So What's Your Favorite Movie?
So, inevitably, whenever I meet someone and they find out that I'm a big movie fan, the first question they ask is, "So, what's your favorite movie?"
Okay, while this is a completely normal question in the situation, and I'm sure most people even have a quick answer for it, I always cringe. You really have to understand what a fan of movies I am to understand that I could never answer that question. Of all the films I've loved over the years, how could I pick just one? How do you compare a John Hughes comedy to a John Wayne movie? I like them for different reasons. One isn't a favorite over the other. They're all just among my favorites. There isn't just one. So if you're going to ask that question, prepare for a really, really long discussion.
Or, perhaps, save yourself from me boring you to death for an hour and just come to this web page and check out some of the info below. These are films, generally, that I've seen a few times and can usually watch again at any given time.
I just love films with a lot of action in them, so I have a lot of favorites that follow along these lines. I was a big fan early of the James Bond movies. What guy wasn't? Come on! Hot women, cool cars, a license to kill (haven't you ever thought about having one of those while standing in line at the DMV?). Some of them were good (Dr. No, Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, Goldeneye), others not so great, but you can bet I've seen them all. I've always loved westerns, too. Favorites include John Wayne movies like The Cowboys, Little Jake, Rio Bravo, El Dorado and The Searchers. Loved the Clint Eastwood westerns, but was most impressed by his latter-day deconstruction, Unforgiven. I loved Silverado, too, sort of a tribute to the western from director Lawrence Kasdan. Kasdan also gave us Wyatt Earp, though I'm one of the few people that liked it, it seems. Kevin Costner knocked us dead with his directing debut in Dances With Wolves.
I love a good cop movie, from the action-oriented to the comedic to the dramatic. I've loved Serpico for many year, and also discovered Prince of the City in a film class. Cop Land is a favorite recent cop movie. I guess you could call L.A. Confidential a cop movie, though it was so much more, and never gets old. Running Scared was a great cop action comedy with Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines that a lot of people have forgotten about. Stakeout is one of the great cop comedies of all time. Oh, Heat definitely has to be one of my favorite cop movies ever, unique in the fact that it was about both the cops and the robbers. Ah, I have to give a shout out for the Dirty Harry movies, too...can't forget one of the most famous cops in film ("Every dirty job that comes along..."). I was blown away when one of the great buddy cop movies hit the screen, Lethal Weapon. I guess Untouchables was basically a cop movie, one of the greats of the 80s courtesy of Brian De Palma. Beverly Hills Cop is one of the great action/comedy cop movies out there too. Speaking of Eddie Murphy, before that one, he was in 48 Hours with cop Nick Nolte, a movie I really got into. Ah, and I just remembered one of my favorite cop flicks from the early 80s. Loved Sharkey's Machine. Just thought it was the coolest thing ever. And if you're in for movies about Russian cops, and a great William Hurt performance, then you might end up like me...a big fan of Gorky Park. Oh, and who from the 80s can forget To Live and Die in L.A.? Best car chase since the French Connection. The 90s, though, gave us Bad Boys, and that movie really did it for me...mainly because I thought it was great that they were taking two comedy guys (one of whom raps) and made them into action heroes. Well, turns out to have been a pretty good movie for both Will and Martin, huh? One of my favorite recent cop movies is Training Day. Doesn't get more dark and gritty than that. Wow. Well-deserved Oscar, Denzel. If you consider an FBI movie a cop movie, a very cool one I stumbled across back the day was Shoot to Kill with Sidney Poitier and Tom Berrenger.
Love the cops, and when it comes to film, love the criminals, too. I have a soft spot for mob movies, and can't get enough of the Godfather trilogy (at least the first two are a couple of the best films ever made). Goodfellas, as far as the filmmaking goes, is art. And I've seen Donnie Brasco many times. King of New York was a big cult mob kind of movie, one of the defining Christopher Walken roles, some feel. The Usual Suspects took the caper movie and redefined it. Other greats I love are Jackie Brown and Reservoir Dogs, as Tarantino sort of took over the crime genre in the 90s. Oh, but lets not forget the capers of old. I always loved The Sting, back when Redford and Newman were getting it done. Ah, and Ronin...sort of a heist and spy movie. A lot of people didn't go for that one, but I've watched it over and over, and I love it. Out of Sight was a real off the wall and great heist movie that I dug. And I guess you can kind of call Sneakers a heist movie. Great cast, great twists, very smart movie with cool characters.
Action movies, like I said, are a big fave of mine when they're done right. And they come in all shapes and sizes and types, from guns to swords to spaceships. Some of the greats (for me) have been Aliens, Die Hard, the Lord of the Rings films (some of the best filmmaking I've ever seen), From Dusk 'Till Dawn, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Predator, The Terminator, The Thing, Escape from New York, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Romancing the Stone (a great action/comedy/romance), 13th Warrior, The Matrix and Braveheart (I love some historical in my action). Can you call Jaws an action movie? Regardless, it's still on my list of top movies ever. I love a good science fiction movie like nothing else, and early influences on me were Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man (I'm a big Chuck Heston Fan). I think True Lies is the perfect mix of action and comedy, a brilliant piece of work from action master James Cameron. Another great latter-day spy film was the Matt Damon remake of Bourne Identity (directed by Doug Liman, the director of Swingers, of all things). Oh, and I'm also a sucker for disaster movies. I loved all the Airport movies (Airport '77 especially). And The Perfect Storm, too (natural disasters are even better). The bigger the disaster the better, which is probably why I'm such a fan of Deep Impact (the end of the world movie with a heart...). One of the better sci-fi action films on my list is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, by far the best Trek movie. And along with every other male my age, I was crazy about The Road Warrior (and I liked Beyond Thunderdome a lot when some of them did not (not enough car fighting! Whine whine whine!)). Ladyhawke is still a big favorite of mine (fell in love with Michelle Pfieffer when I saw that movie the first time. Those eyes!). Big Trouble in Little China is one of the more unique action films around, a John Carpenter film that not everyone got (it's a chinese kung-fu monster western trucker ghost story).
And there's the Star Wars movies. I'm just a Star Wars freak. I grew up with the original trilogy. When Star Wars came out, I was in the fourth grade, just the perfect age for a boy to be swept away by such a grand and unprecedented adventure story. I was in 6th grade when the follow up, the mystical and masterful Empire Strikes Back came out. And I was a freshman in high school when the final film of the original trilogy, Return of the Jedi, opened. I love all of the first ones, though Empire is still my favorite of all of them. I was very excited to hear that Lucas was making a prequel trilogy, and I recaptured that old Star Wars magic when the first one came out in 1999, buying tickets early, taking the day off work, getting in line early to catch Episode I. I kind of had to lie to myself for a long time, telling myself it wasn't that bad of a movie. I'd waited so long, and it was just so good to see Star Wars on the big screen again that I saw it several times. Then Episode II came out, which looked to be better. It wasn't. It actually made the first one look better. I don't hold a lot of hope for the final film. I'll see it, but at this point I'm just kind of waiting to get it over with. At least I'll always have the originals to go back to. Unless George keeps remaking them in new special editions and screwing them up more.
War movies. Yes. Love 'em. Have since I was a kid. Mostly I'm into World War II movies, and my favorites include Saving Private Ryan, The Dirty Dozen, Memphis Belle, Empire of the Sun (not so much a war movie as a movie set in World War II, but a Steven Spielberg masterpiece nonetheless), Stalag 17 (the 1953 Billy Wilder classic with William Holden, set in a Nazi POW camp and still one of my favorite classics), and the really unusual independent film A Midnight Clear, directed by Keith Gordon and starring the likes of Ethan Hawke, Gary Sinise, Frank Whaley and Peter Berg. But I like more historical ones like Glory (never gets old, I can watch it over and over) and Viet Nam films like Platoon and the often overlooked Casualties of War (overlooked because no one would take Michael J. Fox seriously, though he did an amazing job in this Brian De Palma drama). The best modern war films I've seen are Black Hawk Down and Three Kings.
Comedy. Love a good comedy, though I'm really picky about them these days. My favorite classics include What's Up, Doc?, Mel Brooks movies like Blazing Saddles, History of the World Pt. 1, and Young Frankenstein. Blake Edwards did some amazing films in his time, too, and I loved every minute of S.O.B. John Landis, before he completely lost it, was one of the finest comedy directors ever, giving us amazing comedies like Kentucky Fried Movie, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places, American Werewolf in London (is it a comedy...or is it a really graphic horror movie? It's inability to decide made it one of the first great comedy/horror combos), Into the Night, Coming to America, and a movie that only I seemed to find funny, Three Amigos ("Do you have anything besides Mexican food?"). I found Steve Martin hilarious early on (speaking of Three Amigos), and have always loved The Jerk, All of Me, Roxanne, Planes Trains & Automobiles, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Parenthood. I love his dramatic work, too, and he's turned into quite an actor since his King Tut Saturday Night Live days. I love both Richard Dreyfuss and Neil Simon, so it's no great leap that the Goodbye Girl is one of my favorite comedies. Love Bill Murray, one of the most naturally talented comedians alive. My favorites of his are Meatballs, Caddyshack (one of the best comedies ever made, period), Stripes and Ghostbusters. Another near perfect comic (as well as dramatic) actor is Tom Hanks. I first discovered him when I was a fan of his TV series, Bosom Buddies. So I naturally followed him into his film career, and have been continually stunned by his range in comedy and drama. As for his comedies, I'm most fond of Splash, Bachelor Party (I think Adrian Zmed was abducted by aliens after being in that, because he hasn't been seen since), Joe vs. the Volcano, and his writer/director debut film, That Thing You Do. Mentioning Splash reminded me of Ron Howard, who directed some amazing comedies, the king of which is still Night Shift (where I discovered Michael Keaton for the first time). The Gene Wilder/Richard Prior movies were hilarious, and my two favorites are Stir Crazy and Silver Streak. In high school, I loved all the John Hughes comedies, like Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science and Ferris Beuller's Day Off. Another one I loved back then was Class with Andrew McCarthy and Rob Lowe, and an early acting appearance by John Cusack. Oh, talk about John Cusack. Loved the Savage Steve Holland films he was in (Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer), Hot Pursuit, Say Anything, Bullets Over Broadway (great performance by him and by everyone else in this Woody Allen film...and I'm not normally into Woody Allen), the brilliant Grosse Point Blank, and, one of the two most honest films made about men, High Fidelity. Swingers, by the way, was the other...a film I've shared with many people over the years since discovering it on video, and the poster for it is on my living room wall. Other favorites along the way include Used Cars (with Kurt Russell), Risky Business, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Airplane (still the king of stupid movies that are stupid on purpose), The Princess Bride, Cannonball Run, A Fish Called Wanda (one of the funniest movies ever made), The Hudsucker Proxy (genius film by the Coen brothers), There's Something About Mary (heir to the Airplane empire), BASEketball (starring South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, a film which never stops making me laugh), Real Genius, Grease, Mystery Men, Can't Hardly Wait (I really love this movie), and the funniest movie you probably never saw, Waiting for Guffman. I'm also not above the occasional romantic comedy, and some of the ones I've loved have been Four Weddings and a Funeral, Broadcast News, While You Were Sleeping and (of course) When Harry Met Sally. Just wondering where to classify Back to the Future. Is it a comedy? An action movie? Whatever, it's still one of my favorites from the decade of my teens.
I love sports, and therefore love sports movies, whatever form--comedy or drama--they come in. I mentioned BASEketball above. Major League is another of the great sports comedies, along with Tin Cup, Bull Durham and Mystery, Alaska (I dare you not to love this one). The Natural is definitely one of the best sports movies made. The other great baseball movies are Eight Men Out and Field of Dreams. The best basketball movie out is still Hoosiers, one of my favorite Gene Hackman movies. And my two favorite football movies are still The Longest Yard and--though I was totally shocked that I liked it, so convinced was I that Oliver Stone was going to screw it up--Any Given Sunday.
Ah, but two of the best reasons to go see movies are for drama and suspense, and I love a lot of movies in both these genres. All The President's Men. Birdy. Taps. Whose Life Is It Anyway? The Shawshank Redemption. Dead Poets Society. Schindler's List. Tequila Sunrise. Witness (I wrote enough papers on it in college, for crying out loud...I'd better like it). The China Syndrome. Body Double. J.F.K. (you're a paranoid freak, Stone, but you make a fine movie). Rain Man. The Firm. Remains of the Day. Street Smart. Memento. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (wasn't sure where else to classify this one...). The Right Stuff (I'm crazy about the space program, and this is the finest of the films about it...along with Apollo 13). Citizen X (see it). My favorite classics are Casablanca, Gilda, and Citizen Kane (which is still, by the way, the best film--period--ever made). Silence of the Lambs was one of the most suspenseful films to ever come along. Is this where I'd put in Fight Club? Some might call it a comedy, some maybe action? Regardless, it's brilliant work. And the recent master of drama and suspense is hands-down M. Night Shyamalan, director of my favorites The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs.
What I really love more than anything, though? A good character movie. A really good slice of life film that explores people, how they think, how they relate to others. These are the type that I find most gratifying, and most likely to be at the top of my favorite movies list. Some of my favorites have been The Big Chill, Breaking Away, Almost Famous, Beautiful Girls, The World According to Garp, Creator, Trainspotting, The Great Santini (crowning achievement for Robert Duvall), Election, Outside Providence, and Searching for Bobby Fischer. If I had to say there was one director who has the genre nailed? It's Paul Thomas Anderson. His films Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love are showcases for character work and for actors, and I could study them over and over. Oh, and the other new modern master? Wes Anderson. The Royal Tenenbaums was one of the great surprises in my theater-going life (and a long one its been), and epitomized what good character movies should be. These types of films are really what films should be trying to achieve. I'm all about entertainment and love a good explosion like everyone else, don't get me wrong. But the filmmaker, above all, should be seeking, and speaking, truth. Movies at their best are a mirror, helping us understand ourselves. We should never forget that special effects and complex plots and big budgets are great, but when you get right down to it, movies are really about people.
Now aren't you glad you didn't ask me that question in person?
And please note, the above list isn't even that big of a chunk of my movie collection, or of the movies I've really enjoyed over years. I told you. I love movies. You love one that you didn't see above? Ask me about it. It might be one that we share...or one that you can share with me. I'm always looking to add another one to the list.