The Movie Forums Top 100 of All-Time Refresh: Countdown

I'm once again one of the outsiders at the celebration although Taxi Driver has gone up in my estimation about as much as any film I've seen from the time I first watched it and downright hated it until now. I suppose I could stand at the doorway to the party though and ask Holden or cricket for a piece of cake or a beer.

I had a real problem with Taxi Driver when I first saw it in 1976. I didn't like or understand Travis Bickle, and what's more, I didn't like any of the other characters. I've seen it many times since, and I still find it to be extremely-flawed, but its pure cinematics have finally won me over enough to raise my rating up to what it is here. The cinematography and music were always great, but only go so far for what I thought was convoluted. For every scene which I find extended or overkill, I'm rewarded with some spectacular visual/aural pyrotechnics, often something as simple as a taxi driving down a neon-lit night-time street set to the jazzy Bernard Herrmann musical score. Robert De Niro's performance is quite incredible even though he remains an enigma. I believe the most-controversial scenes in the film are the entire rescue bloodbath at the end and the way it's perceived by the press and allegedly the filmmakers. Taxi Driver is definitely a film to be seen, and I'm now begrudgingly allowing myself to come to almost admit that I can "like" or "enjoy" it. One thing's for sure. Compared to all the other vigilante-type flicks which have come along since, Taxi Driver is much more complex and compelling. Ultimately, movies have caught up with Taxi Driver in content and subject matter, but most make it feel much better, both in reality and in the fact that it was almost prescient in the direction a large portion of modern cinema would take. I think it's a very good movie.

Alien is a classic and one of those films which should be seen on as large a screen as possible. True, it borrows a lot from It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Planet of the Vampires, but its budget and technical/creative team (including H.R. Giger) allow it to be far more spectacular than those low-budget flicks. Alien is a terriifc example of a sci-fi/horror flick. The first half is mind-bending sci-fi showing things which had never really been shown before, especially within what appeared to be such spectacular and wide-open sets (even if some were matte paintings). The second half is one of the better claustrophobic monster-on-the-loose flicks aboard the spaceship.

I really love Alien, I remember seeing it several times on the Big Newport's humongous screen and later at FILMEX's 50-hour horror marathon back-to-back with The Exorcist. Even after all these years and newer movies, it still has the strong basic foundation, combined with a sense of originality due to Giger's art directon and creature designs, to qualify as one of the scariest, most-visionary horrors and sci-fis ever made. My fave Alien scene is the long scene down on the planet where they find an enormous underground world, and the eggs on the surface. Then John Hurt sticks his head down a little too close...POW! For me, that scene climaxes with the chest buster.