Your 10 Best Movies

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fountainhall

Your 10 Best Movies

Post by fountainhall »

The subject of lists comes up from time to time in chat rooms. I can't recall seeing one about favourite cinema movies - at least for several years. So I wonder what movies would make it on to the Top Ten list of readers in this forum? Here is mine in no particular order along with their directors -

Citizen Kane - Orson Wells
The Go Between - Joseph Losey
Lawrence of Arabia - David Lean
Psycho - Alfred Hitchock
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - George Roy Hill
The Godfather Part 1 - Francis Ford Coppola
Sophie’s Choice - Alan Pakula
Schindler’s List - Steven Spielberg
Lost in Translation - Sophia Coppola
Road to Perdition - Sam Mendes

Inevitably lists are personal. The above may not be the best movies I have seen (if only because there are more than a few I cannot recall), but they all left an indelible mark on my memory when I saw them.
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Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by 2lz2p »

Very difficult to try to select the 10 best, I have seen 7 from fountainhall's list. But two of my favorites that come to mind quickly are:

A Man for All Seasons
Becket
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Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by Trongpai »

The Wizard of Oz
Casablanca
Godfather part 1
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Glass Menagerie Tennessee William's 1944 stage to film adaptions 1950,1987 and best 1973
Psycho
Dr. Strangelove
The Graduate
West Side Story 1961
Deliverance

Gee, nothing in the past 25 years!
fountainhall

Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by fountainhall »

I was very tempted to add A Man for All Seasons if only for Paul Scofield's performance. But then I later saw him 'live' at the National Theatre as Salieri in Amadeus (another possible candidate for a 10 best list) and realised that nothing on film for me lived up to his titanic stage performances.

I had forgotten about Dr. Strangelove - great movie and deserving a place on any list. The great Peter Sellers at his brilliant best. What he might have achieved had he not been felled by a heart attack aged 54!

I also forgot about West Side Story. Brilliant musical with glorious music. Who would have thought that Bernstein would have incorporated a theme from Wagner's Gotterdammerung in a Broadway show?
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Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by Undaunted »

Legends of the fall
Shadowlands
Dr. Zhivago (original)
Lawrence of Arabia
Judgement at Nuremberg
Inherit the wind
Godfather 1&2
All about Eve
Now Voyager
Lion
Moonlight
Slumdog Millionaire
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belg0001

Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by belg0001 »

I would add 'Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?' with Richard Burton and Elisabeth Taylor at their very best! And also 'Rabbi Jacob' with Louis de Funès , but that's in French...
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Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by Undaunted »

More movies:

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
To Kill a Mockingbird
On The Beach
Lion in Winter
"In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king"
fountainhall

Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by fountainhall »

Since the numbers are creeping up from 10, let me add Blake Edwards' Victor, Victoria. I first saw it on a flight from Bali to Hong Kong and absolutely loved it. I am no fan of Julie Andrews' film work but Robert Preston is masterly as a gay vaudeville singer and Lesley Anne Warren as a Marilyn Monroe-type mobster's girlfriend. I have shown this many times to Thais and each has been on the floor with laughter.
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Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by werner99 »

(1)
One of the best French movies is "Au revoir les enfants" (1987). It was written and directed by Louis Malle, and is based on memories of his childhood during Nazi-occupied France.

It is available with subtitles in many languages.

(2)
Another great movie is "Wedding Banquet" (1993), directed by Ang Lee.

The movie is in Mandarin Chinese and English.

(3)
A great Japanese movie is "Sandakan No. 8", also know by its Japanese title: 望郷 [Bōkyō] (1974), directed by Kumai Kei.

Come on guys--let's not only consider English-language movies.
What are great Thai movies?
What are great movies in languages other than English?
The members of this forum are from a number of countries and speak many languages.
fountainhall

Re: Your 10 Best Movies

Post by fountainhall »

I saw several French films when I was a student. But my French was not good enough to follow the dialogue and that meant concentrating on the subtitles. Frankly, that can often ruin a movie for me. I did see Truffaut's Jules et Jim and Les Quatre Cent Coups but neither made a major impression on me. At some stage I saw Les Parapluies de Cherbourg but all I recall is Michel Legrand's music!

I have seen many Chinese movies. I know many gay guys really enjoyed The Wedding Banquet although that is surely more of a western movie with a Chinese/Western theme - rather like Bertolucci's excellent The Last Emperor.! Frankly I preferred other Ang Lee movies, especially his earlier domestic Taiwan drama Eat Drink, Man Woman and the magnificent spectacle of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. But my two real favourites are by the director Zhang Yimou - Raise the Red Lantern and the wonderful Shanghai Triad. Zhang is one of the world's great directors, but is perhaps best known to most as the Artistic Director of the stunning Opening and Closing ceremonies for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

I have not seen many of Akira Kurosawa's movies. Ran, his take on Shakespeare's King Lear set in medieval Japan, is wonderful but probably not as good as some of his earlier films.

Frankly, I cannot recall any Thai movie which I would put in the category "great", but I expect it will be a ghost story!
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