We’ve been a lot of places and seen a lot of faces to collect the Five Favorite Films from a wide array of personalities in film and entertainment over the course of the year. Out of the movies named by the 70+ people that we’ve spoken with, some favorites have emerged from the cinematic pool of 250+ movies that were named by our distinguished panel. Rounding out a list of some of the most classic and referenced films of all time, read on to find out if you’ve seen all of the five favorites of the Five Favorites of 2009!
Number of mentions in 2009: 4
Release year: 1976
Director: Martin Scorsese
Critics consensus: A must-see film for movie lovers, this Martin Scorsese
masterpiece is as hard-hitting as it is compelling, with Robert De Niro at
his best.
Rob Zombie, writer/director
First time I saw Taxi Driver as a kid, it f—in’ blew my mind. I’ve always been a huge fan of movies about solitary, sort of loner people. I think that’s what I liked about horror movies as a kid, because the monsters were always portrayed that way. And Taxi Driver‘s obviously the ultimate movie about that. I don’t know. I’m picking very obvious movies that are genius, but they were new to me as a kid when I saw them, and they just made me go, “Oh my god, the genius of movies.” I love Taxi Driver so much; I’ve seen it so many times. It’s probably one of those movies where I could recite the whole movie straight, or I could at one point; I probably can’t any more.”
Fred Durst, director
I was really moved by the unraveling of this guy, and the interesting choices Scorsese made, the things he used to tell the story. You know, like zooming in to the bottle of Alka Seltzer fizzling, this guy’s about to really cross over to the next layer of dementia. Just amazing choices, and for him to be so meant to be a filmmaker. Be it and feel it. And De Niro, just, oh man, I just get carried away. Every time, in the beginning of that movie, when he — he’s just so not self aware — he goes in to ask the girl out at the campaign center, and the feeling’s so uncomfortable. I loved him also as Rupert Pupkin in King of Comedy. Man, I love the way De Niro can sorta just play a guy that’s not aware.
Jean Reno, actor
It was a shock, a real shock. The acting was so sincere, so honest. Brilliant
performances from everybody, from Robert DeNiro and Jodie Foster. There are
always good moments in the movie business, but that was a very intense moment in
the American cinema. It was amazing to see those movies.
Djimon Hounsou, actor
I thought its arc of character was beautifully captured. [Martin Scorsese]
has got so many dramatic views — men fed up with life, the situation, the
system. These days people are more experienced [as filmmakers] but we’ve just
been poorly making movies lately. We used to tell beautiful, humane stories. We
used to care about characters instead of just blowing some f***ing building
down.
Number of mentions in 2009: 5
Release year: 1979
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Critics consensus: Francis Ford Coppola’s haunting, hallucinatory Vietnam War epic is cinema at its most audacious and visionary.
Dave Gibbons, artist
Apocalypse Now is a favorite movie of mine. Again, there are kind of Watchmen
resonances there.
Renny Harlin, director
It’s a typical choice maybe. I’m a huge Coppola fan – I’ve seen it many times in
many different versions and formats and that movie, to me, is just fantastic
storytelling, interesting characters, maybe the best war film I’ve ever seen.
You are transported into his incredibly exotic world and it tells the story of
something that is based on reality but the director kind of creates his own
reality. He constructs this horrible place – his own interpretation of hell and
he that makes me believe in it. It’s a movie that I can always watch again and
never get tired of, and it always feel like I’m in the presence of a genius
magician. I think I prefer the theatrical cut of the movie.The Redux,
with the scene with all the French colonialist people, I didn’t feel added much.
James Marsters, actor
I felt that it was a very clear message about why America lost the war. It was a scene that really got me when, right at the very end, the villagers were killing the cow. Because when we want some cow, we have someone else kill the cow and wrap it up in plastic and eat it. But they anointed the cow with oils and paint, and the whole village got around and prayed and chanted to the cow and slaughtered the cow in a bloody brutalist way and nobody flinched. Like, they wanted beef, looked it in the eye, and knew what it takes to eat beef, and that’s why we lost the war, they were just tougher. For me the film was exploring the soft underbelly of our culture and of our weaknesses, and the film’s ending dealt with this; how did we become so weak?
Jean Reno, actor
Danny Boyle, director
Always, and always number one for me in every list is Apocalypse Now. There are lots of reasons. It’s imperfect; which every film should be. I love action movies. I believe in motion, in the motion picture industry. And Apocalypse Now is the ultimate action movie.
Firstly, it’s the only period film you’ll ever watch where nobody ever says it still ‘stands up after 30 years.’ Every other film — like Alien, and I’m a huge fan of Alien, I even did some promotion for it when they re-released it — the main thing you say are phrases like “Even after 25 years it still stands up.” You never have to use that (phrase) for Apocalypse Now. Everyone always just says: “Wow.”
The second reason it’s the ultimate action movie is every time it stops moving it’s weird and unnatural and disturbing. Every time it stops moving: they stop to collect mushrooms, they get attacked by a tiger; they stop and watch the playboy bunnies arriving; the boat stops and they end up shooting these people over a puppy in a little boat. And it stops, of course, with the ultimate stop: When he (Martin Sheen) meets Marlon Brando, Colonel Kurtz at the end. You can tell by how unnatural the stops are, how natural an action movie it is.
Number of mentions in 2009: 5
Release year: 1975
Director: Steven Spielberg
Critics consensus: Jaws remains tense by not showing audiences the shark for the majority of the film, so that when it does, viewers jump out of their seats.
Jesse Ventura, wrestler/public servant
Because they did great character buildup in it. By the time they got out and
were battling the shark, you knew the three characters intimately. I think we
lose that in a lot of our movies today — they’re so set in throwing the action
at you as quick as they can. They don’t allow the character to develop to where
you can feel for the character and I think Jaws did a marvelous,
fantastic job with the three characters on the boat and the action – how they
held the scene with the shark for as long as they did — the shocking moments of
it.
Robert Rodriguez, writer/director
Because I just showed it to my kids for the first time. They’d seen snippets, but that’s the first time I said, “Okay, you guys are old enough. Gotta bite the bullet; we’re going to watch the damn thing all together.” My son, my ten-year-old, was like… So I watched it when I was seven because it was released on my birthday in 1975. June 20th, 1975, Jaws came out, and that was my birthday present. He was like — with the sheets — doing this [mimics pulling covers over head] over his head, and I was like, “What are you doing?” He said, “I’m practicing to make sure they go up high enough.” [laughs] So we watched that. They loved that, and they were like, “What else can we watch?”
J.J. Abrams, director
Jaws is an undeniably great movie. Jaws is just one of the greatest movies ever. It’s on TV all the time. It is never not on television. They should just have a Jaws Network where they just show Jaws all the time because I would subscribe like crazy. The movie is just wonderful and the characters are so great. I am just in awe of that movie. I think that movie is spectacular.
Peter Jackson, writer/director
It’s
the height of suspense for filmmaking, it was the start of the summer
blockbuster, it was the beginning of an entire genre of filmmaking and obviously
the beginning, in some respects, of Steven Spielberg’s career. I think Jaws
is a remarkable film.
Steve Lemme, writer/actor
My favorite film of all time is Jaws, for a number of reasons. I think it’s a perfect film; everything about it works. Obviously, the music — there are not many theme songs that actually elicit an emotion. From the floating barrels, the scene where Sheriff Brody’s on the beach, and stuff keeps blocking his view while he’s trying to see what’s going on and you’re in the audience [cringing]…additionally, my dad took me to see it in the theater when I was seven; he’s from Argentina and I guess he didn’t understand the rating system… He bought me a Jaws movie poster afterwards and I stuck it in my bathroom and shut the door, and I didn’t open the door again for two years. I thought that when I opened the door, water and a shark would come pouring out and eat me. For the longest time, I couldn’t go in swimming pools.
Number of mentions in 2009: 8
Release year: 1962
Director: David Lean
Critics consensus: The epic of all epics, Lawrence of Arabia cements
director David Lean’s status in the filmmaking pantheon with nearly four
hours of grand scope, brilliant performances, and beautiful cinematography.
Roland Emmerich, writer/director
It has the most incredible images. The only movie [from] the 60s that you can
look at today and [have] it feel totally modern and real.
Jamie Winstone, actress
It was one of the first films I ever watched when I was young. It really had
impact. The music just carries you while you’re sitting there watching it. I
remember watching it with my dad, actually sat on my dad’s belly, and saying to
him how much I loved it!
Kathryn Bigelow, director
No
list would be complete without Lawrence of Arabia. Again, I’m
constantly looking at that film for its sheer bravado, magnificence, scale,
scope, and having just shot [The Hurt Locker] in Jordan in the summer
of 2007, I visited Wadi Rum, which is the desert in which they shot Lawrence
of Arabia, just about two hours outside of Amman. And it’s in the middle of
the desert, to which David Lean brought — and this is in the ’60s — arc
lights, and a whole production. If you see this desert, first of all, it’s
gorgeous, it’s beautiful. But it’s a very forbidding landscape, not one you
would imagine would be very film friendly; these beautiful, magnificent,
extraordinary kind of red rock buttes that rise out of this red sand.
Antonio Banderas, actor
I
love the scope of the movie; there is something in David Lean that I like very
much. He’s always of the macro worlds and the micro worlds; he didn’t only do it
in Lawrence of Arabia, but repeated it in Dr. Zhivago and
other movies. [In Lawrence of Arabia] he made a movie with enormous
scope and events that were known in the world — the Turkish-British War, and at
the time, the taking of Akaba — things that were very spectacular and very
epic, but in reality he’s talking to us about the homosexuality of one of the
characters and something really minimalistic and very precise. He gets into the
soul of a man through this spectacular movie and this union of these two worlds.
Renny Harlin, director
Another movie that is hugely influential to me and I never get tired of watching
it. The cinemascope photography is unbelievable, evolutionary and fantastic. The
performances, the production design and the pacing – it’s kind of slow but it
draws you into it and it makes you wish there could still be movies like that
nowadays. I mean most movies these days are made for teenagers. It’s almost as
if people’s brains work differently these days. Maybe its commercials and music
videos and videogames and you just want more stimuli at a faster pace.
Filmmakers seem to be afraid to trust the audience more. I don’t mean that
movies should be slow and boring, but if you have a good enough script you
should be able to use the power of the image to tell a story.
Bill Pullman, actor
This is always the first choice when people say they have a new television set
or home cinema system and they want to watch a great visual movie. I always
choose this because I feel it has an incredible presence.
Jerry Bruckheimer, producer
I’m
a big fan of David Lean. Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of
Arabia, and Dr. Zhivago take up three of my favorites. This can go
for all three of Lean’s films, because they’re all very similar. They all have
very strong characters, very developed characters. He has a unique visual style;
it’s very important for the way the movie looks. There are stories about how
he’d sit in the desert for half a day, just waiting for the clouds to be right
before he’d start filming. You can imagine what a producer would be doing during
this.
Djimon Hounsou, actor
the scope of the film. The journey the film takes. The journey the character
takes. Doing that film today you couldn’t get your head around it — it was such
a massive undertaking. It leaves so much room for imagination, to escape. I
escaped with that film.
Number of mentions in 2009: 11
Release year: 1972
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Critics consensus: One of Hollywood’s greatest critical and
commercial successes, The Godfather gets everything right; not only
did the movie transcend expectations, it established new benchmarks for
American cinema.
Jerry Bruckheimer, producer
The Godfather is another big favorite of mine. It’s a great
characterization. Fantastic casting, in every film. I can generalize on all of
these favorite films, because they all have the same elements to them. Very
strong directors; very strong writers. Robert Bolt wrote most of David Lean’s
movies. You have a fantastic screenwriter working at your hand, penning these
wonderful characters.
Alex Proyas, director
Just a flawless film, something that’s so beautifully crafted and so perfectly
structured and designed, that I can watch it endlessly and enjoy it every single
time.
Greg Kinnear, actor
For
obvious reasons. It’s just painted on a giant canvas – it’s larger than life.
There’s a reason it’s a classic, and I don’t know what else to say about it that
hasn’t already been said. It’s just one of the greats. There’s not a character
in it that I don’t like, and there’s not a performance in it that’s flawed. It’s
incredible.
Anil Kapoor, actor
The
Godfather is not [just] an American hit, it’s really a worldwide film.
Anywhere [you go]: China, Japan, Mexico. Everywhere students of cinema, ordinary
people, everybody just loved the film. It’s got that cinematic magic, The
Godfather. And, you know, it’s the lighting, the camerawork, the editing,
the performances, the casting, the colors, the costumes. It was cinema at its
best, and I’m sure it is something which, as you say, was written. Just
everything fell in place. It doesn’t happen with everybody, it’s [when] people
are [from] a certain kind of work culture [that] these things happen normally.
Ron Perlman, actor
The Godfather is a perfect film. There is not one shot out of place,
there’s not one performance that’s not the best thing that actor has ever done.
There is not one thing about the film, visually, that’s not mind-bogglingly
beautiful and elegant and astounding. And it shines a light perfectly on its
subject matter.
John Krasinski, actor/director
I feel like that movie has stood up to time [and] criticism, and yet everybody
can find the exact same reasons as to why it’s awesome. I mean, it’s so
well-written. It’s a slow movie that you’re still riveted by. It’s [got]
character development unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. And of course, the
performances are wild.
Antonio Banderas, actor
Robert Rodriguez, writer/director
The Godfather, because it’s about family. It’s just a perfect film. Five-act structure… It’s just amazing. Coppola just did the coolest stuff with that.
A.O. Scott, critic
I have nothing original to say about it, but again, a movie that I cannot
imagine ever getting tired of watching. When you come across it on TV, you stop
and suddenly two hours have gone by, and you’re still with it. If you think
about it, the performances in that… Everyone in that movie, just about, is as
good as they ever were.
Carlos Bernard, actor
It’s
just incredible… everything. Incredible acting, writing, cinematography;
they’re just amazing films, really.
Roland Emmerich, writer/director
I
have to say The Godfather. Incredible movie. The performances, how it’s
told. That’s the longest opening scene in film history — an hour or so. The
whole wedding, and then the movie starts.
