My 100 Favorite Movies
(Listed Chronologically)
- Title: It Happened One Night
Year: 1934
Director: Frank Capra
Stars: Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert
A spoiled heiress and chauvinistic reporter end up on a sort of unwilling road trip together, which results in a lot of clever banter. I'm not generally much of a Clark Gable fan -- I'm more of a Humphrey Bogart/Jimmy Stewart gal -- because he does have a tendency to play these overconfident, chauvinistic, overbearing types of characters (e.g., Rhett Butler). But in this movie, the writing is good enough that he wins me over anyway. I just love this sort of witty repartee.
Quote:
[After Ellen stops a car by showing her leg]
Peter Warne: Why didn't you take off all your clothes? You could have stopped forty cars.
Ellie: Well, I'll remember that when we need forty cars.
- Title: Casablanca
Year: 1942
Stars: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Claude Rains
Do I really even need to say anything about this one? Everybody meets at Rick's Cafe, including old lovers. You end up with your basic love triangle, except that one member of the triangle is a famous underground hero against the Nazis. How can a guy compete with that? I don't need to go on, because you've seen it, right? The first few times I saw it, I didn't realize that it had actually been produced during WWII, when Nazis and concentration camps were still current issues. I see it a little differently now.
This has long been my movie to put on when I'm just wanting to vegetate at home with a pint of Ben & Jerry's. My Hobbes-style stuffed tiger I sleep with when Shannon isn't around is named Sasha, after the bartender in Casablanca.
Some Favorite Quotes:
Captain Louis Renault: What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?
Rick Blaine: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Captain Louis Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick Blaine: I was misinformed.
Captain Louis Renault: Major Strasser has been shot! ... Round up the usual suspects.
- Title: The Big Sleep
Year: 1946
Writers: Raymond Chandler (novel) and William Faulkner (screenplay)
Stars: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall
 When I first read Raymond Chandler, I thought his hardboiled detectives were horrendously cliched ... and then I realized that he was the guy who created the cliches. Everybody's been copying him for the past 60 years or so. (But Jonathan Lethem, in particular, does it so well!) I love Chandler, and I must admit that I also love Philip Marlowe as a character. And this movie also benefits from having a screenplay written by Faulkner, who's the author of such highly acclaimed novels as The Sound and the Fury. (I don't think I've ever read him.) The best thing about the books has been entirely retained, and that's Marlowe's dryly witty, often racy and/or smart-ass, repartee with the other characters (see some example quotes, below).
The film is very different from the novel upon which it's based, because they apparently wanted to create a love story and downplay the pornography element. Amazingly enough, the movie works really well as a separate story all on its own. (Usually, in my opinion, this doesn't work, and they just end up dumbing down and sappifying the original story. Just watch the movie City of Angels, based on another film called Wings of Desire, for a painful example.) But in this movie it works beautifully.
Quotes:
Philip Marlowe: I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings.
Eddie Mars: Convenient, the door being open when you didn't have a key, eh?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, wasn't it. By the way, how'd you happen to have one?
Eddie Mars: Is that any of your business?
Philip Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Eddie Mars: I could make your business mine.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, you wouldn't like it. The pay's too small.
- Title: It's A Wonderful Life
Year: 1946
Director: Frank Capra
Stars: Jimmy Stewart
This is another one I doubt I need to describe, since I'm sure everyone has seen it on TV at Christmas time. I'm normally not much of a Capra fan, simply because he rots my teeth -- and this film is indeed shockingly sweet and sappy -- but I still love It's A Wonderful Life. Maybe I identify with George, in that we both tend to take on too much responsibility and want to help everyone, but run ourselves down at the same time. Of course, he's much more the self-effacing hero than I could ever be.
I love the basic concept of seeing the world if things had been different -- George getting to see what things would be like for his loved ones if he had never lived -- and this spawned a million other stories, of course. Like many of the great old movies, it now seems horribly cliched because it's been copied a million times, but looking past the modern sensibility I still think it's a great story. Plus, I just love Jimmy Stewart.
Quotes:
George Bailey: Just remember this, Mr. Potter: that this rabble you're talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath?
Clarence: Remember George, No man is a failure who has friends.
- Title: Rear Window
Year: 1954
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly
Who would have thought that an entire movie shot from one perspective -- an injured man's apartment window -- could be so exciting? Well, Alfred Hitchcock, apparently. He's an amazing director (need I even point that out?), and so he uses neato-keen photography -- silhouettes and events framed within windows -- to create an entire world of neighbors and their individual lives and dramas. This, in turn, sets the mystery of what happened to the neighbor's wife in a definite context. Plus, this movie includes the most creative use of a camera's flashbulb I've ever seen.
I'm not a fan of scary movies in general, but this is definitely my favorite Hitchcock. But that might have something to do with this whole "I like Jimmy Stewart" thing, as well.
Quote:
Stella: We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How's that for a bit of homespun philosophy?
 Title: Sabrina
Year: 1954
Director: Billy Wilder
Stars: Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn
Ahhh ... here we go. It's the unrequited love plot that I adore so much ... doubled. The chauffeur's daughter (played by the almost blindingly lovely Audrey Hepburn) is in love with the rich boy, and the rich boy's older brother in turn falls love with her. She's so charming, who could blame him? She can MacGyver a souffle out of crackers, for goodness sake!
Quote:
Thomas Fairchild: Democracy can be a wickedly unfair thing, Sabrina. Nobody poor was ever called democratic for marrying somebody rich. - Title: Mister Roberts
Year: 1955
Stars: Henry Fonda, Jimmy Cagney, and Jack Lemmon
You know, this movie doesn't really sound like something that would interest me: a bunch of guys in the Navy during WWII, stationed on a supplies ship. Instead of fighting the war, they're hauling toilet paper and cigarettes under the command of a complete control-freak petty tyrant ... and Mister Roberts is the only guy willing to stand up to him. But, somehow, this movie draws me in every single time I see it.
Quote:
Doug Roberts: We've got nothing to do with the war. Maybe that's why we're on this ship, cause we're not good enough to fight. Cause our glands don't secrete enough adrenaline, or our great-great- grandmothers were afraid of the dark or something.
Lt. 'Doc': What is it you want to be, Doug, a hero?
Doug Roberts: Hero? Doc, you haven't heard a word I've said. Look, Doc, the war's way out there, and I'm here. Well, I don't want to be here, I wanna be out there. I'm sick and tired of being a lousy spectator.
- Title: To Catch A Thief
Year: 1955
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Stars: Cary Grant and Grace Kelly
Here we've got another Hitchcock film, but it's thrilling-but-not-scary Hitchcock. (As I mentioned in my description of Rear Window, I'm not a fan of scary movies.)
Cary Grant plays a reformed(?) thief who is suspected of returning to his old ways on the Riviera, and the chemistry between him and Grace Kelly is wonderful. I'm not usually a big Cary Grant fan (remember what I said about being more of a Humphrey Bogart/Jimmy Stewart fan? I seem to go for the sort of awkward ones.), but he's certainly dashing and Grace Kelly in this film is quite the little smart-ass (I love smart-asses). Plus, she's gorgeous as ever ... in fact, they're both gorgeous.
I first saw this film at The Paramount Theatre in Oakland, a grand, exquisitely renovated movie palace. I must admit that the surroundings certainly didn't hurt my experience. The Paramount shows old news reels and cartoons before their films. Plus, there's the door prize game called Dec-o-Win, in which they spin a big wheel and give out prizes to audience members.
How could I not have good memories of this movie? Okay, yeah, I'll admit that I have seen movies I didn't like at The Paramount ... but this isn't one of them.
 Title: 12 Angry Men
Year: 1957
Star: Henry Fonda
Who would have suspected that a movie that takes place entirely in one room, entirely with only the same 12 characters, and entirely during the jury deliberation process could be so stirring and dramatic? Okay, yeah, we see a tiny bit of everyone leaving, but we see nothing of the trial, and all of the drama happens in that tiny jury deliberation room.
I would not have thought this would be a movie I would like, but Henry Fonda's performance is spectacular. And once again (as in Mister Roberts, which I described just 30 minutes ago) he plays a character who is standing up to oppression in order to defend the "little guy". He does it very very well.
Quote:
Juror #8: It's very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth. Well, I don't think any real damage has been done here. Because I don't really know what the truth is. No one ever will, I suppose. Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard which has enormous value to our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's SURE. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us. - Title: Breakfast at Tiffany's
Year: 1961
Stars: George Peppard and Audrey Hepburn
This is another of those movies that I wonder if I really need to describe, because I assume everyone has seen it. Audrey Hepburn plays Holly Golightly, a wacky, modern, self-confident, popular, and yet extremely lonely young woman in New York. In the film she meets her new neighbor (played by George Peppard of "The A-Team" fame, back when he was young and hot), and the two start to get to know each other and calling each other on their foibles.
 I think one of the reasons I love this movie so much is that I identify with Holly quite a bit. Like me, she loves her brother very much. Like me, she left home to make herself a different person. And like me, she gets the "mean reds" (see the first quote, below). Plus, how could anyone not love a movie that includes a scene of Audrey Hepburn sitting on a fire-escape, singing "Moon River"?
I've never read Truman Capote's novel (upon which the film is based), but I hear it's much more cynical and dark. I'm not sure if I want to read it, in fact, because it might taint my experience of the film I love so much.
Quotes:
Holly Golightly: You know those days when you get the mean reds?
Paul Varjak: The mean reds, you mean like the blues?
Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
Paul Varjak: You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
- Title: Charade
Year: 1963
Stars: Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn
Audrey Hepburn plays a woman who is pursued through Paris by various men wanting the fortune her husband stole, but where did he hide the fortune and who can she trust? This is probably my favorite mystery movie ever, and I love the chemistry between Grant and Hepburn. Yeah, Cary Grant's suave charm appears here on my list yet again. If I remember correctly, I most recently talked about him with Grace Kelly, in To Catch A Thief. Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn are very good matches for him, no? They are both so elegant, themselves.
I must admit that one of the things I love about this film is the setting: Paris. It isn't just set in Paris, it's filmed in Paris (unlike most old movies that just used studio lots). They run around all over the place, and you see a lot of the city. I've been to Paris a few times and love it very much, so I get very nostalgic when I see this movie. It's a Paris of decades before I ever visited (in fact, almost a decade before I was even born), but it still looks much the same.
Strangely enough, I even like the film's humor, though it's more broad than I usually appreciate. Some of it has a bit of the feel of French farce, appropriately enough.
Quote:
[The third murder has just been discovered.]
Inspector Grandpierre: Three of them. All in their pyjamas? C'est ridicule! What is it, some new American fad?
- Title: The Sound of Music
Year: 1965
Stars: Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer
A young prospective nun (are they called novices? heck if I know) leaves the convent to work as a governess for a family of many many many children and their sea captain father. Many difficulties arise, and she faces them like the plucky young woman she is ... while singing all the while. I think this is one of four musicals (along with Fiddler on the Roof, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Moulin Rouge) on my list of my 100 favorite movies. I'm not generally a fan of musicals, but this one has great nostalgic value for me.
The Sound of Music was first released 5 years before I was born, but it was re-released in theatres when I was very small. My mom took me to see it a gazillion times when her marriage to my dad was failing, just so that we could get out of the house and away. I didn't know what was going on ... but I did know the songs from the movie. At four years old, I would arrange my dolls and stuffed animals around me as if they were the von Trapp children, and I would sing "with" them as if I were Maria, their governess.
This is the first movie I remember seeing, as well as the first movie I remember touching my life outside the movie theatre. When I watch it now, I see things in it which went completely over my head when I was a kid (I didn't understand any of the Nazi stuff when I was little, for example), but I also see the same things I saw then. This will most likely be one of my favorite movies forever, because no other film could ever usurp its position in my memories.
Quote:
Captain von Trapp: You are the twelfth in a long line of governesses who have come here to look after my children since their mother died. I trust you will be an improvement on the last one. She stayed only two hours.
- Title: Romeo and Juliet
Year: 1968
Country: U.K.
Director: Franco Zeffirelli
Stars: Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey
Okay, you do know who wrote the original play, right? If not, I promise not to mock you out loud, but I make no promises about what goes on inside my head.
 This is, in my opinion, the one true film version of this play. Why? Because they got everything right: cast, directing, sets, costumes, etc. Most important is the cast. This was the first film version of Romeo and Juliet that I'm aware of that starred actors who were of an appropriate age, instead of having 25-year-old women playing the 13-year-old Juliet. Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey are phenomenal, and John McEnery (with whom I'm otherwise unfamiliar) makes a wonderful Mercutio. (This film would, I think, make a wonderful double feature with Shakespeare in Love, which I'll discuss later, since it too appears on this list.)
This film was my first experience with Shakespeare. This is one of my mother's favorite movies, and so when I was a kid she took me with her to see it in the theatres whenever it played anywhere near us. Sometimes we drove a couple hours to see it in a nearby town. By the time I read Shakespeare in school, I'd seen this movie enough times (and from a young enough age) that the language didn't feel unfamiliar at all. I think that's one of the reasons I've always enjoyed Shakespeare as much as I have. It's like having a French nanny or something. You get used to the language young enough, and it just seems natural.
My mom is a painter, and she did some studies from this film when it was first released, when she was about 19 years old and had not yet met my father. She gave me one of these paintings -- a tasteful portrait of Romeo and Juliet in bed together, from one of the promotional stills -- and it has hung on my bedroom wall for about 15 years now.
- Title: Fiddler on the Roof
Year: 1971
Star: Topol
Here we have the second musical to appear on my list of favorite movies. As I mentioned when I discussed The Sound of Music, I'm not in general a big fan of musicals. But this one, too, is familiar to me from my childhood. My mom, my brother, and I watched this movie dozens of times together, and we all knew most of the song lyrics. This movie brings back really pleasant memories of being with my family.
The way I see it, this is a film about the conflict between Jews and Gentiles in Russia during the tense times of the pre-Revolution pogroms, but it is also about the conflict between generations and the conflict between the poor and the rich.
I still occasionally find the songs spontaneously jumping into my head for no apparent reason: He's handsome, tall ... that is from side to side! But he's a nice man, a good catch...
Quote:
Tevye: As Abraham said, "I am a stranger in a strange land..."
Rabbi's Son: Moses said that!
Tevye: Ah. Well, as King David said, "I am slow of speech, and slow of tongue."
Rabbi's Son: That was also Moses!
Tevye: For a man who was slow of speech he talked a lot!
- Title: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Year: 1977
Director: Seven Spielberg
Star: Richard Dreyfus
From age 7 until age 17 or so, this was my favorite movie of all time. Every time I watch it, I still get shivers from the absolute joy and wonder of the moment when the alien ship suddenly communicates with them for the first time, and shatters the windows.
Basically, it's a movie about mankind's first significant contact with an alien race. It sounds simple, but it's also very funny, touching, thrilling, and tense at times.
I'll admit proudly here that you'll see Spielberg's name mentioned again in my discussions of the movies on this list, because I'm a big Spielberg fan. No wonder I always identified with the character Dawson when I watched "Dawson's Creek". Sigh.
Quote:
Roy Neary: I know this sounds crazy, but ever since yesterday on the road, I've been seeing this shape. Shaving cream, pillows... Dammit! I know this. I know what this is! This means something. This is important.
 Title: Star Wars (first 3 movies)
Years: 1977, 1980, 1983
Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher
Do I really need to say anything about this trilogy? You've all seen it many many times, right? It's your basic soap opera. Your basic western, but set in space. Your basic hero's journey. Young boy receives a call to adventure, is guided by a wise teacher, goes off to save someone, etc., etc., etc.
I still quite vividly remember that when I first saw Return of the Jedi, my brother and I had snuck into the theatre (theatre hopping), but there were no remaining seats. So we hung out in the back of the theatre the whole time at the old Cinedome in Garden Grove (now torn down, I'm sad to say) and watched the entire movie standing up.
I've quite purposely listed only the original trilogy here, because I don't consider the more recent films to be anywhere remotely close to the same feel as the first three. I've tolerated the new movies, but I haven't loved them.
I guess someday we'll all have to sit down, people all over the world, and watch the entire series of movies (regardless of the quality of some of those released more recently than the original trilogy) and watch them in the correct chronological order to see the entire story. I wonder if we'll have more patience with Jar-Jar then. In my case, personally, I doubt it.
Some Beloved Quotes:
Obi-Wan: That's no moon. It's a space station.
Princess Leia: Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.
Obi-Wan: Use the Force, Luke!
Stormtrooper: Let me see your identification.
Obi-Wan: You don't need to see his identification.
Stormtrooper: We don't need to see his identification.
Obi-Wan: These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Stormtrooper: These aren't the droids we're looking for.
Obi-Wan: He can go about his business.
Stormtrooper: You can go about your business.
Obi-Wan: Move along.
Stormtrooper: Move along, move along.
Yoda: Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.
Yoda: A Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the Dark Side.
Darth Vader: I am your father.
Luke Skywalker: No! That's not true! That's impossible!
Darth Vader: Search your feelings you know it to be true.
Luke Skywalker: Nooooo! Nooooo!
Luke: The Force runs strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. And ... my sister has it. Yes. It's you, Leia.
Related quotes in some of my other favorite movies
Chasing Amy -- Silent Bob: Do, or do not. There is no try.
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- Bill: You're not my father.... I'll never rule the Universe with you! - Title: Gallipoli
Year: 1981
Country: Australia
Director: Peter Weir
Stars: a very young Mel Gibson and some blond guy
This film is a wonderful study of the friendship between two young men, first at home in Australia and then within the setting of an infamous battle in Turkey during the first World War. Mel Gibson is surprisingly young, but still an excellent actor.
 The film gives a frightening portrait of the battle at Gallipoli, but before I saw this movie, all I knew about Gallipoli was what I'd learned from the Pogues' version of the song "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda."
If you like, you can listen to Eric Bogles' version (as well as various versions of the Australian anthem "Waltzing Matilda") here (scroll down to the bottom for "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda").
Or, alternatively, you can read the lyrics to the Pogues' "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda":
Now when I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of the rover.
From the Murray's Green Basin to the dusty outback,
Well, I waltzed my Matilda all over.
Then in 1915 my country said "Son,
It's time you stopped rambling, there's work to be done."
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun,
And they marched me away to the war.And the band played "Waltzing Matilda"
As the ship pulled away from the quay;
And amidst all the cheers, the flag waving, and tears,
We sailed off for Gallipoli. And how well I remember that terrible day,
How our blood stained the sand and the water;
And of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk, he was ready, he'd primed himself well;
He showered us with bullets and he rained us with shell --
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell,
Nearly blew us right back to Australia.But the band played "Waltzing Matilda"
When we stopped to bury our slain.
We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
Then it started all over again. And those that were left, well, we tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death, and fire.
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
Though around me the corpses piled higher.
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head,
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, well, I wished I was dead --
Never knew there was worse things than dying.For I'll go no more waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and free --
For to hump tents and pegs, a man needs both legs --
No more waltzing Matilda for me. So, they gathered the crippled, the wounded, the maimed,
And they shipped us back home to Australia.
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane:
Those proud, wounded heroes of Suvla.
And when our ship rolled into Circular Quay,
I looked at the place where my legs used to be,
And thanked Christ there was nobody waiting for me,
To grieve and to mourn and to pity.But the band played "Waltzing Matilda"
As they carried us down the gangway,
But nobody cheered, they just stood there and stared,
Then they turned all their faces away. So now every April, I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me.
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march,
Reviving old dreams and past glories,
And the old men march slowly, old bones stiff and sore --
They're tired old heroes from a forgotten war --
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question.But the band plays "Waltzing Matilda,"
And the old men still answer the call,
But as year follows year, more old men disappear.
Someday no one will march there at all.
Waltzing Matilda, waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong:
Who'll come a'waltzing Matilda with me?
- Title: Raiders of the Lost Ark
Year: 1981
Director: Steven Spielberg
Star: Harrison Ford
The first time I saw this, when I was 11 years old, it scared me too much and I left the theatre. I remember that I only made it as far as the guy who gets stabbed through the head (very early in the movie) before I was saying, "Oh, no, I think I'll go watch something else." (I was raised to theatre hop since as young as I can remember, so I just went into a different theatre.)
When I girded my loins to watch the entire movie, not much later, I realized that it wasn't really that scary. Well, except for the whole face melting thing. The Nazis are pretty scary, but not in a "run from the theatre" kind of way.
Basically, it's the story of an archaeologist who's trying to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis get a hold of it and use its power for evil. I love the character of Indiana Jones, because he really isn't a typical bulletproof hero. I love that he's afraid of snakes, for example.
Plus, Harrison Ford rocks. And I lurve Steven Spielberg, as I've already mentioned when writing about one of the other movies.
Quote:
Indiana: Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?
Sallah: Asps. Very dangerous. ... You go first.
 Title: Blade Runner
Year: 1982
Director: Ridley Scott
Star: Harrison Ford and Rutget Hauer
Did I mention that Harrison Ford rocks? Oh, yes, I did, just a minute ago. Well, he still rocks.
If Raymond Chandler had written sci-fi, this would be it. Harrison Ford plays a sort of futuristic detective who ends up running up against some "replicants" (basically very human-looking androids) who are trying to find out and escape their expiration date at all costs.
I love the futuristic culture created in the film (based on a Philip K. Dick story called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", if I remember correctly), and the story itself is compelling throughout, despite the rather large number of characters. When I saw this the first time, when I was a kid, I got very confused, but still loved the film. As an adult, I appreciate it in a different way, but still love it.
Quotes:
Deckard (voice-over): All he'd wanted were the same answers the rest of us want. Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?
Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long -- and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy. - Title: The Dark Crystal
Year: 1982
Directors: Jim Henson and Frank Oz
When I was a kid, every Saturday my mom, my brother, and I would go to the movies all day long. We theatre-hopped, you see. We didn't have very much money, and so my mom would say that we should get our money's worth. So we would arrive, pay the matinee price, and then watch 3 or 4 movies in a row.
Why do I mention this in my description of The Dark Crystal? Well, because my brother and I loved this movie so much that we sat and watched it 4 times in a row, while Mom theatre hopped, watching various different movies. And then, the next time we went to the movies, the next weekend, we watched it again.
Basically, it's similar to The Lord of the Rings, but on a smaller scale. Two small creatures (called "gelflings") must seek to repair a crystal in order to restore true balance to the world in which they live. Since its injury, the crystal has split the most noble race of the world into an evil race and a gentle race. They must be reunited into a single race in order for true harmony to exist.
Nowadays, I look at the movie differently than I did then, but (just as with Blade Runner) I still love it. For one thing, I like the complicated world Jim Henson and Frank Oz created. But even more, I appreciate the philosophy embodied in the film, which is very Taoist in its acceptance of dark and light as reflections of each other and as two parts of the same whole.
And now that I think about it, the main quest is somewhat similar to Inu-Yasha, what with the shards and such
Quotes:
Jen: You're a gelfling? I thought I was the only one.
Kira: I thought I was the only one.
Historian: Hold her to you, for she is part of you, as we all are part of each other.
The Prophecy: When single shines the triple sun, what was sundered and undone shall be whole -- the two made one by gelfling hand or else by none.
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