JohnCoffey wrote:
Napoleon Dynamite. I've lived in the USA, and can happily admit that places like that do exist. Idaho, Iowa and parts of Dakota.
Rob Zombie's Halloween - hated by many, loathed by more. I fucking loved it. I've watched it about thirty times now. Gritty, gross, sick and distasteful from the offset this is typical Rob Zombie. Again, most brits will have no clue who he is, and would hate his music. I can't get enough.
Both excellent choices. I'm very glad to see someone else recognising the genius of Rob Zombie's Halloween. My wife and I saw it at the cinema and loved it - and then were very surprised to see that it was generally regarded as a bit rubbish.
As for Napoleon Dynamite, it's just wonderful. My in-laws live in rural Idaho and it's really quite similar. (And we actually went to Preston, the setting for the film, and saw all the locations. We shopped in the thrift store, drove past Pedro's house, went into the school playground to find the tetherball, etc.
As for my movies, I'll avoid really obvious stuff like Alien and Goodfellas, which everyone loves. (No, everyone does love Goodfellas. People that say they don't just have realised the fact yet.)
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith - I cannot in good conscience say that the film is perfect. It's not. A lot of the acting is lousy, a lot of the dialogue is utterly terrible, Kit Fisto doesn't get the death he deserves and it's edited for repeat viewings. (It seems very strangely paced on a first viewing, the rhythm of the thing only feeling comfortable after that.) But it's full of greatness. There's the look of the thing, for one. People may complain about CGI, but the richness and scope of the world created here deserves to be recognised. Vader's "Nooooooooo!" is utterly ridiculous, but also wonderful. Ian McDiarmid proves that the right actors can make the shit that George Lucas types sound good. He's sublime. The film's a mixture of the terrible, the wonderful and the wonderfully ridiculous. Its CGI sheen suggests perfection, but you've actually got a glorious mess of a film, with every clunking dialogue drop matched by incredible sights and sounds. It's the Star Wars movie I think of as the most Star Wars of the lot, these days. It's everything good and bad about the whole huge Star Wars universe wrapped up in one incredibly entertaining film. I love it. I recognise that it's not as good as the original, or Empire, but it's the one I always want to watch now.
Highlight: The Order 66 montage. Looks incredible and is both chilling and incredibly sad. A whole world ends in moments.
Jason X - It is, quite possibly, the silliest idea for a movie ever. EVER. Take Jason Voorhees and then put him on a space ship in the future. Everyone, including me, expected it to be awful. But it's a gem of a movie. It takes its silliness, it owns it, it parades it, it revels in it. It's a parody of the old movies - IN SPACE! - but done with great love and affection. And there are some great death scenes. The funny thing is, this is the first Jason Voorhees movie I ever saw, but even then I recognised how good it was. Now, after falling in love with the mostly-terrible previous movies, I love it more.
Highlight: The whole "We love pre-marital sex!" scene. It's everything wonderful and gratuitous from all the previous movies rolled up into one brief scene and played for laughs. And it includes a reprise of Jason's greatest kill.
The Passion of Joan of Arc - No robots, no spaceships, no big explosions. For fuck's sake, there's not even any sound! (Though do watch the Criterion version, because the score they use is incredible.) It's a familiar tale, told mostly in close up. It's incredibly moving and you will remember her face for the rest of your life.
Highlight: It's not really a highlight film, but I guess it has to be Maria Falconetti's face.
The Prestige - Batman meets Wolverine! Or, rather, Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman play rival magicians. It's a puzzle movie, but one which is worth watching more than once, even once you know how the trick was performed. There's not much more to say without spoiling it, really, as it's best to go in knowing nothing, but I will mention David Bowie's performance. I suspect is accent is, er, suspect, but he's wonderful in the film.
Highlight: The light bulbs in the field. In a all round great-looking movie, this is breathtaking.
12 Monkeys - All Terry Gilliam's movies are worth watching. Hell, they're all worth owning. Brazil may be his best, but I'm putting 12 Monkeys here because, to my mind, it's the only movie ever to get time travel right.
Highlight: When you find yourself saying, "Oooooooooh, I see."