Oh, please don’t go there …
Speaking of Melvin & Howard, in today’s Salt Lake Tribune. Wow, he may have been telling the truth after all.
I love this. My reaction to the list is almost evenly divided amongst :
a) Ooh, that is a good one.
b) Haven’t seen it yet, but…
c) Huh? Never heard of it.
and
d) What the hell are you thinking?
Dancer in the Dark and Passion of Joan of Arc fit d) for me, both extremely irritating to watch. On the other hand, City Lights, Rio Bravo, Night of the Hunter, The Searchers, Sullivan’s Travels, and Once Upon a Time in the West - excellent.
I’ll make a few recommendations - The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek is a fairly subversive and amusing 40’s comedy; and I recently saw The Amazing Mr. X, which was a genuinely creepy noirish thriller.
I caught it in a local revival cinema in the not to distant past and was firmly “meh” on it; even the car chase which I found really underwhelming after all the hype. The French Connection was a much better movie, and Gene Hackman made a much better thuggish, brutal cop than the sophomoric William Petersen.
I can’t agree more. Mann reworked several bits of this film into his magnum opus facina, Heat. (And Brian De Palma basically ripped it off for Carlito’s Way.) Very accurate, very detailed, James Caan’s best performance, and Jim Belushi gets killed, which is always a plus. (Trivia note: most of the guys playing cops are actually former thieves, and several of the extra heavies that work for Caan’s employer are cops.)
It’s not exactly forgotten among noir fans, but Out of the Past deserves a reprint and specialty house theatrical re-release. And Feares The Grifters is a great film that never got the audience it deserved.
Stranger
Chimes at Midnight, Orson Welles’ 1965 screen adaptation of Henry IV, Part I and Part II, starring Welles as – you guessed it! – Falstaff! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059012/ (The IMDB entry gives the title in Spanish, don’t ask me why.) The only time I ever saw this flick was on a VHS tape with really crappy sound. It’s overdue for a remastered DVD release.
The Wicker Man – http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070917/ – was a real gem for such an obviously low-budget production. It arguably misrepresents modern/revived witchcraft/paganism in a lot of ways, but the story is suspenseful with lots of humorous elements and not-too-bad acting. And there’s some good music on it – which, again, could be improved/restored by a remastered DVD.
I’ve written about it here, as has **Cervaise **(far more eloquently), but here’s another take on it from Slant Magazine’s Eric Henderson.
An alternate on my lifelist. For some reason I don’t a director to be represented more than once in my list, but if I did this movie would be the first one I’d add.
Recently available on DVD.
Not actually adding to the list of movies but an aside. The trailer for the 1955 reissue of Meet Me In St. Louis make me think about this thread and how DVDs and VHS tapes have changed the movie experience. Most of the movies mentioned here can now be rented and viewed. But before VHS, if you missed a movie, you might not ever get to see it. Three cheers for DVDs, I think.
My personal favorites that should be re-discovered:
Legend of Hell House A fun old low-tech movie.
The Resurrected Ditto-granted the effects are a bit dated, but I still like it
And Lifeform: Easily one of the best “People trapped with an Alien” movies I’ve ever seen, and I cannot reccommend it too much. Also called Invader.
The ending was rushed because they ran out of money and so they tacked on the nuke. A pity, it is a great film with real potential.
[Zentropa.](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008978H/104-2881189-9635968?v=g
lance&n=130&s=dvd&v=glance)Also known as Europa. A remarkable movie. The DVD linked is a Korean import, full screen, in English (IIRC the original is subtitled) so I cannot recommend it.
On topic: I don’t think that Secretary, Dark City (which makes the second Kiefer Sutherland nomination along with Freeway), or the surprisingly poignant Bad Santa have ever gotten the attention they truly deserve (but I’m doing my small part by picking up DVDs of all three).
Off topic: this thread has inspired me to add Big Trouble, Crossroads, and Freeway to my Netflix queue, and to dig You Can Count On Me out of the middle of the queue. Thanks.
Zentropa, by Lars Von Trier, is one of the best WWII movies ever made.
Dark City is one of my all-time favorites, Secretary is hot as hell and surprisingly very good, but I hated Bad Santa. Couldn’t even get through it. Lauren Graham’s short scene in the car was great, though.