I started this blog a whole of two years and six months ago.  I’ve been known to go on sabbatical every so often, but generally I try to keep everyone up to date with my ongoing  cinematic adventures.  I’ve met a few people across the internet that I think I can consider friends, had some laughs and enjoyed myself.  I’d like to hope that a lot of you reading this are having fun with it as well.  I’m sure a good percentage of you out there who know me personally stare in bewilderment at my constant blatherings wondering why the hell I think I matter.  However, since I find it almost useless to address those individuals, since you’ve obviously missed the point of the endless exercise, I will continue with what I was saying before.  So I’d like to take the time right now to thank all the readers, listeners of my podcast and followers on twitter and facebook who make me feel like I’m actually better than I really am at this writing/critiquing/internet thing.

Anyways a couple days ago I realized that I was coming up to my 500th post on this site and I sent out a tweet (on the twitter) asking what you would all like to to write about.  I got few responses, but I guess the most interesting response I received was a request for me to talk about some of my favourite movies of all time.  So since that’s way too much work to try and go through and actually try and rank all of my favourite films, here’s an impromptu list of films I think are perfect movies and people need to see:

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) (dir. George Roy Hill)

I saw this movie for the first time when I was about fifteen years old.  My father shouted out to me and called me into his room.  The film had just begun on AMC and I wasn’t the biggest fan of westerns, and to this day I still have my reservations but not so much anymore, and he instructed me that I was finally going to see this great cowboy movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford.  I decided that I didn’t have much else to do so I sat my bum down and when the movie was over four hours later, thanks to AMC’s ads, I was still in a daze.  The film – a western – had wowed me.  I wrote it off as a fluke at the time, that the director figured out how to disguise a buddy movie in a western setting and therefore that’s why I loved it.  From watching Butch asking about the rules of a knife fight to Sundance admitting that he can’t swim; I realized for the first time that movie could make me realize that all I want are moments that I’ll love and want to quote everyday of my life when I’m done watching it.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) (dir. Quentin Tarantino)

As much as I’d like to admit this was not the first Tarantino film that I saw.  Before this I saw Kill Bill Vol 1; and after watching that movie I immediately went on the hunt for everything this Tarantino fellow had made.  The first film on this hunt that I saw was Reservoir Dogs.  Before watching Reservoir Dogs I don’t think I had ever witnessed one of these minimalistic indie films which basically took a handful of characters, threw them in a situation and let them talking do all the work for you.  There was no massive set piece for us to look for which would make me want to forget about all the talking that happened beforehand.  The movie is about a diamond heist gone wrong and how all the guys try to figure what went wrong and if there is or isn’t a ‘rat’ in their group of robbers.  Here’s another movie of brilliant character moments that I’ll just never forget, from Mr. Orange‘s commode story to Eddy‘s story about how this guy’s girl glued his dick to his belly to the brilliant anecdote of Mr. Brown finally figuring out what Madonna‘s song Like a Virgin was really about.  Brilliance in a old empty warehouse.

Zodiac (2007) (dir. David Fincher)

This movie was the first time I realized that execution was more important than originality.  People like to use the word predictable with the plot of films as a massive complaint all the while, and I understand the argument that plots are usually easy to predict.  As much as people want to make fun of me for my not jumping ten steps ahead of the film I find it’s more important to try and gather everything the filmmaker is trying to feed you rather than actually trying to outwit him (or her).  There are scenes in this movie where the violence never feels anything more than frightening, like when the couple are attacked in the park and the killer appears in his ‘costume’.  It’s just unbearably unnerving.  I particularly can’t forget the scene where Robert (Jake Gyllenhaal) is in the basement of this poster artist and while down he begins to believe that this man is the Zodiac killer.  The execution of some of the filming of this movie is so beautifully pieced together that this is the reason that one day I’d like to make movies myself.

Apocalypse Now (1979) (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

People love to latch onto Marlon Brando‘s performance in The Godfather and I may have to claim historic ignorance as to why I look to Apocalypse Now whenever I want to point out Brando‘s brilliant acting sense.  I’m a war film junkie, I love to see characters in the most extreme of scenarios where he has to make the decision of it’s him or you and the idea of watching someone try to re-assimilate into society after committing legally sanctioned mass murder.  What I love about this war movie that I don’t think any other war film has ever done is that it showed the disposition of soldiers that I believe.  A lot of war films make us pay attention to the protagonist and noone else; in this film noone in the film is exempt from the idea that everyone is scared shitless.  As Captain Benjamin Willard (Martin Sheen) on a classified mission to assassinate a Colonel that’s gone off the deep end, played by Marlon Brando, we meet more than just a handful of characters along the way that show us the true status of the Vietnam War.

Rashomon (1950) (dir. Akira Kurosawa)

This is the first Akira Kurosawa film I ever watched.  I admitted openly a week prior that I had never seen a Kurosawa film, and with this gap in my knowledge of cinema’s history I felt it was my duty as a film enthusiast to bridge the gap.  I decided to test the waters with one of the few Kurosawa films that was shorter than three hours, and with the surprisingly easy ninety minute runtime of the film I found myself so captivated by the story that I immediately pressed the play button again – therefore defeating the purpose of watching a short movie.  I’ve always believed in the principle that everyone tells the same story differently because of their own personal desires and wanted to viewed in a favourable regard when all is said and done.  This is one of those films that you have to watch twice just to realize just how different and similar each telling of the same story is.

Once again I’ll let myself be clear.. this is in no way in order or complete.  However, in my humble opinion, these films are all 10/10 masterpieces and if any of these films remain unwatched by you then I demand you run over to your video store and try and have a fun marathon this long weekend.

Also, at the end of this post, I do think that I should try and make a thing of this post and try and post 5 ‘must see’ films for everyone to check out each month.  Post in the comments if this is something that you’d like for me to start doing.

So thank you all for reading and make sure to keep coming back each day to see what films I’m planning on seeing or have seen a thousand times and feel like talking to you all about.  Enjoy.