From Tarantino's trademark moments of tense conversations
One of the many things which disappointed me about IB was the lack of trademark Tarantino dialogue. No spark, no wit. Nothing.
I love submarine movies, but other than Das Boot, I don't think there are many that have transcended into high levels of quality/notoriety. Crimson Tide and The Hunt for Red October are the ones that come closer,.
The Cruel Sea. I doubt it'll show now, but if you're talking submarine films, you need to watch The Cruel Sea.
Just so you know Christoph Waltz is not British and does not have a natural British accent. He was absolutely perfect for the role. I doubt the movie would have worked with anyone else.
It didn't work with him! He was one of the worst things about it for me.
I'm sitting on 10 selections,
Well go and find a chair or something you ninny.
It's been quite a while since I've posted here so some quick housekeeping. Ran, Platoon, Downfall, Schindler's List all made my list at 8, 5, 6, and 11 respectively.
As some of you may know, I have a thing about war movies (and movies in general) where if the first thing I hear about it is "the battle scenes are amazing!" I'm fairly confident from that point on it's not for me. Ran is the exception to that rule. The battle scenes in Ran are amazing but so is Ran. It probably does help that it's based on a Shakespeare play, and one of his best, but that is just the foundations from which this film is built and it's a huge, sprawling, exquisite film which sits upon them.
I like Oliver Stone quite a lot, and Platoon is one of his best. It's a film about division, about ying and yang, about good and evil, about right and wrong, about them and us and dozens of other sides. But, like all the best war films, it's about being human and the absolute best and the absolute worst of what that means.
Downfall I haven't seen now for a very long time, but I've seen it two or three times and it just hits like a sledgehammer every time. It's so tense, so claustrophobic, so frightening to see crazy that close up, to see that kind of delusional devotion which goes beyond all logic and which seems like absolute madness to anyone who isn't one of those in that state, for whom it's the most natural thing in the world. Again, like Platoon, it's about being human and how complex that is even in a story where it should simply be black and white and how that's usually told to us.
I've seen Schindler's List twice, I doubt I'll watch it again. Both times are in the 90s, and so my memories of it are either incredibly vivid or simply a blurred sense of emotion. After so many years of therapy I'm not even sure if I could watch it now without completely falling apart? Maybe that's the point? Anyway, as I have so few war films to choose from and because this film is so important (maybe more so now than when it was actually made?) I had to include it, as I did Night and Fog for the same reason.
I saw All Quiet on the Western Front when I was 19 or 20, which is a great time to see a film like that. A bit like watching The Breakfast Club When you're 15 or listening to The Doors when you're 17, it just fits for where you probably are in your life. I think part of why I like this so much is because you rarely see things from the German point of view in US/UK films, especially when I saw it in the early 90s. It being an anti-war film, also marked it out as something different. But I don't think I included it just because it's different, I think I included it because it's a very good film, which I had at number two.
I also had Das Boot on my list at number 4( because it's the second best submarine film ever made and my number 3 film was also a submarine film.) I first saw Das Boot when I was 10 or 11 in its miniseries format on BBC 2 and was absolutely captivated by it. The small, dark claustrophobic sense of the film works so well on television and I felt simlarly sitting my small, dark bedroom, peering at 12" B&W screen. Later I saw Das Boot and the director's cut, probably in my late teens/early twenties? And was once again taken back to being that little boy in his bedroom staring now it's a bigger screen in colour and once again being captivated by these men trapped in their small little box full of fear, trepidation, joy and loneliness.
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