My Favorite Movies

Perhaps the ultimate "children's" film ever made, Oz helps us find the kid in all of us again. The mythical tale, based on Frank L. Baum's book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz comes superbly to life in MGM's grand epic structure. Over fourteen screenwriters, five directors, scores of technicians, lighting , sound, and musicians brought the 1939 classic triumph together. Most likely Judy Garland's most beloved character turn, she was thought too old for the part, but she not only pulled it off, she made us redefine what it is to be young and scared and alone, and a good friend.

It has been called the film that launched Science Fiction films as a genre, well if you do not count such films as a Trip to the Moon by George Milies. However, it can be said that it helped develop a sense of panic the shape and position modern man in technological times. Perhaps more a keen to Blade Runner or The Matrix in a even more technological turmoiled world shows us that Metropolis still holds as much weight in 2008 as it did in 1927.

Die Letzte Mann was a 1924 gem made by F. W. Murnau at time when it was greatly viewed as a success to the older generation who the world seem to be casting aside for younger, hipper, more modern thinking. The film shows the life, failure, loss and finally in a fantasy sequence, success of a doorman who is played by very able and flexible Emil Jannings. The Last Laugh (English title) show us that old people are worth much more then we sometimes treat them as.

Stanley Kubrick single handedly reinvigorated the Science Fiction film with this amazing masterwork of technology vs. man, ritualistic beginnings of man and the power of myth. Exploring everything from space navigation to the very concept of time and space, the film was widely liked. Not always clear and sometimes downright "trippy" the film proved the cinema could be used to create wonder and awe once more. Semi avant grade in it's final forty minutes, the film has been mocked, praised, booed, heralded, criticized, lauded and honored, not bad for a little science fiction film the Kubrick never thought would catch on.

classic, story about friendship, encouragement for the future of mankind at the same time