Movie meme, tagged by Kij

[weaselmom]

Five of my favorite movies, not necessarily the favorites of all time, which have changed over the years and are subject to change again at any time:

My Dinner With Andre, because sometimes in my own life, I feel like Wallace Shawn in this, who is a sort of Everyman trying to make sense of what his creative, flamboyant friend Andre is saying to him. Plus I love it when people tell me stories, and Andre Gregory is such a compelling storyteller. Word of warning: Pretty much nothing happens in this movie - it's all dialogue and character. No car crashes. No explosions. No T&A.

True Stories, because David Byrne is so (here's that word again) compelling and intense on screen. I don't like all the musical numbers, but most of them are so fantastic. I have to thank silvergoth for introducing me to this movie to so many years ago.

The Emperor's New Groove, because this is one of the best "buddy" movies in recent memory. Originally it was going to be some sappy Disney crap, but as the Self-Made Critic said, apparently somebody at the studio downed a bottle of Jim Beam and said, "Let's rewrite this puppy!" Some of my favorite voice acting ever, and that's saying a lot with all the brilliance coming out of Pixar these days. There is so much hilarious "business" going on in the background of a lot of the scenes that you don't catch until you've seen it several times.

Desk Set because of the Hepburn-Tracy interplay and the cute cute cute dresses. Film scholars may say that there are better films for the chemistry between the two, but this is the one I love. I save it up for Christmastime every year. This narrowly edged out How to Marry a Millionaire, which also has cute outfits and a lot of humor.

Lord of the Rings (no link needed, duh) because if Kij can cheat and put the trilogy down as one entry, so can I. I have been a huge Tolkien geek since early childhood (although nothing compared to our own tolkiencub). We waited so long for these movies to be made, and had such high hopes and such fears. For me, there are no movie moments that can ever compare to seeing Fellowship for the first time, the introduction of the characters, the landscape, the interiors.

Five guilty pleasures, not because they're bad necessarily, but because I feel guilty for loving them, especially so much more than, say, Citizen Kane:

Real Genius, because Val Kilmer was once a beautiful, golden youth. Because it's a million times better than Revenge of the Nerds. Because everybody over a certain age can recite parts of it verbatim. But mostly because of Val Kilmer.

Hardware, because it never compromised itself from its stylized vision of a bizarre, post-apocalyptic world. This movie is just *so bizarre*. I am not claiming it's any good, but I love it. It's got a young and rough Dylan McDermott. It's got the lead singer from Fields of the Nephilim, Iggy Pop and Lemmy in cameos. It's got a wonderful industrialish soundtrack. I can't recommend it to nice, normal people, which would be pretty much all of you, bless ya.

Three Musketeers, the version with Kiefer Sutherland and Tim Curry. Why is this a guilty pleasure? Probably because of the sheer number of times I've seen it and how much I still love it.

Roxanne, because I love it all out of proportion to its weight. It's a light, sweet, fluffy love story, but I think Steve Martin's performance is so fantastic - I love his character in this.

Tapeheads, and man do I feel guilty about my love for this movie. This is in no way great art, but it was made in 1988 back when Tim Robbins and John Cusack were taking themselves a lot less seriously. It's got excellent musical cameos, and I practically wore the soundtrack to pieces (back when there was such a thing as cassette tapes, oh my children).

On deck (if you want to be): smirkingone, uppityfaggot, jeanineers, woadwarrior, and InsertYourNameHere.

Comments

[malixe.livejournal.com]

Hardware-- huh. I've got this on VHS cassette somewhere in the archives. Been so long since I've seen it, I have to admit that I can't remember much of anything about it. Maybe I'll pull it out and cue it up just to see if it was as bad as I remember it or if it has improved over time... :)

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

Some commenter over at imdb.com did a much better job than I can of analyzing this movie's appeal. For me, it really is all about the fact that they created their world vision and never stepped outside it. There's no explanation of what's going on, no little asides to the viewers, nothing to take you out of that world and back into ours. Plus, the bad machine is very very scary.

[uppityfaggot.livejournal.com]

Craig sighs heavily every time I use the word "favorite". Which means he's sighing a lot. I use it all the time. I'm not going to tag other people and I think I won't even answer this in my blog. :) I'll give a quick answer here. The first five answers I think of in no particular order in each category:

Five Favorite: African Queen (STILL no official US DVD release), Babette's Feast, Tampopo, Hope and Glory, (Hitchcock/Donat's version of) 39 Steps.

Five Guilty Pleasures: Van Helsing (two words: werewolf transformation), 28 Days Later, Yours Mine & Ours (Lucy and Hank's version), Room With a View and Stage Door Canteen.

Seriously, my list would change every day.

BTW: I've only ever seen the Kiefer Sutherland Three Musketeers once. I felt as though I was betraying the Michael York version even seeing the Kiefer version that one time. I had (in retrospect this is weird) a HUGE crush on Michael York.

[weaselmom.livejournal.com]

Van Helsing? Them's fightin' words! But you make up for it by having introduced us to Tampopo way back when.

That's why I think of these lists as "some favorites" instead of "the favorites."

Not weird at all! I too had a crush on Michael York. He was my favorite part of the original Romeo & Juliet, and of course he was so fantastic in Cabaret, which I saw way waaaay too many times growing up. Everything I know about sex, I learned from Cabaret. But the later version of Three Musketeers has so much to recommend it! Tim Curry eats all the scenery, Oliver Platt cracks wise, and Michael Wincott is deliciously slithery. Glee!

[cupcake-goth.livejournal.com]

Tapeheads! Oh, I love that movie.

[mckitterick.livejournal.com]

I loved Real Genius! Forgot all about that.