it when the head floats into view. It's an eerie scene, with the murky green water, and you know something is going to happen. It's a false scare, just a jump, but Spielberg tried several different ways of timing it. He had the head float out as soon as Hooper found the tooth, he tried it with a long pause, and finally settled on just a split second pause. He tested the audience each time, and found the short pause freaked them out the most. Stuff like that, that's why I love Jaws, and it's what made Spielberg a real auteur.
Everything from when the three leads head out on the Orca until the end is gold, but Quint's story about the Indianapolis is probably my favorite scene in the film. Quint's death has to be one of the greatest film deaths ever, as well. In the novel, he gets his leg tangled in a rope, is pulled under and drowns. A nice Moby Dick allusion, but again, Spielberg made it better. And "Smile, you son of a bitch!" How great is that? Jaws didn't make a single mistake, and that's why it's my favorite movie.
"Here lies the body of Mary Lee; died at the age of a hundred and three; for fifteen years she kept her virginity; not a bad record for this vicinity." - Quint
So I love Disney movies, and really, when it comes to picking my favorite one, it's not hard at all. Dumbo, Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland would all easily be included among a general list of my favorite films, but when it comes down to it, nothing comes close to Little Mermaid. Where to begin?
I remember vividly the first time I saw this. I didn't see it in the theater (when it was new, although fortunately I was able to have a theatrical experience with it years later). I remember seeing it as an in store play at Stars and Stripes Video, the local video store in Jacksonville, Illinois. I was mesmerized. I had to rent it, and soon bought it, and it's been with me ever since.
The Little Mermaid is part of Disney's second Golden Age. I have no idea if there is such a ranking for Disney films (probably), but here I'm referring to my personal assessment. The first Golden Age is Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi. Then we enter the Silver Age, which lasts until either The Jungle Book or The Aristocats. The Aristocats is definitely the border between the Silver and Bronze ages, but I'm still not sure which era to rank it in. But from there, the first certain Bronze Age film is Robin Hood, and that lasts until Oliver and Company. Then The Little Mermaid ushers in the second Golden Age, which also consists of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King, all of which were as good as anything Disney had ever done. The Rescuers Down Under got in there somehow too, but it's the exception that proves the rule: firmly Bronze Age.
The animation in Little Mermaid is beautiful. The songs are amazing (both my favorite serious and my favorite fun Disney song are from this film, "Part of Your World" and "Under the Sea", respectively). The supporting characters are great. Sebastian and Flounder are classic, but I have to give it up to Scuttle on this one. Scuttle cracks my shit up. Everything from his "dinglehopper" "snarfblat" bullshit, to the way he holds his head to Eric's foot and sadly says he can't make out a heartbeat, to the way he tries to bust in on "Kiss the Girl", Scuttle is hilarious. Ariel is probably the prettiest Disney princess. I love her red hair. And Eric is a very dashing, and down to Earth prince (he reminds me a little of Aladdin, which is a good thing). And the villian... oh, the villain. Ursula is the Disney villain to end all Disney villains. I won't say she's better than the Wicked Queen or Maleficent, but those just aren't the same kind of characters. Ursula is one of the best Disney characters ever. She's based on Divine. I could just stop there and my point is made. A merperson with an octopus body is genius. I don't know if Disney invented that, but I had never seen it before. Her song, "Poor Unfortunate Souls" is amazing (there's really not a bad song in the movie). She's funny but just cruel enough to be scary. And her henchmen are evil eels named Flotsam and Jetsam. That's the best thing I've ever heard in my life.
Flotsam and Jetsam are probably the sleepers of this movie. Rare for Disney henchmen, they are completely competent. They accomplish everything Ursula asks of them, and only get killed by Ursula herself, by accident. I also love that she mourns them ("My babies!"). I like twins who are identical except for one defining characteristic, in Flotsam and Jetsam's case, their mismatched eyes. (Is there an answer on which one is Flotsam and which one is Jetsam? Who has the right yellow eye and who has the left? I never found this out) The scene where they are spying on Ariel, and their white eyes join together to form Ursula's scrying glass... that is really fucking cool.
The scene where Sebastian is escaping the chef is likely the funniest scene in any Disney movie. That guy seemed way too into his job. I could just go on describing each element of this film and why I love it, but I think my point is made. However, probably the most important, and why it's unquestionably my favorite, is how I relate to it. I identify with outsiders, as I mentioned, and I can really relate to someone wanting to belong to a world that they are not a part of. That's why I love "Part of Your World" and it can make me cry sometimes, because the lyrics are almost completely applicable to me (at some points in my life). It's about wanting to be a part of a bright, sunny world where people are laughing and dancing, but you're singing it alone at the bottom of a dark cavern. I can relate to that.
"You'll have your looks... your pretty face... and don't underestimate the importance of bo-dy lan-guage! HA!" - Ursula
It took me a while to acknowledge to myself how much I love this movie. I don't know why. Maybe because it got so much praise? It came out right around the same time as There Will Be Blood, a movie which I also love, and for a long time, I would have told you I liked better. I don't. No Country is a perfect film. It says things about the human condition I hold dear to my heart. It has scenes that are so good I don't want them to stop. It has more great lines than maybe any other movie on this list. It is a masterpiece. It's not the Coens' first. Hopefully not their last. But it's the one that speaks most personally to me.
Based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, I don't think the film is better, but I'm going to call them equally good. Cormac McCarthy is one of the most respected authors living today, both by me and the public at large, so that's a strong statement to make, but I'm making it. Anton Chigurh is not a villain so much as he is just Fate. He is the sharks in Open Water. He is the exploding derrick in There Will Be Blood. He is the taiga in Letter Never Sent. He is the jungle in Aguirre. Llewellyn Moss is Man who says to the universe "Sir, I exist." and the universe replies "That has not created in me a sense of obligation." Ed Tom Bell is the Watcher, who sees all this and tries to make sense of it. In the end the best he can do is "I don't know."
I don't think there's sense to be made. That's what I take away from No Country For Old Men. It's a story about how the world is not a nice place, and how there isn't any reason for that to be so, because there's no reason for anything. Things just are. We can accept it or reject it, and the consequence of our choice is zero. If you've been following my blog, you'll know I agree with that, totally. And that's why No Country is on my list. It presents this story, and this lesson, within a flawless film, filled with amazing performances. It's too elemental a story to say much about, and I could just quote it all day, so I'll just leave it alone. I think I've said my piece. I'll give one quote from the novel, used in the film, and one other literary quote that I think sums it up.
"You can say that things could have turned out differently. That there could have been some other way. But what does that mean? They are not some other way. They are this way." - Anton Chigurh
"To me the Universe was all void of Life, or Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. O vast, gloomy, solitary Golgatha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God?" - Thomas Carlyle
"Don't put it in your pocket, sir. Don't put it in your pocket. It's your lucky quarter."
"Where do you want me to put it?"
"Anywhere not in your pocket. Where it'll get mixed in with the others and become just a coin. Which it is." - Anton Chigurh
RoboCop had been passed around and rejected by almost every big name director in Hollywood. Paul Verhoeven threw it away after the first couple of pages, thinking it was another dumb action movie. His wife finished the script and convinced him it wasn't. It isn't. Few people are willing to approach RoboCop on the proper terms. I can sort of understand that. It seems like a dumb action movie at first (after all, it's called RoboCop. Objectively, that's a less promising title than Time Cop). But it's so much more. It is a brilliant satire wrapped in a sci-fi action movie, and it has real human emotion on top of that. It's wonderful.
One of the definitive scenes of RoboCop: "PLEASE PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPON. YOU HAVE TWENTY SECONDS TO COMPLY." If you've seen it, you know exactly what I'm talking about: the corporate suit throws down his gun immediately, ED-209 doesn't seem to recognize this, and in twenty seconds shreds the guy to paste, at which point the old man tells Ronnie Cox's character "Dick... I am very disappointed." "I'm sure it's only a glitch". That scene says it all. RoboCop is a skewer of bureaucracy and corporate thinking. The police force is privatized by Omni Consumer Products, and that goes about as well as you could expect.
RoboCop is a spiritual successor to Chaplin's Modern Times and Gilliam's Brazil. It's the world we live in followed to its natural conclusion, and it is hilariously frightening. RoboCop is also just a great movie. It has two great villains: the aforementioned Ronnie Cox as boardroom string puller Dick Jones, and Kurtwood Smith as the street level gang leader Clarence Boddicker. Clarence is one of my favorite film villains of all time, and a large part of the reason RoboCop is one of my favorite films. Kurtwood Smith is always good. He's a fairly under-appreciated actor, although he is getting more and more recognition. When he enters a room where his target Bob Morton is cavorting with a couple of floozies/prostitutes, the first thing out of his mouth is "Bitches leave." which has become an internet meme. But everything Clarence says and does in this film is great.
Probably the best scene in the film, in terms of showcasing Kurtwood Smith's skills, and really of the nature of the film itself, is when Clarence and his gang torture Murphy to death. This is a scary scene, because it's played realistically, and it's very cruel, but at the same time, Clarence is laugh out loud funny. Watching this, I'm disturbed and I can't stop myself from laughing at the same time. It's a skilled film that can do that. Just the way he delivers his deadpan "You probably don't think I'm a very nice guy." makes me laugh. The scene peaks when Clarence is tracking the shotgun over Murphy's body with his "Ne ne ne ne ne..." sound effect, and then he blows his hand clean off. It's a brutal effect, absolutely cringeworthy, and then Clarence immediately follows it up with "Well give the man a hand!" It's jerking you around like I talked about Spielberg doing with Jaws. It's great.
One of my favorite scenes in the film is when RoboCop breaks into the cocaine plant and shuts that shit down. Kurtwood Smith is in top form in this whole scene, he has many great lines. ("Guns, guns, guns!" "Come on, Sam! Tigers are playing! To-night!"), but it's also a good example of why he's one of my favorite villains period: even when his dialogue isn't particularly interesting, he delivers it in such a way that I just find it memorable. Two of my favorites quotes in the movie are from this scene, and they're that way. When RoboCop is throwing Clarence through a bunch of plate glass and Clarence starts pleading with him, I've always loved the way he says "Listen to me! Listen to me, you FUCK!" and then when he delivers him to the police station and Clarence spits blood on the forms and says "Just give me my fuckin' phone call."
Kurtwood Smith is the highlight of the cast for me, but there's a lot of great performances here. Peter Weller is perfect as Murphy/RoboCop, which is amazing, considering he was cast pretty much because he was thin enough to fit into the suit. I don't know all the actors names, but I really like the rest of Clarence's gang too, especially the guy who robs the gas station, Emil. That whole scene is great. "I'm a good shot! I can shoot you in the eye from here!" and then the eerie "You're dead! We killed you! We killed you!" That guy gets the best death in the whole movie, driving a truck into a fucking vat of toxic waste like it's Axis Chemicals. Then he's melting and howling and begging for help (this is another scene that turns my stomach and cracks me up at the same time, when his buddy is like "Waaaah, don't touch me, man!") and then just gets split in half by Clarence's car. Why don't they make movies like this anymore?
RoboCop is another film with an absolutely perfect ending. First, I have to say I love Clarence getting stabbed in the throat, because as soon as you saw that spike come out of RoboCop's hand earlier in the film, you were just waiting for him to stab somebody with it, so it was great that he saved it for the second to last bad guy. Then Dick getting fired and blown out the window was an amazing climax. He could have ended the movie there, but the old man asking RoboCop his name, and when he turns around and says "Murphy.", it's just too perfect. Another tears in the eyes moment. What a great movie.
"I'd buy that for a dollar!" - Bixby Snyder
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