Films to Be Buried With

I mean come on. What a sexy image that is.

To each their own, but I'd rather stay away from any woman with a syringe or garrote, no matter how beautiful.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Yeah I remember that, but at the very end, unless I'm getting this wrong, a number of people from the past begin appear on the planet or another dimension?

Oh, yes, now I remember better---it seems like he returns to his family home on earth, but it's actually an island on Solaris? I think that was it.

That sounds about right. Good movie too!

It's actually been a while since I've seen Solaris, so I don't remember it that well. I should revisit it though.

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What is the first film you remember seeing?

The Amityville Horror. Screamed on the floor until my parents decided it would just be easier to bring me with them to see it.

What film scared you the most?

The Exoricst. Watched it on television with my mother when I was about 3. Pleaded with her to turn it off. She didn't. And now I am who I am

What film made you cry the most?

Dancer in the Dark. Sobbing, even though it was clear the whole thing is a manipulative mother****er. Von Trier gets forever props for being able to get this kind of emotional reaction, while clearly and deliberately pulling the strings of his audience in the most grotesque ways.

What is a film that is critically and popularly hated, but you love?

Good God, where do I even start? Probably Hallucinations, if the critics were even aware it existed (trust me, they would all hate it)

What is a respected award-wining or widely beloved film that you hate?

It's probably got to be some music bio-pic. Rocket Man? Anything that is respected is usually awful, so there is a lot to choose from here.

What is a film that you used to love, but you’ve seen it again recently and it no longer holds up? Either simply not as good as your memory or elements that have dated badly.

The Dog that Stopped the War. It probably ranked near the top of my favorite movies of all time when I was a kid. And it's charms as an adult are very limited.

What is the film that means the most to you? Not necessarily due to the quality of the film, but the memory or the circumstances around seeing it?

Another one where there are just too many to choose from. Maybe Return of the Jedi? The first movie that, because I kept asking to go and see it, my grandmother just started sending me to the movie theatre alone. Got to realize that was the best way to see anything, at such a young age.

What is the film you found the sexiest?

I generally find moments sexy, and not entire films....um, Swimming Pool?


Troubling boners/worrying wide-ons: What is a film you found arousing maybe you shouldn't have?

Having once been a teenage boy, there are all sorts of answers I could have for this, but they'd all probably need to be qualified with many shameful paragraphs and I'm too lazy and unwilling to do that.



So the quickest answer is probably Revenge of the Nerds, where I thought it would be great to grow up and put secret cameras in girls change rooms. At the time, it seemed totally okay. It was what boys are supposed to do.

What movie do you most relate to? The character, world, or atmosphere seem to be most like you?

There are probably way more affirming films that I could align myself with, but I think it would be a disservice to my life if I didn't just say that the documentary Crumb is basically the household I grew up in. I can smell that carpet.

What film could you or have you seen the most times?

There are a number of films I've seen at least 25 times, but the only one I think is nearing a 100 is the Exorcist. I don't think anything is touching that.

What film do you objectively think is the greatest – not necessarily your personal favorite?

2001: A Space Odyssey. Duh. And there are only about four possible answers for this that I have any time for

What is the worst film you have ever seen?

Wired. The John Belushi Story. I don't hate many films, maybe almost no films, but this one, both morally and as a piece of art, is about as worthless as any film I can think of.


What is the funniest film you have ever seen?

Airplane is up there. Spinal Tap is up there. But when it comes to a movie that I think I laugh the most too, nearly uncontrollably, it's Windy City Heat

What is a film that changed your perspective on something?

Shoah. It's easy to point to documentary footage of bodies being bulldozed into mass graves, or re-enactments of gas chamber death, but it was a real eye peeler to slowly have this film draw attention to what evil truly is: slow, boring, methodical planning to do all of these things.

What is the best opening sequence to a film?

Walkabout

What is the best ending sequence to a film?

I'm sure there are better, but the first coming to me is Blair Witch.

What is your favorite film?

Exorcist

What one film would you take with you to heaven to screen for everybody when it's your turn to host movie night?

Being that I assume in heaven everyone finally has good taste in movies, and the time and patience to appreciate good things, probably Jeanne Dielmann. First, to show all these dead dopes how great it actually obviously was. Second, to remind us of what it was like to be here. A kind of chore porn since I imagine in the afterlife, they've got mother****ers to clean up after us. Make us pot roasts.

I really like a lot of your responses---especially Blair Witch and Jeanne Dielmann.

What is the first film you remember seeing?

When I was four-years-old, the first theater experience I can remember was a showing of the Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).

I am old enough that my first movie experiences pre-date VHS and even cable TV, so the access to films was much, much more limited back then, up until I was around eleven and twelve. Because this was the pre-VHS era, I know for sure my memory of Snow White is theatrical. It was literally the only way to see it, back then. You couldn’t rent it, and while sequences of it may have been broadcast on ”The Wonderful World of Disney” on NBC Sunday nights, Disney had a strict policy of not broadcasting their animated canon. Instead, they would systematically schedule wide theatrical rereleases, rotating their legendary library for each new generation.

I don’t remember anything about the experience of going to the theater and sitting in the dark, but the movie definitely impacted me as I had recurring nightmares. Specifically, I kept seeing the Queen in her old witch form outside of my window with an apple. In my faded memory these waking nightmares persisted for many weeks, though it may just have been one or two very intense ones. Sometime around the same era I also saw the live-action Disney flick Herbie Rides Again at a drive-in. That one I can’t really remember anything about the movie itself – certainly not nightmare-inducing – but I do remember the experience.




What film scared you the most?

Obviously the aforementioned Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs did a number on me as a tyke, but scaring a four-year-old is a pretty low bar to clear. Horror is about the one genre I don’t really groove to, which doesn’t mean there aren’t Horror movies I find brilliant, but in general it is a genre I don’t care for. The first Horror movie I remember watching and being scared by was My Bloody Valentine (1981).

It was the first of the burgeoning Slasher genre that I saw. By myself. Late at night. On cable. In a dark basement. As an eleven-year-old. I don’t believe the original My Bloody Valentine is widely considered to be one of the best ‘80s Slasher flicks, but I saw it first, before Halloween or Friday the 13th or anything else. We got cable when I was ten and I did see at least pieces of both Apocalypse Now and The Shining before My Bloody Valentine, but they were so surreal and beyond my comprehension that they didn’t really give me the feeling of being “scared”. And I had seen Jaws on regular broadcast television in the late '70s, but it didn’t scare me with commercial interruptions and in the safety of my living room. But I watched My Bloody Valentine beginning to end, and the dread and gory kills got me. The laundromat scene, in particular, really stuck with me, but the finding the burned body in the dryer more than the kill itself.



I have seen lots of Horror movies, especially that 1980s era, and they simply don’t do much for me. Not because they scare me – I am not an eleven-year-old in a basement anymore – but because it’s a genre where its patterns and tropes simply don’t interest me. Every genre is repetitive. I have watched hundreds upon hundreds of Westerns and never tire of the formula. But Horror…meh.

The answer I usually give to Scariest Movie Ever is not any Horror movie but the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp about indoctrinating children to be soldiers for Christ. Terrifying.




What film made you cry the most?

I definitely cried as a kid watching well-known weepers like The Champ (1979) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), which I saw on cable. I remember being blindsided by the made-for-TV movie ”The Comeback Kid” starring John Ritter and Susan Dey. It’s kind of a poor man’s Bad News Bears in its set up, with Ritter playing a drunken minor league baseball player who has lost his spot and winds up coaching some under-privileged ragtag kids (including Doug McKeon the year before On Golden Pond). But at the end of the story the youngest, cutest kid gets HIT BY A CAR AND KILLED. Quite the punch in the nuts.

The first movie that made me cry in the theater is Savannah Smiles (1982). It is a very small, cheap little production that was barely released in theaters, but I saw it. Didn’t intend to see it. Don’t remember where my Dad and brother were that afternoon, but my Mom and little sister were going to see Savannah Smiles. From the TV commercial and ad in the paper I didn’t have any interest in seeing that, but I picked another movie that was starting around then at the same theater. I do not remember what that movie was supposed to be, but back in those olden days you got the movie times either by calling the theater and listening to a recorded message or mostly by checking the times in the newspaper. The problem with that, of course, is that mistakes can be made, and whatever time was printed in the paper was incorrect. Whatever I wanted to see started way after Savannah Smiles, so reluctantly I went in with them.



Savannah Smiles is a sort of inverse take on the O. Henry story The Ransom of Red Chief. A super cute little girl who is being ignored by her rich parents decides to run away. She sneaks into the car of two amiable escaped convicts, Alvie and Bootsie. By the time they realize there is a child in their vehicle they have inadvertently kidnapped her, but when they find out there is a large cash reward for her return they go with it. Savannah is ridiculously cute and sweet and irresistibly charming, and bit by bit these criminals soften up (not that they were true bad guys to begin with) and come to adore the little ragamuffin. At the end of the movie Savannah is returned to her folks while Alvie & Bootsie are arrested. BUT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! THEY AREN’T BAD GUYS! THEY ARE GOOD GUYS! THEY TOOK CARE OF SAVANNAH. SHE LOVES THEM! Oh, the humanity!

I was twelve at the time, and my Dad had already started taking me to see R-Rated movies like Stripes, Outland, and Conan the Barbarian, so I thought I was much too sophisticated for this silly kids movie. But there I was, crying like a baby. How dare they.

But the movie that made me cry the most, and it isn’t even close, is from when I was an adult. Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (2000) absolutely CRUSHED me. Part of it was that I was going through some uncertainty with the woman I was madly in love with. She had taken a job out of state and was insistent that I not come with her, so that likely made me vulnerable. Extra susceptible or not, this odd, melodramatic Musical hit me in a way I have never been hit before or since. I had seen and been impressed by Breaking the Waves and I think I had even seen The Element of Crime by then, so I thought I knew what Von Trier was capable of. I knew who Björk was, but I certainly didn’t own any of her records. And then starts this weird, melancholy, artificial, stylized melodrama with a soap opera plot that on paper I would have laughed at. But in the hands of Von Trier it somehow became this intensely emotional exercise. From the song “I’ve Seen It All” onward I was either tearing up, crying, or full-on sobbing.

Mind you, that song comes about 55-minutes into a two-hour and twenty-minute movie. So for well over an hour I sat there sniffling and shaking with hot tears running down my face. I had gone to see it by myself, probably that first Friday afternoon it hit town. It was a small arthouse theater during the day, so there were only maybe five or six other people scattered around. But at times I stopped to take a deep breath I could hear them sniffling and crying in the dark. The title was a lie. None of us danced. We all cried. By the time it got to the end of the movie and she is hanged for a murder she did not commit…my gawd, I was a shell. I managed to get up once the credits finished and the lights came up, found my way to my car, but that was some intensely sad *****. I do not know if I hadn’t been going through some personal stuff at the same time if it would have affected me so strongly, nor if I had seen it at home rather than the movie theater. I suspect that was all a perfect storm, but however much the ingredients beyond the film itself may have contributed, Lars Von Trier broke me that day.




What is a film that is critically and popularly derided, but you love?

This is a tough one to answer. After all these years discussing movies online, I don’t think there any universally hated movies anymore, because everything seemingly has its cult and its supporters. Back in 1993 if I had said I secretly like Xanadu (1980) or Joe vs. the Volcano (1990) – and I sincerely love them both – I could get some stares. But in this day and age you can find whole web communities devoted to them, both ironically and unabashedly. I saw a sold-out revival screening of Xanadu a dozen years ago in Portland that was half a step from a Rocky Horror Picture Show level of singalong adoration. So for me to call Xanadu a “bad” or “hated” film seems easy and hollow at this point.

While its critical and mainstream reputation definitely had some incremental positive transformation in the decades since its release, for the purposes of this question I’ll go with Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed (1981). Back then Bogdanovich was suffering through a stretch of critical and/or box office disappointments that had plagued him since his brilliant start of The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?, and Paper Moon, a trio that had rightfully propelled him to Oscar nominations and the A-List. They All Laughed is centered on some contemporary Manhattan private investigators (Ben Gazzara, John Ritter, and Blaine Novak) who fall in love with the female targets they have been hired to tail (Audrey Hepburn & Dorothy Stratten) by their suspicious husbands. Like many of Bogdanovich’s movies it is playing with some old-fashioned tropes, though not as slavishly as some of his middle efforts like Nickelodeon and At Long Last Love. I love the tone this strikes, Ritter is fantastic, and it is filled with lots of fun supporting characters. Besides Bogdanovich’s track record being tarnished at the time, the element that sunk the picture more than anything was the horrible, infamous murder of Stratten before its release. She and Bogdanovich were romantically involved at the time and the case was so outrageous and horrible and public (see Bob Fosse’s Star 80) that it didn’t really jibe with what was designed to be a sweet comedy about the power of love.

Anyway, They All Laughed is still generally underappreciated and underseen, even if it is no longer thought of as a box office disaster tangentially tied to a legendarily brutal murder, but I love it!




What is an award-winning or widely beloved film that you hate?

“Hate” is a strong word, but both The Matrix and Inception, for similar reasons. For as much credit as they both get for being so clever, my issue with both is that we learn the worlds are able to be manipulated, and the Neo and Cobb characters have an edge because they are so good at gaming the game…except that in both narratives pretty much the height of their imaginations come down to gunplay and kung fu. If the idea is that you can do anything you can think of, it is very pedestrian that “action movie cliches” seem to be the best they can do. Why not turn into a mile-high metal kangaroo that simply steps on and over the obstacles? Neo unleashes his mighty power and spends it hand-fighting an army and Cobb’s team has to make a forward assault on a snowy compound left over from a James Bond movie. Really?

The freight train appearing in the city street in Inception was a moment that I thought, OK, cool, let’s play and keep escalating this stuff! But nope, just fist fights and gunplay. Ho-hum.

I know the non-narrative answer as to why they are limited in their “unlimited” power is that if they can truly do “anything” then the movies are over very quickly. But that is just lazy. The bullet-time effect may have looked super cool, especially in 1999, but if you stop to think about it for half a second that is its only purpose. And if The Matrix and Inception were treated by the masses as simple action movies with a bit of a twist, that is fine, but so many kneel at their alters as if they were revolutionary narratives. To me they seem much, much less. Thus, I find them massively overrated.




What is a film that you used to love, but you’ve seen it again recently and it no longer holds up? Either simply not as good as your memory or elements that have dated badly

I too am of the mind that I don’t really give up on movies. If they have dated sensibilities, I can put them in the context of the day in which they were made. But a movie that I absolutely adored as an eleven and seventeen and twenty-three-year-old that I find more than a tad dull now is John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981). Nobody who has ever seen it can deny how compelling it is, visually. The design of the costumes, armor, and weapons and the cinematography are all wonderful and different and memorable. Nicol Williamson’s Merlin is a devilish joy. To mix that kind of fantasy world with blood and lust mostly works, too. But the narrative, especially the second half or so of the film, is beyond choppy and confusing to the point of being impenetrable. There were so many Arthurian legends to choose from, but ultimately it feels like too many were crammed in with so few of them given enough space to live.

Had the second half of the film had as much narrative focus as the first, Boorman’s Excalibur might be remembered as more than a visual spectacle. The younger me didn’t really mind. Now the old fogey me sees it as mostly a wasted opportunity. This has likely always been the weakness of Excalibur, but it wasn’t until I was middle aged that it bothered me.




What is the film that means the most to you? Not necessarily due to the quality of the film, but the memory or the circumstances around seeing it?

This is both a great film as well as an important filmgoing experience: Lawrence of Arabia (1962). By the time I was fourteen and fifteen I started to get more or more seriously interested in film, ravenously devouring whatever I could get my hands on in those days, which was primarily cable and VHS rentals. I was also reading books about cinema and filmmakers, which was adding more fuel to the fire. It may be difficult for someone younger to understand now, but you are all gloriously spoiled with how much access you have to media of all sorts. Virtually any film that is going to be mentioned by somebody in this thread, if you haven’t seen it you can quickly and fairly easily search for it and find it legally or illegally for download, which you can watch on a giant wide screen with amazing resolution. Back in the 1980s and 1990s we could only see what we could physically find. If your local video stores didn’t have it or the library didn’t have it, you had to hope it would show up on television. And no matter where you found it, VHS or via HBO or ABC, it was almost certainly going to be edited to fit inside the frame of the old, standard TV monitors. To even type the phrase “pan & scan” still gives me the willies. It was one of the chief reasons I started collecting Laser Discs in the early 1990s as they were usually letterboxed presentations, which was the closest we could get at the time to replicating the various widescreen processes that movies were shot in from the 1950s onward.

I had seen The Bridge on the River Kwai on regular television at some point, but I knew enough about the legend and lure of Lawrence of Arabia that I should wait until I could see it properly in the cinema for my first exposure. If that meant I had this personal gap in my viewing repertoire for a while, so be it. My library and one of the video stores I frequented had it on VHS, a two-tape set, but I kept resisting the urge to see those glorious images chopped up. That all paid off when I read in Film Comment or some other magazine that Lean was supervising a new restoration presented in 70mm! I waited for THAT, and in 1989 I got my chance to see Lawrence of Arabia.



I went by myself to the Senator Theatre in Baltimore, an historic Art Deco beauty that is still open today. I grew up in Columbia, MD, about thirty minutes or so outside of Baltimore, and had never seen a movie there before. So, nineteen-year-old me walked into that beautiful palace and saw Lawrence of Arabia as it was meant to be seen. To say it was worth the wait is beyond obvious and an understatement. I saw it twice more, before it left its re-release engagement there, which was held over for about a month. I have seen it at least another dozen or so times theatrically since then in many different theaters, mostly in 70mm. Clearly seeing that masterpiece presented so perfectly at that point in my cinemagoing life was more than fuel on the fire, it was napalm.

I expect I don’t have to sing the praises of Lawrence of A-freaking-rabia. It remains a monumental achievement six decades later.




What is the film you found the sexiest?

Having a limitless sea of pornography available to us 24/7 now, it may be difficult to imagine what an R-Rated movie with nudity and simulated sex was like to a pre-teen and teen. Certainly Body Heat (1981) made quite an impression on me as a 12-year-old watching it on cable. There were others, for sure. Just the scene of JoBeth Williams in the hallway in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) is happily burned into my mind’s eye. But for me Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts (1985) is king, or rather queen, of them all.

Besides having the added titillation of the love scene being between lesbians (played by Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau), it truly does portray the pent-up desire, attraction, and love of the characters in a very palpable way, much more powerful than just two naked women kissing. Though there is that.




Troubling boners/worrying wide-ons: What is a film you found arousing maybe you shouldn't have?

I don’t really have a good answer for this one. If pressed I suppose I’d pick a David Cronenberg movie, maybe Shivers (1975). Super gross and unsettling, but also some sex stuff. All of his early films kinda have that vibe of low-rent porno meets zombie apocalypse. Especially as a pre-teen and teen watching them, they’re kind of erotic until you and the characters are punished for your sinful thoughts and transgressions.

Cronenberg and Body Horror in general doesn’t quite fit the category perfectly as they are very much designed to play upon those two impulses, and usually full of some dark humor, too. But until I can think of something more embarrassing to admit to, this’ll have to do.




What movie do you most relate to? The character, world, or atmosphere seem to be most like you?

Ever since I first saw it in October of 1998 at the Austin Heart of Film Festival, the answer has been Rushmore (1998). It’s not Jason Schwartzman’s Max Fischer I identify with, exactly, as I was never anywhere close to that ambitious as a teen nor as an adult, nor Bill Murray’s Herman Blume, as I am neither rich nor depressed. It is Wes Anderson’s cinematic voice and the tone he strikes that resonate so very deeply in me, the mixture of melancholy and optimism, of sarcastic cynicism and heartfelt romance. It is what speaks to me at the core of all of Wes’ work, and while he gets called twee or mocked about his visual stylizations and color palate, it is his tone and that wonderful mixture of sadness and happiness that binds all his projects and binds me to them. Rushmore remains my favorite among favorites and has always felt like my cinematic home.




What film do you objectively think is the greatest – not necessarily your personal favorite?

Chinatown (1974), and it does usually double as my personal favorite. From the technical filmmaking to the storytelling to the acting and everything in between, I think Chinatown is flawless. When the only detail Polanski regrets missing is not properly depicting an image as upside down in a character’s camera lens, you know there is a lot of perfection in those 131 minutes.




Best opening sequence to a film?

The opening of Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow (1973) is wonderful, a mini quasi-Waiting for Godot that introduces our two protagonists with almost no dialogue for about seven minutes. It starts with a beautiful widescreen image – cinematography by the great Vilmos Zsigmond (McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blow Out) – of a brown, grassy hill with dark clouds behind it, a storm about to hit. Across that landscape towards the camera walks a lone figure who, with a little difficulty, climbs through a barbed-wire fence to a lonely stretch of road. We will learn later this is Max (Gene Hackman). He is silently observed by another man, Lionel (Al Pacino). They see each other and Max avoids Lionel, crossing the road. They are both trying to hitch a ride in the middle of nowhere. In the few bits of action while they wait, we observe Max is quick to anger and Lionel undercuts that bluster with oddball humor. By the end of the sequence, having said almost nothing to each other, they are road buddies, traveling together. And off we go.

The whole film is set up in this gorgeous, sparse sequence.




Best ending sequence to a film?

I feel like for most film-related questions I can choose Chinatown over and over, but for the sake of variety I will go with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). The Banditos Yankees have finally had their lawless ways catch up with them, in of all places a teeny town in the middle of Bolivia, and they aren't even in the midst of a robbery, just stopping for lunch when they are recognized. They do their best to escape one more time, but they are outgunned and trapped in a small café. Their trademark bickering and friendship continues to the very end. As they reload and ready themselves for a dash to freedom, they are momentarily comforted that the super posse that had tracked and nearly killed them in the U.S. is not outside waiting for them. *PHEW* What they don’t know is an entire company of Bolivian soldiers has joined the local yokels. Butch & Sundance are exiting to certain doom. As they burst through the door and get off a few shots we hear the Captain give the first command to fire. The picture freezes on our anti-heroes in action and turns sepia-toned. Another command to fire is given. And another. As the focus slowly pulls back it reveals the hundreds of rifles trained on their position in this unnamed town, and the simple, wistful piano theme sadly plays under the credits. We don't see the pair cut to bloody ribbons, they remain frozen forever.




What is a film that changed your view on something?

Not changed, exactly, but certainly furthered and enriched my education on a subject. The Oscar-winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk (1985) was and still is a powerful experience. I had known what homosexuality was before I saw this movie, though I didn’t yet personally know anybody who was openly gay. I knew some dirty jokes from the schoolyard, I had seen George Hamilton's Zorro, the Gay Blade on cable, and laughed at Paul Lynde's double entendres on "The Hollywood Squares" even if I didn't fully understand them, but it wasn’t a subject that had come up a lot to that point in my life. Not long after it won the Oscar, PBS screened The Times of Harvey Milk and I watched it one night. Harvey Milk’s story is so triumphant and his murder anger-inducing, all beautifully told by director Rob Epstein who had access to lots and lots of footage of Harvey himself, thanks to how public his run for San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors was, plus new interviews with his friends and colleagues. It all paints such a vibrant picture of this funny, driven, determined man. A man who was assassinated along with the Mayor by a disgruntled and desperate fellow Supervisor.

The documentary is such a lovely humanistic portrait of Harvey that his loss is devastating, but his spirit ultimately triumphant. The Times of Harvey Milk introduced me to real gay people and made me understand how difficult their struggles were and are, as well as how insidious hate and envy can be. It is a movie that makes me laugh and cry every single time I watch it, and I watch it at least once every couple of years. Gus Van Sant’s Milk (2008) with Sean Penn is an earnest Oscar-winner, but to me it is nowhere close to as powerful nor as important as The Times of Harvey Milk.




What is the worst film you have ever seen?

So many to choose from, but I’ll go with Boxing Helena (1993).

Does anybody even remember this flick? It is not a candidate for a double feature with Million Dollar Baby. Different kind of boxing going on, here. At the time it made headlines because it received an NC-17 rating, still one of the first American films to be branded such, following Henry & June and Bad Lieutenant. It came out of Sundance with a supposedly outrageous and sexy concept. Julian Sands plays a surgeon who is obsessed with a beautiful young woman he had a brief affair with, played by Sherilyn Fenn of ”Twin Peaks”. Be she hates and belittles him. She is the victim of a car accident in front of his secluded house. The surgeon saves her life but amputates both of her legs, below the knee. Now she literally cannot run away from him, but she still belittles and berates him. After she tries to strangle him he removes her arms, below the elbow. What is left is a beautiful torso in a box, but, you know, still with all the good sexy parts for happy fun time. She’s like a flesh and blood Venus De Milo statue. Even as his prisoner becomes more and more mutilated, completely at his mercy, she will not give him the affection and respect that he craves.

Isn’t that just outrageous? Making a woman into a captive fu*k toy? In addition to Sands and Fenn the supporting cast also includes Bill Paxton, Kurtwood Smith, and Art Garfunkel. It was written and directed by Jennifer Chambers Lynch, daughter or David Lynch. Boxing Helena was her directorial debut at the age of twenty-two. She would not make her second movie for another fifteen years. Despite the titillation factor, Boxing Helena made no money and, perhaps not surprisingly, it was of the worst reviewed films of the year.

It is not a good movie. But it doesn’t make my list as worst of the worst because of its score on the Tomatometer or for its premise of enslaving a woman and mutilating her except for her sex organs. While I don’t find the concept particularly interesting or sexy, if that’s the story you want to tell, go ahead and tell it. Follow it to its logical conclusions and extremes. The thing that makes Boxing Helena one of the very worst movies ever made is not just the premise and has nothing to do with the quality of the filmmaking. It is the ending. Guess what? This whole outrageous, disgusting story….IT WAS ALL JUST A DREAM. Yup, at the end of the movie it turns out the surgeon did call for an ambulance after that accident and Fynn’s character is at the hospital, with all of her extremities intact. The entire thing was just an elaborate fantasy in his mind, y’all. Gotchya! See, you were all upset that he cut her limbs off so he could keep her in a box and fu*k her whenever he wanted, but it didn’t really happen! Wow.

What a cheap cop-out. Besides being a tired narrative device, it absolutely removes any of the moral weight and artistic point the flick was going for. I mean, of course he didn’t really cut off her arms and her legs. I saw Sherilyn Fenn on Letterman’s show promoting the flick, she’s definitely still got her arms and legs. It ain’t a documentary or based on a true story because nothing this dumb would really ever happen. The It-Was-All-Just-A-Dream ending feels like a lame (no pun intended) attempt to somehow save it from being called too graphic or disgusting, because, like, you know, it was all just for pretendsies! Ugh. Have the courage of your convictions. Even if your idea is dumb, be brave and proud and tell it. I am no fan of The Human Centipede, but at least it doesn’t end with a cop out. Pitiful.

Boxing Helena is now mostly forgotten, which is the exact fate it deserves. I suspect the only person who still thinks about Boxing Helena from time to time is Kim Basinger, who was slated to star and withdrew at the last moment. She was sued by the production, lost, and had to pay them millions of dollars in the settlement. It’s a more interesting and compelling tale than the movie, anyway.




What is the funniest film you have ever seen?

I love, and have always loved, comedies. After my infatuation with Star Wars, the kind of movies I was most likely to gravitate to and give a chance no matter its era or premise were comedies. When I was a pre-teen, before cable, one of my local channels ran “old” comedies every Saturday afternoon. Old in the late 1970s meant Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis, Hope & Crosby, The Marx Brothers, etc. I loved these movies and I feel like it gave me a nice foundation for appreciating comedy from any era - along with the classic Warner Brothers cartoons and Heckle & Jeckle and "I Love Lucy" and all the other even-by-then ancient bits of comedic culture that were regularly broadcast on the small handful of channels we had. As I got a little older and we got cable I loved Mel Brooks movies and Airplane! and Arthur and The Blues Brothers. One of my babysitters was starring as Montgomery Brewster in his High School production of Arsenic & Old Lace. I loved the play so much that led me to rent the Cary Grant movie, which put my on the path of Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, and The Philadelphia Story and then to Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder. By the time I was fourteen I had seen more Cary Grant movies than just about any star from any era. Then as a later teenager it was Monty Python and Albert Brooks and The Coen Brothers and on and on and on.

All of that is to say, choosing one favorite is of course quite literally impossible. Even narrowing it down to twenty-five would be tough. When forced to choose for such exercises I vacillate between a few titles, often going with Young Frankenstein or Dr. Strangelove or Life of Brian. Today I’ll go with His Girl Friday (1940).

Adding the wrinkle of romance between the two characters of The Front Page by changing Hildy to a woman was a simple stroke of genius! The resulting film is comic perfection, impossibly fast-paced dialogue highlighting duplicitous, smart, driven, winking characters who happen to both love a good story maybe even more than they love each other. I can watch this any day – I often do – and it is an instant pick-me up that makes me smile and laugh even though I have every single wonderful beat memorized.




What film could you or have you seen the most times?

Theatrically the answer is still Star Wars (1977), which was my introduction to cinematic obsession. I saw it somewhere close to thirty times between May of 1977 up through the various extended runs and rereleases ahead of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980, from my ages of seven to ten. Again, hard to imagine now, but that movie played seemingly almost constantly, in the theaters, for three years. There was no video store market yet, films were not released on tape eight months or a year later, as became the standard practice in the 1980s. And Lucas and 20th Century FOX also strategically did not put Star Wars on broadcast television as the ABC or NBC Sunday Night Movie event that most blockbusters did a year or two after their theatrical successes. Nope, they just kept putting it in the theater, and kids like me kept going to see it. At some point we lost the official track of how many times we saw it: I thought it was twenty-seven, my brother thought it was twenty-five, my Dad thinks we hit thirty. Whatever the actual number, it was a lot.

Over the years since I have nearly caught it with the various cuts of Blade Runner (1982), which I have seen now about twenty times. Deckard and I will likely overtake those 1970s screenings of Star Wars at some point.

Counting not only theatrical screenings but the total number of times I have seen a movie in all formats…impossible to say. There is a whole tier of movies that I expect I have literally seen well over fifty times each, easy. There were many, many years of my life, long before I was married that I would routinely watch two or three movies almost every single day, and before my movie collection grew to the size it did, I would rewatch my core favorites over and over and over. That adds up. In addition to Blade Runner and Star Wars that top tier would also include GoodFellas, The Blues Brothers, Rushmore, His Girl Friday, The Princess Bride, After Hours, Singin’ in the Rain, The Graduate, Casablanca, Broadcast News, Fletch, The Long Goodbye, Miller’s Crossing, Chinatown, Breaking Away, That Thing You Do!, SE7EN, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Rashōmon, This is Spın̈al Tap, Once Upon a Time in the West, A Perfect World, In a Lonely Place, Amélie, Brazil, Unforgiven, La La Land, North by Northwest,and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. But if I had to pick one for purposes of this exercise, I suppose it must be Blade Runner.

I first had Blade Runner taped of off cable TV, then the store-bought official VHS, then the Criterion Collection Laser Disc, then the Director’s Cut on Laser Disc, the Director’s Cut on DVD, and now the Final Cut on BluRay - the commemorative Briefcase Edition. Plus, all those theatrical screenings. Hours and hours and hours of my life spent watching Blade Runner. No regrets.




What is your favorite film?

Anything from my top ten or twenty or even hundred would do, but I’ll go with Casablanca (1942). It is such joyous perfection. Perhaps you've heard of it?




What one film would you take with you to heaven to screen for everybody?

I’m taking Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985). It is one of my favorite, most beloved movies (see my full write-up HERE), and while I don’t consider it Scorsese’s very best film, it is my most-watched flick from Marty, who is my favorite all-time filmmaker. One category Films to Be Buried with does not have is, ‘What film do you use as a barometer for friendship?’ After Hours is mine. We can be friends and all, but if we are going to be truly simpatico, we need to watch After Hours together (especially if it is one you have never seen nor heard of). If you turn your nose up at it or chastise me for laughing maniacally at Paul Hackett’s nightmare trek through Manhattan, we are simply not on the same wavelength. It will also be fun to remind ourselves of the anxiety and fears and dark humor we have left behind on that mortal coil. I’ll test it out on the angels and other denizens of heaven, see which I can hang with for all of eternity and which I can avoid at dance parties, bake offs, and motocross events.





Thanks for listening!

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

These are great prompts and it's fun reading everyone's answers!

(Also, regarding Boxing Helena, I remember reading about the film and someone wrote "Kim Bassinger paid a million dollars not to be in this film. It's the best money she ever spent." LOL).

It was over three million, actually, but still probably worth it.

Isn't that awesome? Hope it's a worthy spiritual follow-up to Woman In the Box: Virgin Sacrifice.

Of all the movies you wrote about that I haven't seen, this is the only one I want to watch now, so if you intended to dissuade people from watching it, you failed miserably. I wanted to watch it in the past but wasn't in the mood, but now I might finally do it after your glowing endorsement.

As for the rest, impressively long and well-written post, and since it's Christmas I'll leave it at that.

I remember renting Boxing Helena back in the day and I remember it being awful. And I too love They All Laughed.

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I may go back to hating you. It was more fun.

My older cousin rented and brought Boxing Helena to the house to watch with my straight laced parents. I would have been about 17. I don’t know what he was thinking. He must not have really known the content. That’s a very funny movie memory for me. Even at 17, “this movie is horrendous”. Nobody enjoyed it.

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Letterboxd

Oh wow! This is an interesting tidbit.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, i could live in that space forever!! Oooops i didn't realize the rules in this thread!!

No worries. A great answer to one of the questions! Go for the whole questionnaire!

What is the first film you remember seeing?

The Shining

What film scared you the most?

The Shining when i was young

What film made you cry the most?

Awakenings with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams

What is a film that is critically and popularly hated, but you love?

Some of the Paranormal Activity movies, as i found i reacted to the jump scares quite effectively.

What is a respected award-wining or widely beloved film that you hate?

The Dark Knight, at first i liked it, but when i saw it again, the dialogue seemed like just so much childish one up manship kind of stuff.

What is a film that you used to love, but you’ve seen it again recently and it no longer holds up? Either simply not as good as your memory or elements that have dated badly.

La grande bouffe, 1st viewing it was such a mind blowing experience, 2nd viewing i might as well have been watching a police procedural.

What is the film that means the most to you? Not necessarily due to the quality of the film, but the memory or the circumstances around seeing it?

A Woman Under the Influence, showing it to mom and dad, well a few more i showed them when they liked it too, including Ozu's Late Spring

What is the film you found the sexiest?

Mulholland Drive

Troubling boners/worrying wide-ons: What is a film you found arousing maybe you shouldn't have?

LOL hmmm Flower (2017)

What movie do you most relate to? The character, world, or atmosphere seem to be most like you?

Bela Tarr's Damnation, just the feel and the gazing off into space without any expressed emotions

What film could you or have you seen the most times?

Juliet of the Spirits, when collecting this was one of the first, and i could only afford about 4 movies a month, so i saw this many times

What film do you objectively think is the greatest – not necessarily your personal favorite?

Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game

What is the worst film you have ever seen?

Migrating Forms, like a talentless ripoff of Eraserhead and Love is Colder Than Death

What is the funniest film you have ever seen?

Airplane, so many quality one liners, and gags

What is a film that changed your perspective on something?

Godard's Le mepris and Antonioni's L'Avventura taught me to pick up on aspects of reality that were to put it bluntly unfair, but just the way things are.

What is the best opening sequence to a film?

I think i'd go with Welles' Touch of Evil

What is the best ending sequence to a film?

Werner Schroeter's Der bomberpilot, it's hilarious in the best way imo, ladies in lingerie, singing off key and dancing in a weird way, well it's close to the end.

What is your favorite film?

It used to be Makavejev's Sweet Movie, but i decided on Schroeter's The Death of Maria Malibran for the pure music video aesthetic, in the same lineage of Kenneth Anger shorts. The thing i've all along believed to be the most precious thing in film is the non-narrative experimental films with catchy songs, a real gem is Mad Love by Jeff Keen.

What one film would you take with you to heaven to screen for everybody when it's your turn to host movie night?

A Hidden Life by Terrence Malick, such a powerful film that is also faith oriented.

This was fun!! thanks

Boxing Helena is pretty shit. And by pretty shit, he's probably right that it might be the worst film ever made.


Any movie that can have this as the premise, and be completely forgettable, is a pretty remarkable feat.

Fantastic movie. I don't suspect it is one that will ever get the attention of Malick's best-known works (Days of Heaven, Badlands, Tree of Life, Thin Red Line), but everyone who watches it is certainly in for a treat, whether his name draws them in or the subject matter or they just accidentally stumble across it.

I had it on my ballot for the MoFo Top 100 of the 2010s but it didn't make the cut for the collective list.