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

[Plain Old Tele]

48. The Third Man (1949)

 

This movie is sort of the quintessential noir, using many of the standard tropes and visuals, and then (in a stroke of brilliance) undercutting and shifting them with a truly startling and unique score. Worth watching just for the visuals, but it's so much more than that. Joseph Cotton stars as Holly Martins, an out-of-work author who writes pulp westerns, who's invited to post-WWII Vienna by his friend Harry (Orson Welles), who has a job for him. When he arrives in Vienna, Holly finds out his friend Harry was killed in a car accident. The natural thing to do would be to get back on the train and head for home, but Holly sticks around just to ask Harry's friends and acquaintances about the accident. And as he pokes around in his bumbling American unfamiliarity with the city, he starts to notice inconsistencies and gaps in the story of what happened... and when he investigates further, he starts uncovering darker and darker secrets.

 

Edited March 10, 2015 by Telemachos

[Jake Gittes]

The Third Man gets better every time I see it. Possibly my favorite film made before 1960.

[Plain Old Tele]

47. Last of the Mohicans (1992)

 

Lush, romantic, with kickass action, beautiful cinematography, and a soaring score... what else could you want in a movie? This is Michael Mann's take on the historical epic, and he brings his usual precision for detail and accuracy to the 1760s. (The production built a full-scale fort in North Carolina for one action sequence). Daniel Day-Lewis is Hawkeye, a white man adopted and raised by the Mohican tribe as one of their own, who falls in love with a general's daughter amidst the backdrop of the French and Indian War. If somehow you haven't seen this movie, and you like stuff like BRAVEHEART and GLADIATOR, this is for you.

 

[JohnnyGossamer]

I was comforted to hear the zither theme from The Third Man in a recent episode of Better Call Saul. Maybe my favorite music in any film. It suits the narrative so very well.

[Avatree]

I was comforted to hear the zither theme from The Third Man in a recent episode of Better Call Saul. Maybe my favorite music in any film. It suits the narrative so very well.

Crap, I knew there was something I needed to watch today, I completely forgot about Better Call Saul.  I shall watch today's episode now, thanks for that post

[4815162342]

Mohicans is pure adventure.

[Plain Old Tele]

46. The Great Escape (1963)

 

Based on real-life events (and the best-selling book about them) about one of the most famous prison breaks of the war. The Germans had a series of POW camps, and got sick and tired of all the various escape efforts by some of the Allies. So they took the worst of the offenders and stuck them in a custom-designed high-security camp run by the Luftwaffe. Of course, all the prisoners immediately got together and decided to make a huge escape effort: instead of just having a few people escape, they built a plan to get out several hundred men all at once. This is the story of that plan, how they executed it, and what happened. The cast is a veritable who's who of big-name stars: Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Garner, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn. The movie was directed by editor-turned-director John Sturges and the score by Elmer Bernstein is legendary. Famously, McQueen -- who loved racing and doing his own stunts -- only agreed to do the movie if he was allowed to do a motorcycle chase. So they wrote one in. (Ironically, the insurance company wouldn't allow McQueen do to the famous motorcycle jump, so a stuntman buddy of his did it.)

 

Edited March 10, 2015 by Telemachos

[Plain Old Tele]

45. Midnight Run (1988)

 

One of the best action/buddy-comedies ever. De Niro is a gritty tough bounty hunter assigned to track down white collar criminal Charles Grodin... while the mob also searches for him. De Niro and Grodin end up on an improbable road-trip together, and the two men slowly bond despite their differences. That alone would make it a fun, entertaining movie, but this film also has a great supporting cast of That Guy actors (many of whom were or have become far more famous), and there's a warm heart underneath all the profanity and action that really comes out towards the end of the movie. One of the best movies of the 80s.

 

[Plain Old Tele]

44. Near Dark (1987)

 

Kathryn Bigelow's first Hollywood movie... and what a movie it is. Starring Adrian Pasdar, Jenny Wright, and the supporting cast of ALIENS, this is a modern vampire tale without camp or smug self-referential moments. Pasdar is a young man who falls for a beautiful young vampiress and then gets abducted by her vampire family. Hauntingly atmospheric and beautiful, turning kickass when it needs to, with a great electronic score by Tangerine Dream and cinematography by Adam Greenberg, this is a great cult movie.

 

[Dark Jedi Master 007]

I badly wants to know what James thinks of this list.

[4815162342]

Great Escape YES!!!!!!!

[Plain Old Tele]

43. Escape from New York (1981)

 

Snake Plissken, man. Snake.

 

For the first time in a feature film, John Carpenter teamed up with Kurt Russell (the two had previously worked together for Carpenter's Elvis TV movie for ABC), and the result is awesome. The concept of the movie really comes out of the bleak outlook of New York in the 1970s. The city was in shambles -- dirty, polluted, overrun with crime -- and it wasn't a huge leap to take that current state of being and go worst-case scenario with it. The plot is simple: in the near future, Manhattan has become a maximum security prison, walled up and mined and watched. No guards, the Federal Police simply put a criminal inside and don't let anyone out. Except... Air Force One crash-lands inside Manhattan and the feds have to turn to Snake Plissken, former war-hero turned criminal, for help: send him in to find the president and rescue him. Working on a tiny budget, Carpenter was able to work wonders shooting on location in St. Louis (with the famous Sepulveda Dam in LA standing in for the guard facilities). Russell was a child star for Disney movies, and this was his first chance to take on a darker, badass character. Clearly, he relished the opportunity -- Snake is one of the great anti-heroes in movies and has been a major influence on movies and video games since he first appeared.

 

[Plain Old Tele]

42. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)

 

The first feature film by the famous comedy team is still their best, and it perfectly encapsulates their absurdist tendencies and their willingness to embrace both high and low humor. The story is a rough (very rough) retelling of the King Arthur story, with song, dance, animation, and a lot of silliness. Plus, it's probably one of the most-quoted movies of all time.

 

[Empire]

Escape From NY is so freaking awesome!

[Fancyarcher]

The Great Escape, Escape From New York, Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I think I'm really digging the rest of this list.

[RobinHood26]

Tele is on pace for my favorite top list yet. 

[Plain Old Tele]

41. Seven Samurai (1954)

 

Kurosawa's legendary, towering adventure film manages to be broad and epic in scope, and also intimate and filled with small insights into humanity. The story is simple and been remade a thousand times (both literal remakes like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN and metaphorical ones): seven wandering samurai get hired by a town of peasants to fend off an army of marauding bandits. It's iconic for a reason. Long, but worth it.

 

[Kalo]

I haven't seen a lot of these films. but reading this makes me want to. 

[Jack Nevada]

Shamelessly crowdpleasing list.

[Plain Old Tele]

40. Singin' In the Rain (1952)

 

Simply put, this is one of the most purely entertaining movies ever. It just exudes fun -- everyone just radiates enthusiasm, and any movie that has Gene Kelly at the top of his game is worth watching. Pair him up with Donald O'Connor (and include a number with Cyd Charisse) and you have a classic. Again, a simple story of Hollywood playing tribute to itself: set in the 1920s, Gene Kelly is a silent film star whose career is thrown out of whack by the all-new "talkies". He has to figure out how to rebound, all while romancing Debbie Reynolds. I'm not a huge musical fan, but the dancing here is astonishing at times: athletic, graceful, and effortless. Fun fun fun.

 

Edited March 10, 2015 by Telemachos