Thanks to Derek and Adam for suggesting people try to come up with lists of 15 films that stick to us. Here’s the list I came up with off the top of my head, at first from glancing at my DVD shelf and a few pictures on my wall. No particular order.
Raiders of the Lost Ark – saw it with my Mom a week before it opened at the Capitol in North Bay as a double bill with the Ringo Starr / Shelly Long opus “Caveman.” I must have been 13 so I should have known the plot would not take Harrison Ford into space but it did not. I remember reacting to a rope in the background as if it was another snake behind Indy. I remember some talking scenes that bored me, and yet I now can recite them word for word.
The Empire Strikes Back – saw this with my Dad while visiting Windsor. Whatever the plan was we had to get to a theater. I remember the first time noticing (I think the place was called the Center Theater) a sound system that made it seem like a TIE fighter was flying from behind us and past us, and I remember remarking that Yoda sounded like Grover from Sesame Street. Back home in North Bay I ended up seeing this movie in a theater more than any other. The sounds and music are part of the score of those formative years, and so I have no objectivity about it. I varied my experience by deliberately choosing different seats each time.
Back to the Future – I saw this at age 17, the age Marty McFly was supposed to be. I hadn’t read anything about screenplays yet but I knew this one had an apparent script that was as perfect as they get. The set-ups and pay-offs were fun even if you could see something coming up seventh avenue. And the movie overall is something I can watch the way that a native supposedly might have climbed to the top of a mountain to look at the horizon and get “focused” that way to clear his vision. But because it is entertaining it is taken for granted. The next year I completed my first 100-page-plus screenplay and have written at least once since each year. So I’m not sure if I should be thankful or hateful of this movie.
American Graffiti – There was a time I watched this at the end of every summer and saw different things in it each time. And unlike Star Wars it isn’t as much a dance of cuts and images that we can watch over and over, but what there is of that aspect is mixed with subject matter sure to trip a person up on the way to school. It is now sold with More American Graffiti which shouldn’t be watched immediately after the first film but it is worth watching in its own right. This is the template teen movie, not Animal House, though I’m not sure kids who have seen American Pie will respond to Graffiti. Maybe.
I’ve been told they will find it too slow, but I think it would play. I think kids today are aware JFK was assassinated and that the Vietnam War happened in the 1960’s.
History of the World Part I – I was chastised recently by one of my sisters for letting her sons watch this, even though they put it on themselves and I think it was her copy. The dialog from this film has peppered dinner table conversation in my family for years, and now generations. If my nephew says, “Move that miserable piece of shit” he’s not being rude. And I credit this film for all of my education about the Spanish Inquisition.
The Passion of the Christ – I expected this to be about as involving as being dragged to mass. But a story that was like going through the motions all these years came to life and was chilling. Zealots really should have been forbidden to bring small kids to this. It’s not a prayer meeting. But I was most struck by the fact that subtitles were not really necessary. The performances convey everything they have to and the specific words are a bonus. It is not a movie to see over and over, but it sticks. It didn’t fill me with hate either. A thief says something hateful and gets his eyes plucked by a crow and you feel kind of bad for the guy. I did feel some hate engaging the detractors and combating a lot of disinformation. But I got over it.
Schindler’s List – Ten years passed between the first and second time I saw this movie, mainly because it was another “experience” and because I remembered it as being more traumatic than it was. The film has a lot of balance and is often misrepresented. Spielberg knows he doesn’t have to focus on every death or bog down in a recitation of statistics. He could have made Night and Fog with his eyes closed, but the director of that film could not have made this.
Copland - Once of those times it was nice to see Stallone get his voice back again. But I mostly remember DeNiro as an internal affairs cop being told don’t shit where you eat and replying, “I do. I live in a house. I eat there and I shit there.”
Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic – This was done before her TV show and it bombed but I looked for it after seeing a clip on youtube. I watched this over and over, just let it play because it was like the first time I heard Steve Martin’s tape or Eddie Murphy Delirious. The idea that someone can say outlandish things in just the right way that it re-frames reality, tragedy and stupidity while seeming effortless and cheeky.
Innerspace – What sticks with me is this one very visual “reveal” shot that introduces a new element to the story and characters. I won’t say what it is and it may even have fallen out of favor with today’s audiences. But this movie also has a great energy and zaniness I can’t explain though I often think about it. Weak title but a great flick. If gleefully includes the trappings of a bad b-movie and yet it’s quite good.
The Green Mile – the supernatural sibling of Shawshank, I think people may fuse the two but I think most often this movie is dismissed even though its dark aspects are uncompromised. I remember reading the serial novel while I lived in a crappy apartment and I was very concerned about the fate of Mr. Jingles while at the same time celebrating the death of a real mouse that had eaten some poison I had put out. Ultimately though this film and Dancer in the Dark should be compulsory viewing before any discussion of capital punishment.
The Phantom Menace – Notice that I don’t use the full title. I could call it the Phantom Premise. I remember the high point of wandering past The Paramount on what was opening night for that theater (later Scotia Bank Theater) and the film itself, and the latest leap in ticket prices. I went just to look at the lines. I was going to wait for my birthday to see the film. I remarked to one of the nerds in line, “They should have a way of scanning each of us to see who is the bigger Star Wars fan and just give that person a free ticket.” At that moment – I shit you not – an usher came out and asked who was here alone. I put up my hand, I was given a free ticket, and I was directed inside. I got an aisle seat and felt like God was looking out for me and everyone felt euphoria when “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. . .” hit the screen. Then something seemed a bit off part of the way in and when Jar Jar dove into the water and we follow him to the Gungan City all I could think of was George Lucas’ old quote before he turned to the dark side, “The fatal mistake that some science fiction or fantasy filmmakers make is that they want to show off the work that they’ve generated on sets and they spend film time on it.” That and a more recent quote that Jar Jar was supposed to be like Steppin Fetchit and it was now glaringly clear why that actor is not remembered like Charlie Chaplin.
I spent a few years in geek hell compulsively re-writing this movie, literally, and no good came of it. But it stuck with me, like a flashback of suffering molestation.
John Carpenter’s The Thing – This I saw on VHS in the dawn of home video at a time where 13 and 14 year olds and younger habitually rented almost exclusively R-rated movies at the local convenience store. As painful as it was to watch people cut their fingers so their blood could be tested the most traumatic stuff involves seeing dogs rip apart. When this happened it signaled to me my friend Claude that this filmmaker Carpenter “doesn’t give a shit” which is not to mean that he is indifferent about his craft but that the usual boundaries of good taste will not apply and there is no telling how disturbing the movie will get.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind – My mom took me to see this before I had heard of it, maybe to make up for the fact that I wasn’t allowed to see Star Wars for the first year of its release because the Canadian term for PG was “Adult Entertainment” or something back then. Not even Adult Accompaniment either, which would be our PG-13. So instead of being exposed to R2-D2 I got to see the floor grating unscrew and stove burners glow on their own and the little kid pulled by unseen aliens out the doggie door and ripped from his mother’s hands. Luckily my attention span was (and is) bad enough that by the end of the movie when we all love the nice hand-signals of the big fetus-looking aliens I had forgotten about all the trauma they put people through conducting their abductions.
Night Shift – One of my favourite movies. An unknown (to me) Michael Keaton instantly being a star that I looked forward to seeing in other movies. Even the name star Henry Winkler is cast against type and nothing at all like Fonzie. I eventually saw Risky Business which has a similar normal-guy-becomes-pimp storyline, but I saw that once on video and had no interest in seeing it again though I didn’t dislike it. Night Shift though had something strange going on. Despite its raunchy premise it was very clearly about values and respect.
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