Change Your Image
roskopop2004
I seem to have a weakness for great actresses doing great acting turns.
I also fall prey to sentimental stories if they're really well-acted and well-directed. I'm one of those guys who never sheds a tear in real life. And then I go to the movies and easily weep, and feel like a weight has been lifted. Go figure.
I'm an escapist a lot of the time, and I want to disappear for a while. So entertain me.
On my better days, I want to be challenged and enlightened by movies, or they are a waste of my time. But that is not most days.
Summers in New York City can get sweltering, and an air conditioned movie theatre has never looked more inviting. So I end up going to see a lot of stupid popcorn flicks and trying to have fun with them. I try to spend as much time as possible in the summer on the beach, and I really hate the summer in the city. But I really love Spielberg because he's one of the few in those moments who never made me feel like I wasted my money just to get out of the heat. Thank God for him.
But Academy Award season is my favorite, and in the bitter cold of December, January and early February is when I do most of my movie-going. I'll hide in the theatre all day and try to see as many nominated films as possible.
Finally, I generally don't like haters. Haters and Trolls are complete LOSERS with too much time on their hands. It annoys me when people waste a lot of their time on these boards trying to convince everyone to dislike something. Of course, speak your mind. I WANT to hear it. But instead of harassing people on the threads that are celebrating a film, just express your disagreement, and then MOVE ON. Hopefully on to something you DO like.
There are plenty of negative threads to vent relentlessly on if that's your thing.
ANYONE can OPEN my mind. But no one can close it.
These are 60 (I tried to keep it to 50 but couldn't) of my personal favorites of all time, in alphabetical order:
A Clockwork Orange - 1971, Stanley Kubrick
A Streetcar Named Desire -1951, Elia Kazan
Adaptation - 2002, Spike Jonze
All About Eve -1950, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Almost Famous - 2000, Cameron Crowe
American Beauty - 1999, Sam Mendes
Annie Hall -1977, Woody Allen
The Apartment -1960, Billy Wilder
Apocalypse Now - 1979, Francis Ford Coppola
As Good As It Gets - 1997, James L. Brooks
Boogie Nights - 1997, P.T. Anderson
Brokeback Mountain - 2005, Ang Lee
Cabaret - 1972, Bob Fosse
Close Encounters of the Third Kind - 1978, Steven Spielberg
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover - 1989, Peter Greenaway
Deliverance - 1972, John Boorman
The Family Stone - 2005, Thomas Bezucha
Farewell My Concubine - 1993, Kaige Chen
Fargo - 1996, Joel Coen
Fight Club - 1999, David Fincher
The Godfather -1972, Francis Ford Coppola
The Godfather: Part II -1974, Francis Ford Coppola
Gosford Park -2001, Robert Altman
The Graduate -1967, Mike Nichols
Hannah and Her Sisters - 1986, Woody Allen
Harold and Maude - 1971, Hal Ashby
Kramer Vs. Kramer - 1979, Robert Benton
La Femme Nikita - 1990, Luc Besson
The Last Picture Show - 1971, Peter Bogdanovitch
Last Tango In Paris - 1972, Bernardo Bertolucci
Leon - 1994, Luc Besson
The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship.. - 2001, Peter Jackson
The Lord of the Rings - Two Towers - 2002, Peter Jackson
The Lord of the Rings - Return of the King - 2003, Peter Jackson
Lost In Translation - 2003, Sofia Coppola
Manhattan -1979, Woody Allen
Maurice - 1987, James Ivory
Mrs. Parker And the Vicious Circle - 1994, Alan Rudolph
On Golden Pond - 1981, Mark Rydell
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - 1975, Milos Forman
Out of Africa - 1985, Sydney Pollack
Parenthood - 1989, Ron Howard
Poltergeist - 1982, Steven Spielberg
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - 1969, Ronald Neame
Pulp Fiction -1994, Quentin Tarantino
Raiders of the Lost Ark - 1981, Steven Spielberg
Rear Window -1954, Alfred Hitchcock
Rosemary's Baby - 1968, Roman Polanski
The Royal Tenenbaums - 2001, Wes Anderson
Say Anything - 1989, Cameron Crowe
Schindler's List - 1993, Steven Spielberg
The Shining -1980, Stanley Kubrick
Some Like It Hot - 1959, Billy Wilder
Taxi Driver - 1976, Martin Scorsese
Terms of Endearment - 1983, James L. Brooks
Tootsie - 1982, Sydney Pollack
Vertigo - 1958, Alfred Hitchcock
The Wedding Banquet - 1993, Ang Lee
Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? -1966, Mike Nichols
Y Tu Mama Tambien - 2001, Alfonso Cuaron
Some of my favorite actors are:
Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep, Dianne Wiest, Jessica Lange, Jack Lemmon, Rachel McAdams, Frances McDormand, Helen Mirren, Giovanni Ribisi, Christian Bale, Greg Kinnear, and Gael Garcia Bernal.
OK, what the hell...I will now confess that I have had a long-time crush on Keanu Reeves for some reason. It just won't go away, even though I have cringed in my seat during films like "Dracula" and "My Own Private Idaho." I think he has given some of the worst acting performances I have ever seen. But I think he was actually really good and believable in films like Something's Gotta Give, The Gift, and even Parenthood.
MY ONE REALLY MEAN RANT - The only actor I seem to have a real problem with:
I generally just ignore or avoid actors I don't like. I don't dwell on them. I don't know why this one guy still gets under my skin, but oh he does. He's not a bad actor. But I just can't stand him.
Yes, I'm talking about John Travolta.
I admit that I loved Grease as a kid and had the soundtrack like everybody else. And I still think it's fun. But even then, he did his job perfectly well and nothing more. He didn't interest me.
And I still consider the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever a guilty pleasure every once in a blue moon. But the film? His performance? Who cares.
The worst thing, though. I love Pulp Fiction. And I'm still pissed that Tarantino gave him that role. Because a ton of actors in Hollywood would have SOARED in that role. Travolta was great, but almost anybody would have been great.
OH!!! How I wish that never had happened. Otherwise, he would be long-gone, or just doing TV movies like The Man In The Plastic Bubble. Everything he's done since bugs the hell out of me. For me, he just ruins every good thing he's in. But makes 20 million a picture to do it???
And then after Heath Ledger dies, Travolta, Travolta??!!...
steals the spotlight saying "I feel sorry for ME!" I mean, after Brokeback Mountain, Heath Ledger entered a class way above Travolta in my opinion. And he has been the opposite of cocky, arrogant, Hollywood lying B.S. You can't even compare the two. And he didn't even know him personally. How dare he??!!!
That bloated, puffy, smug, annoying, ego-maniacal, one-note, ham, cheeseball, over-rated, closeted homosexual Scientologist!!!!!
Sorry if i've offended anyone. But I had to get that off my chest, I'm done. Peace and Love to All Mankind:)
Reviews
Running with Scissors (2006)
The movie critics should be ashamed! An underrated, magnificent film!
If ever a movie taught me not to let critics influence my decision to see something, this is it.
I remember when this came out in the theater and the overall consensus of the major critics was that this film was a huge disappointment, if not a complete failure. Wow. (scratches head)
Having been a huge fan of the book (I read it twice before I saw the film) I went to see it anyway without high expectations, and was surprised to say the least. I love this film, and it brought me to tears several times. And like other posters, I thought that it was a rare film adaptation that does justice to the book and then some.
Aside from the fact the film remains true to the book, which will please many fans, the performances are excellent across the board. Annette Bening, in my humble opinion, was robbed of an Oscar nomination. She delivers nothing less than a tour-de-force. I mean, it truly amazes me how she was overlooked along with this whole movie. And Joseph Cross should have had a nomination as well. He shines the light and the heartbreak in this boy with dead-on accuracy. This is a remarkable story that I guess is hard to believe for many people, even in the strange, dysfunctional world we live in. I think all of the actors made this story truly believable. Even Gwyneth, who has very little screen time unfortunately, makes the most of it, with a wonderfully low-key, quirky turn. Her scene cooking "the stew", in braids, is one of my favorite moments. And how could they not notice Jill Clayburgh??!! She manages to ground this story, ironically, with sanity. She conveys grace and maternal love and kindness, wringing these emotions from an almost grotesquely-written character. No easy feat. I will admit Evan Rachel Wood is the only actor I felt was a bit miscast if you are being true to the book. She's just cooler and sexier than I imagined the character to be. But she reminded me of someone else i grew up with in an uncanny way, that's how good she is at balancing smart and damaged, as a girl who grew up too fast for her own good, but somehow manages to prevail. I loved her nonetheless, just in a different way than I did in the book.
The pacing, the tone, the lighting, the music, the respect the director showed this story is really stunning as well. Anyone who grew up in the late 70's (like myself) in a dysfunctional home with a rather eccentric mother will probably experience this as movie magic, and feel uncomfortably at home watching this, like being transported back in time. You may even smell your mother's shag carpeting and scented candles like I did. The clothing the characters are wearing, especially Augusten, made me feel like I was back in grade school myself...wearing a polyester plaid vest and tie and out-of-synch with my peers. The imagery really rang true for me, along with "Your the poetry man" playing in the background.
Maybe the problem was that not a lot of people can relate to this story, and it seems too preposterous for them to even suspend their disbelief for a couple of hours? I've never felt compelled to write a commentary up here until now because I really believe this work was done an injustice by the critics. However I don't think, as a viewer, you would necessarily need to relate to this story to enjoy the film. But I can't help but wonder if I'm wrong about that, because it might explain the poor reception from so many critics.
I also trust completely that over time many will discover this movie and be moved to both laughter and tears, and be completely absorbed in it. It's a twisted, sometimes hilarious but mostly heartbreaking tale, based on true events, and it is, in my opinion, a beautiful film. It's a gem.