Yes indeed, the justly beleaguered social network does also possess some elements that I still find deeply enjoyable about my daily visits to the site. One of which has been this shared series where friends nominate friends to share their favorite albums, books, or movies with each other. Of course, I am unable to just leave well enough alone for this is indeed my wheelhouse and I do just love to share and share. And so, I decided to share 30 favorite movies over a 30 day period, which then inspired me to house everything here on this blogsite as well.
As with all of the content of Savage Cinema, these are solely my opinions based upon my personal tastes, so there is no need or desire for debate. Just the enjoyment of film and the memories that those films have created with me as well as for you.
Here are the first 10!
WRITTEN BY CHARLES M. SCHULZ
DIRECTED BY BILL MELENDEZ
-Honestly, this is a beautiful film. One that far extends from the television specials and creates a palate that is undoubtedly cinematic. It is a musical, it is educational (I learned all about "I Before E, Except After C" from this movie), and of course, it is funny. But it is the painful pathos of the story--Charlie Brown discovers his strength as an excellent speller and travels to compete in a spelling bee, only to lose in the last moments over the most crushing word: "beagle"--that drives to the core of Schulz's trademark melancholia. It is a film about what it means and feels like to succeed, to fail and to get up once again, dust yourself off and try again.
WRITTEN BY STEVE TESICH
PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY PETER YATES
-I first saw this film at the age of 10 at a friend's birthday party. Siskel & Ebert had already long raved about the film but it was indeed something that felt foreign due to its overall quiet and even fragile, melancholic tone which made me feel throughout the entire film that tragedy was just around the corner and that someone invariably would die.
And yet, nothing like that happened...perhaps...
This coming-of age film about four newly high school graduate
Bloomington, Indiana teenagers, featuring Dennis Christopher as the
Italian obsessed, bicycle enthusiast and also starring the exquisitely
cast Jackie Earle Haley (from "The Bad News Bears" series), the
lanky Daniel Stern, and Dennis Quaid (who made me think that he was Han
Solo's slightly younger brother) as his best friends was a summertime
ode to the end of childhood with uncertain, rapidly approaching futures
for these four young "townies" surrounded in their home city by
wealthier college students and the class/existential tensions that
ensue.
It was also the film where Paul Dooley portrayed the cantankerous Dad to Christopher, who was often hilarious but on a dime commanded authority. Never will I forget the moment when he puts his son in his place when he proclaims with finality. "You're not a "Cutter." I'm a "Cutter.""
And the sequence where Christopher pedals his bike to 50 miles an hour right alongside a semi with Italian operatic music on the soundtrack remains euphoric.
It was also the film where Paul Dooley portrayed the cantankerous Dad to Christopher, who was often hilarious but on a dime commanded authority. Never will I forget the moment when he puts his son in his place when he proclaims with finality. "You're not a "Cutter." I'm a "Cutter.""
And the sequence where Christopher pedals his bike to 50 miles an hour right alongside a semi with Italian operatic music on the soundtrack remains euphoric.
WRITTEN BY JEAN-JACQUES BEINEIX & JEAN VAN HAMME
based upon the novel "Diva" by Delacorta
DIRECTED BY JEAN-JACQUES BEINEIX
This was the very first foreign film I ever saw and again, it was entirely due to the rave reviews from Siskel & Ebert that made me want to try a movie experience unlike anything I had even attempted before.
This gorgeously stylish French thriller involves a moped driving postal worker obsessed with an opera singer and who has covertly created a bootlegged cassette of one of her live performances as she is an artist who notoriously refused to have ANY of her performances recorded. His postal bag, which contains the bootlegged tape becomes mixed with another bag, which leads our young hero into a dark underworld of cops, prostitutes, crime rings, and a particularly nasty dark glasses wearing assassin.
It is a film of high style and astounding visual sheen, filled with stunning cinematography, set design and sound and oh man...one of the most visually arresting chases (detectives on foot, the postal worker on his moped and through the Paris metro system) I have ever seen in a film. Honestly, if not for Siskel & Ebert, I woud have never even known about this film, let alone have even seen it. My cinematic education was extended greatly by them and this movie.
4. "48 HRS." (1982)
WRITTEN BY ROGER SPOTTISWOODE AND WALTER HILL & LARRY GROSS AND STEVEN E. de SOUZA
DIRECTED BY WALTER HILL
-Two words: Eddie. Murphy.
WRITTEN BY ROGER SPOTTISWOODE AND WALTER HILL & LARRY GROSS AND STEVEN E. de SOUZA
DIRECTED BY WALTER HILL
-Two words: Eddie. Murphy.
To think, not only was this film Murphy's feature film debut, he was
ONLY 21 years old at the time and I am hard pressed to think of a debut
performance that was so explosive, so profoundly confidant yet supremely
hungry. You COULD NOT take your eyes off of him even if you wanted to
and why would you anyway as Eddie Murphy indeed was that proverbial
lightning in a bottle, who could handle comedy, drama and action with a
superior ferocity.
I saw this film opening weekend at the age of 13, just before Christmas time and the entire experience pinned me to my seat! This violent thriller about an angry, alcoholic, "hot dog" San Francisco cop Jack Cates, (Nick Nolte) who reluctantly enlists the aid of convict Reggie Hammond (Eddie Muphy) to track down prison escapee and cop killer Albert Ganz (James Remar) in the ticking clock of 48 hrs was one of Director Walter Hill's very best films as it was an outstanding entry in his filmography of "urban Westerns."
This is an unquestionably electrifying film where the violence is appropriately brutal, the relentlessly vulgar yet compellingly REAL dialogue (complete with all manner of sexual/sexist and what would now be shockingly racist insults and diatribes) pops like firecrackers, Remar's rabid menace made for a GREAT screen villain (despite his minimal screen time) and the white hot chemistry between Nolte and Murphy practically burns the screen.
And then...as the centerpiece is Eddie Murphy's "star is born" sequence set inside of a redneck bar where he verbally annihilates the clientele. To see THAT, and in a predominantly Black movie theater to boot...absolutely UNFORGETTABLE.
To this day, "48 Hrs." remains my favorite Eddie Murphy starring film.
5. "FAME" (1980)
WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER GORE
DIRECTED BY ALAN PARKER
Long before the television show, the reality talent/contest show and even the motion picture re-make, there was this film, a decidedly adult film about a collective of young hopefuls attending High School of the Performing Arts in New York City.
I saw this film opening weekend at the age of 13, just before Christmas time and the entire experience pinned me to my seat! This violent thriller about an angry, alcoholic, "hot dog" San Francisco cop Jack Cates, (Nick Nolte) who reluctantly enlists the aid of convict Reggie Hammond (Eddie Muphy) to track down prison escapee and cop killer Albert Ganz (James Remar) in the ticking clock of 48 hrs was one of Director Walter Hill's very best films as it was an outstanding entry in his filmography of "urban Westerns."
This is an unquestionably electrifying film where the violence is appropriately brutal, the relentlessly vulgar yet compellingly REAL dialogue (complete with all manner of sexual/sexist and what would now be shockingly racist insults and diatribes) pops like firecrackers, Remar's rabid menace made for a GREAT screen villain (despite his minimal screen time) and the white hot chemistry between Nolte and Murphy practically burns the screen.
And then...as the centerpiece is Eddie Murphy's "star is born" sequence set inside of a redneck bar where he verbally annihilates the clientele. To see THAT, and in a predominantly Black movie theater to boot...absolutely UNFORGETTABLE.
To this day, "48 Hrs." remains my favorite Eddie Murphy starring film.
WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER GORE
DIRECTED BY ALAN PARKER
Long before the television show, the reality talent/contest show and even the motion picture re-make, there was this film, a decidedly adult film about a collective of young hopefuls attending High School of the Performing Arts in New York City.
I first saw this film in Chicago's gorgeous McClurg Court theater as a
double feature with another film that will appear upon this list in the
future. I was probably 11 years old and it remains one of my most
favorite film going experiences of my life, not only as a rock musical
but as one of the films that ushered me along into considerably more
challenging, grittier, darker, tougher material.
"Fame" is so much more than a coming of age film for this band of the young, talented and hungry--from aspiring musicians, dancers, comedians, actors--and the relationships they formulate with their prickly, uncompromising teachers. It is a film, with its episodic narrative that covers the auditions, all four years of high school and the graduation ceremony, where what is celebrated and depicted to a grueling degree is the actual work and training one has to undergo in order to pursue and possibly capture that elusive fame...and that failure just may be more imminent for some of the film's characters
Beyond that, I sat in that theater and was exposed to issues pertaining to illiteracy, homosexuality, inter-racial dating, pornography, alcohol and drug abuse while also witnessing building friendships and character arcs that showcased a level of development that I had not experienced before.
And then, there were the songs themselves...WONDERFUL songs and the finale, with "I Sing The Body Electric" remains one of the most stirring conclusions I have been thrilled to witness.
6. "SIGN O' THE TIMES" (1987)
DIRECTED BY PRINCE
In honor of what would've been Prince Rogers Nelson's 60th birthday, I turn to one of the best concert films I have ever seen.
"Fame" is so much more than a coming of age film for this band of the young, talented and hungry--from aspiring musicians, dancers, comedians, actors--and the relationships they formulate with their prickly, uncompromising teachers. It is a film, with its episodic narrative that covers the auditions, all four years of high school and the graduation ceremony, where what is celebrated and depicted to a grueling degree is the actual work and training one has to undergo in order to pursue and possibly capture that elusive fame...and that failure just may be more imminent for some of the film's characters
Beyond that, I sat in that theater and was exposed to issues pertaining to illiteracy, homosexuality, inter-racial dating, pornography, alcohol and drug abuse while also witnessing building friendships and character arcs that showcased a level of development that I had not experienced before.
And then, there were the songs themselves...WONDERFUL songs and the finale, with "I Sing The Body Electric" remains one of the most stirring conclusions I have been thrilled to witness.
DIRECTED BY PRINCE
In honor of what would've been Prince Rogers Nelson's 60th birthday, I turn to one of the best concert films I have ever seen.
While Director Albert Magnoli's "Purple Rain" (1984) will always remain
Prince's finest screen offering, "Sign O' The Times" runs an
exceedingly close second as it is a scorching document of Prince as a
titanic musical artists and visionary the likes of which we will never
see again--a fact that still leaves me in awe as well as now makes me
tear up a bit when I watch it now knowing that he has passed away.
With a shoestring narrative to connect the live material, Prince and his extraordinary band, which includes the brilliant Eric Leeds on saxophone, Atlanta Bliss on trumpet and the film's two MVPs the acrobatic dancer named Cat and of course, the inimitable Shelia E. on drums, run through the lion's share of his masterpiece double album released earlier the same year on a eye popping stage set designed precisely like the iconic album cover.
It is a film that is often visually and emotionally overwhelming to the finest degrees as it is a nearly orgiastic sea of colors, sights and sounds with Prince at the center of the cyclone showcasing exactly why he was the best as we witnessed him, in seeming effortlessness, as the finest singer, dancer, choreographer, guitarist, keyboardist, drummer, and bandleader on the planet.
I saw this film three times at the long defunct University Square 4 theaters on the UW-Madison campus and trust me, I, and the audience, COULD NOT sit still throughout.
Genuinely, rapturously exhausting!
7. "BRAZIL" (1985)
WRITTEN BY TERRY GILLIAM & TOM STOPPARD & CHARLES McKEOWN
DIRECTED BY TERRY GILLIAM
"That was probably the best film I have seen in the last five years. And I never want to see it again."
My Dad said those words once we left the Biograph theater in Chicago after finally seeing the controversial yet rapturously acclaimed film from Terry Gilliam, who was already riding high due to his surrealistic, satirical animation for Monty Python's Flying Circus and the success of his equally surreal fantasy film "Time Bandits" (1981). Yet, "Brazil" was a wholly different beast of a film and cinematic experience entirely as it was a deep dive into an Orwellian/Kafkaesque abyss of crippling bureaucracy, political savagery, grotesque satire, and debilitating madness.
Gilliam's film, set in a dreary, dystopian society "Somewhere In The 20th Century," depicts the nightmarish odyssey of low-level government employee Sam Lowry (beautifully played by Jonathan Pryce), a mild individual who attempts to survive or escape his life of drudgery via his vivid, reoccurring daydreams starring himself as a winged warrior flying high above the clouds and rescuing a damsel in distress. A mindless yet devastating bureaucratic error (I'll never forget the names of "Buttle" and "Tuttle" ) send Sam into a life altering experience that involves political terrorists (Robert De Niro), duplicitous colleagues (a surprisingly sinister Michael Palin) and an encounter with Jill (Kim Greist), a freedom fighter who strikingly resembles the woman in Sam's dreams.
It is a film of enormously winding suffocating ducts, horrific plastic surgery, bottomless red tape, terrorist bombings, totalitarian government retribution, orchestral dream sequences and a dynamic, horrifying, hallucinatory climax where Gilliam pulled out all of the stops, leading to a shattering conclusion that delivers the brutal truth of what happens to dreamers in a viciously realist society.
Blending elements of 1940's film noir, visionary science fiction, and his trademark absurdist satire, Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" is quite possibly his greatest cinematic achievement to date in a long career that has seen exceedingly original artistic highs AND lows. Yet to see it at the age of 16 and to have my building world view so affected, confirmed, and re-shaped, and my senses altered to the point of being blasted apart, Gilliam was yet another filmmaker who illustrated to often head spinning degrees precisely what the movies could be and how stories could be told...uncompromisingly and unrepentantly.
8. "FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH" (1982)
WRITTEN BY CAMERON CROWE
DIRECTED BY AMY HECKERLING
Two years before John Hughes arrived and change the genre forever, the very first teen film that I honestly loved was this one, a raunchy, hilarious, breezy yet deeply perceptive and brutally honest hard R rated episodic joyride through one year at the titular high school.
While I had not (and would not) experience any of the drug and sex fueled adventures in this film for myself, what impressed me so tremendously, and what made me return to this film over and over again was how real it all felt. I had watched essentially every teen film that was being released at that time--the terrible, stupid entries in the "teen sex" genre, yet THIS one was the one that felt to understand what it was REALLY like to spend day after day in those hallways and classrooms. Credit obviously goes to Cameron Crowe, who famously spent one year posing as a high school senior and wrote the original book on which this film is based.
The authenticity in every moment, even a throwaway shot of a classroom of kids happily sniffing the ink scent of the mimeograph machined paper copies, was paramount and it won me over. Yet Crowe tapped into something deeper and what really is the core of the film: these kids were part of a generation who just did not simply attend school--they had coveted jobs at mall, cars, and adult sexual relationships, all of which were utilized as extensions of social status, yet they were clearly too young to even understand the weight of what they were experiencing. THOSE were the "fast times."
Seeing the school year fall of BMOC Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold), from losing his girlfriend and job (as well as the humiliation of being caught having a masturbatory fantasy by the object of his affection), was palpable even as we laughed. The film's primary love story between shy boy Mark "The Rat" Ratner (Brian Backer) and virginal Freshman (and Brad's little sister) Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) as they are respectfully being coached by their older best friends and would be sexual experts, velvet voiced ticket scalper Mike Damone (Robert Romanus) and the stunning, yet unreachable to high school boys Linda Barrett (Phoebe Cates), provided high and often shocking comedy--carrot blow jobs in the lunchroom, Damone's humiliation with premature ejaculation--yet, the tension, awkwardness, embarrassment and pain, heavily witnessed in Stacy's abortion and Damone's cowardliness, was right on the money.
It was in the sensitive yet (again) honest direction by Amy Heckerling, in her filmmaking debut, who made this material soar so highly, by being uncompromising in its honesty, and most importantly, to be the rare female in a male dominated genre that was consistently cruel to girls and women, and utilizing the requisite T&A in ways to subvert and provide commentary upon sex, nudity and sexual relationships. With that, she also had the uncanny ability to allow her film to fly by as luxuriously as a seaside California breeze. She ensured that the film's constant soundtrack was perfectly on point, that every performance was golden, and that the dialogue remained endlessly quotable.
And of course, there is no way to forget Sean Penn as the mighty Jeff Spicoli, the stoner surfer always at odds with his uncompromising History teacher Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) as he just wants to have "tasty waves and cool buds" and even some pizza in the classroom. I'm telling you every single teenaged stoner character from Bill & Ted to Wayne & Garth and Beavis & Butthead owe every single one of their moments to the character of Jeff Spicoli.
9. "THE BLACK STALLION" (1979)
Based upon the novel by Walter Farley
WRITTEN BY MELISSA MATHISON & JEANNE ROSENBERG AND WILLIAM D. WITTLIFF
PRODUCED BY FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
DIRECTED BY CARROLL BALLARD
It is a film I really haven't seen since childhood yet the memories and impressions of it remain large and with so many things in my life, I have to thank my Dad for seeing this one.
With a shoestring narrative to connect the live material, Prince and his extraordinary band, which includes the brilliant Eric Leeds on saxophone, Atlanta Bliss on trumpet and the film's two MVPs the acrobatic dancer named Cat and of course, the inimitable Shelia E. on drums, run through the lion's share of his masterpiece double album released earlier the same year on a eye popping stage set designed precisely like the iconic album cover.
It is a film that is often visually and emotionally overwhelming to the finest degrees as it is a nearly orgiastic sea of colors, sights and sounds with Prince at the center of the cyclone showcasing exactly why he was the best as we witnessed him, in seeming effortlessness, as the finest singer, dancer, choreographer, guitarist, keyboardist, drummer, and bandleader on the planet.
I saw this film three times at the long defunct University Square 4 theaters on the UW-Madison campus and trust me, I, and the audience, COULD NOT sit still throughout.
Genuinely, rapturously exhausting!
WRITTEN BY TERRY GILLIAM & TOM STOPPARD & CHARLES McKEOWN
DIRECTED BY TERRY GILLIAM
"That was probably the best film I have seen in the last five years. And I never want to see it again."
My Dad said those words once we left the Biograph theater in Chicago after finally seeing the controversial yet rapturously acclaimed film from Terry Gilliam, who was already riding high due to his surrealistic, satirical animation for Monty Python's Flying Circus and the success of his equally surreal fantasy film "Time Bandits" (1981). Yet, "Brazil" was a wholly different beast of a film and cinematic experience entirely as it was a deep dive into an Orwellian/Kafkaesque abyss of crippling bureaucracy, political savagery, grotesque satire, and debilitating madness.
Gilliam's film, set in a dreary, dystopian society "Somewhere In The 20th Century," depicts the nightmarish odyssey of low-level government employee Sam Lowry (beautifully played by Jonathan Pryce), a mild individual who attempts to survive or escape his life of drudgery via his vivid, reoccurring daydreams starring himself as a winged warrior flying high above the clouds and rescuing a damsel in distress. A mindless yet devastating bureaucratic error (I'll never forget the names of "Buttle" and "Tuttle" ) send Sam into a life altering experience that involves political terrorists (Robert De Niro), duplicitous colleagues (a surprisingly sinister Michael Palin) and an encounter with Jill (Kim Greist), a freedom fighter who strikingly resembles the woman in Sam's dreams.
It is a film of enormously winding suffocating ducts, horrific plastic surgery, bottomless red tape, terrorist bombings, totalitarian government retribution, orchestral dream sequences and a dynamic, horrifying, hallucinatory climax where Gilliam pulled out all of the stops, leading to a shattering conclusion that delivers the brutal truth of what happens to dreamers in a viciously realist society.
Blending elements of 1940's film noir, visionary science fiction, and his trademark absurdist satire, Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" is quite possibly his greatest cinematic achievement to date in a long career that has seen exceedingly original artistic highs AND lows. Yet to see it at the age of 16 and to have my building world view so affected, confirmed, and re-shaped, and my senses altered to the point of being blasted apart, Gilliam was yet another filmmaker who illustrated to often head spinning degrees precisely what the movies could be and how stories could be told...uncompromisingly and unrepentantly.
WRITTEN BY CAMERON CROWE
DIRECTED BY AMY HECKERLING
Two years before John Hughes arrived and change the genre forever, the very first teen film that I honestly loved was this one, a raunchy, hilarious, breezy yet deeply perceptive and brutally honest hard R rated episodic joyride through one year at the titular high school.
While I had not (and would not) experience any of the drug and sex fueled adventures in this film for myself, what impressed me so tremendously, and what made me return to this film over and over again was how real it all felt. I had watched essentially every teen film that was being released at that time--the terrible, stupid entries in the "teen sex" genre, yet THIS one was the one that felt to understand what it was REALLY like to spend day after day in those hallways and classrooms. Credit obviously goes to Cameron Crowe, who famously spent one year posing as a high school senior and wrote the original book on which this film is based.
The authenticity in every moment, even a throwaway shot of a classroom of kids happily sniffing the ink scent of the mimeograph machined paper copies, was paramount and it won me over. Yet Crowe tapped into something deeper and what really is the core of the film: these kids were part of a generation who just did not simply attend school--they had coveted jobs at mall, cars, and adult sexual relationships, all of which were utilized as extensions of social status, yet they were clearly too young to even understand the weight of what they were experiencing. THOSE were the "fast times."
Seeing the school year fall of BMOC Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold), from losing his girlfriend and job (as well as the humiliation of being caught having a masturbatory fantasy by the object of his affection), was palpable even as we laughed. The film's primary love story between shy boy Mark "The Rat" Ratner (Brian Backer) and virginal Freshman (and Brad's little sister) Stacy Hamilton (Jennifer Jason Leigh) as they are respectfully being coached by their older best friends and would be sexual experts, velvet voiced ticket scalper Mike Damone (Robert Romanus) and the stunning, yet unreachable to high school boys Linda Barrett (Phoebe Cates), provided high and often shocking comedy--carrot blow jobs in the lunchroom, Damone's humiliation with premature ejaculation--yet, the tension, awkwardness, embarrassment and pain, heavily witnessed in Stacy's abortion and Damone's cowardliness, was right on the money.
It was in the sensitive yet (again) honest direction by Amy Heckerling, in her filmmaking debut, who made this material soar so highly, by being uncompromising in its honesty, and most importantly, to be the rare female in a male dominated genre that was consistently cruel to girls and women, and utilizing the requisite T&A in ways to subvert and provide commentary upon sex, nudity and sexual relationships. With that, she also had the uncanny ability to allow her film to fly by as luxuriously as a seaside California breeze. She ensured that the film's constant soundtrack was perfectly on point, that every performance was golden, and that the dialogue remained endlessly quotable.
And of course, there is no way to forget Sean Penn as the mighty Jeff Spicoli, the stoner surfer always at odds with his uncompromising History teacher Mr. Hand (Ray Walston) as he just wants to have "tasty waves and cool buds" and even some pizza in the classroom. I'm telling you every single teenaged stoner character from Bill & Ted to Wayne & Garth and Beavis & Butthead owe every single one of their moments to the character of Jeff Spicoli.
Based upon the novel by Walter Farley
WRITTEN BY MELISSA MATHISON & JEANNE ROSENBERG AND WILLIAM D. WITTLIFF
PRODUCED BY FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
DIRECTED BY CARROLL BALLARD
It is a film I really haven't seen since childhood yet the memories and impressions of it remain large and with so many things in my life, I have to thank my Dad for seeing this one.
Even with the rave reviews from Siskel & Ebert, I really was not
that swayed to see it as the subject matter did not quite interest me.
But for my Dad, the name "Francis Ford Coppola" was all he needed and
so, opening weekend, my family went to the Evergreen Plaza movie theater
as we so often did and had a cinematic experience unlike anything I had
yet seen. It was truly unforgettable.
Set in 1946, this adaptation of the classic novel stars Kelly Reno as Alec Ramsay, who is traveling with his Father by steamer and is captivated by a wild black stallion caged below deck. After a tragic shipwreck, Alec awakens upon a deserted island with only the horse as the only sign of life from the boat.
What struck me so deeply was how, over the course of what I am remembering may have been an hour of the film's running time, there was no dialogue as the film only consisted of the boy and the horse and the tentative bond the two formed during their period of shared isolation. It was magical. It was mystical. It was primal, elegant, and soul shaping cinema as I was being taught not only of the inexplicable union humans and animals can formulate but how to tell stories on a purely visual level and the effect was mesmerizing and haunting.
Even as I sat viewing the film and the story progressed back to land with Alec and the horse returning home, meeting a retired jockey and race horse trainer played by Mickey Rooney and participating in a horse race, while I was still enormously engaged, I remember sitting there just marveling at how much I loved the more esoteric sections of the film...the the point of wishing that maybe the ENTIRE film had solely been about the boy, the horse and the island.
That said, the overall experience, like all of the very best films, altered my perceptions of what movies could actually be and in the case of "The Black Stallion," it was that movies designed for children could aspire to be artful and not trite, simplistic, or disposable. That children were as deserving of the highest quality of material just as adults and I loved how the filmmakers all adhered to creating a vision that aspired to greatness at all times.
Carroll Ballard's "The Black Stallion" will forever remain the film where, for me, movies became more than just something to watch. Movies could be poetry.
Thanks Dad.
10. "E.T.: THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL" (1982)
WRITTEN BY MELISSA MATHISON
DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG
This is quite possibly my favorite film and I celebrate it today as it was released on this date back in 1982.
For me, it is a film of such blinding beauty and poetic perfection that I have only seen it three times in my life--and I even own it--for fear of perhaps, over-watching it and therefore, possibly diminishing its power. It is crystalline to me. It is a jewel.
Set in 1946, this adaptation of the classic novel stars Kelly Reno as Alec Ramsay, who is traveling with his Father by steamer and is captivated by a wild black stallion caged below deck. After a tragic shipwreck, Alec awakens upon a deserted island with only the horse as the only sign of life from the boat.
What struck me so deeply was how, over the course of what I am remembering may have been an hour of the film's running time, there was no dialogue as the film only consisted of the boy and the horse and the tentative bond the two formed during their period of shared isolation. It was magical. It was mystical. It was primal, elegant, and soul shaping cinema as I was being taught not only of the inexplicable union humans and animals can formulate but how to tell stories on a purely visual level and the effect was mesmerizing and haunting.
Even as I sat viewing the film and the story progressed back to land with Alec and the horse returning home, meeting a retired jockey and race horse trainer played by Mickey Rooney and participating in a horse race, while I was still enormously engaged, I remember sitting there just marveling at how much I loved the more esoteric sections of the film...the the point of wishing that maybe the ENTIRE film had solely been about the boy, the horse and the island.
That said, the overall experience, like all of the very best films, altered my perceptions of what movies could actually be and in the case of "The Black Stallion," it was that movies designed for children could aspire to be artful and not trite, simplistic, or disposable. That children were as deserving of the highest quality of material just as adults and I loved how the filmmakers all adhered to creating a vision that aspired to greatness at all times.
Carroll Ballard's "The Black Stallion" will forever remain the film where, for me, movies became more than just something to watch. Movies could be poetry.
Thanks Dad.
WRITTEN BY MELISSA MATHISON
DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG
This is quite possibly my favorite film and I celebrate it today as it was released on this date back in 1982.
For me, it is a film of such blinding beauty and poetic perfection that I have only seen it three times in my life--and I even own it--for fear of perhaps, over-watching it and therefore, possibly diminishing its power. It is crystalline to me. It is a jewel.
Steven
Spielberg, like George Lucas, had long become a hero to me by this point
in his career and once seeing this film, he re-confirmed his status as a
cinematic artist who was second to none. I do understand that for some
this film may be terribly sentimental, and that's fine. But for me, it
is a film of such intense loneliness, for the boy still reeling from his
parent's divorce and the alien, separated and accidentally left behind
by his kind. Their connection and subsequent friendship moved me in ways
I really had not imagined that I could have been moved and even
thinking about it at this time, I get those chills--all cynicism washes
away and my nerve endings are exposed. Spielberg created an experience
of beautiful fragility and resonance, while also crating a companion
piece to two other films that just may make this list.
I cannot fully express to those who were not alive at that time the awesome power of this film over the culture but perhaps this will suffice. My cousin Susan saw this film at an advance sneak preview when those events were kind of the norm. She called me afterwards to tell me how much she loved the film but there was another point she felt that she had to make. After seeing "E.T.," she and her date waited to see the main film that had been screening but the response to "E.T." was so euphoric, it was shown again, to which she and her date watched it all over again.
Just piercing in its richness, elegance, compassion and tremendous empathy.
Stay tuned for part 2!
I cannot fully express to those who were not alive at that time the awesome power of this film over the culture but perhaps this will suffice. My cousin Susan saw this film at an advance sneak preview when those events were kind of the norm. She called me afterwards to tell me how much she loved the film but there was another point she felt that she had to make. After seeing "E.T.," she and her date waited to see the main film that had been screening but the response to "E.T." was so euphoric, it was shown again, to which she and her date watched it all over again.
Just piercing in its richness, elegance, compassion and tremendous empathy.
Stay tuned for part 2!
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