Tele's 100 Favorite Movies aka "Comfort Food" (complete)

[Fancyarcher]

It's in my top two Hitchcock

 

It's my #3 best Hitchcock film.

[4815162342]

Burton's Batman is just a little too over-the-top. I think it has a lot of right ideas, but it goes just over the line with a bunch of them

[DAR]

60. Batman (1989)

 

In this day and age of constant superhero movies, it might be hard to imagine the sheer impact this movie had on a whole generation of kids and twenty-somethings. It was unlike anything a major studio had released. Sure, there are campy moments, and scenes that today are pretty dated (the Joker dances forever to that damn Prince song on the float), but it was such a singular (and dark) vision that it was immediately iconic, and Danny Elfman's score is another amazing accomplishment. This is what introduced me to Batman as a character.

 

I generally abhor the term it broke the Internet. However had the Internet been around, this would have broken the Internet.

[The Futurist]

Jack Nicholson famously said that he wouldn't live long enough to spend the money he's made with BATMAN. He negociated a huge back end deal that made him very rich.

[DAR]

Might be the one of the smartest business decisions ever made

[vc2002]

Jack Nicholson famously said that he wouldn't live long enough to spend the money he's made with BATMAN. He negociated a huge back end deal that made him very rich.

 

How much money did he made from Batman?

[The Futurist]

How much money did he made from Batman?

 

I don't know but a LOT. But mind you it was 26 years ago which means 26 years of inflation.

Anyway , most websites say Nicholson 's wealth is 400m which makes him one of the wealthiest actors in Hollywood with Tom Cruise and Terminator who are closer to 500m.

[Kalo]

56. The Return of the Jedi (1983)

 

It still rocks, Ewoks and all. Yub yub!

 

I love you 

[BadAtGender]

How much money did he made from Batman?

 

$60-$90m. RDJ money, basically. Except he did it 20 years earlier.

 

(Alec Guinness is another actor who had a supremely lucrative back-end deal.)

[baumer]

I remember reading back in 1991 or 1992 that he (Jack) made 70 million from Batman.  I think at the time, it was the biggest amount earned by any actor on a single film.

 

I love your list Tele.  I'm not going to comment on all of them but in particular Trading Places and Jedi bring warmth to my heart.  

 

James will think Trading Places is stupid even though he's never seen it.  Eddie Murphy looks fake or something, and Dan Aykroyd is too thin, not real.  

 

Jedi is all kinds of awesome.  The lightsabre duel at the end is excellent and the editing that went into that film to make it all work is almost as good as JFK (which I consider to be the best edited film of all time).

 

Nice job so far.

Edited March 10, 2015 by baumer

[The Stingray]

Trading Places is hilarious. My third favorite Eddie Murphy movie.

 

And Big Trouble brings back all sorts of sweet memories. Saw it at a time when I was crazy about all things ninjas and samurais.

 

[The Stingray]

Might be the one of the smartest business decisions ever made

 

And the smartest decision in Hollywood history has to be Lucas keeping the merchandising and sequel rights to Star Wars, right?

[#ED]

[Plain Old Tele]

52. The Natural (1984)

 

Baseball imagined as pure Americana mythology. Barry Levinson takes the novel by Bernard Malamud and reworks the original, darker story into something warmer, uplifting, the way Americans like to view themselves. The story begins in the 1920s -- Robert Redford stars as Roy Hobbs, a wonderkid superstar prospect who comes out of nowhere and seems on the cusp of fame and fortune. Instead, he meets sudden, stark tragedy. Many years later, in the late 1930s, Rob Hobbs appears again, this time as an aging prospect in his middle to late 30s. Everyone thinks he's washed up... after all, if you're in your late 30s and still haven't broken into the major leagues, you probably aren't very good, or simply just too old. But there's something special about Roy, and when he finally takes the field, for a terrible team run by a terrible owner, magic starts to happen. This movie has some of the most awesome and greatest moments ever, helped immensely by gorgeous cinematography by Caleb Deschanel and an iconic score by Randy Newman that's now frequently used in all sorts of sports promos and on-field entertainment.

 

[Plain Old Tele]

51. Runaway Train (1985)

 

Almost unknown at this point, this is a great action/adventure movie with an unusual (and amazing) pedigree: A script by Akira Kurosawa, that he was never able to make into a movie, repackaged and reworked by the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky and several additional screenwriters. Produced by schlockmeisters Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, it stars Jon Voight, Eric Roberts and Rebecca DeMornay. Voight and Roberts, out of nowhere, managed to get nominated for Academy Awards. The story is simple: two convicts escape from a maximum-security prison in Alaska, and get on a freight train headed back to civilization. The only problem is that (unbeknownst to them) the train is a runaway. Steadily picking up speed and increasingly out of control, they have to figure out how to stop it.... and all the while being pursued by the sadistic prison warden out to recapture them. If you liked THE GREY, this is a movie along similar lines.

 

[Plain Old Tele]

50. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

 

Sure, it's generally considered the weakest of the classic Indy trilogy, but this is still an amazingly fun movie with great, wild, sprawling set-pieces. Spielberg pulls out all the stops, and the film hardly lets up for a moment. Some of the then-amazing VFX are starting to become a bit dated, but in concept and inventiveness, the movie still has few equals and remains a gold standard for how to build superb action sequences.

 

 

Now on to the top 50...

Edited March 10, 2015 by Telemachos

[Plain Old Tele]

49. Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

 

A hilarious and pitch-black comedy about the insanity of the Cold War and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. It's actually so bold and daring I don't think a major studio would make this movie today. The movie is about how a series of misunderstandings, escalated through paranoia, hypocracy, machismo, and sheer insanity, bring the world to the brink of nuclear war (and perhaps push right over the brink to war itself). Peter Sellers plays three roles (including the mysterious Dr. Strangelove), George C. Scott is far funnier than you'd ever expect, and Sterling Hayden is amazing as an American general obsessed with bodily fluids. Truly one of the greatest movies ever made.

 

[Avatree]

56. The Return of the Jedi (1983)

 

It still rocks, Ewoks and all. Yub yub!

 

Yub nub, not yub yub.

 

ROTJ is my favourite Star Wars film, though I know that's an unpopular opinion. It was the first one I watched so it holds a special place in my heart. 

[RobinHood26]

Your list has been pretty on point, keep them coming. Runaway Train looks great, I'll have to check it out. 

[Avatree]

51. Runaway Train (1985)

 

Almost unknown at this point, this is a great action/adventure movie with an unusual (and amazing) pedigree: A script by Akira Kurosawa, that he was never able to make into a movie, repackaged and reworked by the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky and several additional screenwriters. Produced by schlockmeisters Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, it stars Jon Voight, Eric Roberts and Rebecca DeMornay. Voight and Roberts, out of nowhere, managed to get nominated for Academy Awards. The story is simple: two convicts escape from a maximum-security prison in Alaska, and get on a freight train headed back to civilization. The only problem is that (unbeknownst to them) the train is a runaway. Steadily picking up speed and increasingly out of control, they have to figure out how to stop it.... and all the while being pursued by the sadistic prison warden out to recapture them. If you liked THE GREY, this is a movie along similar lines.

 

Runaway Train is on TV on thursday, I'm definitely watching it