>> Real Genius
You know, it has held up. I showed it to my teenaged son within the last year, and we enjoyed it. Its messages still resonate.
But let me add a very special one to my list:
Boyhood
Rear Window. Compelling theme, fine acting, guiltless secondhand voyeurism. I can even overlook minor plot illogic.*
There are a number of other classic movies I happily watch repeatedly. My appreciation for Anatomy Of A Murder grows with every viewing. Beautiful execution and enjoyable performances by everyone in the cast, even people I never liked much in other productions.**
*Why wouldn’t you make sure your apartment door was locked??
**IOW, Eve Arden.
Both of these are definitely in my Top 10 as well.
I have to add here: my family and I have been discussing another of our favorites, “Stardust”. This story also has all of the above, plus deNiro in a dress. It has a similar sensibility, but while I love it very much, my family and I always place it a notch or two below “The Princess Bride”. I often wonder if that is because it came second.
As a friend of mine said (50 times at least, perhaps 100) as we watched it, “Oh my God, what a boring movie!”
I’ve also heard this-
A: “Stanley Kubrick perfectly captured the utter loneliness of outer space.”
B: “No, Stanley Kubrick perfectly captured the utter boringness of outer space!”
I love this movie, too. I recently shared it with my son. I don’t know which version we saw. What’s the sanitized ending?
The one we saw ended with a fantasy escape to a fake happy ending, followed by a reveal that he’d lost his mind under torture.
I loved this movie when it came out. I was young at the time. I recently shared it with my teenaged son, and although there were moments, I felt that it hadn’t held up so well.
I just spent some time preparing my Thirty Favorite Movies list. I’ve already mentioned my #1 so will just show some of my Top Thirty films that might be relatively unpopular choices:
Whale Rider
Crash (2004)
Third Miracle
To Live and Die in L.A.
Previous threads:
"2001: A Space Odyssey … is the most boring movie ever. "
"2001 Space Odyssey is the 2nd-most boring movie ever made "
And, directed by an Australian like yourself (Peter Weir). He’s always been good at these “cross-cultural encounters with a strong sense of geographic specificity,” from Picnic at Hanging Rock to Mosquito Coast to The Last Wave — even Master and Commander.
Maybe Anyone else. LOL!
Mine is the Godfather.
Stardust for the win. I like The Princess Bride; it’s enjoyable to me. It has everything I like/d in a movie. I just don’t love it. It’s not even a top 10 for me. I’m always afraid to admit that, because it’s beloved by so, so many people, and I can’t help but think that I’d flip right through it if flipping through channels were still a thing.
The sanitized ending does not have the reveal - it’s merely the fake happy ending as the real ending.
There are more changes than that. In a nutshell, the head of Universal Studios, Sid Sheinberg, really didn’t like Brazil; I can’t remember for sure, but the project may have been approved by his predecessor at the studio. The film was a few minutes longer than the contract specified, and Sheinberg used that to try and force Terry Gilliam (the director) to make changes. In the end, there were three versions of the film:
- Gilliam’s original cut; released in Europe.
- A version slightly edited by Gilliam, with 10 minutes taken out; released in the U.S. after a rather public battle between Gilliam and Sheinberg.
- A version done by editors at Universal with instructions to play up the love story and give it a happy ending. This is sometimes called the “Love Conquers All” version and was shown at least once on television in the U.S.
In the sanitized version, he actually escapes. That ending flips the entire premise of the movie. The darker ending is the right one.