The Next Fifty

In no particular order:

The Pianist – for a different look at the Holocaust, right BEFORE it started and what things were like in Poland outside of the concentration camps

Schindler’s List – probably would be in my top 50 if I had seen it more than once

Glory – Denzel. Morgan. Together. The end gets me everytime.

Clockers – a Spike Lee film about drug dealing with Mekhi Phifer and Harvey Keital. I saw it 3 times in the theater and bought the soundtrack.

In America – just a beautiful little film about an Irish family living “in America.”

Philadelphia – Denzel. Tom. Together. The end gets me everytime.

North By Northwest – I love the twists.

Psycho – I love the creepiness.

Rear Window – I love the humor.

Silence of the Lambs – I’ll never forget my surprise the first time I saw it when Lector sits up in the ambulance and takes off his “mask.”

About a Boy – I also really like Hugh Grant in Notting Hill and Love Actually.

Do the Right Thing – I haven’t seen it since I was in high school… maybe I oughta change that.

Mean Girls – plays like a 90 minute SNL skit, and really understands today’s teenager.

Saved – some Christians were offended. I was inspired.

The Game – the most underrated and underappreciated thriller of all time.

Seven – packs one heck of a visceral gut punch.

Braveheart – I’ve only seen it once, I’d probably like it more if I watched it more.

The Matrix – on imdb.com, the 1st Matrix movie scores a 8.6, the second- 7.0, the third- 6.4. I’d give the second 3.5 and the third a .1

The Iron Giant – you gotta love the Brad Bird movies (Incredibles, Ratatouille).

A Few Good Men – one of the most quoted movies of my generation.

Field of Dreams – never has a movie captured the love of baseball this well, except for maybe…

The Natural – the shmaltz works for me. Still can’t believe he strikes out at the end in the book.

Aliens – one of the top 5 action movies ever. Love me the Bill Paxton and Michael Biehn.

T2 – also in the top 5 action movies. To this day it is still a killer story with great effects.

Forrest Gump – it amazes me how many adults let their kids watch this movie though!

Hotel Rwanda – horrific, challenging, inspiring.

Reservoir Dogs – I’m a Tarantino fan. Good storywriting here.

Kill Bill 1 & 2 – so stinking cool.

Pulp Fiction – so stinking funny.

Jackie Brown – I have no idea why.

Sin City – the best job a movie has done at really making a comic book "come to life" on the screen. I was surprised by the chivalry of the men in this movie.

American History X – now this one is tough to watch.

The Sixth Sense – I'm still an M Night fan, despite Lady in the Water.

Joy Luck Club – makes me cry every time.

Best in Show – I like dogs.

Something about Mary – nothing is funnier in the entirety of cinema to me than Matt Dillon in those fake teeth.

Unforgiven – great “anti-western”. Saw it with my big bro at the UC theater on Shattuck in 1992!

City Slickers – dang funny movie... with the great Bruno Kirby.

Kramer vs. Kramer – much better than I thought it would be.

Gladiator – spawned so many lesser movies: Troy, Kingdom of Heaven, 300, etc.

The Emperor's Club – great lesson on integrity here.

Back to the Future – probably should have been in my top 50, but I can’t watch it anymore. I’ve seen it too many times. Yet another example instance where the sequels never happened.

The Untouchables – underrated crime flick with a great cast.

The Big Lebowski – the dude abides. And the Coen brothers score again.

Minority Report – it has a character named Danny who went to Fuller Seminary in it, along with great action and mind-boggling musings on predestination vs. free will.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – I wish it didn’t have to end the way it does… so sad... but imagine how sad it would be if we saw 10 more seconds?

Raging Bull – although I never feel like watching it again. We’ve owned it for 3 years and it is still in the wrapping.

Ratatouille – the first of 4 movies from 2007 on this list, it’s more for grown ups than kids.

Into the Wild – it just stuck with me.

Gone Baby Gone – kinda like Good Will Hunting meets Silence of the Lambs.

3:10 to Yuma – some good discussion on manhood here.

There you have it! If you feel like I left one out or you can't see why I included one you hate, put up a post! In the meantime, I will be trying to think up something to blog about now that I finally finished my movie list!

The Greatest Film Ever Made

During the winter of 2004, two young filmmakers were just beginning to hone their craft. One was new to the pressures of writing, directing, and starring in a short film. The other had never worked with adults before, only middle schoolers.

These two men faced challenges such as a shoestring budget, a narrow driveway, and the need to find a camera operator who shared their vision so that they could both be onscreen together for a few shots. In the booming and competitive FCC digital video industry, these two pioneers forged ahead in their quest to show people what they wanted, nay, BEGGED to know: "What do you guys DO all day?"

The answer, my friends, can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwIykc_7nB8&feature=related

Like other great films such as Citizen Kane, The Godfather, and Howard the Duck, you may want to watch this again and again. But you may also want to learn more about what went into the making of the film. For a short documentary, click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QY1UE5XYggw&NR=1

To go behind the scenes and rewatch the first part of the film with commentary from the co-creators, directors, actors, and the key third camera operator, go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIJCZM7E5DA

For commentary on the second part of the film, direct your mouse here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVkjO-8Pb-c&feature=related

Nobody is perfect. Screen legends are human and make mistakes too. For bloopers, go here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOyXprI58IM&feature=related

There you have it, #1 on my list of my 50 Favorite Movies. I encourage you to file your complaints in the comments section of this post. Also, come back next week when I list "The Next 50" - some of my other favorites that missed the cutoff.

One last thing. Hypothetically speaking, let's say that in the winter of 2002 these two filmmakers succumbed to one of the various pitfalls they faced while making this movie, such as the camera battery running out. Let's say the unthinkable happened and A Day In The Life of D Fitty and G Branny was never made. In that event, the world would be a sadder place. And I would have to consider the #2 movie on this list my favorite movie of all time.

2nd Favorite Movie - Magnolia

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

So I'm pretty glad that I've only got one more of these to do. While I used to look forward to writing about a new movie every week, lately I've had to work up the motivation to do even one entry a month. Last week Bethany asked me if I was going to blog on my day off and my response was, "I forgot we even had a blog." But talking about Magnolia does get my juices flowing. I can tell this is gonna be a long post.

Magnolia came out in theaters in 1999, in what has been called "the year that changed movies."
(http://www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,271806_7_0_,00.html)
During the year that served as the eve of the new millenium, an overabundance of spiritually and theologically rich films were released: The Matrix, Fight Club, Run Lola Run, American Beauty, Dogma, The Third Miracle, The Green Mile, The Big Kahuna, Keeping the Faith, The End of the Affair, and After Life. In my mind, Magnolia is the best and richest of them all.

The first time I saw Magnolia was on New Year's Day of 2001. I was living in Fresno at the time and my roommates and I had ordered it through Netflix. I woke up around 10 am, had the house to myself, popped the DVD in, and when it was done I rushed to my computer to find out everything I could about this movie that was unlike anything I had ever seen before. In the way that some people obsess about Star Wars or Star Trek, I developed an obsession for Magnolia. I trolled fan boards searching for Magnolia minutia (of which there is plenty - for example, the placement of 8's and 2's throughout the film and how many characters are named after flowers). I forced friends of mine who had not seen it to watch it with me. I downloaded the songs from the movie and listened to them over and over again. In a way that only a handful of movies in my entire lifetime will, this movie spoke to my very soul.

Magnolia boasts an impressive ensemble cast, many of who worked with director PT Anderson on his first hit, Boogie Nights: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julianne Moore, William H. Macy, John C. Reilly, and Luis Guzman. Joining them is Tom Cruise, who was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the leader of a male chauvinist seminar. Be warned -some of the foulest statements ever uttered by mankind come from the lips of his character in this film. But as we discover, there is a reason for his character saying the things he does and acting the way he does, and that is what the film is all about. A line from the movie is "we may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." It just occured to me that Magnolia shares this theme with another obsession of mine, the TV show Lost. Interestingly, they also share a cast member: actress April Grace who plays an interviewer in Magnolia and the Other on Lost who Mikhail shot in the "Entering 77" episode.

The film toggles between the male chauvinist played by Cruise, a drug addict, a man on his deathbed and his emotionally unstable wife, a TV game show host with a secret life, a washed-up former child star on TV, and a single dad who cares about success more than he cares about his son's well-being. Within this world of absolute anguish, joy can be found in the presence of a few "angels" - Phillip Seymour Hoffman's tender loving nurse, John C. Reilly's incorruptible cop, and a little boy who, in one scene, is positioned so that the angelic wings from a background mural appear to be protruding from his back. While most of the characters have been used and abused by people in their past and continue to draw others into this cycle of despair, these three are able to rise above the filth and seek to draw others out of it.

The Aimee Mann songs "Wise Up" and "Save Me" which were written for the film are two of my favorite songs ever and I cannot hear them without thinking of the movie. This film would not be what it is without the inclusion of these two songs. "Wise Up" comes at the point in the film when people are beginning to realize the poor choices they have made and how it has hurt themselves and others - that perhaps there is still a chance for them to "Wise Up" and redeem their broken lives. In just one of the bold moves that PT Anderson makes, he has the various actors stop what they have been doing in the film and actually sing the song out loud in their regular voices. It is somewhat like what you would see in a musical, but here they actually look directly into the camera, breaking the storied "fourth wall" of cinema and reminding the viewer that they are watching a movie and the people on screen are acting. For some critics, this was ridiculous. For me, in a film as big and bold as Magnolia, it works. Especially since until this point, for about 2.5 hours, there really is not much of an opportunity to ever stop and catch your breath. For a film with so much dialogue and not much "action", Magnolia builds a tremendous amount of tension. As director PT Anderson says, "I tried to structure my movie after (the Beatles' song) 'A Day in the Life,' how it would sort of build build build build build build build--fall off a cliff, and then start building back up again. I took more structurally from that song than from any movie I've seen." The "Wise Up" interlude provides a release of tension to viewers before the grand finale, which is an even bigger and bolder decision by PT Anderson.

The same people who have a problem with characters spontaneously bursting into song probably also have a problem with the random act of God/nature that takes place at the end of the film, but it is set up beautifully in the film's prologue about how some events in life seem to be orchestrated by a higher power. When we are desparate for help and circumstances become worked out in a perfect and incredible way, divine providence can feel like a more plausible answer than coincidence. For example, in the days leading up to our Winter Retreat last weekend, http://www.weather.com/ called for a 100% chance of rain (have you EVER seen that before?) on Friday, 90% on Saturday, and 60% on Sunday. Friday it poured like crazy. Sunday it poured like crazy. Saturday, we actually had blue skies, sunshine, and not a drop of rain. And that was the key day for us where we were outside for paintball, the ropes course, a night game, and "muggle quidditch" (ask me if you want to know more, it was awesome!). Coincidence or divine providence? I'm not a big "God orchestrated the weather in this whole region just for our group of 50 people" kind of guy, but it was pretty amazing. The other Aimee Mann song, "Save Me" comes at the end of the movie when a drug addicted, promiscous character has for once in her life found something pure, good and noble, and for the first time in the film actually smiles.

If you have made it this far, I want to mention that Bethany and I checked out PT Anderson's latest film, There Will Be Blood last weekend. We were watching the Super Bowl and with the score being only 7-3 in the 3rd quarter, we were getting bored and decided to go see a movie. The game started to pick up just as we were leaving, but we still figured there was no way "weak old Eli" could win a Super Bowl and Tom "the next Joe Montana" Brady could lose one. Our jaws dropped when we came home that night and watched the highlights on Sportscenter. Anyways, neither of us was all that impressed with There Will Be Blood. While all of PT Anderson's films could be considered bizarre and over-the-top, for some reason it bothered me in this film. I still thinkDaniel Day Lewis will get Best Actor, and probably deservedly so, but I think No Country for Old Men, which I liked a bit more, will take most of the major awards. Both films, however, lost me in the last 20 minutes and neither one's "knockout punch last scene", did anything for me. With the writer's strike looking like it will end in the next couple of days, I look forward to the Academy Awards on February 24. But I am growing jaded with the Academy. I don't understand how Gone Baby Gone, 3:10 to Yuma, and especially Into the Wild did not get more nominations, while a PT Anderson and Coen brothers' film that are inferior to their previous work could get so many. It has got to the point where the Academy members nominate and vote based on their previous mistakes: "What? We snubbed Martin Scorsese for Goodfellas and Raging Bull? Well, let's make up for it and give him the Oscar for The Departed, which isn't even one of his 5 best films." Or "Denzel Washington doesn't have a Best Actor Oscar yet? Let's vote him in for Training Day, since we messed up back in 1993 with Malcolm X." With this being the case, perhaps we will see a win for PT Anderson and There Will Be Blood, since Magnolia - the best film of 1999 - was shut out at the Academy Awards that year.

3rd Favorite Movie - 12 Angry Men

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

In an attempt to get my mind off of that terrible Cowboys game (as well as stay out of Bethany's path) I thought I'd blog about my next movie.

I saw 12 Angry Men for the first time about 6 years ago in Fresno when some friends showed it to me. After they showed it to me, I went and watached it with another friend who had not seen the next day. The "12 Angry Men" are all members of a jury. A young man is on trial for murder and it is up to the 12 of them to decide his fate. While I have been playing spoiler left and right on this blog, I just can't bring myself to do it here with this movie. What I will tell you is that over the course of the movie one man (played by Henry Fonda) has the courage to stand alone against the rest of the jurors - not for personal gain - but simply because he feels it is the right thing to do.

I have heard of high school government classes showing this movie to look at how our legal system works. After watching this movie, a pretty good debate could get going as to whether our system is fair or not. I have also heard of sociology classes showing it to study the effects of racism. Subtly, the film suggests certain characters may have certain prejudices early on and then toward the end we understand why this is important. I am told that psychology classes even show this film to talk about the dynamics of being in a group. I think it is all altogether fascinating.

Henry Fonda's character (along with Atticus Finch from To Kill A Mockingbird) is one of my cinematic heroes for his persistence, his refusal to give in to "peer pressure", and his all-around goodness and integrity. The scene where he pulls the knife out and sticks it in the table is also one of my all-time favorites. Interestingly, we never hear the names of most of the men in the movie - in the credits they are listed as Juror #'s 1-12. Also, pretty much the whole film takes place in one room. But don't let that stop you from seeing it... you figure it HAS to be pretty good to be #3 on my list, right?

4th Favorite Movie - Signs

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

I'm not sure why, but the closer I get to #1, the harder it is to get motivated to write each entry. It's weird, I know. You'd think I would be MORE excited about covering the movies that are in my top five! But while I may like the films that are closer to #1 more than the ones that are closer to #50, that doesn't mean I like WRITING about them any more. All that to say... I am going to try to get this one over with as fast as I can so I can do something else. Here are a few reasons why I like this movie so much:

*THE SUSPENSE: Like Hitchcock, M. Night knows how to use music, camera angles and settings to create suspense. The opening credit sequence is one of my all-time favorites, and a nod to films like The Birds and Psycho. Like Spielberg, M. Night knows it is sometimes better to NOT show the monster and thus allow the audience to scare themselves using their own imaginations.

*THE SCENES THAT MAKE YOU JUMP: There are a few of them here, especially the one involving the knife and the pantry door. This makes it a fun movie to watch with people who have not seen it before.

*THE HUMOR: The first time I saw Signs, I was surprised by the amount of humor in it. Joaquin Phoenix is hilarious, and both kids (the girl is the one from Little Miss Sunshine) have their moments as well. M. Night's attempts at humor in The Lady in the Water do not measure up, unless you count his made-up words like "narf" and "scrunt", which sound pretty funny when you say them.

*THE MESSAGE: Most people would say Signs is about crop circles, or aliens, but it is also about faith. Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, a pastor who recently quit the ministry after his wife died in a freak accident. Graham figured that God turned his back on him and let his wife die, so he turns his back on God. In the pivotal speech of the film, Graham tells his brother that there are two kinds of people in the world: those who see miracles (faith group) and those who just see coincidences. As a reaction to his wife's tragic death, Graham has gone from the faith group to the coincidence group. Our first clue of this is in the beginning of the film, when we see the dusty outline on Graham's bedroom wall that indicates that a cross once hung there. Even though Graham put the cross away, it left an imprint on the wall that he cannot completely remove. Likewise, even though Graham has put his faith away, "signs" of it remain. Late in the movie he fumes at God, which may seem like a "faithless" thing to do, but it actually shows he has moved from the coincidence group to the faith group once again.

*THE HEART: When it looks to be the end for them all, Hess shares with his son and daughter the stories of when they were born. The stories that Mel Gibson's character tells are the actual birth stories of M. Night's two children. Again taking a page out of Spielberg's book, M. Night's films may always have something to do with the supernatural, but they also always have something to do with family.

Interestingly, production on the film began the day after 9/11/2001. While M. Night was filming a movie about the effect a tragedy can have on faith and on family, thousands of people around the world were learning firsthand for themselves.

5th Favorite Movie - Jerry Maguire

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Recently, I realized that Forrest Gump is probably the movie that I quote from the most in my daily life. That movie alone added the following words and sayings to my lexicon:

*"Life is like a box of chocolates"

*"Run, Forrest, run!"

*"Stupid is as stupid does"

*"I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is"

*"I was run-ning!"

*"I gotta pee"

*Saying the word 'shrimp' like Bubba

*Pronouncing the name 'Jenny' like Forrest (Jen-naay)

Another movie from the past 15 years that the entire nation is now familiar with - whether they have seen it or not - is Jerry Maguire. From this movie we get "Show me the money" AND "You complete me" AND "You had me at hello" AND "Help me help you". Maybe this is just between me and some of my friends, but I don't think a week goes by in my life without someone referencing one of these four lines. But more than just being a fun movie to quote, Jerry Maguire taught me a lot about myself.

The movie begins with Tom Cruise playing a successful sports agent named Jerry Maguire. He has lots of friends, an attractive fiancee, and a high-paying job. But like Solomon in Ecclesiastes, he is discontented. One of the athletes he represents who is supposed to be a role model gets arrested for indecent behavior. Other clients have become corrupted by the almighty dollar. One night, after being told off by a hockey player's son for attempting to get his injured father back on the ice, Jerry cannot get to sleep. He is disgusted with his lack of concern for his client's long-term health and he is disgusted with the trends he sees around him in the industry. He knows that the problem is not just around him but inside him. So he bares his soul in a 20-page office memo entitled, "The Things We Think But Are Afraid To Say." He talks about how as sports agents they should be more involved in their client's lives... which means less clients... which means less money. Many of his co-workers congratulate him for his courage, but his efforts get him fired.

All that happens in the first five minutes of the movie (see The Apartment). The question for the rest of the movie is: Jerry has talked the talk - now will he walk the walk? Will he live up to everything that he wrote, everything that he believes and stands for... or will he just be another shark in a suit?

In my second year of seminary, I wrote a paper for a class called "The Things We Think About Youth Ministry But Are Afraid To Say." My paper was structured around scenes from Jerry Maguire, and dealt mostly with the concepts of mentoring and accountability. In the movie, Jerry's mentor was a man named Dicky Fox who appears in flashbacks a few times to deliver some gems of wisdom. Here's some of his advice from the movie:

*"If the heart is empty, then the head does not matter."

*In life, I don't have all the answers. I have failed as much as I have suceeded. But I love my wife, and I love my life, and I wish you my kind of success."

*"This business is all about personal relationships."

This last statement sums up Jerry's new strategy in his job. He winds up going from 72 clients to just 1: a football player named Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.). In youth ministry, as in sports agency, it is easy to get caught up in numbers. People always want to know "how big is your youth group?" And sometimes, we think that a bigger group means we are doing a better job. But even if a youth group consisted of just one kid, we need the heart of the shepherd in Matthew 18 who goes looking for that one sheep. Sometimes in youth ministry we only see the multitudes and overlook the individuals. Jesus handled this dichotomy well - he saw both. He found Zacchaeus in a horde of people and the woman who was bleeding amongst the crowd. As youth ministers we can never become too busy, too lofty, or too consumed with the multitudes that we are not available for individual students.

Jerry and Rod become friends and wind up helping one another. Their relationship is a great example of men holding each other accoutable, because they are able to be tough and vulnerable with one another. In one scene, Rod looks Jerry in the eye and asks, "How's your marriage, Jerry?" Ephesians 4:15 says, "But speaking the truth in love we will all grow up into the Head, that is Christ…" In order to grow, we need to speak the truth in love to one another, which occasionaly involves confrontation. But there is a difference between speaking the truth in love, and giving the "brutal truth", as Jerry's fiancee does earlier in the movie.

The movie also addresses something that is difficult for most men: building intimacy. Jerry is known for being a guy who is "great at friendship, terrible at intimacy." He tends to hide himself in his work rather than discover his own feelings or share them with someone else. But his "memo" and meeting Rod Tidwell are breakthroughs for him in this area that wind up changing his life forever.

Some people think of Jerry Maguire as a "chick flick." I believe it is a movie that every man needs to see.

6th Favorite Movie - The Apartment

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

A few years ago, I was reading an interview with Cameron Crowe, one of my favorite writer-directors (Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire, Say Anything, Singles). He was asked what his favorite movie was, and he said it was The Apartment. Even though I had never even heard of the movie before, I immediately rushed out and didn't just rent, but bought the DVD.

Written and directed by Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot), The Apartment took home Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1961. In the movie, Jack Lemmon plays an everyday white collar worker at a large office building in New York City and Shirley Maclaine plays an elevator operator in the building. Now, don't be turned off to the movie because of Shirley "The Psychic Friend" Maclaine, because she is very charming in this movie. Lemmon's character is trying to work his way up in the office world, and he has a hard time saying no to his bosses who constantly ask to borrow his apartment to rendezvous with their mistresses. One of themes of the movie is assertiveness - for most of the movie Lemmon's character is a pushover and lets people walk all over him. But twice toward the end of the movie he finally works up some courage and risks telling people exactly how he feels in a very appropriate way. I guess that theme has some appeal to me.

Another theme in the movie that I enjoy is the struggle between ambition vs. integrity. At first, Lemmon is so focused on getting promoted that he doesn't care about his bosses using his apartment for their extra-marital affairs. Later on though, he has a change of heart, an "awakening" much like Jerry Maguire does at the beginning of that film. I also find the beginning of Jerry Maguire to be very much like the beginning of The Apartment, in which a lot happens in a short amount of time and you are caught up on a lot of information very quickly.

Another similarity to a Cameron Crowe film (Bethany noticed this one) is the way the female lead character is written. Shirley Maclaine's character is similar to Penny Lane in Almost Famous in that she loves another man who does not treat her nearly as well as the leading male would, and it pains her to the point of considering suicide. Jack Lemmon plays the innocent, love-stricken, puppy dog role that Patrick Fugit had in Almost Famous who takes care of the smitten lady while secretly pining for her.

"Romantic-comedy" would be the best way to classify this movie I suppose, but there are also elements of drama in it. While it is certainly feels similar to many Cameron Crowe movies, I also think the ending of When Harry Met Sally, in which Harry is running on New Yea's Eve in New York to be with Sally, is borrowed from this movie. As you can tell, this movie continues to be highly influential in cinema today and if you have not seen it before, rush out and don't just rent, but buy the DVD.

7th Favorite Movie - Traffic

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

I confess that I have not seen this movie in about 5 years. The reason is because I loaned my DVD out to someone and I couldn't remember who! Don't you hate it when that happens? I was happy to find when I married Bethany that she had a copy (I was glad about other things, too). So I am sure I'll see it again soon.

In 2001, Steven Soderbergh looked to become one of my favorite directors. He had already made Out of Sight (1998) and Ocean's 11 (2001) and Traffic (2000), all of which made this Top 50 list. That ties him with Steven Spielberg and Spike Lee as the directors most represented on my list with 3 movies each. The problem is what he has done since. Solaris (2002) would probably make my top 50 for WORST movies of all time, and Ocean's 12 (2004) would make my top 5. He made a few more underwhelming movies (so I hear) Full Frontal, Bubble and The Good German before righting the ship a bit with Ocean's 13. But back to 2001... one year after being nominated for Best Director for Erin Brockovich, he won for Traffic, despite Gladiator taking Best Picture that year, which rarely happens. Apparently the Academy was as impressed as I was at the skills of the up-and-coming Steven Soderbergh.

Traffic is about drug trafficking, and it follows three different intersecting storylines. One features Michael Douglas, who is the new head of the War on Drugs campaign in Washington D.C., and his teenaged daughter, who brings the war close to home for him. Another storyline concerns the drugs getting made and smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico, where Benicio Del Toro works as a police officer. The third story surrounds a major dealer in the U.S. and his wife (Catherine Zeta Jones) and the cops (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman) who try to bring them down. Each story has a beginning, middle and end, intersects with the others, and has a unique look to it. The scenes in Washington D.C. have sort of a blue-grey haze to them while Mexico has a yellow-gold-brown look to it, which accentuate the "scorching, brutal and chaotic reality of Mexico and the sterile, cold & bureaucratic one of the United States" (i stole this from someone on imdb.com).

My favorite character in the film and one of my favorite characters in the entirety of cinema is the cop played by Benicio Del Toro, who rightly won Best Supporting Actor. Living each day in the midst of unfathomable danger and poverty, when he gets a chance to escape and make a better life for himself, he chooses instead to make a better life for the children and families around him for generations to come. The last scene in this movie makes the whole messy journey worth it to me and never fails to bring a tear to my eye and smile to my face.

8th Favorite Movie - Almost Famous

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

During the summer between 9th & 10th grade, my brother introduced me to classic rock. He had already gone off to college, but left behind his extensive collection of homemade-dubbed cassette tapes. I think that he was already buying CD's, so he didn't need to have the tapes with him at college. I probably spent 8 hours a day on the computer that summer, playing adventure games and - believe it or not - chatting with people "online". You may be surprised at that since the year was 1989, a good 5 years before most people heard of email and Al Gore invented the internet. But I had a Commodore 64 computer in my room with a 300 bps dial up modem, and there was this thing called "Popnet" where you could dial up and chat with folks, post messages to bulletin boards, or play simple text-based games like Battleship online with people. The first half of that summer, I listened to the latest pop music station on the radio whenever I was on the computer. The second half of the summer, I listened to Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. My brother refuses to remember this next occurence, but I distinctly recall the day when I grew tired of hearing "Girl You Know It's True" 8 times a day (the radio station would play it once every hour) and asked my brother if he would recommend one of his tapes for me. He gave me The Eagles Greatest Hits, which he still denies to this day. Apparently he is not much of a fan of them anymore. I listened to that tape for a few days until I got to know all the songs and then asked him for another recommendation. Again, I distinctly remember him saying, "maybe you are ready for Zeppelin", and handing me a copy Led Zeppelin I.

If you have seen Almost Famous, you know where I am going with this. There is a scene in that movie where the older sibling goes off and leaves behind her classic rock collection for her younger brother to experience for the first time. He grows to love the music, and before he is even out of high school he winds up covering the tour of an up-and-coming rock band for Rolling Stone magazine.

The premise for the film is based on the real life experience of director Cameron Crowe (one of my favorites) who toured with several bands in the 1970's - Allman Brothers, Lynryd Skynryd, and Led Zeppelin - while writing for Rolling Stone. Two lines in the film he supposedly overheard from bands while on tour: "I'm the singer and the frontman, you're the guitarist with mystique" (Robert Plant arguing with Jimmy Page backstage) and "We don't care what you write, just make us look cool" (Glen Frey of The Eagles to a teenaged Cameron Crowe). Crowe almost called the film Untitled, as a reference to the album more commonly known as Led Zeppelin 4, but settled on using this title for his Director's Cut.

With these experiences being so close to his heart, Crowe injects so much warmth into Almost Famous. Frances McDormand, who plays "his mom", turns in a wonderful performance, as does Kate Hudson who plays his crush, Penny Lane. Hard to believe how far she has fallen after winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress here in 2000.

The Director's Cut DVD has some great extra scenes in it that are actually inserted into the original film. It also has a great deleted scene in which William plays "Stairway to Heaven" for his disapproving mom, who is also a college lit professor - to show her that that not all rock and roll is about sex and drugs, that this one actually talks about Tolkein. Zeppelin's asking price to use their landmark song was too high though, so in order to watch the scene with the music you need to have your own copy of the song ready to play along with the DVD.

How much you like this movie may depend on how much you like classic rock. Essentially, Almost Famous is Cameron Crowe's love letter to 1970's rock music.

9th Favorite Movie - The Hudsucker Proxy

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Everybody has one.

A movie that you absolutely love… a movie that you have seen so many times that you can quote it almost verbatim… a movie that you could watch pretty much any day, anytime… a movie that most people have never even heard of. For Bethany, it is Big Trouble. Geoff B has I Heart Huckabees. Jessica D has A Goofy Movie. The Hudsucker Proxy is my “diamond in the rough”.

Like any Coen brothers movie, The Hudsucker Proxy features great writing, witty dialogue, cartoon-like characters and a cartoon-like feel. It's as if what you are watching is not completely grounded in reality (think Raising Arizona or O Brother Where Art Thou?). In these regards, The Hudsucker Proxy resembles an episode of The Simpsons more than any other film that I can think of. Unlike most Coen brothers movies, The Hudsucker Proxy features neither John Goodman nor Frances McDormand. But it does have Tim Robbins, Paul Newman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Steve Buscemi, Bruce Campbell (he made the Evil Dead movies) and the dad from Frasier.

The story surrounds Hudsucker Industries, a big corporation in New York City. Paul Newman is the #2 in charge, advisor to Mr. Hudsucker himself. One day a young, ambitious, and naïve Tim Robbins arrives to town, freshly graduated from business college. He is looking for a job – any job – but finds that his degree doesn’t help much. Everyone is looking for someone with experience. I first saw this movie when I was looking for a job after moving to Fresno, and discovered that my college degree did not mean as much as I thought it would. I related to this movie immediately, and whenever I watch it I am taken back to my experience of hitting a new city and feeling like I had something to offer… but after submitting over a hundred resumes and getting no calls, beginning to doubt I really had anything to offer. This film is a lesson on dealing with failure and success.

Eventually, I found a job at Fresno State and Tim Robbins is hired at Hudsucker Industries, where he hopes to move up but has to start at the bottom (he literally works in the basement of Hudsucker Industries as a mail clerk). On his first day on the job, tragedy strikes the man at the top of Hudsucker and a new CEO is needed. Paul Newman (who gets to play the villain in this film) appoints Tim Robbins to be the new boss with the hope that his inexperience and incompetence will deflate the stock so that he and the rest of the nefarious board members can buy it up for themselves, fire Robbins, and appoint Newman as the new CEO. It turns out that Robbins has something to offer after all – “you know, for kids!” The awkward title of the film (a 'proxy' is someone who is somehow controlled by another - like a patsy or a puppet) I believe is the main reason why the film flopped at the box office and continues to be ignored.

Within this movie is:

*The best 5 minute economics lesson you will ever find (high school teachers take note).

*The feel of a screwball comedy from the 1940’s like His Girl Friday with Jenifer Jason Leigh doing her best Audrey Hepburn impression of the fast talking, wise-cracking girl who can hold her own against the fellas.

*One of my favorite openings in cinema: a long, slow, majestic zoom throughout the snowy skyscrapers of NYC that ends on Robbins about to jump off the top of the Hudsucker building. (I even like this this opening more than Raising Arizona’s).

So, if you like Raising Arizona, O Brother Where Art Thou?, and The Big Lebowski, I urge you to check out The Hudsucker Proxy.

10th Favorite Movie - The Godfather Part I & II

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Along with Citizen Kane and Casablanca, The Godfather is often considered to be the best movie ever made. The Godfather Part II, which director Francis Ford Coppola made two years later in 1974, is often touted as the best sequel of all time with many people even preferring it to the first film. You may think that you remember hearing about or even seeing a Godfather Part III, made 17 years later starring Coppola's daughter, Sofia (who is a much better director than actress). But I encourage you to pretend that never happened. Trust me, it is better that way.

When I was in the 11th grade, The Godfather I & II were not just my favorite movies, they had consumed part of my life. For an english assignment that year, we were to read a book and then see the movie version and draw comparisons between the two. I chose Mario Puzo's book The Godfather, and the films starring Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, James Caan, Rovert Duvall, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, James Cavale, Bruno Kirby and a host of others that it was based on. The result was a FIFTY page paper. No joke. In a famous Fitelson family story from that time, my dad came home from work for lunch one day to find a teenager he had never seen before sitting on his couch and watching his television with his son nowhere in sight. I was in the computer room in the back of the house working hard on the paper... while we were both supposed to be at school. My friend had heard I was "cutting" and wanted to come along. I'll never forget the feeling I had in my stomach when I heard the front door open and close that day and my dad saying "Well, hello there" to my friend. Sorry about that, dad.

These films are darn near perfect. I think the first one overall is superior to the second, however, my favorite scenes in the series are the ones in the second of Robert De Niro playing the young Don Vito Corleone. It is amazing how De Niro plays the role with Brando in mind (who played Corleone in the first film) but still makes the character his own, all without saying a single word in English. I also have to give a shout-out here to one of favorite actors, the late Bruno Kirby, who holds his own alongside De Niro.

I think a very underrated scene in the second film is the last one of the movie. Everyone talks about the murder in the boat out on Lake Tahoe, which was quite haunting and all, but I think the follow up scene to that is even more powerful. There is a flashback to the time before Michael was involved in "the family business", a family birthday party for Vito. Apparently they couldn't afford to bring Brando back for the scene or he was too busy/flaky, so he does not appear in it. Instead, everyone else is waiting around the table for him to come home. Seeing how the characters have transformed since then - especially Michael - is really moving. I recently saw a list somewhere of the "Best Film Endings" and was pleased to see this scene on there.

I must have said all I have to say back in the 11th grade about these movies, so if you want to hear more, let me know and I can loan you the paper. I still have it somewhere... I think I got an A- on it. The minus was because we were not supposed to go over 20 pages. Whoops. Sorry about that, Ms. Casey.

11th Favorite Movie - Apocalypse Now

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Fresh off the success of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II in 1974, Francis Ford Coppola had to be feeling pretty sure of himself. He had just directed two of the most critically praised and financially successful movies of all time and must have felt that he could take on the biggest challenge. So he did. For his next project, he took Joseph Conrad's book Heart of Darkness (which some said was impossible to put into film) and set it during the Vietnam war. His friend George Lucas was set to direct, Warner Brothers would finance it, and another masterpiece in line with the Godfather films would be made. And a masterpiece was made. But it didn't come about as expected. His wife's documentary film Hearts of Darkness chronicles the making of Apocalypse Now and includes some of these tidbits:

*George Lucas, who was going to direct it at first, bowed out after American Graffitti became a hit, so Coppola stepped in to direct. This supposedly resulted in some bitterness between the two men.

*Warner Brothers refused to finance the film because Coppola wanted to shoot in Vietnam, during the war. So they shot in the Philippines instead, but Coppola wound up financing the film entirely by himself anyways so he could have complete control over it

*The helicoptors they used were on loan from President Ferdinand Marcos who kept having to get them back so they could be used in actual combat

*Shooting was supposed to last 6 weeks, but wound up lasting over a year. Harvey Keitel was originally cast to play the lead role, but two weeks into shooting, they decided to go with Martin Sheen instead, who suffered a heart attack during production and was battling alcoholism. The first scene was shot on his 36th birthday after he had been drinking all day. Sheen says he never intended to break the mirror, he was drunk and was improvising and urged Coppola to keep the camera rolling. Brando showed up overweight and didn't know any of his lines. A typhoon destroyed a lot of the sets and pushed back shooting schedules. 200 hours of film were shot, and it took almost 2 years to edit.

Somehow, amidst all of this chaos - perhaps because of this chaos - one of the greatest films of all time was made. Most of the characters in Apocalypse Now are insane, so maybe the insane shooting conditions actually helped.

The story is simple: Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) is called on to travel from Saigon into Cambodia by boat to assassinate U.S. Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando) who has gone insane. Along the way he meets a score of colorful characters, played by Harrison Ford, Laurence Fishbourne (he lied and said he was 17 at the time of filming but was actually only 14!) , and Robert Duvall, who steals the show as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore. The movie has an incredible drawing power and makes the viewer feel the characters' fear, insanity, and longing to meet Kurtz at the end ("this is the end..."). Much has been said both positively and negatively about the end of the film and Brando's performance. He has a few long monologues which are not easy to decipher. This is my take: the movie is about the darkness that lies within every person. It is about "the horror" that is in the world and what it does to the human psyche. If you take the three officers in the movie that we spend the most time with - Willard, Kilgore and Kurtz - all of them are insane in one way or another. The movie begins by showing Willard's dark side when he punches the mirror in his hotel room. Then we meet Kilgore, who orders his soldiers to surf while bombs are going off all around them. Finally, we meet Kurtz who has become like a god to the natives. The horror of war has made each of these men what they are.

One interesting note: Apocalypse Now is one film that cannot make the claim "none of the animals seen here were hurt during the making of this film". The bull that is butchered at the end is a real bull being slaughtered, but it was not the film crew that decided to kill it. They filmed a real sacrifice that some of natives on the Philippines were performing and used that footage in the film. This continues to produce some controversy and many film lovers refuse to see it because of this scene.

I must comment on which version of the film I prefer. In 2001, Coppola released in theaters a version he called Apocalypse Now: Redux which added about 50 minutes of new footage to a film that was already two and a half hours long. I do not recommend this version, except to the biggest Apocalypse Now fans who have already seen the other version. It has a few scenes which really drag on and it also includes a scene in which Willard steals Kilgore's surfboard and then jokes around about it with the other guys on the boat like a bunch of frat boys. This scene seemed completely out of character for Willard and should have remained cut, or at the most, included as an extra (deleted scene) on the DVD. This version also includes a 20 minute scene at a French colonial plantation right before the finale at Kurtz' compound which disrupts the building intensity of the river journey. I cannot bring myself to believe that Coppola is touting this Redux version as the "official" Apocalypse Now. If you have not seen this movie and have a choice, get the original theatrical version and stay away from the Redux.

12th Favorite Movie - Goodfellas

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Many of the remaining movies on my list were at one point in my life my favorite movie. With Goodfellas, it was 1991 when it first came out in the theater. I saw it 4 times in the theater, which to this day is the most times I have ever seen one movie during its original release period. I think that had a bit to do with how old I was at the time - 17. See, I had wheels and freedom, I had money for tickets but was not burdened with a job, and other technological time-wasters like DVD and Facebook and iTunes and Playstation hadn't been invented yet. It seems like of all the people who go repeatedly to see the same movie in the theater, the 15-17 year old crowd does this the most. Once you get to college, there is other stuff to do and spending $10 on laundry or pizza often seems like a better investment.

I'm not quite sure if this movie is what really got me interested in film (compared to just movies), but it is possible. It certainly got me interested in Martin Scorsese. After seeing this, I immediately rented Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, neither of which came CLOSE to impacting me in the way Goodfellas did and neither of which I have seen since. I have seen most of Scorsese's movies and I think this is his finest work. I was actually a bit disappointed with The Departed... the way critics and people everywhere were gushing about it, I wanted to say "haven't you people seen Goodfellas? This is rubbish compared to that." I think that after seeing Goodfellas, pretty much EVERY Scorsese film has been a letdown for me... especially Casino, which is a sort of sequel to Goodfellas. Both movies are based on the real-life findings of Nicholas Pillegi, who wrote a couple books about gangsters that became these two movies.

So what is so great about this movie? It isn't inspiring, like Shawshank Redemption. It doesn't make you want to be a better person, like Braveheart. It doesn't even really have a positive message. If anything, the message of Goodfellas could be summarized as, "times were great when we were breaking the law, but now everything is pretty lame". The funny thing is, 'pretty lame' is describing a lifestyle that would be perfectly acceptable to most of us. Goodfellas is about wanting to be at the top of the world, getting there, loving it, and then losing everything and being left wondering, "did that really happen?".

I was reading somewhere (I think it was an interview with Quinton Tarintino) that a character who is in the mob but trying to get out (like Jules from Pulp Fiction) is the perfect character to create. Here is why: the dilemma of a character who is stuck doing what they don't want to do but yearns for a better life often parallels our own lives, and the moral/spiritual implications can be strong. Scorsese himself was studying to be a Catholic priest before making Mean Streets, which is also about gangsters - some of which are trying to get out of that lifestyle. The gang member who longs to get out of the mob can parallel our own longings for redemption, to be saved, to be forgiven and absolved of wrongdoing. Perhaps that explains some of the fascination I and others have with gangster movies, including Goodfellas.

Or it could just be the camaraderie, the humor, the unexpected outbursts of violence, and the idea of being able to get whatever you wanted from whoever you wanted whenever you wanted simply because of the power you wield and the fear you instill... and not having to work all that hard to get it. To a race of beings who were once tempted in a garden to be "like gods", what could be more appealing?

13th Favorite Movie - American Beauty

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

The tagline found on posters and billboards for American Beauty was "look closer". These two words beckoned the viewer to look past what they may first see on the surface for something deeper, something hidden underneath. Unfortunately, many people missed it. Granted, this is a seedy film, a dark film, and a challenging film. But there is profound truth to be found here.

On the surface, the suburban family that is at the center of American Beauty seems to be idyllic. Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening play two married, "successful" parents, with a healthy teenage daughter... but underneath there is conflict waiting to boil over, pain that has not been addressed, dreams that have not been pursued. After first seeing them as an ideal family... then seeing them as a horrible one... writer Alan Ball and director Sam Mendes pull the carpet out from under your feet again, showing you the heart of each of the characters and the beauty that exists there.

I like finding beauty where it is least expected. I get a kick out of finding something true, something lovely, in people, songs, books, movies (like this one) or anything that others have written off as having no redeeming qualities. And that is a major theme of this movie. Finding God in the ordinary, or in the mess. One scene in the movie is of one teenager showing a friend a video he took of a plastic bag blowing in the wind. Here is what he says:

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever."

But the movie is not just about the relationship between people and God, it is also about how we treat one another. At one point someone asks Kevin Spacey's character "how are you?" and he stops and thinks for a moment and says, "It's been a long time since anybody asked me that." It is really sad that his wife, daughter, co-workers and friends never stopped to ask how he was doing and took time to listen. This film is about how we need other people in our lives. The first line of the movie is a teenage girl, looking directly into the camera, saying, "I need a father who's a role model..."

It is also about the relationship between us and our "stuff", and how if we are not careful, our possessions will end up possessing us. In one scene, Annette Bening's character interrupts a rare romantic moment with her husband to scold him because he is about to spill beer on the couch. His response: "This (couch) isn't life. This is just stuff. And it's become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that's just nuts." Truth from an unlikely source.

Covenant pastor and Fuller Seminary professor Robert Johnston wrote an entire book comparing the message of American Beauty and other movies to the message of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes. It is called Useless Beauty: Ecclesasiastes through the Lens of Contemporary Film and is available on Amazon. Somehow I don't own this book... yet.

14th Favorite Movie - We Were Soldiers

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Before I get to the movie, I want to remind everyone what this list is all about. About a year ago, I came up with a list of my 50 favorite movies. These were not what I considered to be the best movies ever made, but the ones that I consider to be my "favorites". I did not spend much time nitpicking whether I really liked #32 more than #33, but rather what 50 movies would make the list and what "tier" they would be in: top 5, top 15, top 25 etc. So just keep that in mind when you're thinking, "how could a great movie like x be #18 when a piece of garbage like y is #15"? My (and Bethany's) blog, my list, my rules.

All that to say... I am a bit surprised at how high I ranked this movie! I wanted to watch it with Bethany the other night but I must have loaned the DVD out to someone. If you have it, please give it back. We watched Saving Private Ryan instead, which altogether is probably a better movie than this one. But here is why I thought so highly of We Were Soliders:

-It does a great job of depicting the first battle in Vietnam to involve U.S. forces. And the way it ends says a lot about how the Vietnam War overall turned out for our country. But let me warn you, this film is not for the squeamish. Director Randall White is from the Saving Private Ryan school of shooting combat - in one scene, a soldier tries to move a fellow comrade who has been burned, and his skin comes right off his legs like a turkey drumstick.

-It has some great performances in it. Mel Gibson plays the Lt Col. Hal Moore, who leads a troop of mostly young soldiers who have never seen combat. Madeline Stowe is his wife back home. Sam Elliott plays another veteran officer, while Chris Klein plays a young up-and-coming soldier. Greg Kinnear is a helicopter pilot. Barry Pepper trades his sniper rifle from Saving Private Ryan for a camera, playing a journalist embedded in Vietnam. The DVD extras include interviews with some of the real-life people who are portrayed, and while this is a Hollywood big-budget film, it feels authentic.

-It shows the effects of the war on the soldiers' wives and girlfriends who are back home. Everyday, the army sends messengers bearing telegrams to notify the women whose loved ones have fallen in battle. Halfway through the movie, two of the women, one of whom lost her man already, decide to deliver the bad news themselves every day, face to face. This illustrated to me the concept of being "Wounded Healers" that Christian author Henri Nouwen talks about. The women are the right ones to provide healing to other women because they know them, can relate to their pain and can grieve with them.

-It has some insights into leadership. The line that was in all the trailers is when the new father/soldier Chris Klein asks veteran father/officer Mel Gibson how he feels about being a father and a soldier. Gibson replies, “I hope that being good at one makes me better at the other.” Many people have told me recently that they think that my being in youth ministry will help me be a better father someday, and I hope this is true. I guess I could relate a little bit to this line and the movie overall because I too have wondered how I would do balancing fatherhood and youth ministry someday. I am pretty sure writer/director Randall White is a Christian – he also wrote Braveheart and is currently working on a film version of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters due out in 2008. There are also a couple deleted scenes that lend weight to my theory – one is of Mel Gibson’s character praying with Chris Klein, and another features one of the wives singing Amazing Grace in church.

I think a big reason why I put this movie so high up on my list is because I feel that it deserves more attention… so go see it if it sounds like something you would enjoy. For some people, the presence of Mel Gibson in this film will prohibit them from watching it, just as Tom Cruise's real-life persona keeps some people from seeing his movies. I guess that is not something that has ever bothered me, I can get pretty sucked in while watching a movie and forget about the actor's personal life. I mention these two - Gibson and Cruise - because between the two of them, they are featured in 3 of the next 13 movies.

15th Favorite Movie - A Walk To Remember

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

I fully expect to take heat from some people for this. And I don't mind that... as long as those dishing it out have actually SEEN the movie first. If so, then fire away...

While I argued that When Harry Met Sally was not a chick flick (see #20), I can make no such argument here. This is probably the consenus favorite movie amongst girls in our youth group. The bottom line is most chicks dig it and most guys scoff at it. But here's the thing that separates A Walk To Remember from the rest of the chick flick drabble: it does not just entertain, it does not just talk about how girls and guys are different, it inspires. It is a chick flick with substance.

I think what appeals to me so much about this movie is the character of Jamie Sullivan (played by Mandy Moore). The teenaged daughter of a widowed preacher, Jamie walks to the beat of her own drummer. While other students at her school are out to impress their peers by spending money on nice clothes and cars, she wears the same sweater and takes the bus to school every day. Other students sleep in on Saturday mornings, she gets up early to volunteer tutoring little kids. It makes me glad that so many of our high schoolers like this movie because Jamie Sullivan is a great role model. My hope is that the students in our youth group would have compassion for every human being like Sister Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking (#47), that they would take a stand for truth and justice like Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird (#31) and that they would not get caught up in silly high school stuff but care about the things that really matter in life like Jamie Sullivan in A Walk To Remember.

And it probably doesn't hurt that Switchfoot, perhaps my favorite band, does the soundtrack.

16th Favorite Movie - Raising Arizona

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Raising Arizona is a movie that I think I will watch again every year or so for the rest of my life. It is that enjoyable.

The film begins with H.I. (played by Nicholas Cage) being thrown in jail for armed robbery. He has a bunkmate who rambles on and on about his childhood in a "Bubba" sort of way: "and when there was no meat, we ate fowl. And when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad. And when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand." In a movie full of memorable secondary characters, this guy is my favorite. H.I. gets out of jail, robs again, gets thrown back in jail, gets out, and decides to propose to Edwina, played by Holly Hunter, who works as a guard at the jail. They get married, and try to start a family, but as H.I. tells it "her insides was a rocky place in which my seed could find no purchase." Edwina gets so depressed she quits her job at the jail and mopes around all day. Then they hear about a couple in Arizona having septuplets, and figure the mom and dad "got more than they can handle", so they set off to kidnap one of the babies.

And that all happens before the opening credits, in what has to be the longest intro in cinematic history.

Like all Coen brothers movies, the ingenuity here is in the writing. Here are some of my favorite lines from Raising Arizona:

"Do these balloons blow up into funny shapes and all?"
"No, not unless round is funny."

"Ya hear that? We're using code names."

"What would happen if you went outside and got run down by a truck, then how would Ed Jr. be provided for?"
"Yeah, honey, what if you get run over?!"

But my favorites come from the mouth of Nathan Arizona Sr.:

"No leads!? Everybody leaves microbes 'n what not!"

"I don't know what his *dang* jammies looked like! They had Yodas and *stuff* on 'em!"

When asked for his comment on the theory that aliens took his baby, he says, "Son don't go printing that. If his momma reads that, she's just gonna lose all hope."

This movie has pretty much everything you expect to find in a Coen brothers movie: great dialogue, funny accents, memorable facial expressions, dream sequences, a ridiculous plot, an element of fantasy, John Goodman and Frances McDormand. I don't think they had discovered Steve Buscemi yet.

17th Favorite Movie - City of God

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

City of God did not receive much attention when it was released in theaters in 2003, but it has picked up a following on DVD. It is currently #17 on the imdb.com Top 250 of all time, and it even spawned a television show called City of Men. I imagine there are a lot of people who would love this movie but will never see it because it is a Brazilian film in Portuguese with English subtitles. It took me a few years to convince my last roommate Brent to watch it... he kept saying he doesn't like having to "read" during movies. I think he owns a copy now.

The film is about a group of kids growing up in the slums of Rio De Janeiro surrounded by gang and drug activity. It begins when they are elementary school aged and follows them until they are in their late teenage years. Think Boyz in the Hood or Goodfellas, although even bleaker and more harrowing because of the impoverishment where they are growing up. They live in a neighborhood called called City of God, but it is about as far from paradise as you can imagine. The main character, Rocket, hopes that his passion for photography will one day provide an escape from the neverending cycle of violence which has claimed the lives of many of his friends and family.

City of God has some great names for its characters: Shaggy, Carrot, Lil' Dice... and it is broken up into chapters, each one beginning with a title such as "The Story of Knockout Ned". It was nominated for 4 Oscars in 2004 including Best Director, Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Writing, but was shut out in all four categories (that seems to be a reoccuring theme in this list). While it is very violent and stylized, your heart will break for these kids and you will discover that there are places other than L.A. and New York in the world with communties that are devasted by gang warfare.

18th Favorite Movie - Munich

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

Message to Bethany:

Sorry hon, the final Spielberg movie to make my list is not your childhood favorite, E.T. Nothing personal against your beloved long-necked, flashlight-fingered alien, but I've only seen E.T. once and that was when I was in the third grade. But I do want to watch it again with you sometime!


Something that my wife realized years before me is that Spielberg is a genius. I had always thought highly of Indiana Jones and Saving Private Ryan, but a couple years ago after rewatching Jaws and then seeing Munich in the theater, I realized how big of a Spielberg fan I am. I really like Duel, Close Encounters, Jurassic Park, Amistad, Minority Report, War of the Worlds... I just have such confidence in his work, when I watch one of his films I just know that I am in good hands (except for A.I., but that was probably due to Kubrick's influence on that project).

Munich, released in 2005, is about Israel's response to the 1972 hostage situation at the Olympics when 11 Israeli athletes were killed. Spielberg uses this situation to pose some serious philosophical and theological questions: when is it justifiable to take a life? Does violence just beget more violence? How does being Jewish affect the life of a soldier who is paid to assassinate people for his country, which was founded to be God's light to the nations?

The acting in this film is terrific. Eric Bana turns in his best performance to date in the lead role. Daniel Craig plays his partner and shows why he was picked to be the new James Bond. Geoffrey Rush plays his shady supervisor. I think Geoffrey Rush is a very underrated and versatile actor. This guy is hilarious as Barbosa in the Pirates movies, he won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1996 for Shine, and he has been nominated twice for Best Supporting Actor (Shakespeare in Love, Quills). He even provided the voice for the pelican Nigel in Finding Nemo! He should get more attention than he does.

I don't want to spoil the movie by talking about the plot much, but know that it is deep, dark, and a bit depressing. The film ends with an intense conversation between two characters in New York with the camera framing the World Trade Center in between them in the background (remember, it takes place in the 70's). The shot makes you wonder... is Spielberg suggesting that the events set into motion at the 1972 Olympics somehow led to the tragedy of 9-11? Or is he just making a general statement about the massive casualties when nations war against one another? I'm not sure, but I will always think of the last shot of this film as one of the most powerful in the history of cinema.

19th Favorite Movie - L.A. Confidential

Make sure you have read the first post in this series ("My 50 Favorite Movies") before you read on...

This movie came out in 1997, the same year as Titanic. I remember seeing it with my dad and my brother one night after our neighborhood "Block Party" in that old-school theater in North Berkeley. I liked it the first time and grew to like it even more over the years. Had it not come out the same year that everyone went ga-ga over Titanic, it probably would have won more Academy Awards and become more well-known.

L.A. Confidential features Russel Crowe before Gladiator, Guy Pearce before Memento, and Kevin Spacey riding the wave of The Usual Suspects. I have always felt like The Usual Suspects gets a little too much attention and L.A. Confidential does not get enough. This movie had a twist I didn't see coming (The Usual Suspects' twist is obvious if you know you should be looking for one) and is a more epic and ambitious film. The cast is incredible - rounding out the three leads mentioned earlier are Danny Devito, James Cromwell and Kim Basinger (for which she won Best Supporting Actress). It is a very entertaining movie and I cannot point out a single flaw in it. The only reason I did not rank it higher is because it is not a movie that is trying to impact you in a big emotional way except for it just being a great movie. Most of the movies ranked this high on my list have some sort of emotional, educational or transformational impact on me.

By the way, there is a film to begin shooting in November called White Jazz (also based on a James Elroy book) that will feature Russell Crowe reprising his role as Bud White, but Guy Pierce, Kim Basinger and director Curtis Hanson are not involved. Hanson is in talks about a true sequel that would cover what happened to the characters in the 10 years following where the original film left off. Sounds pretty cool. I hear that Ocean's 13 is pretty good, temporarily restoring my faith in sequels, after plodding through the garbage that is Pirates 3 and Shrek 3. Stay away. You've been warned.