salon.com rebuttal
Finally read that Salon.com Top Forty movie list.
What a load of crap.
O'Hehir's taken thirty-eight entries from the Film School Canon (great cameras, BTW), and tossed in Night of the Living Dead and Jaws. Not one movie made after 1987.
O'Hehir admits himself that we are in "a new golden age of art movies", yet ignores these in his list. He glosses over the fact that it was a chore for him to watch some of the movies on his list. In that case, why subject us to them?
So here's my 40 Influential Movies Since 1987 That Non-Film-School-Grads Might Actually Enjoy List. I'm not splitting it in half, since it's an oxymoron to list 20 influential movies that no one's ever seen before.
- Cinema Paradiso: A film-lover's movie that even a non-film-lover can love.
- Grave of the Fireflies: Feature animation can be serious and good.
- My Neighbor Totoro: Feature animation can be slow and good.
- Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown: Brought Almodovar to Americans, and now we can't get enough cross-dressing melodramas.
- Dangerous Liasons: Important not because of Malkovich or Close, but because it set the precedent for casting Keanu in period roles.
- Batman: The true beginning of the modern superhero genre. Burton broke with the 80's action formula and made a movie about style.
- The Little Mermaid: Brought Disney, and consequently feature animation, back from a three-decade coma.
- When Harry Met Sally: THE romantic comedy. Nora Ephron has been self-conscious ever since.
- Silence of the Lambs: It's a horror movie, but gets labelled as suspense because it's just too good for the horror genre.
- Boyz n the Hood: John Singleton, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Ice Cube, and Laurence Fishburne. Best serious treatment of life in L.A.
- Hard Boiled: Showed Hollywood how to make an action movie.
- Groundhog Day: the purest (and best) example of a running gag in cinema history.
- Howards End: The Merchant-Ivory picture for the rest of us tea-sipping gentlefolk.
- Delicatessen: Where on earth did this guy come from? Oh, France.
- Strictly Ballroom: Where in space did this guy come from? I think the Aussie thing is a cover.
- Farewell, My Concubine: So good, I didn't even mind the Peking Opera.
- Clerks: What many young Americans remember as the beginning of the Indie revolution.
- Pulp Fiction: Exposed the viewing public to non-linear narrative.
- Chungking Express: Hong Kong can do more than martial arts.
- Before Sunrise: Like an incredibly idealized vacation movie.
- Clueless: Kicked off the mid-90's Jane Austen revival. An amusing modern adaptation.
- Toy Story: The one that started it all. Try the German dub sometime.
- Leon: The Professional: Natalie Portman rips your heart out and washes it down with a jug of milk.
- Swingers: The beginning of the Boy Power movement (followed by Office Space and Fight Club). I've never seen a better parody of L.A. life.
- Breaking the Waves: Forget Dogme. Here's where Lars really kicks ass.
- Saving Private Ryan: The quintessential Spielberg movie: big, slick, life-affirming, and packs an action wallop.
- The Matrix: Best action movie ever made. Best sci-fi movie ever made. Best Keanu... I'll stop there.
- Fight Club: Like Matrix, mixing pop philosophy with a huge dose of attitude and style. The ultimate boy power movie.
- The Iron Giant: The beginning of the Brad.
- The Virgin Suicides: Finally, Coppola decided to stop acting and do what she was born to do.
- Memento: Fun with DVD chapters.
- Amelie: Cute, but not saccharine. OTT style in something other than an action movie.
- Mulholland Drive: If there's one thing I agree with O'Hehir on, it's David Lynch.
- The Ring: Delicious horror movie, better than the original.
- Lord of the Rings: More Titanic than Titanic, more polished, and more gorgeous. This is at the top of so many people's lists, it can't be ignored.
- Dogville: Not Dogme, but very much Lars. Kidman and von Trier: a match made in hell.
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Mixing heart with existentialism (more so than I Heart Huckabees).
- Super Size Me: McDonald's now asks if I want to "up-size" that. Still eat most meals there.
- Sin City: The Kings of Style. If you were ever curious what a comic book looks like on the big screen, this has to be seen to be believed.
Allow me to anticipate a few comments:
Q: Where's Scorsese?
A: One day, when he stops gunning for an Oscar, he might actually make a good movie.
Q: Aren't you still weighting the earlier stuff more heavily?
A: Sure. It's hard to prove influence for a movie that came out last month.
Q: You had one extra slot. What happened to Terminator 2/Sex, Lies, and Videotape/Titanic/JFK/Kill Bill?
A: Yeah, that's the same question I asked myself after watching those.
Labels: Movies
posted by 1600 Squirrels at 4:57 PM
Stipulating that arguing over lists is inherently silly....
I have one major bone to pick, and that's "The Virgin Suicides." I loved Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation," and I loved Eugenides' novel "Middlesex"; but Sofia directing Eugenides' Virgin Suicides turned into a silly "why are the pretty (underage) blonde girls killing themselves?" coming-of-age tale. Maybe she needed to get that one out of her system to make LiT, but a 40 alll-time best?
Oh, and why Private Ryan over Empire of the Sun? Higher production values? Just pushing to get a sense of your criteria.
David
10:42 AM
My main contention with your list is "Virgin"-the sleek cinematography could not overcome the plot. I also think "Seven" is oddly absent-what the Fincher film lacks in cheeriness it makes up with in everything else. Also, rather than "Mulholland Falls"-"Wild at Heart" is a better fit-Willem Defoe, although disturbing in almost everything he does, takes the cake in this Lynch classic. Props to you for "Clerks" and "When Harry Met Sally". But no Cohen brothers? How can that be? Where's the Dude?
David, if "Private Ryan" took place in the Pacific theater of WWII you would be more accepting of its inclusion on the list.
Jamie
11:41 AM
David and Jamie, thanks for your bitching. Here's your slaps:
David:
I too questioned Suicides more than any other on the list. I went with it because it was Coppola's first, and I think she will be great some day. I actually found Lost in Translation more manipulative than Suicides, which I felt was ambiguous without the obvious MacGuffin Coppola threw in at the end of LiT.
As for Private Ryan over Empire, pretty much everybody but the two of us ignored Empire, whereas Private Ryan instantly became the war movie for the ages. Why don't we just compromise and pick Pearl Harbor? =P
For criteria, I tried to pick movies with a wide range of genres, directors, and release years; innovation; popularity; hot women; movies I enjoyed; and demonstrable effects on society or other movies (e.g., Kids was a shocker, but I haven't seen anything like it in the mainstream since). Not all movies fit all criteria (e.g., Empire had the lovely Miranda Richardson, but all Private Ryan could muster was Private Melish).
Jamie:
Fincher is great, but not great enough in my book to warrant two entries on The List, and I love Fight Club.
I haven't seen Wild At Heart. I like Defoe, so I'll have to pick it up.
The Dude was too lazy to get his fat ass off the couch and make me laugh. I love the Coen brothers, but the only movie that opened my eyes is Raising Arizona, and it just missed the main criterion, being released in 1987.
Hey, just be thankful I didn't put three Jean-Pierre Jeunet movies on the list.
1:54 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home