Author Topic: Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.  (Read 16612 times)

Hawkeye

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Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2005, 10:09:11 AM »
One of them has to be:

 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
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Sergiopl

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Movies you have to see
« Reply #11 on: August 30, 2005, 12:24:17 AM »
I also have no credentials but I admire the following:

Almost any Luis Buñuel's films, specially the early ones (Un Chien Andalou, L' Age d' Or, Los Olvidados). Unusual pictures (surrealistic, depressing, provocative) that drive you into the story and/or the tone. All of his pictures were decades ahead of their time.  

Todo Sobre Mi Madre (All About My Mother) by Pedro Almodovar. What I admire in this movie is character development, even the most extreme ones. All of them have humanity and real-life dualism (good and evil or light and shadows to say it better).

In photography, some of the most visually exciting films I have seen (without using CGI) are: The Big Blue (By Luc Besson), Mountains of the Moon (By Bob Rafelson), Henry and June (By Phillip Kauffman) and Batman (By Tim Burton). There are many others (have not seen Sin City yet) but these are the ones that most come to mind.

In Acting, some great performances I remember: Peter Fonda in 12 Angry Men, Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver and The Godfather II, Kevin Kline in Life as a House. An many, many others.

I think I have diverted a bit but all of the mentioned films have merits on their own.

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Re: Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2005, 10:25:39 PM »
Quote from: "Anonymous"
As an aspiring film buff, and new cinema major at the University of Iowa, I have a plethera of movies that I have been told that I need to watch.
Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.!


My question is whether you really want a rehash of everyones 100 greatest  films (ones that set the bar for lasting art in the pantheon of great films), or if you want to know what films shoud/would teach you what works and what doesn't (and, here you have to define "works" as money or art.)

I would have any film class I was teaching watch Heaven's Gate (all the way through with no potty or cig stops), and then tell me in detail what they think would fix it at the box office.

I would have you watch King Kong and then outline or storyboard the script for the remake. However, you only get graded once Sir Peter releases his, and we compare yours with the "right way."

I would have you look at the IMDB top 250 list and tell me which films will still be on it by the end of the term and grade you according to your accuracy.

I would have you look at the top three box office winners for each of the past 5 decades and tell me what will be in the next decade's, and, more importantly, whether your soul could stand being involved with making it.

You can learn a lot from watching Three Kings and pinpointing what gave it such good buzz and then what made it fall off the IMDB top 250 within two years. But the two paragraph essay you'd have to write, for me, would be whether you would rather have the buzz and the box office that went with it, or if you'd rather be on the IMDB top 250 forever? Seriously now, food or fame, pick. Quick, pick.

Discuss, after watching the top 10 films on the list, whether being on IMDB's top 250 means squat.

You want to know the best films you've never seen? Watch every Kurosawa, and explain why either Red Beard or Ikura are the greatest films he isn't known for. Watch Renior. Just, watch any Renior. Then watch all Ozu, Lean, Kubrick, Hitchcock, Wilder, Wells, Bergman, Altman, Almodóvar and all Kaufman scripted films and decide where you would like to fit in. (note: isn't it a blessing that one person on this list is a writer rather than a director?)

Then figure out how you are going to make a living. Because each of these indivduals did just that within a very special context, none of which can be recreated by watching their films.

Watch Kasi Lemmon's totally brilliant Eve's Bayou and figure out if you have anything like that in you, and then decide if you could then stand to be eased out of the industry because you are black and female. Can you live with being good, really really good, but not what's selling now, and survive?

So, again, which are you asking for? Which films should you watch because they define art (but won't feed you) or what, if you imitate it, will make you Spielberg with a Schindler's List to live with? Which I would make a 1,000 Batteries Not Included to be associated with.

So, what do you want to learn by watching old-dead-film? What works? What's good? What sells? What you would eat your own living heart to create? Each is likely to be a slightly different list.

alexander

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Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.
« Reply #13 on: August 24, 2006, 10:01:00 PM »
george washington
after hours/good fellas/mean streets
taste of cherry
bad timing
come and see
citizen kane
band of outsiders

CSSCHNEIDER

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Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.
« Reply #14 on: August 25, 2006, 01:03:24 AM »
alexander,
You mentioned George Washington.  I graduated from the same film school as David Gordon Green, Tim Orr, and the rest of the George Washington crew.  That film is huge around the campus as it was the first successful film to be made from a graduate.

Peter Hedges (Pieces of April) also was an NCSA grad, only from the school of drama.
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alexander

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Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.
« Reply #15 on: August 25, 2006, 11:45:10 AM »
weird.  yeah, I knew a girl who knew DGG too.  That's cool.  She lost touch with him I guess.  I lost touch with her after she moved to Chicago.  I liked Undertow a lot but it didn't seem well-received.
it's a great movie.  GW that is.

Kevin Shields

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Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.
« Reply #16 on: August 25, 2006, 02:22:56 PM »
I'd definitely put Heaven's Gate on what not to do when making a film and hopefully get the Final Cut doc as its companion.

I'd also put Safe by Todd Haynes on how to use the camera as an emotional tool.

For sound editors/designers, The Conversation.
"I want to be bored"-Maggie Gyllenhaal

alexander

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Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.
« Reply #17 on: August 25, 2006, 04:42:02 PM »
ugh.  the Conversation is so sick.

I think the best thing is to take very little and create a LOT with it.  Nostalghia did the same for me as Solaris but on 1/10th the budget. same with M / Metropolis.  Both huge films.

oh, and Regis is 75 years old!!

wilson1290

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Top 5 Movies A New Film Student HAS To See.
« Reply #18 on: August 25, 2006, 08:20:39 PM »
I mixed films and directors in my list so here goes:

Citizen Kane: Not my favorite film, not even close, and to be completely honest the story bored me, but you have to watch Kane unless you want to look like an idiot in a room full of movie buffs. It was easily the most referenced film when I took film classes.

Bonnie & Clyde/Midnight Cowboy: I grouped these two films together because they revolutionized what could be show on film without sacrificing a great story in the process.

The works of Ozu: Ozu may be the most influential director that no one's ever heard of. Watch the restraint that Speilberg uses in Schindler's List, that Malick uses in The Thin Red Line, that Ang Lee uses in most of his films, and then watch Ozu, he was the master at telling moving films without beating you over the head with emotion.

Gone With the Wind: For better or worse (depends on how you feel about the film) Wind pioneered the big screen epic that audiences flock to every year.

The Birds: My favorite Hitchcock films have already been mentioned so watch the Birds to see how a good director can turn an idiotic plot into a spine-chilling thriller.
And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

swellcraft

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Not true movies but insights
« Reply #19 on: August 26, 2006, 08:43:46 AM »
Highly recommended are:

"A Decade under The Influence  - The 70's Films That Changed Everything"

"The Cutting Edge - The Magic of Movie Editing"

"A Personal Journey With Martin Scorsese Through American Movies"

"Easy Riders Raging Bulls - How the Sex, Drugs, Rock N Roll Generations Saved Hollywood"

Martin Scorsese -"My Voyage To Italy" -the classics of Italian Cinema

"Visions of Light -The Art of Cinematography" (already mentioned)

Just for some "history" of the film business "The Kid Stays In The Picture" (one of my all time favorites)

Also if you can find it - "When The Lion Roars- the Story of MGM" - very interesting!
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