If you ask me tomorrow this list will have almost completely changed. But here’s my Top 10 favorite films.
‘Akira’ (1988). This was my first exposure to Japanese animation and it is still like on other. The story is of the next steps of human evolution, but is grounded by the use of a street gang as protagonists. At the center of the film is Kaneda looking out for his friend, simple as that. The depiction of a city at night is one of the most compelling in all cinema and the pounding soundtrack is like no other.
‘Faust’ (1994). The story of Doctor Faustus has been told many times, but this version by Jan Svankmajer is one that gets under the skin. Trapped in the old city, always just a doorway from the ‘real world’, Faust struggles at the smiling face of hell.
‘2010: The Year We Made Contact’ (1984). Yes ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (1968) is the classic, however ‘2010’ is highly overlooked. This sequel expands on the story as the books do. This film (though without the jaw dropping visuals) delivers a narrative so competing that it breaks free of the constraints created by ‘2001’. This film gives the audience the answers to some of the questions left hanging in ‘2001’, such as; What’s next for Bowman? Will the monolith have any greater impact? It may make ‘2001’ feel a little more simplistic, but it open the story up to a wider narrative landscape. And as a note on ‘2001’, to clear up all debates, take a look at the book (and ‘The Lost Worlds Of 2001’) to get the definitive explanation behind “what does it all mean”.
‘Fight Club’ (1999). Originally when advertised, this film was promoted in the U.S.A. as a highbrow look into the role of men at the end of the millennium and advertised to the rest of the world as a boxing movie. The director acknowledges that the studio probably read their audiences the wrong way around and as this was pre widespread internet use, there was limited ways for the correct advertising to reach out to the right people. This film felt like a culmination of cinema to this point, with intelligent scriptwriting and grungy visuals, all of which would be abandoned for studios reaching for those big box office returns from franchise movies.
‘Citizen Kane’(1941). Yes it might be a cliché to be on a top ten list, but nothing can take away from this film. One of the reasons it’s so important is that it was the mainstream film which moved American cinema away from shooting films like plays, to producing movies that were a defined by camera angles and editing. Many of Orson Welles angles, camera tricks and editing techniques had been used many times before, but Welles brough all of these together like no other (something which Quentin Tarantino would do years later by taking genres, plots and scenes from other films and mash them together into something new). My personal love for the film is in following the story of Charles Foster Kane (a substitute for William Randolph Hurst) as it plays out as a biopic in an incredibly enjoyable way.
‘Naked Lunch’ (1991). It was always said that no one could ever adapt this novel by William S. Burroughs, Cronenberg managed it by expanding the story in every way possible, creating a film so visual that you are instantly transfixed and a story which no other director could pull off. Peter Weller was born to play the roll of Bill and gives a performance that Humphrey Bogart would have loved to tackle.
‘Being There’ (1979). Peter Sellers moves away from all out comedy into a more charmingly simple character. This is a really good ‘Saturday afternoon’ movie, it’s relaxed direction by Hal Ashby and narrative that calmly moves from farce to farce (though it never becomes a ‘frantic’ farce), creates a loveable mood. Stay away from spoilers as the plot is simple and knowing too much would detract from living with this Sellers character for 2 brilliant hours.
‘The Secret Adventures Of Tom Thumb’ (1993). This disturbing version of the story is not for kids. This film uses stop motion animation for not only the little model of Tom, but also for the human actors in the film too. This gives the ability of full interaction between all characters, human and plasticine…it also creates a nightmarish world that shimmers with bugs climbing the walls.
‘The Big Sleep’ (1946). This is the ultimate Film Noir. Amazing performances, beautiful direction and notoriously challenging script. Being able to lose yourself in the complex plot is something which just isn’t done in modern cinema, films now tend to be created for opening weekend box office results, rather than great storytelling. And who could blame them when, if you can deliver a film that pleases everyone, you could go on to make 1 or 2 billion U.S. dollars with every film you release.
‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ (2014). Wes Andersons visuals are like no other, utilizing flat angles, central framing and heightened reality models. Up until 2004 his visual storytelling had become more baroque and passé with an ever-decreasing interest in his films. However with ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’, Anderson justified the use of his visuals by integrating them so well that the storytelling as a whole is elevated by their use. It’s an incredibly enjoyable film which reminds you what a director with a vision can do.
Up next month, Simons Top 10 TV.
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