September 1, 2008

List of Lists (by white guys)

Enough of mine; here are some other people's lists:

Wes Anderson's favourite movies of the 1990s.*
Bad Lieutenant (Abel Ferrara)
Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo)
Un Coeur en hiver (Claude Sautet)
The Daytrippers (Greg Mottola)
Flirting (John Duigan)

The Ice Storm (Ang Lee)
Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino)
Little Odessa (James Gray)
Un Monde sans pitie (Eric Rochant)

Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland)

Damien Jurado's favourite movies:*
Gas, Food, Lodging (Allison Anders)
Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)
Blue (Krzyzstof Kieslowski)
Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger)
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich)
A Man & A Woman (Claude Lelouch)




My Room-mate's favourite movies (I think. We'll see how close I get):
Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo)
My Life as a Dog (Lasse Halstrom)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)
Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkosvky)
Master & Commander (Peter Weir)


Paul Schrader's list of the greatest films of all time is great. The article preceding it in Film Comment is even better. The most interesting movie on the list (beating out undisputed classics like Singin' in the Rain, Chinatown, and The General):
#40 - The Big Lebowski (Joel and Ethan Coen)

Like a Kubrick film I think Lebowski is slowly crawling into the pantheon of widely recognized American masterpieces.




Paul Thomas Anderson recommends these films:*
You Can Count On Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
Nashville (Robert Altman)
Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati)
Bodysong (Simon Pummell)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
the movies of Carl Th. Dreyer



The ultimate film-snob movie list is available here. If you've seen more than half of them... well, good for you.

Please comment. I'm feeling lonesome. Give me a couple non-pantheon choices for your favourite films. I'm really curious. Long lists, short lists -bring 'em on.

How'd I do Bob Dole?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've only seen 3 of the movie-snob list. I'm more excited to have such a list of movies to watch rather than depressed at how few I've seen. My top seven, at the moment, would have to be thus:

Good Morning, Vietnam (Barry Levinson)

Meet Joe Black (Martin Brest)

Contact (Robert Zemeckis)

Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick)

Reign Over Me (Mike Binder)

Fifth Element (Luc Besson)

Heat (Michael Mann)

---------------
It is hard, because how do you choose your favorites? By quality, lasting value, which you'd want to see if you could only watch x movies ever again?

Anonymous said...

For my list I have decided to choose 10 songs that I never want to hear again.

1. No Woman No Cry - Bob Marley
2. One - U2 (its hard to choose just one from U2)
3. Hotel California - The Eagles
4. Keep on Rockin in the free world - Neil Young
5. Brown eyed girl - Van Morrison
6. Scarborough Fair/Canticle - Simon and Garfunkel
7. Anything that fuses Metal with orchestral arrangement.
8. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin.
9. Can you feel the love tonight - Elton John.
10. Give peace a chance - John Lennon

also, Leif, is that a best of or worst of list?

Anonymous said...

I cant decide wether to be proud or not, Ive seen eleven...

A list of 10 films viewed in the past three months that made a difference:

1. Juliet of the Spirits (Frederico Fellini)
2. My Life to Live (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn)
4. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai)
5. La Collectionneuse, and Clare's Knee ( Eric Rohmer)
6. La Jetee (Chris Marker)
7. Vampyr (Carl Dreyer)
8. Mother and Son (Alexsandr Sokurov)
9. M (Fritz Lang)
10. Army of Shadows (Melville)

As soon as I post this im going to think of something else i should have put up.

school soon matthew? lonesome? let the Spirits entertain you.

Anonymous said...

Most over rated movies of all time.

1. Heat
2. Boondock Saints
3. Crash
4. LOTR trilogy
5. Fight Club
6. a tie between Platoon/Born on the fourth of July
7. Transformers (new one)
8. Scarface
9. The Shrek series
10. Braveheart.
11. Waking Life
12. Love actually

Anonymous said...

My list is definitely a favorites list Dave, and I agree with your list of songs. To anonymous, I think HEAT is overrated, but since my top 2 actors are Pacino and DeNiro, I have to love it.

Anonymous said...

I am the King shit! I have seen 14, all must bow down to my glamour. I think all movie snobs will one day be my subjects, caused to watch interviews will great-grandchildren of Loren Becall talk about how they wish they had had (insert 'had' here) enough money to send some diamonds to that African American Actor (Triple A, for short) after he made that Bloody movie aboubt diamonds. The note will say 'from all those white people who had too much money to help out the poor, stop. Please stop sending me letters, stop. Please stop talking about telegrams, stop. Stop it okay, stop. If this sentence ends in stop, we are all doomed, stop!'

Other than I like that 'Loje' fellow, I like the cut of his jib! In fact I want a gib mule here on the double!

s$s said...

Leif:

I caught a bit of Fifth Element on TV a month ago and was reminded of how much fun it was. It had been several years since I watched it. I like Besson a lot.

I haven't seen a couple films on your list.
----------

Forrest:

Your list of movies for three months seems worthy of a lifetime. Are you sure you've seen all those movies in that short a period? Ridiculous.

Yeah, school starts tomorrow. Thanks so much.
-------------

Dave:

Neil Young, U2, Led Zeppelin, Bob Marley...

Absolutely.

A song capable of inspiring me to murder is the one with the chorus that goes: "I'm blue daboo-dee-daboo-die-daboo-dee." Unbelievable.

--------------

Anonymous:

I hate a lot of movies on your list. Especially 'Crash' and 'Born on the Fourth of July.'

The film that drives me craziest though -which so many critics continue to revere- is Stanley Kramer's revoltingly didactic 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.' Apparently great actors and noble intentions can still lead to a TERRIBLE movie.
-----------------------

King Erasmus:

Right.

s$s said...

Forrest:

I really liked the way you set up your list as being films that "made a difference." It seems less ridiculous than saying "best" or "top," but also stronger than the meaningless "favourite." Thanks for that.

Jon Coutts said...

nice lists.

sorry dave, i actually like leif's list too. some i haven't seen, but joe black and vietnam were awesome films. also, just because U2 is overplayed doesn't mean anything. sometimes (though rarely) it actually means its good. but you don't have to like it, that's fine. great list. most of those songs i wish i could never hear again as well.

i've only seen 4 of the movies on the snob list, and that's actually counting two that i've still only seen half of (don't ask). but, curiously enough, they are all in the top 15. i'm not feeling very "listy" today, so my list contribution is my ranking of those 5 movies:

1. Tokyo Story
2. Dersu Uzala
3. Dekalog (#1 & #2 especially)
4. Stalker (yet to finish. apparently the colour part may move it up my list)
5. Spirit of the Beehive (yet to finish)

(apologia: watching movies in parts is probably a really bad idea. sometimes it is all i can do, though.)

by the way, there is an article in the new rolling stone about the big lebowski and how the "dude" still abides.

Anonymous said...

I still think 'One' is a great song when sung by some other artists. I just can't handle Bono's howling (in his songs or in real life).

s$s said...

The Dude abides.

Jon:
yeah, generally watching films in chunks disrupts the pacing of the film -thus undoing some of the editor's careful work. On the other hand, watching a film in sections brings it closer to the experience of a novel, being put down and picked up again (which, in theory I suppose, isn't ideal either), and that allows the process to sometimes be even more personal. I dunno.

I've been pleasantly surprised at how much everyone's latched onto the film-snob list. It's a great list.
-----------
Dave:

Of course I like U2 a lot more than you do, but I completely appreciate the common (and valid) criticisms brought against them. I don't think the world would suffer at all if U2's appearance on the radio was dropped by 75% or even altogether. We'd all be just fine.

Jon Coutts said...

dave: its his voice you don't like? wow. i'm intrigued.

matthew: i certainly don't mean to watch movies in parts. it is most certainly less than ideal. it is just the way it has worked out a few times.

by the way i love that you did a list on your friend's behalf, and i think master and commander was awesome.

there is a song or two on your EP that reminded me of Jurado a bit. i haven't seen anything on his list.

s$s said...

Jon:
Woe! I'll take every Jurado comparison I can get.

Yeah, Master & Commander is one of the all-time great Hollywood epics. Peter Weir is a pet favourite director of mine.