Noise in the Shape of Writing

Who can resist a movie list that honorably mentions that sci-fi classic “Zardoz”?

Aaron posted this thing on his blog... "List your top 10 movies, and by YOUR top 10 movies, we mean YOU. These aren't the movies that you think are the best movies of all time (though they can be), but movies that have affected and influenced you; movies that are part of your style, point of view, tone, flavor, whatever. Movies that, when you list them, someone else knows you a little better."

Well, okay, I'm game too. I had more important things to do tonight, but I have never had the restraint to turn down an opportunity to make a list. Especially of movies!

The list was hard to pare down to 10 until I applied one final restriction: "In some uber-natural way, am I linked -- more than practically anyone else out there -- with this movie." (ie. The rest of the world hated it... I loved it. OR... Everyone saw it, but only I *SAW* it.)


American Beauty
The perfect movie. Allegorical, colorful, well shot, well acted, well written. It touched me in several personal ways. I felt that everything put forth in that movie was true, or TRUE or "true" in some way or another. NO OTHER MOVIE has ever made me well up with such emotion (OK, maybe Fahrenheit 911).


Star Trek The Motion Picture
Yeah, the original. Hated by most purists. Well, hated by most, really. But NOTHING beats the feeling I felt as I watched the Enterprise pull slowly out of dry dock under the command of James T. Kirk. The music helped a lot too. Sure, the ending was appalling. You can't deny, however, that the movie was for the fans and if you were a Trekkie and you needed something more than to see Kirk and the gang on the Enterprise doing what they do best and kicking Klingon ass, then you just didn't have your eyes open. Or, you were seeing it years later for the first time on video.


The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Another perfect movie. (Many of these "Personal Top 10 Movies" are in fact on my "Not Personal But In Fact Greatest Movies of All Time" list as well) Starts off whimsical, familiar, funny. Shoots right into action. Never lets up except for the "get to know the characters" scenes. Ends tragically and at the perfect moment. A completely self-contained movie. The opening "shire" scene brings me to tears every time. A parable in no uncertain terms.


Rocky Horror Picture Show
Perfect? Maybe not. But it sums up my high school years to a freakin "T". Everyone I hung out with in HS was horny and geeky, and everyone wished they could be as honest and hedonistic as the characters in that movie were. Funny, interactive, social, naughty, timid, tradition-bound, science fictional, unrestrained... it was everything we were. Everything I was anyway, with the "timid" part outweighing and obscuring most of the others most of the time.


Pink Floyd The Wall
Saw it with buddies from Senior English class. We somehow convinced the teacher it would be a good movie to write an English term paper on. Yet, somewhere around the "One of My Turns," glass shards through the hands scene, I realized that this was one powerful, allegorical, smart movie. The soundtrack has been #1 in my collection for years. And the movie is top of my Top 10 Greatest still. Powerful shit. Been there through several sad and several extremely happy moments in my life.


Silent Running
This movie says so much and yet is not full of itself. A testament to simplicity in shooting, art direction and writing, it puts forth a mighty environmental message and yet it has fun and does not preach. The music may have been somewhat mushy, but Bruce Dern's acting was so heartfelt and the (arguably lame, SFX-wise) robots were so endearing that you couldn’t help but get swept up.


The Story of Us
Okay, the rest of the world HATED this movie. I maintain that it is one of the greatest of all time. Maybe it's cause I -- as a married man with a kid -- had similar feelings at times. Everyone argues, everyone has tough times, everyone wants to throw up their hands at some point. Anyway, it clicked for me. Everything Rob Reiner put in there resonated with me. And the reconciliation at the end hit me hard. It takes a lot of strength to make things right in a relationship. A lot of sacrifice. Usually I hate Michelle Pfeiffer, but here she shines.


About a Boy
I loved this movie. It spoke to the little, egotistical, British bachelor in me. Great music. Great direction/editing. Sometimes a perfectly made movie connects with me simply because it’s a perfectly made movie. It makes me smile. Also, women seemed to not get this movie and most men didn’t that I spoke to (except for a few). I guess that made me connect to it.


Spirited Away
What a sweet, exhilarating gem of a film. Never takes itself too seriously. It speaks to courage, tradition, honor, knowledge of self and wonder. Of course, I have a soft spot for Japanese animation, but given that it won the Best Animated Film Oscar a couple years back, it isn’t *just* me. If you haven’t yet checked out Hayao Miyazake’s films (incl. Princess Mononoke, Totoro and others), you really should. Kid’s films for adults young at heart.


Monty Python and the Holy Grail
I saw this late at night once early on in high school (1982-ish) when I should have been fast asleep. I snuck out of my room for some disallowed cable viewing (probably some soft porn) and stumbled across this movie. Hilarious. And for a kid stuck in a square world of early 80s trends, it clicked with my nascent sense of irony. I felt as if I had just joined a club. Then I discovered Python proper and learned what I had been missing. This movie basically serves as a marker for any number of other movies that I A) discovered late at night, B) had never seen anything else even similar to, and C) no one else I knew was into. These movies only existed in my own little world, and without the internet or Leonard Maltin’s guide or the invention of the VCR, I had no way to prove their existence to any one else. Other’s in this group include: Zardoz, Probe and (though it’s TV) The Prisoner.


Pat.