Some Favorite Films

This being a time for best lists, here are ones I made this April of my favorite films of all time, my favorite films of the eighties, and my favorite films of the nineties. In no special order. Originally published HERE.


GEORGES POUJOULY AND BRIGITTE FOSSEY IN FORBIDDEN GAMES

TRAILER

Here is a recent list I made of films that excited me growng up. I'll add lists for more recent decades.






If I can remember where I was when I watched it, even if it was just on a videotape with friends (NEAR DARK, in Chicago), or if I can picture myself walking out of the theater, it made a strong impression on me. I can remember walking home from downtown San Francisco after THE EMERALD FOREST and how excited and enveloped in the fantasy of the movie I remained. In the case of LE RAYON VERT, I remember walking out of the cinema into a drizzly, cool Paris afternoon and starting to cry. Sometimes it's good to cry, especially if it comes on slowly after the film has ended.

THE NINETIES
For me they are the decade of Wong Kar Wai and Quentin Tarantino.

Quote:

The Grifters (Stephen Frears 1990)
Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai 1990)
A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang 1991)
Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino 1992)
True Romance (Quentin Tarantino 1993)
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai 1993)
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino 1994)
Ashes of Time (Wong Kar-wai 1994)
Clerks (Kevin Smith 1994)
Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson 1997)
Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson 1999)

I like Wes, but it looks like he came into his own after the nineties. I know there are other great directors of this period but there's nothing they made that fits my 10-best of the decade of the nineties list. I also like Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together (1997); in fact it's a favorite. Just watched with pleasure Philip Saville's Julian Barnes adaptation Metroland (1997), but would not claim it's a great film. PTA's Boogie Nigits is much admired but I found it so depressing. Should watch again. Maybe I was just depressed. I love Éric Rohmer, and his A Summer's Tale (1996) is a favorite. Doesn't Kevin Smith's Clerks herald a new kind of American indie film,flexible, minimal,and confidently sarcastic? For me it's all about the director and his concept or, earier,a studio style. French films are seemingly marked by the polish of a local industry and a cultural notion of film concept. I would rank Jean-Luc Godard very high. Somehow no Italian films are on my lists, but they were very important from the post WWII period till around 1966 (Antonioni's Blow-Up). Then, niente. Che è sucesso, ragazzi? (What happened, guys?)


JOHN CUSACK AND ANGELICA HUSTON IN THE GRIFTERS

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.