My Favorite Movies

This ongoing list is in no particular order, and the movies appearing on here surprise even me. I've seen thousands of movies, but these are the ones that I always come back to. Yeah, I guess most are guilty pleasures, but I have my reasons! Most of us hold onto movies like we hold onto songs. It doesn't matter what the words say, it's just remembering the moment in time where you heard it in a new way.

I have an obsessive personality. A gift and a curse. It is hard to just "like" something and keep going, I have to soak up all of it. That being said, I go balls deep into just about everything that catches my eye. If I like a book by an author I will read his entire works. A painting, find everything I can by that artist. The same goes for movies and music. During my Bob Dylan phase, which I'm finding you can never really get over, I heard this movie was coming out and almost drove to Atlanta to see it by myself. When it finally came out on DVD I watched it three times in a week and realized it would have been worth it. If you haven't heard of it, Todd Haynes takes the idea that 6 distinct periods of Bob Dylan's work could be divided into 6 different actors, genres, ideas, etc. It would be a hard watch for someone who had no point of references to these facts. The movie is practically a scrapbook and uses images and dialogue from every aspect of his life. The first lines spoken over the bare corpse of Jude, the amphetamine rocker played androgynously by Cate Blanchett, and ending with the flashbulb interrogation of Arthur Rimbaud, the enigmatic poet played by Ben Wishaw, are a haunting thesis of what is to come, and what has gone before.

Narrator: There he lies. God rest his soul, and his rudeness. A devouring public can now share the remains of his sickness, and his phone numbers. There he lay: poet, prophet, outlaw, fake, star of electricity. Nailed by a peeping tom, who would soon discover...

Jude: A poem is like a naked person...

Narrator: - even the ghost was more than one person.

Arthur: ...but a song is something that walks by itself.


How did this movie get made? There was an audience, but I'm still stunned by how perfect this love letter to one of the greatest song writers truly is. This is also the last complete work that Heath Ledger ever performed in, because he died before The Dark Knight was finished. It's fitting to note that Christian Bale also stars as both the embodiment of Bob's folk roots and his stint as a pastor. But it's Ledger's scenes with Charlotte Gainsbourg that are some of the best in the movie and show the couple meeting, falling in love, and then finally divorcing - all the while Vietnam rages on in the back ground.

 I recommend movies all the time, but this one I keep mostly quiet about. It's too personal, but a true sign of love if someone sits down with me and lets me talk through the whole thing to catch them up to speed.