Monday, August 24, 2009

Stephen King's Top 20 Movie Rentals

White Heat, James Cagney | Stephen King: 20 Movie Rentals That Never Let Me Down | Photos | EW.com

Oddly enough some of these are also on that "Manly Movies" list. I think some of the choices are a little weak, but any list that has White Heat on it is okay by me.

12 comments:

Gerard said...

1941 is a great flick. My parents took me to see that when I was a kid. I never got the joke about the Japanese sailors trying to get fit the radio into the submarine until years later.

Jake Murdock said...

Evidently, he has great taste.
(18 out of 20)
But what is he going watching "Titanic" and "Saturday Night Fever?"

Unknown said...

Well, he says you can laugh at him about TITANIC.

David Thompson said...

1941 is one of those movies you either love or hate... I'm in the first camp, my wife is in the second. It's one of my guilty pleasures. Slim Pickens, Ned Beatty, John Candy... how can you go wrong?? :-)

CrimeNerd said...

How can KISS OF DEATH be somebody's favorite noir? Yeah, Widmark is amazing - no question - but he's barely in a quarter of the movie's running time. All the scenes where he's absent are terribly boring. I think the legend of the performance has elevated an otherwise mediocre film. I reviewed it upon my first viewing a year ago. http://tinyurl.com/nlux45

Gerard Saylor said...

It seems like every time I read a WWII novel that mentions anti-aircraft guns I think of Dan Ackroyd's quick tutorial to Ned Beatty on running the Army sticks in Beatty's yard.

Randy Johnson said...

Dump Titanic and The Blair Witch Project and I can live with the list. Yes, even Saturday Night Fever.

Todd Mason said...

I'll say. THE WAGES OF FEAR is one of the most overrated films ever made, inasmuch as it goes beyond existential into Pointless Galumphing Dumb. Decent atmosphere in service of an idiot plot.

It's very explicable why what little of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT works, works...it's eerie. The rest is dull.

Though not as dull as 1941, the biggest waste of its cast till several of them trudged through NEIGHBORS. The running gag of heavyset women getting knocked over and their skirts falling to expose their pantyhose was positively painfully unfunny. Sorry, guys, though you might well constitute the lion's share of this film's fanbase.

TITANIC does have Kate Winslet. And Nothing else. Even the winking asides are desperately sad (though I've never sat through more than five minutes of it, mostly the sketchy five minutes).

And the BeeGees are the great reason to avoid SNF.

This list is what I might expect of King.

Cap'n Bob said...

Lousy list. King should stick to writing.

Anonymous said...

Instead of The Blair Witch Project, I would recommend the recent Spanish movie [REC]. It's sort of like what TBWP would be like if it were actually scary. There was actually an American remake of [REC] called Quarantine, but let's just pretend that that didn't happen.

Todd Mason said...

[REC] 2 is apparently done. I was most amused by the two Murrican adaptations of Iberian works that came out simultaneously, more or less, and with obvious similarities in incident, but not in the way they were marketed: QUARANTINE and BLINDNESS.

Neither 2008 film quite what it should be, I gather. (Haven't seen them, nor [REC] nor read BLINDNESS the novel yet.)

PSGifford said...

It is a very honest list.

I think all of us ahave a few guilty pleasures when it comes to favourite movies.