Dir - Stanley Kubrick
The world's greatest filmmaker followed up the world's greatest film with something that also took place in the future and features a score made up of classical music, (here reinterpreted in synthesized form by composer Wendy Carlos). Yet the narrative similarities between 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange stop there. Ultra-violence and a bit of the ole in-out/in-out rule the dystopian playground for Malcolm McDowell's Alex, and his social-commentating trek through it all is giddily brutal. Kubrick's vision was stylized like no director before him by this point and it is impossible to imagine anyone else besides he bringing Anthony Burgess' Nadsat dialect-laced, "Da fuck did they just say?", black comedy, dystopian novel to life.
Dir - Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese's first and greatest cinematic examination into the world of organized crime, (unless you count the excellence that is Mean Streets), came at the turn of the 1990's with Goodfellas. Based off of the real-life exploits of mobster Henry Hill, (dramatized in Nicholas Pileggi's novel Wiseguy), Goodfellas flows with a heavily improvised script, classic rock soundtrack, and overall gusto that makes it one of the most compulsively watchable films of any kind. Joe Pesci forever became synonymous with his role as Tommy DeVito and Ray Liota's gun-handle-to-the-nose Henry Hill is likewise the best thing that he ever did. Few gangster movies are as wildly entertaining, stylish, and this goddamn good.
Dir - Michael Curtiz
As stated in my intro, around the time that I stopped being tricked by movie trailers into thinking that everything coming out looked cool and was worth my money, me and my brother decided to go back and check out all of the films that we missed;films that everybody had been raving about for decades. Casablanca was one of the first of these that I finally saw then and its classic status is debatable by no one. Similar to Citizen Kane, Casablanca garnished some Oscar nods and did well enough box office wise, yet its reputation continued to grow more exponentially by the boomers in later years. The enormously quotable script is one of the finest in all of Hollywood's history and Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and director Michael Curtiz do their most quintessential work, with a side of Claude Rains and Peter Lorre to boot.
Dir - Joel and Ethan Coen
The term "modern classic" or "modern cult film" gets tossed around frequently and both terms readily apply to the Coen brothers masterpiece The Big Lebowski. This is a movie without a plot that still seems damn funny on first viewing. Then by the second, forth, and fortieth, it transcends just being a great comedy and instead becomes something that is a staple of one's life. There are few, (if any), more quotable films than this. The brothers Coen have tackled the humorless drama, the surreal, period-pieces, and remakes, yet the script for Lebowski is a concoction of absurd hilarity on a wondrous level. Jeff Bridges, John Turturro, Julianne Moore, and certainly John Goodman are great in everything and dazzlingly so here. I could logically end this with a "but that's just your opinion man", but instead I think I will just go and fix the cable.
Dir - David Lean
What just so happens to be the greatest biopic of all time, Lawrence of Arabia melds fiction and historical fact together to bring the story of T. E. Lawrence to breathtaking life. The truth about the real escapades of Lawrence during the first World War in the Arabian Peninsula and the actual man himself probably lie somewhere in the middle of the larger than life figure that is portrayed here. Narcissistic, vain, and egotistical, yet also overtly romantic, conflicted, and compassionate, Peter O'Toole's Lawrence is a conundrum of a person and as the movie announces, he is assuredly "extraordinary". David Lean visually constructed the ultimate wide-screen, on-location masterpiece. Shot in Spain, Jordan, and Morocco with upwards of a thousand extras, Lean patiently utilized the desert landscape in all of its natural beauty and awe. Even if Arabia where nearly four hours of silent establishing shots, it would still be a marvel.
Dir - Andrei Konchalovsky
There are buddy cop movies and then there is Tango & Cash. To pit two of my favorite actors together who shaped my childhood, (Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russel, respectfully), was probably enough, yet inviting Jack Palance, James Hong, Teri Hatcher, "The Jaw" Robert Z'Dar, and Mr. Potatohead Brion James all to the party does wonders as well. Far, far funnier than it is action packed, Tango & Cash was a mess of a film to make, with cartoon-character-crazy producer Jon Peters, (for once wisely), pushing for the movie to be as ridiculous as possible. This resulted in director Andrei Konchalovsky throwing up his hands in frustration and getting fired, which was further complicated by Stallone pulling his usual and domineering behind-the-scenes antics. Never appreciated as the landmark film that it is, there barely exists a movie that I love more, as my precious 1980's action films are sent up with a script that still has me punching the floor laughing at regular intervals. Now if you will excuse me, my pantyhose are riding (way) up into the unknown.
Dir - David Cronenberg
Even beyond crafting some of the best, most memorable horror films ever made, David Cronenberg's adaptation of J.G. Ballard's novel Crash is my absolute favorite of all of his works. The first time that I saw this I was simply in awe of its slow, eerie mood and how fucking "off" every character in it is as they meander around at a snails pace like drugged, horny zombies. Further views unravel the disturbing layers into this world of damaged, emotionally-barren nymphomaniacs turned car-crash fetishists. James Spader is creepy like he always is, but Elias Koteas steals his moments by projecting a type of unease that is as fascinating as it is unsettling. In many ways, Crash acts as just as much a body-horror movie as any other of Cronenberg's masterpieces, only even more successful and disturbing as a whole.
Dir - Lewis Milestone
War films, (or anti-war films), are certainly aplenty and Lewis Milestone's pre-code masterpiece All Quiet on the Western Front sits on a high plateau. Based off of Erich Maria Remarque's book and told from the perspective of the German side in World War I, Quiet runs for two and a half hours and boasts no dramatic music whatsoever, as early talkies were wont to do. Over eighty years later, the result is still one of the most simple, horrifying, and realistic depictions of the trenches as there has ever been. Even the moments of humor and dated melodrama seem to hammer home the living hell of the front-line that much more in contrast, all this coupled with the still modern day, rampant "ra-ra" ignorance that the rest of a country can rally behind. Plus, few final shots in all of cinema are as bleak and sudden, which is as appropriately warlike as anything could be.
Dir - Andrei Tarkovsky
The flip side of the coin to 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris is an easy one to compare to Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece. Both films were written together by the director and the author of the book that they were based on, both view the coldness of technology, and both feature the physical manifestation of their protagonist's psyche. Yet Tarkovsky was not interested in man's quest for knowledge or the fate/purpose of homo-sapien's place in the cosmos. He barely dedicates any of the long running time to any technical sci-fi jargon either, forgoing showing any actual spaceship traveling entirely. Instead, Solaris is one of the finest film explorations of human being's ability to love and to grieve. Everything from the gorgeous, quiet opening shots of nature, to the dilapidated space station, to the hypnotic waves of Solaris's ocean form help make this an awe-inspiring work.
Dir - Francis Ford Coppola
It is staggering that Francis Ford Coppola made three of the greatest films of all time in less than ten years and then never came close to his one time glory again. Yet after Apocalypse Now, he need not prove anything else to anybody. As early as a pre-Citizen Kane Orson Wells, a Heart of Darkness screen adaptation had been sporadically taken upon by various people, also including American Zoetropers John Milius and George Lucas. Coppola himself had wanted to do it for awhile and when the time came to make it a reality, Apocalypse infamously and monstrously ran over-budget and took nearly two years just to shoot. Weather, geographical, military, casting, and re-casting problems ran amok and Coppola was all but a lunatic when it was in the can, doubting himself seriously if he had made either apiece of shit or something extraordinary. The latter proved true as the brutal, often funny, and increasingly bizarre and sinister journey to Colonel Kurtz's compound hell is hypnotic by film's end, with everything from Aguirre, the Wrath of God to Dante's Inferno referenced along the way.
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