100 Things I Love About the Movies
Monday, August 3, 2015 at 10:01PM
NATHANIEL R in List-Mania, The Film Experience

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a group project for the Broken Projector Podcast's 100th episode in which several cinephiles were asked to list 7 things they loved about the movies. You should listen to it! I got a little carried away and was too longwinded (sorry!) but I highly recommend a listen because even though I do carry one, others are more succinct and the podcast also features various writers from Film School Rejects and our friend Katey Rich among fabulous others. I purposely didn't lean into geek culture titans like Star Wars and Spielberg classics and all of that because I new they'd be amply covered. But yes, I love early Star Wars and early Spielberg, too. I just rarely talk about it because it's all you hear about elsewhere. 

Anywayyyy... Not related but in a similar vein I chanced upon The Best Picture Project blog doing a 100 wide list, too, and... well, why limit myself to seven. So herewith, a mostly off the top of my head listing of 

100 Things I Love About the Movies 
(in no particular order and literally off the top of my head) 

 

  1. The feeling of possibility in that moment when the curtains go up or, rather, expand to fit the wider screen
  2. Opening titles that are their own short entity, not just overlayed on the movie
  3. Musicals - for being the greatest of film genres and essentially combining every art form
  4. Women Who Lie To Themselves™ - the greatest of subgenres
  5. The Redford Theater in Detroit (which played old movies every other weekend on a massive screen with a live organ pre-show) which is where I first fell in love with Old Hollywood
  6. That time exiting a revival of Singin' in the Rain as a kid when I swung around a pole in unbridled enthusiasm for the movies
  7. The pride of learning every nonsense syllable of "We Go Together" from Grease
  8. My mom's deep enthusiasm for Witness (1985) and her weird guilt about loving it so much
  9. Dreading my dad's grumpiness when the family went to Titanic (1997) on a Christmas break only to realize he loved it. And how.
  10. Liz Taylor doing Bette Davis "What a dump!"
  11. When Dorothy Gale opens her door and leaves sepia tone behind for color
  12. The complete works of Pedro Almodóvar
  13. "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
  14. Moulin Rouge!
  15. Catherine Deneuve's hair
  16. Vivien Leigh's eyebrows
  17. Marilyn Monroe's voice

    83 more things after the jump...

  18. Paul Newman's eyes
  19. Natalie Wood's lips
  20. Paul Rudd's nose
  21. Colin Farrell's eyebrows
  22. Montgomery Clift's angst
  23. Gene Kelly's everything
  24. Michelle Pfeiffer 'feeling so much yummier' in a catsuit
  25. "Spectacular! Spectacular! from Moulin Rouge!
  26. "You're a little liar aren't you?" Nicole Kidman in Birth
  27. Pandora's Box and The Passion of Joan or Arc, my two favorite silent films... 
  28. But also: silent films in general
  29. Bette Davis's cackle in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
  30. That time I took my nephews to see Babe
  31. Michelle Pfeiffer on the piano top
  32. William Hurt and Kathleen Turner obviously not faking it in Body Heat
  33. Edward Scissorhands origin flashback
  34. Slow dissolves
  35. The posters of Bob Peak but especially Excalibur and Apocalypse Now
  36. The sound of lightsabers
  37. "All those moments will be lost... like tears in the rain"

  38. Rewinding "Mein Herr" over and over again when I first discovered Cabaret on VHS
  39. That the best movies are often about the movies
  40. The "Tom, Dick or Harry" number in Kiss Me Kate
  41. The middle seat in the middle row of the movie theater -location location location
  42. Agnes Moorehead in The Magnificent Ambersons
  43. River Phoenix in Running on Empty
  44. Lehi Roller Mills in Footlose, The Royal Tenenbaums home, and the apartment hallway in Trick... three locations which were familiar visions from real life and the big screen, too
  45. The rush of giddy feeling, without boundaries, whenever the girls are reunited in Heavenly Creatures
  46.  Lillian Gish's rocking chair silhouette and Robert Mitchum's tattoos in The Night of the Hunter
  47. That shower room psychotic break in They Shoot Horses Don't They?
  48. The trail of the dress through grass in the opening of Howard's End
  49. Ada's suicide fantasy in The Piano, "there is a silence where hath been no sound..."



  50. That endless closeup of hilarious seduction in The Lady Eve
  51. Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams
  52. "Damn. I said God Damn!" (Uma + Cocaine)
  53. Miranda Priestley's introduction in The Devil Wears Prada
  54. "The Man That Got Away" from A Star is Born
  55. The colors in Vertigo
  56. The score in Psycho
  57. The kiss in A Place in the Sun
  58. "It twirled up!"
  59. Nashville every single second of its 159 minutes (one of the rare movies that justify a crazy running time) but especially the beginning, the ending, and "It's Easy")
  60. Madison pronouncing her name in Splash


     
  61. That emerald green dress in Atonement
  62. The morning ritual editing of All That Jazz
  63. Michelle Pfeiffer's predator gaze in White Oleander
  64. Watching marquee letters being changed on Thursday nights at the local movie theater when I was a kid (back when they had to do it by hand with a ladder) what would the weekend bring?
  65. "Night on Bald Mountain" segment of Fantasia 
  66. Renting Trouble in Paradise and watching it literally back to back from delight
  67. Winona Ryder's diary writing monocle in Heathers
  68. Jane Fonda checking her watch during a f*** in Klute
  69. Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby
  70. Spider-Man's upside down kiss
  71. Joan Crawford's about-face from soft (Grand Hotel) to hard (Rain) in 1932
  72. "Oh, insight!"
  73. Persona


     
  74. The first time seeing the T-1000 in action: jawdropping, frightening, exciting, everything.
  75. My very late arrival at the astonishments of Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus) which served as a happy reminder that there is always more great cinema to discover
  76. "I got moves you've never seen."
  77. Sigourney Weaver's head-tilt before burning shit up in Aliens
  78. Waiting for Guffman
  79. Anjelica Huston's elevator descent in The Grifters
  80. The silhouette axe murder in Straitjacket
  81. Judi Dench's voiceover in Notes on a Scandal
  82. Studio logos, but especially Universal and Paramount and how the graphics change over the years
  83. That there's a perfect actor for every great director: Bless Robert Altman for Shelley Duvall
  84. Sound as character in The Conversation
  85. The crosscutt "Tonight" medley in West Side Story
  86. The subtitles in Annie Hall
  87. "Le Jazz Hot" in Victor/Victoria
  88. Being super embarrassed with my mom during the "fancy a swim?" scene in A Room With a View
  89. "Let's keep going" - that exchange of looks in Thelma & Louise
  90. The costumes of Bram Stoker's Dracula


     
  91. Anita Ekberg strolling through Rome with a cat on her head in La Dolce Vita
  92. Dianne Wiest in Bullets Over Broadway
  93. Deep focus
  94. "Jack, I swear."
  95. That time we went straight to Bring It On on the way home from hours at the beach all sandy and sunkissed and the movie was like even more sunshine. But less carcinogenic and way funnier.
  96. Greta Gerwig's "Modern Love" run in Frances Ha
  97. Oscar Nomination Morning
  98. "Too many things. Too many things. Too many things."
  99. That this list could stretch into 100,000 things and not just 100
  100. Leaving a movie theater on such a fizzy high that the world looks different to you when you emerge from the dark.  
Article originally appeared on The Film Experience (http://thefilmexperience.net/).
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