Bet you can't pick just one
Sep. 17th, 2004 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynSince others have done that "pick a movie that people probably haven't seen" meme that's going around everywhere with movies that I would recommend (so nice to see people mention Big Eden and Strange Days and Wings and all kinds of truly great stuff), that didn't leave me with the huge list I was putting together in my head. But here's a couple that I would highly recommend:
1. The Sweet Hereafter. I'd be hard pressed to say "best movie ever made" about anything, but this one comes close. I think it's as close to film perfection as I may have ever seen. It's a tragic story, and I think this turns a lot of people away, but it's also ultimately hopeful, and gets at the heart of what makes humans resilient even in the face of staggering personal loss. Starring Ian Holm, Bruce Greenwood, Sarah Polley, Alberta Watson from LFN, and a host of Canadian actors almost everyone will recognize if they've watched Canadian-made shows (and all three of those lead actors mentioned are jaw-droppingly incredible), and directed by Atom Egoyan from a novel by Russell Banks (who helped write the script), this is essentially the tale of a lawyer who arrives in a small Canadian town to start a lawsuit over the deaths of a busload of children, whose bus crashed into a frozen lake. It jumps through time (I love stories that mess with timelines) and back and forth between the individual characters' stories, and it's suffused with a kind of gorgeous grief and longing that's palpable. It's haunting, redemptive, and heartbreakingly beautiful.
2. The Limey. Also another story that screws with time, and turns the concept of voiceover narration on its head, this masterpiece by Steven Soderbergh takes many of the tricks he employed on the lovely Out of Sight and The Underneath of time-displacement and disjunctive narrative style and uses them to astonishing effect. It's also one of the most visually arresting movies I've ever seen. Terence Stamp plays a career criminal who has just been released from prison, and goes looking for the man who killed his daugher in Los Angeles just prior to his release. Peter Fonda and Barry Newman are amazing as the would-be bad guys, but Stamp just burns through the screen in every scene he's in. He's especially incredible with Luis Guzman, here in one of his few good-guy roles. One of the best crime stories I've ever watched, it has the coolest "shoot-out" too, totally scary because it's so realistic it spooks you. And it uses footage of a young Stamp in the '60s Brit movie Poor Cow as flashbacks, because Stamp is essentially playing the same character decades later. A story of personal redemption and recovery, and the effect of memory on present action, it has one of the loveliest endings on film, and also had the single greatest one-sheet poster ever created, in my not-humble opinion.
3. The Iron Giant. Because this lovely animated film came in at a time when computer animation was taking over, it was dumped on by Warner Bros and never got the attention it deserved. Similar in some ways to Lilo & Stitch (another highly recommended, largely hand-drawn animated film), this is a story about a boy in the late 1950s who befriends a giant robot who doesn't know where he came from, and doesn't know that he is essentially a defensive weapon. Director Brad Bird's comment was "What if a gun had a soul?" It's beautiful, funny, poignant, sweet, filled with wonderful adult jokes and kid-pleasing visuals, and really deserves to be seen by more people. (The little making-of on the DVD hosted by Vin Diesel, who does the voice of the Giant, is a huge extra treat, btw.)
And then there's this movie called The Fast and the Furious that... ha ha, just kidding.
1. The Sweet Hereafter. I'd be hard pressed to say "best movie ever made" about anything, but this one comes close. I think it's as close to film perfection as I may have ever seen. It's a tragic story, and I think this turns a lot of people away, but it's also ultimately hopeful, and gets at the heart of what makes humans resilient even in the face of staggering personal loss. Starring Ian Holm, Bruce Greenwood, Sarah Polley, Alberta Watson from LFN, and a host of Canadian actors almost everyone will recognize if they've watched Canadian-made shows (and all three of those lead actors mentioned are jaw-droppingly incredible), and directed by Atom Egoyan from a novel by Russell Banks (who helped write the script), this is essentially the tale of a lawyer who arrives in a small Canadian town to start a lawsuit over the deaths of a busload of children, whose bus crashed into a frozen lake. It jumps through time (I love stories that mess with timelines) and back and forth between the individual characters' stories, and it's suffused with a kind of gorgeous grief and longing that's palpable. It's haunting, redemptive, and heartbreakingly beautiful.
2. The Limey. Also another story that screws with time, and turns the concept of voiceover narration on its head, this masterpiece by Steven Soderbergh takes many of the tricks he employed on the lovely Out of Sight and The Underneath of time-displacement and disjunctive narrative style and uses them to astonishing effect. It's also one of the most visually arresting movies I've ever seen. Terence Stamp plays a career criminal who has just been released from prison, and goes looking for the man who killed his daugher in Los Angeles just prior to his release. Peter Fonda and Barry Newman are amazing as the would-be bad guys, but Stamp just burns through the screen in every scene he's in. He's especially incredible with Luis Guzman, here in one of his few good-guy roles. One of the best crime stories I've ever watched, it has the coolest "shoot-out" too, totally scary because it's so realistic it spooks you. And it uses footage of a young Stamp in the '60s Brit movie Poor Cow as flashbacks, because Stamp is essentially playing the same character decades later. A story of personal redemption and recovery, and the effect of memory on present action, it has one of the loveliest endings on film, and also had the single greatest one-sheet poster ever created, in my not-humble opinion.
3. The Iron Giant. Because this lovely animated film came in at a time when computer animation was taking over, it was dumped on by Warner Bros and never got the attention it deserved. Similar in some ways to Lilo & Stitch (another highly recommended, largely hand-drawn animated film), this is a story about a boy in the late 1950s who befriends a giant robot who doesn't know where he came from, and doesn't know that he is essentially a defensive weapon. Director Brad Bird's comment was "What if a gun had a soul?" It's beautiful, funny, poignant, sweet, filled with wonderful adult jokes and kid-pleasing visuals, and really deserves to be seen by more people. (The little making-of on the DVD hosted by Vin Diesel, who does the voice of the Giant, is a huge extra treat, btw.)
And then there's this movie called The Fast and the Furious that... ha ha, just kidding.
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-17 05:12 pm (UTC)And yes, I agree with you - these guys must be 'stupid asshats'! And they should now hire you.
On a completely different subject, I love hearing about Seattle through your life. I don't know if you remember me, (I'm a Pros/Roy Dupuis fan who ordered some tapes from you a while ago) and I got the biggest surprise when they were shipped from Media Cannibals because I moved a year ago after living on that same street for 9 years, just a little further south ... It's wonderful to hear the familiar sprinkled in your writing - things like Scarecrow and Swedish... Although I'm happy where we are now (must convince myself!), my heart is still there.
Still thanking my lucky stars that I found lj and you!
no subject
Date: 2004-09-19 08:04 pm (UTC)That whole scene in TSH and the way he recounts that story is just amazing -- and the way he describes himself in it... I still get goosebumps thinking about it. I should watch it again. That was one movie I didn't wait for to get on DVD -- as soon as it was out, it was mine.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-19 10:31 pm (UTC)I lived on N Whitman and 42nd, in Wallingford - I don't think that it was you who mailed my tapes, from Whitman :)
I realized later that referring to Swedish was very thoughtless of me - the last thing I want to do is bring up unhappy things... Sorry. I've been thinking of you and your sister. ::hugs::