SMC Founder.Programmer Craig Hammill's Top 35 Films Conversation! 28 to 20...
#28 FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963, dir by Terence Young, UK)
A James Bond movie might seem strange pickings for "greatest movie of all time". But like THE WIZARD OF OZ, I humbly propose that here we see the template for the "action-adventure odyssey" movie that has full expression in the Indiana Jones movies (LAST CRUSADE re-works FROM RUSSIA down to the rats in the catacombs, speed boat chase, car chase with aerial bombs, Sean Connery casting), etc. FROM RUSSIA is the perfect Bond movie. A great 1960's cat & mouse spy game that hops the globe and ends with one of the greatest 30 minute suspense action sequences (train to truck to boat) ever filmed. Sean Connery is quintessential Bond. And he's matched by sociopathic Robert Shaw's Red Grant Spectre assassin and Daniele Bianchi's Russian double agent. Just the perfect balance of elements here makes the tastiest of cinematic dishes.
#27 THE GOLD RUSH (1925, dir by Charlie Chaplin, USA)
Silent cinema is such a pointless name for the movies made before the dawn of the sound era in 1927. Maybe we should call them "Pure Visual Poetry" movies or something. These movies are a kind of Lourdes fountain from which all us moviemakers should take a glass of medicinal water to be cured of our lazy movie shortcuts. Chaplin's GOLD RUSH is possibly his most perfect movie. Hilarious. Heart breaking. Wildly inventive. The Tramp travels to the Yukon in search of gold. He ends up nearly starving, fighting a bear, falling in love with a Showgirl, having a house go over a cliff. But through it all he shows endless resilience and ingenuity. This is the movie where Chaplin found maximum emotion with minimum sentimentality. A perfect film.
#26 HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940, dir by Howard Hawks, USA)
As a great contrast to the pure visual poetry of THE GOLD RUSH, we get the pure "dialogue" poetry of Howard Hawks' HIS GIRL FRIDAY. Let's be clear though. Hawks was one of the greatest craftsmen of movies ever. His movies fly with visual, editing, pacing, atmospheric finesse. This is probably one of the 2-3 greatest American comedies EVER MADE. Top journalist Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) returns to the newspaper to inform editor (and recently divorced ex-husband) Walter Burns (Cary Grant) she's quitting and remarrying. He immediately assigns her to a breaking story she can't refuse to try to win her back. Russell and Grant have such clear chemistry that it's just pure joy to watch them deliver "rat a tat" dialogue non-stop at each other for 100 minutes. You can see they drive each other crazy AND they're made for each other. What makes this movie still so modern is that the romance is between two stubborn, wildly independent, talented professionals. They are perfectly matched equals. I love this movie. It's like eating a dessert that only makes you more energetic and ready to tackle the day.
#25 THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY (1966, dir by Sergio Leone, USA/Italy)
Although repeatedly copied (justifiably!) by almost every like-minded filmmaker who came after, Leone's movie still stands out as the shocking, wildly entertaining epic it was in 1966. This Spaghetti Western is the final movie in "The Man with No Name" trilogy Leone made with rising star Clint Eastwood. Here three crafty and wily men-Blondie (Eastwood), Tuco (Eli Wallach in probably the best supporting character performance in American cinema), and Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) try to outsmart each other through the American Civil War to get to a chest of gold buried in a cemetary. Each man has a piece of the puzzle but not the entire puzzle. So a game of wits and death ensue. This movie is amazing scene after amazing scene of greedy men doing whatever they have to, "to get the gold". And yet, a tremendous humanity eventually comes through as Leone shows the pointlessness of both war and greed. But let's not get too lofty. What makes this movie great is the brilliantly entertaining darkly funny tone nearly every single scene achieves. This movie feels like the lost Shakespearean Spaghetti western. Learn from the master!
#23 THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998, dir by The Coen Brothers, USA)
It took 3-4 viewings of LEBOWSKI before this programmer realized how hilarious, brilliant, expansive this movie is. But once that realization hit, each subsequent viewing is like a gift that keeps on giving: every time one catches new jokes, new details, new hidden story connections. The Dude, Jeff Lebowski, a former 60's hippie who loves to bowl with his Vietnam vet friend, Walter Sobchak, gets mistaken for a rich conservative also named Jeffrey Lebowski. From there the Dude has to solve a kidnapping, interact with known pornographers, conceptual artists, a German 80's techno band of nihilists, and still bowl to try to make the semis. It feels like the Coens set out to make both a stoner comedy and a Raymond Chandler-esque mystery. What they made, which may have even surprised themselves, is one of the great American comedies which points out the importance of overcoming one's own ideologies and dogmas in the interest of human connection. Profound AND hilarious.
#24 GET CARTER (1971, dir by Mike Hodges, UK)
Ironically, THE GOOD, THE BAD, & THE UGLY appears outright genteel in comparison with this British gangster movie of the early 1970's. Michael Caine (in probably his all-time greatest role) plays London gangster Jack Carter who returns home to Northern England to avenge his brother, whose supposed accidental death is clearly a murder. This movie pulls off a nifty trick. We root for Carter the entire time although it's clear he's basically as amoral, murderous, and hypocritical as the people he hunts. And yet. . .Caine imbues Carter with a humanity (love of family) that makes him an "anti-hero" not a "villain". This movie is so bad-a@# there's a scene where a naked Carter (totally unembarrassed) chases gangsters off with a rifle and a stare. Any actor who can pull that scene off is clearly one of the very best. And Caine is one of the very best who ever lived.
#22 IN A YEAR OF THIRTEEN MOONS (1978, dir by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany)
One of the most intensely emotional, visionary, and honest movies ever made, THIRTEEN MOONS tells the story of Elvira (in a stunning performance by Volker Spengler) who left her family and got a sex change to please a lover who couldn't care less about her. The movie follows Elvira during the last few days of her life as she tries to make amends with those she's hurt and make sense of the decisions she's made. This movie was Fassbinder's response to the suicide of his lover, Armin. It's hard (and would be irresponsible) to try to fully unwrap here what Fassbinder was trying to say. But what gets communicated is a brutal no holds barred examination of good yet vulnerable people who are ignored, or worse, brutalized by society. The movie also examines the struggle caring individuals in their circle have trying to care for these dispossessed. Just a tremendous cinematic scream of a movie.
#21 A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE (1974, dir by John Cassavettes, USA)
John Cassavettes' movies are strange unwieldy things. And that's what gives them their beauty. Like life itself. They veer wildly from drama to comedy to tragedy to drama again, often all in one scene. Here we spend a year with Mabel (in one of cinema's greatest performances by Gena Rowlands) who tries her best to be a good wife and mother and woman yet finds herself mentally unravelling. Her hapless husband Nick (Peter Falk, never better) has no idea how to handle the situation. The miracle of this movie is how emotionally intense, uncompromising, yet joyful the whole experience is. These people are good people (as most people are good people), doing their best, suffering, trying to be a family, fighting on. The KING LEAR of Cassavettes' movies.
#20 GOODFELLAS (1990, dir by Martin Scorsese, USA)
A based on true events movie about the life of mid-level New York gangster Henry Hill (played by a never better Ray Liotta), Martin Scorsese's GOODFELLAS operates on a number of totally seamless levels. Its most exhilarating level is the sheer brilliance & breathlessness of its storytelling and style. Scorsese has said he planned this movie like a 2 1/2 hour coming attractions trailer. But it also first shows us why the gangster lifestyle is so tempting before pulling the rug out and showing us how cheap, tawdry, and ultimately animalistically predatory the whole thing is. Liotta's Hill is backed up by a murderer's row of supporting talent: Joe Pesci as the sociopathic gangster Tommy, Robert De Niro as the shark eyed calculating Jimmy Conway, and Lorraine Bracco as Hill's fiery, mostly in denial, wife Karen. Scorsese keeps the moralizing to a minimum; he just shows us how it is. And in doing so, the stark contrast of life decisions is made all the more clear.
Written by Craig Hammill. Founder and Programmer of Secret Movie Club.