My Favorite Movies

Regularly voted the scariest movie of all time, thanks to Friedkin's taut direction, wonderful performances [especially from Jason Miller as Father Karras and Ellen Burstyn, who damaged her spine carrying out one effect] and the gripping source material by William Peter Blatty [who has a cameo as the producer of the movie Burstyn is acting in], Many scenes have become the stuff of legend: possessed child Regan [Blair] vomiting pea soup or getting a bit graphic on the bed with a crucifix, but the creeping horror of the movie remains embedded in your mind well after the credits have rolled. A director's cut is available, featuring Regan's infamus spider-walk, alternate ending and "improved" sound but try and search out the 25th Anniversary Edition with the great documentary "The Fear of God".

Darren Aronofsky's follow-up to his groundbreaking "Pi" is a portrait of addiction, disturbing in the achingly emotive performances and in its suggestion we could all go down that road. Ellen Burstyn is Sara, whose addiction to sugar and television becomes an addiction to diet pills as she tries to lose weight to enter a tv game show. Her son, Harry [Jared Leto] is addicted to heroin, as is his girlfriend Marion [Jennifer Connelly]. This is not your typical drug-addicts-cleanup story, this is a stunning, brutal account of where addiction can lead all of us!

Staggering adaptation of Thomas Keneally's best-seller about the real-life Catholic war profiteer who initially flourished by sucking up to the Nazis, but eventually went broke saving the lives of more than 1000 Polish jews by employing them in his factory, manufacturing crockery for the German army. Filmed almost entirely on location in Poland, in gritty black & white, but with a pace to match the most frenzied Spielberg works, this looks and feels like nothing Hollywood has ever made before. The three central characters rate...and receive....unforgettable performances, Liam Neeson, who's towering as Oskar Schindler, Ben Kingsley, superb as his Jewish accountant [and conscience] and Ralph Fiennes as the odious Nazi commandant. Outstanding screenplay by Steven Zaillian and cinematography by Janusz Kaminski. Spielberg's most intense and personal film to date. Seven Oscars include Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Editing, and Original Score [John Williams]; review by L. Maltin.

Make no mistake, this is not a gangster movie but out -and -out heist fun. They've got the suits, the unexplained nicknames and the ruthless boss Joe[1940s tough guy Lawrence Tierney] keeping it in the family with son Nice Guy Eddie [Chris Penn]. What they don't got is loyalty. These guys are purely out for the money and in Mr Blonde's case, the thrill of killing, although he is the only one who doesn't kill anyone. Tarantino planned to have his friends playing the key roles until actress Lorraine Bracco [then Kietel's wife] passed the script to Kietel who signed up at once, helping to raise cash and profile. The role of Mr Blue finally went to Eddie Bunker, a convicted armed robber once on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List!

Fight Club is one of those movies where you think you know what's going on until the last reel and you realise you were completely off the mark. Adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's novel [Fincher gave the film a different ending, which Palahniuk preferred to his own], Ed Norton is a bored, repressed, white-collar salesman whose meeting with Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham-Carter....and the blowing-up of his apartment...changes his life. From here on we are in fight club mode with the two men, and eventually a whole band of fellow repressed males, getting off on beating the crap out of each other. Stylishly directed by David Fincher, Fight Club is a mesmerising ride through contemporary culture fuelled by the performances of Pitt, Norton, Carter and a fantastic turn from Meatloaf