All in My 50 Favorite Movies

What Batman Begins can teach us about market positioning and monetizing too early

Charlie O'Donnell
My 50 Favorite Movies, Venture Capital & Technology

Liam Neeson has a great line in Batman Begins that didn't quite resonate with me until yesterday:

"You haven't beaten me.  You've sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke."

I think this is a great lesson for anyone tempted to monetize a service too quickly and sacrifice adoption and uptake of a product... or to change the direction of your product to take advatage of short term revenue opportunities.  Its very easy to pick low hanging fruit, but you also need to "mind your surroundings" and think about whether or not quick payback sets you up to still take advantage of the larger market opportunity.

BTW...  I've heard about the possibilities of a sequal to this movie...   I'll cast my vote right now for Scarlett Johansson as Harley Quinn should they follow a Joker storyline.

A Good Movie List

Charlie O'Donnell
My 50 Favorite Movies, Random Stuff

Douglas Warshaw sent me this list some time ago...  I was just cleaning my inbox and couldn't figure out what to do with it, and I think its really best suited out in the open, b/c its such a well thought out list.

From Doug:

Charlie ... was reading your blog ... and thought I'd send you the below.  It's a list I made up last year for a friend's son who was going off to college (hence, some of the notes specific regarding on what date a film should be ideally be seen :)

WINTER KILLS.
By the author of The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi's Honor, a dark satire
on the Kennedy assassination ...probably the best movie you've never heard of.



   PRIMAL FEAR
Ed Norton's breakout role -- and he's surrounded by a great cast, including
the incomparable Laura Linney, Frances McDormand, John Mahoney, Adre
Braugher, Alfre Woodard and Richard Gere -- a terrific, underrated movie
(probably because its dumb-ass title has zero to do with the plot!).



   THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
Sean Connery and Michael Caine...about as good as a Kipling tale -- or a movie
for that matter -- can get.



 *THE LAST DETAIL
One of a line of truly great, cynical American movies of the late 60s and 70s. The kind of flick that makes you realize how far from great today's

films are.  Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles.



  BONNIE & CLYDE
Changed American filmmaking, our sense of violence, our sense of celebrity -- and even effected American fashion. Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway and young Gene Hackman (in his breakout role).



   NETWORK
Paddy Chayefsky's amazing black satire of the TV business -- that today seems less a satire than an on-the-mark prediction. Another of the great, cynical American movies of the late 60s and 70s.



  THE HOSPITAL
The single blackest film I've ever seen. Another gem by Chayefsky.



  *CHINATOWN
Regarded by many as one of the very best scripts in the history of film. Roman Polanski at is best, and Jack Nicholson, again,  at the top of his game.



 *THE MALTESE FALCON
"A man can have many sons, but there's only one Maltese Falcon."
 The most perfectly cast film ever. (From a great Hammett novel.) Another John Huston gem.



 THE BIG SLEEP
What the Falcon is to Hammett, the Big Sleep is to Chandler. Bogart and Bacall, 'nuff said.



 LA CONFIDENTIAL
Another great script. And, of course, Rolo Tomasi.



  WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
Billy Wilder meets Agatha Christie. This one gets lost in the shuffle of great old films, but a true gem.



 *THE USUAL SUSPECTS
Best script of the past 10 years.



 *THE GODFATHER (I & II)



 *GOODFELLAS
"Funny how?"
Forget Paul Hamm... The IOC should make Kevin Costner walk over to Scorsese's house and hand him the two Oscars Costner stole in 1990 (for Best Director & Best Picture, for that abomination, "Dances with Wolves").



 *RAGING BULL
Regarded by many as the best film of the 80s.



 *TAXI DRIVER



 *CUCKOOS NEST
Jack at his best, yet again. (The World Series scene is one of the greatest ever -- hell, the whole movie is one of the greatest ever.) And to think it only took a decade for Kirk Douglas to find a producer (his son) willing to make it.



  SERPICO
Based on a true story of the one honest cop in all of New York in the 1970s.
   Another of the truly great, cynical American movies of the late 60s and 70s.



 TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
I cry just thinking about it. (See it with a date, and show her your sensitive side.)



 *DINER
Tough to find a smarter, funnier, more enjoyable film. The sort of film you quote from once a week. The sort of film that has about a dozen GREAT scenes (including the greatest quiz ever.)

  The first of Levinson's Baltimore films.



  TIN MEN
The second of Levinson's Baltimore films.
  Not Diner, but pretty terrific.



  BREAKING AWAY
Another great script. And another great ensemble acting job (featuring Paul Dooley, one of my very favorite character actors: "Refund! Refund!") Another gem.



 *ANIMAL HOUSE
Simply the finest American film ever made. To be quoted from at least once a day.
  I dare you to find a funnier picture.



 *SPINAL TAP
Another film you'll quote from for the rest of your life.



  LOST IN AMERICA
Albert Brooks' best film. Funny and mean.



   FLIRTING WITH DISASTER
Ben Stiller, Tea Leone, George Segal and Mary Tyler Moore in a another cruely funny (David O'Russell) film.



  MY COUSIN VINNY
Another comic gem.



 *PULP FICTION
Right up there with The Usual Suspects, in terms of script, and great direction to boot.



 *TRAINSPOTTING
I LOVE this film -- its energy, its wit, its grit, its script, its
filmmaking, its humor.



  DRUGSTORE COWBOY
Another great drug film. Starring Matt Dillon and Kelly Lynch (with one of the all-time laments: "You won't fuck me and I always have to drive.")



  *48-HOURS
Eddie Murphy's breakout film. And still his best.



  *3 KINGS
David O. Russell's brutally funny, smart, quirky film about US Soldiers in post-war Iraq on a quest to find a chunk of Sadam's hidden treasure.

  George Clooney & Ice Cube have never been better together!



  *PATTON
Huge.



  APOCOLYPSE NOW
My guess is you've seen it. And best not seen on a small screen. But I couldn't stop myself from typing it on this list. (Falls apart at the end,

but well worth the trip up the river.)



  BREAKER MORANT
Brilliant courtroom drama that takes place during the Boar War. Small picture, big issues.



  LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
One of the all-time great films. But best seen on a BIG screen.



  THE RIGHT STUFF
Perhaps APOLLO 13 is better ... but this is bigger ... and translates the remarkable reportage of Tom Wolfe to the big screen perfectly.



  ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN
Just a great movie. And every frame of it is true.



  NORTH DALLAS FORTY
One of the all-time sports films. Dark as hell. But funny as hell. And on the mark: This really is what pro sports was like in the 70s/80s. (From a

terrific novel by former Dallas Cowboy, Pete Gent.)



  *SLAP SHOT
THE FUNNIEST sports film ever made.



  *BULL DURHAM
Probably the most entertaining sports film ever made. And probably the best baseball film ever made. (And Costas agrees :)



  *CHARIOTS OF FIRE
The Olympics before NBC, Bob Costas, or even Roone Arlidge.
        "True story* of two Brits competing in the 1924 Summer Olympics: One a devout Scottish missionary who runs for God, the other a Jewish student at Cambridge who runs for fame and to escape prejudice."

 *(Actually, some of the facts are conveniently moved around :)
  Won the Gold medal for Best Picture in 1981 ...and unlike Paul Hamm's, no one argued about it.



  *COOL HAND LUKE
How many hard-boiled eggs can you eat? George Kennedy (later of Naked Gun side-kick "fame") gets the Oscar, but Paul Newman owns the film.



  THE HUSTLER
Man, Jackie Gleason was just a great film actor. And Paul Newman is just... Paul Newman.



  *THE COLOR OF MONEY
How many Scorsese films (and Paul Newman film) can I put on this list--and the guy's never one the Oscar!!!--dunno', but no way this sequel to "The Hustler" gets left off.



  GOING PLACES ("Les Valseuses")
A great date film -- but has to be the right girl -- and its subtitled, so see it on a big screen if you can. But you probably can't, which is why I'm putting it on this list (whereas I've left off a lot of other great films like "The 400 Blows," which you'll be able to catch on campus).

  Aimless criminals, and aimless sex. But blisteringly funny. Starring a very young Gerard Depardieu -- and featuring the legendary Jeanne Moreau, of "Jules and Jim" fame -- and a very young Isabelle Huppert.



  AMERICAN GRAFFITI
George Lucas's breakout film about his home town. No special effects -- just a great young cast: Harrison Ford, Richard Dryfuss, Ron Howard! ...and a brief but memorable appearance by the then unknown Suzanne Summers.



  SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER
Lost all the hoopla over John Travolta, and disco fever, and the Bee Gees, is the fact that this is a great (small) authentic film.



  * THE GRADUATE
My guess is they'll show it Freshman week. If they don't, save it for a date. (Just don't make it a date with one of your friend's mothers.)



  MORGAN: A Suitable Case for Treatment
One to watch on a date...or with a group in the mood to see a very offbeat film...that's one of the best of the British comedies of the mid-60s.

  I love this film.
  And Vanessa Redgrave, despite her politics, just may be the most beautiful woman ever to walk the earth. And in this film, she certainly makes you understand why, "Morgan is sad today."




  * CASABLANCA
You must remember this... Maybe the ultimate date film. (Ideally the third date.)  Hell, maybe the ultimate film.



  *THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
  For a long time this remarkable film of war veterans coming home after WWII held the record for most Oscars, and deservedly so.

  I cry just thinking about it. (Another one to see with a date, to show her your sensitive side.)



  * IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE
One of Capra's classics. And another great date film.
   (Don't get fooled into thinking this is some “Miracle on 34th Street” Christmas Holiday see-it-on-TV film. This is one remarkable movie. And Jimmy Stewart gives one of the great performances ever caught on celluloid. It's why Tom Hanks--only at his

best---gets compared to Jimmy Stewart.)



  THE PHILADELPHIA STORY
Maybe the greatest (and. smartest) "screw-ball" comedy ever made:  Katherine
Hepburn, jimmy Stewart and cary grant. And, yes, she is "yar."
  Another date flick.



 * DESIGN FOR LIVING
Gary Cooper and  Fredric March both living -- and sleeping with! -- Miriam
Hopkins.  (With the magical Edward Everett Horton--the voice of Bullwinkle's
"Fractured Fairy Tales"--as the cuckolded husband.)
  This film almost single-handedly brought about the Hayes/Hollywood
Production Code, which took the sex out of American movies for about three
decades!
  (My favorite shot is when Hopkins falls back on the couch, and the sex--in
the form of dust--just rises all around her.)
  You won't believe someone made this film 70 years ago. It's brilliant, and maybe Lubitch's best -- and that's saying something.

  Another great date film.




OKAY... i can't help myself... here are the films that you MUST see when they play on campus... all but the last four are great date films :)

* GRANDE ILLUSION (anybody who really knows film has this in their top 10 -- Renoir's greatest)

RULES OF THE GAME (another gem by Renoir)

400 BLOWS  (possibly Truffaut's greatest)

CITY LIGHTS (Chaplin's greatest)

* MY LIFE AS A DOG

NINOTCHKA (another Lubitch masterpiece -- it'll make you realize what all the fuss about Garbo was about)

* CITIZEN KANE (basically the mount Olympus of films)

KIND HEARTS & CORONETS

ANNIE HALL

BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID

HEAVEN CAN WAIT

A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (one of the 20 most influential films of all times)

HAROLD & MAUDE ("offbeat" doesn't do it justice)

FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH

RISKY BUSINESS

* Clockwork Orange

* Dr. Strangelove

M*A*S*H

Henry V (both Olivier's and Branagh's versions)

----also
   The Blue Angel
   Destry Rides Again
   Goodbye Mr. Chips
   The Hunchback of Notre Dame
   Brassed Off
   The Commitments
   Notorious
           (Gary Grant, Ingred Bergman and Claude Raines in my favorite Hitchcock film)
   From Russia with Love
   Five Easy Pieces
   Easy Rider

Standard Furniture - Search Results

Charlie O'Donnell
My 50 Favorite Movies

Ok, quick, name a movie with Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Tobey MacGuire, Christina Ricci,  and Elijah Wood.  I hadn't heard of this movie before I saw it on TV, and I was like, "Wait... wow, look at all these people in this movie.  How have I not heard of this before?"

To be honest, I don't know how good of a movie this is... but it just has so many people in it that I really like to watch.  I like Kevin Kline a lot because I tend to like his characters.  He's great at playing a guy with good intentions that gets himself into some not so ethical situations, but yet, it always seems to rise above it.   While  Keven Spacey did an enormous performance in American Beauty, I think Keven Kline could have also played that role as well.

And Sigourney Weaver...  well, Sigourney and I have a connection, because we literally bumped into each other one time...  like actual bumping.  I was going to pick up my high school girlfriend at Sacred Heart on 91st and 5th, and when I was turning the corner on 91st and Madison, we walked right into each other.  I didn't realize who it was at first, but when I was like "Oh... um.. wow."  She smiled and we both walked off to return to our normal lives, forever altered by that single moment.  I'm sure she feels different for having met me even to this day. 

The movie takes place in the early 70's in suburban Connecticut, with charactors basically stumbling through the search for themselves by doing all the things they shouldn't, with sometimes tragic results.   Its sad, sometimes interesting and often somewhat uncomfortable, but it is in these moments of uncomfortable sexuality where the A cast really shines.  (Although, since I already said that Christina Ricci was in it, did I even have to mention that there would be some uncomfortable moments like that in it?   She was going 17 going on 36 at the time.)  No car chases, explosions, special effects... just a really great movie with great actors and some interesting situations.

Internet News for Internet Business

Charlie O'Donnell
My 50 Favorite Movies

Not everyone I've recommended this movie to or watched it with likes it.  Its a bit slow and a bit long.  However, its just like Ice Storm in that its got a great cast and yet few people have ever heard of it.  It stars Kevin Kline, Danny Glover, Steve Martin, Mary McDonnell, Mary-Louise Parker and Alfre Woodard.  So you're going to see a lot of Kevin Kline on this list--he just plays these great introspective characters trying to be stand up guys.  I like that.  I feel like all his characters could be Jesuit educated--men for others but also tortured by questions over what exactly that means. 

There's also this great scene where Kline explains why he's trying to get to know Danny Glover--because Glover saves his life and he can't help but wonder why people get placed in each other's path at certain key moments.  I do the same thing.  I don't let chance encounters pass me by and I wonder about the reasons behind them.  Maybe I try to make something out of nothing, which Glover seems to think Kline is doing, but I just think its wildly interesting why random people seem to have these disproportionately large impacts on your life sometimes. 

So, if you want good dialog and a nice story acted solidly by really good actors, this is worth checking out.  If you need action to keep you awake, you'll just have to wait to see Batman Begins this June 15th.

My 50 Favorite Movies -- Ghostbusters (1984)

Charlie O'Donnell
My 50 Favorite Movies

I know, I know, I'm doing a terrible job of keeping up... but I've been busy fixing the layout of this blog.  :)   Well worth it so far, no?   This is the end of phase one.  In phase two, I'll be fixing the layout of the sidebar and reorganizing some of the bells and whistles.

I rediscovered Ghostbusters not too long ago.  I never really realized the quality of the writing before.  Almost every single line in the movie is either funny or just plain good.  The commercialization around this movie really made it cheesy, but if you go back to it years later, its actually a fantastically written movie.  The humor is often subtle and I don't think you pick up on half of it unless you see it a few times.

"Do you have any hobbies?"

"I collect spores, molds, and fungus."

The other thing I like is how genuinely New York the movie is.  So many of the extras couldn't get any more Gotham, from the unsuspecting Upper East Sider who walks into the corpse's cab, the Mayor, and all of the wiseass cops.

"You do your job, pencilneck, don't tell me how to do mine."

Nice cameo by local anchorman Roger Grimsby, too...  I remember Grimsby and Bill Beutel every night at dinner on Channel 7.  Little details that just make the whole thing a little more authentic...well, as authentic as you can get a movie about catching ghosts.

"What are you supposed to be, some kind of cosmonaut?"

"No, we're exterminators.  Somebody saw a cockroach up on 12."

"That's got to be some cockroach."

"Bite your head off."

This is also a movie that never should have had a sequal, and I think the cheesiness and commercialization of the franchise really detracted from the original.  But, you know, Ivan Reitman's got to put some food on the table...  which, if you've seen him lately, doesn't seem to have been an issue.  Same with Ackroyd.


 

My 50 Favorite Movies -- Catching up with Dr. Lecter

Charlie O'Donnell
My 50 Favorite Movies

I didn't do a movie post last week...totally forgot.

So, this week, I've got not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR movies for you.

And, in the spirit of Halloween, they all revolve around one man:

Dr. Hannibal Lecter

Silence of the Lambs is probably the best in this series of four, based on three books (three movies + one remake).  Its also my favorite, but the other movies are solid and stand up on their own, too.

We first got introduced to Dr. Lecter in Manhunter, then played by Brian Cox.  That's also the first time I got introduced to Iron Butterfly's In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida, which is scary as hell if you're in a dark room chased by a lunatic, being captured by low quality camerawork.  Manhunter has a kind of low-budget Halloween feel to it, but the script is good and the charactors give it some depth.  Not a bad adaptation, and in, fact, I like it better than I liked Red Dragon.  I think Tom Noonan was better cast than Ralph Fiennes to play Dolarhyde, although the Dolarhyde charactor gets explored much deeper in Red Dragon.

Still, Anthony Hopkins is Lecter, and he redefines movie psychopaths in Silence of the Lambs.  A lot of people get really freaked out by this movie, and to be honest, I find movies like Se7en to be more disturbing, but that doesn't mean it still isn't an excellent movie.  Silence is the movie that will actually be going on my Top 50 list...  these others are just gravy in a great series.  Or... chiante rather. 

We lose Jodie Foster after Silence, but Julianne Moore does a good job as a replacement in Hannibal.  In fact, I almost think its better that we see the tougher, more agressive Moore here since this is supposed to be Agent Starling later in her career.  Hannibal is a beautifully styled movie with a great score by Hans Zimmer.  This time, we catch up with Dr. Lecter in Europe, coaxed out of hiding by a melted Cabbage Patch Doll, played by Gary Oldman.  The dinner scene at the end is over the top, but the rest of the movie is an admirable follow up to the favorite.

Red Dragon finishes up the series with yet a new and fresh take, telling the story of Dr. Lector's capture and the first case that he helps out on.  Edward Norton does a fantastic job here, as always and the movie is pretty suspenceful throughout, especially when his family gets roped into this terror.  I think I like the original Manhunter a bit better, I still think, as sequels and prequels go, this one is pretty good....  its a solid and scary series all the way around.

My 50 Favorite Movies - Bullitt (1968)

Charlie O'Donnell
My 50 Favorite Movies

You could have almost guessed this given my new arrival this weekend, no?

My dad really loved Steve McQueen and that's how I found Bullitt.  It was the Saturday afternoon movie on Channel 5 or something and he was watching it.  Steve McQueen was a very different action hero than I was used to.  Growing up on Sly and Ahhnold, and even catching a bit of Dirty Harry, you think of every action here as a bit larger than life.

Steve McQueen in Bullitt was just a regular guy doing a job.... and he played that perfectly. 

I would have liked to see him last longer than he did... he was stricken with lung cancer and died at 50.  What kind of roles would he have taken? 

Bullitt also has a great cast.  Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset, Robert Duvall.

Oh... and there's a little car chase in it, too.  :)

By conventional standards, it isn't really much of  a car chase...   but this is really the first real movie car chase.   The Mustang vs. the Charger.  It was so much more realistic than the chases we see now.  They used live sound, and McQueen did a lot of his own driving--screwing up a few times in the process--all caught on film.  And the chase was McQueen's idea in the first place.

The interesting thing was that it also touched off another auto icon.  Had they not used the Charger in the movie, it would have never influenced the use of the Charger as the  "General Lee" in the Dukes of Hazzard. 



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