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Dead Poet’s Society – It has been on my mind a lot of late, for various reasons. I wish Sigma Tau Delta, the honors English society that seniors get invited to, were instead named that. Just because.
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The Matrix. Not for the actors themselves, or the script, per se, but more because of the “what is reality?” aspects.
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Sixth Sense – a distance third. It speaks to me more structurally, ie, the withholding of plot development, more so than the overarching abstract themes of the first two.
I don’t regard “favorite” and “most watchable” as similar in any way. I’ve probably watched Overboard 20 times due to its heavy cable rotation in the past and eminent watchability, but I don’t particularly like it.
My favorites are all my favorites for the same reason…I have major crushes on the female leads: (the characters, not necessarily the actors)
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True Romance - Alabama
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Chasing Amy - Allysa Jones
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Killing Zoe - Zoe
Instead of repeating the choices so many of you have already made (12 Angry Men, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, To Kill a Mockingbird, Pulp Fiction, et. al.) I’ll throw out three of my faves that haven’t been mentioned yet.
Thunderbolt & Lightfoot (1974) One of Eastwood’s best non Dirty Harry or western pictures, IMHO. Technically very good (botched tech ruins a film for me), and based on an actual break-in of an armored car company in New York.
Lonesome Dove (1989) A superb job of bringing McMurtry’s book to the screen. Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones filled the roles of Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call in a magnificent way.
Liar’s Moon (1981) The touching story of teenage love, and a tragic reminder of how devastating deceit can be.
My three FAVOURITE movies are “Jaws,” “Fargo,” and “Galaxy Quest.” The best three movies ever? No. But if I wanted to just have a fun night, I’d put those three on.
Purely subjective and I don’t care who knows it:
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Un Chien Andalou. Salvador Dali was among the greatest minds of the 20th century, and Luis Buñuel was no slouch either. This movie pulls no punches, from the opening shot with the guy slicing the woman’s eyeball open to the guy dragging a piano with a rotting donkey carcass on it to the hand covered in ants to God knows what else.
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Magical Mystery Tour. Widely considered to be the Beatles’ worst film, but I like the combination of self-indulgence, amateurishness, psychedelic surrealism, the Beatles’ insights on society, and innocent joie de vivre. I still find it delightful after watching it millions of times. And come on, it has the “I Am the Walrus” sequence AND the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band playing in a strip club. What more could you ask for?
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Baby Snakes. Not only footage of mind-blowing Frank Zappa performances, but also antics involving inflatable love dolls and gas masks, PLUS Bruce Bickford’s unbelievable clay animation. Never before have I ever seen someone so fully exploit the hallucinatory possibilities of the clay medium. Bickford moves everything a full 24 times a second, twice as often as most animators do (and, like he says in the movie, “Hanna-Barbera uses the half-hour exposure”), and the attention to detail is incredible. I have no idea how the guy makes a living, but apparently he’s still at it.
Yeah, none of these movies have much of a plot, but I don’t think the motion picture medium should necessarily be limited to traditional narrative forms.
I cant believe that someone actually named a movie that I was in! 
(I was an extra for this film and a stand-in for the the big funny friend. You can see me for all of one second in the carnival scene at the ticket booth. I spent ten days shooting and that was all that made it to screen. My friends ragged me for ages over that.)
BTW:
All That Jazz: Great feeling for how theatrical artists live, love, and die for their craft. Great music and dancing too! Bob Fosse at his best.
Repo Man: This and The Warriors are two of the greatest surrealistic films ever made.
Star Wars (The original) : What can I say. Opening shot of big star cruiser fleeing shots followed by the bottom of Imperial Star cruiser that keeps coming and coming and coming… changed the way we looked at film. From that moment on, anything was truly possible in film. If someone could imagine it, they could creat it.
And it was great fun also!
Casablanca, The Godfather, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail - all three chosen on the basis that I watch them over and over and still enjoy them.
This is really tough, three is a pretty small number. I agree with a large number of selected films.
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Jaws1975: Often written off as a B-movie or summer flick, it is actually an incredibly well made film combining fantastic performances, cinematography, editing, sound, and my favourite ingredient in any movie- serendipity. The stupid rubber shark didn’t work a lot of the time, so its’ on screen time is limited. I have watched this movie more times than any other, and while two scenes have become teeth-grindingly irritating in that time, overall it has withstood the brunt of repeated viewings very well. One of my favourite aspects is the sound- the dialogue is often used as background sound, characters talk over each other and their dialogue is secondary to the action- but so real. (The scene where Brody is preparing to close the beaches, the town hall meeting which Quint interrupts, the scene at the beach where Brody is intently scanning the water for shark signs.) I could ramble on for too long. In fact I probably already have.
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Unforgiven1992: What can I say? I love revenge movies, and this one has some of the sweetest revenge ever. Fantastic dialogue, amazing direction and performances, this movie has no flaws.
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My Darling Clementine1946: This is the weakest film on my list, 3rd could have gone to a lot of other films. I love this movie ‘tho, especially the performance of Henry Fonda. Calm, bemused, unafraid and dangerous, some of the finest moments are of him getting shaved, dancing, or just sittin’ on the front porch. John Ford was an absolute master, with the sense to allow the people he was working with to do their job. (For example, he almost never looked through the camera, and rarely shot more than one take. He’d ask his Cameraman if they “had it”, and trusted his word.)
He worked with excellent technicians, trusted them, and it shows.
Also, like Gum and hawthorne I recommend that anyone who hasn’t go out and find Fritz Lang’s amazing M. Coulda easily been #2 or 3.
OK- I’ll shut up now.
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Star Wars - the only movie I never get tired of watching. Every time I see it, I still marvel at it. And I can’t think of a time when it was on TV and I changed the channel.
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The Usual Suspects - There are a lot of movies I’ve seen more than once in the theater, but this was the only movie that so floored me that I saw it on two consecutive nights. On the second night, I dragged other friends to see it and even offered to pay if they’d come, just so that I could share the experience with someone.
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LA Story - I’m pretty sure I’ve caught most of the little jokes by now, but for a long time there I noticed something new every time I watched it. Watching it, you can tell that Steve Martin really sweated over it a lot; it’s humor honed to a perfect edge. And how many other movies have a road conditions sign that’s a reincarnated set of bagpipes? (personal anecdote: I worked in a movie theater in New Mexico when this movie premiered, and the audience always laughed when they mentioned the hotel, “El Pollo Del Mar.” I dunno if that joke went over as big in, say, Minnesota as it did in NM.)
That is pretty cool. That character had some good parts, too: The locker room scene at the dance when they’re drinking moonshine, and he toasts with, “Past the lips and down the throat. This here stuff would kill a goat.”
- Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas - This movie grabs me very viscerally. I love the alternating frantic and melancholy moods, the scenery, the not-quite-real camerawork (“Get in!”), the extreme devotion that both Depp and Del Toro have to their characters, the mournful look back at the mistakes of the '60s, the music, the sense of being caught up in a mad, swirling maelstrom called Real Life… I can’t NOT like this movie. It’s physically impossible. The universe would implode if I didn’t write this movie.
Plus, I love Thompson’s prose and Depp’s delivery of such. I could listen to it all day…
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Reservoir Dogs - Hard to decide 'tween this one and Pulp Fiction, but I give Dogs the vote just because Tarantino did far more with far less. An incredibly captivating story, very intriguing characters immersed in what feels like a real (albeit fantastical) world, extreme badassery (Mr. Pink’s escape scene, for instance), a hell of a fucking ending, excellent use of flashback and foreshadowing… I only hope I can some day make a movie almost as good.
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I don’t know what to put for three… I thought of Quills, or The Big Lebowski, or Fight Club, but none are jumping out at me. Oh well. I’ll leave off with two.
A quick update in case anyone’s interested. The leading films at the moment are:
1= Fargo
1= Jaws
3 One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
4 The Godfather
5= Casablanca
5= Local Hero
5= The Passion of Joan of Arc
8= Dr Strangelove
8= Fight Club
10= Amadeus
10= Duck Soup
10= Harold and Maude
I gave 3 points for films nominated 1, 2 for 2, and 1 for 3.
A total of 105 films have been nominated so far.
- The Holy Mountain, by Alejandro Jodorowsky. (1973)
A beautiful film in every way. Psychedelic and surreal, it’s a Hermetic allegory with a modern surrealist flavour. I can watch this one over and over. Real alchemy! Whohoo! Funny as hell in places, breathtakingly beautiful in others. A band of questors, under the guidance of an enlightened master, seek to conquer the Holy Mountain and overthrow the nine immortals who have mastery over the world. Unlike anything you’ll ever see. If you’ve read too much Carl Jung, this is your movie. If you’ve done too much acid, this is also your movie. Travelling to the East? Check it out, dude. Can’t stay awake through Matthew Barney’s films? The Holy Mountain manages to work a pretty compelling story in there, too. Besides, there’s this one part where this chick gets off with the mountain! Beat that, Muhammad.
- The Mirror, by Andrei Tarkovsky (1975)
Also beautiful-- this is my favourite Tarkovsky film. A dying man reflects on his life. I don’t know what to say about this film. The photography is beautiful. A lot of the “dialogue” is supplied by recitations of Tarkovsky’s father’s poems, which miraculously are good even in translation.
- Forbidden Zone, by Richard Elfman (1980)
Okay, Herve Villachez is the wicked Dwarf King of the Sixth Dimension, and Susan Tyrell is his zoftig, domineering Queen. Flash Hercules must rescue his sister Frenchy, who has become the King’s concubine after being pooped into the Sixth Dimension after wandering through a forbidden door in the cellar. Also requiring rescuing is Squeezit Henderson’s transgendered sister, Renee. The sets are all papier mache, it’s filmed in high-contrast black & white and borrows design elements from Hellzapoppin! and Max Fleischer cartoons. It’s a musical, and the songs are all 1930s jazz and pop songs reworked by The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. Danny Elfman performs a version of Minnie the Moocher as Satan. The spoiled Valley Girl Princess of the Sixth Dimension has no top. Viva plays the Ex-Queen and delivers one of my favourite lines, “I’ll see ya later, I gotta go change a Tampax.”
(Actually, I think I like Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958) quite a bit better than Forbidden Zone, but it’s not nearly as much fun to describe. After “Charleton Heston plays this Mexican cop…” it’s hard to surprise anyone. “Hitchcock blatantly ripped parts of this movie off for Psycho” kind of rolls off the tongue, though.)
Piker. The Lady From Shangai is superior to Touch Of Evil. 
The Lady From Shanghai is even better. :smack:
I’d never would have thought ‘Fargo’ was that popular. What a surprise. Why didn’t it get more Oscars?
(in no particular order)
-The Iron Giant The best children’s movie ever made. Touching, funny, meaningful, sweet, beautiful. Everyone should see this.
-The Lord of the Rings (entire trilogy) What is there to be said about this epic that hasn’t already been said? I admit that I’m a bit of a sucker for epic adventure and drama, but these movies are true grand masterpieces
-Wayne’s World No comedy has ever made me laugh more over repeated viewings.
Ilsa_Lund, you know, I’ve seen both The Lady From Shanghai and Touch of Evil quite a few times, and Touch of Evil eventually overtook The Lady From Shanghai as my favourite Welles film. Maybe because I’ve become extremely enamoured of the technical bits, which continue to enthrall me longer than the stories do. The way stuff on the soundtrack blends back and forth between diagetic and extradiagetic, for instance. And of course that opening shot is the best thing ever. Holy crap. I still haven’t seen The Lady From Shangai in a theatre, though. Maybe that would freshen it up for me again. Time to agitate at the Cinematheque again, I guess.
To tell you the truth, I haven’t seen either in a theatre, but the last half hour of TLFS is one of the best in talkies.