Shorts & Rants: No particular order, tell me your favorites and I will add them to the post.
1. The Silence of the Lambs (1991): Hannibal Lecter’s (Anthony Hopkins) mocking assessment of Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), after she gives him a questionnaire to answer: (“You’re so-o ambitious, aren’t you? You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well-scrubbed, hustling rube, with a little taste. Good nutrition’s given you some length of bone, but you’re not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you’ve tried so desperately to shed – pure West Virginia. What does your father do? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamp? You know how quickly the boys found you. All those tedious, sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars, while you could only dream of getting out. Getting anywhere, getting all the way to the F…B…I”); and then after Clarice retorts, he adds his famous line of dialogue: (“A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chi-an-ti. You fly back to school now, little Starling. Fly, fly, fly. Fly, fly, fly.”) Pure West Virginia
2. Animal House (1978): Bluto’s (John Belushi) factually inaccurate motivational speech after the Delta House Fraternity has been closed: (“Over? Did you say ‘over’? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!…What the f–k happened to the Delta I used to know? Where’s the spirit? Where’s the guts, huh? ‘Ooh, we’re afraid to go with you, Bluto, we might get in trouble.’ Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I’m not gonna take this. Wormer, he’s a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer…”) German’s Bombed Pearl Harbor
3. Five Easy Pieces (1970): Bobby Dupea’s (Jack Nicholson) mad ‘diner’ tirade when ordering a plain omelette (with tomatoes instead of potatoes), a cup of coffee and a side order of wheat toast from a stubborn, live-by-the-rules waitress (Lorna Thayer) who won’t allow substitutions: (“I’d like an omelet, plain, and a chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, no mayonnaise, no butter, no lettuce. And a cup of coffee… Yeah, now all you have to do is hold the chicken, bring me the toast, give me a check for the chicken salad sandwich, and you haven’t broken any rules.”) Hold the Chicken Between Your Legs
4. Cool Hand Luke (1967): A moving character study of a non-conformist, anti-hero loner who bullheadedly resists authority and the Establishment. One of the film’s posters carried a tagline related to the character’s rebelliousness: “The man…and the motion picture that simply do not conform.” With this vivid film, director Stuart Rosenberg made one of the key films of the 1960s, a decade in which protest against established powers was a key theme. One line of the film’s dialogue from Strother Martin is often quoted: “What we have here is…failure to communicate.”
5. Some Like It Hot (1959): Admirable honesty. Sugar Kane’s (Marilyn Monroe) ‘fuzzy end of the lollipop’ speech about bad luck, mostly with saxophone players: (“You fall for ‘em. You really love ‘em, you think ‘This is going to be the biggest thing since the Graf Zeppelin.’ The next thing you know…”). You fall for ‘em. You love them.
6. Rebel Without a Cause (1955): A film that sympathetically views rebellious, American, restless, misunderstood, middle-class youth. The tale of youthful defiance, which could have been exploitative – but wasn’t, provides a rich, but stylized (and partly out-dated) look at the world of the conformist mid-1950s from the perspective of the main adolescent male character – a troubled teen with ineffectual parents, who faces a new school environment. The infamous “you’re tearing me apart” scene.
7. On the Waterfront (1954): A classic, award-winning, controversial film directed by Elia Kazan – a part drama and part gangster film. The authentic-looking, powerful film is concerned with the problems of trade unionism, corruption and racketeering. And it is set on New York’s oppressive waterfront docks, where dock workers struggled for work, dignity, and to make ends meet under the control of hard-knuckled, mob-run labor unions that would force them to submit to daily ‘shape-ups’ by cruel hiring bosses. Marlon Brando’s Famous “On the Waterfront” Speech. I could’ve had class
8. Ace in the Hole a.k.a. The Big Carnival (1951): A cynical drama, well acted and tautly directed, it belongs in a class with such other American films as Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd.Kirk Douglas plays a down-and-out newspaper reporter, whose last chance for success depends on his exploiting an Albuquerque mining disaster. As the days pass, his need to make the story bigger than it is replaces any journalistic urge he may have had at one time to tell the Truth. Even for Albuquerque, this is pretty Albuquerque.
9. Casablanca (1942): The classic and much-loved romantic melodrama Casablanca (1942), always found on top-ten lists of films, is a masterful tale of two men vying for the same woman’s love in a love triangle. The story of political and romantic espionage is set against the backdrop of the wartime conflict between democracy and totalitarianism. [The date given for the film is often given as either 1942 and 1943. That is because its limited premiere was in 1942, but the film did not play nationally, or in Los Angeles, until 1943.] We’ll Always Have Paris. Bogart and Bergman at the Casablanca airport at the end of the movie. We’ll Always Have Paris.
10. Gone With the Wind (1939): Scarlet silhouetted against a sunset: “As God is my witness, as God is my witness, they’re not going to lick me! I’m going to live through this, and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again – no, nor any of my folks! If I have to lie, steal, cheat, or kill, as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”
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