I guess this entry is more for the personal record but it’s something I wanted to do for a long long time – a compilation of my favorite movies. There are 38 of them listed right now but I probably missed a few. There are many many more that I like very much and which are funny, thrilling, interesting, or just pleasant to watch. About some I was very uncertain whether to include them in the list or not. There are many others that have won awards and which I find excellent films indeed. But this compilation wouldn’t make sense if I would simply list all films that are known to be good. Also, I did not intend to be fair regarding directors or the country of origin which is why, unsurprisingly, many of the directors on the list appear more than once and most of them are from the US. These are movies that have influenced me in one way or the other, that I like to remember and think about, and all of them I find brilliant pieces of art.
It would be very interesting to show such a list to a psychoanalytic – I would suspect they could draw some quite detailed conclusions about one’s personality from it. And I think I can make out certain tendencies toward particular kinds of films and storys here, too. Can you?
(ordered by director’s last name)
- Match Point – Woody Allen
- The Others – Alejandro Amenábar
- Sheltering Sky – Bernardo Bertolucci
- The Big Lebowski – Cohen Bros.
- Barton Fink – Cohen Bros.
- The Man Who Wasn’t There – Cohen Bros.
- Apocalypse Now! – Francis Ford Coppola
- The Godfather, Parts 1-3 – Francis Ford Coppola
- Naked Lunch – David Cronenberg
- Spider – David Cronenberg
- Casablanca – Micheal Curtis
- Halbe Treppe – Andreas Dresen
- Funny Games – Michael Haneke
- American Psycho – Mary Harron
- Nosferatu – Phantom der Nacht – Werner Herzog
- Broken Flowers – Jim Jarmusch
- Down By Law – Jim Jarmusch
- Dead Man – Jim Jarmusch
- Ghost Dog – The Way of the Samurai – Jim Jarmusch
- Lights in the Dusk – Aki Kaurismäki
- Eyes Wide Shut – Stanley Kubrick
- M – Fritz Lang
- 14th Arrondissement, in ‘Paris, je t’aime’ – Denis Lenoir
- Ninotchka – Ernst Lubitsch
- Mullholand Drive – David Lynch
- Blue Velvet – David Lynch
- Sin City – Frank Miller
- Lemming – Dominik Moll
- The Quiet American – Phillip Noyce
- Taxi Driver – Martin Scorcese
- The Usual Suspects – Bryan Singer
- Kill Bill, Parts 1 and 2 – Quentin Tarrantino
- Dogville – Lars von Trier
- Don’t Come Knocking – Wim Wenders
- The Matrix, Part 1 – Wachowski Bros.
- Das Weiße Rauschen – Hans Weingartner
- Witness for the Prosecution – Billy Wilder
- 2046 – Wong Kar Wai
So many I haven’t seen… btw, did you get the story of Mulholland Drive? I don’t know a single person who did.
In general I tend to like more European movies, mostly German or Scandinavian or maybe Finnish. (Not all of them of course.)
»Das Rauschen« should btw be named »Das weiße Rauschen« – one of the German movies I didn’t like too much.
Comment by DrNI — March 25, 2007 @ 11:57 am
>btw, did you get the story of Mulholland Drive? I don’t know a single person who did.
I had to watch it five or six times and discuss it even more often, but I think I caught most of it, now, although there are some spots that are very hard to interpret in general. The fundamental clue is that the film is split in two halves – the first half is a dream the main character Betty has. This part follows the logic of the unconscious and is thus a little hard to grasp – in it, the world is made according to Betty’s desires: she is a beautiful and succesful actress who is coveted by many. But more and more, eerie things happen that are to give her hints that this is all just an illusion and things aren’t that great, really.
The second half shows reality: Betty’s actual name is Diane and she is just a nobody who won a local dancing competition somewhere in the provincial backwaters. She has crooked teeth and is in love with an actress who is dating her producer.
There is very detailed analysis here: http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2001/10/23/mulholland_drive_analysis/index.html
I think ‘Mulholland Drive’ is one of Lynch’s movies that actually *can* be understood. Compare it to ‘Lost Highway’ or ‘Twin Peaks’ – those films are much harder to interpret because, I think, they don’t in fact have any answers to the questions they pose.
>In general I tend to like more European movies, mostly German or Scandinavian or maybe Finnish
C’mon – I do have Kaurismäki on the list! And even Lars von Trier, although ‘Dogville’ is one of the very very few of his movies I like (there are more I really hate). But admitedly, I don’t know too many Scandinavian films – can you recommend some? German cinema I find difficult. Of the later directors there is Schlöndorff, Tykwer, Petzold. And Dresen, definitely. I also liked ‘Der Totmacher’ (Karmakar) or stuff like ‘Gegen die Wand’ by Fatih Akin. But most of everything else always seems so artificial to me – shallow stories, perhaps comical, sometimes suspenseful. But they just don’t grab me.
Comment by Armin — March 25, 2007 @ 1:53 pm