Favorite Film. That's All.

Thanks! That’s a very insightful answer.

I will also completely conceded to Red Line haters that while I found the method (the empaths part) of telling the story completely surprising and eye opening in the best way, the content was deeply personal and it may not hit everyone the same way. I had a friend in film school that feels about Lynch films how I feel about Malick. I love Lynch films but for my friend, that was his exact language and he never felt like anyone else spoke it. Suddenly he found someone that spoke exactly the way he understood and wanted to speak himself.

I am a big fan of Lynch’s work and I like the way he presents information too, as an intuitive set of information. It’s kind of cliche to call his movies “dreamlike” at this point, but as a lover of transcendental meditation and the Surrealist poets, it makes sense that he would have an oblique approach to presenting information, and I get how it can be a turnoff for some. As for me, I’m impressed by how he can present a series of scenes that are difficult to tie together logically and yet ultimately come together into a cohesive whole, like Mulholland Drive.

Kind of how I feel about it too. In my memory, the movie consists of about 867 hours of the sun streaming through palm leaves with monotone voiceover droning sophomore-year creative writing pablum in the background, but sometime in the interminable middle there’s a brief scene where Woody Harrelson blows his ass off.

I like the bit where the soldiers are marching along and a native islander comes across them, and just keeps on going. (At least that’s how I remember it.) It’s like two parallel realities intersecting.

Someone chuckled at this.

And that someone… was me.

I just screened Badlands again and talked about it with my students. Malick is all about humans and their violent tendencies juxtaposed with the wonder of nature. Plus lyrical voiceover. I only saw The Thin Red Line once in the theater but reading your thoughts makes me want to revisit that shit, yo.

I can’t say that I am shocked that nobody else has picked Wings of Desire, but I am disappointed.

Does the still to be released Detective Pikachu count for this?

Wow, I saw the Thin Red Line ages ago and just thought it was the slowest, longest, dullest war movie (though beautifully shot) with a few interesting bits, I had seen.

But now I really want to see it again after these comments.

I heard it was this so I avoided it but now I guess I have to watch it.

The Great Escape is an unrivaled ensemble piece with a surprisingly modern script & editing, legendary actors who all get a moment to shine, and a memorable motorcycle chase. It’s helped, not hindered, by the fact that it’s a true story with Nazi villains. And like Lawrence of Arabia, it hasn’t aged nearly as badly as most other films of the era because the complete lack of women in the subject matter means the movie is devoid of the sexism of the period.

If you don’t connect with the movie, that’s exactly what it will be. If you do connect with it, it can be a downright transcendent experience.

I would never accuse a detractor of the film of “not getting it” or missing something, if this movie doesn’t draw you in it must be utterly tedious. If I were to read the voice over throughout the film on paper without knowing the movie, I’m sure I’d call it pretentious drivel - but on screen, combined with those images and the Hans Zimmer score, it just bypasses all my critical faculties and takes me places few movies can. But that’s just me.

I loved and agreed with Roger Ebert’s point (I think it was Ebert, anyway) that Thin Red Line should have either been a 90 minute movie or a five hour movie.

If Malick could release his original cut, I’d be all over that.

I’ve had it happen before where I revisit a film a decade or more after having first seen and not enjoyed it and my opinion of it changes. Not always, but enough times.

That’s especially so after I go into it with some fresh insight and the posts here have intrigued me. Depends on context, too. I may have seen Thin Red Line not long after watching Saving Private Ryan and so it was probably more my own expectations that let me down.

The first time I saw The Big Lebowski was late night on cable, alone. I was tired and probably shouldn’t have attempted to watch a comedy so late but I did, and got no enjoyment out of it. Saw it again a few years later with a friend (and a few beers) and it’s probably now in my top 25 favorite films.

Sometimes it’s just rewatching something now that I’m older (late 40s) and having different viewpoints than when I was in my 20s. I’ve come to appreciate longer, slower films. I loved The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

A plug for the novel The Thin Red Line - which is very different in style and theme than the film, and conveys the voice of someone intimately familiar with the war because they lived it.

As for favorite movie: Teiman is correct. Groundhog Day. Again.

LOTR: Fellowship Of The Rings, which I’ve easily watched more times than any other, but also because of the WAY I watched it. We were in the process of moving, and because of the timing between my and my wife’s job changes, she and the kids moved first while I worked out my last few months of my “old” job and had the fun job of packing everything up all to myself. During this period, my very first purchase of a DVD (instead of those old, reliable VHS tapes) was LOTR: Fellowship, which I watched every Friday, Saturday, and sometimes Sunday nights without fail on my brand new surround sound system blasting at top volume (the walls literally rattled), accompanied by my soon-to-be-world-famous-super-spicy chicken wings washed down with plenty of beer. Sad, lonely times, but those nights made it bearable. I can recite most of the dialogue by heart. Bilbo’s birthday party still brings a broad smile, while Gandalf’s fall still brings a heartfelt tear. Every time.

Raiders for me too. Could watch it all day.

I’ll say Alphaville by Jean Luc Godard.
…because it’s impossible to answer… as is favorite book, as is favorite game… just like I told my wife when we first met…that my favorite book is one I’ve never finished (that fact drove her crazy) … my favorite film is one I’ve watched about 20 times… and hardly ever finished…?

the trailer alone is a strange masterbeast… !

in this special mood for the one and only film… I’d watch this one I guess.

Easy choice for me.

Braveheart

Great fighting, great performances, beautiful scenery and sets, and pre-crazy Mel Gibson. Plus I’m a little bit Scottish, Irish and English. I feel like I bond a little with multiple parts of this movie.

The longer story here is I did not want to see this movie. Some of my favorite movies of all time have been when I thought they would be boring, long, or uninteresting to me and someone drug me to them anyway. I think that makes them even more striking, that not only did they turn out to be fantastic, but did so when I was in a negative mindset from the start.

There’s something to be said about keeping your expectations low.