My All Time Favorite Movie: 8. Casablanca (1942)

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



We have reached the most classic film on my list. There are many old Hollywood films that I enjoy, but when thinking about my all time favorites, most of them just do not do it for me in the long run. Casablanca has always been the exception. If you have not seen this film, chances are your life has been unfulfilled. Ultimately quotable, featuring one of the best casts ever, Casablanca is the ultimate story of love, loss and sacrifice for the greater good. It is shot gorgeously, it is emotionally outstanding and Humphrey Bogart, who has an entire list of amazing performances, gives his best performance (if you want to say The Treasure of Sierra Madre, that is okay with me, too). What makes this movie so great though, is the story. During World War II, Europeans who were fleeing from the Germans, sought refuge in America. But to get there they would first have to go Casablanca and once they get there, they have to obtain exit visas which people are killing for. Now the hottest spot in all of Casablanca is Rick's Cafe which is operated by Rick Blaine (Bogart), an extremely cynical American expatriate, who for some reason can't return to America. Now it seems that two German couriers were killed and the documents they were carrying were taken. Now one of Rick's regulars, Ugarte (Peter Lorre) entrusts to Rick two letters of transit, which he intends to sell. However,before he does he is arrested for killing the couriers. Captain Renault (Claude Rains), the Chief of Police, who is neutral in his political views, informs Rick that Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid), a resistance leader from Czechoslovakia, is in Casablanca and will do anything to get an exit visa but Renault has been "told" by Major Strasser of the Gestapo, to keep Laszlo in Casablanca. Laszlo goes to Rick's to meet Ugarte, because he was the one Ugarte was going to sell the letters to, but since Ugarte was arrested he has to find another way. Accompanying Lazlo is Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), who knew Rick when he was in Paris, and when they meet some of Rick's old wounds reopen. It is obvious that Rick's cynical nature was caused by something Llsa did to him in the past. Eventually Laszlo and Llsa learn that Rick has the letters, but he refuses to give them to him, because "he doesn't stick his neck out for anyone".

Casablanca is the kind of film that gets more emotionally gripping after you have already seen it once. That way you have a better understanding of Rick and Llsa and the past love they once shared. You start to see their emotions unfolding in the way their faces are framed in each scene together. The resentment coming out of Rick's mouth bites even harder when you understand how he felt that Llsa left him. Their first few scenes together when the meet again crackle with feeling. Bogart has always been better when playing the wounded anti-hero. Yes, he played some great heroic characters in his day, but Bogart as a vulnerable man just plays so much better. Rick declares his nationality as "I'm a drunkard" in an early scene and Bogart is not afraid to look unlikable in the film. it served him well in his career to every once in a while play character who has some bad in him. That is what makes every character in this film so interesting. They all have good and bad. They are real people with real emotional depth. Even the more minor characters feel flushed out, which is shocking considering there are rumors of writers writing down dialog as they were filming and just handing it to actors to say. I guess, if you have a great feel for characters, and you have amazing actors, the writing will come eventually. Writing in this film was clearly more than just dialog, which is pretty minimal and deeply cynical. However, these characters are all redeemed in some way. They make giant sweeping sacrifices for the greater good of trying to rid the world of Nazi Germany. That is why this film still resonates on an emotional level. We can all relate to making personal sacrifices to help someone we love, or to help a bigger cause.

The black and white cinematography is stunning. It looks better than any black and white film in my opinion. The lighting is exceptional in every scene, but the way the film lights Bergman makes her even more stunning a presence. It is not difficult to understand why Rick is so bitter at everything. it is not difficult to see why he keeps everything inside and why he refuses to help anyone. He got left by this gorgeous woman. The sound design and the crisp sound editing are both executed perfectly throughout the film. That may seem like a smaller detail, but those small details are what make a movie better than it otherwise would have been. They are important to tell this story and they get everything right throughout. Michael Curitz, who directed 173 movies, was working at a master level in this one. The pacing of the film is excellent and each slow reveal is delivered to get the most emotionally resonant response. He understands the importance of actor's faces, especially the actors he has. He never misses the perfect reaction shot, or a quick glance between Rick and Llsa. He captures their complicated chemistry in such a perfect manner, my heart breaks every time I watch the film.

let's be honest though, none of that would be possible if Bogart, Bergman, etc. were not so unbelievable in every single frame of Casablanca. If there is a film out there more perfectly cast than this one, I would have a hard time believing it. Bogart gives a layered, wrenching performance of a man who has been broken by life and is unsure of what to do next. Bergman is gorgeous yes, but she is also fiery and strong and vulnerable in a role that could have easily been nothing but arm candy. Then you have a whole host of supporting roles that are all wonderful Peter Lorre adds a nice touch in his role and Claude Rains gives one of my all time favorite supporting performances. Had Renault been in the hands of a lesser actor, who knows what I would think of the character, but Rains gives him just the right touch of good and evil. They had no idea they were making a classic piece of cinema at the time and they had no idea how many lines from this film would be quoted for decades, but they all acted like they knew exactly what they were making, and it feels like they knew this would be on of the masterpieces of cinema.

My All Time Favorite Movies: 9. O Brother Where Art Thou (2000)

http:/I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



We have reached the highest ranking comedy on my list. I love this movie so much, my dad, brother and I went to see the music live in concert. Yes, I willingly went to a concert full of bluegrass and country music and it was amazing. Of course, the music fits the film perfectly and only adds to the greatness of the film. The Coen Brothers, masters of the weird, off the wall brilliance have crafted 4 movies that many people would call brilliant (this one, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No Country for Old Men). In all honesty, I think all four are pretty perfect. I just happen to prefer this one to the others. I am not sure why, Part of it is the re-purposing of Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey." Another part of it has to do with the stellar cast, and the goofy tone. However, it mostly comes down to the writing. Very few great movies have as much fun with dialog as this movie. The dialog has bursts of wit, absurdity, seriousness, insight and even has a tender heart in places, but all of it works. Everything fits and each character has a distinct voice, which is hard to do when all of the characters have below great levels of intelligence.

Set in 1930s Mississippi, O Brother Where Art Thou follows three escaped convicts as they look for the treasure the leader promised the other two that he hid before he was caught. Ulysses Everett McGill (George Clooney) is the leader of this bunch. he is a slick talking con man who probably should never be trusted. Unfortunately, Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) and Pete (John Turturro) are not exactly bright guys. McGill has convinced them he robbed an armored car and stashed 1.2 million dollars. They are chained together, which is why he tells them this and why they break out together. However, the law is hot on their trail, so they cannot stay in one place for too long. What follows is a wonderful road trip movie where two of the guys get baptized, they meet a black guitarist who may have sold his soul to the devil, they meet Baby Face Nelson and drive his getaway car, they are lured to sleep by sirens, one of them may or may not get turned into a frog and two of them have a confrontation with a mammoth one eyed John Goodman. They also record a massive hit song, and they have a run in with the KKK.

Told with a wacky sense of humor, wonderful music, great acting and the steady hand of the Coen Brothers, O Brother Where Art Thou is one of the more rewatchable movies I know. I desperately wanted to show it to my Freshman class last year after we read The Odyssey, but there was not enough time. No, it is not a perfect adaptation of that story, but it hits a lot of the same story beats. This is not about how good of a version of Homer's poem the film is though. This is about how wonderfully delightful the film is. First off, it is perfectly hilarious. It has clever laugh out loud dialog, immensely successful physical comedy (Clooney trying to box someone takes the cake), and it has off the wall random nonsense that makes me laugh every time, such as Baby Face Nelson's dislike for cows. I think the real treat though, is the throw away lines. The film is full of these one-liners that out of context would make zero sense, but within the film they are just absolutely hilarious. The film never loses this sense of whimsy, and foolish optimism, even when it feels cynical at times. Clooney, Nelson and Turturro could not possibly be more perfect. Clooney, always a master of cool togetherness, allows himself to just get wacky with this film. He plays on Clooney-esque vanity, and he makes a great dimwitted leader. He never thinks of himself as above the silliness and it shows throughout the film. Tim Blake Nelson, who is not a terribly known actor is the perfect fool in the bunch. Not that the other two characters are geniuses, Nelson's Delmar is the most childlike. he is dumb, but sincere and he gets many of the best lines. He has a playfulness that keeps him from seeming too much of an idiot to function. He is instantly likable. Turturro has never used his fiery temper to better use. Turturro is often an actor who can overdo it. He is wonderful with wonderful directors, and here he is exactly at the right level of over doing it. His hot tempered Pete gets, in my opinion, the wackiest stuff and he takes it all in stride.

No matter how ridiculous the road trip element of the story gets, this movie stays from getting too far off course. It is, at its core, the story of three people searching for one thing, but finding something else. The Coen Brothers know exactly how to balance absurdity into a story. Sure, it is absurd that 90% of the stuff that happens in this movie actually happens, but you never stop believing it. There was a moment in this film where I actually thought maybe Pete did get turned into a toad. Why? Because Delmar believed it so much and it may have fit in with the whimsical nature of the film. The Coen Brothers are usually pretty great with film pacing, but I feel like here, they really knocked it out of the park. Road trip movies often get derailed by staying in one place or in one situation for too long. It can get tedious, but this film has no such problem. Characters enter and exit with extreme quickness. Whether we like the cameo character or not, they are not around long enough to outstay their welcome. No, this movie is about McGill, Delmar, and Pete, and how they react to the silliness surrounding them.

the music in the film, as I mentioned is perfect. The song they record "A Man of Constant Sorrow" is a hit record. Seriously, it could be a real hit record. I loved how the film weaved music in organically by having characters singing sngs at appropriate times and the black guitarist they meet plays a wicked guitar in a rather touching sweet scene in the film for all of the characters. There are a lot of movies that have become synonymous with their music, but none have as much fun with it as this movie. Watching Clooney, Turturro, and Nelson lip-sync to "Man of Constant Sorrow" is an absolute joy and I feel like many movies would not have given us the entire song like that. This is a rare movie that knows exactly when a scene should end and exactly when a scene should linger just a little bit longer to give us the laughs.

O Brother Where Art Thou is not the funniest movie in the world, but it is the best movie that is also hilarious. it tells a wonderful story with great acting, great writing, great music and perfectly pacing. The Coen Brothers will probably continue to create brilliant films, but it will be difficult for them to top this in my opinion. It has everything you want a light hearted wacky film to have. When it is over, you will humming the songs and trading one-liners. At least that is what my family does. It stands as one of the Hadley family's favorite movies. My dad and I still quote it to each other on occasion.

My All Tim Favorite Movies: 10. L.A. Confidential (1997)

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



In 1996 I discovered a love for hard boiled and pulp novels. I started to devour Elmore Leonard novels and short stories. This eventually let to the uniquely hard boiled writing style of James Elroy. Elroy wrote fictional cop stories and also true crime. His books were set in Hollywood's Golden age of the 1940s and 1950s and his cops wanted that Hollywood image. His characters spoke in pulpy short sentences and Elroy's writing style can be difficult to digest at first. Eventually I stumbled onto the novel, L. A. Confidential. It quickly became the gold standard for this type of novel, for me. Everything pulpy, everything with hard boiled detectives and mysterious dames got judged against this novel. The hardest thing to do when you love something in such a way is to watch someone screw it up on screen. Today, I am much more able to separate the love I have of something from its remake or adaptation, but in 1997, I could not. If L.A. Confidential had been a mess, I would have never forgiven anyone involved. Luckily, it was and still is a brilliant detective story full of pulpy twists, wonderful performances, crackling dialog, steamy sexual tension and wonderfully perfect costumes. In fact, I loved this movie so much upon my first viewing that I went back to Blockbuster and rented everything the director, Curtis Hanson, had previously directed. I even went so far as to track down everything the screen writer, Brian Helgeland had written to see if he was always so great (side note, he was not). I could imagine going in how they would get the aura of the novel so well, and they ended up getting everything about what I loved so very right. However, as the years went on and I kept watching the movie, I realized that I loved the movie as a completely separate entity. It was not because it was such a good adaptation, it was because it is just that damn great a movie.

Set in the world of sleaze and glamour of 1950s Hollywood, L.A. Confidential tells the story of three cops all out for a different kind of truth, and realizing that maybe, just maybe, they are all searching for the same thing. Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) is the police force's Golden Boy. He is a pretty face, he is determined and he is always out for truth. He will do anything to get it as long as it stays within the confines of legality. He is a rule follower and it makes him hated among other cops, but loved by his superiors. Bud White (Russel Crowe) uses brute strength to get his justice. He is a cop with a temper and is always on the verge of beating people within inches of their lives. Not known for intelligence, White is feared by all. Finally, Jack Vinscennes (Kevin Spacey) is a pure Hollywood cop,. he wants the glitz and glamour of high profile arrests. He wants to be in the papers and he will always take the easy way out. A multiple homicide in an after hours diner sets the film in motion and the film is about finding out who did the killing, but it is also about uncovering the truth of deep seeded police corruption, a prostitution ring that involves girls made to look like high profile actresses, and the crime boss opening left by Mickey Cohen's arrest.

First of all, L.A. Confidential is based on a novel that runs about 500 pages long. It is a multi layered novel with three cops each getting tons to do. it is the third in Ellroy's L.A. Quartet and some of the characters from the other books show up in this book weaving a complex series of stories spanning years within one book. It is complicated to say the least and Curtin Hanson and Brian Helgeland do an amazing job of capturing the complexities of the stories, and the characrers in the 2 and a half hour film. Every single scene pops with wonderful dialog and insight into this world they recreated with pain staking detail. Hanson blends wonderful action with effective thrills and even manages to have entire scenes of meaty dialog without anything ever feeling boring. The action weaves between the three characters at just the right pace so you do not feel you are missing anything. We are able to digest each new piece of information, but do not have long enough to sit back and wonder what it really means because there is more to chew on coming very quickly. The twists ans turns happen on a dime and even though we follow these three characters, we are never truly sure how many, if any, we can really trust. Dante Spinotti's cinematography manages to perfectly capture both the glitz and the sleaze of Hollywood, which gives the film the perfect backdrop. His camera also captures these wonderfully perfect costumes in all of their glory. The detectives are all in perfectly tailored suits and perfectly fitted fedoras and the girls in wonderfully lush gowns with perfect hair and make up for the time period. These details may seem small, but this is not a small world being created, so every detail helps.

Beyond that, Pearce and Crowe are magnetic. In 1997, Crowe had two American film credits to his name and Pearce had zero. They were nobodies and they were carrying a huge load in this enormous project and they are both outstanding. I have no idea how Pearce did not turn into a massive star after this film launched him. His Exley is the moral center of the film, but he is not always good. He is not always smart. He is kind of weak at first and Pearce shows all of that and as the film goes deeper into sex and murder and mayhem, we see Exley slowly come to terms with what he has to do. He has a few scenes where he just lights up the screen with this intelligent intensity. Crowe, as White makes a seriously imposing figure. It helps that his scenes are in the darkness. His character is not afraid to get dirty and he is no fool, but he lets you believe he is a fool. I feel like Crowe really connected to White's plight in this film. his character, in my opinion, goes through the biggest transformation and he becomes the underdog. He also has some wonderful scenes with Kim Basinger, who won an Oscar for her supporting role as a high class prostitute made to look like Veronica Lake. She and Crowe have a smoldering heat between them. In fact, Pearce and Basinger also have this smoldering tension between them, and the scene where it comes to a head is one of my favorites in the entire film. Crowe and Pearce, while both not being American born, look like they were born to play 1950s cops in Los Angeles. Everything about them works. Of course, Kevin Spacey is no slouch. Coming off a few years where he won an Oscar, played a fearsome serial killer, and the worst boss in the world (The Usual Suspects, Se7en, and Swimming with Sharks, respectively), Spacey is virtual perfection as the ultimate Hollywood cop. He is the collaborating cop on a cop TV show, he gives heads up to gossip rags about drugs and sex busts of high profile actors and Spacey does it all with the easy confidence of a pro. However, he also plays the more intense scenes very well. His ability to move from easy charm to quiet intensity makes Vinscennes my favorite character in the film. If you add James Cromwell and Danny Devito to the mix, you get an incredibly solid cast for an incredibly wonderful film.

L. A. Confidential is telling a tricky story and it allows the film to unfold at exactly the right times. No turn is telegraphed and no twist comes at you too early. It is easily described as Film Noir, but I think it is something different. The story is not really the point. In fact, for much of the film, the events that happen seem incredibly disconnected. What is key to this film is how the characters react. This is a story about how characters are affected and shaped by events. The film is more concerned with how the three protagonists will handle all of the things thrown at them. It is why it was so vital for these roles to be perfectly cast, and they are. The focus on the characters never gets lost, either, even in the most brutal violence and this film has one of the most realistically brutal beat downs I have seen on film. Today, L. A. Confidential seems insanely relevant. We now turn trials into television spectacles and we are all using our cameras to capture wrong doings. We are still obsessed with Hollywood. It would not surprise me if there was a place on-line where you could get girls/guys who look like celebrities to come sleep with you for the right price. That element of the film will probably always be spot on.

For every twist and turn, L. A. Confidential maintains it wonderful easy pacing and its complex characters trying desperately to stay ahead of the criminal underground. It cares about what happens to these people, and it allows us to care about what happened to them. Each of the three protagonists has a distinct personality and a very distinct way of reacting to every single thing that goes on. We understand that morality is not black and white and that these characters are at once, moral and immoral and that is a magical thing to watch.

My All Time Favorite Movies: The Shawshank Redemption

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



I know many hardcore film people who would put this film in their top 10, top 5 or even top 3. it really is that good. If you have not seen it, I have no idea what your problem is. In fact, it is currently number 1 on IMDB.com's top 250 movies of all time. Thematically it is resonant and applicable to all. It is gorgeously written, acted, and directed. it is essentially a master class in film and I was kind of surprised to find it on the outside of my own top 10. Bank Merchant Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank prison. After a while of depression and solitude, Dufresne starts to remember that even in prison there is one thing no one can take from him: hope. He starts to earn the respect of the other inmates and become particularly close to "Red" (Morgan Freeman). Even as the circumstances in the prison get more and more depressing for Andy, he finds a way to hold onto hope.

Robbins, who I have always found to be a solid actor, but not anything special, really nails it here. From the very start, he hooks you into this character of Andy. You wonder how this seemingly mild mannered man will handle life in prison and then as he starts to find that quiet hopeful feeling, it is impossible not to be completely taken in by the performance. It is almost serene what Robbins does with the role. Of course, most people leave the film thinking about Morgan Freeman's pitch perfect performance. Freeman has sort of perfected this type of role as a the confidante of the white man, but he is in top notch form here. He should have won the Oscar for this movie, but instead he got it for a different movie playing the same type of role a decade or so later. Robbins and Freeman create magic together. There is an ease to their scenes that almost transform the surroundings. You forget this is a prison and that there are seriously hardened criminals in the film. Gil Bellows as Tommy, a character vitally important to the story and to the transformation of Dufresne, is quite great. I think he gets overlooked because of how excellent Freeman and Robbins are, but honestly, the Tommy character arc breaks my heart every time I think about rewatching this film.

It does not end with the acting though. Writer/director Frank Darabont adapted Steven King's story and gave it serious life. The screenplay is fantastic. It allows for so many great character moments and gives multiple characters a chance for growth and change. He writes dialog is such a wonderfully rhythmic way and it adds to the ease at which Robbins and Freeman interact. Darabont has become more known for the first season of the Walking Dead at this point, but when you think about The Shawshank Redemption being his first feature length directing job, it is a pretty amazing accomplishment. I did not think there were many camera tricks and that lends itself to the film. It puts you right in the film, I felt. There were moments when you felt like you were in the prison with these people. That is, of course, helped by the gorgeously perfect cinematography of Roger Deakins. When I first saw this movie, I was still in my infancy of loving film, so I did not have an appreciation for cinematography yet, but during my multiple viewings of this film, I have grown to understand how important it is in film in general, but particularly for a film that is set in such a drab place like prison. it takes skill to make a movie look beautiful when so much of what we see is grey. The palette can be so boring, but Deakins and Darabont find the beauty, which is part of the theme of the film. Adding to the beauty of this film is Thomas Newman's wonderful score. Now if Thomas Newman is scoring your picture, there is a great chance that the music will be perfect. The man understands movements in music and how they work within a film. To be fair, movie scores are still something I am learning. It is an aspect of film where my appreciation is still in its infancy. However, even I can recognize how wonderfully uplifting the music here is.

The tagline for this film is "Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free." The poster features a great shot of Robbins with his arms spread wide with rain pouring down on him. At its core The Shawshank Redemption is about not letting your circumstances hold you down. Yes, the movie literally takes place in a prison, but the idea is that we all have things that trap us and hold us down. It is our job to keep dreaming, to keep hope alive no matter what is happening. The film believes in the uplifting spirit of hope. It is a powerful message in its own rite, but when backed by this film and backed by the tremendous final 30 minutes of this film, the point is perfectly sent and received, at least by me. I did not see this movie in theaters, but saw it early on in its home video life, and I had not studied the film much, and I was just completely taken by how this film made its point. Everything about it was so gorgeous, even though it was birthed out of ugliness. It should be an ugly film and there is certainly ugliness to be found within the characters and the actions of supposedly good characters, but deep down through all the ugliness is this uplifting soaring theme of hope. Everything eventually revolves around this idea of not letting the world bring you down. If you cannot relate to that, you must be living the most charmed of lives.

My All Time Favorite Movies: Ghostbusters

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



Ghostbusters is on a list of movies that I do not understand someone not liking. There are probably 10 movies on this list that includes The Princess Bride, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and a few others. If you actively do not like Ghostbusters, I am not sure how I could possibly relate to you on a human level. It is so full of pure joy and entertainment. There is nothing to not like about it and if you tell me you do not like it, chances are, I do not like you. Let us begin with the delightful, hilarious cast of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Rick Moranis, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and Sigourney Weaver. it is tough to find a trio as tune with each other as Murray, Ramis and Aykroyd in this film. They create such an awesome chemistry and give us great film characters, and I know people do not like Ernie Hudson's Winston, but I think he adds his own something to the film. Does anyone play a better nerd than Rick Moranis? No, no one does. Aykroyd and Ramis wrote a great script with fun, wacky moments, and a few genuinely scary moments and gave us amazing lines like "Ray, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "YES"!" Then you add in Ivan Reitman's perfect direction allowing the film to get wacky and kind of hokey, but not too much so that you stop caring about what happens to the guys and new York City. How can you miss? You cannot!

Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spangler are three scientists at Columbia University, but their grant and run out and they are fired. From there they do what anyone would else would do, they create a ghost extermination business. Soon business is booming and they add Winston Zeddmore and basically become celebrities for taking out the ghosts of New York City. There logo is plastered everywhere, they drive an awesome car and they live it up as rockstars, but of course, someone believes they are frauds and they are jailed. They do not stay long because soon New York City is terrorized by the ancient Sumerian God named Gozer the Gozerian, who has been channeled through the apartment complex occupied by a woman Venkman is seeing.

It is a pretty basic concept, but what they do with it is truly spectacular. The effects are great for the time and they take a concept that could be scary, or could be too goofy and they strike the right balance between them. There are moments that inspire some chills, but mostly the film is played for, and achieves, laughs. Beyond the dialog, you have these great visual gags of our heroes being slimed by the best movie ghost, ever. yes, Slimer is the best one every. He has this vibrant, off-putting personality, and you are actually kind of rooting for him, even though we love our heroes. Bill Murray, who could not be touched in the 1980s for comedy, creates a perfect character in Venkman. He is the playboy of the group, which sounds silly because, well it is Bill Murray, but he makes it work all the way through. Ramis and Aykroyd play the perfect foils for Venkman as the more traditional nerdy types you would expect to be part of a Ghostbusting team. The movie really is all about their chemistry. It is tough to bottle that and give it to any group of people. Whether they were great friends or not, they all appeared to be great friends. it is what gives life to Judd Apatow's movies, as well. There is a sense that you are just watching real people doing their things. It gives the movie something extra.

Of course, you also have the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man as well. If you put a giant smiling, yet menacing Marshmallow, you probably have one of the best movies ever. That is just the way it works. Plus, the Marshmallow man looks amazing for the time. he is big and cuddly, but truly creepy with that smile. I could talk and talk about this movie, but seriously, very few movies use banter as well as this movie does. It is such a great study in comedic timing and how to play off other actors. I could just post the screenplay at the reason why I love this movie, so let me just leave you with this:

Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

My All Time Favorite Movies: (500) Days of Summer)

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



Not going to lie, I tried to create this list without this movie. Not because I feel guilty for loving it, but because I am not sure how I feel about putting it on my favorite movies of all time list. However, I want to be honest with myself and the few people who read this thing and if I am being completely honest, (500) Days of Summer is absolutely one of my all time favorite movies. In fact, I can count the amount of movies I watched more than this one on one hand. I saw it more than any other movie in theaters (tied with Liar Liar, and Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring) and since it came out on DVD, I cannot even remember how many times I have watched it. My girlfriend and I have the movie poster up in our dining area and a mini for it in the downstairs bathroom. Hell, I even taught it to my seniors last year as a way to show them how film can be read as literature and I gave them an in class essay about it and I learned even more about the film. I think that is why I love it so much, every time I watch it, I can approach it from a different angle and I can pick up something, or realize something or just appreciate something different with each viewing.

(500) Days of Summer concerns the relationship between Tom Hansen (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel) which spans 500 turbulent days. There is an omniscient narrator who tells us right off the bat that "This is a story of boy meets girl, but it is not a love story." From the very start of this film, we realize this is not going to be a traditional romantic comedy and it definitely is not. Tom believes Summer is the one from the moment he sees her. Summer very clearly states she is not interested in a relationship, and they become friends. Summer knows that Tom is into her, but he never fully says it because he just wants her in his life and because of that, it gets tricky when they start kissing, going on adorable dates to Ikea, and start having sex. Are they a couple or are they not a couple? Who knows? Clearly neither of them know. Tom believes they are, Summer maintains that they are just friends. This back and forth could get old quickly, but the great thing about the script is that the story unfolds in a non-linear fashion. We get the good mixed with the bad. We get the humor followed by the sadness. The film never lets us wallow in the sadness for very long and it never lets us celebrate the happiness for too long. It creates this wonderful blend of emotions and it is not afraid to smack us around with them. My favorite transition is from the morning after the first sex to the first day post break up.

Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel have remarkable chemistry and it would make me happy if they could be in any more movies together. They are both certainly in their respective elements with these characters, and in my opinion, they make them feel real. I know Tom Hansen, hell I might be Tom Hansen. Summer is often mislabeled as a bad person and the cause of Tom's heartbreak, but Deschanel plays her very real and I believe that the idea of the film is to play with the idea of the Manic Pixie Girl in the same way that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did. Summer is not going to save Tom. She is not magical. Tom never listens to her when she states what she is looking for. Tom has unilaterally decided she is the one who he will be with forever. The movie is vague on what it wants Summer to be, and that is another reason why I love it. If I am in a good mood, I view the movie as optimistic and real and heartfelt. If I am in a bad or sad mood, I loathe Summer to her very core and I bawl my eyes out repeatedly. it is not easy for a movie to be approached in such drastic ways for the viewer and it is quite an accomplishment. The supporting roles from Tom's friends, his little sister (played perfectly play Chloe Grace Moritz) and Tom's boss (played by Agent S.H.I.E.L.D's Agent Coulson) are all perfect and only drive home the point that this story is from Tom's point of view. We are supposed to, at first, see Summer only as Tom sees her.

Marc Webb, first time director, does great things with a great script. The screen writers, Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, crafted a pretty straight forward story in a very unique way. The morning after the couple first has sex, Tom comes out dancing to Hall & Oates' "You make my Dreams Come True" complete with back-up dancers, UCLA's marching band and a cute animated blue bird to emphasis the point that Tom believes that he has just had sex with the woman he will marry. He even looks in a window and sees his reflection as Han Solo (something all men have done whether they admit it or not). We have the aforementioned non-linear narration technique of the film. There are sections in black and white and Tom, as he sits alone in a dark movie theater, even envisions sad student Avant-garde films in which he is the star. The film also uses music to perfection. In a very happy scene The Temper Trap's "Sweet Disposition" plays, then later in the film, when Summer and Tom reconnect, the song plays again,, giving us the impression that things just may end up going well for the young couple. Many of my students even said they did not believe the narrator when he said it was not a love story because of this scene. They wanted to be believe because of how the mood was set up by the music, the lighting and how the two young people were framed together with the sunset in the back and flowers in the background.

All of that is great, but there is one scene that sort of drives this movie to my list. It is a scene to which every person can relate, I believe. As Tom goes to a party hosted by Summer, the film goes to a split screen and on one side we see Tom's expectations and on the other side we see the reality. This is after the break up, and after months of not seeing each other before the scene I mentioned in my last paragraph. His expectations and the reality are so grossly different that it hurts to watch them side by side. I have seen movies press forward with the expectations only to pull back and reveal it was in the character's head and then go forward with the reality, but to see them side by side just hurts. It is an achingly brilliant move on whomever decided to go that way. It is like that in the shooting script, but who knows if Webb had input there. That scene will crush you because we have all done it. We have all seen what we want to happen in our heads, only to see reality go in a completely different direction. In a movie full of hilarious moments and sad moments, this scene is easily the most crushing. The scene even ends with Hansen no longer a human being, but a sketch in one of his architectural creations as all of his surrounding are being erased to a sad poignant song.

(500) Days of Summer will frustrate you, make you cry and make you laugh. I think, though, in the end, it gives you hope. It makes you believe in the search for true love, even though it hurts when it does not go your way. it deconstructs our idea of what a romantic comedy is supposed to be and it perfectly deconstructs the character tropes of the genre. It has a kick ass soundtrack that is made more kick ass by how each song is used in the film. The non-linear narrative technique serves the film in a variety of ways, but mostly it keeps the film from feeling too sad in the second half. The performances, direction, script and editing are all top notch. It does not over stay its welcome at a brisk 95 minutes and it leaves you feeling something. I will not say what you will be left feeling by it, but I do not know anyone who did not feel something when the film was over. half of my students hated me for playing it for them because it felt too real, but that was kind of the point. This is a movie that I know in 20 years I will still watching and enjoying and I hope that if you have not seen the movie, this make you want to see it and I hope that if you have seen it, this gives you something new to think about.

My All Time Favorite Movies: Taxi Driver

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



If I am being completely honest, I would not consider Martin Scorsese one of my 5 favorite directors, but he is one of only 2 directors to have two films on my list, unless you count the Lord of the Rings movies as 3 different films (they will appear as 1 film on my list). I love many of his movies, but if I had to list 5 favorites he would barely miss the cut. His filmography is full of excellent to brilliant movies and his early work with De Niro as his lead as exceptional. I know if people are going to choose between Raging Bull and Taxi Driver, most will choose Raging Bull and I completely understand why. It is a technical marvel. It is a master film work, but for some reason, Taxi Driver is the movie that lingers for me. it is my second favorite Scorsese movie and my all time favorite Robert De Niro performance. It is a testament to the performance that it features probably the most parodied moment in cinematic history (The "you talkin' to me" scene) and yet when I watch Taxi Driver, I am still mesmerized by that moment and by that performance in general. De Niro is electric. He is electric in a way that makes you sad for what his career has become in the last 10 to 12 years. he is electric in a way where the line blurs between wanting him to succeed and fail in his quest of the film. His Travis Bickle is a world of confused and conflicted, and De Niro takes us through a brilliant journey of nuance, bravado, menace, and even heart break in a weird way.

Taxi Driver is the story of a Vietnam Veteran struggling to acclimate back into real life and since he cannot sleep any way he decides to become a late night cab driver to earn money from his insomnia. What makes the film so brilliant is watching his slow descent into madness. At first Bickle looks like your average guy and we are not entirely sure what it is going on, but he starts to crack. We see signs of frustration. He starts to get his body back in shape and looks like he is preparing for some sort of vigilante style war. Scorsese is a master film maker and he knows exactly when to take his time and when to let the movie fly. He and his editor understand how pacing of a movie like this can make or break it and everything moves in such a perfect way. The starts and stops are always unnerving because we just want to see what is going to happen. What makes the film especially brilliant is how it plays with perception of reality and fantasy. People get so upset over the perceived indeterminate ending, but I remember seeing this for the first time when I was probably 15 and thinking it was so perfect that we never know how much of the film was reality and how much was in Bickle's twisted fantasy.

Another thing that makes this film so perfect is the supporting performances. Harvey Keitel has what amounts to a cameo role that he does so much with, you wish there was more. Of course, the big find in this movie was Jodie Foster. As a 14 year old girl playing a 12 year old prostitute that Bickle feels the need to save, Foster is outstanding. he conveys depth way beyond her years and she finds a way to live inside this tough street wise little girl, but still make her vulnerable. You feel bad for everything that is going on around her that you forget this is a young actress doing all of this excellent work. Scorsese has always gotten amazing performances are out great actors, and he shows a deft touch in dealing with Foster's 12 year old character.

However, if you want my opinion, the real star of this show is the screenplay. The dialog is unforgettable. The story is juicy, relevant even today and creates this fully realized character in Travis Bickle. Paul Schrader wrote a gorgeous fever dream of a film and the right pieces were put in place to make it the terrific film it is. If you are mesmerized by the score from the beginning as New York is shown as a blurred out hazy dream, I do not know what to say to you. I feel like Taxi Driver is one of those films that works because the team was completely in sync. There is not a scene out of place, not a performance behind the others and Scorsese stands behind the camera as the mastermind behind this perfect snap shot of 1970s film making. Plus you have to love a movie that over 30 years later is still lighting up message boards with questions, theories and controversies over what exactly happened.

My All Time Favorite Movies: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



For the longest time when people asked me for a movie recommendation, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was the first movie I would recommend to people. Not very many people saw it in theaters and it was kind of lost on DVD at first. It was obscure enough that most people would not have seen it, but the star, Robert Downey Jr, was enough of a name, that people were willing to go with my recommendation and watch it. I never heard anyone say they did not enjoy the film. Honestly, I do not know anyone who has seen it that does not very much enjoy it. it is that kind of movie. It is witty, hilarious, action packed, and features dynamite performances. Written and directed by Shane Black and resurrecting the career of RDJ, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was an easy choice for this list. It is a movie I can watch no matter what mood I am and totally get a kick out of it. In fact, every time I watch it, I end up laughing at new things.

Shane Black is the screenwriter of Lethal Weapon and a series of action buddy cop movies in the late 80s and early 90s. He was the first screenwriter to make over a million dollars for a screenplay, but the 90s did not stay too kind to him and he sort of vanished. I love his screenplays. They are full of great dialog, but they are also very knowing. I love META movies and while his script for The Last Action Hero was mostly rewritten, he is responsible for the story of it and while I hated it as a teen, I loved it when I became more aware of cinematic language and how cinema worked. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang brought Shane Black back, but not just a screenwriter, as a director. I was probably one of a handful of people who actually saw it in theaters and I loved it instantly. When Jon Favreaux was getting ready to cast Ironman, he wanted RDJ because of his performance in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. In turn, RDJ helped Shane Black get the job to direct Iroman 3. Okay, time to get back to Kiss Kiss bang Bang.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the story of Harry Lockhart (RDJ), a two bit criminal who, as luck would have it, ends up at an audition for a television show and lands a visit to Los Angeles to maybe be on a detective show. He teams up with Gay Perry (Val Kilmer) and ends up trying to solve a real crime or is it two? Lockhart narrates the story, as it is a movie. the film has stops and starts as Lockhart remembers information he forgot to tell us, and he mocks the exposition process, even though he knows, and we know it is necessary. Of course, there is a girl, Harmoney (Michelle Monaghan) that Harry knew as a young boy, and who has grown up to be a wanna be actress, and is at the crux of the mystery.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is the best META movie I have ever seen. it winks, nods and flat out tells us we are watching a movie, yet it never gets stale. RDJ gives an awesome performance as Harry Lockhart and his narration is pitch perfect. I love the dynamic between Harry and Gay Perry. Kilmer and RDJ are clearly having a blast with the script and having a blast together. I was really hoping they would both get the carerr resurrection off this movie, but I am glad at least one of them did. Their chemistry is exactly what you want it to be. I love how they fall into the buddy cop routine, but always with a little bit more bite. The movie keeps you guessing, sort of, throughout the story, but it is not really about that. It is about subverting our ideas on the old buddy cop formula, while also being this great pulp film. Here is a sample of how the film subverts the pulp style of dialog by staying true to it, but making it as ridiculous as it actually is:

Harry: Is she a looker?
Perry: She opens the door, and she got nothing on but the radio. Yeah, invites me to sit down, sits on my lap, fires up a spliff.
Harry: Geez. Really?
Perry: No. Idiot.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has some great action as well, especially in the climax. There is enough action to keep things from ever getting stale, but the thing I love most about it, is how RDJ's character reacts to killing someone for the first time. So often in movies people kill someone and quickly move on, but here, the character looks changed. he reflects on it, even briefly to show, he is a man. The characters in this film are treated as people, even if it is very clear to us that it is just a movie. RDJ apologizes for forgetting key information at a key place. He mocks seemingly pointless information, that will clearly be important later and he, of course, swears a lot. Kilmer even apologizes to the Midwest for all of the swearing at the end of the movie. The comedy, though, is what keeps the movie together.

It is probably time for me to go back to this movie and just soak it all in. The pacing and editing are key as well because there are blanks to fill in and the film twists and turns around time to fill those in when needed. It never gets confusing because everyone on the film is doing top notch work. There are scenes that veer into the ridiculous, but you are willing to let the movie go there, because it KNOWS it is ridiculous. It is a movie after all. I love to watch this movie after watching a series of buddy cop movies because it makes the jokes taste that much better going down. Also, if you do not fall in love with the dialog, something is probably wrong with you. If you are still among those who have not seen this wonderful film, do yourself a favor and get it, watch it, and love it!

My All Time Favorite Movies: The Dark Knight

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



THE DARK KNIGHT

It is impossible for me to have an all time favorites movie list and not have a superhero movie on it. As a kid who grew up reading comic books, and loving movies, the marriage of superheroes and cinema just makes perfect sense. There are a handful of excellent superhero movies (the Avengers might end up on this list some day), but I decided to go with the one that I feel made the most out of the film medium. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is the apex of superhero cinema because it is not a typical superhero movie. In a weird way, it is not Batman's story at all. The Dark Knight is a classic battle of good vs. evil, but it constantly blurs the line between good and evil. It blurs to the point where the hero must become the villain to maintain order. Hell, it even makes us wonder who the true hero is? Is Batman really our hero, or is it Harvey Dent? Batman is the superhero of course, but as a vigilante, is he really a hero? In a movie chalk full of great quotes, the most telling quote is from Dent when he says "You either die the hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." We spend this whole movie waiting for the inevitable transformation of Harvey Dent into Two-Face, but Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent is so noble, is so much the good guy, we start to wonder how in the world he will ever turn into this villain. Well, Nolan's film has an ace up its sleeve (you thought I was going to say Joker didn't you?) That ace is Heath Ledger's Joker.

With The Joker, Heath Ledger created a new iconic version of an already iconic character. Do you have any idea how difficult it must have been to recreate a character who has been iconic in so many ways? Well, Ledger was clearly up to the task. Maniacal, energetic and scary beyond belief, Ledger's Joker completes the trifecta of best villains with Darth Vader and Voldemort. What makes The Joker so scary, beyond the painted face and the scars, is his desire for nothing but pure chaos. That is what makes Nolan's film so perfect for our time. A villain who wants nothing but to create chaos has to be the scariest kind of villain. He wants nothing. He just wants to watch the world burn. Has there ever been a villain who had no real desire for world domination or something tangible? In a post 9/11 world, is there anything scarier than a motiveless villain and has anyone encapsulated that idea better than Heath Ledger as the Joker? Every scene he is in bristles with manic energy. He is completely riveting and we hang on every word out of his mouth. The ultimate tragedy of Ledger himself makes the role even more frightening because it is impossible to separate the two, but, even on its own, his Joker is one of my favorite performances ever. There are depths to the insanity that create a full flushed out character, something superhero villain almost always lack.

However, beyond just the story aspects, the film is a technical masterpiece. It is paced perfectly, so the story builds without feeling rushed, but when you feel like something needs to happen, something definitely does happen. Every single action scene is perfectly placed, perfectly shot and perfectly executed. How awesome is that bank robbery that opens the film? How much does it set off a movie that is going to be full of action, but also be this incredibly intense heist film? The Dark Knight manages to perfectly blend the superhero genre with the heist film and a detective film all while being a great superhero movie. In my opinion, Batman has never been the most interesting of superheroes. His villains are worlds more interesting, but Nolan's vision of Batman as a character and as a symbol really worked for me. We have Harvey Dent, the white knight hero, who stands for truth, justice and believes in the legal system and we have our dark knight, Batman, who believes in doing whatever he has to do to get justice. The movie never blatantly makes the symbolic nature of these characters in an eye rolling way and that is a testament to the grace of Nolan's film making abilities. Batman is the hero Gotham deserves and in essence, the hero we deserve.

The Dark Knight is a perfect movie for our current world. It plays on fears of the unknown, it taps into the idea that our phones can be used against us by our Government and it gives us a hero who is not exactly upstanding. it works in the grey area of our current world. Eckhart, Ledger and Bale make this crazy triangle of both good and evil. Eckhart is really the focal point of the film and by making Batman a supporting character, Nolan builds up the idea that Batman is merely a symbol, something he brings to a stark conclusion in the final film of the trilogy. Ledger stands heads and shoulders above most of the world with his performance, and the movie looks gorgeous. The cinematography is pitch perfect, and every single scene builds to this wonderful climatic crescendo. The screenplay is full of great quotes and each character is given a chance to grow and show depth. When you round out a cast with Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman, it makes it easy to have characters who matter and that is what is important. The Dark Knight makes us care about the stakes by making them high for every character. it presents Batman with a true challenge, because The Joker has absolutely nothing to lose. Nolan never loses sight of what truly matters in this film and thematically grounds it with terms we understand and in a world that is our world. He plays on our fears and gives us both the hero wish we had and the hero we actually have. It is not an easy feat to have a movie with two heroes and two villains and have one person be both the hero and villain, but Nolan executes it to perfection.

My All Time Favorite Movies: ALADDIN

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.

ALADDIN


It would be silly of my to try and concoct a best of all time list without including an animated film. There are so many excellent ones throughout history and they are often left behind for no real good reason. Animated movies are not a genre. They are a different way to tell a story in any genre. When I was thinking of this list, two animated movies made the final 40 and in going back and forth between Aladdin and Wall-E, I ultimately decided on the classic Disney Musical.

Aladdin is nothing but a street rat in the eyes of the world at large, but one day he helps a mysterious woman in the middle of town and she sees more than just a street rat. The problem is that she is actually the princess and a princess must marry a prince. Those are the rules. Jasmine, the princess in question, is making it very difficult for her father, the Sultan, to find a husband for her because she is tough, and independent and wants to marry for love and not because it is what she is supposed to do. This girl does not care about how much money you have. Aladdin is scooped up by the soldiers of the kingdom, but it is all a clever ruse by Jafar, the evil sorcerer who has the Sultan's ear. Jafar sends Aladdin into a magic cave to fetch a magic lamp, but Aladdin is no idiot and he winds up with the lamp and he ends up releasing a genie who grants Aladdin 3 wishes. Aladdin only wants to be a prince so he can marry Princess Jasmine.

Aladdin is a colorful, vibrant musical with perfect voice work from Robin Williams and a wonderful cast of characters. The characters are so great three of them do not even speak, but still have buckets and buckets or personality. You have an angry monkey, a playful magic carpet and a loyal tiger who do not speak, but still manage to be fully realized characters. Add them to the perfect Genie, a sarcastic talking parrot, a truly wonderful villain and two wonderful leads and you have everything you need for a magically perfect musical. Aladdin moves quickly; it has thrilling, daring action sequences and a whooper of a climatic action sequence. However, it is more than just that. It has wonderful, memorable tunes, a sharp funny script and the animation is still wonderful today. I love how fluid everything is once the movie gets going.

"Friend like me" is one of those instantly classic umtempo musical theater dance numbers and the colors and creatures that pop out during that number are so much fun that it is impossible not to get wrapped up in them. There are a few of those fun musical numbers, but the movie also has one of Disney's best love songs "A Whole New World." It is my absolute favorite Disney love song, but more than that, it tells a great story in the movie and allows for the animators to tell a wonderful little story as this romantic song is being sung. The movie has dazzling vocals throughout, but the subtlety of "A Whole New World" will win me over every damn time. You also get the great opening number "One Jump" which offers a fun introduction to the Aladdin and Abu characters and of course, "Prince Ali" the number that I would love to see staged live because it is just full of great character moments for the Genie, but also boasts an impressive number of people/animals. It is hard for me to understand how anyone could not love the music of this film. All of the songs are witty in their lyrics and catchy in their melodies and they all fit perfectly into the movie.

Last but not least there is the comedy. Robin Williams riffing throughout the movie is Robin Williams at his best. He has had richer parts, and done great work in many other movies, but for my money, this is film utilizes Robin Williams in the way Robin Williams was meant to be utilized. His zingers are top notch even 20 years later. His voices are great and he just makes the Genie such an insanely likable character. However, he is not the sole laugh giver. Gilbert Gottfried is perfectly cast as the snarky parrot, Iago. His lines are incredibly memorable. In fact, one of my favorite things about Aladdin is how memorable it all is. I used to have the whole thing completely memorized and even now, that I do not watch it as frequently, I can still remember giant chunks of hilarious, or witty or even frightening dialogue. I am not going to say Jafar is the creepiest of Disney villains, because I can think of 2 or 3 that outdo him in that department, but he is more lecherous. He just oozes nastiness and watching him gain control, is such a dark force and I loved it.

Aladdin is fun for everyone. It is hilarious, has great music and a timeless story about love being just about loving the person and not what the person is supposed to be. It has a strong female princess, a wonderfully charismatic "prince" and a great bunch of supporting roles including Robin Williams whose performance as Genie is one of the all time best voice over performances in cinematic history, in my opinion. Everyone has their rankings of Disney animated movies and I understand everyone is different, but if Aladdin is not in your top 5, we probably have a problem with each other. I am never not in the mood to watch Aladdin,and that is key to being one of my favorite movies of all time.

My all time favorite movies: SCREAM

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.



SCREAM

It is impossible for me to do an all time favorites list without a horror film. When it comes down to horror movies, I have to choose between 2 films, this one, and Halloween. They are far and away my two favorite horror movies, but I decided to go with Scream for a variety of reasons. Horror movies have a really bad reputation. People tend to think of them as cheesy and unbelievable and not having any real merit as films. When I was Nine years old I saw Halloween for the first time and I remember being terrified, like legitimately terrified and for some reason I drawn to that. I was drawn to movies that could really put me in a weird space like that. Scream came out my senior year in high school and I was working at a movie theater at the time and we premiered everything back then on Thursday nights after we closed. That meant the movie would be getting out around 2am. During the first time I watched it, I could remember a movie ever making me laugh and make me scared so often and so well. In fact, the movie was so funny that it made the scares, the jumps and the brutal deaths even more shocking. But those laughs lull you into a false sense of comfort and when I was walking out to my car, I was not thinking about how scary the movie was until I was near the alley and no one else had parked their car where I was. Suddenly I was truly terrified that Ghost face was going to come out of the darkness and stab me and no amount of witty movie knowledge was going to save my ass. This is the brilliance of Scream.

Wes Craven is a long time master of the horror movie genre. Go back and watch his filmography. There are, in my opinion 12 incredibly solid movies on his resume and a few of the creepiest movies ever are directed by him. He did for dreaming what Hitchcock did for showers and Speilberg did for swimming in the ocean. In the early 90s Craven first tried his hand at this META style of film making with New Nightmare, but with Scream he took it to a whole new level. Armed with a fantastic reference heavy script from Kevin Williamson, and a cast of young, fresh, ready-for-anything actors, Craven crafted a genuinely hilarious and equally scary film franchise that turned the entire slasher sub-genre on its head. Craven has directed all four Scream movies and while people have found the sequels to be varying degrees of less successful than the original, they stand as a wonderful series anchored by this whip smart, incredibly fast and brutal film. Set in the fictional town of Woodsborro, a maniac in a truly horrifying mask and cloak is going around stabbing young people. The main target appears to be Sidney Prescott and her friends. Is it a personal grudge? Is she just a victim of bad luck? Probably not. A year ago her mother was murdered and Sidney put the man who did it behind bars, or did she? Who really knows?

The opening scene, I think goes down in history as one of the best opening scenes in a horror movie, ever. Drew Barrymore, doing Craven a favor, plays a girl babysitting when she starts getting harassed by menacing phone calls. Soon she realizes she is in the midst of a game that probably no good ending. Creepy, bloody, smoky and weirdly comical, this opening scene sets a blazing tone for the rest of the film. Ghostface is not like so many of the slasher film villains, he is fast. He runs and he misses. He is clumsy, but he also stabs with unrelenting evil. He, like every slasher villain, somehow manages to be everywhere at all times and even though the mask deadens him, he has personality and it is not pretty. In what I like to think of as a nod to Michael Myers, Ghostface appears genuinely curious as to how people die. Like Myers slightly tilted his head when he murders Bob in halloween, Ghostface often tweaks his head after a satisfying kill, especially when Rose McGowen gets it. That scene works on so many wonderful levels and as a stand alone scene, in encapsulates everything this movie does right. That scene starts kind of funny, then gets a little bit creepy, then builds to the main action as we freak out about this character we have grown to like, then it gets gruesome. and Scene.

Of course, the thing most people remember from Scream is the rules of surviving a horror movie. I have read people in film academia write and discuss Scream from all angles, but they always come back to this idea of surviving the horror genres. By poking fun at the slasher film is Scream stuck to continue the tropes of the slasher flick? Does it have to play out exactly the way we know it is going to play out because of the rules it sets up? Essentially people ask if the META aspect of Scream trap Scream. I have always looked at it like this, I think that is the point. I think it is supposed to be "trapped" by genre conventions, but by pointing them out, the film knows it is trapped, if that makes any sense. We get a series of rules to survive a horror movie, and then those rules play out for the most part in a way that is both funny and scary because of the set up. To have scenes be both hilarious and scary really plays with your head. You are laughing because the big boobed girl is running up the stairs after a comment about a big boobed girl running up the stairs is made, but at the same time she is being chased by someone with no mercy, so is it wrong to actually laugh? I have no idea, but it gets you thinking.

That is why I love Scream so very much. it works as a satire, but it also works as a horror movie. It is bloody and scary with an awesome climatic sequence that, of course, takes place at a high school party. It has a great cast of young people and Sidney Prescott is the ultimate Final Girl, but she is not alone. I love how personal the story got, and I absolutely loved Matthew Lillard's performance. Scream has great references to a whole world of scary movies, but instead of being trapped by the conventions it dares us to laugh at how the conventions play out. That is not even including the brilliant scene of us watching the newsman watch a scene of Randy watching Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween telling Jamie to turn around as we want Randy (played by Jamie Kennedy to turn around. In sense we are Randy hoping Jamie will turn around. I wrote a whole page in an essay just about that scene once. I took a college course in horror and sci-fi film and Scream was the only film we spent more than one class period on because it adds so much to the genre of horror. It really added a new dimension to horror movies that you still see today. It existed before, (see The Howling)but it really showed us that when crazy things happen, we really only have fiction to guide us through them. If suddenly the world sprouted zombies, the one thing we all believe is that head shots will take them down because that is what we have always seen. Scream showed us that. Scream showed us that watching horror movies might be the only way to escape a real life horror movie.

My all time favorite movies: LOOPER

I have been toying with the idea of doing a series of posts on my all time favorite movies for a little while now. Working at a movie theater again has started all of these conversations about movies and I always love to hear what people have on their lists of favorite movies. I decided I would take my 20 favorite movies of all time and write a blog entry about each of them. There are no set qualifications for a movie to be on this list. These are simply my 20 favorite movies of all time. They will not be numbered. Do not assume that I am going in order from 20-1. I will probably do that starting at 10, but honestly 11-20 are not numbered. They kind of exist right outside of the top 10. A few things you will realize as the list goes on are how recent so many of them are, and how Americanized the list is. I make no apologies for this. I know most people who are deep into film as I am often have many movies from the pre-1970s on their lists, but you will only find 2 or 3 of those here. I do not dislike "classic" movies in any way, but they have never stuck with me as much. I respect the craft, but I am rarely left feeling like they are my favorite movies. I cannot really explain it further than that. I am not xenophobic, but when it comes to cinema, I just prefer the American Aesthetic. I have roughly 10 foreign films that I love, but they do not make it into this list. Again, it is just my personal taste. Each post will be labeled as "favorite ever" so you can easily find them as I go on. As always, I love to hear feedback, if not on my choices, on your choices for some of your favorite movies of all time. Okay, onto this week's post. Oh and there will probably be spoilers about each title on the list.

LOOPER

I know it seems crazy to put a movie released in 2012 onto my all time favorite movies list. I mean, how will I know if it stands the test of time? Honestly, I have no idea if it will. What I do know is that when it was over the first and second times I watched it, I had tears in my eyes and not really because of the sadness of the movie, but because of the beauty of the crafting of the movie. Looper represents everything I love about movies. It is inventive, full of heart, witty, intense and perfectly put together. Everything fits like this gorgeous and mysterious puzzle piece.

Looper is the story about a guy, Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) who kills people for a living. It is not under ordinary circumstances though, because the year is 2074 and when the mob wants to kill someone they send that person back in time to have them killed. Joe is a looper. he is in the past killing people who get sent back to him until one day when he is supposed to kill the older version of himself (Bruce Willis). That is the basic story. The final half of the movie involves a woman (Emily Blunt) and her kid (Pierce Gagnon) and Young Joe's attempt to keep them safe from old Joe.

If you are the kind of person who goes into every movie looking for holes or watches Looper and points out that the time travel thing does not make sense, well clearly the movie is not for you. That is not to say I even think there are holes in the plot or that the time travel function of the movie is the point, because it is not. Looper is, at its core, a movie about time, but not about time travel, it is about our time, about how we spend our time and how our time affects those around us. it is also incredibly full of ideas about destiny and fate and nature vs. nurture. it is full of everything life is full of. It asks questions about who we are and what we are and why we are. It digs deep into our humanity and forces us think about our own lives. Rian Johnson has written and directed 3 excellent movies in 3 very different genres with 3 very different tones and they all work, but everything about Looper is incredible to me. I love the creativity involved in the story and I loved the giant chunk of time the movie spends showing us the possible outcome of Joe's life. It was poetic and heart breaking and incredibly interesting. I was invested in Joe on two different levels as two completely different people. It was hard to root for one because you knew that there would consequences for the other. Willis gives his best performance since The Sixth Sense and Joseph Gordon-Levitt continues to blaze a trail of excellence on screen. The two of them together are dynamite. The make up on Gordon-Levitt to give him that Willis looks is astonishing. And Gordon-Levitt really mastered that Willis look and posture and mannerisms. Their diner scene is equal parts funny and tense.

However, the second half, and especially the final third are when the film kicks everything into overdrive. I was pretty stoked with how everything was going and then we get to this house on the edges of a cornfield in the middle of nowhere and the movie just ramps everything up. Emily Blunt is magical as usual as a woman keeping a very big secret and trying to keep everything in her life together and Gagnon is a fiercely talented young actor who really shines in a film full of stand outs. His performance is menacing and scary, but also sad and vulnerable. Gordon-Levitt and Blunt have a wonderful bristling chemistry that comes to a head at exactly the right time. A lot of that is owed to Johnson's sense of pacing in this film. Things move at the exact pace they need to. The movie can switch from slow burn to a fully engulfed flame at the snap of the fingers. But it never feels stilted. Then you add in the crazy effects when the kid loses his cool and Looper succeeds on a whole new level. There is this insane burst of energy that explodes off the screen multiple times and just when you recover, it hits you again, if not with crazy action, then an awesome character revelation.

For me Looper is pure movie magic. It is a film that made me think and feel about everything. It was a master work from a young director who is still on the rise. I did not get up when it ended, I did not quickly grab my phone and tweet immediate reaction. No, I sat there through the credits quietly pondering exactly what just happened. I sat there quietly to reflect on everything. It had such a profound affect on me. I wanted to watch it again for the first time. No joke, it was the kind of movie that made you sad that you could never see it again for the first time. That is not to say that more viewings make the movie less, because they do not. They add to the experience of this fascinating film. Perhaps you were not as enamored by it and that is fine for you. I know Looper is the kind of movie I am going to be telling everyone to watch when they turn to me for recommendations as people often do. The themes in Looper are eternal and so many of those movies with staying power are based on eternal themes. They ask us to think about what our lives mean to us, because that is important. How we see ourselves and how we react to our own lives is what is important. Our lives have meaning, but it is our job to excavate that movie and Looper gets to that in such remarkable ways.