DocMorbius

My Favorite Movies

So you clicked here. Your reward (or punishment) is a list of my favorite movies. At last count, there are 110 of them. I always was an overachiever (not really). Note that a lot of them are from the 30's, 40's and 50's. Also, there are quite a few 1950's Science Fiction Films. There's even a few silent films from the 1920's. As an old fogey, I don't think that the current films and filmmakers are nearly as good as the ones from back then. You'll only see a handful of films made after 1990, and most of those are the wonderful animations from Pixar and Miyazaki.

Science Fiction
2001 - A Space Odyssey	1968	The second best Science Fiction Film, ever. The special effects, sets, costumes, and cinematography blew me away when I first saw it in a theater, and are still amazing. The story by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick is fascinating. It really has to be seen on a big screen though.
Brazil	1985	Terry Gilliam's sci-fi/black comedy masterpiece. A very strange, but very imaginative film
Fahrenheit 451	1966	A very good adaptation of the book by Ray Bradbury, so you know it's a great story
Forbidden Planet	1956	The BEST science fiction film, ever. My favorite movie. The sets, costumes, and special effects are still amazing, 50 years later. The story is an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest and the acting, particularly by Walter Pidgeon is first class. Robbie the Robot is my hero.
Metropolis	1927	The restored version is amazing. The sets and special effects, 80 years old now, are incredible.
Star Wars	1977	The first one and the best one.
Star Wars, Return of the Jedi	1983	Also pretty good. Then things went downhill.
Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back	1980	Still a good one.
The Day the Earth Stood Still	1951	A compelling story and a good performance by Michael Rennie.
The Invisible Man	1933	Claude Rains' amazing "invisible" performance. Great effects for 1933. A great 1930's "horror" film, without blood and guts and gore.
The Thing from Another World	1951	One of the best 1950's sci-fi alien invasion flicks. Great directing and writing. The acting is so good that the dialogue appears natural and not acting at all.
The Time Machine	1960	A good adaptation of the H.G. Wells story. The effects are pretty good. Yvette Mimieux is beautiful.
The War of The Worlds	1953	Another good H.G. Wells adaptation.
Them!	1954	A great 1950's monster movie. Lots of fun, and starring Edmund Gwenn, James Arness and James Whitmore. There's a very, very, tiny role by a very young Leonard Nimoy.
This Island Earth	1955	A different kind of alien invasion film. Good story and good special effects.
Animation
Atlantis, The Lost Empire	2001	A box office disaster, but a masterpiece of animation. The scenes of the city of Atlantis are amazingly beautiful
Fantasia	1940	Disney's animation spectacular. This is still animation at its best.
Howl's Moving Castle	2004	Another instance of the incredible imagination of Hayao Miyazaki.
Monsters, Inc.	2001	The guys and gals at Pixar are geniuses. A fun movie with great characters, a good story, and Pixar's imagination and top-notch digital animation.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind	1985	More of Miyazaki's imagination. It's amazing that he can think up these things.
Princess Mononoke	1997	One of Miyazaki's most popular films. Not as good as Spirited Away though, but still so imaginative.
Ratatouille	2007	I think this is Pixar's best film. A must see. The backgrounds alone are works of art.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	1937	Disney's masterpiece. The first full-length animated film, and some 70 year old animation that is wonderful.
Spirited Away	2001	Hayao Miyazaki's masterpiece. The imagination alone is mind-boggling, but the drawings and animation are the best being done today.
The Incredibles	2004	The geniuses at Pixar again. This is one of their best.
Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave	1995	Nick Parks' third Wallace & Gromit short film. Very funny, and very imaginative. Gromit reads "War and Peace" by Dogstoyevsky
Wallace & Gromit: A Grand Day Out	1989	The introduction of Wallace & Gromit. Very funny.
Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers	1993	Nick Parks' stop-motion animation masterpiece. It's very, very funny. Gromit reads "Electronics for Dogs". The train chase at the end is hysterical and amazing, especially when you consider that it took months (or maybe years) to film it.
Comedy
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum	1966	Hysterically Funny. It has some of the best comedians of all time in an ensemble performance: Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers, Jack Guilford, and an incredible performance by Buster Keaton.
Amelie (Le Fabuleux destin d'Amelie Poulain)	2001	A great, funny, romantic French film. Audrey Tatou is wonderful. Paris is wonderful too.
Annie Hall	1977	One of Woody Allen's last great funny films
Around the World in 80 Days	1956	A little dated, but still a fun movie.
A Thousand Clowns	1965	Another very funny, almost forgotten film. Jason Robards' performance is fantastic. The lovely woman who eventually became my lovely wife once asked me what my favorite film was. I told her that she probably never heard of it, and that it was called "A Thousand Clowns". She was astonished and said it was her favorite film also. So we got married.
City Lights	1931	A Charlie Chaplin film that will have you laughing one moment and crying the next
Duck Soup	1933	One of the Marx Brothers' funniest
Harvey	1950	James Stewart in a hilarious comedy, playing a hilarious role. Did you know he was a great comedic actor?
Kind Hearts and Coronets	1949	Alec Guinness plays 7 Parts,wonderfully
Manhattan	1979	Another great Woody Allen film, and a tribute to Manhattan. The cinematography and the score are great.
Mister Roberts	1955	A great comedy with a great cast: Henry Fonda, James Cagney, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon
Modern Times	1936	Another great Charlie Chaplin silent comedy
Monty Python and the Holy Grail	1975	Hysterically funny, and strange. Wait -- that describes anything by Monty Python.
Much Ado About Nothing	1993	A great, funny, romantic, Shakespeare movie, starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson in some wonderful performances.
My Man Godfrey	1936	A funny movie starring William Powell and Carole Lombard
Shakespeare in Love	1998	A funny love story with a great cast and great sets and costumes and a wonderful screenplay by Tom Stoppard. Gwyenth Paltrow gives an amazing performance, as does one of my favorite actors, Geoffrey Rush.
Sleeper	1973	Maybe the funniest Woody Allen film
Some Like It Hot	1959	Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe in a very funny film. Joe E. Brown has the best "last line" of any picture.
The Bank Dick	1940	W. C. Fields at his funniest
The General	1927	Buster Keaton's masterpiece, He did all the stunt work himself. Amazing
The Gold Rush	1925	Another great, funny, sad, Charlie Chaplin film
The Horse's Mouth	1958	A marvelous Alec Guinness performance in a very funny film.
The Man in the White Suit	1951	Another very funny Alec Guinness film
The Producers	1968	Possibly the funniest Mel Brooks film
Zelig	1983	An amazing Woody Allen film
Horror
Dracula	1931	The first, and still the best. Lugosi is the one and only Dracula.
Frankenstein	1931	Boris Karloff's triumph. This is the monster movie of monster movies.
King Kong	1933	A fun film, and much better than any of the remakes
The Bride of Frankenstein	1935	Better than the original. The sets and costumes are better. The music is terrific. The performances by Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger are fantastic.
The Mummy	1932	Another Boris Karloff treat
The Wolf Man	1941	A great story, some incredible make-up work by Jack Pierce, and some very good performances, particularly by Claude Rains (another of my favorite actors), and Lon Chaney junior.
Musicals
An American in Paris	1951	Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron. Nothing else needs to be said
My Fair Lady	1964	Great music, and Julie Andrews.
Singin' In the Rain	1952	The Best Hollywood Musical. Gene Kelly, Singin' and Dancin' in the Rain
Yankee Doodle Dandy	1942	Did you know that James Cagney was a dancer? A great, fun film.
Adventure
Raiders of the Lost Ark	1981	A 1930's serial-type adventure, made in the 1980's. Great Fun!
The Adventures of Robin Hood	1938	Three Strip Technicolor in all its glory. And Erroll Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Claude Rains, and Basil Rathbone. Wow!
The African Queen	1951	Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, directed by John Huston. You can't get better than that. This, and a very few other films, are in my "must watch" list. If I'm flipping through the channels on the TV, and this comes on, I must watch it. Casablanca is another one on this list.
The Great Escape	1963	The best escape movie, with another great cast.
The Maltese Falcon	1941	Humphrey Bogart directed by John Huston, with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Marvelous.
The Man who would be King	1975	A old-fashioned adventure starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Another John Huston film. Great fun.
The Treasure of Sierra Madre	1948	Another John Huston film with Humphrey Bogart, this time, not a good guy
Yojimbo	1961	Another great Kurosawa film starring Toshiro Mifune
Fantasy
The Wizard of Oz	1939	The best fantasy/musical ever made. A perfect film.
La Belle et La Bete	1946	Jean Cocteau's visual masterpiece. It is stunning.
Lost Horizon	1937	A great adventure with Ronald Coleman and Sam Jaffe
Seven Faces of Dr. Lao	1963	An incredible performance, no -- Seven incredible performances by Tony Randall
Noir
Laura	1944	The best of the Noir. Dana Andrews and an incredibly beautiful Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. Also, an unusual, and masterful performance by Vincent Price
M	1933	Peter Lorre will send chills down your spine. Fritz Lang's masterpiece. Well -- one of two. The other is Metropolis.
Pandora's Box	1929	An incredible silent film starring a gorgeous Louise Brooks -- Wow!
The Third Man	1949	Incredible cinematography. Visually stunning. Great acting, and great directing, and a score that you can't forget.
Drama
Amadeus	1984	Great sets, great costumes, great music, but the best thing about this movie is the performance by F. Murray Abraham.
A Tale of Two Cities	1935	A wonderful performance by Ronald Coleman
Ben Hur	1959	A classic spectacle.
Casablanca	1942	The classic of classics. What a cast: Humphrey Bogart, an incredibly beautiful Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet. Romance and adventure at their best.
Chocolat	2000	An under-rated film that deserved better reviews. Juliette Binoche is wonderful, and beautiful. Alfred Molina, Judy Dench, and Johnny Depp are terrific. The story is great and very imaginative, and of course, has a happy ending. How could a film about chocolate not?
Citizen Kane	1941	Justifiably considered the best film ever made. Orson Welles was a genius. Every directing and cinematographic cliche was first done here, when it wasn't a cliche.
Das Boot	1981	A wonderful, engrossing, unusual war movie. It shows how horrible it must have been to be a submariner, on either side, during WW II.
Gandhi	1982	A spectacle, with an unbelievable performance by Ben Kingsley.
Hamlet	1996	Kenneth Branagh's remarkable filming of the complete Shakespeare play. The sets and costumes and cinematography are wonderful, but to paraphrase the bard, "The Acting's the thing".
High Noon	1952	I'm not usually a big fan of westerns, but this one is great. Gary Cooper is wonderful, and Grace Kelly is too, and I think she's nicer to look at. The score is unforgettable.
Inherit the Wind	1960	An intense dramatization of the Scopes Monkey Trial, this film is very powerful, and the performances by Spencer Tracy, Frederick March and Gene Kelly are exceptional.
Ivan the Terrible	1944	An amazing film by Sergei Eisenstein. Engrossing, and visually fascinating.
Lilies of the Field	1963	A great "little" film, with a performance that launched Sidney Poitier into stardom. Great fun.
Moby Dick	1946	A performance by Gregory Peck that is incredible. A great story, some great sets and costumes, and fantastic character actors. Another John Huston film, written by Ray Bradbury
Mutiny on the Bounty	1935	A great classic sea story, with wonderful performances by Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, and Franchot Tone.
My Dinner with Andre	1981	Just two guys talking over dinner, yet fascinating. The actors are playing themselves, using their real names.
Orphans of The Storm	1921	A D.W. Griffith and Lillian Gish silent masterpiece
Rashomon	1950	Another Kurosawa classic. The cinematography is wonderful, and the concept is fascinating. Toshiro Mifune is, as usual, amazing.
Red Beard	1965	Another incredible movie by Akira Kurosawa. Beautifully directed and photographed. A wonderful story about the good parts of the human spirit. The performance of Toshiro Mifune is spectacular. In many ways, one of Kurosawa's best.
Scrooge (A Christmas Carol)	1951	Much better than all the remakes. Alistair Sim was the best Ebenezer Scrooge ever. Trivia fact: the young Jacob Marley is played by Patrick Macnee, the later John Steed of Avengers fame.
Seven Samurai	1954	One of Kurosawa's Best. I have probably overused the word masterpiece, but this one definitely deserves the adjective. A must see.
Spartacus	1960	Another spectacular film, directed by Stanley Kubrick with great performances by Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and Jean Simmons.
The Apartment	1960	Great performances by Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine in a terrific story. Shirley MacLaine never looked better.
The Grapes of Wrath	1940	A classic tale of the dust bowl. The performances are all wonderful. Of course Henry Fonda is amazing, but John Carradine does an amazing job here also.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame	1939	A great classic tale, with superb performances by the cast, including Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara and Cedrick Hardwicke, but Laughton's performance is not to be missed. This is the definitive version of this story.
The Miracle Worker	1962	Two performances that will knock your socks off by Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft. They both won Acadamy Awards. Patty Duke won the award for Best Supporting Actress at the age of 17, for playing a blind, deaf, and dumb girl! It is impossible to be unmoved by the "water pump" scene at the end.
The Red Shoes	1948	A very beautiful film, with an incredible dancing performance by Moira Shearer
The Red Violin	1998	A very unusual, beautiful, well written story, with a great ending and a wonderful performance by Samuel L. Jackson
The Sting	1973	A fun film, with a trick ending, and a great cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert Shaw, Eileen Brennan, and another one of my favorite actors, Harold Gould.
To Kill A Mockingbird	1962	A moving story, and an incredible performance by the wonderful Gregory Peck.
Twelve Angry Men	1957	A riveting drama that takes place entirely in a jury room. The contains some of the best actors of the time, with performances that nobody can duplicate today.
More Recent
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl	2003	The first "Pirates" movie, and, in my opinion, the best. Not a great masterpiece, but imaginative and a lot of fun. Johnny Depp, as always, is a great actor and he turns the character of Captain Jack Sparrow into a film legend.
Wall-E	2008	Yet another of Pixar's fantastic animated movies. The first half hour or so is an incredible tour-de-force of computer animation.
Up	2009	Still another of Pixar's fantastic animated movies. Great characters, and a very imaginative and fun story.
The Illusionist	2010	A wonderful little french animated movie, based on a story by the great French comedian Jacques Tati.
The King's Speech	2010	A great, "old school" movies, without massive special effects, CGI, car chases, or any of the other "requirements" of modern films. Just a good story, and great acting. One of my favorite current actors, Geoffrey Rush, is co-star here, and to see how good he is, compare his role in this movie to the one he plays in Pirates of the Caribbean.
Midnight in Paris	2011	I have to admit that I haven't liked most of the more recent films by Woody Allen, but this one is a big exception. A marvelously imaginative plot, wonderful sets and costumes, great cinematography and direction. A good, fun film, especially for lovers of literature, art, and Paris.