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Best Films!
Topic Started: Oct 5 2010, 01:17 PM (3,154 Views)
lamna
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I can't believe I forgot to mention, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Zulu definitely has to go up their in a list of best films. In generally I'd quite happy with a war film made between the late 50's and early 80's. Especially if they are period colonial films. Here are some of my favourite. I'm not claiming this are the best films ever but they are enjoyable

55 Days at Peking, about the Boxer Rebellion. Probably the best non-blowing shit up scene is right at the start with the cacophony of anthems and flags in the Peking Legation Quarter.

The Man Who Would Be King, an adaptation of a Rudyard Kipling story Sean Connery and Michael Caine unite and take over Kafiristan, the last non-Islamic place in Afghanistan.

High Road to China, a flapper in Istanbul (not Constantinople) has to find her father before he is declared legally dead and hires a WW1 ace to take her to Warlord Era china.

The Wind and the Lion, an American Woman and her children are kidnapped in Morocco. And so the president negotiates with Moroccan government for their rel, oh wait this is 1904 and Theodore Roosevelt we are talking about. Teddy sends in the marines. With the USMC, Moroccan royal guards, Imperial Germany and French armies and Berbers milling about you're bound to have some fun. Also some pretty good stuff with Roosevelt at home.

Khartoum, some nutter in the Soudan has decided he's king of all Islam and his men won't stop pillaging till he gets to Mecca. Chinese Gordon is send back to the land he was one governor of, and the Mahdi is not happy about it.

The Lighthorsemen and the more famous Lawrence of Arabia about the Middle Eastern theatre. To be honest, I liked The Lighthorsemen more. Not a huge fan of T.E. Lawrence.

The Last Samurai could have been good, but it made such a mess of history beyond the battles it was no fun. It showed the rebels to be the good guys and the Imperials to be the bad, and the Samurai not using guns.
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Moon is excellent!
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food for thought
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lamna
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I didn't dislike it at all, it was pretty good. But I didn't think it was anything that special myself.

I eagerly await the sequel though, you don't get that many hard SF films. From what I can tell it will be a whole other story, it's just Mute will be set in the same universe as Moon. It would be interesting to see if they show a unified Korea.

Two more excellent war films are Waterloo, a proper old epic. None of your CGI bollocks, it took 16,000 soviet soldiers to make it.
And The Beast about a lost Russian tank during the invasion of Afghanistan. Really enjoyable, quite clever film. Plenty of stuff blowing up too.

Red Dawn was pretty fun, but I don't know how good the remake will be. They seem to be trying to slot China into a role just doesn't fill.
Sure the Soviets in the original were not the same as the real ones at the time, NATO collapsed so it was just the US, Canada (presumably) and the UK against the entire Warsaw Pact, Cuba and I think Mexico, though they might have just been the bad kind of neutral.

China's just not a threat, they have one old Soviet carrier they might be able to activate before the decade is out. The USA has the worlds largest fleet, and are closly allied with the best fleet. The US also has allies in the region, Japan, South Korea, the Republic of China.
China has no allies in the Americas. Heck half of Central America does not recognise the PRC as the legitimate government of China.
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Just had to get that 'best' part in, didn't you? :rolleyes:
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lamna
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Indeed.

Goodness me how could I have forgotten the Ray Harryhausen films?

Watch 20,000 Miles To Earth people, it's well worth it. Probably my favourite of his films. The Ymir is just such an interesting beast.
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Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Valley of Gwangi and One Million Years B.C are also favourites.

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Rumbo a la Victoria

Serenity
Alien 3
Predator
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Star Wars: A New Hope
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The Matrix
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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Mike
Oct 5 2010, 02:23 PM
The Room (absolutely the best film ever made in existence, ever)
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People are going to kick my ass for liking these movies, but oh well.

Jurassic Park series. "That is one big pile of shit."
Jaws."We're gonna need a bigger boat."
Yu-Gi-Oh: the Abridged Series: The Movie."Kaiba boy!"
Super Freakin' Parody Rangers: The Movie."Not today! Fwwwipitah!"
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lamna
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Blackadder Back and Forth is pretty good.

Also isn't it good they finally made a faithful adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes film? You've probably not seen it. Here is a trailer.
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I love Jurassic park and jaws but the other 2 are just silly....
I really want to see "Monsters" it sounds cool :)
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My top 10 fave films of all time are:

01) Sunset Blvd. (1950) by Billy Wilder
02) Pulp Fiction (1994) by Quentin Tarantino
03) The Graduate (1967) by Mike Nichols
04) Gangs of New York (2002)
05) Gladiator (2000)
06) On the Waterfront (1954)
07) L.A. Confidential (1997)
08) The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
09) To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
10) All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
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lamna
Oct 8 2010, 03:19 PM

Also isn't it good they finally made a faithful adaptation of a Sherlock Holmes film? You've probably not seen it. Here is a trailer.
Dude...the hell did I just watch?
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Something awful.
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It must be so faithful to the source material, that my brain popped a blood vessel.
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One I'm surprised nobody (including myself) has mentioned yet is Donnie Darko. That one makes you think...
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food for thought
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lamna
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It's an Asylum film. Mostly they make mockbusters but sometimes they make crazy stuff.

And the Yu Gi Oh Abridged film was supposed to be silly. Speaking of which, I liked the Sailor Moon Abridged film too. Fiore was crazy awesome. TEN YEARS, DARIEN!

Back on to anime films, Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa was pretty fun, especially the Nazi Rocket Glider doohickys.
I put off watching Howl's Moving Castle for a long time and now I've seen it I don't know why I did, it was a really good film. Probably because it's fantastical.
I loved Steamboy, good solid Steampunk with (steam) powered armour vs Victorian tanks complete with redcoats dukeing it out in the middle of the Great Exhibition.
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Never seen Donnie Darko and from Tim Minchin's song, I'm not that interested.
Edited by lamna, Oct 8 2010, 04:33 PM.
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