100 Movies You Need To See - Part VII: Horror

Since it is October, and I have been kinda dragging my heels on getting this list out, the timing for this section is quite apropos.  Horror movies are as much a staple of cinema as Westerns and crime dramas.  Some of the earliest movies were horror movies, and while we might think them campy or cheesy now, we have to remember that it was new technology back then.  The fear factor was as much in the technology itself as it was in the plot or characters.  Part of me would like to see some contemporary horror movies that evoke the moody Gothic feel of those early films, instead of relying on gore and shock value.  And no more sparkly vampires.  Ever.


Lord of Illusions – It's a Clive Barker film, and one that's somewhat more understated than the Hellraiser series.  “Understated” however doesn't mean it wimps out on the chills.

The Thing – The best John Carpenter horror movie he ever made.

An American Werewolf In London – John Landis has a truly screwball sense of humor.  Mix that with the curse of lycanthropy and you have a trippy scary monster movie.

Dracula – The classic vampire film.  Bela Lugosi may have been perpetually typecast because of it, but he's still “The Count.”

Tremors – It's a modern movie, but it's got the style of a classic '50s monster movie.

Silver Bullet – Another werewolf movie, but this one's played straight.  And it works well.

From Dusk Till Dawn – The horror element doesn't show up till about halfway through the movie.  That's what makes it so damn effective.

Creepshow – The film that firmly established the “anthology” movie genre, in my opinion, since it spawned Tales From The Dark Side and Tales From The Hood.  Notable for Stephen King's essentially one man show.

Flatliners – The cast list sounded like one of those “today's biggest stars” grab bags, but the premise is creepy and the acting is really well done.

Stir of Echoes – This one got lost in the noise from The Sixth Sense, which is a shame because I think it's probably the better movie.  Watching Kevin Bacon go crazy is a lot more fun than watching Bruce Willis play dumb.


Next Time: Drama

100 Movies You Need To See - Part VI: Thrillers

Action movies are great, as I sort of pointed out during the last part of this list.  But if there's something better than a good action movie, it's a good thriller.  One can look at an action movie as a ball that gets rolling down a hill, and pretty much ends up blowing up everything that it comes into contact with before it hits the bottom of the hill and comes to a stop.  Thrillers are more like taking a piece of rope, or even chain, and pulling on both ends, adding more and more stress until it meets and exceeds it's breaking point.  Sometimes, there are two or three chains all being put under strain at the same time, but not at the same rate, which gives us a lot of good pop-pop-pop excitement.

The Hurt Locker – It's easy to dismiss this one as a war movie or merely a drama.  It would be a mistake to do so.  This one, particularly during the bomb disposal scenes, is garrote wire tight.

Hard Candy – Very few movies make me flinch.  This is one of them.

Chinatown – Growing up, John Huston had this very wholesome grandfatherly appearance to me.  After seeing this one, he reminded me that great actors have more fun playing the bad guy.

Primal Fear – The first film I saw Edward Norton in.  The last scene still sends a chill down my back because the way he delivers his last lines is almost perfectly in sync with what I'd imagined the character saying when I read the book.

Unbreakable – This was where M. Night Shyamalan peaked.  While it has a decidedly fantastic premise, it's still structured like a thriller.

The Game – It all starts out so innocently, and then goes to hell at the speed of light.  And what a ride.

Deathtrap – For a movie adaptation of a stage play, it's damn good.  Also helps remind you Christopher Reeve was more than just Superman.

The Name of The Rose – Proof that not every thriller has to be set in the present day.  Sean Connery doesn't chew up the scenery like he does in the Bond flicks.

Ronin – If it had just been about common hijackers tooling around the south of France, it'd probably be considered just another action flick.  But when you throw in ex-spooks, ultraradical IRA maniacs, double-crosses left and right, and a mysterious package that suddenly takes a backseat in the movie's last great twist, you know you've got a thriller on your hands.

Sneakers – It feels a little lighter than some thrillers, but it's still got plenty of twists and turns.


Next time: Horror movies

100 Movies You Need To See - Part V: Action/Adventure

Sometimes, you want to go to the movies to experience something magical and wonderful.  A touching love story.  A wrenching drama.  An uproarious comedy.  You go to feel something you might not otherwise feel and experience a story that you will probably never experience in real life.  You go to connect with characters that you'll never meet in real life, but you would really like to know.

And sometimes, you go to watch shit blow up.

Sometimes, you don't want high concepts and deep characterizations.  You don't want all the drama of dramas.  Sometimes, you just want to see big explosions.  You want to live vicariously through men and women of action.  Yes, they're sometimes cartoonish.  Yes, they have lines that straddle the line between hilarity and cringing awfulness.  And you don't care.  For a couple hours, you just want to see good guys win, bad guys lose, and shit blowing up all over the place.

With that in mind, my list of ten action movies.

Conan The Barbarian – If you're going to do a fantasy flick, this should be how you do it.  It shouldn't be just swords and sorcery.  It should be almost operatic.

300 – A larger-than-life adaptation of a larger-than-life story of legendary figures in a legendary battle.

The Princess Bride – For all the lighthearted lines and jokes, it's a classic adventure.

The Replacement Killers – The first movie I ever saw with Chow-Yun Fat.  I didn't quite become an instant fan, and there are several of his earlier works I haven't seen yet, but I try to catch every movie he's done since this one.

Mad Max – It's an oldie and a goodie.  Mel Gibson before he got big.  The fact that it involved fast cars, motorcycles, and a bit of the ultraviolence enhances the performance.

Sin City – While it has a strong film noir feel, it's all about the gangsters, guns, and girls.

Excalibur – The rise and fall of Camelot, with all the blood, seduction, sorcery, warfare, and grand scale you can handle.

Leon: The Professional – Another first exposure, this one being Jean Reno.  It's a little too straightforward for a thriller, but it's an excellent action flick.

The Delta Force – One of the many Chuck Norris films done during the mid-80s.  Notable because they managed to find one guy more badass than Chuck Norris: Lee Marvin.

Young Sherlock Holmes – This one is hard to find, which bothers me tremendously.  The action was fast paced and well written.  Also one of the forgotten landmarks in movie history.  This is the first film where a human actor shared the screen with a fully computer generated character and played off of it.

Next time: Thrillers

100 Movies You Need To See - Part IV: Comedies

Laurence Olivier was quoted as saying, "Dying is easy, but comedy is hard."  And it's pretty much true.  Of all the emotions that cinema can convey and evoke, humor is one that is perhaps the most subjective and the most elusive.  Some folks see the pratfalls of the Three Stooges and laugh, others dismiss it as juvenile.  Some watch witty word play and laugh in surprise, others wonder why the actors are all standing around just talking.  What tickles somebody's sense of humor will almost certainly kill somebody else's.  With that in mind, I offer up a sampler of comedy.  Some of it is witty and urbane.  Some of it is puerile and lowbrow.  But it is all funny, to me at least.  You might find some of it funny, too.


Chasing Amy – While I wouldn't hesitate to recommend any Kevin Smith film, this one's got a special place in my heart.  It's how romantic comedies really should be written and acted.

Four Rooms – Four helpings of exceedingly black comedy.  At least two of the segments almost feel like very long setups for a single killer punchline.  Awesome stuff.

Amazon Women On The Moon – Short segments of absolutely weird and completely silly shit.  A product of the '80s, but a very good product of the '80s.

National Lampoon's Vacation – Two weeks in a car with the family.  What could go wrong?

The Naked Gun: From The Files of Police Squad – It's a whacked out little spoof, which isn't surprising considering the cast, the writers, or the director.  It's also one of the movies that reminds you O.J. Simpson actually had potential as an actor.

Orgazmo – The guys that created South Park go live action again and absolutely hold nothing back.  It's wrong on so many levels.  It's funny on so many more.

Office Space – This one has achieved the level of cult status normally reserved for Monty Python films.

The Blues Brothers – One of John Belushi's best films.  And the musician cameos are worth the price of admission.

Trading Places – An early Eddie Murphy film.  You know, before he found fat suits.

History Of The World, Part I – Much like Kevin Smith, you can't miss with any Mel Brooks film.  It's a tough call between this one and Blazing Saddles as his best.  For me, this one just barely edges the competition out.

Next time: Action/Adventure

100 Movies You Need To See - Part III: Historical Films

Because I've been so darned lazy getting this list out, I figure I should try and step it up a little more on the posting.  One of the tiny downsides which I was unaware of regarding Blogger is how well it handles information copied out of OpenOffice, and it apparently doesn't handle it very well.  Copying and pasting into Notepad and then from there into Blogger is kind of obnoxious, and a workflow killer, but it's what I have to deal with.

With that said, I thought I'd take a moment to introduce the historical genre.  History has long been a fascination with me.  If there was any one subject I loved in school, it was history, and I tended to put a little extra effort into my history reports.  Historical films often get confused with genre films and vice versa (Gladiator stands out as one example; even though it's a great flick, it's not terribly accurate in terms of historical events).  For me, historical films (and their close cousins, the bio-pics) are a great way to at least get a good overview of an event or a figure out of the past.  They serve as introductions, trailheads for the curious to follow into the past. 

Let's take a walk, shall we?

El Cid – It's old, but the production values are top notch, and the battle sequences are classic.
Zulu – Michael Caine's first film, and still delivers the goods even after all these years.
Zulu Dawn – Although it was made after Zulu, it covers the historical events immediately prior.  The cast is just as impressive and the action is just as brutal.
The Wind & The Lion – A good old fashioned “swords in the desert” movie.  Sean Connery isn't exactly the most convincing as a Berber, but Brian Keith looks completely right as Teddy Roosevelt.
The Ghost & The Darkness – Although a few parts have doubtlessly been altered, it's still the best “African safari” story out there.
The Lighthorsemen – A WWI story that gets out of the European trenches.
Black Hawk Down – Some of the characters are composites, but the events of the day are accurate. The sad part is the place hasn't changed much since then.
The Great Escape – Again, characters are often composites, but the circumstances regarding the escape are accurate.
Patton – Who else but George C. Scott could possibly portray an ego like George S. Patton?
Enemy At The Gates – You don't see a lot of WWII stories told from the Soviet side.  Albeit with some historical inaccuracies, it's still a hell of a good story.

Next time: Comedies

100 Movies You Need To See - Part II: Sci-Fi

OK, just ever so slightly delayed, but here. 

Science fiction is pretty much a staple of a geek's existence.  We gravitate to spaceships and dinosaurs around the same time other kids start going for the footballs and Barbie dolls.  But there's more to sci-fi than just Star Trek and Star Wars, however.  Sometimes it's hard sci-fi, like what we'd find in the pages of Analog or Issac Asimov's Magazine.  Sometimes, it's softer sci-fi, leaning into towards science fantasy or delving into the more human aspects of sci-fi.  These are ten that I think ought to be seen by just about everybody.

Primer – This is a perfect example of how to make a great “hard” sci-fi movie on a small budget and still have it be believable.  Like any good movie involving time travel, this one will bake your noodle.
Donnie Darko – This one works as sci-fi, thriller, fantasy, and even horror to some extent.  It's a skull twister, not only because of it's focus on time travel and the fate/free will argument, but the way it makes teen alienation strangely more understandable.
The Thirteenth Floor – A couple months after The Matrix came out, this one proposed that we might be living in a computer simulation in a more subtle fashion. 
Serenity – The movie followup, and conclusion, to the TV series Firefly.  Seeing the series isn't necessary to enjoy the movie, but it sure helps add to the enjoyment.
Silent Running – This one might be more disturbing now than it was when it was first released.  The premise of containing chunks of Earth's biomes inside geodesic modules on board spacecraft is a little less academic these days.
Forbidden Planet – It's an oldie but a goodie.  Also works as a monster movie.  And it reminds you that Leslie Nielsen used to be a serious actor the same way Tom Hanks used to be a comedian.
A Boy And His Dog – While the world isn't quite as close to nuclear annihilation as it might have been years ago, this one strikes a definite chord for what life might be like when everything's been smashed down to bedrock.
Space Truckers - Not every sci-fi movie has to be super-serious.  Sci-fi can also be a playground for comedy.  Sometimes, really campy comedy.  Dennis Hopper might have done this one for the paycheck, but he earned every penny.
Outland – Essentially “High Noon” set in space, it shows Sean Connery really can act beyond James Bond.
Rollerball – Not the shit remake that came out a couple years ago.  The original.  Yes, there's a definite '70s vibe to it.  But it still works.

Next: Historical films

100 Movies You Need To See - Part I: The Westerns

I'm not ashamed to say that, in addition to obviously geeky past times like video games and role playing games, I have more socially acceptable geeky hobbies.  I'm something of a film buff, a joy that definitely got started when I was young, and one that I haven't ever given up on.  There are doubtlessly people more hardcore about film than I am and that's OK.  The problem, however, is with folks that aren't as big on film as I am.  I've been able to toss off movie quotes with ease, identify actors, and reference films both popular and obscure for a long time.  But there are always some folks who just look at me blankly and go "huh?"

One day, talking with an acquaintance over Yahoo Messenger, I got a little fed up.  There were a lot of great movies out there which I'd seen and which they had not.  Moreover, there were a lot of other people I know who hadn't seen them, either.  I decided that I would cook up my own little list of a hundred movies that I figured people really ought to see.  The theory was that if people liked them, they might go out and see other films in the same genre, or performed by the same actor, or made by the same director.  At the same time, I didn't want it all to be big budget titles and media-blitzed movie stars.  I wanted to show people there were films beyond the multiplex.

It's a lot harder than you think to come up with 100 movies for people to see and give them a reason why.  I decided to break the list down into ten smaller pieces, which still didn't help, because you're trying to distill genres with hundreds, if not thousands, of titles and performances both great and atrocious down to just ten titles.  These may not be the all time best or worst movies, but they're ones that I like, ones that I think other people might like, and ones that should probably be seen.

I decided to get the ball rolling with Westerns.  They've been a big part of my cinematic education and it's one of those uniquely American film art forms.

The Wild Bunch – It's bloody, it's violent, and John Wayne thought it killed the whole genre of Westerns. Which fits pretty well with the theme of the dying days of “The Wild West.”

True Grit – It's hard not to mention at least one Western with John Wayne in it. This one's one of two that I figure are absolutely essential.

The Cowboys – This is the other one. Still playing a tough guy, but a much different one from the previous movie. Also neat to see all the future stars that came out of this movie

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly – It's about as hard not to mention a Western with Clint Eastwood as it is to avoid mentioning John Wayne. The last of Sergio Leone's “Man With No Name” spaghetti Westerns, it's a well done flick all around.

Once Upon A Time In The West – Sergio Leone's big budget Western, and it's a killer.

There Was A Crooked Man – There's a few giggles in this one, but the best parts are when Henry Fonda and Kirk Douglas are talking to each other. We know one of them has a plan. The other's plan is a bit more surprising.

Jeremiah Johnson – A Western and a biopic, Robert Redford sells the character of “Liver Eatin'” Johnson perfectly.

The Mountain Men – Covers the early period of the West beautifully, and bloodily, with excellent acting all around.

Quigley Down Under – A Western that goes so far west it hits Australia. Still an excellent movie. It illuminates the Old West saying “Beware the one gun man” perfectly.

Paint Your Wagon – A Western and a musical! While there's a definite comic tone throughout the movie, Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin play off each other wonderfully, and they don't sound too bad singing.

Tomorrow: Sci-Fi