Movies That Stay With You

[Heywoodmoutaw]

Ok, I never posted my list.  It's long, but there are a lot of movies that pop into my head over and over.  Some of these are really obvious choices; sometimes movies are overwhelmingly acknowledged as great because they have an undeniable power, an ability to connect with something universal, or nearly so.  In that spirit:

 

Lawrence of Arabia: saw it the first time when I was maybe 9 or 10, still thought old movies must be boring movies.  Man, this movie.  I love that it doesn't end with the triumph.  It ends with heady revolution turning into difficult/impossible governance.  And established, powerful people who know how the game is played, and don't mind taking advantage.  The movie The Candidate ends famously with "So, what do we do now?". LoA shows the most likely outcome.  To win, pull off the impossible, and still lose.  The scene at the well, Sharif on the horizon, showing you the entire approach.  I gotta stop, love this one too much.

 

Inside Llewyn Davis: there are a lot of Coen Brothers movies I could put here, depending on my mood.  So beautiful to look at and listen to, so warm and cold at the same time.  A man's character is a loop, and will visit him over and over.  Watching Llewyn become fully adult, find his limitations (as important as finding your potential, they're inseparable).  Makes me think of Gere in Days of Heaven, realizing he isn't smart enough to get over on the world. And when it makes me laugh, it makes me laugh really hard.  

 

Night of the Hunter: my parents let me watch anything as a kid, so I saw the edited for TV version of The Shining even earlier than I saw Lawrence of Arabia.  A couple of years later, Mitchum riding through the night singing "leaning . . . leaning" creeped me out more than anything at the Overlook.  Now I think of the fairy tale touches, the shot of Shelley Winters underwater, Lillian Gish's moral center serving as an infallible bullsh*t detector.  

 

Touch of Evil:  Every time I watch it, I feel like I've been up all night and the next day, just like Janet Leigh.  "He was some kind of a man.  What does it matter what you say about people?" I don't think it would be possible to make this movie today and have Quinlan be right about anything; great art is as complicated, paradoxical and sometimes amoral as real life.

 

Marathon Man: Crazy how long this movie keeps you in the dark and it either frustrates you enough to walk away from it, or makes you wish more movies were this good with genuine suspense.  Does the second thing for me obviously.  

 

Moonstruck:  Why don't more movies have real people in them, in all of their flawed glory?  Most romantic comedies fail for me because the leads are too unobjectionable.  They don't have real flaws, they're like people in a job interview saying that their greatest weakness is perfectionism.  These people feel real, really flawed, and you can fall in love with them anyway.  

 

All The President's Men: Every great triumph is driven almost entirely by unglamorous grunt work that no one in their right mind wants to do.  And occasionally makes you very afraid.  Also, Bernstein chain smoking in the elevator.  "You don't have it; come back when you've got it" is something that people on the way up should be hearing constantly, until they learn how to say it to themselves.

 

2001, Goodfellas, Lebowski, I'm a pretty stereotypical Gen X guy when it comes to these.  I love them, think of them often, have quoted them endlessly.  Probably have nothing new to say about them but they belong on this list.

 

Miller's Crossing and The Big Sleep:  more hard boiled dialogue and double-crossing, please.  "She tried to sit on my lap while I was standing up."

 

There Will Be Blood

Network (the dialogue, and successful prediction of how the next 50 years would go down!)

Children of Men (a nightmarish movie about hope)

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

The Hustler

25th Hour

Kiss Me Deadly

In The Mood for Love

Andrei Rublev (would've given Stalker the Tarkovsky slot up until the last 10 years; a man ages)

The Lighthouse

The Proposition 

Reds

Tar (feels soon to include, but I'm confident of it)

Mulholland Drive

Lost Highway

Sunset Boulevard

Zodiac

Slap Shot

Sexy Beast

Atonement

Amadeus

Blade Runner & 2049 (the 2nd movie is even richer, made me appreciate the first one more, though)

Sorceror

 

I'll think of a hundred more tomorrow