THE INDISPENSIBLES – The Bibliography
And we’re done! Can you believe it? After the debacle of Off The Shelf going from one issue a week to issues getting split into fours and going monthly or bi-monthly etc. who actually thought that I’d get a fully researched ‘essay’ done every day for twenty-five plus days straight without missing a beat?
But I did it! And, we’re done! Outta here! You may not agree with the selections I put forward or the order I put them in, but hopefully I’ll have inspired you to get out there and check out a fair few films you might not have heard of or had let you pass you by.
Thanks to Kristina and you regulars for your kind comments and for bantering away in the talkbacks. I leave you with ‘the bibliography’ – links to all the essays and, as requested by a couple of you, the 50 to 26 positions sorted out, put in order and briefly commented upon!
Hope you lot have enjoyed reading The Indispensibles as much as I have writing it. For those coming to this completely “fresh”, maybe you’d like to check out the introductory piece that will get you up to date with what I’m doing, what the criteria is to make the list etc. etc. You can find that right here!
THE INDISPENSIBLE TOP FIFTY:
50. THE LAST BOY SCOUT: This violent, smart-mouthed buddy movie enlightens the hackneyed “private eye” flick thanks to the work of screenwriter Shane Black (something he’d do again, even better, years later with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) in much the same way he revolutionised the buddy movie’s cop genre a good few years earlier with Lethal Weapon. After John McClane, this is undoubtedly Bruce Willis’ best role and it’s most certainly the best thing Damon Wayans has ever done. The action is fast, the sexism jaw-dropping (women are there to be fucked, slapped around or murdered!) and the violence soaked in testosterone, but it’s all so self-consciously excessive and drenched in comic-book sensibilities that it works incredibly well.
49. BEAUTIFUL GIRLS: You may have heard of it but chances are it’s not held within your DVD collection like it should be. A touching, funny, smart and well-realised screenplay by Scott Rosenberg is given light yet committed direction by the late Ted Demme in this tale of big “boys” in a small town, coming to understand the importance of love, commitment, growing up and the harsh realities of the big bad world during the course of the weekend of their high school reunion. A cast of Hollywood’s best, (then) young character actors work wonders and the film is a slice of solid gold from start to finish as a result. The mere sight of it on my DVD shelf just makes me start humming “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond.
48. SAY ANYTHING: Forget about Crowe’s assured screenplay and subsequent direction, set aside the wonderful supporting turns from the likes of John Mahoney, Joan Cusack and Lili Taylor and just put yourself in one single moment from this movie: Lloyd (John Cusack), having been dumped by Diane (IIone Skye) (“I gave her my heart! She gave me a pen!”) decides to not give up without a fight and goes and stands outside of her bedroom window in the early hours of the morning, ghetto-blaster (this is the 80s, remember!) held high above his head, blaring out the song they lost their virginity to (and what a song too – Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes). A million girls wipe tears from their eyes and a million boys nod warmly whilst the hairs stand up on the back of their necks!
47. ANNIE HALL: You know you’re watching a genuine vintage cinematic masterpiece when we’re first introduced to the wonderful, unique, semi-autobiographical creation that is Annie Hall, played sublimely by Diane Keaton who seems to waste her talents these days playing really rather horrific batty old-lady variations on this “type”. It’s probably my favourite Woody Allen film and the best film to have a crack at if you’re not a fan of his work.
46. THE APARTMENT: From the first frame to that sublime final line, you realise that thanks to Billy Wilder’s master-hand and two stellar performances from Jack Lemmon and Shirley McClaine, this is an unarguable highlight on Wilder’s cinematic C.V which, in turn, just happens to be littered with them. Every single film fan on the planet has got to have this in their collection!
45. THE FRENCH CONNECTION: This is William Friedkin’s brilliant, genre-defining masterpiece; a definitive textbook example of how to make a police-procedural for the masses. It’s memorable for it’s superbly executed balls-to-the-wall car chase but not characterised by it and, in Gene Hackman’s ‘Popeye’ Doyle, driven by one of cinema’s greatest character performances!
44. RUSHMORE: Every time someone throws out the argument that great debuting directors always fuck up their second movie, I always immediately hit back with the words “Wes”, “Anderson” and “Rushmore”. It’s just a brilliant, brilliant, brilliant film from start to finish. Soaked in originality from start to finish and in every frame, this is a film every single film geek whose ever wanted to be somebody but always had to stand on the outside, should have in their collection. In a career that has films as fantastic as Tootsie, Ghostbusters, Stripes and Lost in Translation, this could be considered one of Bill Murray’s best performances! In fact, any time Murray has worked underneath Wes Anderson he has given a career best. Now let’s go indulge in that Apocalypse Now spoofing theatre production of an ending!
43. FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF: The whole film is just flawless! One of the best films of the 80s. My personal favourite moment in the whole film is when Ferris takes over the float at the parade and lip-synchs ‘Twist & Shout’! It’s just so bat-shit crazy and joyous and fun! Watching this film again, you realise just what a wonderful, under-stated performance Alan Ruck gives as Cameron. The best film John Hughes made as a director. The second best film he wrote!
42. ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13: Quite simply one of the best siege films ever made and, had it not been for us Brits, it certainly would not be considered the classic that it is. Carpenter’s superb play on Rio Bravo and Night of the Living Dead casts against then cinematic stereotypes (a black man portrays the heroic policeman and a white man play the notorious criminal – something the much underrated and actually rather good recent remake rather stupidly reversed)! It’s a taut, well paced and extremely tension soaked slice of cinema. Carpenter’s use of shadows and minimal dialogue serve the film well and it’s a real sign of how brilliant the film is that, despite repeated viewings, I find something new to enjoy every time I watch it.
41. GOOD WILL HUNTING: This film may have it’s haters but I adore it and think it is positively perfect from start to finish. I’m not that big a fan of Gus Van Sant as a director but even I can acknowledge that he’s delivered a modern masterpiece here! You know whether you can recognise this film for its greatness or not when you see Robin Williams, richly deserving of his Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actor, and Matt Damon deliver the “It’s not your fault!” scene. If it doesn’t chip your heart strings a little then this film isn’t for you, otherwise sit back and watch this film in all it’s truly mesmerising glory! And all hail me, for getting through this without raving on about Damon and Affleck’s astoundingly good screenplay!
40. THE TRUMAN SHOW: Peter Weir’s modern masterpiece is one of the best conspiracy flicks of the last ten years. In fact, let me go a little bit stronger seeing as the truly great, timeless conspiracy movies are usually and invariably from within the decade of the 70s, let me state that The Truman Show is, since it’s release in 1998, not only one of the best films ever made but also THE BEST conspiracy film of the last ten years! If you haven’t seen this flick then you must be insane! This is a film that every self-respecting film fan should own.
39. THE PRINCESS BRIDE: From start to finish – yes, even the Fred Savage and Peter Falk bookends – you get to revel in, I kid you not, one of the greatest movies of all time. There’s not an “off” moment in the entire film but my personal favourite moments are a) the cliff-top swordfight between Wesley and Innigo Montaya and b) that adrenaline pumping moment when Montaya finally comes face to face with “The Sixth Fingered Man” and delivers his all important speech. I just love this film so, so much.
38. FIGHT CLUB: This is a truly awesome film. Everything you have ever been told about this film is true. Read Art Linson’s memoirs to get a really clear picture of how Fox and its cowardly marketing department fumbled the ball on this one. In the history of directorial filmographies, David Fincher’s one-two combination of masterpiece (Se7en) to masterpiece (this opus!) by way of a quick duck-and-weave (The Game) is one of the greatest! If you don’t own this on DVD and don’t intend to rectify this mistake within the next 60 minutes then please don’t visit this site ever, ever, ever again.
37. Any of the following PIXAR movies on any given day : THE INCREDIBLES / TOY STORY / TOY STORY 2 / MONSTERS INC / WALL-E
36. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST: Oh My God – that ending! It absolutely devastates me! Seriously! I’ve seen this movie well over a hundred times. Probably half of that was due to studying it as part of my Sociology course in High School but still that ending breaks me in half every time. The lobotomising of McMurphy by electric shock therapy and his inability, in Chief’s eyes, to return mentality from it. The fury of Chief that forces him to break free from the asylum once and for all. The swelling of the musical score. The sense of freedom that swells within you from just a small moment. This is unarguably THE greatest movie about institutionalisation that has ever, and probably will ever be made.
35. HEAT: What can I possibly write about this, the greatest film of 1995? With an impressive cast (too lengthy to list here!) supporting the first on-screen pairing of Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, this is an adult, complex and thoroughly dazzling police procedural epic. That post-bank-robbery scene in which De Niro, Sizemore and Kilmer walk out of their latest ‘job’ and find themselves forced to unleash “hell” on the awaiting police units outside is still, for me, one of the greatest scenes in cinema of the last twenty to thirty years. It’s expertly executed in terms of production, performance and sound. It says everything about the skill and depth of Michael Mann as a director and what it is about him that makes him one of the greatest directorial talents in the movie industry to date. Heat is his masterpiece and my favourite film of his!
34. JERRY MAGUIRE: This should have got Tom Cruise an Oscar. It really should have. It shouldn’t have got Cuba Gooding Jnr an Oscar though. It really shouldn’t have. This is a truly great, inspiring, exceptionally well-written character piece, one of the best of our age, channelling the work and mind-set of the late Billy Wilder like the film’s live depended on it. Everyone keeps commenting on how “sugary” and “soppy” the film is, but go back and watch it again. It’s not like that at all. Think how much worse it could have been? The moments of “soppiness” or whatever, are very much earned and somewhat required in what is basically a very well-judged dark piece about a man looking inside of himself and not liking what he’s seeing, but not really knowing whether he has the inner-strength to change.
33. TAXI DRIVER: Like Raging Bull, I don’t need to write a single word to sell this movie to you or justify its place in this particular subsection. Winner of Best Picture at Cannes 1976 and nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Film, Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress, this is a film that – for me personally – has actually transcended past the point of being considered one of the pivotal movies of the 70s and has now become a piece of moving art!
32. STRANGER THAN FICTION: I voted this as my Number 1 film of the year. I cried when I saw it back then and I still cry when I watch it now. It’s a wonderful, wonderful film. It can prove life-changing to you the viewer if you want it to. It’s Will Ferrell doing a complete reversal as to what you’d expect from him and its music, script, direction and supporting cast are just completely heart-capturing in their excellence. Barely anyone I know has seen this, I seem to lend this DVD out more than any other in my collection and I urge you all to seek it out!
31. FARGO: Undoubtedly one of the best films the Coen Brothers have ever done, and you only need to glance quickly at their directorial CV to see what an achievement that is. This really is fresh, original and incredibly assured filmmaking at it’s very highest. Joel and Ethan Coen have written a screenplay so unarguably pitch-perfect that it is understandable why some film schools study it and why William Goldman thinks it should be studied by High School students as work of literary art! The film itself is directed superbly and offers up a fantastic portfolio of rich characters – from the iconic Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), a small-town, heavily pregnant police chief, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy, who concluded his audition for the role with the now famous statement of “I don’t mean to be pushy but I’m not leaving until I get the role. If I have to kill your pets, I’ll do it!”) the used-car-salesman under pressure, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi), the mouthy yet thoroughly incompetent criminal, and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), his hulking yet silent accomplice. Its understandable why within two years of its release, the AFI raced to include it within its Top 100 Films of All Time.
30. THE GODFATHER / THE GODFATHER PART II: The first is a film so classy, timeless and majestic that it is undoubtedly a must-own for any self-respecting film-fan and unarguably something every person on the planet should see before they die! The second is the poster-child for sequels yearning to be superior to their ‘birth-parent’. More assured/inventive, it’s a film so well executed across every relevant arena that it looks, feels and breathes its way into your life like a work of art. Coppola has never bettered it since! Watch both as one movie (hence its inclusion as one) to experience its true magnificence!
29. THE GOONIES: Come on? Like I need to say anything right? The prison break opening? The assembling of the gang with their individual introductions? The “truffle shuffle”? All those phenomenal sequences inside the tunnels? Sloth (“Hey! You! Guys!”)? The pirate ship ending? I could go on and on and on… A true classic of the 80s, and a kids flick that stands up briliantly to this day!
28. RAGING BULL: There’s not a word that needs to be written about this film. Definitely in the top five movies made by Martin Scorsese. Definitely in the top three of movies from the 80s and unarguably one of the greatest films ever made. I dare anyone to disagree with me that this isn’t a film that works out to be the very definition of a “vintage masterpiece”.
27. OUT OF SIGHT: My favourite Elmore Leonard novel becomes my favourite Elmore Leonard adapted movie with a surprisingly stunning cast and a career-defining turn from George Clooney leading the way. Steven Soderbergh shows us how to make a visually inventive, cool piece of cinema that captures our attention from start to finish and keeps us enthralled despite the non-linear time-jumps, simply by colour-coding events as a guide. This is the best Jennifer Lopez has ever been and probably will ever be, and the whole film is just a total joy from start to finish
26. BACK TO THE FUTURE: It is one of the greatest films of the 80s. An intelligent family film that delivers thrills, laughs and unquestionably superb special effects in equal measure. A genuine masterpiece for every generation – then and to come! The screenplay should be studied as a work of art!
23. PARADISE LOST / REVELATIONS: PARADISE LOST 2
Fare thee well. Hope you’ve enjoyed the whole endeavour and bounce back over the issues you may have missed, should you wish – that’s what this “bibliography” is for after all!
Was there a film I covered that you’d never seen before but hunted out on the basis of my essay? Is there flicks you intend to see now for the same reason? Is there films given coverage that you just think “Oh Dear God, that doesn’t deserve to be on such a list?”
Well… that’s what the talkbacks are for. Fill ya boots! 
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17 Responses to “THE INDISPENSIBLES – The Bibliography”
okay i started visiting this site when you were almost done with this list so….is this a list of best movies ever, or best movies that came out in VHS/before the year 2000? or just not-the-best-but-certainly-underrated movies, or movies you own?
either way good list, appart from the part where you included tootsie in the list (in front of HEAT!?)
and i would switch fight club with munich…and altogether take out the thing lol
Hazmat mate, what they are and what they mean are all explained in the introduction. Click back over and have a read of that. And the list is personal to me but a jumping off point for as much debate as you see fit. Like any good list, you can spend all the time in the world saying that should be higher or that should be lower, but if this whole thing just makes you hunt out at least ONE thing you haven’t seen in order to give it a try on my say so then I’ll be a very happy man!
lol
the top doesnt specify…(obviously you already explained and it would be redundant to explain again) but its FILLED with links…like ive noticed in this site every 5 words are a link lol so i dont ever click on links on thios site..unless you guys are showing videos (AGAIN, emble your videos!! lol)
and i thougth the list was good other then the fact that you dared to put tootsie in it
but all of thos emovies i liked (okay..not really pulp fiction…but i dont disagree with you..it was a good movie but i didnt enjoy watchign it…liek titanic..i know it was a great movie..but i just can not watch that shit again)
Yes Hazmat, the “green” links are a bit of a bone of contention between Gareth (Wyv) and I but unfortunately whilst he is still the bill payer, they’ve got to stay, but they’ll be the first to go if I take over! Just coz you avoid the “green” links or whatever, doesn’t mean you should avoid the all important blue ones!
And coz I’m nice, here’s what you SHOULD be looking at:
http://www.stalepopcorn.co.uk/features/indispensibles-features/the-indispensibles-an-introduction/
not being funny but you’d have to be pretty ****in dumb to not be able to tell the difference between advertising links an real ones. its not like yours is the only site to use them
Hazmat…. ‘tangledvein’ is calling you dumb!
lol
just saying dude! good posts btw. didnt agree with all your choices but they were good reading
That’s a compliment I’ll gladly take – as long as people enjoyed the coverage, not necessarily the order or necessarily the choices!
Thank you very much sir!
tangle****
no.
web sites dont usualy advertise the words “agree” or “day” so i dont bother clicking on them when i see them…
and the blue ones also say irrelevant shit sometimes like “runtime” or “microwave”
so ive stopped going in them altogether unless the title says “______ movie trailer!” and one of the links says “HERE”
which is why ive been saying its easier to emble the videos
and i dont know were youve ever seen a website advertise the word “week” but ive certainly never seen it (not that i mind…im just SAYING)
See?
See what you’ve done tangledvein?
Me and Kris spent WEEKS cooing and coaxing Hazzy back into his cave and you’ve gone and poked him with a stick and set him off!
DOWN HAZZY! DOWN!
Kristina – go get that rolled up Gywenth Paltrow poster to hit him with!
if a gwyneth poster is damaged in any way shape or form it will not help whatsoever
oh now that were on the subject they were playing shallow hal on FX and i was like “oh SHIT!”
i forgot to say this but i am really glad you put the movie “seven” on your list. i have infinite respect for you now gazz
although…i question the fact that TRON isnt up there…..HHHMMMMMMM’
(oh yes. i liked tron)
You really need to re-watch TOOTSIE Hazzy. That is a truly GREAT romantic comedy!
A classic!
okay..i liek comedy (soemtimes)
i LOVE LOVE romance (not gay)
but MOST OF THE TIME (especially now a days) romantic comedies have been getting really repeatitive and abnoxious
but hey! i cant make fun of you for liking tootsie..shit i like TRON for crying out loud!
(btw..tron was awsome)
Seriously, go back and re-visit TOOTSIE…
… It’s a masterclass in romantic comedy filmmaking!
Yeah, Tootsie is a pretty fun movie.
Tootsie is a great movie. Certainly one of my faves.
As for those “green” links – they were part of an attempt to make the site self-sustainable, rather than draining funds from my pockets, but they have never really generated any kind of income. Coupled with the fact that I have had various problems with the code of the site recently, and narrowed it down to them, they have now gone.
Feel free to click on any of the “blue” hyperlinks though, as usually they do have some relevance to the posts!
PMSL!
Very droll Wyv!
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