1001 Films that ARE worth watching. [start new threads for new films please]

[alcoholic messiah]

I'll nominate the 1994 film Fresh, which is a wee gem of a movie. On the surface it's a drug-dealing ghetto gangsta flick, but there's a lot more depth to it.

It's the story of a smart 12-year old drug-runner, and how he plots and schemes his way to a better life for him and his addict sister, employing the tactical wits gained from playing speed chess with his estranged father (Samuel L. Jackson, in restrained mode).

The main characters are more rounded than the usual sketched archetypes, and crucially, in comparison to its contemporaries, the film never seeks to glamourise the drugs-and-guns lifestyle. Whilst it has its share of violent scenes, they're not gratuitous or without consequence. The direction is unfussy and mostly subdued, in keeping with the fairly grim events depicted.

If you became attached to the kids that were introduced in season 4 of The Wire, you'll probably enjoy this film too. Fresh's young lead also went on to appear in The Corner, a project that David Simon was heavily involved in, and can almost be seen as a test run for what he'd later do with The Wire.

It's notable too for having a "soundtrack album" that featured the first appearance of some choice solo cuts from Wu-Tang Clan alumni, none of which ended up being used in the film itself (the actual score is by ace soundtrack-ist Stewart Copeland).

[Cohaagen]

The 'Burbs
National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1
The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension
Sleeper
Repo Man
Used Cars
Play It Again, Sam


And if you want to see Rod Steiger act the shit out of everyone else, I'd recommend The Pawnbroker and The Sergeant. The latter is on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoHF5w3rXOw

EDIT: Tagger's right, Basketball Heads is a fuckin' blast, duuuuude.

[Johnny Textface]

Dark City Without it, the Matrix would never have happened (probably).

[Serge]

Old films are worth watching too. Old films such as Powell and Pressburger's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. Roger Livesey delivers a performance for the ages. Why he isn't among the upper echelons of classic British actors, like David Niven and such, I dunno.

I still need to get around to seeing 'Colonel Blimp'. My friend Jim saw it and re-enacted the opening scene in such a way that I almost dread the movie not living up to his rendition.

Livesey is also in the utterly magnificent 'League Of Gentlemen', along with Jack Hawkins, Richard Attenborough, Bryan Forbes and Norman Bird, amongst others. Not to mention an early appearance by a young Oliver Reed playing a camp actor. Anyone who's a fan of Ealing comedies such as 'The Ladykillers' and 'The Lavender Hill Mob' should definitely check it out. And if you do, can you explain to me the only thing I don't understand about the movie - why the devil does Jack Hawkins climb out of a manhole in full evening dress in the opening shot??

[Famous Mortimer]

I'll add, as it seems to fit nicely with the idea of this thread,

Straight to Hell

I'm not sure it's even a good film, but it's fairly unique, and that makes it worth your while, I think. A film half made-up of non-actors (the Pogues, Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, Ed Tudor-Pole), shot on knackered old spaghetti western sets, with a plot which could fairly be called meandering...but it's got the sort of spirit in it which doesn't get shown in films all that often, and it's funny, and it's good to see the guys from Repo Man again.

[samadriel]

Well I thought it was great and a shame it didn't do big bucks at the box office.
Brilliantly directed and cut, full of original ideas, great soundtrack, funny oneliners and likeable characters and some retro chip music. What more could you ask for? (Don't bother answering that - looks like everyone hated apart from me - but theres nothing wrong with having a different opinion to everyone else...)

If its box-office failure denied Brian O'Malley money, then I'm glad, but I was surprised to find the movie quite enjoyable; much more pleasant and creative than the hackjob on which it's based.  The wacky graphics were a little annoying sometimes (who knew Scott Pilgrim and Wall Street 2 would have so much in common?), but not enough to sink the whole endeavour.

Oh yeah, '1001 movies'...  Watch the first Wall Street?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Ealing was mentioned earlier, which leads me to nominate The Man in the White Suit. It's one of the lesser known Ealing comedies, I think. It certainly doesn't seem to turn up in the big film magazine lists as much as Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Ladykillers and the like (although I did first learn of it through an Empire sci-fi special).

Sci-fi? Aye. This isn't spaceships and lasers though, but a rather more down to Earth affair, in which scientist Alec Guinness invents an everlasting, stain resistant synthetic fabric which causes uproar in and around the textile mill in which he works. The film gently satirises the relationship between labour and capital and also Guinness' naive idealism.

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

I Married A Witch.

Frederick March. Ronnie Lake. Sheer class.

[lipsink]

Teeth

Perfect little black comedy/indie horror about a young woman who has teeth 'down there'.

Freeway

Reese Witherspoon and Kiefer Sutherland give near-career best performances in a demented kind of modern day update of Little Red Riding Hood.

May

Recommended it on the horror thread. It's bloody great.

Inside

Mental and incredibly violent home invasion French horror movie.

[alan nagsworth]

The Hudsucker Proxy

An utterly bonkers fast-paced piece of cinematic genius in the same vein as 'It's A Wonderful Life' - sure to warm the cockles of whatever smoke-belching engine model powers your human bodies.

And I second the recommendation for In Bruges as it's one of the best films I've seen released in the last ten years, easily. I watched it again the other night and, as I did every time I watched it previously, cried my bloody eyes out.

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

Isn't In Bruges basically just a rip off of Pinter's The Dumb Waiter?

I haven't seen it. Somebody told me this.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It isn't sufficiently similar to criticize it for. Plus once you start playing this game you can regress the history of fictional narrative to the same small number of stories. After all, The Dumb Waiter very likely shares many similarities with many other stories itself.

[uglybob1986]

I'll give In Bruges another glowing reccommendation, and I only saw it because Harpo Speaks gave it a mention in the "Full films on Youtube" thread. It really is a very different film to what I expected it to be (damn tv trailers!).

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

I'm pretty sure Pinter invented the "banal inner lives of hitmen" trope.

Of course, Tarantino nicked it and based his entire career around it...

[Maybe Im Doing It Wrong]

It's well-known, at least according to Wikipedia

"Critics have observed that Martin McDonagh, who has acknowledged being influenced by Harold Pinter,[9] seems indebted to the plot of The Dumb Waiter, as well as to its dialogue, in his award-winning 2008 film In Bruges.[10]"

[Small Man Big Horse]

Harold and Maude - It will genuinely make you want to date the elderly.

[ThickAndCreamy]

For the love of god watch Harold and Maude if you haven't seen it. I was recommended it on here a year ago and watched it in the summer.

It truly is a one of a kind movie: life affirming, beautiful and brutally charming. Watching it conjures up a feeling which so few movies can ever offer, something of almost utter contentment and joy at just being alive.

The above sentence probably understates how good it is, it really is extraordinary.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Oh, absolutely. I only watched it this year as well, though I'd wanted to for years. It's a very unique but incredibly beautiful and touching film, whilst being remarkably funny as well, and would easily make my top 10 of all time.

[Famous Mortimer]

So far, we've got:

X. Basketball Heads

1.   Black Narcissus
2.   Super Troopers
3.   Mesrine
4.   Hot Rod
5.   In Bruges
6.   The Big Hit
7.   Helen
8.   Three Colours: White
9.   Three Colours: Red
10.   Three Colours: Blue
11.   A Single Man
12.   Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
13.   Midnight Run
14.   Speed Racer
15.   Four Lions
16.   Babe 2: Pig In The City.
17.   Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
18.   Deep Water
19.   The Glass Key
20.   Primer
21.   Fresh
22.   The 'Burbs
23.   National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1
24.   The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension
25.   Sleeper
26.   Repo Man
27.   Used Cars
28.   Play It Again, Sam
29.   The Pawnbroker and The Sergeant
30.   Dark City
31.   League Of Gentlemen
32.   Straight to Hell
33.   Wall Street
34.   The Man in the White Suit
35.   I Married A Witch
36.   Teeth
37.   Freeway
38.   May
39.   Inside
40.   The Hudsucker Proxy
41.   Harold and Maude

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I watched Hot Rod earlier. It could have done with another script draft to make it more consistently laugh packed I think, but it was nevertheless a lot of fun. The fall down the mountain was one of the best sustained gags I've seen in ages.

[Ja'moke]

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset.

Perhaps the only truly tolerable romance movies. I think they are perfect in every way, they really get down every detail of meeting someone for the first time that you feel a true connection with. Beautifully directed, and brilliantly performed by Ethan Hawke and Julie Deply.

[Serge]

Yep, they're fantastic. I tend to re-watch both of them about once a year, and they always hold up. I remember when they first started talking about doing a sequel, I was nervous, because I thought they'd have to resolve the open ending of the first, but they did it so well, and managed to give it an equally open ending, that I don't know why I panicked in the first place.

I adore Julie Delpy, she's practically beyond criticism in my eyes, but neither her nor Ethan Hawke have ever been better, and I hope the rumours that they might do a third in a few years time ('Before Noon'?) are true.

[Sxncass]

Save The Green Planet is well worth a watch.

A Korean kidnap film dealing with the possibility of the existence of aliens, and all kinds of other stuff too.

Its a real genre bender, and confounded my expectations on more than a few occasions. A truly unique story.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Synecdoche, New York - I watched this last night and was blown away with it. There's just so much intelligence and beauty and misery and a hundred and one other things to be found within it's running time, and I want to see it again already, despite the fact that I hardly ever rewatch films.

Up / Wall-E / The Incredibles / Finding Nemo / Toy Story 1 - 3 - Bah, those pesky kids don't know how lucky they are. I had to put up with godawful animated fare whilst growing up in the late seventies / early eighties, but these days Pixar are producing some of the most amazing films ever made, and utterly beautifully too. And they seem to be improving with every film, which leads me to predict that by 2020 all children will stop being cunts and the world will be a much much better place due to this one film studio.

A Town Called Panic - It might take a little while to get used to the animation style, but this is one of the most charming and endlessly inventive films I've seen. If you watch it and don't fall in love with it, it's been scientifically proven that there is something badly wrong with you.

Kafka - Once upon a time Stephen Soderbergh made great films. Well, this and King of the Hill, anyway. And then he went mad and decided his previous efforts were rubbish, and now largely turns out empty Hollywood action films or supposedly Oscar worthy films that never really satisfy. But this proves how talented he once was, pulling off a biopic that is a mix of fact and fiction with aplomb.

Better Off Dead - Now a trendyish cult comedy, I loved this back when it first bombed in 1985 (or 86 when it first turned up on video over here, if we're going to be honest about such things). Cusack is perfect as the underdog who is desperate to win his girlfriend back, whilst the rest of his life is filled with everyday insanity. Packed with silly one liners, surreal subplots, and a brilliant finale, it's easily one of the best 80's comedys if you ask me.

[Gulftastic]

Election from 1999. A wonderfuly spike satire on democracy, featuring smashing turns from Reese Witherspoon and Matt Broderick. Amazingly, Chris Klein is also great in this. I wonder how long after he'd made the film he realised that he would never ever star in anything even remotely as good?

[Cambrian Times]

Spirited Away Gorgeous, gorgeous film. Makes me cry everytime.

[djtrees]

I'll nominate the 1994 film Fresh, which is a wee gem of a movie. On the surface it's a drug-dealing ghetto gangsta flick, but there's a lot more depth to it.

Oh ta for this. Acquired this the other day and it was pretty good. Unrelentingly grim but in a good way. I kind of liked how the lead didn't really have a plan or backstory for doing what he did. He just kind of responded to the things that where happening around him.

One that I got the other week was Wet Hot American Summer which I didn't know anything about til I read something about either here or elsewhere on the internet. I completely missed it at the time (2001) but would have been tempted to go and watch it at the pictures. It is a spoof summer camp comedy set in an 80's Jewish Summer Camp with loads of pop culture references and shite jokes. It is done really well though, and the actors (including Janeane Garofalo and Fraisers brother) seem as if they are having a marvellous time which comes across in the film. Not shit and worth 93 minutes of your life.

[waste of chops]

How odd -- I just watched that tonight. Or at least, I watched the first 10 minutes then decided I wasn't in the mood for a comedy so watched Red Eye instead. But still -- how odd!

[mikeyg27]

Black Dynamite was the funniest film I saw last year - a blaxpoitation spoof done with a real understanding of the genre and a consistent stream of great gags (not to mention a kick-ass score).

[Jim Jarmusch]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qsy83/Lonesome_Jim/

Lonesome Jim. Directed by Steve Buscemi.