"There's only one hard and fast rule in running: sometimes you have to run one hard and fast."








Friday, March 23, 2012

My 50 Favorite Films... apparently

One of my favorite non-running blogs is Rupert Pupkin Speaks, which is lists of "My Favorite ____ Films," where the blank could be filled in with just about anything. He just did a list of his 50 favorite films, without qualifiers and I couldn't imagine doing that. How does one choose just 50 of 15000 or so? I decided that I'd give it a shot, but without my usual obsessiveness, so... only one day's thought.

I decided the crux of the problem was defining "favorite." How I decided to make the list was to use three criteria: 1) I had to enjoy the film far more than its quality demands (this eliminates all the great classics), 2) I had to enjoy it more than the average person does, [Because I have a higher tolerance than most for violence, weirdness and bad taste, that's where the list went] and 3) I had to enjoy the movie more than an average movie (this eliminates most of the terrible movies I watch). The list seems to be firmly set in the mid-1980's. There's a concert film, two experimental films (one in its entirety embedded!) and a TV miniseries, so my definition of "movie" is pretty broad.

Here's the list, with my ratings (out of four stars). If your favorite film is "Pulp Fiction," you'll probably agree with the ratings. If your favorite film is "The Music Man" or "When Harry Met Sally," you'd probably knock each film down a star and a half. Most people should fall in between those and drop each film 1/2-1 star.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) **1/2
Bad Taste (1987) ***
The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970) ***
The Big Bird Cage (1972) *1/2
Blood Simple (1984) ***
Boondock Saints (1999) **1/2
The Brain from Planet Arous (1958) **
The Brig (1965) ***
Bullet in the Head (1990) ***
Cul-de-Sac (1966) ***
Detour (1945) **1/2
Diggstown (1992)***
Electra Glide in Blue (1973) ***
Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn (1987) **1/2
Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! (1965)***
A Fistful of Dynamite (aka Duck You Sucker) (1972) ***
Fitzcarraldo (1982) ***
Five Million Years to Earth (1968) ***
Funny Bones (1995)***1/2
The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1977) *
Hard Ticket to Hawaii (1987) *1/2
High School Confidential! (1958) **
The Hit (1984) ***
The Icicle Thief (1990) ****
Infra-Man (1976) *1/2
The Jericho Mile (1979) ***
La Jetee (1962)***
Johnny Guitar (1954) ***
The Killers (1964) **1/2
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983) **1/2
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)***1/2

Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953) ***1/2
Montenegro (1981) **1/2
The Night Stalker (1971) ***
Re-Animator (1985) ***
Repo Man (1984) ***
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) **1/2
The Ruling Class (1972) ***1/2
Rushmore (1988) ***1/2
Shogun Assassin (1980) ***
The Singing Detective (1986) ****
The Stepfather (1987) ***
Stop Making Sense (1984)***
Stranger Than Paradise (1985) ***1/2
The Stunt Man (1980) ***1/2
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) ***
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) ***
Wise Blood (1979) ***
The Wizard of Speed and Time (1986) **1/2
A Zed and Two Noughts (1985) ***

8 comments:

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

It should come as a surprise to no one, least of all you, that you managed to name at least four movies that I absolutely loathe. I'll let you guess which ones.

Except I won't make you guess about one: Bad Taste. That's the Peter Jackson piece of shit, right? Looks like it was made for a dollar ninety-eight? I had to sit through that one night with my friend Mikey D (whose taste in movies roughly parallels your own) because it was a boys' night out and the featured movie was going to be Buckaroo Banzai, which I had also never seen, but the guy at whose house we were watching the flicks was a whiskey aficionado and he wasted shots of his good whiskey on me (it all tastes like turpentine, as far as I'm concerned), and the whiskey and having to sit through Bad Taste first had me drifting off 15 minutes into Buck. Ban.

I didn't like what little I saw of BB, either.

Also typically: You commented on my latest post while I was still editing it. Post first; edit late <--My Motto.

Your loss. Or, possibly, gain.

(I did like Blood Simple, though.)

Glaven Q. Heisenberg said...

"late" = "later"

More evidence of my Post First Edit Later motto.

Carilyn said...

Hmmmm...I've never heard of half of those movies, and I "grew up" in the '80s. I guess this means I should stop recommending books to you :)

Anonymous said...

I am aware of only 8-10 of those, but, The Jericho Mile is one which my cross country coach wanted us to watch - and I remember liking it as a 14 year old. I looked it up on Youtube last year and it was nowhere to be found, but I just did another search and someone uploaded the film last month - time to go watch!!

Anonymous said...

Just finished watching Jericho Mile on YouTube - great racing scenes, gave me chills!! Time to go for a run.... :)

SteveQ said...

@Glaven: I still laugh just thinking of the start of Bad Taste, where the guy scoops his brains back in his head. Not for all tastes, of course, much like my favorite whiskey: Oban. That's sort of why the post title has the word "apparently" - do I really prefer Bad Taste to Citizen Kane?

Rupert Pupkin said...

An excellent group of films Steve. I'm not at all surprised. Love the variety here. Thank you very much for the kind words re: my blog too!

Samantha said...

Huh. I have only seen two of those, which I guess doesn't surprise me all that much since I don't seem to have seen as many movies as the average bear.