Thursday, April 20, 2006

What's Your Favorite Film... Objectively Best? (if different)

Blade Runner with Harrison Ford is my favorite and one of the objective best. Directed by Ridley Scott, possibly the most skillful director alive, Kingdom of Heaven (2005) Matchstick Men (2003) Black Hawk Down (2001)Hannibal (2001) Gladiator (2000) G.I. Jane (1997) White Squall (1996) 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992) Thelma & Louise (1991) Black Rain (1989) Someone to Watch Over Me (1987) Legend (1985) Blade Runner (1982) Alien (1979)

Bladerunner presents an unmatchable, extraordinary atmosphere through its vision of the future and its eerie soundtrack. As literature, this film presents a messianic metaphor through Rutger Hauer in his best performance as Roy the Leader Replicant looking to remove an intentional flaw in his genes, a rather limited lifespan. Ford is exceptional as he seeks redemption for his career (cop) as a detective/assassin of replicants. He is torn between his consideration of replicants as humans and his duty to terminate them for demanding recognition as such by fighting for their lives. This is Ford's best performance as he toggles between strength, fear and indecision.

Sean Young, Edward James Olmos and Darryl Hannah round out the cast of this thrilling, heartrending film.

Plot Summary for Blade Runner (1982)
In a cyberpunk vision of the future, man has developed the technology to create replicants, human clones used to serve in the colonies outside Earth but with fixed lifespans. In Los Angeles, 2019, Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specializes in terminating replicants. Originally in retirement, he is forced to re-enter the force when five replicants escape from an offworld colony to Earth.
Summary written by mailto:{gsr@cbmamiga.demon.co.uk}

Los Angeles, 2019: Rick Deckard of the LPD's Blade Runner unit prowls the steel & micro-chip jungle of the 21st century for assumed humanoids known as 'replicants'. Replicants were declared illegal after a bloody mutiny on an Off-World Colony, and are to be terminated upon detection. Man's obsession with creating a being equal to himself has back-fired.
Summary written by mailto:{mjment@hotmail.com}

Deckard is a Blade Runner, a police man of the future who hunts down and terminates replicants, artificially created humans. He wants to get out of the force, but is drawn back in when 4 "skin jobs", a slang term for replicants, hijack a ship back to Earth. The city that Deckard must search for his prey is a huge, sprawling, bleak vision of the future. This film questions what it is to be human, and why life is so precious.
Summary written by mailto:{bole@life.bio.sunysb.edu}

Amadeus with Tom Hulse as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is by far the objectively best film ever made. Don't be fooled by its subject by thinking it may be a little "artsy fartsy" because it is anything but. Yes, it's rich but unpretentious, serious but funny, great acting, music, costumes, cinemetography, pacing... Well, it's directed by Milos Forman, also among the best drectors by far, Man on the Moon (1999) The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) Valmont (1989)Amadeus (1984) Ragtime (1981) Hair (1979) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Forman never misses a beat in anything he does as he brings his European sensitivity and in particular his Czech storytelling ability. He would never let the truth get in the way of a good story as Amadeus is fictionalized about his relationship with his nemesis who pretends to be his friend, played by Best Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham.

This film is bawdy, raunchy and classy at the same time. I have never met a moviegoer who did not see its extraordinary merits.