Your favourite 5 films.

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Sky'sGoneOut
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Your favourite 5 films.

Post by Sky'sGoneOut »

Star Wars. The proper one without any of that cgi shit.
The Big Lebowski. The first Christmas present my parents ever returned to me.
Alien. Our neighbour at the time was the projectionist for Berwick's only cinema. I saw Alien when I was nine years old.
El Topo. Honest to god what the fuck?
My Neighbour Totoro. Anyone for the cat bus?
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by LadyCentauria »

Renaissance: Post-acopalyctic black and white animated sci-fi graphic novel. Utterly brilliant.
Mic-macs á tire-larigot: French zany comedy – translates as non-stop shenanigans
Huit Femmes: (8 Women) Murder-mystery, musical, dark comedy, farce, great actresses.
Spïnal Tap:painfully real and funny - cannot find an n with an umlaüt on it for love or money :(
Ziegfeld Follies: narrowly beats The Red Shoes (1948) for being more fun and having the gorgeous Cyd Charisse in it :dance:

I think that's my top five, at the moment...
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by Spacedone »

Castaway On The Moon: Korean comedy about a suicidal man who jumps off a bridge over a very wide river and ends up stranded on an island. It's a masterpiece that'd I'd recommend to anyone.

Salute Of The Jugger: 80s post-apocalypse b-movie starring Rutger Hauer and Joan Chen about a team of people who wander the wastelands playing a violent sport that involves a dog skull and hitting each other with sticks. One of the little known classic action films of the 80s.

Zulu: Because it's a bloody good film.

The Yellow Sea: Another Korean film. This one is about a man who agree to murder a stranger to clear his gambling debt. Things don't go as planned.

All The President's Men: I have a particular love of all those 1970s political paranoia films but this one is my favourite.

Honorable mentions: Hardboiled (Chow-Yun Fat), The Thing (John Carpenter version) and anything starring Song Kang-ho (but particularly Memories Of Murder).
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by TheGrimSqueaker »

OK, this is a representative list only not a definitive top 5, mainly because it depends on my mood day to day. So here we go ......

A Matter Of Life And Death: I love anything by Powell and Pressburger, but especially this one and Colonel Blimp. No coincidence that both feature Roger Livesey who was, I think, one of the finest actors this country ever produced and who is not given the recognition he deserves.
The Battle Of Britain: Personal reasons. I spent a few summer holidays as a child staying with an old school friend of my mother who had moved to Cambridgeshire when she married; one of those summers was spent with the sky full of the sound of Merlin engines, as the flying sequences for this film happened over my head - I've been an aviation buff ever since.
Amelie: Another great partnership is that of Jeunet and Caro and I could easily have gone with Delicatessan, La Cité des Enfants Perdus (Ron Perlman speaking french, what's not to like) or, indeed, Micmacs; but Amelie is my goto film when I am really down, a perfect gem that never fails to lift my mood.
Howl's Moving Castle: How do you pick one over the other when you are talking about Studio Ghibli? You can't really and, again, this could have just as easily been Spirited Away, Totoro (yep, gotta love that cat bus), Porco Rosso, Kiki's Delivery Service or The Cat Returns. So, today I'll plump for this one, tomorrow .... who knows?
Star Trek: First Contact: I'm a Trekkie, so sue me!! The reboot films are great, the even-numbered films pre-reboot all have their strengths and I have an odd fondness for Insurrection; but First Contact has to be the best of the whole bunch.

Honourable mentions - pretty much anything done by Michael Caine in the 60s; Silent Running; Genevieve; BBC2 Saturday afternoon B & W war films, especially Reach For The Sky and Dambusters; and I'm partial to a good musical, whether it be Gene Kelly or Baz Luhrman.

Dishonourable mentions - 2001 (which I loathe with a passion), John Wayne Films and American remakes of European originals (lazy sods should read the subtitles).
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by 51A »

Toy Story: My kids loved it, I loved it, pure family joy.

Hook: Peter Pan grew up but not really but I could share Robin Williams with my kids and Tinkerbell came along, Smee, the Lost Boys, we were all there in our generations, what a brilliant idea! I first saw Robin Williams in Mork & Mindy then forgot about that for decades then I saw his "Live at the Met" when I was pregnant with my son, then came "Good Morning Vietnam" which is a close runner for the list but not for kids.

Dead Poets Society: Captain, My Captain. I cried and cried. In praise of good teachers. We all had one and never forgot them. And Robin Williams, again.

Saving Private Ryan. Never have I been so pinned back in a cinema seat than during that first 20 minutes on the big screen.

The Full Monty: Well, being a Yorkshire lass it had to be in there. And I laughed aloud at the canal scene although now I don't know how I didn't see it coming. I laughed aloud through most of it, come to think of it.

A Matter of Life and Death: Well there has to be something from the "Studio Era".

Shame it stops at 5, I could go on and on. The first 4 I saw in cinema and tried to limit it to that because it is a different experience but I'm not old enough to have been of the "Studio Era".
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by adam »

51A wrote:Hook: Peter Pan grew up but not really but I could share Robin Williams with my kids and Tinkerbell came along, Smee, the Lost Boys, we were all there in our generations, what a brilliant idea! I first saw Robin Williams in Mork & Mindy then forgot about that for decades then I saw his "Live at the Met" when I was pregnant with my son, then came "Good Morning Vietnam" which is a close runner for the list but not for kids.
These are all very good reasons to like it but, as someone who really loves Peter Pan, I'm not a big fan of Hook. I'm struggling to try to do a top five at the moment and whilst it wouldn't be in there, the more recent live action one (PJ Hogan directed, I think) is somewhere in my top I-Don't-Know-How-Many. I think the problem with Hook is that it's about Peter, and the wonderful thing about the recent one is that it's about Wendy, that she will grow up and will experience everything that adulthood brings and she is just on the cusp of innocence and understanding, and part of that understanding is that Peter won't understand. It's lovely and sad.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by adam »

I can't do five. I can't do a top twenty, I just can't.
Five films

Animal Crackers - it was my first Marx Brothers' film. It's very stagey (it was a stage play before it was a film) but it's still wonderful - it gives them the most fantastic introductions, it has some brilliant Harpo/Chico and Chico/Groucho scenes and Margaret Dumont is brilliant and Lillian Roth is completely lovely in a flapper kind of way.

Audition - two people who clearly have been damaged by the world and might be perfect for each other try to find a way but unfortunately she turns out to be completely batshit crazy. I think the final shot anchors the whole film and makes it much more than a dumb stereotypical 'fatal attraction' kind of thing. It really isn't very nice, be warned, if you're thinking of using anything in this thread as a recommendation. (I used to show it to my sixth formers as an exam film for a module on 'Shocking Cinema' and they hid behind their bags).

In Bruges - I saw this when I was in the most god-awful mood/situation/time and it still completely took me out of myself. It's clever and funny, brilliant wham-bam fast paced dialogue, laugh out loud slapstick moments and (I sense a couple of themes emerging) it's kind of sad and has bursts of being very unpleasant. Also apparently holds some kind of record for swearing.

Hannah and her Sisters - I consumed Woody Allen films when I was a teenager and hit a real golden time of new releases - I remember making a trip of it and going to see this in the Odeon Leicester Square. It's just beautiful, it's cinema as complex multi-threaded novel, it sounds amazing and looks amazing. All the big questions and very funny sequences about the answers and he rescues himself at a low point by going to see a Marx Brothers movie and the end is great.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover - Thatcherite decadence at it's height, everything totally uglybeautiful, amazing music, brilliant cast (Liz Smith being a parody of herself from loads of sitcoms, Tim Roth shuffling round quietly getting everything wrong, Ian Dury knowing that, off to the side, he's the man) and Michael Gambon as a complete monster.

And I'm having six because whilst I know I've missed out dozens of things, just as I wrote 'a complete monster' I realised I hadn't included Pan's Labyrinth which is perhaps my desert island film (if I really was only allowed one) (desert island record - High Land Hard Rain, desert island book, Flicker by Theodore Roszak). Sergi Lopez is one of the greatest/worst man-monsters in all of cinema, and the whole thing is, again, astonishingly beautiful and incredibly sad.

edited for spuling
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by refitman »

adam wrote:
51A wrote:Hook: Peter Pan grew up but not really but I could share Robin Williams with my kids and Tinkerbell came along, Smee, the Lost Boys, we were all there in our generations, what a brilliant idea! I first saw Robin Williams in Mork & Mindy then forgot about that for decades then I saw his "Live at the Met" when I was pregnant with my son, then came "Good Morning Vietnam" which is a close runner for the list but not for kids.
These are all very good reasons to like it but, as someone who really loves Peter Pan, I'm not a big fan of Hook. I'm struggling to try to do a top five at the moment and whilst it wouldn't be in there, the more recent live action one (PJ Hogan directed, I think) is somewhere in my top I-Don't-Know-How-Many. I think the problem with Hook is that it's about Peter, and the wonderful thing about the recent one is that it's about Wendy, that she will grow up and will experience everything that adulthood brings and she is just on the cusp of innocence and understanding, and part of that understanding is that Peter won't understand. It's lovely and sad.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by PaulfromYorkshire »

I'm fond of professing my internationalism on the Politics thread, but can be quite patriotic when it comes to the arts ;-)

So here are my five favourite British films:

Kes (reminding us of loads of other great Ken Loach films)
Naked (ditto for Mike Leigh)
Trainspotting
Withnail and I (to lift the mood a little)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (and take it to the absurd)
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by LadyCentauria »

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:I'm fond of professing my internationalism on the Politics thread, but can be quite patriotic when it comes to the arts ;-)

So here are my five favourite British films:

Kes (reminding us of loads of other great Ken Loach films)
Naked (ditto for Mike Leigh)
Trainspotting
Withnail and I (to lift the mood a little)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (and take it to the absurd)
I completely forgot Withnail and I – great film!
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by TheGrimSqueaker »

LadyCentauria wrote:
PaulfromYorkshire wrote:I'm fond of professing my internationalism on the Politics thread, but can be quite patriotic when it comes to the arts ;-)

So here are my five favourite British films:

Kes (reminding us of loads of other great Ken Loach films)
Naked (ditto for Mike Leigh)
Trainspotting
Withnail and I (to lift the mood a little)
Monty Python's Life of Brian (and take it to the absurd)
I completely forgot Withnail and I – great film!
Nearly included it on mine, and could have had any of those others as well (although I prefer Monty Python and the Holy Grail), just shows how difficult it is to come up with "The Five". *


* Somebody should ask NickyB his ..... nah, on second thoughts.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by letsskiptotheleft »

Bloody hard this, it changes with my mood, still here goes:

Once Upon a Time in the West. Bronson, Robards, Fonda, Cardinale and a Morricone soundtrack, good enough for me.
Billy Liar.
The Big Lebowski.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Inglorious Basterds.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by Spacedone »

letsskiptotheleft wrote:Bloody hard this, it changes with my mood, still here goes:

Once Upon a Time in the West. Bronson, Robards, Fonda, Cardinale and a Morricone soundtrack, good enough for me.
Speaking of which if you can still catch the episode of BBC4's The Sound Of Cinema that covered Morricone on iPlayer.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by letsskiptotheleft »

Spacedone wrote:
letsskiptotheleft wrote:Bloody hard this, it changes with my mood, still here goes:

Once Upon a Time in the West. Bronson, Robards, Fonda, Cardinale and a Morricone soundtrack, good enough for me.
Speaking of which if you can still catch the episode of BBC4's The Sound Of Cinema that covered Morricone on iPlayer.
Thank you Space, I watched it last night, on iplayer, of course, I watch the film at least twice a year, it has to be bucketing down outside, doors locked, curtains drawn and peace and quiet, afterwards bed with Morricone's music in me head, marvellous.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by yahyah »

My five are:

Bertolucci's 1900
Gone With The Wind
An American in Paris
Eisenstein's Ivan The Terrible [courting with my husband at the NFT]
Rocky Horror Show [Tim Curry, phew....<drools>]

In reserve: Il Postino.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by PaulfromYorkshire »

yahyah wrote:My five are:

Bertolucci's 1900
Gone With The Wind
An American in Paris
Eisenstein's Ivan The Terrible [courting with my husband at the NFT]
Rocky Horror Show [Tim Curry, phew....<drools>]

In reserve: Il Postino.
Il Postino is great. And very poignant that Massimo Troisi died the day after completing the film. And I so love Neruda. If we had a five favourite poems, mine could all be his.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by RogerOThornhill »

I could quite easily fill this with 5 Powell/Pressburger (and yes, it would include AMOLAD which was a real WTF? moment when I switched on halfway through many, many years ago) or 5 Hitchcock but this si what today's list is:

The Red Shoes - don't like ballet much but this is wonderful

The Searchers - ditto for Westerns. Wayne plays one of his most complex roles

Night of the Hunter - possibly the finest cinematography in cinema. And Robert Mitchum as a phony preacher after the loot.

All That Heaven Allows - slushy melodrama...but pointed things to say about class and materialism

Vertigo - I remember when this came back into circulation in the 80s and I saw it at the London Film festival. No other film quite like it.

Wish I had room for Gregory's Girl, Colonel Blimp, Seven Samurai, any Godard, Sullivan's Travels and the Palm Beach Story. Philadelphia Story, Chinatown, Manhatten, Fanny and ALexander...wait...no room for Buster Keaton?

Or It's a Gift where WC Fields is trying to get to sleep on the porch.

Here you go...

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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

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The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp - a truly great British epic, whose still and silent heart is an 'enemy alien' explaining, as much to himself as to those questioning him, why he has chosen his adpopted home over his native land.
Gregory's Girl - such sweetness and innocence and comic confusion at the last moment it's possible.
Casablanca - because of course.
La Dentelliere (The Lacemaker) - Isabele Huppert's first starring role, a story of such aching beauty and despair that it's impossible not to cry.
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - for proving that it's not impossible to film that book.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by TheGrimSqueaker »

Nope, it is no good, I have to make it six films! Watched "Stardust" for the I don't knowteenth time today and still loved every second of it; Matthew Vaughan and Jane Goldman crafted a minor masterpiece, even allowing for the liberties they took with Gaiman's wondrous original material. Worth the admission price just for the sequences on Captain Shakespeare's ship - Dexter Fletcher stealing every scene with a single look and Robert De Niro dancing to the Can Can, what's not to like! :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance:
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by Spacedone »

If we're doing 6 films then I'm adding The Princess Bride to my list, because I inconceivably forgot to add it in the first place.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by ErnstRemarx »

Difficult. Off the top of my head:

All Quiet On The Western Front (30s version);

This is on the list because is simply rocks. If you don't get this, and yet appreciate the bizarre niaivety intertwined with the cynicism, then you probably shouldn't be watching grown up films. First seen when I was about 40, it retains a nostalgic hold on me.

2001: A Space Odyssey;

The film that Spielberg could never make - nor Solaris for that matter, as proven by what'shisface - a drop dead, perfect sci-fi movie that even stumped sci-fi buffs. I saw it on its release, so I'd have been about 9 then, powerful stuff that even then I knew I'd watch again to get an inkling. Cinematically beautiful, a perfect soundtrack and the product of a brilliant mind at its best.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (the recent one);

I'm still absolutely in awe of this film. The recreation of the 70s is so stifling as to take your breath away - literally. A superbly concocted story played out, brutally, but such class that you'd have to be very picky to dislike it.

Catch 22;

The best war film I've yet seen - yes I've also seen Apocalypse now. It's funny, cynical, nasty and has a schizophrenic regard for human life; the dynamic that the book relies on. The scenes in Rome near the end are heartbreaking and it's not short of genius how they took one of the best books I've ever read and turned it into one of the best films I've seen.

Koyaaniskatsi;

I've commented on this elsewhere, so I won't waste your time. The USA through the eye of a very talented man, from nature into the city, faster and faster it goes. It's utterly beautiful, the soundtrack is sublime - particularly "The Grid" - and the lessons are still valid today.

Threads.

OK, horrible one at the end. This is the one that nobody I knew would watch bar me. Even MsRemarx flinched (we were courting, so perhaps not the best choice). But it is unflinching, and if your idea of a night well spent is a Ken Loach film, or a film about the travails of trade unionists in central America - and they are very real, believe you me - then this will probably shock you more than you might think.

I've got loads of other films I could have mentioned - Airplane, as an example - but I'll need a very good excuse to bore you to death further...
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by HindleA »

I will have to think about the other four but my favourite by a country mile is"The Days of Wine and Roses" Jack Lemmon and a young Lee Remick and the spiralling into alcoholism,agony to watch at times and not a saccharine ending.Stunning performances.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by AnatolyKasparov »

Strictly speaking, "Threads" isn't a film but a BBC drama-documentary :)

Agree with the rest of the comment, though - nobody who has watched it will ever forget it.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by adam »

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Strictly speaking, "Threads" isn't a film but a BBC drama-documentary :)

Agree with the rest of the comment, though - nobody who has watched it will ever forget it.
You can watch 'Threads' here (with subtitles on it, can't find a 'clean' one), The Day After is here, Zed for Zacharria is here and there is a discussion of Threads on Newsnight here. And The War Game is here.

Happy viewing, everyone.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by ErnstRemarx »

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Strictly speaking, "Threads" isn't a film but a BBC drama-documentary :)

Agree with the rest of the comment, though - nobody who has watched it will ever forget it.
I know Anatoly, but it's still a film, even if was commissioned by the Beeb - back in the day when it still wasn't frightened to say boo to the governmental goose.

If you're really nice to me I'l give you my next 5 faves! ;)
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by NonOxCol »

Only just discovered this, very interesting.

I'm going to do this on a strict 'one film per director or trilogy' basis. Warning: I was born in 1972. I am absolute hardcore Spielberg/Lucas generation.

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: Other people can say what they like, I simply cannot be objective about this film. I saw it twice at the age of 10 in the cinema, and was completely spellbound. More importantly, it was the first film to have a deep emotional effect on me. I'm quite cynical about manipulative US sentimentality, and I know many people have accused this film of being a prime example. So I have tried to analyse why I love it so much; it's possible it's because I was the same age as Elliott when I saw it, and my parents were splitting up. But then I see it as an adult and I realise it doesn't need analysing. It is simply an astounding evocation of childhood innocence and wonder, and for that reason I'm liable to turn into a gibbering wreck if I watch more than ten minutes of it now (aged 42).

Goodfellas: well, there you go, that's a bit different, isn't it? The best film I saw for the first time as an adult. I am still capable of becoming incandescent with rage that Kevin Costner was given the Best Director Oscar for his first fucking film, ahead of this, the best-directed movie I have ever seen. And so they end up giving everything to Scorsese for The Departed, which is a fine way to spend two and a half hours, but it's a bit like saying a bloody Wings album is better than Revolver.

The Empire Strikes Back: because I have to have one of them, and this is the best by (*avoid trite light year metaphor*)... well, it's just the most interesting, the darkest, the one with the best score, the one that makes the back-story possible, the one where Vader is at his most compelling, the (only?) one with a decent script... Just the last half hour of this film is better than 99% of two-hour-plus sci-fi blockbusters made these days.

I'm supposed to regain credibility by putting something really mature in at this point, but sorry, I can't:

Back To The Future
: As with, say, Raiders of the Lost Ark, I genuinely think there's something strange about people who dislike this film. Ostensibly a science-fiction movie, there's actually more heart, wit and humanity in this than in hundreds of box-office smashes made in the 30 years since. Someone said that the screenplay, full of set-ups and pay-offs and not a wasted line or image, is as beautifully constructed as a Swiss watch, and they teach it at film school. That's good enough for me.

OK, the final choice could be one of several, most of which prove that I did watch films after the age of 13 (!): Monty Python's Life of Brian; Trainspotting; The Shawshank Redemption; Clerks; Chinatown; LA Confidential; Pulp Fiction. Out of those, I'll pick the one that didn't knock me out on first viewing, but got better with age. Because, at the age of 16 (when I first saw it), I did not - could not - appreciate the extent of its ambition, and the fact that there were other satirical targets apart from organised religion.

Monty Python's Life of Brian - because of its depth, the greatest comedy I've ever seen, ahead of the two films that simply made me laugh more than any others (Airplane and Clerks).
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by adam »

Another film which is always bumping around my top whatever and which I'd like to bump up as an Easter Weekend recommendation (as a thoroughly avowed atheist who very much likes the line from I can't remember who, who said "I don't believe in God, but I believe in the bible"), I would like to recommend Denys Arcand's 'Jesus of Montreal' - a rising-star actor is hired to put together a cast and put on a Passion Play for a church, reviving their old tradition that's lapsed.

(If you can't find that, I think Cecil B DeMille's 'The Ten Commandments' is one of the world's great revolutionary movies and is also thoroughly appropriate for this weekend).

(edit - Denys for Denis. Désolé)
Last edited by adam on Sun 05 Apr, 2015 8:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by adam »

TheGrimSqueaker wrote:Nope, it is no good, I have to make it six films! Watched "Stardust" for the I don't knowteenth time today and still loved every second of it; Matthew Vaughan and Jane Goldman crafted a minor masterpiece, even allowing for the liberties they took with Gaiman's wondrous original material. Worth the admission price just for the sequences on Captain Shakespeare's ship - Dexter Fletcher stealing every scene with a single look and Robert De Niro dancing to the Can Can, what's not to like! :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance:
I agree with all of this - and one of the sad but predictable things about that SignaTory thing last week was that Vaughan was on it. I think Kick-Ass, another of his directing jobs, is really good too, although he's busier as a producer than as a director. He was featured on the very good Mark Kermode Radio 4 three part thing about the business of cinema recently (see here for info and links to listen and download) basically saying 'bollocks to public funding or subsidy, put your hand in your pocket and take a risk'.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by Sky'sGoneOut »

Star Wars.

Bladerunner.

Flash Gordon (1980).

Star Tek II. The Wrath of Khan.

The Big Lebowski.

That's all you need to know.
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Re: Your favourite 5 films.

Post by refitman »

Sky'sGoneOut wrote:Star Wars.

Bladerunner.

Flash Gordon (1980).

Star Tek II. The Wrath of Khan.

The Big Lebowski.

That's all you need to know.
Not just great films, but great, quotable films.
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