Sunday, May 13, 2007

Blown Away


What movies have blown you away? Now, they don't have to be on your top 10 lists or whatever, but maybe when you saw them they just suprised you, took your breath away, or stuck with you. Here are some of mine:

Red Dawn - Saw this on cable (Prism) a long, long time ago. Loved every minute of it. And it's not the cry of "Wolverines!" that got me, no, it was the eerie beginning: Paratroopers floating from the sky, landing near the high school. The teacher walks out to see what's up. "Hello there my friend" he says, then rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Down he goes as they riddle him and the school with bullets.

Jaws - When the boy is on his raft one minute, and then the next he's gone, and the raft is getting tossed around the waves, destroyed. Brutal.

To Live & Die In L.A. - Good cop movie, awesome highway chase, but as the movie starts to near its climax, the hero (WIlliam Peterson) is shot in the fucking face! Damn!
Gallipoli - Watch the ending. Made me want to make movies.
Fearless (Peter Weir not Jet Li) - solid movie all the way through, but that damn ending - astounding.
Children Of Men - Yeah, the car scene.
28 Days Later - The field scene - After some scary carnage stuff, this smart movie pauses and lets our heroes watch the beauty of a pack of wild horses run free across a field. Great stuff. Looking forward to the sequel.
Dawn of the Dead (remake) - The 1st 10 minutes simply rock!
You get the picture. Your turn!!

13 comments:

Lucy V said...

For me, it was THE DARK CRYSTAL. As a child, I was totally enraptured. LABYRINTH less so, but that end sequence with David Bowie and Jennifer Jason Leigh in the Escher's stairs set was fantastic. More recently A MAP OF THE WORLD blew me away - only got DVD release in the UK as far as I'm aware, but Sigourney Weaver and Julianne Moore were fabulous. PITCH BLACK was great and I loved I, ROBOT - know it's uncool to say so but : P

Anonymous said...

I have to comment on To Live and Die in LA. Who does that? To have your hero killed, what the fuck? I loved it. That is one of the first "darker" movies I watched and it left an impression.
Also, Seven, for it's dark ending. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the movie that instilled in me a lifelong love of cinema.

Jason Arnopp said...

Ouch, Sir, that's a rather large spoiler for To Live And Die In LA, isn't it? :-) Love the film, though - a seriously underrated classic. There are no good guys!

Anonymous said...

Stranger Than Fiction, the only movie that made the hairs on my balls stand on end in quite some time

MaryAn Batchellor said...

Master and Commander - Thought there was no way Patrick O'Brian could be adapted and since I knew books would be piece-mealed, I poo-poo'd the whole mess from the very beginning and refused to see it in the theater. How dare they corrupt my seafaring literature!

Wrong. It's brilliant.

Thomas Crymes said...

Field of Dreams - When the voice happened and I wasn't prepared for a "voice."

Star Wars - Started it all.

About Schmidt - The very end.

Children of Men - When the fighting stops and everyone sees the baby, of course.

Aliens - Sublevel 3

Hard Boiled - Tea House gun play.

Spidey 2 - When the people on the train car stand up for Spidey against Dr. Octopus.

Glory - Before Fort Wagner on the beach.

Emily Blake said...

Hero. Some of the most beautiful cinematography and use of color I've ever seen. I spent most of the film with my mouth side open in wonderment.

Also Osama. I wasn't expecting that film to be as amazing as it was.

James said...

Seven. Just left me feeling like I had gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson. Pros don't last 30 secs. And I'm not even at amatuer level.

Crash. Most movies have one or two moments that make you hold your breath and plaster yourself to the seat. Crash had four.

I hadn't thought about it, but I think you're right Moviequill. Stranger Than Fiction had me... up until the dues ex machina ending. That sort of spoiled the whole movie for me.

Thomas Rufer said...

There are lot of great movies and some of them would be in my list too. But I will chose some others.

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. The ending scene is pure love for cinema.

Midnight Cowboy. Dustin, you made cry!

The Descent. The car crash at the beginning. The audience was very still. No sound. I had to laugh out loud that moment because it was so brilliant hitchockian that I understood the power of cinema when hearing no peeping sound of anybody or anything else in that movie theater that long minute.

Eyes Wide Shut. The scene at the beginning where Nicole Kidman and Sky Dumont dance at the party. I was so absorbed... don't know how Kubrick did that. Genius. Can only happen when you are in a movie theater.

Thomas Crymes said...

"up until the deus ex machina ending. That sort of spoiled the whole movie for me."

That comment puzzles me. That movie ended perfectly. The writer decides how it ends. the writer is God so any ending is Deus Ex Machina.

Perfectly executed.

Patrick J. Rodio said...

Seven, to me, had perfect execution, and is among Finchiebaby's best (I also dug Da Game & Fight Clubbin').

Field Of Dreams - Oh yes. The Dad/Catch part gets me, but so does James Earl and his "Baseball" speech.

And yup - Glory, too. That scene on the beach is amazing, but I remember almost coming out of my scene at the end where Cary elwes/Morgan Freenman and charging full force around the fort, and then BLAMMO. And don't forget Tomas' howl!

Also, sorry to spoil To Live/Die in L.A. for thsoe of you who haven't seen it, but it's like 20 years old so I figured it was fair game.

wcdixon said...

To Live And Die In LA - yes
Aliens - yes

Will add:

Taxi Driver

Road Warrior

T2 (actually Terminator did first but T2 took it to another level)

The Matrix

...and on a quieter note:

Diner

Annie Hall

Little Miss Nomad said...

I suppose you're talking about movies where YOU DIDN'T KNOW THEY COULD DO THAT. I absolutely agree that Cinema Paradiso is breathtaking, but it didn't BRAND me the way Apocalypse Now, The Believer (not the whole movie, just Ryan Gosling's performance), American History X, and City of God did. Scarring films.