Seven Psychopaths. I love self-referential stuff. Here’s a quote about Marty’s screenplay that applies to the movie you are watching (not to mention the director of SP is also Marty):
My favorite movie is “Murder By Death” which makes me very happy. But I do have to confess it has a few flaws.
In my opinion, Silverado is very close to perfect. I can’t point to any meaningful or significant flaws in it. The story, acting, music, scenery, action – just plain great.
(My b.i.l. asks, though, why they had to ride from Arizona through New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada, just to get back to Arizona again.)
Yes. I have to like the subject also, but other than that, that’s my criteria.
Ocean’s Eleven (2001) and Goodfellas are mine. I wouldn’t change a single cast member, line, or shot/edit in either of them.
Honorable mention to the perfect trailer for IRON MAN, with an Oscar-caliber actor joking around as a breezily smug high-roller of an arms dealer who gets badly injured and captured by terrorists who force the guy hooked up to a car battery to start working on a [del]guided missile[/del] clunky armored suit built around crude flamethrowers, and cue the music, and – is that Gwyneth Paltrow? Wait, that’s all just the beginning of the story?
All the movie had to do was not screw it up from there – but, hey, full marks for going with the “I am Iron Man” ending, followed by Nick Fury stepping out of the shadows to say one sentence that made every fanboy in the audience think, oh, yes: yes, we shall see Captain America fighting in WWII; and, yes, we shall see Thor and the Hulk brawling on the deck of an aircraft carrier; and, yes, we shall see a flying city and an army of robots and that guy has a bow and arrow; and, lo, there shall be an Ant-Man.
But all of that was the future of the franchise of franchises; all I’m saying is, the movie started from a perfect trailer, and then didn’t bother to screw it up.
Predator - a high point in 80’s action movies. Everything works: tough guys, action sequences, endless quotable lines, music, great alien menace.
The Last of the Mohicans (1992 version). Perfect mix of adventure, action, romance, period piece and spectacle woven together with amazing music and scenery.
Second Silverado. I’m also very fond of Grand Canyon. Both very under-rated, I think.
Dredd. Not just a great adaptation of the comic, but a beautifully constructed movie: there is nothing in there that shouldn’t be. The opening 2 1/2 minutes is a masterclass in taut, lean film making: how to set up your premise, outline your main character, and engage the plot by having a cool machine gun motorbike chase. At the end of that 2 1/2 minutes, you’ve been given everything you need to know about Dredd, his world, and his adversaries, all with about a half a dozen short lines of dialogue. All that, and a John Carpenteresque score to set the tone.
Hey, we get enough of real life in, y’know, real life. Let’s go for a movie that takes us out of real life.
My vote is for Yellow Submarine.
The Blues Brothers.
Shake your tailfeather, Dopers. 