Thoughts

On my favorite movies

Name your favorite movies. I’m gonna keep submitting this ’til you post em, beeyotch.

 

Okay, okay. In no particular order and off the top of my head:

  • Children of Men
  • Beasts of the Southern Wild
  • The Princess Bride
  • True Romance
  • Ferris Beuller’s Day Off
  • The Usual Suspects
  • Groundhog Day
  • Searching for Bobby Fisher
  • Defending Your Life
  • Interstellar
  • Trading Places
  • Heathers
  • The Imitation Game
  • Midnight in Paris
  • Goodfellas
  • Grosse Point Blank
  • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
  • The Shawshank Redemption
  • Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
  • Heat
  • The Big Lebowski
  • Dead Poets Society
  • Clue
  • Black Swan
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
  • Point Break
  • Moonrise Kingdom
  • Working Girl
  • The Breakfast Club
  • Boogie Nights
  • Michael Clayton
  • Amelie
  • Labyrinth
  • The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
  • The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
  • Raising Arizona
  • Cold Mountain
  • Pretty Woman
  • The Godfather I and II
  • Love Actually
  • Good Will Hunting
  • The Fifth Element
  • Ordinary People
  • Clueless
  • The Silence of the Lambs
  • Fargo
  • Magnolia
  • Steel Magnolias
  • Monty Python’s Life of Brian
  • The Truman Show
  • Being There
  • Amadeus
  • Pulp Fiction
  • Tree of Life
  • Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
  • Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
  • A History of Violence
  • L.A. Story
  • Cloud Atlas

(I know I’m forgetting some, so I reserve the right to revise and extend my list.)

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107 thoughts on “On my favorite movies

  1. Chris says:

    That one-l0ng-tracking-shot scene towards the end of Children of Men is nuts. It never fails to get me choked up.

    (This is a good mix of movies I love, movies I’ve been meaning to see, and movies I haven’t heard of but will put in my DVD queue.)

  2. bramble says:

    Beasts! Its makers are good friends & almost definitely among your readers. They will be so pleased. How nice to feel connected to a piece of art that means something to you. Thank you for sharing all of this.

    • Tessa says:

      I thought the same thing! I would’ve thought Coke had a penchant for the James Stewart or Humphrey Bogart era. (It Happened One Night- check it)

    • Rose says:

      I feel similar to how (I think) she feels. I’ve studied a lot of film, and I’ve watched a lot of the classics, American and foreign. I love film history, I love digging through the old stuff, puzzling over the French New Wave and Neorealism and piecing the history together. I love the feeling of completion from finally seeing a classic I’ve been hearing about for years. However, I don’t really LOVE most of those grand old films. I appreciate Casablanca and Citizen Kane, and Kurosawa has a special place in my heart, but none of them resonate with me on a deep, emotional level the way movies from our era do.

      (There are exceptions, though. The biggest I can think of at this moment is Ikiru.)

  3. Stephanie says:

    I’m also surprised that nothing before 1969 is on there. I thought that All About Eve, or Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? would be on there….

    • The Coquette says:

      When I was a kid, my mother ruined me when it comes to old movies. (That’s all she ever watched, and therefore all I was allowed to watch.) There are a few that I like, though. Off the top of my head:

      Dr. Strangelove
      The Big Sleep
      Wizard of Oz
      Lawrence of Arabia
      North by Northwest
      Breakfast at Tiffany’s
      Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      Casablanca
      La Dolce Vita

  4. I approve of this list and I’m guessing that a lot of us will go and watch Cold Mountain. A movie I had dismissed along with Seabiscuit and other early 00s oscar folly.

    I’m so happy for everyone who will go and watch Working Girl for the first time because of this list. That movie is wonderful and I feel like it wouldn’t get made today.

    If you haven’t seen it I reckon you might like Jodorowsky’s Dune. Actually…knowing your favourite documentaries would be pretty sweet.

  5. KG says:

    I always use the Shawshank Redemption as a litmus test for working out whether someone’s taste in movies is any good. I find pretty much 100% of the time, you can write someone’s taste off immediately if they tell you they didn’t like Shawshank.

    • Jules says:

      My husband and I use Buckaroo Bonzai as our movie advice litmus test. If the adviser hasn’t seen it, we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, but if they didn’t *like* it, well, clearly our tastes will not overlap.

    • erica says:

      Honest trailers did a great one on youtube. I’m trying not to lose respect for coke because this is on the list. But hey we all have shit we like that other folks be like WUT. But since there’s other stuff on the list I totally approve of I guess we’re still cool.

  6. definitely not batman says:

    Aw, I love that you love The Fifth Element. I know it pretty much by heart and I’m surprised not more people do. Whenever I reference it, it falls flat. At least I had some personal satisfaction out of identifying myself as a “meat popsicle” at that horrible time when otherkin and such were a thing on Tumblr. Man I’m so glad I’m off that shit site.

  7. HM says:

    I’m so glad Moonrise Kingdom is on there! And… are you talking about the old or the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (please say old)?

  8. Miranda says:

    Still kickin’ FWIW, and this could be a list I wrote myself Coke. Except I would have included The Philadelphia Story, just adore that film, sexism and all.

  9. Sara says:

    The astonishing amount of overlap between your list and mine makes me think we must have extremely similar values when it comes to movies and this makes me feel good.

  10. A bit high says:

    I had always pictured you as someone working in the music industry, but now my idea of you has changed into a movie producer or casting director or something of the like. This list is as impressive as it is intriguing. I love getting small glimpses into the life of Coketalk. I want to rewatch/watch all of these movies now!

    • a long time reader says:

      It’s interesting you say that. I had also always imagined that she worked in film. But after seeing this list I’m 95% sure she hasn’t. No heavy hitter “canon” films that someone working in film would likely include. Very populist list. Which I should make clear isn’t a value judgement. Like whatever you like Coquette.

      I guess I was just expected to see some more foreign films (Kieslowski, Bergman, Tarkovski). Very interesting CQ

      • The Coquette says:

        There’s a difference between favorite films and best films. Honestly, I could write a cogent analysis of the French New Wave’s influence on Italian Neorealism, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy Godard or Fellini. The movies that I like are contemporary, fairly mainstream, and rarely foreign. I go to movies to feel big sloppy emotions. I’m in it to laugh or cry, not to think. I do plenty of thinking elsewhere. For me, movies are an escape. That’s just how I roll.

        • Rimi says:

          This is almost exactly what I was saying to my boyfriend the other day! I love that Eternal Sunshine is on your list. It’s in my top few films I watch the death out of that film – probably seen it about seven times (usually stick it on after an awful argument because my brand of cathartic melodrama is kaufmanesque) and cry at something different each time.

        • For big sloppy emotions, Inside Out is one of the best. It roller-coasted all the way, and while I knew it would have a happy ending, I loved letting go and feeling the cascading up and down of crying, laughing, then crying and then laughing, all the way through.

  11. Alicia says:

    Surprised to see Love Actually on here, though I freely admit to being heavily biased against it. But in general, this is a really solid list.

  12. thorn says:

    I’m going to recommend maybe the first 45 minutes to an hour of Bad Boy Bubby. The means by which they reach the ending are… not for me… but the first half had such promise for being a fascinating thought experiment about alienation and confinement since birth. Don’t research it at all. Just watch it.

    Also, I was gonna light my hair on fire about the absence of Blue Velvet but I haven’t watched that movie in about a decade. I hope it aged well

  13. Gaybeard says:

    “The secret ingredient is love”

    Interstellar is a very interesting failure.

    The scene where Matthew McConaughey tries to convince Matt Damon to stop head butting him by telling him that he has a 50/50 chance of cracking his own visor and Damon’s character responds “50/50? I haven’t had odds like that in years!” made me laugh so hard I cried. That whole fight was just, so funny and amazing.

  14. perspectivator says:

    Well. Now I have proof you’re not perfect. 🙂

    While I’m thrilled Being There is on the list, I’m fucking shocked that Network isnt.

  15. Jules says:

    Amadeus, Buehler, Heathers and Buckaroo? Either you watched some fun movies at a young age, or you are older than I thought. Those are the movies of my teenish years, and I’m 45.

    You *might* enjoy Better off Dead, it certainly gave me the big emotions, and held up well when I watched it later. Spirited Away is also awesome, if you haven’t seen it.

  16. The Derpy Bear says:

    It is funny how movie lists can leave people surprised or even judgmental. It is possible for people to like both cheesy movies and movies that make people think.

    Like CQ though, I generally watch movies to be entertained.

  17. coskel says:

    surprised no Peter Greenaway on that list.
    The Draughtsmans Contract is pretty wonderful.

    Most folks jump all over The Cook, The Thief,His Wife and Her Lover, but my vote is for early Greenaway.

  18. LC says:

    I love True Romance! I’m sure you’ve seen it but just in case, Natural Born Killers!

    Also, it’s been mentioned by Quinn but I’d also recommend Hedwig.

  19. margarita says:

    Nah, Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell. His Girl Friday. Other movies can do a lot of things, but you want sex on the screen without any sex, you want comedy, you want pathos, you want romance, this is your film. Watch it.

  20. dk says:

    Have you seen Antonia’s Line? My favorite movie ever, and now one of my daughter’s since I shared it with her last year when she was 16. Funny, charming, sex-positive.

  21. Shannon says:

    Right on List! Wish I hadn’t seen most of these already, that’d be a blast. How ’bout Inception… Wings of Desire, Hair, Pappilon and for something completely different: Fletch! Love the list, remembering Working Girl and its ear worm of a theme song & Ordinary People makes me think of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting telling Mat Damon, ‘it’s not your fault!!!!’, except better.

  22. M says:

    Oh man, Dead Poets Society made me cry before Robin Williams’ passing, but now? Gets me in floods every time. I’ve loved several movies of his – Good Will Hunting, Good Morning Vietnam, even Jumanji (…nostalgic childish delight is a powerful thing).
    How do you feel about The Blues Brothers?

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