Number 6 on Dave’s Strange World’s list of all-time favorite films is Tim Burton’s outrageous and loving biopic of the legendary “World’s Worst Filmmaker” Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp as Wood. A lot of the films on the Sight and Sound list of World’s Best films (as well as my own list) center around the world of filmmaking.
Having a dream can be a dangerous thing. In this country, they say if you work hard enough and persevere, you can achieve anything. While hard work is essential towards achieving any dream, you also need talent and luck. Wood had passion to burn, but lacked the taste and talent to become who he wanted to be: Orson Welles.
However, you have to have the dream first. Granted, it helps if you know your limitations and are non-delusional. But at some point you do need to have a leap of faith to potentially achieve the sublime. Only those crazy and courageous enough to pursue their dream always go farther than those who never try.
Which is why I love this scene where Wood, frustrated after disagreements with the producers of his film (and wearing a dress, because that’s what made Wood feel most comfortable), storms off to a bar and runs into his hero, Orson Welles. I imagine this encounter was the invention of the writers, but it’s still a marvelous scene. Tellingly, Welles doesn’t flinch when he sees Wood dressed in drag and wearing a hideous mustache. As Welles tells Wood, “Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?” Just because it’s being said to someone who probably never should have been a director doesn’t make it any less true.
At what point does an exploitation film become an art film? Take for example, the nasty, but incredibly fun suspense thriller “Freeway” from 1996. “Freeway” updates the “Little Red Riding Hood” story to modern times, but the heroine is not the sweet, innocent girl she is in the fairy tale. While Reese Witherspoon’s teenage character Vanessa Lutz has been dealt a lot of bad cards in life, make no mistake, Vanessa is really f–king scary! Even scarier is Kiefer Sutherland’s child psychologist Bob Wolverton (Wolverton = wolf, get it?) who moonlights as a serial killer of hitchhikers and prostitutes. Anyway, Bob picks up the wrong girl with Vanessa and as the attached trailer shows, turns the tables on Bob. Lots of trouble ensues …
Make no mistake, this is one sleazy tale, but it’s gleefully sleazy and doesn’t pretend otherwise. However, the acting (especially by Witherspoon and Sutherland), script, and direction are all top notch. And it proves that just because you’re making an exploitation film, it doesn’t mean that it has to be crappy. It’s too bad Bright’s directing career didn’t take off after “Freeway.” Let’s just say he’s made some “interesting” choices since then. And while the trailer is fairly cheesy, this is by no means is indicative of the quality of the film. If you have the stomach for it, “Freeway” is a wonderfully sick thrill ride.
Number 7 on Dave’s Strange World’s list of all-time favorite films is Martin Scorsese’s vicious, profane, and hilarious gangster classic “Goodfellas.” Since I tried limiting myself to just one film by each director, it was hard picking my favorite Scorsese film. “Taxi Driver” and “Hugo” almost made the cut on all my time Top 10, but “Taxi Driver” is a really heavy, painful film that I don’t watch that often these days and “Hugo,” while being emotionally uplifting, is heavy in its own way too. These aren’t criticisms, it’s just that if I’m picking a Scorsese film to watch at the end of a long, hard day at work, “Goodfellas” never disappoints. Even at 2.5 hours long, it feels like it’s half that length. Everything about this film, from the script to the acting to the editing to the music is a pure adrenalin rush. And while you may feel exhausted at the end of this, it’s a good exhaustion.
The scene I included here is where Liotta’s, DeNiro’s, and Pesci’s characters need to borrow a shovel from Pesci’s mother’s house to bury the body of a gangster they just killed. Playing Pesci’s mother is Scorsese’s mother Catherine, who is totally sweet and funny in this scene. There is some pixelation during the first 11 seconds of this clip, but everything else is fine after that. Favorite line: “Looks like someone we know.”
Number 8 on Dave’s Strange World’s list of 10 favorite films comes Richard Rush’s bats–t crazy masterpiece from 1980, “The Stunt Man.” I saw this when it was in theaters in the fall of 1980, thanks to my Dad. Back in the day, my Dad was an avid “New Yorker” reader and likely wanted to see this based on Pauline Kael’s rave review of this film. Granted, this film was grossly inappropriate for a 10-year old to see, but I respect my Dad for trusting my intelligence and good taste in letting me see this.
Like “Pulp Fiction,” this is quite possibly the perfect film: action, suspense, comedy, violence, sex, and plot twists that seriously f–k with your brain and make you question reality. It’s cerebral, but ridiculously entertaining at the lowest common denominator as well. It’s what every Hollywood film should be like, but isn’t. Richly deserving of its 3 Oscar nominations for Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actor for Peter O’Toole’s turn as the Satanic director. O’Toole could have easily walked off with the Best Actor Oscar that year, had it not been for DeNiro’s turn in “Raging Bull.” (Shaking fist in the air, Stephen Colbert-style: “DENIRO!!!!!!!”)
I think this is still available on Netflix instant and if you haven’t seen it, you’re in for one of the greatest treats of your life.
John Lennon in primal scream mode, delivering punk blues from hell. A pulverising song that was put to great use in Martin Scorsese’s 2006 “The Departed.”
Continuing the punk theme from “Jesus of Suburbia,” Number 9 on Dave’s Strange World all-time favorite movies is Alex Cox’s funny, nasty tale of punks, UFOs, repo men, and the CIA. This movie came out around the time me and my friends started getting into punk. In 1984, punk as a late-1970s fad had faded and whatever was left just got harder and more aggressive, hence the adjective “hardcore.” By this point, there wasn’t much mainstream media exposure to punk, other than “Blackboard Jungle”-style exposes of wayward youth on the evening news.
So when a major studio (in this case, Universal) film featured hardcore punk as a prominent part of the film and soundtrack, it was something we all paid attention to. Granted, “Repo Man” portrayed punks as stupid, violent, and amoral for the most part, but nearly all of the characters in “Repo Man” were stupid, violent, and amoral, so no one cared and laughed their asses off.
This is a really funny, subversive film that’s still hilarious to this day. It’s nihilistic sense of humor predated Quentin Tarantino’s films by about 8 years and when I first saw “Reservoir Dogs” in 1992, I described to friends as “Repo Man” meets “Goodfellas.” I realize that may strike most people as odd, but when you consider the characters in “Repo” and “Reservoir”‘s mutual misanthropy, it makes perfect sense in my book.
Of the many great scenes in “Repo Man,” I love this one where Emilio Estevez’s character is talking to his punk friend who is dying after being shot during an attempted hold-up. Estevez casually comforts his friend during his death rattle by saying “You’re going to be all right, man … Maybe not.”
The esteemed British film journal “Sight and Sound” recently released their once-every-10-years international critics and directors poll of the greatest movies ever made. They have their idea of the greatest films ever made and I have mine. So, whether you like it or not, I will be including essays on my 10 favorite films of all time. These are not necessarily the 10 best films of all time, just the 10 that made the biggest impact on me personally. These are not necessarily in order:
10. “Blue Velvet” (1986) dir. David Lynch
I have an interesting history with David Lynch. Back when I was growing up, I heard about his first movie “Eraserhead” through the bi-monthly bulletin that the local arthouse put out and was consistently intrigued by the poster with Jack Nance with the weird hair. When “The Elephant Man” came out in 1980, it was the first movie I remember seeing that made me cry. I actually saw Lynch’s legendary big-budget sci-fi bomb “Dune” (1984) twice in the theater and loved it (even though, I was clearly in the minority at the time).
So, when I heard about “Blue Velvet” in the fall of 1986 and all the notoriety it had re: its dark violence and sexuality, I was very intrigued. Unfortunately, it didn’t come out in my hometown until November 1986 and it was likely only a fill-in feature until the Christmas blockbusters came out on Thanksgiving weekend. I was only one of three patrons in a theater that had a capacity for 500. And from the moment the curtains opened and the credits rolled over the blue velvet fabric, I was hooked. It was the perfect setting for seeing this film. I got completely sucked into Lynch’s nightmare that unfolded in front of me. I laughed in a few spots, but for the most part, I was positively frightened and mesmerized throughout. I walked out of the theater in a daze, convinced I had seen the greatest movie ever made.
I saw it a few months later at the local arthouse that used to show “Eraserhead.” Only this time, the place was packed, unfortunately with hipster d–kheads who laughed hysterically throughout the entire film. Yes, there are funny moments in the film and yes, because I was an insecure 17-year old, I laughed along with the audience. But I really cherish being able to see “Blue Velvet” that first time in a nearly empty audience and accept it non-ironically.
The scene I included here is one of the scenes I remember the hipsters losing their s–t over. And on the surface, you can see why because it totally seems completely dorky. However, as David Lynch noted to British film critic Mark Kermode when Kermode asked him about this scene.
“We all have this thing where we want to be very cool and when you see something like this, really kind of embarrassing, the tendency is to laugh, so that you are saying out loud that ‘This is embarrassing and not cool!’ and you’re hip to the scene. But we also always know that when we’re alone with this person that we’re falling in love with, we do say goofy things, but we don’t have a problem with it. It’s so beau-ti-ful. and the other person’s so forgiving of these beautiful, loving, goofy things. So there’s a lot of this swimming in this scene. A the same time, there’s something to that scene, a truth to it, in my book.”
I couldn’t have said it any better myself and I have to admit when I watched this scene in a nearly empty theater, I took this scene at face value and seriously got sucked into Laura Dern’s character’s description of her dream and, like Kyle MacLachlan’s character admitted, thought it was pretty “neat.”
Sorry, Sean Penn. Forget Jeff Spicoli in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Brad Pitt played the DEFINITIVE stoner in “True Romance” as Floyd. Pitt absolutely NAILS the lethargic hang-out-on-the-couch-all-day mentality of a chronic pothead. I don’t ever remember laughing so hard during a film than the moment when Brad Pitt asks the mobsters if they want to smoke a bowl. It was even more hysterically funny than the infamous scene between Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper.
A rare quiet moment in the otherwise infamous documentary about the Stones’ tumultuous and tragic 1969 US tour. Nothing much happening here but the band grooving on an early take of “Wild Horses,” one of my 5 favorite Stones songs.
In my earlier tribute to Tony Scott, I forgot to mention his stunning first film as a director, “The Hunger.” I remember seeing this on HBO late one Saturday night around 1984 or so and this opening sequence was so mind-blowing, I remember running into people at my junior high who saw the same thing (“My God, did you see that weird vampire movie on HBO?”) and were as flabbergasted as I was. So flabbergasting, that when I heard he was directing “Top Gun,” a needle went off the record in my mind. Well, he definitely found his commercial niche and while Scott made some wildly entertaining and commercial films (“Last Boy Scout,” “Crimson Tide,” “True Romance,” “Domino”), it would have been interesting to see if he had continued in this artier, less commercial mode. This isn’t the full sequence that features the seduction / sex / murder sequence afterwards, but you can find the longer version on YouTube if you so desire. You can see a lot of influence on Gaspar Noe in this clip. Highly recommended.
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