Favorite Movies

Charade - This is one of the few movies I remember seeing as a young kid. For some reason, I was staying over at my Grandmother's house, and Channel 9 must have been showing it (they show it a lot - in fact, they are showing it now as I type), and we watched it together.

At the time, I only liked it as a mystery. It's a fairly interesting movie, because you can never quite figure out what Cary Grant is up to. And he acts quite silly.

Later on, I liked it as a romantic comedy. While I'm not sure Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn have any chemistry, exactly, since there is a huge age difference and quite honestly, while I love Cary Grant, it's fairly obvious he's gay. But they work well together, if not romantically, as a comedy team. It's almost more like a buddy movie than anything else. The shower scene is genuinely funny.

Godzilla - This is actually the later movies, not the original. The ones with Raymond Burr are actually quite horrific, with lots of people getting killed and Godzilla beating the hell out of Tokyo. But the later ones are quite different. Usually they pit Godzilla vs. some sort of other monster. Sometimes Godzilla is good, sometime he's bad. But he's always got style.

In many ways, I do think Godzilla is a good symbol for nature, like the song Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult postulates. Sometimes it's good, sometimes bad, mostly indifferent. While you're grateful for it sometimes, mostly you just hope it doesn't stomp you into the ground.

It's also interesting, there's basically two Godzilla cycles of movies. The original ones, from the 50-80 or so, then another one, which basically remakes the earlier movies, from 1990 to today. While the basic stories are the same, there's some slight differences in tone between them which perhaps denote a shift (somewhat) in Japanese culture. Obviously not much, since the Japanese apparently still love Godzilla (and giant monster movies), but it's the little things that are interesting. Women, for instance, are much less vapid in the newer ones. Americans tend to be slightly more villainous in the later ones.

Casablanca - I like this for many reasons. For one, I used to date a woman that looked an awful lot like Ingrid Bergman. Though at the time I didn't realize it.

Men also like Humphrey Bogart. I've noticed that I relate to two sorts of leading men in romantic movies - those like Cary Grant, who are gay or foolish or foppish or goofy and thus are non-threatening (Brendan Frasier, for instance) and guys like Humphrey Bogart, who have an air of coolness about them. (Hugh Grant is the epitome of leading man that men hate - smarmy, devastating good looking, classless, and a complete slimeball).

Anyway, this movie largely represents something a lot of men wish they could have - sort of an idealized love that they can make sacrifices for. Ie, at the end, when Humphrey tells Ingrid to go away with what's his name for her own good.

Dollars Trilogy - This is the 3 westerns by Sergio Leonne starring Clint Eastwood as The Man With No Name. A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Many westerns, I would say most before this came out, were almost cartoonish. The west is so clean in them. Every one wears perfectly ironed and pressed clothes, not a speck of dirt on them. Everyone is attractive. Not so in these. Everything is like things really were - dirty, icky, muddy, sweaty, sticky.

While it would be something of a stretch to say that Clint was a good character in these movies, he did in many ways represent a modern-ish version of the Knight or Samurai. (Not surprising, since A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of a Samurai movie).

In Sergio's later "Once Upon a Time in the West", another favorite, we get the similar ultra-gritty feel (the opening scene is nothing short of amazing), but the tone is much darker. The main character played by Charles Bronson doesn't have the same noble character that Clint's had. Rather, Charles character is driven by one thing, revenge. Much like something out of a greek play. Once he accomplishes this at the end of the movie, he has nothing left to go on for, really. (The movie probably would be better if Jason Robard didn't come out and say this at the end, as it was somewhat obvious anyway). But this is a really really dark movie. I like watching this when I'm in a bad mood.

The Crow - This is another fairly dark movie. Also about revenge. But it's also a love story. Although it actually is from a comic book, it's not that cartoonish, more gothic-ish. I don't read comics much, but I do have the graphic novel for this, and I have to say, I think the movie is a lot better at portraying the pain of the Crow. Also nice to see what one of my favorite bands, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult look like.

Groundhog Day - This is another romantic comedy. Bill Murray is one of those guys that I can relate to.

I like the premise, too. It would be nice if one could try things over and over and over until you get things right.

It's nice how at first he simply just tries to score with Andie McDowell, using his gained knowledge. But comes to realize that there was more to her than that, and eventually simply falls in love with her, as a person.

I'm not sure I like the ending, though. I mean, he finally escapes when he ends up sleeping with Andie. I dunno, that seems a bit cheap.

The Mothman Prophecies - I really don't like Richard Gere much, though I guess I respect him, he's not someone like Barbra Streisand who is quite possibly evil (and would quite possibly want to become Mecha-Streisand and rule the world), he genuinely is a pacifist.. However, generally I find him too 'pretty', sorta like Hugh Grant, and he's up there on the smarminess scale. Still, he works well in this movie.

It's basically a movie about coping with the loss of a loved one. And a whole bunch of weird stuff.

Many people didn't like the movie because the weird stuff in it really makes no sense. But that's sort of the point. It was based on real life, and the paranormal phenomenon in real life doesn't make much sense. Especially dealing with contactees and the beings that contact the contactees.

The Princess Bride - Well, being a geek, I really really like the book more than the movie. But the movie is an excellent adaption of the book. Loses a lot. A whole lot. I basically got my love of using parentheses from this book (I only wish I were as funny as the author).

Blade Runner - I taped this off of Showtime when I was a kid back in I think around 83, and I still have the tape. It's a weird movie.

The thing I liked as a kid was the style. It essentially gave rise to the cyberpunk view of the future - big buildings, grey all the time, something of a retro look.

It's not much of a mystery. Or a love story, really. And the dialogue is a bit dopey. But it's the ending that really shines. An android designed to kill, and who has killed, who has been doomed to an early death, and has seen his friends/compatriots killed, at the moment of his death, decides to spare the life of the detective who works for his creators and who personally killed several of his friends.

To me, this illustates the basic tenets of existentialism - that people who are alive, ie, conciousness, sentience, awareness, while perhaps conditioned or programmed to do things, ultimately are responsible for their own actions. Even androids. It's not easy, life's not fair, but eventually you can be free.

I know most people get a lot of different things from this movie, mostly the gnostic realization of is perhaps reality an illusion? Because many think that the main character of the movie, played by Harrison Ford, is also an android, but doesn't know it. (False memories). This comes from the novel it was based on, by Phillip K. Dick, who was like myself, a gnostic, but that's not why I like the movie. I like it for what I said, which seems somewhat absent from the book. (The book is somewhat painful to read. Mr. Dick was a bit hard to read. He was a bit on the nutty side. Gnostics tend to be like that, unfortunately. But that's probably why I'm writing this page).