Posted on 06/21/2008 8:58:59 AM PDT by Jakarta ex-pat
Here we go!
Arsenic and Old Lace
Aliens (great series except for 3)
Apollo 13
The Aviator
Apocolypto
All About Eve
The African queen
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
Armageddon
The Aviator with Leonardo DeCapiro? I watched about ten minutes of the crap on TV knowing that Decapiro is one of the most overrated actors today.
It reminded me of Oliver Stone’s Nixon in terms of inaccuracy and over the top acting and I like Anthony Hopkins.
He's certainly had his number of flops.
However, Decapiro features in more than of my top 10 movies for a reason; As you will see with C. Can you guess?
One more, powerful and moving: Au Revoir Les Enfants. I like watching foreign, sub-titled films. Another good one from France, not in the A-titled Section: La Femme Nikita./Just Asking - seoul62......
You have a point. Should have read the whole post first.
Hellzapoppin (from the 1940s and finally out on DVD) wasn’t a “parody” film, but it was mockery of the “big show” movies and the characters kept breaking the fourth wall to talk with the audience or even the projectionist (Shemp Howard).
It is about as close to an old Warner Brothers cartoon that I have seen in a live action film. Puns. Bad jokes. Sight gags. They advance a story but much like the Austin Powers movies (especially by the time of the third one) the story was secondary to the joke telling.
Did Airplane come before the Police Squad tv show? I think so but just would like some recall on the history.
And I’d say that the Police Squad series owes a debt to the old EC Mad comic books with parodies of things like Dragnet. Again every available space was crammed with “chicken fat” throwaway gags by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder.
Sorry...guess I didn’t read. I just thought we were naming movies beginning with certain letters. I take back my A Star is Born and I’m going home.
In that case, I’d have to say replace Aliens with Alien. Alien was a cumulative effort by a number of people (in the wake of Jodorowsky’s failed attempt at filming Dune). Some of the design work by Giger had come from that. Dan O’Bannon reportedly embeds egg references in everything he makes (eggs in Alien are obvious, in 1941 they are a bit more subtle, can’t recall the others).
It certianly brought outsiders into the film business and let the graphic designers take a more active roll in the movies we saw.
Aliens was just Rambo in outer space (as opposed to a haunted house in outer space). That, and a Reboks shoe ad campaign.
The suspense was gone because now there were hundreds of these things.
Back to some of the other suggestions that people offered,
I’d have to say that these are very well crafter films that begin with A and movies that I have returned to many times (not just watching something “because it was on” but making a conscious decision to put it on).
After Hours, Almost Famous, Apocalypse Now, Apollo 13
Good call. Especially the use of the score (not just the pop songs but the composer).
It was made as a serious film, not just another teenage sex comedy (as was spawned in its wake and a genre that came back on us with American Pie and the like).
Airplane! - 1980
Police Squad - 1982
Leslie Neilsen regarded Airplane! as a life saver. It was his first comedy role, and he felt he was getting stale in serious roles.
ANNIE HALL!!!
I enjoyed The Alamo when I saw it in the theater in 1961. I especially like John Wayne’s monologue on Republican government: “Republic. I like the sound of the word. It’s one of those words that makes me tight in the throat...”
I agree. Annie Hall.
I first saw Around the World in 80 Days at the Carthay Circle Theater in Los Angeles in May of 1958.
The scene in which a woman is about to be burned alive in a Hindu “suttee” ritual will undoubtedly offend today’s “multiculturalism” and “diversity” enthusiasts, who will decry the protagonists for imposing their Western Christian values by rescuing the woman.
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