The Princess Bride
Penguins (of Madagascar): the Movie
Hot Fuzz
The Princess Bride
Penguins (of Madagascar): the Movie
Hot Fuzz
Idiocracy
It's slowly becoming a documentary...
It works as a comedic dialog on the values of our society shifting away from science. It's also incredibly ironic due to the number of people that point to it as if it has any basis in facts. I could barely watch it because there is nothing in that movie that makes sense, yet is referenced as if it does.
Big Trouble in Little China
John Carpenter gives a lot of good recommendations, many of my favorite movies. Here's a few more:
The Thing
They Live
In the Mouth of Madness
Halloween
Showed this to my GF a few months ago, and she didn't fall asleep watching it. That's really saying something.
First time I rented it on VHS back in the 80s, watch, rewind and watch again, next day same thing.
It takes place in Chinatown.
It's similar to Little Italy. But Chinese.
Really great movie TBH, especially when you view Kurt Russel as the dumb white sidekick
Yeah, it really turns tropes on their head.
All the Chinese characters are the smart ones and the real heroes. And are played by actual Chinese actors.
The white guy is a dumbass who's in the right place at the right time and gets lucky.
He checks all the right boxes for a sidekick too.
He's comic relief. He's a flamboyant character. He chokes at almost every critical moment. He requires additional exposition so the rest of the team can explain things to the audience.
The camera follows him, and he thinks he's the main guy. But we know he's not.
"I'm starting to feel a bit like an outsider here."
"You are!"
I love the fact that it's an entire movie where the side-kick is treated as the main character, while the actual main character is treated as the side-kick. It's brilliant.
It's also responsible for by-far my most used line. "It's like I told my ex-wife. "Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. And besides that, it's all in the reflexes."
"You remember what ol' Jack Burton always says at a time like that: 'Have ya paid your dues, Jack?' 'Yessir, the cheque is in the mail.'"
Jack talking tough on the radio sends me, he's just such a wannabe tough guy clown.
So many adventure movies have the white saviour action hero protagonist with a sidekick who's an (often racist) ethnic caricature. Jack is a caricature of an American tough guy, and it works so well. I wish we saw it in more movies.
Try reading about the movie before passing judgment.
In the U.S., "little (place)" is simply a neighborhood with a large population from some other country.
The Fifth Element
Don't even need to watch it ever again, it just plays on a loop in my mind.
Children of Men
Agreed. It’s not my highest-rated 10, but I still gave it a very rare 10… it is my favorite even though I think there are better movies, if that makes sense?
Primer
Insanely low budget, very realistic depiction of engineers. Super complicated plot which gives it great replay value.
If you watch it for the first time, the audio sync issues are not part of the plot. They had to re-dub a lot of the movie and they didn’t do a great job.
Don't sleep on Upstream Color. That director is crazy af and makes crazy movies well.
I wish the producer had a bit more budget. The last act needs more scenes. This may be one of the few cases where I want AI to augment an existing film.
Have you seen Darren Aronofsky's 'Pi' from 1998?
Everything everywhere all at once is easily one of my favorite movies of all time. Pays a bunch of homages to action films and tropes. One of the few times in my life where I ugly cried and laughed at the same time.
I just saw a post in a different thread where someone called it the worst thing they'd ever watched.
I loved it, but I could definitely see both sides. It was a weird movie. But great. And fun.
Everything, Everywhere, All At Once would definitely also be my recommendation. Because a kung fu comedy that's also a sci fi thriller, a bilingual family drama that can switch languages multiple times per sentence, a Ratatouille parody, and a 10 minute silent shot of two rocks in a desert, that just SHOULD NOT WORK. The fact it does, and does brilliantly, with ten new directing ideas every minute and a climax that leaves me in tears every time, borders on genius.
If not for the papercuts, big agree. It could’ve been anything improbable. Why that. It did the job of making the audience uncomfortable but at what cost.
The Blues Brothers
Someone else mentioned Hot Fuzz, which is mine. Another I love is Tucker & Dale vs Evil. It’s an excellent satire about conflict borne from nothing but preconceptions. Also a rare movie in which the “jock”-type characters are the good guys.
Agree, but I wonder if you need to have seen a bunch of other horror films first to really appreciate Tucker and Dale?
My favorites are the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Went to see them re-released in theaters earlier this year for the 25th anniversary.
Rocky (1976) and When Harry Met Sally (1989) are my favourite movies, and I prefer the former only a little bit more than the latter. I'm a sentimental man. 🤷
I would say the #3 spot belongs to either Arrival (2016), The Sixth Sense (1999), Se7en (1996), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), or The Secret in Their Eyes ("El Secreto de Sus Ojos", 2009). #4 is both Kung Fu Panda 1 and 2, and #5 is probably too large to enumerate here, lol.
Repo Man (1984)
Honorable mentions:
I count Buckaroo Banzai (or to give it its full name, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension) as my all-time favorite film. But I realize it's not for everyone.
My favorite capsule description of (The Adventures of) Buckaroo Banzai (Across the Eighth Dimension) is "A stupid movie for smart people."
It was actually my number 1 for a long, but somehow, over the years, Repo Man just crept up the list until it took its place.
The Matrix. Sometimes I'll get the urge to watch it like 3 times in a week. Only movie I can do that with.
Thank goodness they never made any sequels.
The Big Lebowski
Shut the fuck up, Donnie.
This is my absolute favourite movie of all time but I gave up recommending it to people.
The Coen brothers are too weird and nobody gets it but me, apparently 😭
This is absolutely in my top 5. Hard to pick amongst that rarified air, but it’s so well done in EVERY category. Costuming, acting, casting, direction, writing, pacing, editing, directing. It’s an absolute masterpiece of a film and hilarious to boot.
Ask me again tomorrow and I'm sure it'll be different, I can never pick a firm favorite for any media or genre.
But the one that sprang to my mind this time was Clue. Just a fantastic cast, and far more charming than its source material gives it any right to be.
Bugonia was very good just make sure you go in blind.
That is an impossible question because it depends on so many factors of what's going on on the particular day that I'm asked.
So instead I'll give you the three that most often rotate into top spot:
Children of Men
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
LA Confidential
Nice try recovery questions phisher. You will never find out that it's the 1966 Thunderbirds are go! Film.
My tastes are almost exclusively sci fi, horror, and cosmic horror, but I'll give excellent and obscure recommendations for each, not necessarily my favs because you might have seen them already.
Aniara
The Void
green room
All of these are very good and hold up to a second watch.
There is no way I can pick one.
There are really good recomendations here. But there are very few recomendations for films around the world, while I like American films a lot I'm going with my favorites from other countries.
Korea
Hong Kong
Japan
Italy
Spain
Argentina
I'm going to stop here, there are a lot of countries I didn't mention, this comment is already long enough. Don't stop yourself because the film is in another language, there are fantastic films out there.
Back to the Future.
My favorite three movies are Toy Story 3 (for nostalgia reasons), Spirited away and City of god.
I'm willing to concede that Toy Story 3 isn't that good but the other 2 are amazing movies IMO.
70s Pacino -Serpico
Arthouse Christina Ricci and some weird dude who used to hang out with Basquate -Buffalo 66
Sicario is my favorite movie. Villenueve is more hit than miss, and you can’t really go wrong with any of his recent films. Arrival, Prisoners, Blade Runner 2049, and the Dune films.
Wreck it Ralph is made with such a love for (classic) gaming and in general being a really good animated movie I love it.
Also The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! Is great and can be rewatched endlessly.
Then again, Idiocracy. Getting less and less funny and more scary as we come closer to that future.
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
Knives Out trilogy
Short Term 12
Hamilton
In The Heights
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Scott Pilgrim vs the World
The Secret in Their Eyes
The Lives of Others
The Counterfeiters
The Wave
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Whiplash
The Town
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
In Bruges
The King's Speech
Inglorious Basterds
The Imitation Game
Her
Nowhere Boy
The Spectacular Now
If I had to choose one, it might be Short Term 12. I like some of these more than others, but all mean something to me and there's a pretty broad spread of genres here.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Thank you for reminding me of that one. It's one of those movies that I mentally put on my "to watch" list when it came out, and I just realized that somehow I never got around to it.
edit: Oh dang, I never watched Her either. That is like, the most relevant movie of all time right now, lol. Need to get on that.
In the 40s & 50s, Alfred Hitchcock made a series of incredible thrillers that hold up to this day. Some were B&W, some were color, but ALL of them were at least 4 star movies, and many are 5 stars, and some are absolute CLASSICS.
My favorites:
He made a lot more than these, and like I said, they're all terrific, but these are my personal favorites. Rear Window is my favorite film of all time, a PERFECT movie. Also, in Rear Window, Grace Kelly was the most beautiful woman who has ever appeared on screen. Watch it, and tell me I'm wrong.
Hitchcock is addicting.
His Girl Friday (1940)
The best screwball movie ever made. Fast, funny, but with an edge. Doesn't feel it's age to me at all.
Give us a few to go on, OP.
i.e. Sci-Fi
Arrival
2001
Dune (2021)
i.e. Crime
Heat
Sicario
Brick
i.e. Non-Blockbuster Comic Book
Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
Comic Book Villains
Dredd (2012)
i.e. Beautiful/Painful international
Dancer in the Dark
Incendies
La Vita e Bella
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