some films i have liked

(i generally tend to like things that... are visually beautiful, are wacky, absurd, surreal, bizarre, tell a moving story, have things to say that i feel are important, have brilliant acting, have fabulous funny dialogue, have exciting plots, push the envelope, make you think, make you reexamine your assumptions, create an absorbing atmosphere, make you care about the characters, have nifty technology and lots of explosions, show people kicking ass and taking names, expose me to ways of living with which i am unfamiliar, are in french, make me feel better about the world, make me cry, amaze me, delight me, disgust me, confound me... you could say i have an eclectic taste in film.)

• terry gilliam.
  i love most of his stuff, though most especially brazil, and also time bandits and the adventures of baron munchausen. but i think brazil is just timelessly brilliant.

• arizona dream, emir kusturica.
  this movie is a dream. and it has johnny depp and lili taylor.

• until the end of the world, wim wenders.
  this is a gorgeous, haunting film (as wim wenders' films generally are). wings of desire and faraway, so close! are quite lovely. there are several other wim wenders films i would like to see.

• city of lost children and delicatessen, jean-pierre jeunet & marc caro.
  these films are hauntingly beautiful with fantastic soundtracks and a wonderfully twisted sense of humour.

  le fabuleux destin d'amélie poulain, jean-pierre jeunet.
  made without marc caro, this film actually has daylight in it. it maintains the visual beauty and the sense of fantasy and wonder of the other films, but is bright and sweetly uplifting. audrey tautou, who plays amélie, is perfect in the role and a serious hottie.

• three colors: (blue | white | red), krzysztof kieslowski.
  beautiful works.

• drowning by numbers, peter greenaway.
  you have to be able to leave your cynicism at the door and just appreciate the aesthetic and thematic beauty of greenaway's films in order to like them. most of my friends think he's just an arty pretentious prick...

  other greenaway -- the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover is very good. prospero's books is a very abstract and visually impressive interpretation of shakespeare's "the tempest". the only other greenaway i've so far seen was the pillow book, which i wasn't so impressed by. i have not seen some of the other earlier stuff that's supposed to be good, like a zed & two noughts or the draughtsman's contract.

  also, michael nyman, who kicks ass, usually does the music for greenaway. (his most wellknown work was probably the soundtrack for the piano, also a very good film.)

• the kingdom, lars von trier.
  originally a televised miniseries, this movie has contributed to the conclusion by some that danes are all just freaks. eerie, atmospheric, absurd, hilarious, an engrossing 4 hours. unfortunately the follow up episodes in the kingdom II are not nearly as satisfying.

• toto le héros, jaco van dormael.
  this is just a great happy life-affirming movie. sure it's kinda cheesy, but damn, when a movie ends with me grinning though tears, what can i do.

• jésus de montréal, denys arcand.
  this is a moving film about theatre and religion and the establishment.

• harold and maude, hal ashby.
  so good!

• gas food lodging, allison anders.
  this movie really spoke to me with hope when i was in high school. and i think it planted the seeds in me of a very strong bilingual love fantasy...

• reservoir dogs and pulp fiction, quentin tarantino.
  great filmmaking. great casts. great action. great soundtracks...

• cannibal!: the musical, trey parker.
  "all singing! all dancing! all flesh eating!" before southpark, there was this. a musical based on the true story of alfred packer, a man tried for eating his companions on a mining expedition gone astray. it's even better if you're a musical fan and are familiar with all the classic material trey is working from. simply brilliant.

• dead alive (aka braindead), peter jackson.
  the best of comedyhorror. how can you wrong with a movie that has quotes like "your mother ate my dog" and "i kick ass for the lord"...

  also by peter jackson, meet the feebles, a film about deranged muppets. gruesome and hysterical, with an MPAA classification that reads "No MPAA Rating (Puppet sex, puppet profanity, puppet drug use, puppet violence, puppet nudity)." it also has a fabulous soundtrack that includes the smash hit "sodomy".

• repo man, alex cox.
  this movie is just fantastic. try to spot all the generic products.

• schizopolis, steven soderbergh.
  surreal. wacky. nose army.

  i've really liked most of what i've seen of soderbergh's, which includes traffic and the limey. (and gray's anatomy, but that's a bit different.) i'd like to see kafka, and sex, lies, and videotape.

• the star wars trilogy, george lucas.
  i actually sort of remember going to see the empire strikes back, where my father tells me we stood in line next to jerry garcia.

• raiders of the lost ark, steven spielberg.
  i have a vague memory of somebody my mother worked with getting me to help test some kind of software for laserdiscs when i was in probably 3rd grade. this was the movie i got to play with... random.

• john woo, the killer, hard boiled, other hong kong cinema.
  chow yun fat with a matchstick and two guns. what more could you ask for in a movie.

• classic 80s movies:
  war games, john badham.
  gremlins, joe dante.
  the lost boys, joel schumacher.
  ladyhawke, the goonies, richard donner.
  better off dead, savage steve holland.
  lucas, david seltzer.
  the princess bride, stand by me, rob reiner.
  say anything, cameron crowe.
  heathers, michael lehmann.
  
  and of course the john hughes movies:
  sixteen candles, the breakfast club, weird science, ferris bueller's day off, pretty in pink, some kind of wonderful
  
  (i may not really be part of the mtv generation, having never had cable, but i am definitely a child of 80s movies.)