My Favorite Movies
My Favorite Movies 15 – Touchez Pas au Grisbi (Jacques Becker, 1954)
From the very beginning cinema has been fascinated with the character of the gangster. These onscreen rebels who live outside normal society have undergone many permutations over the years, from hoodlum to organized criminal. However, my favorite type of gangster is the post High Sierra (1941) professional (and honorable) career criminal and this is the…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 14 – The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg, 1928)
It’s a common misconception to think of all silent films as primitive, sped-up affairs with histrionic acting and a lot of makeup. Now, not that there’s anything wrong with the primitive sped-up silent films with a lot of arm waving, but there are also a lot of silent films that are just as polished and…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 13 – Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)
So, even though I’m in film school now and people are making me write about movies, I still like writing about movies in my free time. Thus, I’m switching from the monthly “Internet Meme Monday” feature to a more sustainable monthly “My Favorite Movies” feature. I’ve written about my favorite movies in the past, and this “new”…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 12 – Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, 1972)
There are many directors I admire greatly, but none as much as Eric Rohmer. With his death yesterday morning, cinema lost a true master whose unique voice has never been (and most likely will never be) matched. It’s easy to think of Rohmer’s films as “all being the same”. After all, “young attractive french couples (often on…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 11 – Nosferatu (Werner Herzog, 1979)
It is astonishing how different Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night is from Murnau’s classic silent horror film considering it is an almost scene for scene remake. To be sure, both versions share the fixation with the natural world, the inhumanity of Dracula, and the underlying sense of terror and dread. But Herzog’s version of Dracula (the true heart…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 10 – Nosferatu (F. W. Murnau, 1922)
Silent films get a bad rap. Even among film snobs there is the attitude that “yes, they are important, but come on…wouldn’t you rather watch something a bit more polished?” However, while the acting is not always as naturalistic as we are used to (a style developed due to the lack of sound), the silent…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 9 – It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
I wasn’t sure whether to write a “My Favorite Christmas Movies” post, a “My Favorite Christmas Movie” post or just a “Christmas Movies” post. Finally I realized that I really just wanted to write about It’s a Wonderful Life, and since there was no point in needlessly qualifying it, I might as well give it a…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 8 – Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981)
Every time I revisit John Boorman’s Excalibur I enjoy it a bit more. And since I thought it was pretty awesome to begin with, I can’t think of a better indicator that I should probably write a “my favorite movies” post about it! I should probably start by pointing out that the movie can seem…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 7 – Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
Five Easy Pieces is a movie about alienation. Of course that is an awfully broad subject, and one that is perennially in fashion for artsy fartsy film directors. What distinguishes Five Easy Pieces from the slew of movies on the subject is the complexity of its portrayal of a fundamental inability to connect. Foundational American…
Read MoreMy Favorite Movies 6 – Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
So there it is, Saturday night, and I’m sitting at home with a Breckenridge double IPA watching a movie (instead of “clubbin” like usual). John Wayne and Dean Martin have just seen the man who shot their friend run into a bar full of men who would like nothing better than to kill them too.…
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