Topic: What is your favourite film?

[Najemikon]

There's a simple question! A forum classic, that hasn't been asked in a while. Abandon all thoughts of best directors, cleverest scripts, most dazzling effects; which single film means most to you personally? Not your top ten, not your top three, but the single number one. And tell us why without using any film student terms: "I'm intrigued by the use of colour and sound to offset the genre conventions..." is not a valid reason for liking Police Academy 5 in this thread, me laddio! 

Bonus points for remembering what your favourite film was before you discovered your favourite film... 

[Najemikon]

For the last few years when people asked me that question, I'd be dismissive and claim it changes on a monthly basis. The Godfather in June? Citizen Kane in August? That was bollocks, much as I do adore those films. The answer is purely and simply Dances With Wolves.

I first saw it on TV split over two nights. I must have been about 17. It was the film that made me realise how much I could love cinema. After all I was sat watching a 3-hour epic, with little action and a good dollop of subtitles. It taught me that story can transcend culture and language, and so it was a stepping stone to things like The Seven Samurai and buying film magazines and spending far too much time on film forums and thinking DVDs are the best invention ever.

Since then I've watched a lot of films, but I watched Dances With Wolves again last night and realised I can ramble on all day about how great and important it is, but really, it's just the most beautiful film I've seen and the most pure and personal experience watching it. I wouldn't even entertain a specific discussion on it because I don't want to break it down or put in context, and that's the only film I wouldn't do so with.

Oh yeah. Pre 1992? Aliens. 

[DJ Doena]

Braveheart.

I always liked movies where people fight for their freedom and independence. And I am always on the side of the underdog.

I first saw this movie in german on VHS. A friend of mine tried to copy it from an original VHS to an empty one, but failed due to Macrovision.

Braveheart felt so realistic, with the massacres and the blood and the mud. Before that many movies were very clean. You never saw a wound, even if they just got a sabre in the belly. People died almost instantaneously or fell from a great height.

Here people got heavily wounded and survived or died hours later.

Braveheart was my very first DVD. I saw it on the shelf, grabbed it and bought it.

I can watch it over and over again.

In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom.

[Kathy]

My favorite film...oh my. I love so many but my heart belongs to Mel Brooks. If I have to choose one it is Young Frankenstein; I like every single thing about this movie. It would take pages of narration for me to explain the affection I have for this film; the actors, scenery, use of nuances, comedy, etc. etc. etc. Young Frankenstein was the impetus that began my true love affair with cinema.

[Achim]

I used to answers this question with "Jaws", which I still love. A great exciting film.


Now I say "Pulp Fiction". I like the dialogs, the story, the way it's put together. Have to watch it again soon, it's been a while.

The way I saw Pulp Fiction the first time may be part why I am so attached to it... It was supposed to play at a Film Festival in Berlin (where I was working at the time) short while after Cannes. Rumor had it, that the German theatrical version would be shortened (ultimately turned out to be false alarm though), which made the urge (sparked by knowing Reservoir Dogs) to see it a little larger. However, they didn't get the print in time, but announced they would play it in Hamburg, where the festival would take place two weeks later. Since I lived in Hamburg, it would be an easy thing, or so I thought... When trying to get the tickets I found out it would play on a Wednesday night, a work night. So here's what I did:
Wednesday I finished work early and drove the 300km to Hamburg. I went home and slept for a few hours. Then I went to the cinema, as I had a ticket for the 1:45 show. After only watching the first short segment with Honey Bunny and Pumpkin, when the credits started to roll, I had already fallen in love with the film and continued to watch in awe. After the film finished 2 1/2 hours later I drove back to Berlin and went to work.

[lovemunkey187]

The Killer
I was staying at a relatives and my cousin had rented two films from the video shop, one was Hard Bolied and the other was The Killer.

We watched Hard Boiled and couldn't believe our eyes. We thought that we'd seen it all. But this was something else.

After Hard Boiled had finished and we got refreshments/toilet break, we watched The Killer. It didn't have the all out action of HB, (admittedly it does have more than it's fair share) but the the themes of loyalty, honour & friendship that run thoughout struck a chord about things that are very important to me.

Before this? Being honest, Empire Strikes Back. I'm not 100% but I am fairly certain that this was the first film I ever watched at the cinema.

[richierich]

I can't pick just one film, there are several that at different times, different points of my life, have been my favourites.
I've always maintained different films can appeal more dependent on your mood/emotional state when first viewed.



Special mention for Zulu though, watched it loads of times and never tire of it

[RossRoy]

I have to say Star Wars, the very first one.

I grew up watching it repeatedly, and still today, when I watch it, I get this urge to just go back and watch it all again. I couldn't explain it, how after seeing it so many times I'm still not fed up with it, but I just keep coming back to it.

It's also the only movie, well trilogy, that I've kept double dipping with each new release.

[Achim]

The Killer
I was staying at a relatives and my cousin had rented two films from the video shop, one was Hard Boiled and the other was The Killer.

Both great choices! I saw Hard Boiled earlier and am somehow a little bit more attached to it's over-the-top action; The Killer has a little more story going for itself.

Too bad John Woo was so desperate to get to Hollywood, where they almost never let him do what he wants. Hard Boiled is only available in a Director's Cut in Japan, I believe (never seen it, only the awful theatrical version). Broken Arrow was somewhat fun (John Travolta getting high from watching the heli go down is a treat). ..and then of course Face/Off, it feels the only time Hollywood let him loose. M:i:2 is just a Tom Cruise vehicle (although that motorcycle chase is really cool) and Windtalkers is only so-so...

[Lone]

Shawshenk Redemption for me,,it's an interesting story and keeps my attention time after time..it just seems like that one will never go out of fashion
Cool Hand Luke is a close second

[VibroCount]

"O Lucky Man!" is my favorite film. I could not imagine anything besting "Citizen Kane" (prior to viewing Kane, I loved "Casablanca"), but college film studies reintroduced the great works of Buster Keaton... "The General" & "Sherlock, Jr." among my favorites of his works. So I have dozens of favorite films.

But seeing "O Lucky Man!" busted my ideas of plot, structure, and character. The film was episodic -- absolutely ancient in structure, with Mick Travis' many travels after leaving the school in the film "if...." learning that his smile has both substance and emptiness. Cutting away to the band in rehearsal, as each song commented on the themes of the film, then having the band become part of the narrative. And reusing actors to play many characters throughout the film... giving substance to minor characters because you recognize them from "if...." and earlier in "O Lucky Man!", their types becoming less and less stereotypical as the plot unfolds.

Sorry if I sound like a film student -- I was.

[VibroCount]

Please don't laugh at me    

I think I'm going to injure myself if I don't...

 

Delightful!

 

[m.cellophane]

When my wife and I started dating and realized that (this was pre-DVD) we each owned official copies of Xanadu on VHS...well, we knew we were a match!  And yes, we own it on DVD now together. 

Barbra Streisand is my all time fave but a non-Streisand film has crept up and become my #1: Moonstruck

The dialogue is hysterical to me and painfully true as well...which makes it the best kind of humor where it causes you to reflect.

The casting in Moonstruck is oh-so-perfect...surely the best cast movie I've ever seen, down through the entire cast. I can watch it over and over again, no matter when it comes on. If I stumble upon it on TV, I'll watch it. With commercials. Even though I have the DVD on the shelf. I even watched it in Spanish once when I found it on the Spanish station. I don't speak Spanish. But I still loved it.

"Snap out of it!"

"You're life's goin' down the toilet!"

"You've got a love bite on your neck!"

Love it. 

[movie diva]

I have so many favorites, so here is one The Lion in Winter with Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepbubrn. The acting and dialog is some of the best.

Prince John: Poor John. Who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once! My God, if I went up in flames there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out!
Prince Richard: Let's strike a flint and see.

Henry II: The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings.
Eleanor: There'll be pork in the treetops come morning.

Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody.
Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore.

If you have never seen it give it a rent the 1968 version.

[lyonsden5]

Thanks Diva!