Dez's Top 50 Movies, #'s 10-6

We are into the heavy hitters now. Desert island stuff for me, immovable as the rock of Gibraltar. By the way, I'm a little disappointed that my readers had no thoughts/picks for the Worst Movie post from a couple of days ago. Oh well.

10. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love the Bomb (1964), dir. Stanley Kubrick
Every film of Kubrick’s is worth viewing. A Clockwork Orange, The Shining and 2001 were all in serious consideration for my list, but Dr. Strangelove is by far my favorite of this distinctive directors’ works. This was only a couple of years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, so a black comedy about nuclear holocaust had quite an impact in 1964. What is funny (and scary) about the film is that the wacky characters are so self-involved, yet they hold the world’s future in their hands. And they drop the ball spectacularly. The performances are truly great. Sterling Hayden’s insane Gen. Jack D. Ripper (afraid that the Russians are trying to steal his “precious bodily fluids”: “I do not avoid women, Mandrake. But I do deny them my essence”), George C. Scott’s bellicose and childish Gen. Buck Turdgison (“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than 10, 20 million casualties, depending on the breaks”) and the astounding Peter Sellers (in three roles: the lone sane military man British Wing Commander Mandrake, the meek President Muffley and the ex-Nazi but still fascist mad scientist Dr. Strangelove) are all iconic film characters. Political satire has never been this sharp.

9. This Is Spinal Tap (1984), dir. Rob Reiner
Most serious music fans know this “mockumentary” by heart. For those of you who don’t know, director Rob Reiner and comedians Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer joined forces and created this fictitious washed-up metal band, Spinal Tap. The four of them largely improvised this fake documentary following the Tap on their U.S. comeback tour. Every second of this film is funny, but it is more than that. These guys are clearly big music fans, and while they are brutal in their lampooning of the rock and roll life on the road, you can tell that they also love the ridiculousness of it all. They make fun of these guys, but they love them all the same. Incredibly witty satire of the music industry abounds, it is one of those films that must be viewed multiple times to catch it all. What are seemingly meaningless asides turn out to be some of the funniest lines of the film. This Is Spinal Tap became the template for Guest’s later mockumentaries Best in Show, Waiting For Guffman and others, but it was never done better than here.


ABOVE: A compilation of some Spinal Tap moments, by no means all of the best, but some good ones

8. Fandango (1985), dir. Kevin Reynolds
This largely forgotten coming of age film is a sentimental favorite. My friend Johannes is a fellow fan and is the one who first turned me on to it. My friendships with certain high school and college friends still mean a great deal to me, and this film is the best film I’ve ever seen that addresses the unique male bonding that occurs during the time period which Kevin Costner’s character refers to as “the privileges of youth.” Very funny but also often poignant, this is the best work of both Costner and Judd Nelson’s careers. It is the simple story of five college buddies from the University of Texas who take one last road trip together before graduating and moving on to the real world (it takes place in the early 70’s, so for some the real world means a trip to Vietnam). Their epic journey takes them all over West and South Texas and into Mexico, and along the way there are many adventures, misadventures and surprisingly meaningful conversations. I don’t really know why, but for me, one of the most effecting scenes I’ve ever seen is the very last shot of Costner sitting alone on a cliff overlooking a Mexican border town (the site of their last adventure), solemnly toasting his absent friends as Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” plays on the soundtrack. Love it.



7. From Russia With Love (1963), dir. Terence Young
It is no secret that I’m a huge James Bond fan, so I decided I needed to pick my favorite Bond flick for this list. I guess I could have gone with Goldfinger (the critical consensus pick as the quintessential classic Bond picture) or maybe even the recent franchise-reviving Casino Royale, but I always go back to the second film as my favorite. It was not yet a formula, so Bond could still genuinely surprise. And this was Sean Connery at his peak; his Bond was dangerous and seductive at the same time. No other Bond actor has been able to balance both aspects of the character so credibly. This is also one of the better plots, there is no maniac villain trying to take over the world. It is a simple Cold War thriller plot hatched by the Soviets (or actually SPECTRE, masquerading as the Soviets) aimed at destroying Bond by taking advantage of Bond’s dual weaknesses, his ego and his lust for beautiful women. This is also one of the few Bond films where the supporting cast is as memorable as Bond himself, especially the vicious Soviet assassin Red Grant (Robert Shaw) and Pedro Armendariz’s Karem Bey. Bey is an older Turkish agent who acts as a sort of father figure to Bond. Bey still has a taste for the ladies, so it is easy to imagine that Bey was probably much like Bond in his earlier days. Armendariz was dying of cancer as he filmed his part, so there is a poignancy to the scenes where Bey reminisces with Bond about the old days. The brutal fight scene between Bond and Grant on the Orient Express is to this day one of the most thrilling scenes of hand to hand combat ever filmed.


ABOVE: Over at ASWOBA JMW wrote an interesting post on movie trailers. Here is a good one for From Russia With Love. Is there anyone cooler than Connery's Bond?

6. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), dir. Steven Spielberg
I think that ROTLA is the greatest pure adventure film ever made. It is thrilling and charming from beginning to end, and Indiana Jones is a part that Harrison Ford really made his own. Rarely has a supposed action hero gotten caught by his enemies and been on the receiving end of so many ass-kickings. But again, that is part of Ford’s charm as Indiana Jones. He is far from invincible, rather often a frustrated punching bag. Creators George Lucas and Spielberg (you see, when Lucas can just come up with ideas but he is not writing dialogue or directing, he is brilliant) wanted to pay homage to the Saturday morning adventure serials that they grew up loving, and they succeeded wonderfully. Forget about the terrible sequels that followed, ROTLA stands alone as the peak of great adventure filmmaking. Fun trivia: the classic and hilarious scene where Jones is face to face with the big bad dude who is wielding the giant sword and spinning it around like a bad-ass, and Jones wearily pulls his gun and shoots the guy? That was improvised on the spot by Ford. In the script, there was what you would expect, a flashy extended fight scene. But evidently Ford had the runs and really needed to get to a restroom, so he just pulled the gun and shot as a joke to cut the filming of the scene. Spielberg loved it so much he decided to change the scene, BELOW.