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2004RedSox
Apocalypse Now Brazil A Clockwork Orange Dr. Strangelove 2001: A Space Odyssey
Other Favorite Films:
Alice In Wonderland (Disney Version) Adventures of Baron Munchausen Alien Aliens All That Jazz Altered States American Beauty An American Werewolf In London Annie Hall Being John Malkovich The Birds Blade Runner Blue Velvet Close Encounters of the Third Kind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Dirty Harry The Deer Hunter Dumbo The Elephant Man Empire Strikes Back Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind The Exorcist Eyes Wide Shut Fantasia Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Fight Club The Fly (1986) Forrest Gump The French Connection Full Metal Jacket The Godfather I & II The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Goodfellas Halloween Hellraiser Hero The Howling Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Jacob's Ladder Jaws Jurassic Park Kill Bill, I & II Little Big Man Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels Mary Poppins M*A*S*H Mulholland Drive One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest The Pianist Phenomena (Dario Argento's) The Producers Pulp Fiction Psycho Raiders of the Lost Ark Raging Bull Ran The Ring Rocky The Royal Tenenbaums Saving Private Ryan Schindler's List The Shining Star Wars The Sting The Texas Chainsaw Massacre The Thing (John Carpenter's) Taxi Driver Yellow Submarine Wizard of Oz 25th Hour
Universally acclaimed films that I acknowledge are great but not a huge fan of:
All The President's Men Barry Lyndon Bonnie and Clyde Boogie Nights Bridge Over River Kwai Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Casablanca Chinatown Citizen Kane Dances With Wolves Easy Rider ET - The Extra Terrestrial Fargo Gone With The Wind The Graduate It's A Wonderful Life King Kong Lawrence of Arabia The Longest Day Midnight Cowboy Notorious Paths of Glory Platoon Rebel Without A Cause Saturday Night Fever Seven Sumurai Silence of the Lambs Singing In The Rain Sound Of Music Spartacus The Terminator Titanic West Side Story The Wild Bunch
Films That Are Not Great But I Have Guilty Pleasure In:
Aladdin (Disney Version)
Austin Powers Movies
Back To The Future
Bend It Like Beckham
Blade
Bruce Lee's Kung Fu Flicks
Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Irwin Allen's Disaster Movies
Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Flicks
Jet Li's Kung Fu Flicks
James Bond Movies
Japan's Monster Movies (Eg. Godzilla)
Jean Claude Van Damme's Action Flicks
Kirk Russell's Early Disney Movies
The Matrix Series
The Muppet Movie
Sinbad and Eye of the Tiger
SpiderMan 2
Super Man Movies
Stephen Chow's Hong Kong Films
The Mummy movies by Stephen Sommers
Underworld
The Wiz
Favorite Directors:
Cohen Brothers
David Lynch
Francis Ford Coppola
Martin Scorsese
Quentin Tarantino
Sergio Leone
Stanley Kubrick
Steven Spielberg
Terry Gilliam
William Friedkin
Woody Allen
Zhang Yimou
Universally Acclaimed Directors Who I Acknowledge As Great But Not A Huge Fan Of:
Akira Kurosawa Alfred Hitchcock Bernardo Bertolucci Billy Wilder David Lean Don Siegel John Cassavetes John Huston John Schlesinger Mike Nichols Ridley Scott Robert Altman Sam Peckingpah Sidney Lumet Sidney Pollack Spike Lee
Directors Who Are Good But Never Great:
Adrian Lyne
Alan Parker
Brian DiPalma
Chris Columbus
John Avildsen
John Badham
Michael Mann
Philip Kaufman
Richard Attenborough
Rob Reiner
Robert Benton
Robert Redford
Robert Zemeckis
Tony Scott
Directors Who Can Potentially Be Great:
Ang Lee Alexander Payne Christopher Nolan Cameron Crowe David Fincher Guy Ritchie Jim Jarmusch (Some say he is already great) M. Night Shyamalan Paul Thomas Anderson Shari Springer Berman Steven Soderbergh (He's a big maybe: read my feelings about him below) Terry Zwigoff Wes Anderson
Directors I CAN'T stand:
John Hughes
John Woo
Michael Bay
Oliver Stone
Roberto Benigni
Ron Howard
Wayne Wang
Great Directors Whose Films I Shamefully Haven't Seen Yet:
Edward Yang Frederico Fellini Francois Truffaut Fritz Lang (I have Metropolis DVD that I never watch!) Ingmar Bergmann James Ivory John Ford Mira Nair Kaige Chen Werner Herzog Wim Wenders Wong Kar Wai
Favorite Non Directors:
Charlie Kaufman (screenwriter)
Douglas Trumbull (legendary visual effects pioneer of 2001 and Close Encounters)
Jim Henson
Ray Harryhausen (stop motion animation pioneer)
Rick Baker (legendary makeup artist)
Rob Bottin (make up artist of "The Thing")
Stan Winston (animatronics pioneer)
Tom Savini (makeup artist of horror moves)
Silliest Best Picture Winners (films that should have won in parethenses)
Kramer Vs. Kramer in 1979 (Apocalypse Now)
Oliver in 1968 (2001: A Space Odyssey)
Ordinary People in 1980 (Raging Bull)
Shakespeare in Love in 1998 (Saving Private Ryan)
Favorite Cult Directors
David Cronenberg George A. Romero John Waters Ken Russell Ralph Bakshi Tobe Hooper Wes Craven
Great Films I Haven't Seen Yet And HAVE To See (now why haven't I seen them yet??)
All Quiet In The Western Front
Ben Hur
The Birth of a Nation
The Maltese Falcon
Metropolis
Once Upon A Time In America
On The Waterfront
Rashamon
The Quiet Man
The Searchers
A Streetcar Name Desire
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Touch of Evil
8 1/2
My Pick As The Most Important Filmmaker Of All Time:
Some serious film lovers will laugh at my pick - Walt Disney. But if you do research and read what he did, you will not disagree. Disney always demanded innovation in moviemaking and was breaking barriers left and right; he was an amazing pioneer of film like no other (though many would argue Welles is more influential). He opened the creative floodgates and provided inspiration to many of the greatest filmmakers such as Orson Welles, Kubrick, Spielberg, and Lucas to help transformed cinema. He is unfairly known today as a creator of silly children films; but you have to see real Disney by watching his groundbreaking films such as Snow White, Dumbo, Fantasia, Alice In Wonderland and Mary Poppins. The complete cinematic experience you see in today's movies is mostly derived from Disney's amazing vision he had way back in the 40s with 'Fantasia.' Fantasia was the first to use stereo sound and other cinematic effects. Many of modern films such as '2001' , 'Star Wars', 'Close Encounters', 'ET', etc have Disney elements (yes, not making this up about '2001': go see 'Fantasia' and 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks'). He foresaw the important use of visual effects and was the first to use robots and animatronics (later made famous by Stan Winston and Jim Henson) in films such as "20000 Leagues Under The Sea." Even after he died, his company continued to innovate. For example, computer animation have roots in Disney (eg., Tron was known as the first computer animated film.) Lucas mainly copied Disney's ideas and created Industrial, Light and Magic, THX Sound, etc. Today, Disney company represents the worst in mainstream (unless you include the fact that Disney owns Miramax, which made some of the greatest films of the past decade.) I cringe at their current animated films. However, the present doesn't overcome the amazing accomplishments Disney has done in his career.
The Film Maker Who I Love...And Hate At The Same Time
The person is...you're in for a shock...George Lucas! I loved his Star Wars flicks. Seeing Star Wars was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Watched Star Wars over thirty times. Up to a point, I agree he's one of the most important figures in Hollywood history. However, having said that, he basically stole the engineers from the technician team of '2001' and claimed that he revolutionized special effects; in this regard, Douglas Trumbull and Kubrick should have gotten the credit. Lucas's company is worth over billions thanks to Trumbull and Kubrick, whom Lucas barely gave credit. I think this is a big injustice. Lucas didn't just steal from Trumbull and Kubrick. His computer animation ideas were stolen from Disney, whose revolutionary "Tron" was released in 1982. Lucas also didn't make any great film since American Graffiti and Star Wars. The truth is his list of films isn't that impressive. Lastly, as Ebert have said, the day that 'Star Wars' was released was the day films died. After 'Star Wars', great artistic directors were told to take a hike and film producers were more interested in making money than making art. The Golden Age of the 70s, considered the greatest era in Hollywood, ended with 'Star Wars.' The effects are still being felt today (most films seem to be made by Xerox machine.)
Greatest Modern Director His films 'Dr. Strangelove', '2001: A Space Odyssey', and 'Barry Lyndon' introduced revolutionary film techniques that are still being used today. Eg., the battle sequences in "Saving Private Ryan" copied the battle sequence in "Dr. Strangelove." Barry Lyndon introduced natural lighting which is used by 'Amadeus' and other films about nineteenth century. I need not say much about '2001' (read above about George Lucas), whose mind-bloggling shots inside space ships still astound today (eg., pen floating in gravity-less air that is grabbed by a space flight attendant; people walking on walls and ceilings; astronaults floating around). Just as Orson Welles' film techiques dominated the forties, fifties and sixties, Kubrick's techniques dominated seventies, eighties, nineties and today. Other great directors who helped shaped modern cinema: Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman and William Friedkin, kings of the ultra-realistic documentary-style films which use lot of improvisational acting and overlapping dialogue, techniques that made the characters very believeable. And of course, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who basically created the modern entertainment mainstream film.
Stanley Kubrick. Most of the reknowned directors today, such as Ridley Scott, Lucas, Spielberg, David Lynch and James Cameron were greatly influenced by Kubrick.
The Film Makers Who Were Great At One Point...And Who I Want To Be Great Again
Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Cimino and John Carpenter. Coppola made some of the greatest films of all time in the 70s ('The Conversation', 'Godfather' films and 'Apocalypse Now.') But since 'One From The Heart', he had made one crap after another. He seems to have totally lost his Midas Touch. Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" is one of the most beloved movies of all time. But after the colossal failure "Heaven's Gate", he lost his creative powers in Hollywood and never was able to make a great film again. He made a mini-comeback with the underrated "Year of the Dragon" (a film that was unfairly criticized as racist but is probably the most realistic film about America's Chinatowns) and "The Sicilian" in 1987 but totally disappeared after that. I feel if he didn't make the disaster "Heaven's Gate", he would have made many more masterpieces and would have been on the same level as Coppola and Scorsese. John Carpenter is one of the best from the Hitchcock School of Suspense and made two of the greatest suspense/horror films in 'Halloween' and 'The Thing.' Then he began to believe that every day is Thanksgiving day by creating all turkeys since 1982. A very sad decline. The other former great directors who haven't done much recently: Sidney Lumet ('Dog Day Afternoon', 'Serpico'), William Friedkin ('The Exorcist', 'The French Connection') and Arthur Penn ('Little Big Man')
Director I Liked In Beginning But Now Getting Kind Of Annoyed
Steven Soderbergh. It seems like he wants to overwhelm us with excess cinematography and other gimmicks instead of concentrating on screenplay. Take 'Traffic' for example. Not a bad film but do you HAVE to overdo those 'Saving Private Ryan' type shots? I got pretty dizzy after a while. Spielberg's, Kubrick's and Zhang Yimou's films have amazing cinematograpy but their cinematography is not dizzying at any means (they mostly have straight steady shots.) Soderbergh seems to be from the school who wants camera movement in every scene when stationary shots are great enough. Soderbergh's a very talented director who needs to limit his need to overwhelm us visually. Once you look past the great eye candy of his films, you realize that his screenplays are pretty preposterous and not very credible. Another director who potentially might be like Soderbergh: Paul Thomas Anderson. I only saw one of his films, 'Boogie Nights.' It SEEMS like Anderson also does the same things as Soderbergh. But I'll give him a chance when I watch his other films.
Reviews
MASH (1970)
One Of The Greatest Films Ever Made
Some people may think I'm insane for saying this. But this is one of the greatest movies ever made. It was so shockingly different back in 1970 and it influenced war films in the 70s (the "war is insane"-type atmosphere of the film was used by "Apocalypse Now".) The black comedy elements are as original as Dr Strangelove. I have watched this film over ten times and I get astounded each time by it's amazing originality. It's too bad Robert Altman doesn't get as much as recognition as Kubrick or Fellini though I feel he is in the same league. Today the admirable but inferior TV series is more well-known than the movie but I feel the movie is one of the great achievements in film history.
Titanic (1997)
A Great Film - Even With A Flawed Love Story
Lot of men truly hate this movie. I don't blame them. An ultra-silly love story that is basically unrealistic as well as naive; it's a purest example of puppy love.
However, I really do think this is an excellent film. You take away the love story, and you will see a very accurate portrayal of an very tragic event.
There are some scenes that will break everyone's heart. One is the old couple waiting to die in their bed as their room is being consumed by water. Another is the string quartet playing music while death and destruction surround them. The scene that really wrenches my gut is when the captain commits suicide. I find these scenes very emotional mainly because they probably actually happened.
Is the love story really corny? You bet. But many films such as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "The English Patient", and even "Lord of the Rings" have lot of silly sentimental corny love story lines but they are much more acclaimed than Titanic. I have a feeling the reason why this film got so much bad rap is that much of the audience are very young females and that their being head-over-heels over DiCaprio annoyed lot of men. (I think DiCaprio DID do a mediocre performance in this movie.) But the silly love story in my mind didn't affect the emotionally devastating impact I had watching the powerful sequences of death and dying. "Saving Private Ryan" is the only other film that affected me more than "Titanic" in showing the horror of human beings struggling to survive.
Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970)
Contains One Of The Greatest Battle Scenes
"Tora! Tora! Tora!" is not exactly a great film. Mediocre acting and script. However, it contains one of the greatest battle scenes ever shot on film, if not the greatest. It's a treat for war film lovers to watch. I still find the simulation of the Pearl Harbor attack to be a totally mesmerizing spectacle.
This film is done before CGI, which the vastly inferior "Pearl Harbor" used ad nauseum. This fact makes this film much more amazing. (This film must cost 300 million to make nowadays!)
The only bad battle scene in this movie is the bombing of Arizona, in which you can tell the ship is floating on a bath tub. But other than that, you'll be hard-pressed not to say, "Wow!"
Little Big Man (1970)
A Far Superior Film To "Dances With Wolves"
This masterpiece of Arthur Penn (who also did "Bonnie and Clyde") is a far superior film to "Dances With Wolves" but probably a lot less known.
There are several truly heartbreaking scenes in this film that made me almost completely break down. *Spoilers ahead!* One is is the reservation slaughter sequence. And another is the ending in which the Chief was awaiting his death but it didn't come; pretty soon his kind would "die" since it would be nearly wiped out.
I personally don't know why this film wasn't more popular especially after "Dances With Wolves" was released. Also, there doesn't seem to be much talk among modern critics (it was rarely reviewed in Rottentomatoes.com or rarely talked about in IMDb's messages.) This is one of the greatest films of the 70s that should get the attention it deserves.
Saving Private Ryan (1998)
One Of The Cinematic Experiences Of My Life
Watching "Saving Private Ryan" was one of my greatest cinematic experiences.
The first twenty minutes of the film is truly astonishing. It's as if I was actually running up the beach, with bullets going all around me, slicing people to bits and bombs blowing off everywhere, tearing everyone to shreds. There was a feeling of total hopelessness of the existing and forthcoming carnage around me.
I remember when I first saw the film, there was somebody left of me who was so traumatized by the Omaha invasion sequence, she covered her eyes and went out of the theater. There was a seemingly hardened old man right of me who said he has never have seen such horrifying experience in his life.
Yes, this film has many flaws. I found the script to be very conventional and there were many corny cliches. The characters are not very well developed. Even the tank battle at the end, an amazing scene than matched the Omaha scene in tension, is pretty much Hollywoodized; it showed many military inaccuracies. I had participated in message boards that many military analysts rightfully criticized the ending as being very unrealistic.
However, it's still hard to not say this is a groundbreaking powerhouse of a war film that will (and had probably already) changed Hollywood war cinema forever. The intense violence of this film will teach generations of people that war is not fun and games. War really sucks.
National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)
It's a DAMN funny movie!
Let's admit the truth about "Animal House." It's pretty much a b-movie. The dialoque is very stupid. The story is pretty simple. The corny Us-vs-Authority idea is used a million times. The direction is very horrible (don't really blame Landis for this - and I think Landis is a great director as evident by "An American Werewolf in London" - because the studio made him rushed the project.) It's full of cliches. The film seems to made for TV if not for the swearing and sex. It's really a stretched-out version of a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
Having said this, I saw "Animal House" close to ten times and I can't stop laughing each time. It's in my tope ten favorite comedies.
The genius of "Animal House" is that it intended to a b-movie type of film. Nothing is taken seriously. The casting is excellent and the comic timing of all the performances are very great.
I understand since there have been so many imitators the film might seem very outdated. However, please see the film as it as if you were back in 1978.
Vietnam: A Television History (1983)
A Good Series That Won't Satisfy War Buffs
Not a bad television series. However, this program is mainly a political history of the war and not really a military history. True Vietnam War buffs will be disappointed by it's very brief mentioning of the Ia Drang battle, Khesanh siege, etc. There were NO mention of the battles of 1966. Some of the legendary battles of the war such as Dak To and Dong Ha are brushed aside.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)
One of Spielberg's Worst
This is should be in Spielberg's waste basket of disposables along with "Hook", "Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade", and "1941." Spielberg seemed bored and rushed through out this project. Unlike "Jurassic Park", which is one of the best suspense films of the past twenty five years (very few scenes can come close to the nerves-splitting T-Rex scene in which the kids were menu items in a car), this film doesn't have any ounce of tension.
Luckily, after this film, Spielberg made one of the greatest films of the all time in "Saving Private Ryan" so that this potentially Tyrannosaurus Rex type disaster became only a small glitch in his career.
Year of the Dragon (1985)
One of the more realistic films about Chinese Americans
When "Year of the Dragon" was released in 1985, it was ripped to pieces by Chinese anti-defamation organizations as being a very racist film. The film was likewise given lot of bad reviews by critics, who probably wanted to be politically correct.
Being a Chinese American who was raised in Boston's Chinatown, I had expected bad things about this film. Even though "The Deer Hunter" is a great film, the depictions of Vietnamese and Chinese in that film are truly horrendous (no, Chinese DID NOT engage in Russian Roulette!!) I expected the same with "Year of the Dragon." I was totally shocked after I saw the film at how realistic the film was about Chinatown. I do understand many Chinese Americans do not want themselves portrayed as drug dealers, gang members, etc. However, I don't think there has been any film in Hollywood history who portrayed the dark side of Chinatown as accurately as this film. I know because I grew up in the area when there lot of Chinese street gangs and mafia activity.
The sad thing is after this film was released, depictions of Chinese Americans has gotten a LOT worse; they are depicted as chopsocky kung fu gangsters (now isn't that ironic!!) in Jet Li and Jackie Chan movies, or as baby killers, rapists, or domineering bigots in "The Joy Luck Club" (by the way, this film is truly truly AWFUL in it's portrayals of Chinese; the ignorant critics however gave this movie great reviews.) Strangely, Chinese anti-defamation leagues has been very silent during these years.
"Year of the Dragon" is Cimino's unappreciated gem. According to my view, it's his second best film. I understand this film has flaws but Cimino was brilliant in showing the side of Chinese Americans that few Americans know. Not all of us Chinese went to CalTech or MIT and became successful software engineers or research scientists.
The Thing (1982)
When John Carpenter Ruled As A Horror Director
According to my view, "The Thing", despite it's flaws (most notably the lack of character depth), is one of the greatest sci-fi horror films ever made. In many ways, it's better than the other ground-breaking sci-fi horror film "Alien." I was jolted a lot more in "The Thing" than I was in "Alien"; the suspense sequences of "The Thing" are so intense at times, you can almost feel your blood vessels about to burst, your nerves about to be ripped from your body; only "Jurassic Park" did better. And I feel the astonishing make-up/animatronic effects of Rob Bottin is far superior to the rubber costume in "Alien." Only after "Aliens" was released was "The Thing" surpassed in animatronic effects.
I am very disappointed that John Carpenter hasn't made a great horror film after this one. Along with "Halloween", he made some of the greatest horror masterpieces of the past twenty-five years.