What are you favorite Top 5 Movies of all time?

[phil marlowe]

My list changes literally from week to week, but here's as of now, my favorites (in no particular order)

The Long Goodbye

Oh! How is that one? I looooove the book but i haven't had the chance to actually see the film. It's great huh?

[Film Student]

It's fucking great.  Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe was a stroke of genius.  Definitely my favorite Robert Altman film.

[Recce]

1. Fight Club
2. Goodfellas
3. Taxi Driver
4. Full Metal Jacket
5. Scarface
6. Pulp Fiction
7. Out of Sight
8. Fargo

[phil marlowe]

It's fucking great.  Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe was a stroke of genius.  Definitely my favorite Robert Altman film.

Man! i wanna see this!

[Teen Wolf]

My ever-changing list (in no particular order):
-Badlands
-The Apartment
-Dr. Strangeglove
-Rushmore
-Eyes Wide Shut
-Magnolia

Side note to Film Student: Being a huge Straw Dogs fan myself, I was extremely disappointed to learn of a remake in the works. Now, you would think the powers-that-be would atleast have enough respect for this classic to find an able-bodied director to follow in Peckinpah's footsteps. Unfortunately, it seems the only schmuk they could find was the incredibly mediocre clown who directed Swimfan... (sigh)

[Gold Trumpet]

What was so good about Straw Dogs anyways? I saw it as a mediocre film with a not very good one idea to it that seemed more or less an excuse for Peckinpah to spit out his usual violence.

~rougerum

[RegularKarate]

I love Peckinpah, but I wasn't huge on Straw Dogs either.

Just saw it as pretty basic.

Maybe I'm missing something.  I only saw it once.

[Duck Sauce]

What was so good about Straw Dogs anyways? I saw it as a mediocre film with a not very good one idea to it that seemed more or less an excuse for Peckinpah to spit out his usual violence.

~rougerum

If there is one thing I learned from Straw Dogs, its that all Brittish people are bad.

[Teen Wolf]

I don't know... Straw Dogs just struck a chord with me when I saw it. Maybe it's because I saw a little bit of myself in Peckinpah's Everyman, which was brilliantly acted by Dustin Hoffman. He was just a normal guy who didn't want any trouble -- very non-confrontational. Everybody has boundaries, though, and when the English ruffians pushed Hoffman's David Sumner over the line there was hell to pay. Honestly, though, I can see how some people wouldn't like this film. Though I don't hold it on the same plane as such cinematic masterworks as Magnolia or 8 1/2 I do enjoy watching it from time to time and it irritates me to learn that some Hollywood hack thinks he can do better.

I don't even know what to say in response to the contention that the film was "basic." Not that you are wrong. Actually, it is sort of a basic film. However, is that the criteria with which we judge movies? Dazed and Confused was basic and it was great. So was Sleeper and Good Will Hunting and Sullivan's Travels... but they are all wonderful movies. Atleast I thought so.

Finally, someone inquired whether this film was merely another chance for Peckinpah to show violence onscreen, or something to that effect. Isn't that sort of like saying Magnolia was just another chance for Paul Thomas Anderson to work out his familial issues on the silver screen? Peckinpah was an auteur who was mainly interested in exploring the nature of violence and how it rests like a dormant beast in all of us. That theme pervades all his work. So, in a sense you're right. I just think there's a little more to it than what you seem to have implied.

In closing, I just want to say that I'm not trying to make enemies around here and I'm sorry if I might have come off as surly or condescending. But you gotta go to war over the films you love, right?

Also, it's pretty cool how much crossover there was in everybody's lists. People on this board seem to have similar tastes... that's just great.

[RegularKarate]

I don't even know what to say in response to the contention that the film was "basic." Not that you are wrong. Actually, it is sort of a basic film. However, is that the criteria with which we judge movies? Dazed and Confused was basic and it was great. So was Sleeper and Good Will Hunting and Sullivan's Travels... but they are all wonderful movies. Atleast I thought so.

Well, let's take Good Will Hunting (I thought D&C was pretty mediocre)... what I meant by "Basic" doesn't fit there.  There is conflict all around in GWH (not the best film ever, maybe a tad over rated even) mulitiple characters with thier own inner conflicts.  Straw Dogs was just "I'm a pushover until I get pushed too much then I fight back" and that was it... there really was no depth to it at all.

[MacGuffin]

Peckinpah told Playboy in an interview shortly after the release of "Straw Dogs": "I'm not saying that violence is what makes a man a man. I'm saying when violence comes you can't run from it. You have to recognize its true nature in yourself as well as in others and stand up to it. If you run, you're dead, or you ought to be."

[Teen Wolf]

I didn't know, RegualarKarate, that when you said "basic" you were referring solely to character development. So now then...

It seems to me that you over-simplified the character of David Sumner -- in order to bolster your argument -- by describing him as "a pushover who gets pushed too far and then fights back." Really, though, you can do that with any movie. Hey, let me try...  

Warning if you haven't seen Double Indemnity, don't read on, as there is a SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
below here.







Double Indemnity: Lonely guy falls for a girl and gets cajoled into murder





END SPOILER END SPOILER END SPOILER END SPOILER END SPOILER

Sounds pretty basic, huh...and yet, Woody Allen called it the best film ever made. The way I described Walter Neff, much like the way you described David Sumner, made the character sound wooden and two-dimensional. It's all about the details, though. In fact, Straw Dogs is a character study about an American intellectual living in another country. His marriage is hollow and lifeless, but he doesn't want to admit it to himself. He constantly tries to ignore his emotions -- namely his anger, rage, violence, whatever you want to call it.  We don't learn much about his past , so it could be that he has had a violent past and is trying not to walk down that same road. Now if that isn't an inner conflict I don't know what is.

It's fine if you didn't like the movie. I'm not saying you're wrong or you didn't get it or whatever.  People like things for different reasons and it's all subjective anyway.

[Gold Trumpet]

OK, Dazed and Confused was a purposely structured movie that took on a subject that was pigeonholed by so many different cliches that were so extravagant and only belonging to the ridiculousness of the teen comedy movie genre in general. For Linklater to find more truth in doing the subject, he had it to be about many different kids and how nothing really happens, like in real life, but for the characters, many things happen. Dazed and Confused was a very good movie that had a purposeful structure and storyline that spoke more truthful to the subject. Referencing an old 1940s movie like Double Indemnity and comparing its simplicity in plot to that of Straw Dogs may be a little unfair. They were two different films made in two different eras of film that seemed to require different things in order to be successful. When Double Indemnity proved to be great, it was competing with movies being released like they were coming off a conveyer belt that dealt less with artistic growth and more with running out a proven success story to make money. Pure money making business at the time, but Double Indemnity proved successful, and for the times, managed to last in effectiveness and enjoyment. If you really want to do well in comparing Straw Dogs to anything, compare it to other works by Sam Peckinpah, and not only his works, but his best. I think when you compare it to The Wild Bunch, an awesome movie with an enormous scope and imaginative story that seemed to be stretching outside a lot of boundaries that the westerns provided at the time and not just in violence, but in redoing a traditional western story into something epic and feeling of freshness like it was new. I understand Straw Dogs was a different story and all with a different purpose, but compared to that work, Peckinpah seemed like he was working as a hired director only who was able to put his touches on a simple story without able to make it distinguishable in any important way from stories like it.

Its fine if you like the movie, but its also fine for discussion on it too.

~rougerum

[MacGuffin]

I understand Straw Dogs was a different story and all with a different purpose, but compared to that work, Peckinpah seemed like he was working as a hired director only who was able to put his touches on a simple story without able to make it distinguishable in any important way from stories like it.

When producer Daniel Melnick first approached him in 1970 about directing an adapation Gordon M. Williams' novel "The Siege of Trencher's Farm (which became "Straw Dogs"), filmmaker Sam Peckinpah was at loose ends. Following the groundbreaking success of his revisionist western "The Wild Bunch" - which set new standard for combining artistry and violence - Peckinpah had publicly declared that he would not make another cinematic bloodbath. He attempted a true departure with the lyrical, enchanting fable "The Ballad of Cable Hogue," but that film's commercial failure and Peckinpah's criticism of the studio that released it cost him the chance to direct several prestigious, and largely non-violent films.

Torn between his desire not to be pigeonholed and his need to work, Peckinpah finally agreed to direct "Straw Dogs". According to David Weddle's biography, "If They Move...Kill 'Em," Peckinpah told a friend, "They want to see brains flying out? I'll give them brains flying out!" As usual, Peckinpah was unable to turn out standard explotation fare. Working with screenwriter David Zelag Goodman, Peckinpah took Williams' book - which was a "potboiler" at best - and transformed it into a complex commentary on man's ambivant relationship with his violent side.

[Gold Trumpet]

nice propaganda

where did you cut and paste that one from?

~rougerum