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The 100 best films according to the www.telegraph.co.uk
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry and you may angrily demand to know why we’ve snubbed Meg Ryan in our highly subjective, yet infinitely debatable list of the greatest films of all time.
drama/thriller and action
Drama
1. The Conversation (1974)
This is Francis Ford Coppola’s favourite of all his films, and Gene Hackman’s, too. Hackman plays a seedy surveillance expert who suffers a crisis of conscience when he suspects the couple he is bugging are about to be murdered. A film routinely dubbed ‘Watergate-flavoured’, this may be all about audiotapes and inflection, but it was written in the 1960s. It’s bigger than mere commentary – the real subjects here are paranoia and culpability, loneliness and love.
2. Strangers on a Train (1951)
Two men swap murders. But one of them thinks it’s a joke. It ain’t. Patricia Highsmith’s best novel; arguably Alfred Hitchcock’s best movie, this is a great taut morality tale with a barnstormingly icky turn by Robert Walker.
3. There Will Be Blood (2008)
Just because it’s fresh in the mind doesn’t mean this isn’t one of the best films of all time. See it now while it’s still on the big screen.
4. Winter Light (1962)
Ingmar Bergman could have a top 10 of his own, but this little-seen entry in his ‘Silence of God’ trilogy ranks alongside Wild Strawberries and Persona as a brief, freezing masterpiece.
5. Dogville (2003)
It’s three hours long, there’s no set and John Hurt does a maddeningly arch voiceover. But Lars von Trier’s Nicole Kidman-in-chains sadomasochistic study of small-town America is still thrilling filmmaking.
6. Raging Bull (1980)
Martin Scorsese’s best, and Robert De Niro’s too. And that’s against some stiff competition.
7. The Godfather Parts 1 and 2 (1972/4)
Coppola’s Corleone saga works because it’s only brushingly a gangster pic. Really it’s the best family soap ever shot: more King Lear than Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
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| Double Indemnity (1944) |
8. Double Indemnity (1944)
Billy Wilder’s insurance scam classic, based on a James M. Cain story, is film noir at its most tar-hearted.
9. Apocalypse Now (1979)
So that’s four films by Francis Ford Coppola in the top 10. But it would be a horror to omit his Cambodia odyssey.
10. Chinatown (1974)
Roman Polanski. Robert Towne. Jack Nicholson. Faye Dunaway. John Huston. Enough said.
Thriller/Action
1. North by Northwest (1958)
A whirlwind sightseeing tour round America’s top landmarks with guides James Mason (as the silky baddie), Eva Marie Saint (as his icy squeeze), and Cary Grant (as a suave advertising exec they’ve mistaken for an enemy spy). The granddaddy of the action flick is a terrific treat no matter how many times you’ve seen it. Also features one of cinema’s most spine-tingling lines: ‘That plane’s dustin’ crops where there ain’t no crops.’
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Who knows how Indiana Jones 4 (due for release later this year) will turn out; so let’s take time to remember the three fabulous movies Harrison Ford’s archaeologist has already given us, especially this breathless debut.
3. Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
Woody Allen and Diane Keaton, reunited for the first time since Annie Hall, suspect foul play when their neighbour dies, but Keaton sees her on a bus a week later. Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston help solve the puzzle. Tense as well as funny.
4. Heat (1995)
Al Pacino and Robert De Niro co-star for the first time (they never actually shared the screen in The Godfather Part II) in Michael Mann’s sizzling cop thriller.
5. The 39 Steps (1939)
Classy hatchet job on the John Buchan adventure, with Robert Donat rollicking round Scotland on the run from the Germans. Look out for Dad’s Army’s John Laurie in an early sinister crofting role.
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| Terminator 2: Judgment Day |
6. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
This hulking cyborg smackdown not only betters the original, but marks the first step in Arnie’s reinvention as the good guy.
7. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Spaghetti westerns don’t get tastier.
8. The Ladykillers (1955)
An Ealing comedy it may be, but it’s also a serious nail-biter, especially the scene in which Katie Johnson’s affable gran transports £2million home from Kings Cross for evil prof Alec Guinness, aided by the unwitting police.
9. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Anthony Hopkins’s menu choices may be an acquired taste, but few could resist the five-star excitement of Jonathan Demme’s electric classic.
10 Die Hard (1988)
Vests. Explosions. Alan Rickman speaking German. Big dumb fun at its best.
kids and musicals
1. Back to the Future (1985)
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| Clueless (1995) |
Not just for kids of course, but it’s one of those films where the sooner you can start watching this, the better. Directed with whiz-bang energy and clockwork precision by Robert Zemeckis, BTTF is huge family fun with a killer central conceit: a teenager goes back in time and his mother falls in love with him. Michael J. Fox may have been 24 when he starred as schoolboy Marty McFly, but he pulled it off like a pro; Christopher Lloyd is all bug-eyed brilliance as Doc Brown, the crackpot scientist who makes a time machine out of a DeLorean.
2. E.T. (1982)
Spielberg’s best film bangs the buttons so effectively, watching it is like being beaten up. But you’re laughing as much as you’re blubbing: remember the scene where E.T. downs a six pack? Or Drew Barrymore puts him in a dress? Robbed of the Oscar by that other little bald fella, Gandhi.
3. Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
Surprisingly subversive sequel to the 1995 smash, in which the chatty porker quits farm life for the big smoke.
4. Freaky Friday (2003)
Harassed mum Jamie Lee Curtis and sarky sprog Lindsay Lohan bodyswap with hilarious results.
5. Addams Family Values (1993)
Wednesday (Christina Ricci) causes bloody mayhem at summer camp and Morticia (Anjelica Huston) gives birth to a moustachioed baby christened Pubert.
6. Mean Girls (2004)
Superb satire with Lindsay Lohan getting a crash course in the sociology of high school after her parents move from the African bush to downtown Chicago.
7. Anne of Green Gables (1985)
A beautifully made TV movie with Megan Follows as the orphan, and Colleen Dewhurst and Richard (The Straight Story) Farnsworth the elderly siblings who take her in.
8. Clueless (1995)
Jane Austen’s Emma relocated in Beverly Hills. Features that classic PE excuse: ‘My plastic surgeon doesn’t want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose.’ (The response is even better.)
9. Enchanted (2007)
Amy Adams is a Disney princess in modern-day New York.
10. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
The first full-length outing for Nick Parks’s man and his dog trips over itself with lovely touches.
Musicals
1. West Side Story (1961)
The leading man is even more wooden than the rickety sets, the editing is a mess and the heroine’s Puerto Rican accent wouldn’t fool a baby. But this is still finger-snappingly fine: a score by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics from Stephen Sondheim and that balletic choreography by Jerome Robbins. The plot, borrowed from some old playwright, isn’t bad either.
2. The Sound of Music (1965)
For full enjoyment of Julie Andrews’s starmaker it’s worth attending a singalonga screening, where everyone dresses up as a nun or Nazi, subtitles flash up during the songs and it’s considered polite to wolfwhistle when Christopher Plummer stalks on in lederhosen. But even just on TV this is a sugary treat. It’s best to quit before the end, though: the plot slumps after Maria gets hitched, and that karmatastic I Must Have Done Something Good sticks in the throat every time.
3. Cabaret (1972)
Very camp, very catchy, very creepy.
4. Top Hat (1935)
Ginger and Fred at their twinkle-toed finest. Songs by Irving Berlin.
5. Chicago (2002)
Rob Marshall’s sparkly satire showcases Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta Jones to great effect. Even Richard Gere seems good.
6. Mary Poppins (1964)
Magic nanny Julie Andrews and awful cockney Dick Van Dyke soar over the rooftops in this lovable Disney dream.
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| My Fair Lady (1964) |
7. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Another movie to make brolleys look glamorous.
8. Nashville (1975)
Robert Altman’s freewheeling masterpiece follows two dozen main characters in the countdown to a presidential primary. Madly entertaining when it works, madly dull when it doesn’t.
9. Woodstock (1970)
Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker are among the young buck editors on this whopping chronicle of the 1969 festival.
10. My Fair Lady (1964)
Gloss version of Shaw’s Pygmalion. Audrey Hepburn is a bit chilly even in cockney mode, but Rex Harrison smooths effectively.
documentary and world cinema
Documentary
1. American Splendor (2003)
Fact and fiction are deftly muddled in this character study of doomy cartoonist Harvey Pekar, directed by Robert Pulcini. Half a dramatisation of his graphic novel Our Cancer Year, with Paul Giamatti (pre Sideways) as Pekar and Hope Davis as his wife, Joyce, the film also devotes screentime to interviews with the real-life Mrs and Mrs Pekar.
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| American Splendor (2003) |
2. The Sorrow and the Pity (1969)
Four hours on the Vichy government’s involvement in Nazi atrocities. Marcel Ophüls’s mix of newsreel and interview makes for a film of rare intelligence and integrity.
3. American Movie (1999)
Movies about making movies tend to be overrated. Not this one, perhaps because it doesn’t follow the production of a classic. Instead, it tracks the ups and downs on Coven, a grubby horror shot by redneck auteur Mark Borchardt, funded by his wonderfully crusty father.
4. Touching the Void (2003)
Superlative reconstruction of Joe Simpson’s and Simon Yates’s perilous trek up, and particularly down, an unforgiving Andean peak.
5. Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
Queasy investigation into the case of a middle-class Jewish family whose father and son were charged with child abuse in the mid-1980s.
6. Spellbound (2002)
Jeffrey Blitz’s Spelling Bee crowdpleaser is gripping and revealing.
7. Être et Avoir (2002)
More disarming tots in Nicolas Philibert’s sophisticated look at a year in the life of an infant school in rural France.
8. Hearts and Minds (1974)
Peter Davis’s Vietnam documentary cuts together talking heads and eyewitness footage to difficult, brilliant effect.
9. My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
Another documentary in which the director, Amir Bar-Lev, finds himself unhappily involved. This one starts as the story of a four-year-old painting prodigy in New York, but gets interesting after allegations that Marla may have received more than encouragement from her amateur artist father.
10. Neil Young: Heart of Gold (2006)
Exactly what a concert film should be: the concert, and nothing else. This one, directed by Jonathan Demme, records a performance in Nashville of Young’s 2005 album Prairie Wind, taped days before his op to remove a brain tumour.
World
1. The Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925)
The film that introduced an astonished world to Sergei Eisenstein’s theory of montage (dynamic editing for political effect). The story of the abortive Russian revolution of 1905 still has immense impact, thanks to the unforgettable ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence.
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (France, 1928)
Made in France by the Danish director Carl Dreyer, this was one of the greatest silent films. It depicts the trial and execution through close-ups resembling medieval portraits. And the spiritual quality of Maria Falconetti’s Joan seems beyond acting.
3. La Règle du Jeu (France, 1939)
All French society gathers for a country-house party that proves to be on the eve of the war. Time has lent Jean Renoir’s film an extra dimension, but it always seemed the quintessence of art.
4. Tokyo Story (Japan, 1953)
Yasujiro Ozu’s study of family relations and the irreconcilable differences between generations is one of the most moving of all pictures. It offers universal truths, a spare, almost ascetic camera style and matchless acting from Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara.
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5. Seven Samurai (Japan, 1954)
Akira Kurosawa’s medieval epic achieves an almost Shakespearean range, embracing personal pride, professional skill and social distinctions. There’s Falstaffian humour, spectacular battles in the rain and the sense of a master film-maker at the peak of his powers.
6. Pather Panchali (India, 1955)
Another film about generations – the very old and the very young. Set in Bengal, it was Satyajit Ray’s first film, establishing him as a director in the great humanist tradition, with a superb pictorial sense.
7. Smiles of a Summer Night (Sweden, 1955)
This apparently frivolous comedy is Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece because, like Mozart’s operas or Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, it says something profound about love. It’s taken 50 years for the penny to drop.
8. Un Condamné à Mort s’est échappé (France, 1956)
In Robert Bresson’s austere account of the wartime escape of André Devigny, the soundtrack is Mozart’s C Minor Mass, the alternative title is ‘The Wind Bloweth Where It Listeth’. It might as easily have been called ‘God Helps Those Who Help Themselves’.
9. Andrei Rublev (USSR, 1966)
Not a conventional biography of the 15th-century icon painter, but eight imaginary episodes from his life, evoking his spirituality and symbolic importance at the time of the Tartar invasions. Andrei Tarkovsky’s troubled epic looks to God as saviour rather than Lenin.
10. The Color of Pomegranates (USSR, 1969)
Sergei Parajanov was imprisoned in Russia for this intensely visual film about the 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat Nova. It delivers a torrent of breathtaking images.
romance and animation
Romance
1 Before Sunset (2004)
In 1994 Richard Linklater made an unfashionably talky movie called Before Sunrise, about an American backpacker (Ethan Hawke) and a Sorbonne student (Julie Delpy) who meet on a train and tramp happily round Vienna for a day and night. They arrange to meet in six months, but we never find out what happens. Then Linklater resurrected their story a decade later. This time round – shot in Paris, in real time – the couple have even less time to get reacquainted, just 90 minutes before Hawke must return to his two children and ailing marriage in the States. The set-up is so romantic, the script so spot-on, you’re left light-headed for days after seeing it.
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| Brief Encounter (1945) |
2 Head-On (2004)
An intense five-hankie tragedy about a suicidal girl and a boozy ex-rocker who enter into a marriage of convenience. Talk Talk’s Life’s What You Make it powers the narrative, as do traditional ballads from Istanbul.
3 I Know Where I’m Going! (1945)
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Highlands-set swooner, with noble laird Roger Livesey luring materialistic Wendy Hiller from an ill-advised engagement. The colourful supporting cast – check out those wolfhounds – adds to the charm.
4 Brief Encounter (1945)
Still heart-breaking after all these years.
5 The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood get acquainted looking for missing Dame May Whitty on a train.
6 The Quiet American (1958)
More Michael Redgrave, this time as a melancholy foreign correspondent in 1950s Saigon, devoted to his Vietnamese mistress, but at risk of losing her to a horribly virtuous Yank. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s version of the Graham Greene story knocks spots off the 2002 remake starring Michael Caine.
7 Hannah and her Sisters (1986)
There’s no one central love affair in Woody Allen’s finest film, but the whole picture, especially that madly feel-good ending, qualify it as a romantic classic. Barbara Hershey, Dianne Wiest and Max von Sydow are the stand-outs. Look out for that great line: ‘She just kept on drinking and drinking until finally she turned into Joan Collins.’
8 Bringing up Baby (1938)
Cary and Katharine plus Baby (the leopard) equals screwball heaven.
9 Days of Heaven (1978)
Overwhelming Terrence Malick love story as infatuated with the cornfields as it is with its lovers.
10 Casablanca (1942)
Check the pulse of anyone who doesn’t weep buckets.
Animation
1. Dimensions of Dialogue (1982)
Czech surrealist Jan Svankmajer’s 12-minute stopmotion masterpiece, which is being shown as part of the touring ICO Essentials programme, could equally be filed under action, comedy or romance. Household items scrap it out, men find the wrong things emerging from their mouths, and – in one of the most amazing depictions of a relationship ever filmed – clay lovers melt in one another’s arms before ripping themselves to shreds.
2. The Jungle Book (1967)
As radical a film for Disney as Elvis was for popular music: ripping up the cutesy, picture-book approach, and, instead, going for something altogether more hip and swinging. Alongside Mary Poppins, one of the most underrated musicals in film history.
3. Spirited Away (2001)
Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki may well be the greatest animator working anywhere in the world today, and this exceptionally imaginative fantasy provides a universe in which to lose one’s self absolutely.
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| Toy Story (1995) |
4. Toy Story (1995)
Where the rise of the machines intersected with the pleasures of the playbox. Set for a three-dimensional re-release in 2009, it was dazzling enough in two.
5. Komposition in Blau (1935)
Animation stripped to its barest essentials: German-born Oskar Fischinger shunts blocks of colour across the screen to form patterns both abstract and Busby Berkeley-like. Fantasia pilfered the exciting bits and rendered them as middlebrow sludge.
6. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
One of the few films from Japan’s Studio Ghibli to tackle historical rather than fantastical forces, Isao Takahata’s exceptional drama observes the collapse of Japanese society during the Second World War through children’s eyes. Beautifully drawn, it’s a deeply committed work of art: tender, humane and distressing in exactly the right way.
7. The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993)
This live-action/stopmotion hybrid from Bristol’s Bolex Brothers takes the polar opposite to the Disney approach, adapting material familiar from childhood and, rather than jollying it up, transforming it into something unsettling and finally heartbreaking.
8. Finding Nemo (2003)
Just edging out The Incredibles, Pixar’s other recent classic, because of its extraordinary palette and shrewd analysis of modern parenting.
9. Perfect Blue (1998)
Satoshi Kon’s cautionary animé, depicting a teen pop idol’s psychological collapse, assumes greater relevance with each passing year. Comparisons with Hitchcock and Repulsion aren’t inaccurate; at the very least, it should be required viewing within the Spears compound.
10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
The film that made Disney, and effectively invented full-length animation; 70 years on, its influence can still be seen in Enchanted.
comedy and horror
Comedy
1. Some Like it Hot (1959)
Billy Wilder’s masterly comedy, starring Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis as musicians who don drag and join an all-girl band to escape a Chicago gang, has lost none of its freshness – and nor has Marilyn Monroe as ‘Sugar Kane’ Kowalczyk, the pneumatic ukulele player who entrances them both.
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| Zoolander (2001) |
2 Annie Hall (1977)
The director Woody Allen also stars as Alvy Singer, a neurotic New York comedian, who falls in love with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). The script, which Allen co-wrote with Marshall Brickman, features a domestic lobster-killing crisis and a series of immortal one-liners, including Alvy’s protest to Annie: ‘Don’t knock masturbation: it’s sex with someone I love.’
3. Meet the Parents (2000)
The comic depiction of every fiancé’s nightmare features Ben Stiller as Greg Focker who is about to become Robert De Niro’s son-in-law. De Niro’s character, a CIA man, will stop at nothing to make sure Focker is the right man for his daughter. A truly brilliant play-off between hysteria and anxiety.
4. Withnail and I (1986)
The writer-director Bruce Robinson drew on his student days as inspiration for this cult comedy, the story of two young ‘resting’ actors – the dissolute, wild-eyed Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and the narrator, ‘I’ (Paul McGann), who leave their filthy Camden flat in 1969, to stay at the ramshackle country cottage of Withnail’s lascivious Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths).
5. His Girl Friday (1940)
Howard Hawks’s screwball comedy, a remake of the 1931 film The Front Page, crackles with witty dialogue, delivered at an incredible pace. Cary Grant plays a hard-bitten newspaper editor, and Rosalind Russell, his ex-wife and former star reporter, is his intellectual match. She plans to give up reporting for marriage with a dull but decent man and life as a wife and mother: Grant, however, is tirelessly hatching plans to make her stay.
6. The Odd Couple (1968)
Gene Saks’s film, an adaptation of Neil Simon’s stage play, remains the comic template for frustrated flatmates everywhere. Felix Ungar (Jack Lemmon), a tidy worrier, sets up home with the jovial slob Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau) after both men are separated from their wives: they soon find that living together is the most testing domestic arrangement of all.
7. Zoolander (2001)
Ben Stiller directs and stars in this unlikely tale of an insecure male model (Stiller) who fears that his fashion crown is about to be stolen by a laid-back newcomer (Owen Wilson) and becomes embroiled in an evil plot to topple the prime minister of Malaysia. Surreal, silly, satirical and very funny.
8. Stir Crazy (1980)
Sidney Poitier directs, and Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor star as two men who are framed for a bank robbery and imprisoned for life: the high point of the film comes when they are locked in a cell with a heavyweight mass murderer, Grossberger, only to discover that he’s a pussycat. Pryor’s comic energy and Wilder’s irrepressible optimism render every scene a joy.
9. Gregory’s Girl (1981)
Bill Forsyth’s low-budget Scottish story of how Gregory (John Gordon Sinclair) develops a crush on the school’s new sporting heroine, only to find that true love lies elsewhere, is still poignant, sweet and funny. Half the charm derives from the supporting characters, particularly Gregory’s cookery-obsessed friend Steve (Billy Greenlees) – and, to contemporary eyes, the haircuts.
10. Tootsie (1982)
Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, a ‘difficult’ actor whose reputation for perfectionism means that he can no longer get parts. In desperation, he dresses as a woman to bag a role in a long-running soap, and becomes a nationwide star – only to run the risk of being exposed when he falls in love with his vulnerable co-star, Julie (Jessica Lange). The revelation scene, in which Dorsey improvises changes to the soap script live, and rips off his wig to reveal the truth, uses Hoffman’s flair for comedy to the full.
Horror
1. Psycho (1960)
Even after five decades and a shot-for-shot remake, a film with nasty surprises at every turn. Hitchcock gave the genre its most comprehensive makeover: never again could motel rooms, basements or shower curtains be approached with the same degree of innocence.
2. Frankenstein (1931)
More so than the creaky Dracula or The Wolf Man, the defining film of the Universal horror cycle, and the only movie on this list rich and ripe enough to spawn – via Mel Brooks – an equally great spoof.
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| The Exorcist (1973) |
3. The Exorcist (1973)
The first horror blockbuster. William Friedkin directs the hell out of it, though it’s a quieter film, for long stretches, than you remember, and as an example of horror storytelling it remains pretty much unimprovable.
4. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
George A. Romero is the social conscience of the horror genre; his ‘Dead’ films – Dawn (1978), Day (1985), Land (2005) and the forthcoming Diary – provide an ongoing American chronicle, but this chiller, exposing the entrails of the Civil Rights movement, is where it all began.
5. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
David Lynch’s very modern horror movie forms cinema’s most devastating exploration of sexual abuse. Anchored by an often astonishingly committed performance by Sheryl Lee, it’s a film that invokes its own theology, with angels and devils visible everywhere you (can bear to) look.
6. Dead of Night (1945)
One-off portmanteau from Ealing: everyone recalls ventriloquist Michael Redgrave’s dummy talking back to him, but the other segments, and the bleak punchline, are no less unsettling.
7. The Wicker Man (1973)
Unrepeatable is the word for Robin Hardy’s uniquely British pagan shocker; see the 2006 remake for grisly details.
8. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Something iconic fashioned out of nothing more terrifying than sticks and stones, but it’s a lesson in how the horror genre can exploit new technologies to reinvent itself: no Blair Witch, no Cloverfield.
9. Vampyr (1932)
Horror as high art. Nosferatu has its reputation; but this, Carl Dreyer’s unlikely follow-up to The Passion of Joan of Arc, has cinematographer Rudolph Maté’s superlative images.
10. The Kingdom, Parts I and II (1994/1997) Lars von Trier’s larky, Dogme-styled medical serial uncovers something genuinely unnerving beneath the titular hospital. Part I ends with a woman giving birth to a fully grown Udo Kier – what could be more terrifying?
Great films, bad performances
1. Marlon Brando, Apocalypse Now
Brando rolled up drunk, obese and unfamiliar with the script for his role as the pencil-thin Kurtz. Coppola had to agree to him ad-libbing and being shot from the shoulders up. Imagine how much more of a masterpiece it could have been had Brando given a damn.
2. Andie MacDowell, Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
MacDowell is staggeringly uncharming. She’s the reason Four Weddings has gone down as a classic comedy, but is never described as a great romance.
Great moments in bad films
1. John Travolta’s entrance in Saturday Night Fever (1977)
You could tell by the way he used his walk that clerk-turned-disco king Tony Manero (John Travolta) was about to paint the town red; pity the rest of the film now looks embarrassingly tatty.
2. Dogs on tractors (in Scary Movie 3, 2003)
Charlie Sheen is an Iowa farmer perturbed by rumblings in his cornfields. ‘Something’s not right,’ he observes, while a procession of dogs driving tractors passes behind him.
Great performances in bad films
1. Judi Dench, Ladies in Lavender (2004)
Dench and Maggie Smith play two spinsters whose knitting schedule is interrupted when a young Polish dreamboat washes up on the beach. Dench falls in love with him. And how! Dame Judi gives it so much welly here you wonder if she really has gone mad. The sheer excess really livened up this stale rep effort.
2. Eugene Levy in New York Minute (2004)
Levy’s finest hour is in this unfunny Olsen twins adventure. As the dim truancy officer on their tail, he provides the few moments of amusement, while also subtly suggesting he thinks the adorable sisters should be shot.
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A-Z of English words with surprising origins
Award-winning etymologist Henry Hitchings thought he did, until he studied the origins of English
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When I set out to write a study of the history of words, I thought I had a decent grasp of where even the most curious English ones originate. Those with the prefix al- – as in alchemy and alcohol – often have Arabic roots, and many seafaring terms – skipper, schooner, land-lubber – are Dutch. |
But there were plenty of surprises. Who knew that marmalade, for instance, while eternally associated in my mind with Paddington Bear, is in fact Portuguese? So here is an A-to-Z of some of my favourite English words that have been absorbed from and inspired by other languages.
A is for…
Avocado, which comes from Nahuatl, a language spoken by the Aztecs. Their name for it, ahuacatl, also meant ”testicle”.
B is for…
Bonsai. Although we think the tree-cultivating art is Japanese, it originated in China.
C is for…
Coleslaw. Supposedly eaten in ancient Rome, it comes from the Dutch kool-salade (”cabbage salad”).
D is for…
Dachshund, a compound of the German Dachs (”badger”) and Hund (”dog”). Originally the breed was known in Germany as Dachs Krieger, or ”badger warrior”.
E is for…
Enthusiasm. From the Greek entheos, which means ”to be within energy”, suggesting being spiritually ”possessed”.
F is for…
Flamenco, from the Spanish name for a Fleming (i.e. someone from Flanders).
G is for…
Goulash, an invention by Hungarian herdsmen whose name derives from gulyas.
H is for…
Hotchpotch, used in Norman legal jargon to denote property collected and then divided.
I is for…
Intelligentsia, a collective term for the intellectual class which derives from Latin but came to us from Russian.
J is for…
Juggernaut, Sanskrit for a giant carriage used to transport an image of the god Krishna.
K is for…
Kangaroo, from gangurru, the large black male roo in the Guugu Yimidhirr language.
L is for…
Lilac, which comes from the Persian nilak, meaning ”of a bluish shade”.
M is for…
Mandarin. The name of the fruit feels as though it ought to be Chinese, but may well have come from Swedish.
N is for…
Namby-pamby. Nickname of the 18th-century poet Ambrose Phillips, coined by the satirist Henry Careybecause of his sentimental verses
O is for…
Onslaught, from the Dutch aanslag – related to a word in Old High German for a shower.
P is for…
Penguin, a compound of two Welsh words, pen and gwyn, which mean ”head” and ”white” – even though penguins have black heads. It is likely that ‘penguin’ was at one time the name of similar, now extinct bird which had a white patch near its bill.
Q is for…
Quack can be traced to the Dutch kwaksalver, literally someone who hawked ointments.
R is for…
Regatta, from Venetian dialect, it originally signified any kind of contest.
S is for…
Sabotage. Supposed to derive from the tendency of striking workers to damage machinery by throwing shoes into it – sabot being an old French word for a wooden shoe.
T is for…
Tattoo, Captain Cook saw Polynesian islanders marking their skin with dark pigment. Long before that the word signified a signal or drumbeat, a Dutch expression for ‘Close off the tap’, used to recall tippling soldiers.
U is for…
Umbrella, appeared in English as early as 1609 (in a letter by John Donne). In the middle of the 18th century the device was adopted by the philanthropist Jonas Hanway as a protection against the London rain.
V is for…
Vanilla, ”little sheath” in Spanish.
W is for…
Walnut, a modern rendering of the Old English walhnutu (‘foreign nut’), so known because it grew mainly in Italy.
X is for…
Xebec, a little vessel with three masts, from the Arabic shabbak, a small warship.
Y is for…
Yogurt, a mispronunciation of a Turkish word.
Z is for…
Zero, whose immediate source is French or Italian, but its origins are in Arabic – and before that in the Sanskrit word sunya, which meant both ”nothing” and ”desert”.
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Indiana Jones sequel is the most mistake-ridden film of 2008
The new Indiana Jones sequel has topped a list of the year’s most mistake-ridden films.
Despite having a budget of more than £100 million and Hollywood’s most famous director at the helm, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull racked up 67 continuity and historical errors.
One obvious blunder was raised by motorcycle enthusiasts who noticed that the Harley Davidson used in the film, which was set in 1957, was actually a post-2000 model.
Another historical error was made on a map used in the film which used the name Belize, even though the country was called British Honduras until 1973.
There were also many continuity mistakes, including one which showed Harrison Ford with his shirt tucked in and then untucked in the same scene.
The errors have been compiled by film website moviemistakes.com, which encourages fans to point out the errors they notice.
Number two on the list was The Dark Knight with 46 mistakes.
The new Batman film, starring the late Heath Ledger, has been named film of the year in a poll and took £48.7 million at the UK box office – but fans still spotted some glaring bloopers.
At one point the Joker appears to sport different hairstyles in the same scene, while later in the film he is shown holding a gun in different hands.
Third on the list was the Abba musical Mamma Mia!, which was recently named as the best-selling DVD in film history. It has grossed more than £360 million worldwide and £70 million in the UK, knocking Titanic off the top spot.
Fans pointed out 45 mistakes. In one scene a man is shown getting out of the water but in the next shot he is completely dry.
In another a hairdryer changes colour from silver to green.
Jon Sandys, head of moviemistakes.com, said: “With the budget of many movies, you’d think they could avoid mistakes like this, or at least use computers to cover them up. But they keep cropping up, and eagle-eyed movie fans keep spotting them.”
Top ten mistake-ridden films of 2008
1 – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – 67 mistakes
2 – The Dark Knight – 46 mistakes
3 – Mamma Mia! – 45 mistakes
3 – Twilight – 45 mistakes
5 – High School Musical 3: Senior Year – 41 mistakes
6 – Journey to the Centre of the Earth – 31 mistakes
7 – Step Brothers – 24 mistakes
8 – Quantum of Solace – 23 mistakes
8 – Get Smart – 23 mistakes
10 – Iron Man – 21 mistakes
2 Comments
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