Saviour

Grave of the Fireflies – the depiction of the suffering of the weakest when society collapses under the onslaught of strategic area fire bombing, it’s a difficult film to watch and forget.

I’d go with

Mullholland Drive
Magnolia + (All other T.P.A film’s)
Barry Lyndon
Under the skin

To name a few

This is England. I couldn’t talk for a while after coming out the cinema. Meadows will never top it. Everything came together and the music was the icing on the cake.

The Selfish Giant is little seen but is a hometown masterpiece according to me. Shocking, delightful and worrying.

Saving Private Ryan had a lasting impact on me, and not just because I lived in Hatfield whilst it was being filmed.

Lord of War, superb film and maybe the only film with Nicholas Cage in that I’ve liked.

+1 Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. (Sadly) I saw it whilst still a kid and it messed with my head.

Another recent (for me) one that really got to me was ‘Sin Nombre’. I thought the subject matter would be far away from me as can be but the film reminded sharply of my young desire to escape from the weirdness and often violent undercurrent of (macho) adolescent peer pressure*

*Albeit on another level ie they used guns with bullets and actually killed each other, whilst in polite England I was simply robbed, beaten and shot with an airgun. A boy in a neighbouring comprehensive school was stabbed to death but that was an anomalous occurrence in our neck of the woods.

I think the overwhelming feeling I got from Sin Nombre was the sometimes hopelessness of young people who wish to escape the peer culture they were born/thrown into. It’s like escaping from glue, where the merest effort to extricate makes it stickier still!

a clockwork orange. all time favourite.

pulp fiction
apocolypto
psycho
crimes of passion. bit of a sh1t film when i think now, i just love anthony perkins as a nutter.
street trash. stays with me cos i just thought ‘wow’ when i watched it.

Pulp Fiction and Trainspotting.
Can’t remember coming out of a cinema so gob smacked after watching those two movies.

the Anthony Burgess subtitles are a masterclass.

Very much so!

Salem’s Lot.
The mist clearing and the tapping on that window.
Haven’t seen it for years but can visualise that perfectly.
Wooden rocking chairs scare me.
Sleep tight everyone 😉

Schlinder’s List.
Harrowing. Pretty sure everyone in the cinema was crying at some point.

Pulp Fiction for sheer cool and unique way it’s constructed.
I need to watch that again soon.

Dead Man’s Shoes. Just brilliant.

Reservoir Dogs

Requiem for a Dream

Withnail & I

Citizen Kane

All completely genius for their very original way of story telling 🙂

Excalibur, Raging Bull and the first Rocky

Police Academy 5, stunning plot lines and one can never tire of Michael Winslow’s beatbox sound effects/machine gun impression.
Bachelor Party, some say this is Tom Hanks’ best acting performance, a real heavyweight role for arguably the finest actor of his generation.
Crocodile Dundee, Paul Hogan showing off for 2 hours, who wouldn’t want to see that?
Etc
Etc
😆

That Mick Jagger Ned Kelly film.

It was Easter, I was about six and we thought we were going to see Pinocchio….

Certainly made an impression!

Requiem For A Dream. Some films I can watch over and over again. That film I could only ever watch once.

Harrowing movie, great to let your mates watch when they are off somewhat worst for wear – mushroom season + requiem for a dream = traumatised friends

Quirrel – thats an evil thing to do. Well done 🙂

Interesting to see Three Fish mentioned Stalker – it’s one of the most memorable films ever made IMO. In fact any film by Tarkovsky is breathtaking!

My all time most memorable and the greatest film ever made though I reckon is Satantango by Bela Tarr! A true life changing experience (and total endurance fest).

some say this is Tom Hanks’ best acting performance

Only those who haven’t seen Toy Story 2

some say this is Tom Hanks’ best acting performance

Only those who haven’t seen Toy Story 2
He only voiced that role. 😛

“Let him have it”

Bitish injustice at its finest.

FMJ

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ea2qb5qTeQI[/video]

Watched Requiem for a Dream last night, I liked it, the scene where Marion leaves the apartment, goes in the lift and out into the rain was stunning…

Local Hero
Wicker Man.
Death in a French Garden
Diva

Kajaki. A war film where no one fires a gun. It’s slow, hot and the stuff of nightmares. The humour underlying the horror of what’s happening is great. As a paramedic I felt the medic was brilliantly scripted, making the right decisions, managing an increasingly futile incident until he just wants to pull his hair out. A real current of fear

Ah yes, Platoon…one of the best!

I suppose when you are young you are more open to being ‘blown away’ by films, so Rocky, Enter The Dragon, Pulp Fiction, Star Wars, Friday 13th, Grease to name a few.

These days I’m hugely critical of films and it takes a very good one to satisfy me. Which is why I hardly ever bother now! 😕

Here’s my list of Usual Suspects –

Star Wars the opening sequence in Worcester Odeon.

Pulp Fiction just for the WTH is going on here for the first 15 minutes…

The Usual Suspects.

Dersu Uzala – Hardly ever shows up on TV but it’s (one of) Kurosawa’s masterpiece. Beautifully shot.

The French Connection

The Thing (John Carpenter) – Made a very big impression when I was 10!

A Simple Plan – Fargo-esque. You spend most of the film dismissing Billy Bob Thornton’s character as being the village idiot and then in one chilling piece of acting you realise you’ve been had and he’s the scariest character in the film.

Excalibur

A few good ones already mentioned. To add to those would be Wolf Creek, but not in a good way. It’s the only film that has properly freaked me out. Its about 12 years since I watched and I still can’t bring myself to watch it again. I remember shouting at the TV, “get the **** out of there, no don’t go back, what the **** are you doing”. Financially there’s not much chance of me going to Australia but as long as I can remember Wolf Creek there’s no chance of it happening.

Good call. I remember being amazed that there were old mining towns so remote that they could not be found. Just how remote can a place be 😀

Who could forget “head on a stick”

Also, the scene in The Wild Bunch where they decide to go an rescue Angel. They’re aware that they are probably going to their deaths, but do it anyway.

The Crying Game
Good Will Humting
As Good as it gets
Jaws

Tricky stuff

Irreversible. Tough film.

Pretty much anything by Lars Von Trier (not always for positive reasons.)

Modern Classics

Goodfella & Casino are etched into my mind. Pulp Fiction etc.

Childhood

Superman / Star Wars etc. Mad Max II – the first ‘X’ my dad let me watch.

For all the wrong reasons

Nothing But Trouble

+1 Local hero
I think it’s a wonderful combination of innocence, quirky humour and downright good story .

More recently, a couple which sit on my mind are:

Les Miserables – think its shot very true to how the book reads, and the ending gets me every time.

The Imitation Game – the searing injustice of Turing’s treatment after the war.

Gregory’s Girl is a classic, valuable lesson in it is that the girl everyone wants is never worth the trouble and your mate who is a girl is way better in every way.
I give you Clare Grogan