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Wasn't that the one with John Wayne and Ricky Nelson? Great film, but not the best western - what about The Magnificent Seven? - which, by the way, is not as good as the original film it was based on, Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa. If you ever get the chance, see it!

Mikey wrote:Wasn't that the one with John Wayne and Ricky Nelson? Great film, but not the best western - what about The Magnificent Seven? - which, by the way, is not as good as the original film it was based on, Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa. If you ever get the chance, see it!

Has an uncut version of seven samurai been released on dvd yet? i'm a big akira kurosawa fan myself -- if you've never watched his movies, you should check them out. its an interesting perspective through postwar japanese film that modern japan has almost ignored in its modern films, not to mention its modern politics and cultural perceptions.

Yeah, The Magnificent Seven and the Searchers are probably all around better westerns in a critical sense, admittedly. Rio Bravo is just so damn perfect.

My favorites are Close Encounters Of the Third Kind, The Big Lebowski, The Fountain, and American Beauty. Being on a Star Trek forum, I'm surprised that more of us don't mention Star Trek. But for me it's more of the ST mythology as a whole than any one movie or series that I find so appealing. And it's the same way with The Lord Of The Rings, and Tolkien.

I agree with your take on the "backstory" as being what makes 'Trek, Tlkien, etc. so great. On that note, am I the only LotR books fan who thought that Jackson's films were complete, painful-to-watch crap?

Definitely the original "The Manchurian Candidate".

It has some of the best characters in movie history, the best one being Angela Lansbury as the mother from hell.

Lord of the Rings (though still not as good as the books)
Star Trek First Contact
Shawshank Redemption
300
Hot Fuzz
Galaxy Quest

On that note, am I the only LotR books fan who thought that Jackson's films were complete, painful-to-watch crap?

It seems so. I liked them. Granted it was never going to be as good as the book but it was still dman good. i've also read the books 6 times so know my way around the stroy quite well.

The films were actualy far better than I thought they would be. My first impresion was that they were going to be like that horific animated film they made of the first two.
Although they weren't perfect, I thought the films did as good as they could.

Really... I thought the films did an absolutely perfect job of completely removing the element of Tolkien that held the greatest attraction - that is, the backstory, the languages, the history of the Men of the West, the history of Sauron as a minor demigod, and teh resultant feeling of the contemporary events being just the tip of the iceberg that was the events of the prior two ages.

Even without having read The Silmarillion et. al., one could still very clearly get that feeling from the books.

I liked the LOTR movies, but I don't compare them to the books. I haven't read the trilogy in a while.

Won't list the ST movies, since they're in another category...

Transformers: The movie (1986)

Transformers: Live-action

Big Trouble in Little China

Enter the Dragon

The OT

The Dark Crystal

Mortal Kombat

The Longest Day

Spider-man

kostmayer wrote:Definitely the original "The Manchurian Candidate".

I'm not the biggest slobbering Sinatra fan out there - but close. How about The Man with the Golden Arm?

Mikey wrote:Really... I thought the films did an absolutely perfect job of completely removing the element of Tolkien that held the greatest attraction - that is, the backstory, the languages, the history of the Men of the West, the history of Sauron as a minor demigod, and teh resultant feeling of the contemporary events being just the tip of the iceberg that was the events of the prior two ages.

Even without having read The Silmarillion et. al., one could still very clearly get that feeling from the books.

I have often had this discussion. I've read all the works, LOTR, Silmarillion, Histories of Middle-earth, Unfinished Tales, Hobbit, and even the Letters of JRRT (not Children of Hurin yet, though). I knew the film couldn't be as good as the books, but I didn't expect them to be.
I take a different outlook on the films - that they're good as films. Just imagine them as films, and not based on anything else. They're pretty awesome that way, but when you start comparing everything - of course Tolkien's languages (there was a decent amount of Quenya and Sindarin, even a couple of words of Khuzdul), and the more minor characters; Bombadil, Glorfindel (too much Arwen), Beregrond... The history of Men, and of Sauron, though, don't really fall into LOTR. The history of Men is really the Akallabeth, and Sauron is just all over.

I think the fims are brilliant, but just not comparable to the bokos.

One of my alltime favorites is Aliens. The longer cut is a little better yet with the automatic century guns and such.

Thorin wrote:I have often had this discussion. ...

I suppose I am being somewhat unfair; it's just that part of me wonders, "why bother?" I felt the same when I watched the film version of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. I mean, the turned a phenomenal, intelligent sci-fi book into a run-away-and-shoot-stuff movie.