CatNipped wrote:

...over and over and over again and still love watching.

What about you guys?

OK, you asked. My list isn't very long, but I do like to yammer on about
them, especially since a number of them might not be familiar to everyone.
I hope at least some of you will read this post! And please let me know if
you've seen any of these - and what you thought of it.

"Jacob's Ladder" - Some would call this horror, but it's no slasher film.
This is creepy and weird and confusing, but it's all for a good reason.

"Boyz n the Hood" - Beautifully acted and extremely realistic dialogue.
Makes me cry every time I watch it.

"Thelma & Louise" - Need I say more??

"Stand and Deliver" - About the (real) math teacher in LA who got his barrio
students to learn calculus.

"The Last Picture Show" - Another amazing cast.

"Butterfly (Lengua De Las Mariposas)" - Beautiful film about a schoolteacher
with a classroom of 7-year-olds, in a rural Spanish town during the civil
war. It's from one of the children's point of view, so the politics are in
the background, but are still very much felt.

"Duma" - Story of a cheetah and the boy who loved him. Absolutely adorable.

"Grace of My Heart" - If you like singer-songwriters like Carole King, you'd
probably like this movie. The character is fictional, but the things that
happened in the movie have probably happened many times in real life.

"Groundhog Day" - Who *doesn't* like this movie??

"Longtime Companion" - Another cry-fest. It's about a group of affluent
gay men in New York City, just at the start of the AIDS epidemic. By the
end of the film, several have died and a whole movement has grown out of
the crisis.

"The Machinist" - A very moody psychological thriller.

"Office Space" - Hilarious for anyone who's ever worked in a corporate
office, especially in the software industry, and had the world's most
obnoxious boss.

"Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos)" - Creepy psychological thriller, well done.
But if you've seen Vanilla Sky (which was based on this movie), then you
already know how it's going to end.

"Parenthood" - This movie was underrated, IMO. Yes, it has a lot of sentimental
moments, but the dialogue is hilarious and full of quotable lines, such as:
[mom to bitchy teenage daughter during a fight] "Do you know *why* I have sex
with machinery?"

"Pom Poko (The Raccoon War)" - Lesser-known Miyazaki animation. Disney must
not have picked this one up. Which is OK with me, because I wouldn't want to
hear the dialogue spoken by American actors. Nothing against American actors,
but this is a Japanese movie, after all. I found this one to be the most
powerful of all the Studio Ghibli films. It's beautiful, engrossing, trippy
and has a strong message.

"The Sheltering Sky" - Based on a novel by Paul Bowles, American ex-pat who
lived in Morocco for 5 decades, documenting local folk music and writing.
The story: three young, privileged American tourists traipse through North
Africa during the 1920s. Some bad stuff happens to them. Then some weird
stuff happens. The real reason I love this movie is because of the stunning
cinematography as well as the gorgeous soundtrack. (I was really disappointed
by the soundtrack CD for this movie, though - it was mostly excerpts from
the score written for the film, and contained almost none of the wonderful
indigenous music, mostly Tuareg, heard in the film.)

"The Sixth Sense" - Yep, I was fooled by this one. Sometimes being gullible
is a good thing.

"Storm" - Not to be confused with an American movie by the same name. This
is a Swedish movie. It has all the trappings of a hip film about gaming
and comic books, but when you peel all that away, what you have is this
emotionally wrenching story about a numb, callous jerk who is forced to
remember his past, and (at the risk of sounding totally pretentious) get
his soul back.

"Time After Time" - Malcolm Macdowell as HG Wells, who, in this story, really
did build a time machine. Jack the Ripper's in it, too, and while being
pursued by police, he commandeers the time machine and escapes to the late
1970s. HG follows him there. There are a lot of hilarious "WTF?" moments as
HG tries to make sense of 20th century objects, such as a Snoopy telephone.
There's also a romantic subplot which, for once, is actually convincing.

"Birdy" - This is about an odd, extremely introverted guy who prefers birds
over humans. After a tour in Vietnam, he ends up in a veterans psych unit,
refusing to talk. Actually, he kind of thinks he is a bird. Through flashbacks
you learn all about his love of birds. It may sound weird, but I thought it
was very tender. Note to Peter Gabriel fans: he wrote the soundtrack.

"My Cousin Vinnie" - I've watched this so many times that I'm pretty sick of
it at this point, but I love Marisa Tomei!!

"Mystic River" - Mystery/suspense film about 4 guys who were friends as kids,
and who ended up on different sides of the law as adults. It centers around
a murder mystery, but there's a whole lot more to the story.

"Strangers on a Train" - Classic Hitchcock movie.

"Woodstock" - I saw this in 1970 and it changed my life. Great music, too.

"Z" - This is a political thriller about the right-wing takeover of Greece
in the late 60s (not sure of the date). It's a very convoluted plot and is
hard to follow. I first saw it at age 15 and I understood the entire movie.
Then about 10 years ago, I remembered how engrossing and thrilling it was,
so I rented it - and had *no idea* what was going on. I don't even want to
think about what that says about my brain!


Joyce

--
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary
and those who don't.