What are your favourite films? Ten optional.

[DFF]

I can't even imagine seeing that in 3D. It's wonderful, and has the most Herzog thing ever at the end, where he's clearly got a bunch of time to fill, and just films some albino alligators and says things like "maybe we are just alligators, staring into the abyss of time" (which, when drunk, I am almost guaranteed to say in my best Herzog impression). Sadly we've not got a cinema that would screen anything like that.The general rule is that anything Herzog did in America is documentary, anything in Germany is fiction, but then he did a remake of Bad Lieutenant starring Nicolas Cage for some fucking reason.If it's the documentary stuff you're after, watch Into The Abyss or Grizzly Man.Also, watch Werner Herzog Eats His Own Shoe.

I second the love for Grizzly Man. Excellent film.

[Monkey D. Lars]

Grizzly Man is awesome!

[Skummy]

Oh my god, Herzog in Jack Reacher is phenomenal. After the "alligators staring into the abyss of time" bit, my favourite thing to say in a Herzog impression (I do this a lot) is "chew off my fingers to avoid the salt mines" as a kind of bastardisation of that entire scene. I've never watched the movie, but just that bit over and over again.

[Hewey]

Very hard to narrow it down to ten, took me some time.

1. Batman Returns - Not the best Batman movie, but I've loved it since I was a kid.

2. True Romance

3. Die Hard

4. Terminator 2

5. The Thing (original)

6. Halloween (original)

7. Boogie Nights

8. Dirty Harry

9. The Spy Who Loved Me

10. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[HC]

Very hard to narrow it down to ten, took me some time.

1. Batman Returns - Not the best Batman movie, but I've loved it since I was a kid.

Understatement of the century.

Wait, nevermind, I thought you said Batman Forever.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

There is one bad movie I watch every with friends while getting drunk, Dude Where's My Car. Therefor its a great movie.

AND THEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN.......?

[Hewey]

There is one bad movie I watch every with friends while getting drunk, Dude Where's My Car. Therefor its a great movie.

AND THEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN.......?

No, that's it, no and then.

[RPS]

1. The Wizard Of Oz: my personal definition of a great movie because it pretty much has everything in it. It has laughs, some songs, lots of adventure, whimisical fantasy, and a timeless story.

2. The Great Dictator: I don't fault anyone for putting any other Chaplin film on the list - he is extraordinary. But Dictator has always stuck out as my favorite of his films. The speech at the end of the film may come across as heavy handed after the fact, but when centered in the context of global events and the treatment of Jewish people at the time, it really was a gutsy speech.

3. All That Jazz: This is a musical that is just so splendid and I think Fosse's best movie. It was also his last and after you see the movie, you'll see why it is both sad and fitting. If you have not seen it... watch it. It starts off as a typical movie, but spirals out of control into this surreal experience.

4. Terminator 2: Everyone has it on their list, so I'd be preaching to the converted. But it truly is the greatest action film.

5. Paris is Burning: do you love documentaries? This is is your ticket. It is a documentary following drag queens in New York City in the late 80s. It touches on issues of sexuality, social status and race. The joy and optimism the kids have is amazing when you consider how the world around them was constantly shitting on them. The movie was so ahead of its time and the subjects of the movie so fun to watch - they just love life so much, even though they can only be themselves for a few hours every Saturday night at a drag ball.

6. How to Survive a Plague: another documentary, this time on HIV/AIDS in New York City and the groups that struggled to distribute HIV/AIDS drugs when governments were being inactive or were actively working against their efforts. So basically Dallas Buyers Club, but a million times better and actually real.

7. The White Ribbon: A movie about the roots of fear and distrust that led to the rise of Nazism. Wonderfully done, but don't watch if you don't want to see a slower movie.

8. Wall-E: to me this is the definitive childrens movie. It is so wonderfully done and joyous and the ending is so fantastic. I cried at the end.

9. Return of the Jedi: a lot of people crap on it for a lot of acceptable reasons - Ewoks as money grab, Darth Vader becomes good guy, etc. It does reek as a little bit cheesy, but as a kid watching it, I loved it. Fantastic film.

[Loz]

Gladiator

- An absolute classic. Nothing to say really. A very powerful film indeed.

The Shining

- Being a massive fan of 'horror films' it was difficult to choose a favourite. It was hard to decide between this, Halloween II and Hannibal. All are very good, but Jack Nicholson's performance in this was incredible.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

- As far as martial arts type movies go, if it hasn't got Bruce Lee in, I'll rarely give it a go. Chow Yun, who is a brilliant actor, was great in this. It's one of the few films I could happily watch over and over.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

- Many people seem to have this on their lists, and it's easy to see why. A brilliant film. It's a shame the sequels to this didn't live up to expectations.

The Shawshank Redemption

- I'm actually quite surprised this hasn't appeared more in this thread. It was brilliant. Albeit for Mystic River, this was Tim Robbins' best work in my honest opinion.

The Godfather: Part 2

- I don't feel I need to say much about this. Along with the first, this remains one of the best films ever made. Many people may argue that the first was better, but regardless of that, they're both fantastic films.

Schindler's List

- Another classic. I needn't say anything about how powerful this film was.

The Last Samurai

- I personally despise of Tom Cruise. I believe he is a good actor, but incredibly overrated. However, his performance in this film was great. The film itself remains on of the best I've seen.

The Green Mile

- Again, another classic. I needn't say anything about this.

Scarface

- Finally, yet another classic. Again, I needn't say anything. This is one of the best films of all time, without question.

[Skummy]

Tremendous shout on The Great Dictator. I'm a huge, huge Chaplin fan, as an actor and as a director, and while I wouldn't say it's his best work per-sé, it's almost certainly his most important. Obviously the speech is great, if heavy-handed (I think at the time someone criticised it by saying, "isn't that what everyone wants?" - it was too generalised), and a huge risk for his career at the time, but there's also some phenomenal physical work from Chaplin in there. The scene with Hynkel toying with the globe is superb. Even some of the earlier, more basic stuff with the barber - basically just old musical hall routines - are wonderfully done, if not as strong as his earlier work.

[ROC]

Gonna try to avoid numbering these, although I'm very tempted to. These are the movies I most like to talk about.

Alien -- I mean, as far as a horror movie about a deadly creature in a tight confinement goes, this one did it the best.

The Big Lebowski -- Watching it again in a crowd just reminds me of the pure glee I get from watching Jeff Bridges just own playing The Dude. It's got a nice pisstake of a modern Western inside its plotting, but mostly it's just the genius characterization that the Coens create that always gets me. I can't not laugh at Walter's "this is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" scene in terms of just how John Goodman becomes this militant weirdo.

Do The Right Thing -- I'm so upset that I didn't watch this for the first time until recently, but man, does it blow me away. From the constant use of "Fight the Power" to the brilliance of Danny Aiello and Ossie Davis playing off of Spike Lee's best script, I can't believe I had never found a way to watch this. It's a movie so good that you can even justify Spike Lee being a main character in the respect of how he plays off the cast he's assembled or at the very least you learn to get used to it.

Goodfellas -- The best version of The Wolf of Wall Street there ever was with the added bonus of two all-time phenomenal actors bouncing off of each other instead of say Jonah Hill (not to throw too much shade).

Heathers -- As far as a dark comedy goes, this one hits the most. There is so little empathy for anyone outside of the main protagonist's reach and yet it's much more bleak that the one who is in her reach isn't an amazing crusader for social change, either. Christian Slater's character more just wants to watch the whole American school system burn. Also did the gallows humor where people that die suddenly become much better of a person than they really are and did it amazingly.

Robocop -- Glorious satirical violence mixed with a shocking empathy for the main character. Great if I want violence, but much better because of everything else around it.

There's a few others I might add. I'll list them and see if I have anything to say about them later: Back to the Future, Drive, Short Term 12, Winter's Bone, others I'm probably forgetting but that's probably not a good sign for a favorites list anyway.

[RPS]

Tremendous shout on The Great Dictator. I'm a huge, huge Chaplin fan, as an actor and as a director, and while I wouldn't say it's his best work per-sé, it's almost certainly his most important. Obviously the speech is great, if heavy-handed (I think at the time someone criticised it by saying, "isn't that what everyone wants?" - it was too generalised), and a huge risk for his career at the time, but there's also some phenomenal physical work from Chaplin in there. The scene with Hynkel toying with the globe is superb. Even some of the earlier, more basic stuff with the barber - basically just old musical hall routines - are wonderfully done, if not as strong as his earlier work.

I took a class on Chaplin, seen all of his major movies and love them all. I'm a big proponent of Chaplin. The guy was tremendous and knew how to so beautifully mold a subversive story in a commercial movie. The guy was genius. And above all of that, his movies are legitimately funny these days. A lot of it has been repackaged throughout the years, so some of it loses it's luster.

When isolated from the history of film, when you look at a Chaplin film, you kind of shrug your shoulders a bit. It's like 'oh, wow, he did a speech against Hitler and stuck up for Jewish people' or in Modern Times when he does the factory/cog scene, you roll your eyes a bit because the message is heavy-handed nowadays. But it wasn't back when he was doing it. He was writing the blueprint for how to do a commercial movie that were simultaneously humorous, insightful and challenging the audience. Compare his work to something like The General or the Freshman. Good movies, but I don't think they were as interesting as Chaplin's movies and the ideas in them.

I went back and forth what my tenth movie would be, because I listed 9. I tend to think there are certain directors and films that film geeks/snobs/whatever you want to call them tend to obsess over that don't really interest me. Not that there is anything wrong with Christopher Nolan or Martin Scorsese, just not my directors. I just think they tend to present a viewpoint that I'm not interested in. Not to generalize, but they typically center around flawed men who are for the most part good trying to deal with the evils around them. Usually, even though the main character has problems and does 'bad things', you are supposed to associate with them at the end because they are righteous. Totally oversimplified it, but it is a message board - sue me.

That being said, there is one typical 'movie geek' movie that I really love and that is American Psycho. I think it is such an interesting take on what it means to be a "man" and I think it is quite genius. American Psycho almost takes that exact same formula that I discussed above and completely obliterates it. The protagonist in the movie is 100% and he does terrible things, including eating human brains. But as an audience, it is almost like we feel conflicted. It's like - Patrick Bateman is evil... but he's the center of the movie and movies are generally told in this structure where we are used to seeing a man who is flawed but is good and you relate to them. So are we suppose to relate to Patrick Bateman? Are we supposed to see him as righteous? Are those that he kill evil? It inverts this expectation in your head of the male protagonist being righteous and throws it all out of whack. I think the way you approach that question, which everyone does usually subconsciously, frames how you see the movie. Is it a comedy? A drama? A horror movie? Who the fuck knows!

[Jimmy]

I haven't seen enough Chaplin by any means, but I'm guessing I'm the minority who prefers Buster Keaton?

[RPS]

I think Chaplin is considered the better of the two, but I would say that The General is generally considered a stronger piece of work than anything Chaplin did... City Lights may be considered stronger. I think The General is a fantastic film, probably in my top twenty of all time, but I didn't really much like anything else Buster did. Whereas, if I did a top 50 movies of all time, I'd probably have 3-5 Chaplin films in there.

[Benjamin]

EDIT: Okay, that original post made very little sense, but I was so excited by the mention of Buster Keaton.

Now, I don't know anything about film, I really have no clue about all this symbolism and all that jazz, but Buster Keaton is funny as fuckkkkkk. I don't know why I love him so dearly, honestly I don't, but ever since The General and Seven Chances, I don't think I've ever liked physical comedy as much as I did then. Then there's The Cameraman and, of course, I just recently watched Sherlock, Jr. for the first time, and it's probably in my top ten of movies I've watched this year.

I love him to bits. I will admit I didn't like Our Hospitality, though, but I think I just didn't get a lot of his stuff.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Benkid

[Jimmy]

Yeah, I haven't even seen The General yet. I was saving to go and see it in the cinema, but an essay deadline got in the way. Sherlock Jr is bloody wonderful and all the shorts I've seen of his have been brilliant. If I feel down, I watch some form of Buster Keaton film.

[Benjamin]

Seriously, Jimmy, watch The General. It's amazing.

[RPS]

I've seen a lot of Chaplin and off the top of my head 5-6 different Keaton films. Both are extremely well-regarded and acclaimed, but I do think some people (myself included) to paint Chaplin as this groundbreaking, subversive, someone who played against convention in his stories and to more portray Keaton as the opposite of that - safe and conventional in his stories. I don't think people find Keaton not funny, just that he didn't push things forward like Chaplin did. I tend to take that view, but I still think Keaton is fantastic.

If you haven't seen the General - watch it. It is fantastic. It holds up so well. As I said - I tend to take the view that the story is a bit 'meh', but some of the scenes in the movie are unbelievable and the comedy is top notch. I've probably seen the General ten times and I've loved it every time.

[Jimmy]

Oh I will watch it. But I really, really wanted to see it in the cinema, so I'll definitely get round to watching it soon. With films like that (see also: The Shining), I just would love to see it on the big screen for the first time.

[Benjamin]

Well, then, you can watch The Cameraman in the meantime. I like it almost as much as The General.