THE INDISPENSIBLES - An Introduction
I’ve been wanting to do this for a while - to take a look at the films I consider my ‘all time favourites’, to revise and update that list and to look closely at just why I regard them as I do. I kept putting it off and putting if off until, just recently, I lent a friend a copy of a film I consider to be one of my all-time favourites with the line “I don’t think I could live my life without this film in it!” and that just set things in motion.
First of all, he came back having watched my recommendation, absolutely ecstatic that I had put him on to it. Secondly I started to think about the films I consider truly indispensible to me. The films I am just all the more thankful for having encountered. The list came in at 109.
I knew there was no way in hell I was going to be able to write 109 essays, over a shortened period of time, so I went back to the drawing board. I managed to get the list down to 99. Still no good. I rewatched a whole host of films, some of them twice in quick succession, all the while whittling away. By the time I got to fifty I knew I was still way off but I knew I was beginning to come up with a template that each given film had to live up to, in order to acquire a place on the final countdown.
They had to be flawless in my opinion. Or possessing such a minor blemish that it doesn’t register in your retrospection of it. (I don’t buy into the assertion that “no film is truly perfect”. I think there are films, when you judge them for what they are, which genre they sit within, and what they are trying to do or so, that are truly perfect within the confines of that aim.) They had to make some sort of personal impact to me. They had to stand not only the test of time, but repeated viewings, whilst maintaining a level of freshness that many a film doesn’t. Most important of all, they had to be a film that I would ‘take a bullet’ for, so to speak. If I called them up as great in public and was challenged by a friend of family member for having that opinion, I had to be prepared to stand up for them and wax lyrical on their greatness eloquently and without shame or embarrassment.
With all that taken into account, I was left with the twenty-five movies I consider absolutely indispensible. Twenty-five movies I feel I am a better man for having seen and have an enriched life for having encountered them. There were movies that just, and I mean just, missed out on securing a place in this feature. They make up the ‘back-end’, the films that would flesh this thing out into a Top 50. In no particular order, they are:
Fight Club, Raging Bull, The Goonies, Say Anything, The Godfather trilogy, Heat, Fargo, Taxi Driver, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Assault on Precinct 13, Jerry Maguire, either The Incredibles / Monsters Inc / Toy Story / Toy Story 2 on any given day, The Princess Bride, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Good Will Hunting, Out of Sight, The French Connection, Rushmore, The Last Boy Scout, Stranger Than Fiction, The Truman Show, E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial, Annie Hall, The Apartment and Back To The Future.
I managed to cheat a little by compiling separate lists of the ‘conspiracy’ movies and the ‘revenge’ movies that I consider ‘indispensible’, and in time I’ll put forward the Top Ten lists for both of these types of movies, but by doing that I managed to free up some space instead of just having a list of twenty five revenge-themed and/or conspiracy-soaked movies, which is how early designs of the list started to look.
Now, it’s probably very well known as we countdown with these essays - let’s not consider them “reviews” per se, there’ll obviously be no criticism so therefore no ‘popcorn’ rating - as to which film is going to land in the number one spot, but I’m hoping you enjoy the journey there, learn some new facts about some films you’re already familiar with and, most importantly of all, get the urge to check out some films that you were otherwise unfamilar with too.
Starting tomorrow, and running daily - yes, daily, I promise - for twenty five days, I’m going to countdown, from twenty five to one, the films that I consider to be my absolute all-time favourite movies. I hope you enjoy it and find something that sparks the urge to talk about these films in the given talkback areas!
Take care and enjoy!
Gazz
Related Posts:
- THE INDISPENSIBLES - The Bibliography
- LESSONS IN CARPENTERY: The Introduction!
- Mysterious Paths Lead Gazz To An EXCLUSIVE Screening Of IRON-MAN!!!
- OFF THE SHELF - Issue # 1: THE INTRODUCTION
- Introduction To The Stale Popcorn Rating System
14 Responses to “THE INDISPENSIBLES - An Introduction”
Glad to see Out of Sight getting a little love, a really under-rated movie if you ask me. The best Elmore Leonard adaptation by miles.
OUT OF SIGHT is an awesome movie! The trouble with this column has reared its head already man! I started writing and all of a sudden I’m like “Oh but what about this movie, or that movie?”
But, deep down, I “think” I’m more than happy with the twenty-five I’ve selected. They’re most certainly the twenty-five I would say I watch the absolute most above all others and still think are ‘fresh’ and ‘great’ etc.
I just hope you lot like them too! Or at least the essays about them, not necessarily the films!
Out Of Sight is the only movie in which I found myself wanting to shag George Clooney silly. I never understood why women dig him so much until I saw that movie. Goddamn.
I thought you were going to say “the only movie in which Jennifer Lopez is bearable and actually quite a decent little actress”
Which is something I can confirm is true - the George Clooney thing? Obviously I’ll take your word for that! LOL
Agreed on J-Lo.
Also agreed on the J-Lo thing, I cant’ watch her in anything else. Like Russell Crowe, any movie he mad before I realised he was an asshole I can watch, anything after I can’t. So I love LA Confidential and The Insider, can’t watch anything else, or else he takes away form the film.
I got flamed for this in the past but I don’t care I stand by it… The thing with Russell Crowe is that I always see him as “Russell Crowe as…” Never just the character he is playing.
It’s always “Look, there’s Russell being a gladiatar / a cop / a cowboy / whatever!”
People thought I was mad when I published the article about STATE OF PLAY but the fact of the matter is I think he is wrong for the part. I think he is too old to play the character opposite Ben Affleck. It should have been Matt Damon. That would have been perfect.
When they originally cast it, they cast it with Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, and you bought them as old friends. Crowe and Affleck, that just doesn’t fit for me.
Crowe brings too much “personal history” to the screen.
That’s exactly why I can’t watch a film with him in it these days, Him and Catherine Zeta Jones, can’t stnad he rin films either.
No, I’m no Catherine Zeta Jones fan either!
There’s something rather unsavoury about a woman who heads out to the US, fails in all her auditions, dates George Lucas, gets a role in a Spielberg production, marries Michael Douglas, career takes off.
That’s why I call her ‘Castingcouch Zeta Jones’!
She dated George Lucas?!
Yup
“hand-holding” is what most blogs say, but The Daily Mirror here in the UK I recall published pics of them kissing in Hyde Park.
Swear to God!
This is the best I could come up with on the spot though:
http://hjem.get2net.dk/skullhead/catherine-news.html
love the goonies would love to read essay on it , have you done it ? I was trying to explain to my girlfriend the pivotal moment which i think of as the santa clause moment when they decide between there time (where santa clause doesn’t exsist) and our time (where santa does and anythings possible) she didn’t get it lol
Unfortunately, THE GOONIES didn’t make the grade when it came to doing the essays. It sat just outside - but if you come back to the site on 6th December when The Bibliograph is published, then you’ll find THE GOONIES is covered there briefly!
Hope you do, and enjoy digging into Issues 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17 and 16 which are all up online now - just click on the “Features” button at the top of the page!
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