There’s a hashtag thing going around Twitter now – #fav7films – via which people list their favorite seven movies. Here’s my brief list. I’d say three of the slots are subject to change at given time, but this is the list now:
1. The Conversation: It’s held at number one for a long time now. It’s a nearly perfect slow burn/psychological thriller on its merits, but as someone who often catches himself observing the world more than actually living in it, it resonates with me a bit more than most movies do.
2. Zero Effect: I like it for some of the same reasons I like “The Conversation,” though it’s obviously goofier. But it’s nowhere near as goofy as it seems on first look. There are some deceptively deep psychological waters being explored here and Bill Pullman, Kim Dickens and Ben Stiller all hit the perfect notes as they explore theirs.
3. Casablanca: It’s not all psychological crap for me. Sometimes you just gotta be entertained by some perfect old Hollywood romance, drama and humor. This may be the most perfect blending of all three in cinematic history.
4. Miller’s Crossing: It may not be the “best” Coen Brothers movie – “Fargo” is probably a better movie all things considered – but I’m a sucker for their more affected works for some reason and this one, while crazily affected, is just a joy to watch and quote over and over again. I like to think of Tom Regan as The Big Lebowski’s grandfather.
5. Chinatown: As a general rule, I like my heroes to only have half a handle of what’s going on until the very end, even while fighting like crazy to come out on top. And even once they get a handle on it and the plot resolves itself, I like them to still be perplexed by everything that happened and unsure what will happen next. Life is sort of like that. Forget the less-than-memorable sequel. I prefer to think that Jake Gittes was a profoundly changed man after what went down in this movie. It’s one of the rare pieces of hard boiled detective fiction where the detective takes the journey and doesn’t keep his cool detachment, even if it’s subtle here.
6. Dark City: I could make separate top-7 lists for detective movies, psychological thrillers and sci-fi. But all three of them landing in one movie like this makes this a great proxy for it.
7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: This is an odd one, I realize, and on purely cinematic terms it’s no masterpiece. It’s a very personal choice for me, however, and I have it here out of respect for what it means for me more than for what it is. I’ve written about it before, but this movie hit me at a perfectly imperfect time in my life when the decision between trying to deal with bad experiences vs. trying to utterly deny and obliterate them from one’s memory was more than just a theoretical one for me. It’s still something I struggle with.
Anyway, sorry to anyone who was expecting to see “The Godfather,” “Citizen Kane” and “Goodfellas.” They’re all good too, though.
