Definitive Rundown Part II

More films, this time in no particular order.



















21. The Thing (1982)
My favourite John Carpenter film. The Thing takes place in an Arctic outpost after the discovery of the frozen remains of an extra terestrial life form. When the alien starts to come back to life and seems to be able to take the form of its victims, the tension and paranoia between the remaining characters begins to mount. Like many of Carpenters films, The Thing is a suspenseful waiting game. In a career of atmospheric movies, it is the most atmospheric. Kurt Russell is memorable as the outposts whiskey drinking hellicopter pilot, MacReady. The special effects are astonishing, and probably represent the zenith of animatronics in cinema.


































20. Battle Royale (2000)

Veteran director Kinji Fukasaku's final masterpiece. The story of Battle Royale is adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by Koushun Takami. Basically, a class of school kids are put on a deserted island and given three days to kill each other using randomly allocated weapons ranging from an uzi to a dustbin lid. The shocking and excessive violence emphasizes the characters emotional turmoil in what is perhaps one of the most unusual of teen dramas. The movie features a subtly chilling performance from 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano, the famous film maker and comedian, as the homocidal ex-teacher "Mr Kitano". A uniquely entertaining and violent joyride.


































19. Santa Sangre (1989)
Alejandro Jodorowsky's macabre masterpiece was produced by, and co written with Claudio Argento (brother to the Italian horror master, Dario), who seems to have added atleast a touch of the giallo to the story about a young man who kills in the name of his semi-deified, armless mother. It is infact, a giallo in a Hispanic style, with the baroque tone of the Italian sub-genre replaced by a decidedly surrealist one. The characters in the film are frequently archetypes, almost allegories, representatives of some universal element. The film also seems to borrow stylistically from the work of Herschell Gordon Lewis and José Mojica Marins, but the symbolism and storytelling is altogether more complete. It seems Jodorowsky has taken their work as far as it will go, or atleast to another level. The plot is far too complexed to recount at this point, but suffice it to say that Santa Sangre is a highly symbolic, bloody, sex massacre of the highest calibre.


































18. Goldfinger (1964)
Guy Hamiltons first of many forays into the Bond universe is the most famous and perhaps most consistent of all. In this adventure, Bond is assigned to spy on bullion dealer Auric Goldfinger, and somehow ingratiate himself into the billionaire's company in order to ascertain how he's smuggling gold internationally. In doing so, Bond also uncovers a plan to contaminate the Fort Knox gold reserve with radioactive material, and thereby bankrupt North America while simultaneously sending the price of gold sky-rocketing. What makes this particular Bond movie stand out is, apart from Hamiltons superior directing, a particularly well crafted script by Paul Dehn and Richard Maibaum. The dialogue is excellent, but more importantly the story is well paced and each scene feels as important as the last, which I think is unusual for a Bond film. It seems to be a film heavily grounded in Hollywood classicism, and as such remains a crucial influence on directors like Spielberg and Lucas. Sean Connery is the original and, for me, remains the best incarnation of the Ian Fleming character.


































17. Alien (1979) Ridley Scott's astonishing sci-fi horror classic manages to incorporate the most intriguing elements of both genres. In the future, the crew of the commercial towing spaceship Nostromo are awakened from their hypersleep (a technologically induced coma) by Mother, the spaceships computer, which has detected a mysterious signal emanating from a nearby planet. It appears they are contractually obliged, by the nameless corporate entity they work for, to investigate the phenomena. The crew reluctantly alter course and eventually land on the seemingly un-inhabitable planetoid. They learn that the signal is coming from another craft, a derelict of alien and seemingly ancient origin. The dark, stormy environment of the planet, and the presence of a 'ghost ship', as a device representing the protagonists possible fate, are both classic staples of horror storytelling and aesthetics. Add to this a genuinely terrifying alien antagonist, who's appearance, famously designed by H. R. Giger, seems to suggest both in its head shape and protruding second mouth, an erect phalice, and what we have is something very far away from a traditional sci-fi movie. The aliens phallic appearance gives it emphasis as an aggressive intruder, a sort of rape nightmare made flesh. In the films open ending, the only surviving crew member, warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), along with the ships cat, is left drifting on a lifeboat, returning to hypersleep in the hope that someone, somewhere, will find them.


































16. Black Sabbath (1963)
One of Mario Bava's greatest horror films is a classic example of the horror tryptich, a film made up of multiple segmented stories. Black Sabbath, like most tryptich's, is divided into three stories, with an introduction to each one featuring horror legend Boris Karloff. The first story, The Telephone, is set in the modern day. A woman returns home from a night out to find her phone ringing. She answers it  but hears only a heavy breathing. She puts the receiver down and gets ready for bed, but then the phone rings again. And again. And again. The Telephone is perfect in its simplicity. A story about modern day paranoia. The second story is called The Wurdulak and also stars Boris Karloff as the patriarch of a family harbouring a dark secret in rural, 19th century Russia. The third and final part, entitled The Drop of Water, sees a nurse in Victorian London racked with guilt after stealing a ring from the hand of a deceased, elderly lady, who turns out to have been a famous medium. As always, with ex-cinematographer Bava, the film is beautifully shot, with deep black shadows punctuating the lurid primary colours. Red with green, purple and yellow.


































15. Enter The Dragon (1973)
Bruce Lee's most iconic moment and undoubtedly the best film of a career so unfortunately cut short, Enter The Dragon is a Bond style, 70's, martial arts extravaganza. Lee plays a martial artist proficient in Kung Fu, who is invited to take part in a martial arts tournament which is held every three years on an island close to Hong Kong that is owned by the reclusive and mysterious Han, who is suspected by British authorities of being behind a large scale prostitution and heroin trafficking empire. Lee is recruited by British intelligence to enter the tournament in order to basically assassinate Han, who has banned guns from his island. Also competing are two Americans. Roper, a bankrupt playboy (played by John Saxon) hoping to pay his mob debts, and Williams (played by real life Karate champion Jim Kelly), a black political activist on the run after defending himself against two racist, white policemen. The three of them become loose allies in an environment thick with corruption and oppression. Lee's final showdown with Han in a mirrored labyrinth has to be one of the most iconic scenes in 70s action cinema.


































14. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
John Huston's adaptation of a story by Rudyard Kipling, The Man Who Would Be King is, to me, one of the greatest adventure movies and features two stand out performances from Michael Caine and Sean Connery. In turn of the century British India, Rudyard Kipling (played by Christopher Plummer) is confronted by an elderly beggar while working late at the headquarters of the Northern Star newspaper. The beggar reveals that he is infact 'Peachy' Carnehan, the well dressed man Kipling met just three years earlier on the first class carriage of a train. Originally, Carnehan (Caine) had introduced himself in order to return a gold watch he had infact stolen from Kipling at the train station moments earlier. Carnehan, an ex-non-commissioned officer in the Indian Army and general adventurer and rogue, reveals himself as a fellow Freemason, and that he was forced to return the watch after finding the emblem of Freemasonry carved into the back. He takes the opportunity to ask Kipling to deliver a message to his friend, Daniel Dravot (Connery), another roguish, de-mobbed officer, who should be travelling that way in a few days time. Kipling delivers the message, and eventually forgets about these two eccentric, seemingly quintessentially British characters. One day soon after, the pair show up at Kipling's Northern Star office, explaing that they need him to witness a contract. They pledge to abstain from drink and women until such time as they find the semi mythical kingdom called Kafiristan, which lies beyond the Kyber Pass. Once there, they plan to use their knowledge of tactical warfare to take control of the region, that they have heard is filled with primitive warring tribes, and return as rich men. Classically directed, the movie was hailed by many as Huston's best film since The African Queen. It remains one of my favourites since childhood.





































13. Army of Darkness (1992)
The culmination of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead Trilogy, Army of Darkness is an extraordinary example of horror-comedy script writing, and a cult classic. Bruce Campbell reprises his role of zombie killer Ash Williams, who as a result of being pulled into a time portal at the end of Evil Dead 2, finds himself in Britain in the year 1300. The source of all his problems in the previous films was the Necronomicon, a book bound in human skin and written in blood that has the power to awaken malevolent spirits that apparently inhabit the world around us. These spirits have already possessed his fiance, forcing him to kill her, horribly, and infected his hand, forcing him to cut it off and replace it with a chainsaw. After falling through the time portal, he is taken prisoner by some knights and taken back to their castle to be sacrificed by being thrown into a pit that houses one of the possessed. It seems that the Necronomicon also holds sway over this time and place. After defeating the evil 'Deadite' with his 'Boom Stick', Ash is celebrated as a hero. Eventually he learns that to return home he must retrieve the Necronomicon, BUT he can only remove it safely from its resting place after reciting the words "Klaatu verata nicto". Unfortunately, Ash fails to remember the words and, after taking the book anyway, ends up reviving an army of Deadites who descend on the castle. The script, written by Raimi and his brother Ivan, is pretty much a stream of classic, endlessly quotable one liners. For me, one of the defining movies of the 90s.




































12. The Birds (1963)
For me truly one of Alfred Hitchcock's most enjoyable and complexed movies. Adapted from a short story by Daphne du Maurier, The Birds basic premise is of a small coastal town being suddenly attacked by flocks of birds of varying species, who seem to be acting in unison. The story concerns wealthy socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) who after meeting journalist Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) in a San Francisco pet shop, decides to continue the strange flirtation and follow him back to the coastal town where he lives. Eventually a relationship seems to blossom and Melanie meets his mother, young sister and ex-girlfriend, who is the local school teacher. The birds of the title, and their unexplained behavior, seem to be caused by, or at least symbolic of, a kind of underlying tension between Melanie and the other women. Her sudden appearance in the town, and subsequently Mitch's life, seem to correspond with the birds first attacks, and she seems to be singled out by them on at least one occasion. Another possible cause, symbolic or otherwise, seems to be the sexual tension between Mitch and Melanie, which is exacerbated in the beginning by their almost excessive flirting and teasing of each other. However you analyse the story, the visual motif of a flock of birds silently congregating, with malicious intent, around a small town is truly chilling, an image that seems to haunt popular culture.






































11. The Godfather part 1 (1972)
Francis Ford Coppola's sprawling epic about the ascension of the young heir of an Italian-American mafia dynasty, is a true classic of Hollywood cinema. Al Pacino plays Michael, the youngest son of mob Don, Vitto Corleone (played by Marlon Brando) who presides over a racketeering empire on the east coast of America in 1945. In contrast to his older brothers Sonny (James Caan) and Fredo (John Cazale), Michael initially has no desire to join the family business, instead he goes to college and serves in World War 2, eventually returning as a war hero. In spite of all this, or most likely because of it, he is his fathers favourite. He becomes engaged to a young teacher, Kay (Dianne Keaton), but eventually his plans for a normal life are put into jeopardy when his father is gunned down one day and falls into a coma. Michael can't help but become involved when he finds himself largely alone in the hospital where his father is, after the police expel all the men who where meant to be guarding him. It soon becomes apparent that a corrupt police chief was responsible for this, and is siding with their enemies. After saving his fathers life by moving him to a different room and fending off potential assassins, Michael agrees to act as bait to draw the police chief and the man responsible for his fathers attempted murder out again by agreeing to a sham meeting, where he will infact assassinate both of them. After, he is sent to Sicily to hide out and visits his fathers home town. Returning from Italy, he appears to have changed, he seems to be re-tracing his fathers footsteps, and eventually becomes the Don himself after the death of his older brother Sonny. Aside from the rich content of the story and characters, the beautiful, film-noir inspired cinematography by Gordon Willis and Nino Rota's iconic score make the film also an aesthetic masterpiece. Essentially, The Godfather part 1 is about a man who, by chance and misshap, becomes his father. A fairly universal theme for one of the most famous genre movies ever made.

Definitive Rundown

My top 10, in descending order.




















10. Peeping Tom (1960)
This is probably one of the greatest horror-thrillers ever made, although it was banned and ruined director Michael Powell's career. Powell had been previously known as one half of the Powell and Pressburger partnership that in the 40's made classic films like Black Narcissus, A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Although these are some of the greatest and most beautifully photographed (by Jack Cardiff) films to come out of Britain ever, they are basically melodramas. Peeping Tom was a huge departure of subject matter. The film is about a young man, Mark Lewis, who kills women with his camera tripod and films them dying. He suffers from a disorder that means he is compelled to stare at people through windows and whenever he generally feels they can't see him. I think it's one of the cleverest scripts Michael Powell ever worked with, and the film is also visually groundbreaking. It's influence on latter giallo films by Bava and Argento is quite apparent. Carl Boehm's performance as Mark is also incredible.


































9. 8 1/2 (1963)
Federico Fellini's iconic, self referencing masterpiece (including his segment of Boccaccio 70, this was Fellini's 8th and a half film), 8 1/2  is a portrait of a disenchanted film director (played by Marcello Mastroianni) and the characters who fill his life and imagination: his girlfriend, wife, writers, producers, their girlfriends, some other people who he meets and the various characters remembered from his childhood. The film's reality is constantly undermined by his fantasies, dreams and embellished memories, without you ever knowing where you are exactly. A beautiful mess. 8 1/2 is a shamelessly indulgent depiction of the Italian male psyche.


































8. The Producers (1968)

With films like Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, writer director Mel Brooks has been responsible for some of the most groundbreaking comedy films of the 60s and 70s. His original 1968 version of The Producers is arguably one of the greatest of these. A has-been theatre producer, Max Bialistock (played by Zero Mostel), and his accountant Leo Bloom (played by Gene Wilder) decide to produce 'the worst play ever', a light musical comedy called Springtime For Hitler. They hope that it will close after one night and thereby leave them with most of the funding, which would greatly exceed the actual budget of the play. The fact they are both Jewish offcourse lends an extra depth to what is probably the definitive comedy of the 20th century.  Gene Wilder is great in his starring debut and Zero Mostel is absolutely astounding.









































7. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

This was adapted from a book by Erich Maria Remarque about his experiences as a German soldier in the First World War. The film, directed by Lewis Milestone, is probably one of the most groundbreaking for its time. It won Best Picture at the third ever Academy Awards, and its not hard to see why. The camera work is more dynamic than most films made now, and it features some of the greatest battle sequences ever, along side intimate, naturalistic dialogue scenes. A recurring visual motif seems to be of the characters sitting in the foreground with a large window or doorway in the background showing the different environments and stages of the war. It's a film that perfectly expresses its message, verbally and visually.













































6. The Silence (1963)

The story of Ingmar Bergman's The Silence concerns three relatives who are travelling through Europe: Ester, who is busy translating a book into Swedish, her younger sister Anna and Anna's son Johan, who are accompanying Ester on what seems to be a work related trip. The three arrive in an unspecified European country that appears to be at war and who's language they don't understand, staying in a hotel sweet of two adjoining rooms. Johan is inquisitive and explores much of the hotel in the earlier part of the film. These early scenes rely on visual narratives and are short, seemingly unrelated and almost completely without dialogue. This is the most cinematic Bergman gets (until 1966's Persona), the result is beautiful and hypnotic. It is only towards the middle and end of the film that the dialogue starts to take hold and the film returns to more familiar Bergman territory. The sisters are portrayed in more depth and their strange relationship is exposed. Anna is often rather suggestively shown with wet or moist skin, denoting her apparent health and vitality. She is voracious and sensual. Ester, by contrast, is the intellectual, seeming to live solely on alcohol and cigarette's. At the end of the film Ester appears to be terminally ill. The films three main characters can be seen to be based on the stages of man (youth, adulthood and old age), and the hotel and foreign country they find themselves in an allegory for humanity's unexplained and seemingly pointless existence in the universe. However, as with other Bergman classic's like Through a Glass Darkly, Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal, The Silence also works excellently as a simple, play-like narrative.












































5. Hard Boiled (1992)

John Woo is the greatest action director of all time and Hard Boiled is the ultimate John Woo movie. All his early Hong Kong films: Bullet in the Head, The Killer, A Better Tomorrow, etc. feature these incredible set piece action sequences along side emotionally involving characters and fairly complexed sub-plots. A bit like Die Hard meets The Godfather. I think Hard Boiled is the best example of this. The story is basically a cop drama about a stereotypically hot-headed yet sensitive jazz loving detective, played by Chow Yun Fat, and his relationship to a slick mafia hit man who is actually an undercover cop, played by Tony Lueng Chui-Wai. It features a frankly excessive amount of action scenes and gobsmacking set-pieces, which along with what infact ends up being a rather moving story of friendship, elevates the film above anything done before or since. Hard Boiled is quite simply the zenith of action cinema, it has never been surpassed.












































4. Night of the Living Dead (1968)/ Dawn of the Dead (1978)/ Day of the Dead (1985)
I tend to think of George Romero's iconic zombie trilogy as a single work. Although all three films have a different setting and characters, they seem to exist in context to each other, all being a continuation of the same story: that of the end of human civilisation after the dead start to apparently rise from the grave and eat the living. Romero re-invented the zombie film in 1968 with his original take on the sub-genre: Night of the Living Dead. It's a perfect horror b-movie, with 50's stock music and atmospheric black and white photography. Romero's trademark sense of editing and pace are already apparent here. As with it's two follow ups, the dialogue is gritty and real. In Dawn of the Dead the violence is in Technicolor. People with grey/green faces bite into fleshy make up sacks filled with bright red paint. The film is garish and entertaining, like a comic book. The final act, Day of the Dead, is simultaneously the goriest and most cerebral of the three, with even more dialogue, and Tom Savini's groundbreaking special effects. These three films are undoubtedly Romero's best, and perhaps the greatest concept movies ever made.

















































3. Persona (1966)

Ingmar Bergman's Persona is probably the most beautiful film I've ever seen. It's also in some way about film itself. The abstract opening sequence is unsettling, it reminds you of the fact that you are watching a film, it reminds you of death, you are placed in a defensive state of mind. The films reality can no longer be taken for granted. From the outset of the story then, the characters seem to be like apparitions. Symbolic. The narrative seems fragile and dreamlike. Nurse Alma (excellently played by Bibi Anderson), is charged with the care of a mental patient, an actress called Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann), who has inexplicably stopped talking. Alma's boss, a female Doctor, send's them to stay at her holiday home by the sea. Here, Alma engages in long monologues while Elisabet listens. The patient has a sinister, haunting presence and the nurse's honesty makes her seem vulnerable. The two characters are like hot and cold. One of the most telling moments of the film is when Elisabet apparently speaks. She tells Alma to go to bed after the nurse nearly falls asleep at a table. Infact, Elisabet is never shown to visibly speak, but her voice is heard as a whisper, as if possibly imagined by Alma. Looking at the characters of Persona allegorically, as with The Silence, this time they seem to represent facets of the same mind. Elisabet, the actress, seeming to represent a kind of creative sub-conscious, and Alma (who's name is the Spanish word for soul) representing the heavily constructed conscious mind, full of what are apparently frivolous concerns and observations. As a simple narrative its filled with beautiful images, and Bergman himself regarded it as one of his most cinematic and important films.

















































2. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

This film is just stunning. Masterfully directed by David Lean, it seems to have an entirely different feel to his previous films, classics like Bridge on the River Kwai and Brief Encounter, and was never surpassed by his later, slightly less enthralling epic Doctor Zhivago. The new wave inspired editing of Lawrence of Arabia are one of the more obvious influences on directors like Steven Spielberg, the scene transitions seem to relate to each other. The dialogue is simply astonishing, from a screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson that is probably one of the greatest ever written, and based on the real T. E Lawrence's own written accounts. Peter O' Toole's performance in the role of Colonel Lawrence is also wonderful, and probably a landmark in his career. The desert is used to great effect in the cinematography by Freddie Young, along side one of the most iconic cinematic scores ever by Maurice Jarre. Lawrence of Arabia is simply so watchable, it doesnt feel as long as it is (which is about three and a half hours), something of a rarity in epic cinema. Undoubtedly, it is the greatest of the Hollywood epics of the 50's and 60s.

















































1. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966)

Sergio Leone's masterful example of film-making in its purest form, The Good The Bad and The Ugly is arguably the greatest film of all time. There is something mystical, un-explainable about why this is, but nevertheless I will try to convey some sort of rationality as to why this is my favourite film. The first ten minutes or so are completely whithout dialogue. The characters move through entire scenes silently, to the point where their actions are almost abstracted. When they do finally speak we learn of a plot involving some stolen confederate gold (the story takes place during the American Civil War), apparently buried in the grave of a soldier. A mysterious oportunist known as "Blondie" (played by Clint Eastwood) knows the name on the grave, and a greedy and generally base outlaw, Tuco (Eli Wallach) knows which graveyard. As old acquaintances, they must temporarily bury the hatchet and work together to uncover the lost loot. On their trail is a man Tuco calls "Angel Eyes" (Lee Van Cleef), a sadistic and self serving bounty hunter and army captain. Although the film is offcourse a spaghetti western, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly's sprawling scale and American Civil War context give it the feeling of a true epic.
Throughout the film, Tuco is confronted with ethical decisions. His choices seem to guide the story along. Tuco can be seen allegorically as an everyman, with Blondie and Angel Eyes as incarnations of his own good and bad instincts. In this context, the story is seemingly elevated to a timeless parable. It is almost Biblical. Leone's 'Dollars Trilogy', the trio of iconic westerns starring Clint Eastwood of which The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is the final part, brought the Italian style western into the mainstream and inspired a surge of similar movies, all shot in southern Spain, and usually with funding from Italian or German production companies. These would become known in America as "spaghetti westerns". Spaghetti westerns, as apposed to the traditional kind, featured the violence and high drama of Italian opera, along with a knowing modernity, often influenced by the social and cultural climate of the 60's. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is no exception to this rule, having a distinctly anti-war message at around the time America was gearing up to invade Vietnam. A movie that has yet to be surpassed in terms of visual and sonic aesthetics, and perhaps one of the greatest artefacts of the 20th century.