MY THIRTY FAVOURITE MOVIES

I just finished watching one of my all-time favorite movies on Netflix, The World’s Fastest Indian.  Sir Anthony Hopkins gives a marvellous performance as Burt Munro, a 67-year-old Kiwi from Invercargill, New Zealand, who broke the speed record for his class of motorcycle at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah in 1967; the record still stands.  Hopkins is best known for The Silence of the Lambs but I like Indian the best.

It’s time to list my top thirty movies.  Not all of them won Oscars and not all made it into the big cinemas.  Elva and I have been avid patrons of City Cinema for as long as it’s been in operation, and we’ve seen many excellent movies there that would not have made a nickel for Empire Theatres.  Whittling down all of the excellent movies I’ve seen over the years to make a top-thirty list is not easy. 

I had to include a movie directed by the Coen brothers, those masters of ironic comedy.  My favorite is O’ Brother Where Art Thou with George Clooney. 

When it comes to low-budget independent movies, the list includes The Straight Story and Amal.  The Straight Story is about a man, played by Richard Farnsworth, who must travel to see his dying brother on a lawn tractor because a visual impairment prevents him from obtaining a driver’s license.  Amal is a touching love story of a poor auto-rickshaw driver, Amal Kumar, and the young beauty he hopes to marry.  It’s set in crowded, chaotic New Delhi. 

The Rocket falls into this category as well, starring the intense Roy Dupuis as Maurice “The Rocket” Richard.  It offers as good an explanation of Québec’s Révolution tranquille as I’ve seen anywhere.  Then there’s Les Intouchables, the story of a down-and-out African immigrant who finds his calling as caregiver for a wealthy French quadriplegic.

I chose the Deer Hunter because it’s one of the first big-budget movies to question America’s participation in the Vietnam War, and because of Robert De Niro’s Oscar-winning performance (Meryl Streep played his girlfriend).  Good Morning, Vietnam is on the list because of Robin Williams, and also because of the way it deals with the Americans’ failed war effort. 

Deliverance is the first movie I saw that deals with sodomy, including overtones of incest, as well as how easy it is for a group of good ole’ boys to get themselves into a heap of trouble.  By the way, Burt Reynolds is damn good in this movie, and the tune Dueling Banjos must be both seen and heard to be appreciated fully.  

The first Australian movie I saw was The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.  It’s on my list because of the way it employs humour to deal with the then-sensitive subject of trans-sexuality.  Other Australian films that impressed me are Rabbit-Proof Fence and Muriel’s Wedding, the latter featuring Toni Collette.

Dustin Hoffman’s Rainman ranks as one of the best performances I’ve ever seen by an actor, and Tom Cruise doesn’t do too bad a job either as his brother. 

I love it when Clint Eastwood spits tobacco juice on the dog in The Outlaw Josey Wales.  Caught in flagrante delicto with a much younger woman, Chief Dan George is priceless peeking out from under their shared blanket.  If I had a top-one-hundred list, it would include several more of Eastwood’s; at least The Unforgiven and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

One of the most powerful movies I’ve seen is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Jack Nicholson didn’t win an Oscar for his role as Randall Patrick McMurphy – Louise Fletcher did as Nurse Ratched – but he was amazing.  So was the Chief, played by Will Sampson.  Nicholson’s obsessive-compulsive character in As Good As it Gets did win him a much-deserved Oscar.

Meryl Streep can pull off any role.  I had a hard time narrowing down all of her great movies to two: The Devil Wears Prada and Hope Springs.  I also love Julia Roberts’ movies; she gives an amazing performance in Erin Brockovich. 

I had to include a James Bond movie, and the newest one is the best in my view.  There have been many good 007s over the years (and some awful ones), but no character has impressed me more than M, played by the incomparable Dame Judi Dench.  Too bad Skyfall will be her last.

Few consider Sylvester Stallone to be a serious actor, but I loved his first Rocky.  He wrote and starred in the movie, made on a shoestring in 28 days.  It won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1976. 

To Sir, with Love is an old movie; 1967 vintage.  It starred Sidney Poitier and was the first movie I saw with a black actor in a lead role.  The Cider House Rules is on the list because I love John Irving’s novels.  This movie adaptation is over-the-top, thanks to a superb performance by Michael Caine.

I’ve seen many biopics over the years; the Iron Lady and Walk the Line are among my favourites.  But the one I liked best was Ray, with Jamie Foxx as Ray Charles.  The music score is incredible.

I chose The Shawshank Redemption for one reason: Morgan Freeman.  I also loved him in The Bucket List and Seven.  I’ve included Invictus because of Freeman and an incredible performance by Matt Damon.

The Godfather is my favorite Marlon Brando movie, although I loved his character in The Missouri Breaks.  I’m not attracted to movies about the Holocaust, but Life is Beautiful is the exception to this rule; Roberto Begnini is incredible as the director and lead actor. 

Al Pacino gives a command performance as a blind man in Scent of a Woman.  The Dirty Dozen features an all-star cast, including some of my old favorites: Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, George Kennedy and Canadian Donald Sutherland.

I chose M*A*S*H because it was one of the first movies I watched as a young university student, and it left quite an impression on a teenager who’d led a sheltered life until then.  My Left Foot with Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the most inspiring stories I’ve seen in a movie.  It’s the true story of an Irish boy afflicted with cerebral palsy who learned to write with his left foot and became a famous author.

Here’s my list!

1.    The World’s Fastest Indian

2.    O’ Brother Where Art Thou

3.    Amal

4.    The Straight Story

5.    The Rocket

6.    Les Intouchables

7.    The Deer Hunter

8.    Good Morning, Vietnam

9.    Deliverance

10. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

11. Rainman

12. The Outlaw Josey Wales

13. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

14. As Good As it Gets

15. The Devil Wears Prada

16. Hope Springs

17. Erin Brockovich

18. Skyfall

19. Rocky

20. To Sir, with Love

21. The Cider House Rules

22. Ray

23. The Shawshank Redemption

24. Invictus

25. The Godfather

26. Life is Beautiful

27. Scent of a Woman

28. The Dirty Dozen

29. M*A*S*H

30. My Left Foot

AN OPEN LETTER TO MY AMERICAN ACQUAINTANCES

　
My ‘take-away’ from yesterday’s election is this: old white men will never again decide who will become President of the United States of America!

Exit polls show that the guy who won got more votes from women, young people, visible minorities, gays, lesbians, and people who do not attend church regularly. Those who say the Republicans lost because of Romney’s gaffes are, in my view, ignoring some very important facts. Many people don’t like what the Republicans stand for. Those people came out in droves and stood in line for hours to make their views known through that most important democratic institution, the ballot box.

Up here in the Great White North, we once had a party that called itself the ‘Natural Governing Party’. It was in power for so many years that it believed it could do no wrong. The opposition was split and disorganized, so the Natural Governing Party was able to govern badly and get away with it.

One day, along came a few brave souls who wanted to form a party of the right. But their main problem was that they only appealed to old white men. The Natural Governing Party knew this and took advantage at every turn.

Well, lo and behold, the party of old white men transformed itself. It got rid of the fringe element that pissed off women, young people, visible minorities, gays, lesbians, and people who do not attend church regularly. And, guess what, it’s been in power for quite a while now and, despite a few annoying traits, is not doing that bad a job of governing us through challenging times that have crippled other countries.

We have stable financial institutions, universal medicare, and a well-funded social security system. Interest rates are low, our dollar is strong, and we have lots of natural resources. And, what I’m most proud of, we do a decent job of redistributing income between rich and poor, both at the provincial level and at the individual level.

We’re happy your election is over. But we wish you hadn’t spent so much money needlessly on a campaign which seemed to do nothing to bring about meaningful change.

We know you’re facing a fiscal cliff, and we’re hoping your leaders will put aside their differences and get on with the job of bringing your deficit under control and addressing the critical issues facing your economy. We say this because, in economic terms, when you sneeze, we catch cold!

When it comes to priorities in the months and years to come, we hope you’ll focus on what‘s important. Your young people need to be innovating and producing wealth, not fighting in far-off wars. People cry when someone is killed by an IED; no one cries when a drone is shot down in the middle of nowhere. By the way, the guy you elected is a master at killing those you hate from a distance, and with minimal loss of American lives. He's come out looking a lot smarter than the guy who declared, from the deck of that aircraft carrier, that you’d won the war in Iraq.

And, oh, by the way, if called upon, we’ll be there to fight beside you. But it’ll be on our terms and when we feel it’s just and necessary. No one fights better than a Canadian soldier. Don Cherry says so, and I believe him!

American innovation and know-how have brought me many of the things I value most: cinema, rock and roll, sitcoms and reality shows, world-class institutions like the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Disneyworld, wonderful books, your particular take on freedom of speech, technological advancements and, of course, NASCAR. I want you to succeed because I want more of this.  Americans are, quite simply, the greatest innovators in the world.

Please learn from what happened yesterday.

Good luck, my friends!