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Silence of the Lambs, but The Thing is pretty close behind.The Thing!!
I forgot about that movie!! Way up there for me and I think I have done that scenario at least half dozen times over the years in various games! The best one was when I stranded a group on an ice world in an old school Traveller game and none of the players were familiar with the movie! Awesome!
Yeah, John Carpenter's version for sure. Definately at the top of my list. Fright Night is also up there as one of my favorites. Great horror/spoof flick, and Roddy McDowell is the bomb.
Seven Samurai.
Action, drama, performances. Flawless. A big influence from the obvious (Magnificent Seven) to the less obvious (Star Wars). One of the few movies I always enjoy re-watching.
Wow, are you ever right. I remember how awesome it was to see this at our local indie theatre two years ago. Such a fantastic movie.
Apparently, another big influence for Star Wars was another Kurosawa movie, The Hidden Fortress. I've never gotten a chance to see it, but a lot of the elements in Star Wars seem very similar, such as escorting a Princess through enemy territory (the Death Star), and the Princess bribing people to help with her gold (Han & Leia's relationship).
I also found out while looking this up on IMdB that there's a re-make of Seven Samurai planned for 2009? This is bad news...
Seven Samurai.
Action, drama, performances. Flawless. A big influence from the obvious (Magnificent Seven) to the less obvious (Star Wars). One of the few movies I always enjoy re-watching.
And then of course there's influence on the bad: Battle Beyond the Stars (basically, a scifi version of the same story).
My favorite movie of all time is Vertigo. If it comes on tv, I have to sit down and watch it.
Other favorite movies include Amadeus, The Thing, Harold and Maude, Audition, Rosemary's Baby, Psycho, The Iron Giant, Akira, and Perfect Blue. (Yes, I did just look through some of my movie collection, but I keep my favorites.)
What?!? You're better have watched The Third Man and Night and the City or I'm coming over to beat up your professor.
The prof wanted to focus on a specific director, which, in this case, was Fritz Lang. So we saw The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, Clash by Night and The Blue Gardenia. All pretty good, but I would say only Scarlet Street was a great film.
It was pretty interesting to see the growth and death of noir as a genre, though, seeing it develop, at least, in Lang's hands. You can see how some noir themes began in Woman in the Window, and how by the time of The Blue Gardenia, it was getting a bit to "easy" and "mainstream".
The prof, did, however, recommend Maltese Falcon and The Third Man among others to see if we get a chance.
Back when I had favorite movies, I'd have four:
- The Empire Strikes Back (please, much better than its predecessor),
- Princess Bride (a good movie made great by its last line),
- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (because, even as a kid, I could see it was bizarre and dark under all the happy colors; notice that in the far background, there's always brick walls and iron bars...), and
- whatever Terry Gilliam movie I adored at the time (usually Time Bandits, but sometimes 12 Monkeys, Fisher King, or Adventures of Baron Munchhaussen).
