Archive for the 'Top Five' Category

5. Dracula (Roger Corman, 1964)

Young real estate agent John Harker (Jack Nicholson) realizes too late that he just sold that big dark house on the hill to an ancient vampire.  The effete, charismatic Count Dracula (Vincent Price) menaces both John and his girlfriend Mina (Barbara Steele), until they eventually recruit help from aging vampire hunter Dr. Van Helsing (Boris Karloff).

4. Doctor Who: The Cosmos (BBC/PBS co-production [no director you've ever heard of], 1980)

This low budget made-for-public-tv movie bends genres in its innovative attempt to combine science documentary with science fiction.  The Doctor (Tom Baker) and Romana (Lalla Ward) are on their way to visit 20th Century Earth, when they encounter a strange ship, unlike anything the Doctor has seen before.  They materialize the TARDIS on the ship’s spacious bridge, and meet its sole occupant, an unassuming man in a turtleneck and khaki blazer.  He explains that he is Carl Sagan, and that this is his Spaceship of the Mind.  Carl and the Doctor hit it off immediately, but their pleasant chat is soon interrupted by a Dalek attack.  Managing to capture and restrain the Daleks, they take them on an impressive tour of spacetime, and Carl is able to use his amazing powers to convince even the Daleks to appreciate the beauty of the universe, eliminating (at least temporarily) their desire to exterminate.

3. Super Mario Brothers (Ralph Bakshi, 1990)

Riding high on the runaway success of Super Mario Brothers 2, the Nintendo company decided it was time for a big screen animated film.  After realizing they’d have a disadvantage negotiating with Disney, they decided to hire idiosyncratic animator Ralph Bakshi.  The talks with Bakshi were a little tense at first, but eventually they told him, “Do whatever you want; just put as much stuff from the games in there as possible.”  Two years later, Bakshi delivered a surrealistic animated epic about two plumbers who stumble into a psychedelic realm of flying turtles, walking bombs, and mushrooms that make you change size.  Susan Tyrrell narrates, as well as providing the voice of Birdo.  Bakshi, a Brooklynite himself, voices Mario.  The film was a flop, of course, but has gained a strong cult following, particular among stoners.

2. Zombies (Alfred Hitchcock, 1962)

Ben Livingston (Jimmy Stewart) is a depressed widower, and burnt out on his job as a newspaper reporter.  After working late one night, he offers a walk home to Barbara Benson (Eva Marie Saint) a columnist who has caught his eye.  Soon after leaving the building, however, they discover that the entire town has been overrun with shambling zombies.  Ben’s journalistic spirit and his will to live are reawakened in tandem as he and Barbara struggle to survive, and to understand what’s happened to their world.

1. Star Wars: Episode I (Luc Besson, 1999)

Wisely realizing that he’s rather out of practice as a filmmaker, George Lucas hired a handful of the best writers in Hollywood to help him flesh out his ideas for the Star Wars prequels.  He then searched for the best possible director to helm the first chapter, and settled on Besson, who had recently proven his scifi action chops with The Fifth Element.  The engaging, well-reviewed film that emerged from this collaboration stars Edward Norton as Anakin Skywalker, a reckless hotshot pilot in the Clone Wars who reluctantly teams up with Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan MacGregor) on the orders of General Bail Organa (Angus MacFadyen).  Meanwhile, the insidious Mandalore warriors are grooming their own young hotshot, Boba Fett (Mos Def), who’s been secretly contacted by the ambitious Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), whose ultimate plans are mysterious.  Sensing in Anakin a natural affinity for the Force, Obi-Wan decides to teach him the ways of the Jedi, but Anakin keeps getting distracted by the young queen of Alderaan (Milla Jovovich), who’s already engaged to Organa.

10. Star Trek

When I was a kid, I loved the classic Star Trek, and this movie reminded me why.  It’s big, colorful, fast-paced and reasonably smart—although I wish the movie was just a little bit smarter.  Zachary Quinto is a fantastic Spock, and Chris Pine is a reasonably okay Kirk (there’s really no fair way to judge anyone who’s not Shatner in that role).  Karl Urban is absolutely phenomenal as Bones (always my favorite character), and if he’d had more to do, the film would probably be higher on this list.

9. The Princess and the Frog

There’s a full review coming, so I won’t say too much here.  In short, I was pleasantly surprised by how good this is.  The animation is gorgeous, the music is occasionally very good, and the politics are as good as could reasonably be expected.  I’ll definitely watch this again sometime, which is more than I can say for Avatar.

8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

I’ve always loved scifi/fantasy stories that background the adventure in favor of believable characterization and drama.  Largely for that reason, this is my favorite by far of the Harry Potter series.  It’s a movie about good wizards battling bad wizards, sure, but more than that it’s a movie about being a teenager, and it captures the joy and confusion of that age perfectly.  All that, plus a fantastic turn by Jim Broadbent.

7. Up

Ed Asner is the gift that keeps on giving.  He’s been the go-to crusty old man for about 30 years, and he’s still alive and continuing to perfect the role.  In Up, he’s holds his own, voice-wise, with a cute little fat kid and probably the funniest canine character ever put on screen.  Of course, this being Pixar, there are also mindblowing visuals and an outside-the-box story.  There’s also a real emotional core to the film, particularly in that opening montage that makes everyone (everyone!) cry.

6. Drag Me to Hell

After the disaster that was Spider-Man 3, Sam Raimi returned to his horror/comedy roots and proved he’s still got it in him.  This might be my favorite horror film of the past decade (the only other contender is 2008’s Let the Right One In, a film so different it’s hard to compare).  Drag Me to Hell is scary, suspenseful, occasionally disgusting, and frequently hilarious.  In other words, it’s everything a horror movie ought to be.  A moment of Satanic sunlight in a dark decade of reprehensible Torture Porn.

5. Moon

Wedged into this year of big, noisy, frequently dumb scifi movies comes this weird little cerebral piece, like a lost film from 1974, to show us what the genre is capable of.  The writing is unapologetically complex, the effects are excellent but never distracting, and Sam Rockwell blows it out of the water in an insanely demanding role.

4. Humpday

Lynn Shelton’s film deals with some heavy issues without ever feeling even slightly bogged down: gender, sexuality, friendship, art, the social divide between bohemian and bourgeoisie.  Josh Leonard, Mark Duplass, and Alicia Delmore all do a great job building their characters and their relationships with each other through extraordinarily believable (apparently improvised) dialogue.  This is also one of the best portrayals of awkwardness I’ve ever seen outside of any version of The Office, but unlike that show, it never makes you wince and turn away.

3. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Every inch a Wes Anderson movie, despite its cast of woodland creatures.  George Clooney does that thing he’s so good at, his cleverness and charm perfectly embodied in fox form.  Anderson regulars like Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray find their dapper inner animals as well.  Meryl Streep’s vocal performance is strangely lackluster (which is particularly disappointing after she totally nailed the Julia Child role) but passable.  The puppets and sets are beautiful, the animation is lovingly old school, and the plot has some depth to it while still appealing to children (or at least the ones I saw it with).

2. Inglourious Basterds

Big, sprawling, occasionally messy, but beautiful to behold.  A hell of a lot of talking, punctuated with people getting killed with guns and knives, baseball bats and bare hands.  A love letter to war movies, but also a film with something to say about war.  I get annoyed with film nerds who write negative reviews of Tarantino films that can be summed up as, “I get every one of your obscure cinematic references (behold as I list them) and therefore I hate you and your films.”  If Tarantino’s esoteric allusions were a problem, it would be the people who don’t get them that hate the films, which doesn’t seem to be the case.  I get maybe about half of them myself, but I just like watching what he builds out of such disparate pieces.

1. Where the Wild Things Are

I’m extremely impatient to see this film again.  It’s so unlike anything else I’m used to that I have a hard time trusting my opinion of it based on one viewing.  These are the things I do know:  It captures the spirit of the book perfectly.  The creatures are wonderfully constructed and beautifully acted.  It’s unlike anything else I’ve ever seen (including Spike Jonze’s other films, which I always found overrated).  Parts of it almost made me cry, but it left me feeling genuinely uplifted.  This was a movie I never would have thought (prior to seeing the trailers) could possibly be good, and yet it was basically perfect.  This movie makes me want to have kids, just so I can one day show it to them.

The new trailer for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland is out, and it’s an improvement over the teaser, but I still can’t say I’m excited.  Regardless, I thought it would be fun to look back at some previous non-animated Alices.

5. Alice (1989)

This is far from Jan Svankmajer’s best film, but it stands out as an inarguably unique take on the Wonderland story.  Rather than an expansive landscape, Wonderland is depicted as a labyrinthine house of tiny rooms and cramped passageways (not unlike the Hell of Svankmajer’s Faust).  The White Rabbit has been stuffed and mounted, and the Mad Hatter and March Hare trade heads rather than seats.  When Alice shrinks, she transforms from a real little girl into an animated china doll.  In short, this adaptation is purposely as creepy as possible in every way.  It’s neither faithful nor child-friendly, but it’s definitely worth a watch.

4. Alice in Wonderland: An X-Rated Musical Fantasy (1976)

What can you say about a 1970’s hardcore porn version of Alice in Wonderland?  To begin with, it’s a musical, which makes for a truly strange generic blend.  Like a lot of vintage porn, the hardcore sequences are the least interesting bits (containing very little that could actually be called sexy), whereas the pun-filled dialogue, the scanty costumes, and the full and flowing 1970’s hair (on their heads and everywhere else) are consistently amusing.  This was produced by Bill Osco, who was also responsible for the classic Flesh Gordon.

3. Alice in Wonderland (1966)

This British production (originally broadcast on the BBC) views Carroll’s story through the lens of mid-20^th Century Art Cinema.  Think “Alice at Marienbad.”  There was no script—the actors just improvised around the text of the novel.  There are also no animal costumes—each creature is just a person, except for the Cheshire Cat, who’s just a cat.  In watching the Tea Party scene, the conclusion seems inescapable that costumes were out of the question once they’d spent the entire budget on drugs.  Also check out the Frog Footman, who’s easily the funniest character in the film.

2. Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass (1985)

Irwin Allen produced this big budget star-studded musical TV miniseries spectacular in the grand 1980’s tradition.  Natalie Gregory stands out as a rare age-appropriate Alice, and handles the dialogue exceptionally for such a tiny child.  There are a few too many winks to the cast’s other work to regard it as a faithful adaptation (Telly Salivas as a bald Cheshire Cat exclaims, “Meow, Baby!”), but it’s mostly a lot of fun, and the length allows for the inclusion of characters who make it into few adaptations, such as the Horse, the Goat, and the Newspaper-suited Man on the train.  No other incarnation of the caterpillar has ever been as likable as Sammy Davis, Jr., who does a tap number to Father William.  There are also some surprisingly frightening scenes, such as the encounters with the Jabberwocky and the truly disturbing bit where Carol Channing turns into a sheep.

1. Great Performances: Alice in Wonderland (1983)

The 1982 Broadway production of Alice was adapted for PBS, and it’s really something special.  The costumes and sets are taken directly from the Tenniel drawings, so much so that they’re largely black and white with crosshatching.  Alice is played by twentysomething Kate Burton, whose theatrical acting style doesn’t stand up to the camera’s scrutiny.  Fortunately, she’s balanced out by legends like Colleen Dewhurst, Maureen Stapleton, and Donald O’Connor.  I saw this as a small child, and was terrified by the Cheshire Cat’s bald, claw-sharpening human form.  As an adult, my favorite scene is the tea party, in which avant garde theatre legend Andre Gregory and a strikingly handsome young Zeljko Ivanek play the Mad Hatter and the March Hare as a bitchy gay couple.

Disclaimer: All Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones movies were eliminated from the running to avert obviousness.

5. Aguirre: The Wrath of God

I watched this in Film Club in high school and hated it.  And I was a kid who liked art films (obviously, since I was in Film Club).  When I watched it again recently, though, I adored it.  Klaus Kinski is a sackful of crazy in a conquistador suit.  The Amazon is the Amazon, and the rain forest is filled with death.  The long shots that bored me as a teen really work for me now (it probably helps that I watched a ton more Herzog and some Malick in between).  Herzog’s lingering camera emphasizes the indifference of nature (his favorite subject); the river and the jungle will just keep on going, doing what they do long after the inevitable deaths of these fools who think they’ve come to conquer.

4. The King of Kong

If I get around to making a “Top Five Documentaries of All Time” list, this film will make that one too.  I get frustrated trying to convince people how good this is, and that you don’t have to have the slightest interest in video games to appreciate it.  I mean, I imagine it’s a better film if you know what Donkey Kong is than if you don’t, but we’re talking about a game that’s permeated our culture for almost three decades.  Anyway, this is a movie about a guy who sets a goal, discovers it’s harder than he expected and there are forces working against him, and only becomes more determined as a result.  Also, the “wipe my butt” scene… wow, that’s a heady mixture of suspense and pathos right there.

3. Blood Tea and Red String

If you only see one experimental puppet film this decade, see Blood Tea and Red String.  Christiane Cegavske spent thirteen years making this wordless saga about the Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak and their journey to retrieve a beautiful doll from the incredibly creepy aristocratic White Mice.  Along the way they encounter carnivorous hallucinogenic plants, a frog shaman, and a spider with head of a woman.  This isn’t so much a fairy tale as a dream that has borrowed a fairy tale’s shape.  The world feels fully realized, despite the utter lack of explanation for anything within it.  With this film alone, Cegavske became my favorite underground animator working today, and I really hope she releases her second feature before I’m middle aged.

2. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I’m going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it.”  And thus the aging adventurer sets out, like King Beowulf to slay the dragon.  He was barely competent to begin with, and time hasn’t been kind.  He spends his days drinking, smoking weed, and driving away everyone who wants to help him.  But he really, really wants to find that giant shark that ate Esteban, if only because he can’t come up with anything else to do.  Bill Murray, under the direction of his biggest fan, Wes Anderson, creates a beautiful portrait of a man past his prime.  Like Beowulf, he’s a larger than life hero in a fantastical world full of grand adventure and man-eating creatures.  Unlike the King of the Geats, Zissou (like most of us in the real world) is defined by his flaws as much as (perhaps more than) his strengths.

1. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I meant to write about this film back when John Hughes died, as I think it’s his most underrated work as a director.  Steve Martin and John Candy are a comic duo in the classical mold, and it’s kind of a shame they didn’t make any more buddy films together.  They’re both actors that it’s become easy to dismiss, but here they’re both at their best, and their best turns out to be pretty amazing.  Martin is a bundle of anger, tension, and judgment in a well cut suit and expensive overcoat.  Candy is his opposite: as obnoxious as he is kind, dressed in the bulky winter clothes of the uncultured rube.  The nighttime interstate scene ought to be taught in school (and will be one day, if I have anything to say about it).  The ending is maybe a little too heartwarming, but surely a film this funny can be forgiven some schmaltz in the last five minutes.

5. Logan’s Run

This movie has entered our cultural consciousness in a pretty permanent way, with the whole idea of being put to death via “carousel” when you turn thirty.  Unfortunately, not many people seem to have actually seen the film.  It’s one of those great pre-Star Wars sci fi epics that combines heady concepts with really cheesy execution.  A future where everyone’s young and beautiful, wearing color-coded outfits and sleeping with whoever they want, seems like a pretty wonderful place at first.  Well, maybe not the color-coded clothes.  But of course there are more insidious things lurking underneath the surface than just a limited wardrobe palette.  In addition to the whole dying-at-thirty thing, there’s also an insane African-American robot who lives under the city, freezing people in blocks of ice because he’s been denied his original purpose of making frozen fish sticks.  Okay, it’s possible I just convinced you not to see this movie, but there’s undeniably great stuff too.  Peter Ustinov is fantastic as the last living denizen of the outside world.  Michael York in action hero mode is a little more butch than he was in Cabaret, but not much.  Jenny Agutter is great as well, and Farrah Fawcett has a role that’s perfectly in proportion to her acting ability.

4. Serenity

If you’re not already on the Firefly boat by now, I don’t know what can be done for you.  Either way, this cinematic adaptation of the short-lived TV series stands on its own as one of the best rollicking outer space adventures of the last decade.  I’ve said before that the recent Star Wars prequels suffered from a lack of a Han Solo analog, and Joss Whedon did his best to make up for it by populating half the cast with variations on the gunslinging space smuggler.  Serenity is more than just a great action movie, though.  It has a lot to say about free will and the rights of the governed.  It’s just that it also has a lot of people getting kicked in the head by a gorgeous ballerina.

3. THX 1138

George Lucas’s first sci fi film is also his best.  Yeah, I said it.  I have as much nostalgic love for Star Wars as the next 30-year-old, but THX 1138 has a depth and vision to it that Lucas never quite topped.  It’s so different from what came later that it’s difficult at first to believe that this is the same director.  At least until the futuristic car chase scene, which is pure Lucas.  Robert Duvall plays the title character, who rejects the emotional constraints his society has put on him and falls in love with his roommate.  This decision leads him down a surprising path through the guts of this underground world, across a Beckettesque wasteland, and ultimately up and out.  The sexuality and emotion between Duvall and Maggie McOmie feel so real and visceral that it’s astounding to think that this is the same George Lucas who went on to tell the soulless story of Anakin and Padme. I suppose it helps to be young, and to have a lead actor of unparalleled talent.

2. A Scanner Darkly

Philip K. Dick’s fiction is notoriously difficult to adapt to film, and Richard Linklater pulls it off to an amazing degree.  It helps that the movie is animated, which enables the real world to mesh seamlessly with all manner of drug-induced surrealism.  You never know if what you’re seeing can be trusted, which is the same problem most of the film’s characters are facing.  You couldn’t imagine a better cast for playing a gang of charismatic burnouts and junkies: Keanu Reeves, Robert Downey Jr., Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, and Rory Cochrane.  Keanu does a good job here, probably because nothing is asked of him that’s outside his admittedly limited range.  Downey steals every scene he’s in, emitting a tireless stream of barely coherent ramblings.  This is an extremely dark movie, although it contains some very funny moments.  The future it portrays is frighteningly easy to envision, and the story’s tragic ending is simultaneously unpredictable and inevitable.

1. The Brother from Another Planet

If you don’t know much about this movie, it would be easy to look at the title and dismiss it as a run-of-the-mill blaxploitation sci fi comedy.  It is a sci fi comedy with a predominantly black cast, but there’s nothing run-of-the-mill or exploitative about it.  Every John Sayles movie has a strong sense of place, and this one’s place is the Harlem of the early 80′s.  A mute alien crash lands there who looks almost exactly like a black man (only his feet give him away), and he quickly realizes what a complex system of rules this planet has for who belongs where and why.  To the black residents of Harlem, he’s an oddball outsider.  However, when two aliens who look like white men come looking for him, the lines are quickly redrawn.  Joe Morton gives an amazing wordless performance as the Brother, and Sayles and David Straithern are hilarious as the Men in Black who come for him.  This is one of my very favorite movies, and I can’t recommend it highly enough to anyone who’s never seen it.

5. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

As the archaically long title implies, this is a film about two men and tells the tale of how the less impressive one came to gun down the legendary hero he’d idolized. It’s a bit of a love story, really. Andrew Dominik doesn’t presume to tell us the exact nature of Ford’s feelings for James, but they’re certainly complex. Brad Pitt exudes quiet charisma as Jesse James. The Ford brothers, Casey Affleck as Bob and especially Sam Rockwell as Charley, embody the sort of guy you meet and think, “Something’s just not right with him.” There are also great supporting performances by Mary-Louise Parker and master of creepiness Garrett Dillahunt, not to mention cameos from Nick Cave and the Nosferatu of politics, James Carville. The movie drags a bit toward the end, but the cast and the Malick-esque visuals more than make up for it.

4. Reds

This movie isn’t watched or discussed nearly as often as it ought to be, which probably has something to do with it being more than three hours long and about American communists. Regardless of your politics and attention span, though, you just really need to see this one. Like I said about Nashville, stop the DVD (or the torrented .avi file, if you’re a communist) and come back later as many times as you need to, but just get it watched. Warren Beatty co-wrote, directed, and stars as John Reed, the only American buried in the Kremlin. Diane Keaton plays the love of his life, Louise Bryant. Jack Nicholson and Maureen Stapleton have memorable turns as two better-known American socialists, Eugene O’Neil and Emma Goldman. The movie isn’t so much about any particular ideology as it is an exploration of political passion. It’s about how great it feels to get swept up in something bigger than you, and how disillusioning it is to realize a movement isn’t living up to its promises.

3. Milk

Gus van Sant’s best mainstream film should have easily taken the Best Picture Oscar instead of Danny Boyle’s bit of forgettable patronizing sentimentalism, but if I start complaining about academy choices I might never stop. At least Sean Penn was recognized for his portrayal of Harvey Milk. For all the great work Penn has done in the past, this is his first role where I didn’t feel like I was seeing any of the actor’s ego up on screen. It also has one of the best scripts I’ve ever seen in a biopic. Dustin Lance Black manages to include all the key events while maintaining a consistent pace, avoiding a major pitfall of the genre.

2. Frida

The great thing about Julie Taymor’s Frida is how the film itself takes on some of the vibrantly colorful, surreal, occasionally disturbing imagery of Frida Kahlo’s paintings. Of course, all of Taymor’s movies are a bit like that, so maybe she was just the perfect filmmaker for the job. Kahlo had such an interesting and dramatic life that I’m surprised there wasn’t an earlier movie about her, but I’m really glad this is the one that got made, because it’s pretty much perfect. Easily Selma Hayek’s finest moment, with great turns from Alfred Molina and Geoffrey Rush too.

1. Ed Wood

Like Frida, Ed Wood incorporates some of its subject’s visual style. Fortunately, Tim Burton (who would never make a movie nearly this good again) adds considerably more polish to the endeavor than Wood was known for. Still, this black and white film incorporates the kind of enjoyable cheese that makes 1950’s Sci Fi so much fun to watch. When Bela Lugosi launches into a dramatic monologue on a street corner, or Orson Welles appears at exactly the right moment with exactly the right nugget of inspiration, there’s no impulse to worry about whether it really happened that way, because the whole movie takes place in a retro-Hollywood Neverland. Johnny Depp is great in this (and makes a much prettier girl than Ed Wood ever did), but the picture belongs to Martin Landau as Bela Lugosi. He’s pitch perfect in every moment, but I especially love the octopus-wrestling scene. I also adore the way Burton uses the repeated image of Lugosi laying Dracula-like on his back, culminating in the actual funeral scene.

5. The Evil Dead

I have a certain amount of loyalty to this movie because its exterior scenes were filmed in my hometown.  Consequently, despite the high cheese factor, when I first saw this film as a kid it was scarier than anything I’d seen before.  These demons and zombies weren’t just lurking in the woods; they were lurking in the distinctly East Tennessean woods identical to the view from my bedroom window.  This first Evil Dead plays it straighter (or tries to) than its sequels, but there’s already some pretty funny stuff going on, mostly thanks to Bruce Campbell.  Sam Raimi, despite some missteps along the way, has made some of the greatest pulp films of the last three decades, and he got off to a strong start here.

4. Barbarella

I don’t understand this movie at all, but it’s really, really pretty to look at (and not just because of Jane Fonda, although she’s certainly not hard on the eyes).  The dialogue varies from deliberately nonsensical to just plain terrible. Barbarella, despite being the protagonist and having her own spaceship, is never really an empowered woman at all.  Yet somehow the psychedelic music, special effects, and production design make it all worthwhile, plus there are great lines like, “An angel doesn’t make love. An angel is love.”

3. Fire and Ice

Ralph Bakshi is a much-maligned artist who I have great respect for, but he’s not at the top of his game with this movie.  I’m not sure if this is set in a Robert E. Howard style imaginary prehistory or another planet entirely, but either way the world is populated entirely by monsters and ridiculously good-looking humans who wear as little as possible.   The animation is almost entirely rotoscoped, which creates a look that’s at once dreamlike and sort of pedestrian.   Bakshi still packs in some great visuals, though, especially in the backgrounds.  Also, the villain is an albino guy who doesn’t wear pants.  Well, actually nobody in this movie wears pants, but the villain wears a shirt, which just accentuates his pantslessness.

2. Flash Gordon

I almost disqualified this movie from the list, on the grounds that it’s an intentional pastiche of cheesy old sci-fi.  I included it because I’m certain the end result was much worse than the filmmakers had planned.  Surely nobody (even Dino De Laurentiis) would deliberately cast two leads as totally lacking in talent and charisma as Sam Jones and Melody Anderson.  As awful as their performances are, everything going on around them makes the movie a ton of fun.  Max von Sydow (can you believe this movie shares a star with The Seventh Seal?) is a fantastic Ming.  Famous madman Brian Blessed elevates every scene he’s in, thanks to his strangely charismatic shouting.  Ornella Muti’s English is a little awkward, but she’s ridiculously gorgeous.  Throw in a delightfully dated soundtrack by Queen and some phenomenal costume design by Danilo Donati, and this is a movie I can watch over and over again.

1. Forbidden Zone

This is what happens when a movie is made by a bunch of people who are incredibly talented but have no idea how to make a movie.  Specifically, it’s The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, a performance art group from the 1970’s comprised of Danny Elfman and a bunch of people you’ve never heard of.  After much membership upheaval, the group evolved into Elfman’s 1980’s new wave band (just called Oingo Boingo), but at this time they were still into early jazz and cabaret music.  Forbidden Zone might be the strangest musical ever made: Children are played by old people, women are played by men, and buildings are played by painted cardboard.  The visual and musical choices are directly influenced by 1930’s Fleischer cartoons, an effect that is only increased by the stylized sets and larger-than-life acting.  The one truly great actor here is Susan Tyrrell, who dominates the screen as Queen Doris of the Sixth Dimension.  Danny Elfman himself makes a cameo as Satan, who performs a variation on “Minnie the Moocher.”  That and other musical numbers are what keep me coming back to this film, despite the total failure of its narrative and humor.

5. Good Night, and Good Luck

I’m kind of a dissident at heart, so one of the only ways to get me fired up about America is to have somebody (like Joe McCarthy) presenting a totally wrong, offensive idea about what American means, so that someone else (like Edward R. Murrow) can stand up to him with a more compelling notion, reaffirming freedom and the right to dissent.  This is a simple little movie, but it’s got a lot to say.  Also, I love how David Strathairn plays Murrow against McCarthy playing himself via archival footage.

4. 25th Hour

It took me a couple of viewings to realize how much this film is about America, more than it’s about New York or crime or regret.  Ed Norton has been living the American dream- using his ingenuity and hard to work to build a good life for himself and his girlfriend.  Unfortunately, he’s losing everything because he did it outside the law.  Along the way, characters deal with class issues, racial disunity, the emptiness of the Wall Street lifestyle, and the mass mourning for 9/11.  Then the fantasy sequence at the end ties every fleeting fantasy up together in a nice little bow.

3. The Searchers

This is probably the only movie on my list that a Republican might include on theirs, if not for the same reasons.  We probably would agree, though, that this is the greatest Western of all time.  John Wayne is the ultimate rugged individualist, but he’s been so corrupted by years of fighting Yankees and Comanche that he doesn’t seem to have much human warmth and compassion left in him.  Unlike too many “Cowboys and Indians” movies, this one doesn’t shy away from the brutal racism on which our nation was built.  The ugliness of the story is contrasted with the beauty of the surroundings.  John Ford captures the gorgeous Southwestern landscape so spectacularly, it seems unsurprising that people are literally killing each other to live there.

2. Shortbus

Shortbus is a movie about sex.  Specifically, it’s about an assortment of very different people, who are into all different kinds of sex, but all of them are somehow hung up and unable to be satisfied.  In other words, this movie is about America.  It’s about how the only clear path to happiness is for everyone to help each other find the thing that makes them happy, and give each other the room to pursue that happiness.  It’s about an America that doesn’t quite exist yet, but one I’d like to think we might be on the way to, if we work at it.  It also includes the greatest rendition of our national anthem committed to film since Woodstock.

1. Nashville

On the occasion of the USA’s 200th birthday, Robert Altman got out his camera and asked the nation to sit for a portrait.  Focusing on 20-odd people in one city for four days, he tells an epic story about American culture.  It’s very much of the post-Nixon moment, but it definitely holds up today.  Certainly the merging of politics and entertainment still hits close to home.  This might be the greatest American movie ever, and if you haven’t seen it, you really need to.  Yes, it’s incredibly long, but nobody’s going to judge you if you stop the DVD and take a break or two.

I’m going to keep this one brief, because I’m traveling this week and thus low on time.  Still, I couldn’t resist doing something in observation of my least favorite holiday.

5. Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi

At first I was thinking of The Empire Strikes Back, since that’s famously when Luke learns that Vader’s his daddy, but that only happens at the very end of the movie.  Jedi is the one in which Luke spends the entire movie dealing with the fact that his father is the most evil guy in the galaxy (or at least in the top two).  I love that Luke has started dressing in all black, and even wears a cape.  Despite telling himself that he hates his father, he can’t resist trying to be a little more like him.

4. The Godfather

Well, I mean, obviously.  “I never wanted this for you.  I work my whole life – I don’t apologize – to take care of my family, and I refused to be a fool, dancing on the string held by all those bigshots.  I don’t apologize – that’s my life – but I thought that, that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the string.  Senator Corleone; Governor Corleone. Well, it wasn’t enough time, Michael.  It wasn’t enough time.”

3. The Squid and the Whale

My favorite aspect of this divorce story is the way that the older son sides with the father initially, because he’s the cool parent, and then becomes increasingly disillusioned as he realizes that “cool” isn’t necessarily what you want or need out of a parent.  And yes, it’s a little creepy when Jeff Daniels makes out with Anna Paquin, after playing her father a few years earlier in Fly Away Home.  But really, that just adds to the “Dad, what are you doing?!?” factor.

2. All That Jazz

This movie isn’t really about fatherhood, exactly.  It’s about a guy whose many addictions (to sex, to work, to pills and liquor) irreparably destroy his life, and fatherhood is only one of the things he manages to be really bad at.  Still, I’m including it mainly for one moment- a moment that makes me tear up every time I see it.  When [spoiler alert] Joe is dying, he envisions his passage as a big final musical number, and towards the end of it, he runs out to the audience to greet all his fans.  As he interacts with his ex-wife, his girlfriend, his colleagues, and his rival, there’s an emotional distance.  He shakes hands and smiles and goes through the motions.  Then he comes to his daughter, and she jumps up and wraps her arms around his neck and doesn’t want to let go.  It’s heart-wrenching.  It’s also one of the reasons I love this movie.

1. Field of Dreams

Yeah, I know it’s clichéd.  I’ll even admit I haven’t actually watched it in at least 15 years.  But it’s stuck with me, and it’s a part of our culture (no matter how far Kevin Costner has fallen since it came out).  This is a movie about guy who builds a giant monument to American illogic, seeks out a magical negro version of J.D. Salinger, and hosts a secondary afterlife for Baseball players, all so that God will let him play catch with his dead father.  I suspect that if it made more sense, it wouldn’t be so beloved.

5. Grizzly Man

This documentary is a kind of visual dialog between two filmmakers: Timothy Treadwell, the conservationist and bear devotee who presents the wilderness as a place of peace and beauty, and Werner Herzog, the art-house auteur whose films have always been about the violent indifference of nature.  Of course, Herzog gets the final word, because Treadwell gets eaten by a bear.

4. Wall-E

I’ve always respected Pixar (although not enough so to see Cars), but they really exceeded my expectations with this one.  It’s true that the film can leave you a little disappointed the first time through, because the first half really is better than the second, but on repeated viewings you can really see how the whole arc holds together, from the desolate ruined Earth at the beginning to the hope for recovery at the end.

3. Hustle and Flow

I know a lot of people have a problem with the gender dynamics on display in this movie, which is understandable since the protagonist is a pimp.  I certainly have no interest in arguing with those people, who have every right to their position.  For myself, though, I’m completely taken in by the gorgeous cinematography, the unglamorous look at poverty and crime, and the performances.  Terence Howard seems to be perpetually on the verge of getting the respect he deserves, Taraji Henson is starting to get at least a little bit of attention, and Taryn Manning remains completely unrecognized.  I didn’t know who any of them were before seeing this movie, and they all three blew me away.  There’s also a great little performance by DJ Qualls, a likable actor who may not ever been in another good movie in his entire career.

2. Me and You and Everyone We Know

As the title implies, this is a pretty far-reaching movie, particularly for an indie from a performance artist turned first-time director.  Like most of Miranda July’s work, it’s all about the struggles of flawed people to feel some kind of connection with each other.  The size and diversity of the cast enable her to show how that need for closeness keeps coming up, from childhood to old age.  The truth is, I’m having a really hard time writing about this, because the themes are so big and emotional that it’s difficult to discuss them without making the film seem hackneyed or manipulative, neither of which it is.  I just know that every time I watch it, I find new threads to follow as they weave through the story, and when it’s over I feel as affected as the first time I saw it.  John “Sol Starr” Hawkes gives a great performance as the male lead, managing to be likable and sympathetic while still seeming like a guy who’s pretty profoundly damaged.

1. The Royal Tenenbaums

I think it’s become fashionable to dismiss Wes Anderson as a worthwhile filmmaker, but I just can’t do that (at least not as far as his first four films are concerned).  Tenenbaums has a flawlessly intricate structure and a calculated artificiality that combines to create a unique (and frequently imitated) tone.  Anderson is also something of a genius at casting.  The three Tenenbaum children are not played by people who I have much respect for as actors, but they fit the characters so perfectly that it works.   In other words, Ben Stiller is aggressively neurotic, Luke Wilson is listless and melancholy, and Gwyneth Paltrow just seems sort of cold and empty.  On the other hand, the older generation of characters is represented by four amazing actors: Huston, Hackman, Glover, and Murray, who are all at the top of their game.  If I were to make a Venn diagram of fun watchable movies I can put on anytime I’m bored or need cheering up and movies I regard as complex multi-layered achievements in cinematic art, The Royal Tenenbaums would be one of a tiny number of films occupying the two circles’ intersection.