INCEPTION grabbed me like no film has before or since. I was going through a lot emotionally at the time, and as the film was about letting go, it was a message that strongly resonated with me. And I have listened to Hans Zimmer's "Time" track several times on the plane coming back from a deployment, and it's left me in tears every single time.
"And id be happy with Lucille and her soapy car wash - a scene Kinsinger clearly slept through when he watched it!"
Good sir, I'll have you know that I have never slept through one moment of the brilliant Cool Hand Luke, and I know I've watched it over a dozen times through the years. Lucille's little sex tease with her wet, soapy bosom pressed up against an automobile window certainly caught my attention as a teenager watching the film for the very first time. No, sir. No sleepy!
However, the wonderfully mature Charlotte Rampling is a hundred times more smoldering than thirty seconds of a wet T-shirt tease any day of the week!
It would be Bill's luck to get stuck on a island with only the DVD of Cool Hand Luke, and it would be the PG rated version where Lucille's scene are missing. LOL.
Alan Pakula's All the President's Men. The art of off-center storytelling, and subtlety, two things Hollywood mastered for way too short a time. Important subject matter takes a backseat to underplayed star power, natural dialogue and chemistry, and skilled composition.
A fun idea would be to have a series of threads with favorite films by genre, to capture comedy, thriller, Westen, romance, etc....
Here's my first runner up to The Lion in Winter: The Stunt Man
Stunt Man - Film Caravan/Frontiere
Oddly, my two personal favorites both star Peter O'Toole, who is indeed a favorite actor, but not mostly why these two left such a permanent affect on me since seeing them in my early 20's. Nothing has ever topped them, and I still frequently quote from both. Though "Pink f...ing smoke?!" is not quite on the same level as "Such, my angels, is the role of sex in history."
I have a gorgeous, mint print of THE STUNT MAN. I ran it a couple of years ago for the Rialto crowd. Nobody had neither seen nor heard of the film. They were totally blown away by it. O'Toole is amazing. Allen Garfield was being Goorwitz in those days. And what a dream Barbara Hershey was back then!
