The Gunslinger45's top 50 favorite movies

Here we go, the final three! And we all saw this one coming, more Kurosawa!

3.
Seven Samurai: 1954 (NR)
Japan / Toho
100% (CF)



I love Akira Kurosawa; he was simply a cinema legend. And it shows in the greatest samurai movie ever made. There is a very poor village of farmers who are plagued by bandits, who come and steal their crops and food. Fearing starvation, they go to another nearby village to hire ronin samurai to fight off the bandits. They have no money to give to the samurai and they can only pay them in white rice while they eat millet (a food stuff of no nutritional value). They first find Kambei (Takashi Shimura) during a hostage situation. A thief has taken a child captive and is hiding in a shack. Kambei shaves off his top knot (a symbol of honor for a samurai) in order to pass as a monk. He brings rice balls to the thief and the boy, and then strikes killing the thief and saving the child’s life. After that is resolved, he agrees to fight for the villagers and suggests that a total of seven samurai are needed to fight the 40 bandits. The young and inexperienced Katsushiro (Isao Kimura) is quick to join after witnessing Kambei’s rescue of the child, and Kambei then recruits the good natured Gorobei (Yoshio Inaba). Next they get one of Kambei’s old lieutenants to join named Shichiroji (Daisuke Kato) as well as the good humored but mediocre swordsmen Heihachi (Minoru Chiaki). The last two to join are master swordsmen Kyuzo (Seiji Miyaguchi) and Kikuchiyo played by one of my favorite actors Toshiro Mifune. Kikuchiyo is not actually a samurai, he was born a farmer but wants to rise above his station, and he has a stolen birth certificate and a giant sword to fit the part. He is the drunken comedic foil to the proper samurai, adding comedic relief as well as a few moments of genuine drama to the story. Plus he is great with the kids. They go to the village, erect defenses and lay the battle plan for the fight all the while exploring the relationship between the farmers and the samurai. And the final battle is a long one, just a little more than an hour of film time, and spans several days in the movie. And it leads to arguably the best final showdown in cinema history. The acting is fantastic, the sets are huge and shot on location, and scenes toward the end are shot in the rain and freezing cold. What makes it all the more impressive is that these scenes call for certain characters (namely Mifune) to be in minimal cloths, so many an actor suffered on this set. One of the biggest influences on Akira Kurosawa was America’s own John Ford, the man who directed many a John Wayne movie including The Searchers. Kurosawa uses many western stock characters and themes in the movie. In addition many of Kurosawa’s shots in his movies are inspired by shots you would see in westerns. So it is fitting that Hollywood remade Seven Samurai into a western. And in 1960, that remake was released as The Magnificent Seven. The movie is great and has a stellar cast, but in my humble opinion is not as good as the original. And Seven Samurai was also remade into other movies that share the same plot such with movies from The 13th Warrior to A Bugs Life. Still nowhere near as good. It is Kurosawa's best movie, and one of my all time favorite! Seven Samurai at number 3.

Damn, how can you distinguish which one is better out of your favourite movies? I couldn't make a top 50 or 100 list, because I'd rather eat a herring pie than sort these films in exact, numerological order.

It's my favourite of Kurosawa too. Simply glorious.




Gran Torino is an excellent film.

THAT pick made me LOL!

And to be honest it took me over a month to finish this list. And to be honest writing out the reviews of why I liked them really helped in making my decision. Some I could not even come to a true conclusion on, like my number 5 spot. But I spent a long time thinking about what makes my favorite movies, and it was a lot of fun.

As for my favorite Kurosawa movie, see number three. Though that was also one of the hard decisions. Which Kurosawa movie do I like more? The psychological thriller or the greatest samurai movie ever! I went with more Toshiro Mifune.

You inspired me to watch both Clerks movies. Thanks for the good time!

I'd seen the first one at the theater when it came out, but I'd never seen the animated funeral parlor scene, which was added years later. (That scene was great, but the line in the subsequent scene about 'leaning on the coffin' then became awkward, because that's not what happened in the animated scene.)

It was, as you point out, great to observe the stylistic differences in the two films. The original was filmed on a production budget of 27,000 bucks. I guess that accounts for all those long single-shot scenes, which I really like because they add an intimate quality and accentuate the snappy banter. I figured the whole sealed shutter device was to prevent glare from the window - but I just read it was because they filmed the whole thing at night in the convenience store where Kevin Smith was working during the day.

Compared to the grittier black and white Clerks I, the sequel (which I just watched for the first time) was, as you say, larger and more fun, with lots more laugh out loud moments. Jeff Anderson's acting was good in the first film, and was even better in the second.

Other interesting things I read concerned the rating of the movies. The MPAA hit the first one with an NC-17 rating despite no violence or nudity - solely for the language. The Weinsteins hired Alan Dershowitz to fight the MPAA, and they changed it to an R rating - which they subsequently gave to the second one as well, despite its raunchier content.

I prefer Tatsuya Nakadai. And Seppuku.

Good choice. Thought I have not seen that movie yet, though he was in Yojimbo and Sanjuro

Watch it then, but be careful, as it may change your opinion about the best samurai movie!

I have seen the recent remake to Harakiri. It was good

Either way it is in my watch list on Hulu

Oh you are quite welcome. I am glad you enjoyed it. And yes the MPAA is not a consistent rater of movies. Why no NC 17 rating for a movie with a donkey show and one for just the dialogue is beyond me. XD

The way I understood it is the MPAA probably didn't want Alan Dershowitz on their case a second time.

That would make sense. But the MPAA have a history of rating one movie one way, and a similar movie another way.

2.
Red Dawn: 1984 (PG-13)
USA / MGM
53%



This is the last of the movies with Cold War themes on my list. The Hunt for Red October looked at the Cold War dealing with a near miss of a nuclear holocaust. Dr Strangelove explored mutually assured destruction and mocked it, and as a continuation of the the Cold War post apocalyptic movies explore life after the bombs have dropped. Red Dawn on the other hand covered the idea of what happened if during the Cold War the bombs never dropped, but instead the Russians had invaded. Five minutes into this movie you see a Colorado high school overrun by Russian, Cuban, and Nicaraguan paratroopers to begin their invasion of the US. Escaping the fray at the school, a group of teenagers including Matt Eckert (Charlie Sheen) and adult brother Jed Eckert (Patrick Swayze) grab a bunch of guns and supplies and head for the mountains. The group adds two additional members and they start a guerrilla war against their Soviet invaders calling themselves the Wolverines. They set up ambushes, bomb movie theaters with Soviet films (namely Alexander Nevsky), raid prison camps, blow up Soviet vehicles, and leave the Russkies lying in puddles of their own blood. The plot is simple, the characters are not the most complex, but the drama is real and the violence is in mass amounts. And though the violence is relatively bloodless like in a John Ford western the number of violent acts is staggering. In fact this movie was considered the most violent movie at the time in terms of number of violent acts on screen. This movie even held the record in the Guinness Book of Records. It was also the first movie to be distributed with the PG-13 rating.

To talk about this movie I have to talk about John Milius. John Milius was a film student at the University of Southern California and in a group of friends that included Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola. He chose film school after being turned down for the Marines due to asthma. He was mostly a writer in his early days. He was an un-credited writer on Dirty Harry, The Hunt for Red October, and Jaws, a credited co-writer on Magnum Force and Apocalypse Now, and wrote and directed Conan the Barbarian as well as this movie. He was also the writer who came up with a lot of the most memorable lines in American cinema. He wrote the “Do I feel Lucky” monologue from Dirty Harry, “Go ahead make my day” from Sudden Impact, the “Charlie don’t surf” and “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” lines Robert Duvall says in Apocalypse Now, and he had a hand in the USS Indianapolis speech Quint gives in Jaws. He eventually decided to direct so he could see his works fully realized on screen without the studios butchering the script. The biggest influences on his directing were both John Ford and Akira Kurosawa, but the likes of David Lean, Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, and his friend and mentor John Huston have had influences on him as well. And even though he was friends with some of the biggest names in film making, he was always considered an outsider because of his politics in the left leaning Hollywood system. A self described “Zen Anarchist” who just as easily is pro gun, but also wants to see Rush Limbaugh drawn and quartered. Not even a joke.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movi...ies/index.html

Milius aligned himself with the conservative members of Hollywood and was seen by many in the industry as a nut job. The movie was a hit at the box office, taking in over 38 million dollars on a 4 million dollar budget. But the reviews were mixed. Some liked the movie while others condemned the movie as saber rattling and jingoistic. In addition, some people said that it was a dangerous film during the Cold War. Okay a critic does not like a movie, fine, but dangerous? Why Red Dawn? To be fair Red Dawn was made at a time of renewed tensions between the Soviets and the US, such as the CIA backed funding of Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, increased military spending on nuclear arms, the Soviets own domestic issues such as inefficient agriculture and manufacturing, the Polish solidarity movement, the shooting down of a Korean Airlines 747 with Congressman Larry McDonald on board and killing 269 people in total, and the like; tensions were tight. And the Doomsday Clock at the year of its release was set at 11:57, the highest the clock has been since the Russian tested their first nuke. But still, why such the backlash? Movies have been released and praised even when the films subject matter reflects troubled times. For starters there is no movie released at a worst time then I can think of off the top of my head then Dr Strangelove. I already went into detail of its release, the Cuban Missile Crisis and what not. And yet despite this, it was still a considered great movie by the critics. And while Dr Strangelove is a better crafted film by a master director, I never heard that movie being called dangerous. And even a movie that gained a reputation for being “dangerous” can still be considered great. One such praised movie is also my 50th favorite movie on this list and actually has an influences on this one, The Battle of Algiers. As I said, The Battle of Algiers gained a bit of a reputation for its popularity with radical elements of the 60’s and 70’s due to possible “inspiration” for their violent terrorist acts. A reputation I have called BS on and explained in that review. And once again it is a better movie, but still why the outcry over Red Dawn and not The Battle of Algiers by critics? Why call one movie dangerous when there are other films? Did Red Dawn have any sort of bearing on the climate of the politics between the US and the USSR? F@$K NO! It was a movie! And nowhere near influential enough to influence social policy. So I ask again, why was this movie called dangerous and not others? My explanation is simple. First off I think some degree of favoritism was in play. Critics did not want to have movies they actually liked seen as dangerous because that would hurt those movies. And then there is the second reason. Dr Strangelove was able to get away with a lot because it mocked all aspects of the Cold War arms race, including both the US and the USSR. In The Battle of Algiers there was no good side in this movie as both powers commit horrible acts and it is very difficult to sympathize with either side. Red Dawn on the other hand, clearly took America’s side. This is a very pro America movie in which ordinary Americans rise up against Communist forces that are labeled as the bad guys. Now the Cuban Colonel Bella (Ron O’Neal) is shown to be dissatisfied with his role as a conqueror and oppressor rather than as the revolutionary of the people he sees himself as. It shows that not all of the communists are one note demons, though he was the only one who got that arc. So in short, Red Dawn is pro America, pro second amendment, and very anti-communist. Yeah I can see why certain Hollywood types and critics would hate this flick. And that is fine. It is not a movie made with them in mind. It is one thing to say you dislike a movie, but to call a movie dangerous period is silly.

From many interviews I have read from him, Milius states he was for the most part blacklisted from a lot of work in Hollywood, as well as never given full control as a director ever again. Even despite the nearly 10 fold profit of the movie. He still found some work, but for a guy who had legitimate talent as a writer and was behind the movie that gave the greatest action hero in Arnold Schwarzenegger his first real big break, and helped write one of Francis Ford Coppela’s greatest works it is sad that politics got in the way of his career. But what he gave us can never be taken away. If you cry out “WOLVERINES!” people know exactly what you are talking about! And if you have ever seen Walter in The Big Lebowski, take a guess who is friends with the Coen Brothers and inspired that character. And before they started dirty dancing, it was also the first pairing of Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. There is a documentary about him that should be coming out soon, and I want to pick it up when it comes out on DVD. He is one of my favorite writers and has a hand in four of my all time favorite films. What more can I say about this movie other then it is a low brow The Battle of Algiers, and number 2 on my list.

Some great choices on the last two pages, as well as Gran Torino and The Avengers. I've not seen either of those films, but, you know, I don't have to.

Also, Mr. Mino complaining that an action movie was an excuse for the effects? Really? You don't say.

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Thanks HK. Just one more movie and I will release it later today.

Films like Looper, The Dark Knight Rises, X-Men: First Class and Running Scared can also be treated as action films with special effects, but in those movies special effects were an addition to the plot. In The Avengers we had quite opposite situation. At least to me.

The Avengers was better than The Dark Knight Rises but I agree that X-Men: First Class was the best out of the three. The Avenger's is pretty conventional in plot so one can say it is an excuse to display especial effects since the plot is similar to many earlier movies.

However, despite it's formulaic nature I still enjoyed The Avengers very much, even though I think it is one of the weaker movies that I have watched that are on this list.

I admit this, however never underestimate a fan boy's love. lol

Well folks the time has come for me to reveal and review my all time favorite movie. Some of you know it already. Many have seen it already. So this review will be a love letter to the movie and explain why I love it so much. It will be also be the longest review I do. Mostly because I have a lot to say.