top ten films off the top of your head

[Nordic]

Suddenly I'm thinking of some great B-movies that I remember.

Race with the Devil. They were supposed to remake that. Not sure if they did or not. That movie always freaked me out.

Terminator. Possibly the greatest B movie ever made.

Christine. Another wonderfully made B-movie. John Carpenter was the master of this stuff. The guy knew how to make a scene with just a couple of camera angles. So effective.

Dark Passage. The old Bogart noir classic. LOVE this movie.

The Haunting of Julia. One of the greatest ghost stories I've ever seen, and almost as creepy as Don't Look Now. That's saying something.

[JackRiddler]

Terminator. Possibly the greatest B movie ever made.

Yes! Pretty much the only good Cameron movie, too. Great car chase, too. I didn't see the others you mention, but in this category, of course: the entire John Carpenter oeuvre.

[Joe Hillshoist]

In no particular order:

Meet the feebles.

Smoke 'em if you got em.

Bran Nue Dae.

Drunken master.

Lone Wolf and Cub. (the first one.)

A Bollywood film I don't know the name of, about a mother whose twin children are killed and who appeals to kali. The kids are reincarnated and come back to get revenge.

Urotsukidōji

Baraka

Metal Skin

Mad Max 2

Ghosts of the Civil Dead

Of course now I've started thinking about it another 50 or so come to mind. But the best of all movies must be BMX Bandits.

[Bruce Dazzling]

This would be a different list every time you asked me, but at his particular moment in time:

2001
The Shining
Dawn of the Dead (original)
Get Carter (original)
The Maltese Falcon
Key Largo
Casablanca
The Machinist
Blade Runner
Day of the Jackal

[psynapz]

I'm really starting to see this thread as one of the class of threads like "5 words GD brings to mind today" or "last post in this thread wins".

10 movies that made me wanna make movies, incomplete and in no order:

Jurassic Park (just the ILM work, which was mindblowing at the time)
Clerks
Pulp Fiction
Mindwalk
Night On Earth
Four Rooms
Glengarry Glen Ross
Cube
Schizopolis
Gray's Anatomy (the Spaulding Gray performance directed by Steven Soderbergh)

[Stephen Morgan]

The Veteran, because I was just watching it. Unusually high level of awareness about parapolitical issues, having both the spook and the drug dealer tell the soldier he was fighting for the drug trade in Afghanistan. Would've been better with an American style happy ending, rebuilding the character from the point where he's at his lowest, about to be decapitated by the spooks. In stead ends badly. Unlike, say, Shooter or Shoot 'em Up. But English films are more likely to have unhappy endings, like My Brother Tom. Best film ever of course is The Wrath of Khan, although I prefered Robin Curtis to Kirsty Alley. 12.01 with Helen Slater also good. Captives with 'Tim Roth and Julia Ormond. I was just watching a Liam Neeson film, they're all pretty much the same, so those're top of my head. Unknown, a sort of less-awful Bourne Identity. The Constant Gardener was sad, and The Importance of Being Earnest made me ponder the improbability of a film where the happy ending is "we can get married because we're cousins, not unrelated after all".

[Nordic]

Ha! A "movies that made me want to make movies" list! Great idea!

1. The Black Stallion
2. Days of Heaven
3. The Conformist
4. The Deer Hunter
5. Midnight Cowboy
6. Diva
7. Jaws
8. Blade Runner
9. The Hunger
10. Halloween
11. Lawrence of Arabia
12. Dr. Zhivago





*********

[DrEvil]

In no particular order:

1. Pinchcliffe Grand Prix
2. Hard Boiled
3. Spoorloos
4. Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Yes, seriously! I love this movie . And it still has one of the best soundtracks ever.
5. Aliens
6. Noroi
7. Serenity
8. Natural Born Killers
9. Terminator 1 & 2 (minigun is an automatic +5 )
10. Where Eagles Dare

[Peregrine]

Ooh. I like this game, can't believe I missed this thread this whole time...
Movies that at least stuck with me for a really long time and/or made a real big impression:

The Road
The Descent (I've completely lost interest in spelunking, thanks to this film)
Grace
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Antichrist
Jacob's Ladder
In the Mouth of Madness
Princes Mononoki
The Thing (not that piece of crap remake that bombed the box ofice recently)
Alien

There's a couple of Studio Ghibli films in there, but pretty much every Studio Ghibli movie ever made has always left a really big impression.

[thurnundtaxis]

Here we go, straight from the top of my head at this very moment:

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Blade Runner
Night Moves
Blood Simple
The Long Goodbye
Time Bandits
Eyes Wide Shut
The Road
Paper Moon
Day of the Locust

[JackRiddler]

Pretty much since seeing Blade Runner on first run (we were thrilled at the visions and the sexual magnetism and laughed at the voice-over and knew it was a last-minute add-on), almost every time I've gone into a movie I've been thinking, "Hope this is like Blade Runner!" So even if it's not the GFME, that's an endorsement.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Pretty much since seeing Blade Runner on first run (we were thrilled at the visions and the sexual magnetism and laughed at the voice-over and knew it was a last-minute add-on), almost every time I've gone into a movie I've been thinking, "Hope this is like Blade Runner!" So even if it's not the GFME, that's an endorsement.

Funny Blade Runner story:

In 2003, I was in a band with a much younger (23) girl. We were watching Blade Runner one night, and about an hour into it she says, with complete sincerity, "wait, is that Han Solo?"

BTW, Blade Runner is on my list. Hell, I'd watch Rutger Hauer read the paper.

[JackRiddler]

BTW, Blade Runner is on my list. Hell, I'd watch Rutger Hauer read the paper.

Well yeah, it's on your list and that's what prompted me to say that.

[Nordic]

Even now I can just watch the shit out of Blade Runner. Its a visual feast, a cinematagraphic masterpiece. Quite possibly the best cinematography and lighting of all time. I'd buy it and hang it on my wall if I could. Its better than even Bertolucci/Storaro, which is kind of an insane thing to say but I feel to be true.

[Stephen Morgan]