Counting down to our 100th episode spectacular,
we're keeping things personal for episode ninety nine.
Last time, Billy shared his autobiographical top ten and
now it's my turn.
So these are my ten most personal movies.
(Music)
I like to look at things I am into at any given time, and narrow them down as
specifically as possible as a way to see what kind of person I am at the moment.
Sometimes I discover things like my love for
songs covered by members of a different gender, than the song's original artist,
I'm not sure why, it's just a thing I gravitated towards.
Mostly, I learned that it is not a genre that I love,
it's the specific sub-genre that I love.
Sometimes it's a tiny sliver of a small part of a sub-genre,
I like getting specific with my likes.
So that's what I'm doing for my Top Ten.
These are sometimes scattered and
disparate films that occupy completely opposite ends of spectrum.
But I think that's just who we are.
Our lives are, for the most part, a collection of random experiences
that pull at our edges until we become the shape we like the most.
So in the interest of finding my edges I'm a firm
believer that if you want to make fun of something you have to love it first.
Otherwise it's just being mean.
Because comedy has always been very comedy to me I love a good spoof.
A lot of movies have tarnished the good name of spoof in more recent years but
I'm always hopeful for another Airplane or Spaceball.
The next Hot Shots or the Naked Gun, Galaxy Quest,
Young Frankenstein, Not Another Teen Movie.
These are all comedies that really appreciate the genre they're parodying and
I like all of them.
But a comedy that can pass as a good example of the type of film in spoofing?
That is what I love.
As funny as it is,
nobody would ever confuse Blazing Saddles with an actual western.
But Hot Fuzz is both hilarious and a good action movie.
Black Dynamite absolutely nails 70s blaxploitation and
the one that makes my list for it's pitch perfect Connery Arab Bond spoofery,
OSS 117, Cairo, Nest of Spies.
(Inaudible) >> OSS 117 at
your service >> Jean DuJardin's french intelligence man
perfectly nails everything about the James Bond of the 60s.
Not content to just nail the wardrobe, and the cars, and
the politics of the era, OSS 117 mimics the film stock, the color palette,
the day for night shooting and rear projection photography the early
Terence Young's Bond utilized The fight choreography too, is hilariously perfect.
It's an earlier glimpse of the physical comedy gifts of Desjardins that would
later win him an Oscar for the artist.
But the movie doesn't stop there.
What really sets this film apart from other spoofs like it,
is the cultural mockery it employs.
OSS117 is dimwitted.
He is an arrogant misogynist simply because he's too dumb to know any better.
All the things that make Connery's Bond harder to stomach by today's standards
are the butt of the jokes in Cairo Now.
Nest of Spies, a true spoof of the spy movies of the 50s and 60s wouldn't be
doing it's job if it didn't make fun of every part of the genre, warts and all.
Which is why I love OSS 117.
(Music)
Next up, we're going psy fi.
We've covered this genre plenty and talked about all manner of sub genres before, but
one that gets me every time is the tiny science fiction film with a big idea.
No sweeping epics needed, just a simple story that hints at something universal.
That seems easy enough to do right,
I frankly don't understand why there aren't more movies like this.
Some of my favorites are Memory and Heartache and
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Shane Carruth's microbudget work with
time in Primer and human connection in Upstream Color.
And Moon both lend humanity to man's own creations, but the little movie with
the big idea I like the most is Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin.
>> Why are you in Scotland?
>> I just wanted to get away from it all.
>> Yeah, why here?
(Noise) >> Because it's, it's nowhere.
>> This movie is a very big idea in a tiny van sized package.
A story about an alien disguised as a woman driving around Scotland
luring men back to,
where who knows what this pace is, covers a surprising amount of fanatic ground.
Scarlet Johansson’s Alien has been interpreted critically as an immigrant,
as feminist and as an allegory for race.
What’s at the heart of the story is a being that is entirely other exploring
the human experience, whether that means eating cake, making love or in one scene
that is burned into my nightmares forever, witnessing a tragedy unfold.
Under the Skin provides an opportunity for
us as an audience to more objectively look at what being alive in the world can mean.
As a guy in his mid 30's for better or
worse I was partially raised by action movies.
And I dig them in all their shapes and sizes.
In fact, action movies make up my next two picks so
I won't waste any more time prefacing the sizzling mayhem ahead.
One of my favorite types of action films is the kind that truly does not
give a [BEEP].
This love is born out of the action greats of the 80s and
In early 90s like total recall, lethal weapon, face off and the rock.
Movies that have a fourth act where they freaking invade Cuba.
Or my choice for this slot, Arnold Schwarzenegger's best performance ever,
don't at me, in true lies.
(Sound)
>> My god, do something!
(Sound) >> You're fired.
>> True Lies features physics defying set pieces, scenery chewing villain,
a bridge that is out, and a damn nuke going off in the Florida Keys.
And as the sun sets on a mushroom cloud, lesser movies would call it a day with
what could be a satisfying conclusion to a comfy three act movie.
But what's that you say?
Arnold's daughter has been kidnapped and held hostage at the top of a skyscraper in
downtown Miami and there's a Harrier jet right here that I can borrow?
Let's just keep rolling on this shall we?
True Lies is a nearly meta tongue-in-cheek operation, that
with a liberal definition of spoof might nearly qualify for my first category.
But the beauty of Cameron's film is in the balance of action and heart.
The bonkers set pieces are all there, but they're greater than the sum of their
parts because you never lose sight of the fact that this movie is about a family.
And so it pulls off the extravagant fourth act shenanigans in a way that
doesn't seem like a why the hell not kind of move.
Which is why it's one of my favorites of all time.
On the complete other side of the action movie spectrum is the bottle
episode variety.
The action movie that takes place all in one building or a battleship or
a cowardly Western town or a bus or, to a much lesser extent, a cruise liner.
In favor of a go-anywhere and do-anything mentality of some other action films,
these movies trap a hero in one spot and
we get to watch as they struggle to get out.
I nearly picked a jungle shaped bottle for this one, but
I'd be lying if I picked anything other than Die Hard.
>> They got missiles automatic weapons and
enough plastic explosives to orbit Arnold Shwartzaneggar.
Their down to 9 now counting the skydiver you met,
these guys are mostly European judging by their clothing labels and,
Cigarettes.
>> There's not much we haven't already said about Die Hard here on Cinefix.
It's a structurally perfect film about a guy in the wrong place at the wrong time.
If I'm being completely honest, this is possibly my all-time favorite.
And if it weren't for the narrative thread I'm trying for in this video,
it would certainly rank higher than number seven.
Point here is Die Hard perfectly captures the relatable every man fighting
against impossible odds, not for fame or fortune, just for his family.
That and peak Alan Rickman villainy ought to be enough to get on anybody's
all-time top ten.
Bouncing around to another completely disperate data point on my personal
movie chart let's talk about feelings for a moment.
Any theater teacher I ever had would hate to hear me say this, but
a lot of the time I don't want to be put through the ringer.
The spectrum of human emotion is very wide and I'll admit that by and
large I prefer to sit in that comfy mid section.
However from time to time I do have a taste for movies that just destroy me.
Especially since I've become a parent, films like Arrival have lain
waste to my insides, and I haven't dared revisit Sophie's Choice.
I first saw a Ghost Story last year, and it's meditation on our
insignificant niche in the sheer enormity of time still haunts me.
But if there's one filmmaker that continues to outdo his own emotional
warfare is Darren Aronofsky,
who has on three separate occasions made the saddest movie I'd ever seen.
Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler and my number six, The Fountain.
This film is downright beautiful, though there are stark shifts in production
design between any errors, Aronofsky finds technical ways to connect different times
and places that are centuries apart to tell one clear and continuous story, but
the fountain takes all of my boxes not just a technical.
It's a heartbreaking story about love loss and
grief that literally spends 1,000 years.
For me this film is about being so scared of losing the ones that you love,
you don't take advantage of the time you have with them.
So, both as a guy who appreciates the craft of film making and
a human with feelings, this movie It broke me in half.
(Music)
Instead of the epic sweeping type of romance, my number five slot is going for
a completely non romantic love story.
This covers buddy cop movies like Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys and
Guy Ritchie's recent Sherlock Holmes films.
It covers family comedies like Paddington or Ratatoille.
Odd couple pairings like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Major League,
which Quick little tangent here, in addition to teaching me how to cuss,
introduced me to one of my favorite tropes of all time, blue collar guy and
punk rock guy sharing a moment together in the midst of a celebration.
These stories show love in all its many forms across genre and
one of my favorites of all time is Ryan Johnson's The Brothers Room.
>> It's time, let's do this, let's just get it done.
So first you say, I'm quitting Steven, I'm out.
>> Then I say, do we have to go through this again?
>> Do we have to go through this again?
>> And then you make a show of putting on your jacket, and you say no,
I mean it this time, Stephen, this time I'm really out.
>> And then you say let's have a drink, and in the morning, Bloom,
you'll have come to your senses.
>> The story of two legendary artists of the long con,
The Brothers Bloom is quirky and fun and has a cold open that's worth studying.
Seriously, the faces song as the film's title bursts onto screen in literal
fireworks.
Even as I'm writing this,
I'm digging that song up in my iTunes library because I need to hear it.
But what this movie does better than most is deal with the sometimes uneasy love
between family.
Steven loves Bloom so much that he only wants to make him happy
going to often infuriating lengths to write him a perfect life.
Bloom, meanwhile, loves Steven in spite of that.
And as they embark on what might be their final job together,
it's an experience that is heartwarming, twee, and dark in equal measure.
A very specific type of love on full display.
Let's transition from feeling lots of love to feeling lots of scare.
I've never bought into gore for the sake of gore, and jump scares are fine and all,
but truth be told I've never liked horror films until the last few years.
With so many things in the world to be uneasy about these days,
horror as a genre has tapped into a panicky zeitgeist and
frankly it's been the most interesting type of movie out there.
So a scary movie where the monster is a metaphor has become one of my
favorite hyperspecific subgenres.
Going back to the original atomic age monster Godzilla and
the Cold War's Day the Earth Stood Still, this isn't a terribly new phenomenon.
Get Out's run to a best picture nomination speaks volumes to what's happening
in the genre.
More recently favorites are It Follows and It's a nightmarish take on sex and
intimacy.
Goodnight Mommy's quiet twin terror.
The Invitation's eerie tension among a group of old friends and
the Witch and its religious seal.
But the movie that truly made me reevaluate horror is the Babadook.
>> Mom!
Mom!
I had the dream again.
>> What I love about this movie is every conversation I had about it,
brings up a subtly different interpation.
For me, the film is about grief and how all you can do is learn to live with it.
At the center of the story is a mother and son with an unbelievably tragic past that
manifests itself as a monster threatening to kill them both.
But even deeper than that, this movie can be a Rorschach test,
a blank screen onto which you can project your own relationship to your parents or
your kids or whoever in your life you love but also kind of hate sometimes.
Which, actually makes The Babadook a pretty similar movie to
The Brothers Bloom.
And that is a perfect example of finding your specific likes.
By tracing your own outline, you start to notice similarities like this.
And I just think that's cool.
(Sound) On the other side of my outline far away from my
emotional baggage lies the purely aesthetic.
A movie that without talking about anything else we can almost all agree just
looks (Bleep) good.
This is a category I call the super lush.
These are films where every little detail take you to a completely different place
and time.
This is where Barry Lyndon lives alongside Pan's Labyrinth.
Where Ang Lee's Sense and
Sensibility can fit in with Coppola's take on Bram Stoker's Dracula.
A third of list maker, the Fountain, qualifies as well.
But if there's one that outlushes the rest, it's Milos Forman's Amadeus.
(Music)
From the dank squalor of an 18th century to the opulence of the Austrian royal
court, and everything in between.
The film looks, and feels, and tastes, and smells like the place and
time in which it's set.
Plus more, the exacting detail with which the film is designed mirrors Salieri's
obsession with the careless and arrogant Mozart.
So the postured atmosphere of the film has a pinch of relevance to the Characters it
portrays and that's exactly why it earns this spot.
It's not style over substance, there is reason behind it's exacting, precise, and
just plain gorgeous to look at design.
For my number two slot,
I'm highlighting the three movies that will forever be tied for my number one.
And I know it makes zero sense feature three movies tied for
first at number two, but it's my list, so bear with me.
The first is Jaws.
When I saw it, at what was, I'm sure,
too young an age, I immediately became fascinated by sharks.
I wanted shark books and toys, and talked about wanting to be a sharkologist,
which I was totally convinced was a name for a real job.
But then came Indiana Jones, a movie I probably could've watched at a younger age
than Jaws, but hey, talk to my parents about that.
Either way, Indy's adventures made me want to be an archaeologist more than anything.
Even more than a sharkologist.
Cut to 1993, after 11 year old Clint saw Jurassic Park in the theater a dozen
times or so and wouldn't you know it, wanted to be a paleontologist.
I was so sure of it.
Sharks and relics buried in the sand were just phases.
Then, at some point later, I was floored to realize,
the same guy made all three of those movies
which gave way almost immediately to how cool is that, I want to make those too.
You'd think for such a watershed moment in my life I'd remember the date and time and
where I was standing when all that hit me, but unfortunately, I don't.
I do however, remember realizing the power movies had over me.
These films are specific only in that, that moment of realization
is specifically mine, and if you've made it this far into a video like this,
I'm sure you've got one of your own and I would love to hear about it.
Finally, with my last spot on this list, i'm not so much looking at my edges, so
much as the movies that shift my edges.
Movies that add pins to parts of the map I haven't been to.
These are movies that aren't about me.
There's no denying the over representation of my own demographic on screen.
And just by looking at this list, the problem is evident.
It's something that in recent years I've focused on addressing, and thankfully,
I'm getting more opportunities to see other people's' stories on screen.
Just in the last few years, films like Moonlight, Get Out, Brooklyn,
Tangerine have all share the experiences of people that don't look, act,
or think like me and I find myself seeking that out more and more.
And because that is no real way to rank one over the other I'll just pick one.
Not because it's a better film, or a better example of what I'm talking about.
Just because I'm truly loved Call Me by Your Name.
>> Is there anything you don't know?
>> I know nothing, Oliver.
>> Well you seem to know more than anybody else around here.
>> If you only knew how little I know about the things that matter.
>> What things that matter?
>> You know what things.
>> For me this film about a young man sexual exploration is a story on its
surface I can relate to.
There's nothing in my past that translates directly to this film.
But the love and care with which the film was made.
The intimacy and honesty and warmth that inhabits Elio and
Oliver's story is something that I know.
What I love about the move is it tells a tale with which I have
nothing in common in such an empathetic way.
That's also why I loved Moonlight, Get Out, Brooklyn, and Tangerine and
all the other great films recently that have told me unfamiliar narratives.
These movies remind me that my edges are never truly set.
That how I feel about movies is a living, evolving thing that's always looking for
different experience.
Six different stories to share, that's my hope anyway.
And that's why these are ten, or 12, of my most personal movies of all time.
That'll do it for this episode.
Let me know in the comments what your favorite hyper-specific niche genre is and
be sure to subscribe to Cinefix so you won't miss our 100th movie list.
Spoiler Alert!
We haven't decided what we're doing for it yet.
(Music)