Dir - Sylvester Stallone
When watching me watch the forth installment to the Rocky franchise, you would think both A) I suffer from severe Alzheimer's and do not know that it is not 1985 anymore, B) think movies are real, and C) really like boxing when in fact none of these things are true. That is because I get into this movie and particularly the glorious, final Rocky Balboa/Ivan Drago showdown to the point of jumping up and down and hollering like I have actual money on the event. The first three Rocky films are great, but Sylvester Stallone's montage-a-thon masterpiece in IV is one of the most entertaining of all movies, regardless of genre. Often parodied and laughed at, Stallone actually builds up the tension perfectly to the epic title bout, which is as unrealistic and ridiculous as it is fist-pumpingly awesome to watch.
Dir - Sidney Lumet
I first knew what 12 Angry Men was when we were forced to read and study it aloud in one of my high school English classes. We then watched William Friedkin's 1997 remake instead of the much admired original from forty years prior, (I assume because my teacher thought a room full of fifteen year olds would be bored with a black and white movie). Well aware of the story by now, I have since seen the 1957, Henry Fonda stared/produced vehicle several times and it continually amazes me. Sidney Lumet was a veteran of television direction when he was tasked with adapting Men as his first feature and his work here is exceptional. Changing the camera angle and lenses gradually throughout, a feeling of intense claustrophobia and tension is raised as the twelve jurors sweat out their logic, prejudices, and emotions on the hottest day of the year in their battle to reckon with the concept of reasonable doubt.
Dir - Leo McCarey
Ah the world of the Brothers Marx. Duck Soup is the Vaudeville-to-Hollywood, Jewish brothers family act's best film, but one could just as easily pick A Night at the Opera and my personal favorite moment from any of their movies takes place in A Night In Casablanca and of course involves Harpo fucking with somebody. Story-wise there is nothing particularly stronger about Duck Soup, though it is amusing in hindsight how the film bombed when released because it hit too close to home in its absurd send-up of dictatorships and how silly of a reason a war can get started. Really though, the gags are just flawless here as every last Groucho insult kills, Chico delivers more solid puns than anyone could, and Harpo cuts everything hanging off of everyone's clothes for just over an hour.
Dir - Steven Spielberg
On Steven Spielberg's mind for ten full years before he was ready to actually make it, Schindler's List showcases all of the technical film language skill that the man had in spades, which in turn eclipses Thomas Keneally's novel Schindler's Ark into something far more than an elementary Holocaust movie, let a lone any kind of popcorn fare. Spielberg's knack for over-dramatizing his films for emotional manipulation does not get a justifiable complaint here, due in part to how Liam Neeson's title character is as multi-layered as Ralph Fiennes' Nazi commander Amon Göth is impossibly unsympathetic and diabolical. Meaning that what war does to men is always different across the board, just as men are different themselves to begin with. The dent that Oskar Schindler made to the Jewish people's legacy may seem small to him in his emotional breakdown, but the generations that survived because of his gradual selflessness cannot be undermined and the film itself is a beautiful and harrowing milestone of human good overcoming evil.
Dir - John Carpenter
John Carpenter, (easily one of the finest horror filmmakers of all time), was on a role by 1986, delivering nearly a film a year since Halloween. After 1984's Starman and Escape from New York three years earlier, Carpenter's further willingness to step outside of the horror genre was rewarded tenfold with the utterly amazing Big Trouble in Little China. If this is not the king of all supernatural ninja epics, (with a side of guns and a John Wayne impression), then seriously what is? The tones of snappy, Golden Era Hollywood comedy, ridiculous kung fu movies, and big dumb 80s action are masterfully handled by Carpenter, plus the arrogant ridiculousness of Kurt Russel's Jack Burton easily turns the character into one of the best, unintentional cinematic heroes of all time. Few of my childhood favorites hold up this well and all these years later, the fight scenes are still all the awesome and Thunder blowing himself up is still one of the funniest things in any movie.
Dir - Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood wisely sat on David Peoples script for Unforgiven for over a decade until he was old enough in real life to play the worn-down, now tamed, women and children murdering, no good son of a bitch Will Munny. Time indeed is a heavy theme in probably Eastwood's finest directorial effort, but so is the fact that most men cannot really run and stay gone from themselves if the circumstances will not allow it. Gene Hackman's Little Bill is as grey a character as Munny is. One of them sobered up for the love of a woman years ago and quit their evil ways while the other took a cushy Sheriff position in a small Wyoming town and revels in his tough guy legend, but only when the situation calls for it as he is just as much at home when building a house for himself to retire in.
Dir - Stanley Kubrick
Many view Stanley Kubrick's final opus Eyes Wide Shut as a slightly unfinished work as the director only got to screen it once before his death, at which point his collaborators and Warner Bros. finished some technical details, (and more infamously added CGI bodies to cover up the hardcore thrusting for an R rating). Even with that all being the case though, it is another masterpiece made by a man who seemed only capable of delivering such things. Most of the cast speaks very slowly and precisely, as if to heighten the tension as Kubrick styles the Austrian novella from Arthur Schnitzler as a creepy thriller, even if that is not what it is. The equally unnerving and fascinating orgy scene is the centerpiece and sums up Eyes Wide Shut to a tee; where sexual jealousy, curiosity, fantasy, and reality flirt with each other to a dangerous point, leaving us with way more questions than answers by film's end.
Dir - Richard Lester
Hardly anyone thinks that The Beatles' second movie Help! is superior to A Hard Day's Night, but that is where I come in. Since always, I have fancied their and Richard Lester's second film collaboration over the first and still remarkable one, if for any other reason than because it is noticeably more ridiculous. With the influence of The Goon Show reigning heavy, (a radio program that The Beatles were all fans of), there is a direct link to be made between the numerous bonkers and random silliness in Help! to the work of Monty Python just a few years later. Look no further than the tiger that can only be tamed by singing "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's 9th or the out of nowhere, seconds long "intermission", which doubles as my favorite moment in any Beatles movie. Technically being a musical, you cannot possibly do better than one made up of Beatles songs so in the soundtrack department, this is naturally as good as it gets.
Dir - Spike Jonze
As arguably the most ingenious screenwriter to emerge in recent memory, Charlie Kaufman's first produced work, (also marking Spike Jonze's directorial debut), Being John Malkovich set the bar ludicrously high as far as how good and how on drugs his films were going to be. Adaptation and certainly Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are close in quality to Malkovich, but this one just ups the insanity to such a gleeful level that it gives it a bonkers edge like nothing else. Kaufman randomly wrote it for fun, with the simple premise of telling a story of a man in love with someone that he was not married to. How that turned into the finished product involving puppets, a 7th and 1/2 floor, a slew of odd-ball characters, Charlie Sheen randomly, and of course John Malkovich going into his own head is what separates Kaufman from everyone else.
Dir - Joel and Ethan Coen
As the Coen brothers dankest and most hopelessly dire movie, many rank No Country for Old Men alongside Fargo as the filmmakers dramatic finest hour. I have always preferred the aforementioned Fargo less than others, but where No Country is concerned, I wholeheartedly concur with the praise. Surface similarities abound here with much of the brother's other work, (the desert landscape, a sheriff as protagonist, brutal violence), but the humor is minimal, the music even more so, and the film stays grounded to reality much more than the Coen's usually allow. Javier Bardem's villain is one for the books, his Anton Chigurh embodying the impending doom of fate, not only for nearly everyone he comes across, but the "country" as a whole; where time moves on and what once was comprehensible becomes more and more uncertain and distressing.
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