'Lists are fun' - Maps

so Maps had the idea we list our top ten favourite movies of all time, might spark some debate....here’s mine:

10) Cannibal! the musical - Trey Parker. ‘the first intelligent musical about cannibalism’. This one had to make the list somewhere, it stars Trey Parker of Southpark fame and is just such a quintessential satire on all things Hollywood.

9) Bed and Board – Truffaut. The lightest touch of any movie director I’ve seen, every scene seems to flick effortlessly into the next, whilst maintaining a flat-out pace, a genuine delight.

8) Blue Velvet – David Lynch. Pretty much my favourite director, I could have put at least four of his films in this list, but this one has to make it coz of madman Dennis Hopper’s performance and the great scene where the drug supplier in make-up lip-synchs a Roy Orbison song to the gangsters in his lounge.

7) Dogville – Lars von Trier. This movie set on a black stage with lines painted on it to depict a town, pissed me off for almost the first two-thirds of the film, ‘you cannot do this in a film which by its nature is so dependent on cinematography.’ The bastard won me over in the end though with the outstanding plot/acting. Lars von Trier, one of the few directors who likes to investigate ideas in a film. Often attacking ‘idealism’.

6) Magnolia – Paul Thomas Anderson. 3hrs long, 5 stories interwoven, a sub-text of illusions being shattered so the characters are forced to encounter the underlying pain in their lives. William H Macy stunning as the battered child-star trying to deal with his fractured past. Chris Knox said he came out of this movie, hopped on the bus to go home and just started to cry.

5) Cobra Verde – Werner Herzog. I could probably have chosen any of the Klaus Kinski/Werner Herzog films here, they’re all good in their individual ways, Fitzcarraldo, Aguirre, Nosferatu, Woyzech. Cobra Verde has a very cool beginning though with a bare-foot Kinski swaggering into a dusty outback town people fleeing at the sight of him, and the scene where he runs totally crazed through hundreds of topless pole-wielding African women, Kinski at his best.

4) Wild at Heart – David Lynch. Every gesture is overplayed in this film, the mad mother smothering her face in red lipstick, the tripped out voodooists before they execute someone, William Dafoe pissing loudly in the toilet as he tells the girl she should listen to the ‘heavy sound he’s making’. Nicholas Cage wearing a snakeskin jacket which is a ‘symbol of his individuality and his belief in personal freedom’ seriously cool from start to end.

3) Pulp Fiction – Quentin Tarantino. I almost wish I didn’t like Tarantino so much, Pulp Fiction has become a bit of a cliché, problem is, its so damn good. Tarantino is addictive on the big screen, he’s like a warm glow of drugs and alcohol stirred in with great dialogue, as the title says pulp fiction, is his forte, and he’s great at it.

2) New York New York – Martin Scorsese. Funny, all the Scorsese fans I talk to, they never mention this film, its always the gangster ones or Taxi Driver, but to me this is his best film. It has a kind of poetry to it, from the intensity of De Niro’s performance, to the great singing of Liza Minnelli (and I am by no means a fan of the musical style of singing), the dynamics between the characters and the subtlety of the ending when Liza turns around before walking out to rejoin De Niro, this whole movie just works.

1) Bad Boy Bubby – Rolf de Heer. This was my favourite movie for nigh on ten years, so it gets to stay no 1 for sentimental reasons. The lead performance of a guy who’s been locked in a concrete room with his incestual mum for 35yrs without ever having been outside, the Kasper Hauser type of investigation into how human personality functions, the weird epic-like scenes, the sheer plethora of information that Rolf tries to fit in one film, from the intellectually handicapped to parental abuse to ‘Fuck you God!’ to Bubby shedding his old persona ‘Me Pop now’ to sex to outrageous band performances and somehow he manages to keep it all coherent and moving at the same time.