Top Ten Films then and now
In 2011, Shannon Maldonado (or YOWIE) used to do an INCREDIBLE film blog called I Love Hot Dogs, which is sadly no longer archived. She asked me to contribute My Perfect Ten, below. Someone asked me last night if they’ve changed… Perhaps I would add Tarkovsky’s Stalker, Rocco and His Brothers or Plein Soleil, and admit I still have an unending thing for Room with a View, but I know I had the same thoughts back then too! So basically I haven’t changed at all in a decade have I…..
My Perfect Ten in 2011
1 Don't Look Now
This weird vein of British supernatural horror makes me so excited. Without a doubt the best edited film in history. This film has everything. Blind old ladies, psycho dwarves, real sex and Venice in winter.
2 Eyes Wide Shut
Everything Kubrick touched was genius. Although slated when it came out, I find this strange movie so watchable. I don't even mind Tom Cruise in it. Part of the draw is the music where everything slows down and time seems to stop.
3 Annie Hall
Ah the bittersweetness of 70s intellectual New York. I don't know if Woody Allen’s world really ever existed but I could live in it for a while. I like romantic comedies a little too much but this is the archetype.
4 Blow Up
I was a mod when I was around 17 and I watched this Antonioni film about 300 times to encourage my 60s fantasies. Under the David Bailey style and surface is a genius exploration of the meaning and process of photography.
5 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
Russ Meyer is god. My name is the combination of two of his wacked out stars – Erica Gavin and Francesca ‘Kitten’ Natividad. This stuff is so weird and trippy and pointlessly voyeuristic that you cant help but smile.
6 The Conformist
The best film about Italian fascism and the 1930s. Stars Jean Louis Trintigant (hubba hubba). Even the architecture in every scene has a narrative element to it. Amazing twist at the end too.
7 Phantom of Liberty
Although Bunuel ‘s Belle du Jour is more coherent (and incredibly gorgeous), this is a dream case of surrealism at its most far out. A montage of strange scenes including spider pornography and toilet dining.
8 North by Northwest
Hitchcock always delivers. Bernard Hermann score? Check. Saul Bass title sequence? Check. Ice cold blonde? Check. Cary Grant (as an alternative for James Stewart) as the man accidentally throw into a web of fear? Check.
9 Au Revoir Les Enfants
The two pre-teen boys in this film about collaborators in occupied-France are so beautiful. Their relationship is so touching, everything feels really natural and its definitely Louis Malle’s best movie (and most personal).
10 Pretty in Pink
A film dripping in perfect moments. Jon Cryer lip syncing to Otis Redding. James Spader’s Duran Duran style arrogance. This is the class warfare of 80s America in trash pink perfection.