UPDATE: Top 10 Greatest Conspiracy Films Of All Time

At long last, we revive our ever-so-popular Top 10 Films lists.  Being a film maker and well-versed in film history (and real history for that matter), we can't resist the opportunity to list the biggest conspiracy flicks ever committed to acetate (celluloid went out decades ago silly), and that we really like too.

Some of these selections are completely fictitious, yet they bear an uncanny resemblance to real history that happened subsequent to the film's release.  Some are fictionalized versions of real conspiracies that folks are afraid to talk about in real life.  And some are just plain true and have been well known for centuries, if not millennia.

We note that the word 'conspiracy' comes from the Latin con spirare, which simply means "to breathe together'.  Thus, anytime two or more people come together for a single purpose, it is a conspiracy.  'Theory' just means that it's an educated guess based on the facts at hand, but that has yet to be proved.  When you dissect the term 'conspiracy theory', you find that a lot of people and organizations put forth conspiracy theories, including governments, and as you watch these great flicks, you'll notice that government figures prominently in many (if not all) the great conspiracies of history.

So strap yourself in, get out your tin foil hat, and warm up the Netflix.  Here comes 20 hours of pure conspiracy that will leave you so paranoid that Edward Snowden won't even get you up any more.

Yes, Virginia, there really are conspiracies.  After all, if there weren't, why would criminal conspiracy be against the law in most civilized nations?

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Conspiracy Theory (1997)- We lead off with the conspiracy film to end all conspiracy films, and the one that answers the question, "What in the hell happened to Mel?"  Richard Donner plays god to Mel Gibson in the story of a man driven to madness by the certain knowledge that government is creeping into every corner of our lives.  And guess what?  He's right - not only in the film, but everything the character spews breathlessly trying to get people to see has become common knowledge now.  It's one of the things we love about conspiracy theories - they are usually true in most respects - but no one remembers that it was loonies like Mel that told us about it.

Body Double (1984)- This is a quirky and really fun flick, if for no other reason than to see Melanie Griffith nude!  Brian de Palma, that wizard of weird, brings us a convoluted tale with dozens of plot twists that keep your brain spinning as you try to keep up with who is the bad guy and who's the good.  Even at the end, it's not really clear in the cloud of moral ambiguity.  And did we mention Melanie naked?

Executive Action (1974)- Before Oliver Stone had even graduated film school, there was a definitive film exploring who killed JFK.  Master tale-teller Dalton Trumbo (Papillon) explores the complex conspiracy behind one of the most shocking events in modern history.  A complex consortium of business, military and social interests come together to rid themselves of one of the most radical presidents since Lincoln.  Burt Lancaster and Will Geer head up a fine cast of cold, calculating individuals who order the death of presidents for breakfast.

The China Syndrome (1979)- Before Fukushima, everyone thought that run-away meltdowns would go from west to east.  We've since found out that this should have been called the New York syndrome.  James Bridges inhabits the God chair and bullies Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon into some fine performances as they race to make the world aware of the coming catastrophe.  When we watch this one, we wonder why reporters like these don't really exist.  You'da thunk when this movie came true three years ago, someone would tell us.  It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!

The Stuntman (1980)- This is one of those rare films that shouldn't be good, but it is.  Richard Rush is the deity on the set and Peter O'Toole is the deity on screen, turning in a masterful and nuanced performance that is frequently overlooked.  The story is a complex web of overlapping conspiracies that leave the audience breathless at the end and wondering if anything really got resolved.  After all, in Hollywood, nothing is what it appears to be.

All the President's Men (1976)- This was the defining conspiracy of the 1970s, and it brought down an American president and his entire administration.  It also launched the career of Hilary Rodham Clinton, who's a walking conspiracy in and of herself.  Allen J. Pakula plays God to Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, who are playing ace reporters Woodward and Bernstein, and who haven't done a damn thing since Watergate, which is yet another conspiracy.  It's a great story and the style of this film is obviously the inspiration for JFK, complete with shadowy "Deep Throat" feeding all the right information at all the right times - a conspiracy that has yet to be unveiled.

Capricorn One (1974)- If you believe the Moon landings were faked, this movie will thrill you.  If you don't believe it, then this film may change your mind.  Peter Hyams writes and lords it over the set, with Eliot Gould playing (yet another) intrepid reporter who's on to the big story, but it's so BIG and there are so many folks trying to kill him that he's having a bit of trouble getting the word out.  Granted, this flick is about a Mars trip, but one look at the spacecraft, suits, etc., tell you this is a thinly veiled tale about Kubrick, Disney, NASA, and the trip to the Moon.

Z (1969)- Americans tend to think they invented conspiracy theories, and that all the mayhem in the 60s was their exclusive domain.  Costa-Gavras mounts the God chair to tell us differently.  This based-on-a-true-story is a French telling of events in Greece in the 60s, with political assassinations, cover-ups, plots, and intrigue.  Most Americans don't know this film, which is fine.  Keeps copies in stock for us film afficionados.  However, for those brave souls who know that films are made in the rest of the world, too, this makes a fine double feature with JFK, so you get a little broader picture of how the world was back then.

The Third Man (1949)- It's a toss-up as to whether this film should be #1.  This is a great film in every way.  Story by Graham Greene, Carol Reed in the God chair, Orson Wells and Joseph Cotton chasing around on set, some great lines, and a soundtrack that sparked a craze for zither music back when, how can you miss?!  This is film noir at it's moody best, with conspiracies run amok in post-war Vienna, and three victorious governments all competing for who gets to take credit for crime busting.  In fact, the bureaucratic mess that runs through the whole story is a whole conspiracy in itself, before we toss black markets and war profiteering into the fire.  A great film on any list, but right at the top of this one.

Julius Caesar (1953)- Let's see: greatest conspiracy in Western history, written by William Shakespeare, lorded over by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, starring Marlon Brando, James Mason, John Geilgud, Greer Garson, and enough quality acting to fill four films - and you wonder why this tops the list?  Imagine the Senate getting together to plot the death of not only a president, but a living god, by thrusting knives into his all too human flesh, which spawns one of the most famous questions in all history, gives us the name for an entire month and makes the Ides of March a cultural singularity.  This is the definitive film version, which is why Olivier, Brannaugh and Gibson never attempted to tackle it again.  This is the conspiracy that gave birth to a thousand conspiracies!

Honorable Mention: With so many good conspiracies out there, it's hard to make a list of just 10.  We have to throw Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much somewhere in this list.  Both versions (Hitch liked it so much he made the film twice).  The first one has Peter Lorre at his nasally best, while the second has Jimmy Steward sputtering and Doris Day chirping.  If you want a fun triple-header for a lazy Saturday afternoon, Netflix these two with Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn in the comedic send-up, called Foul Play.

So there you have it.  If we added something you don't like, or forgot something you think should have been here, just remember how much you paid for this list.  These are the flicks that have entertained us for decades, and stay fresh even after dozens of viewings.  Like good books, you wear out copy after copy over the years.  Thank God for MPEG4!

Happy Viewing and hope to catch you lurking around this site again some time soon.

Sampai jumpa!
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Reading our list inspired long-time LFS fan Robert to pipe up with his own list.  Of course, we couldn't agree more with his choices, with the exception of Minority Report, just because we hate Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise - double whammy.  Have a look:

Hello Bernard:
When you talk about media I stop still and listen carefully. As a media observer myself, your post on conspiracy movies inspired some thought, so I check my collection of DVDs. For the most part your list of best conspiracy films corresponds to mine with a few exception and additions.
1.) "Seven Days in May." Military coup d'etat frighteningly prescient for Obammy times since he has fired over two hundreds command level officers in some kind of unexplained purge.
2.) "Conspiracy Theory." Loved that movie. I was a victim of microwave experiments in the Army in 1958.
3.) "Manchurian Candidate." Both new and  old versions are good. Both Meryl Streep and Angela Lansbury's character as Mrs. Shaw was extraordinary. The mind controlled operative, Raymond Shaw, used to take down a government makes me think of all the drug-induced mass shootings these days that invoke more and more social controls.
4.) "The Island." An updated clone of "The Clonus Horror" (1979) where it's the politicians that want immortality via a top-secret cloning conspiracy to harvest body parts for themselves.
6.) "Executive Action." In my mind the JFK assassination is the first coup d'tat. Baby Bush's selection the 2nd, and the results of 9/11 the final.
7.) "Enemy of the State." A real foreshadowing of the NSA, DHS, and NDAA goons out of control takeover.
8.) "Three Days of the Condor." A secret CIA within the CIA manipulating sovereign countries around the world for exploitation.
9.) "Minority Report." Pre-crime, facial and cornea recognition, robotic transportation systems, drones of all sorts are getting truer all the time. This is about using scape goats in a future society to support a corrupt system. Nothing new here. I sure like Max von Sydow a lot more in the old Bergman films.
10.) "The Matrix." A great metaphor for waking up.
11.) "The Third Man." Wartime black-marketer Harry Lime (Orson Wells)  amid footage of bombed out post war Vienna. It begins at a funeral and ends at a second funeral for the same person. Full circle.
There are more as genres criss-cross, but, for me, these films are my favorite ones with messages about conspiracy.

 

The 10 Weirdest Films of All Time

We here at Far Side Global Headquarters try to keep the weekend columns on the lighter side. The world is full of bad news, so why not put a little spark out there? We will return to our usual grousing and complaining on Monday. Fair enough?

OK, you asked for it (not really, but we can blame you anyway). Due to the overwhelming popularity of the first Top 100 list (yeah, we know it only had 10), we are adding our take on the really, truly weird. Orson Welles figures prominently in this list because his movies were, well, just weird.

To make it on this list, the film has to have some redeeming qualities. Good production value and acting help, but it can be just a legacy of weirdness, also. In a couple of cases, we just chose the weirdest of a weird director's filmography, because we only have ten slots here.

No, "Reefer Madness," nor any of its ilke made it on our list, because all propaganda is weird and we don't like it, so we don't promote it in any way. That's why you won't find Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi flicks on here, either. Just too weird, you know?

So, log on to Netflix and get your credit card ready, here comes a list of must-see weirdness for the whole family!
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10. Rhinoceros (1974) - Tom O'Horgan dares to sit in the God Seat and take on Eugene Ionesco in head-to-head combat. The German playwrights of Ionesco's era were a strange bunch, and their products are even stranger. O'Horgan is afraid to go it alone, so he brings in Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Karn Black to watch his six. The result is a brilliant rendition of the classic minimalist play, but it doesn't lose a single, precious drop of weirdness in translation. The central character watches his circle of friends and acquaintances turn into rhinoceroses, one by one. It's a metaphor for political movements, especially Nazism and Communism, and it works, if you know what the message is. Still, this is just one plain weird movie and well worth a rainy afternoon of your time.

9. Touch of Evil (1958) - This one has it all! Charlton Heston as a Mexican cop, Marlene Dietrich as a Mexican madame, Orson Welles as a small-town Texas sheriff, a young Dennis Weaver in a small role that inspired Alfred Hitchock's "Pyscho," and one of the longer uncut shots in cinema history (and the only one spanning two soverign nations). Not only is the story weird, but Heston as a Mexian cop has got to be the all-time weirdest casting decision ever. The accent alone will send shivvers down your spine. The motel scene with Heston's screen wife and Dennis Weaver has all the elements of "Psycho" packed into just a few minutes of screen time, with a Mexican gang thrown in to make it even more weird. Welles, of course, takes the God Chair, writing and acting credits, though we hear the Chair was re-enforced for this one.

8. The Trial (1962) - Yup, Orson again. This time, he wrestles with Franz Kafka and produces one of the all-time strangest flicks we know of. Once again, Welles sits in every chair on the set, not that we're complaining, of course. Anthony Perkins heads the cast as a mild-mannered clerk who gets tangled up in a bureaucratic nighmare, which twists and turns and contorts until it's hard to figure out what the truth is, or if there is even any truth at all. Naturally, that was Kafka's whole point, which is why his name became an adjective. Welles does a masterful job of blending halucination with reality until its all one big opium cloud. Perkins' acting is up to par and we feel his confusion, anger and frustration, as things go from bad to weird. The weirdest part of this movie is that once you finish, you look around at your world and see the movie come to life before your very eyes. You'll want to watch this one with your lawyer.

7. Crash (1996) - The question becomes, "What was David Cronenberg smoking, and when did he smoke it?" This movie is one of those pycho-sexual mind-blowers that's just too weird for words. A TV director gets into an auto accident and ends up in a world of sexual weirdness where people get off on watching staged car wrecks and touching each other's scars and disfigurements. Only Cronenburg could come up with this and it fits into his well-respected filmography of weirdness. This is also one of his least-known works, which is not surprising, if you make it to the last reel. James Spader and Holly Hunter top the cast list, with Holly playing a role unlike anything we've ever seen her do. James tends to drop back into his "Sex, Lies & Videotape" character, every now and then. The scene at the re-enactment of Jimmy Dean's death is just beyond weird. Where does Cronenberg come up with this stuff? It's almost as if he lives it...

6. Myra Breckinridge (1970) - OK, imagine you have a book by Gore Vidal, and a list of stars that includes Mae West, John Huston, Raquel Welch, Jim Backus, John Carradine, Farah Fawcett, Andy Divine, and even critic Rex Reed in his first and only on-screen role, and yes - even Tom Selleck in his film debut!  This probably wouldn't be first on your list of weirdness for a rainy Saturday afternoon, but buddy, this one is weird.  Rex Reed is transformed at the hands of a drug-addled surgeon into Raquel Welch (in front of an audience cheering along).  Raquel then goes on a series of adventures as she tries to break into the Hollywood elite, meeting strange characters and having very weird adventures along the way.  No collection of weird is complete without this title, but be warned, you're going to have to work to find it.  This movie is so weird that Gore Vidal wrote in Esquire Magazine it "proves that God exists and there is such a thing as Divine Symmetry," because the director Michael Sarne was reduced to slinging pizzas after the film's release.  Now, THAT's weird!


5. Zardoz (1974) - Sean Connery was fresh out of the 007 franchise, and John Boorman had written this really weird story about a post-apocolyptic world which had based itself on one of the few surviving books, "The Wizard of Oz." Connery, wanting to shake off the Bond Bubble, needed something to break the spell, and this was just weird enough to do it. He's a long-haired barbarian, carefully groomed to be Destroyer of Worlds. He flies around in 'godheads,' gets lost in crystals, is haunted by some weird floating head guy with a penciled moustache and an Egyptian head-dress. Connery's job is to destroy the Immortals, who have grown bored of thier lives, to the point that some have become 'apathetics.' His job is to introduce a little death and destruction to snap everyone out of their centuries-long doldrums. To get a handle on this flick, you'll need to read the book, "Wizard of Oz," by L. Frank Baum, not watch the movie. And yes, there is a BIG difference.

4. Eating Raoul (1982) - Paul Bartel takes pen in hand and sits in the God Chair, as well, for our next selection. Bartel's list of weird flicks includes, "Lust in the Dust,' which takes honorable mention on this list. Bartel and Robert Beltran head up the cast. The subjects are an LA couple who are self-righteous, pretentious and despise the immoral swingers who live all around them in the apartment building. They also want to open a restaurant, by the way. They find a way to clean up LA's swinger scene AND get money for their restaurant, all in one easy solution! This flick has something for everyone: wine lovers, swingers, cannibals, and mushroom lovers. As weird as it is, it is really funny, and you'll never look at your frying pan the same way again. The toy closet and, of course, the title character Raoul, are hysterical. But the whole thing is pretty darned weird, when you think about it. This is definitely a flick for the well-rounded collection of weird.

3. Edward Scissorhands (1990) - In the realm of weird, Tim Burton's God Chair will end up in the Smithsonian. He is the Sultan of Strange, the Wizard of Weird and the God of Gravitas. This particular film stands out for its complete artistry with non-sequitur. Borrowing from Mary Shelley, Vincent Price, in his last filmed performance, plays a mad inventor who lives in a castle on a hill in the middle of 50s suburbia. Where else? Johnny Depp is the Creature, and an all-star cast of misfits fills out the superb cast, including Alan Arkin, who we love in anything. Everything about this movie is just plain weird. The cookie-cutter pastel suburbia, the choreographed "go to work" scene, the topiaries, the costumes. It's kind of like "The Women's Room" meets "Frankenstein" and they kick ass on "Leave It To Beaver." It's a Gothic novel twisted into a Burton-esque landscape. We happen to think Burton is one of the greatest minds in film, and this one shows why. But, it doesn't change the fact that the movie is just...weird.

2. Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958) - No list of weird would be complete without Ed Wood in the God Chair. This guy's mature work looked worse than our childhood films. But, you gotta hand it to this guy...he's got staying power. We're not even going to try to describe this flick. It's so far out there, so disjointed, so bizzare that it's hard to believe a single person could have this scrambled of a vision. Ed must have suffered from dylexia, ADHD and myopia all at the same time. It's notable, of course, for Boris Karloff, who was just a weird guy. It's also notable because Philip Glass wrote a weird opera with nearly the same title. This is one of those movies to watch when you need inspiration, because if this guy could become famous making this kind of weirdness, well, we all have a fighting chance.

1. Liquid Sky (1982) - On our list of all-time weirdness, this one takes the cake and eats it, too. Slava Tsukerman hunkers down in the God Chair and takes us to New York City, which is a weird place, where aliens in a dinner plate arrive to load up on heroin (why they don't go to Afganistan, we don't know). In the process of cranking on the residents of a brownstone, they discover that the opiates produced by the brain at the moment of orgasm are far superior, and so invade the body of a young, nubile, bisexual punker. She then proceeds to become a world-class nympho, sucking up every orgasmic brain stem she can get her hands on. This flick is notable for its make-up and the music score, which we find haunting, though we haven't heard it in years now. Having no budget also made Slava very creative with special effects and the camera work is highly unusual and creative, as well. We are taken places most of us would never go. We see things most of us would never see. And we are thankful it's just a movie. This movie is equally fun because no one knows about it. We have met maybe a handful of folks who have seen it, and half of them only because we tied them down and forced them to watch, a la "Clockwork Orange." None have ever recovered from the experience. If you're a Fan of the Freaky, this movie is for you. It takes weird and flogs it into submission.

As mentioned above, our Honorable Mention goes to, "Lust in the Dust." Watch the flick, you'll soon understand why. Nuff sed.

So, that fills out our Weirdest Films list. Now, you may be saying, "Hey, these are pretty mainstream for the Far Side." We hear you. But, this list, we felt, should be accessable to most folks. Weird implies "different, but not too far outside the norm." At some future point, we'll publish our Top 10 Most Subversive Titles, which will include almost nothing you have ever seen, and likely never will, because even with our "Good Housekeeping" stamp of approval, you probably won't got watch it. Only us professionals know about them, and we rarely speak of such things among the uninitiated.

We'll also be bringing you our list of Double and Triple Features with Obscure Connections. This is a great list for film buffs and can fill out a rainy Saturday with infinite entertainment options.

How's that for a tease?

Happy viewing, and don't forget to tell your friends about the Far Side. We're here almost daily, bringing you content you won't find any where else. Thank God for that.

The 100 Best Movies Of All Time

We are often asked (not really but it makes a good launching point) what are the 10 best flicks of all time. In that we have 40 years of experience as writer, producer, director, editor, designer, actor, grip, gaffer, and a few dozen other titles, we are imminently qualified to answer this question. No dissention or equivication will be allowed. Anyone not towing the part line will be summarily tossed out of the auditorium. Our word is final, and that's that.

This list is by no means exclusive of hundreds of other great flicks, but it does represent movies that we have bought over and over again, first on Betamax, then VHS, then LaserDisc, then DVD, now MP-4.
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10. Batman (1989) - Tim Burton takes the God Seat for a run at the venerable comic-book hero. He creates a world right out of Metropolis, with operatic grandeur and visual heaviness. He casts a comedic actor in a serious role and a serious actor in a comedic role, with Michael Keaton and Jack Nickleson. The sets are amazing! Buildings bolted to the ground, statues bearing enormous weight, offices with items dating from the 30s to the 80s. Somehow, even Keaton's lips look like the 'bat' symbol, when he's in costume. Visually stunning, well-acted, tight writing, and edited with just the right pacing. It starts our list for all-time greats.

9. Dark Star (1974) - Not only is this John Carpenter's first feature flick, it's also the movie that launched a 1,000 ideas. A group of weary astronauts have been wandering around the galaxy blowing up planets in a ship that looks remarkably like a tennis shoe (Douglas Adams stole those two). There is some brilliant writing by Dan O'Bannon here, who later penned the classic, 'Alien.' In fact, you can see the seed of that franchise starting to bloom in this flick, as the guys chase an alien beach ball around the ship. At one point, one of the astronauts has an existential argument with a 'smart bomb that is reminiscient of 'Dr. Strangelove' and elements of which show up in Dennis Hopper's speech in 'Speed.' The finale involves planet surfing, literally, which we saw reborn in the recent 'Star Trek' reboot. A great flick for a lazy Saturday night around the bong.

8. The Player (1992) - Tim Robbins teams with Robert Altman in the God Seat to bring us an all-too-real look inside Hollywood. There are dozens of hat-tips to other movies in here, inlcuding a brilliant retake on Orson Welles' opening scene in 'Touch of Evil.' It's a very cerebral movie, with little action or sex, but it's a great story, well-paced and beautifully shot, primo acting, and enough insider secrets being spilled to keep the ardent Hollywoodophile rewinding and taking notes for days. It also has a really nice twist on the 'happy ending' and shows how movie deals are really done. Well worth your time.

7. The Man Who Would Be King (1975) - Sean Connery and Michael Caine make the best buddy movie ever recorded. End of story. The brilliant John Huston, whose other buddy flick, 'Treasure of the Sierra Madre,' is one of the all-time greats and infinitely quotable. Here, he brings us two Brits in India in the early 1900s. They meet Rudyard Kipling (who wrote the original story), and make a deal that they will take over a country and become kings, and Rudyard will witness the pact. As it turns out, they do exactly that and go one better by becoming living gods, because they are Freemasons. Watch the movie, you'll see why. They inherit a vast fortune left by Alexander the Great and make a plan to get out with the loot. This movie has it all: gold, guns, girls, and one hell of a story. The cinematography is a main reason the film has such an epic feel. We can feel the exotic locations and the strangeness the characters find. We loved this movie so much, we lived it.

6. Apollo 13 (1995) - "Houston, we've got a problem." See why, and how they got out of it. We hate to admit it, but we cry every time we see the chutes at the end. Ron "Opie" Howard makes us feel like we're along on a ride in a can only big enough for three SPAM. These guys are locked in a capsule, set on top of the most powerful machine every built, and shot at a target 250,000 miles away. There's no hope of anyone coming to the rescue if anything goes wrong, and guess what? Something goes wrong. Really wrong. Almost dead kind of wrong. This movie is a literal cliff-hanger from reel 2 to the closing credits. We grew our beard and didn't bathe for three days after watching it. The launch sequence alone is worth the price of admission. And the music!

5. Dead Ringers (1988) - This is David Cronenberg at his weirdest and best. He takes the God Seat and drags Jeremy Irons through the 'ringer' to create a truly odd film. Twin gynecologists obscess over a woman with a genetically malformed uterus, and since they are identical, they can share without anyone knowing. This flick is intense and you won't want to watch it alone, because it will freak you out. You'll need to be talked down. Seriously. As psycho-thrillers go, this is top-notch. And whoever designed the 'examination instruments' should have gotten an Oscar for 'Best Drug-Induced Design Ever.' You'll see what we mean. Brilliant cinematography and Irons' acting makes this by far the best one-guy-plays-two-people-in-the-same-shot movies ever made.

4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) - Using one castle for a dozen different locations. Using coconut shells for horses. Special guest appearance by God Himself. And the funniest damn writing, period. All that and more in Monty Python's first feature film after coming out of British TV. You can almost forgive the British for being pompous asses after watching this flick. The Pythons take the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and turn it on its ear. They make endless fun of themselves, the French, the Germans, and simply trash the Middle Ages, while they're at it. There's Trojan Rabbits, catapult cows, aerodynamic swallows, and witches galore. You'll be quoting lines for the rest of your life after watching it 200 or 300 times, like we have. And don't forget the oral sex.

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - Stanley Kubrik is one of those brilliant filmmakers whose works are stuffed full of symbolism and metaphor. On top of that, this film set the standard for space flicks that holds even 43 years later. This movie is so far ahead of its time that one wonders if Kubrik didn't time travel to get weightless shots so perfect. From the monolith (which has the same aspect ratio as the film itself), to Moon mysteries (a la Hoagland, et al.), to Jupiter's Galilean moons, this movie is so damn prascient, it's spooky. But aside from content, the use of music, the dancing spaceships, the Lunar surface, it's all gorgeous and incredibly rendered. The movie has been so influential, that it has spawned names for real-life spacecraft and inspired the design of the International Space Station whizzing over your head just about now. For our generation, this WAS the future, and we're still waiting for it.

2. Eyes Wide Shut (1998) - Kubrik is the only God Seat occupant who makes the list twice, and with good reason. This movie is what got him killed. He told too many secrets. It also happens to be the best performance ever by Tom Cruise, which goes to show that a good director can take shit and make it shine. Again, Kubrik's symbolism is so deep, so rich and so, well, so... Every inch of every frame has meaning, if you know what to look for, and that will take years of study in the occult. Not only that, it's got Satanic masses, orgies, mystery, fine writing, lavish sets, and a music score that haunts long after the credits stop. It's truly an amazing film, but what do you expect from a director whose work is a Top 10 list in and of itself. To really enjoy it, watch it once for story, then watch a second time, only look at everything BUT the main action.

1. Lawrence of Arabia (1961) - Take a man who was larger than life, whose story writes itself, and whose exploits are being felt even in today's headlines out of Egypt. Put David Lean in the God Seat and Freddy Young behind the camera, spinkle liberally with England's finest acting talent,let Marice Jarre score it, and Anne Coates cut it, and you've got one of the finest flicks of all time. The magnificent desolation of the locations, as rendered by Young, lets the audience feel the heat. You'll be thirsty the whole time you're watching this one, so have plenty of water near-by. Even if you (understandably) don't care about the British or the Arabs or World War I, you can't help but love this film. It's just that damn good. This is Peter O'Toole's first feature, and he's backed up by such greats as Alec Guinness, Anthony Quayle, Claude Rains, and Oman Sharif. In fact, Sharif's entrance is probably one of the most memorable in all film history. Lean stole a page from Orson Welles' 'Citizen Kane,' by opening the film with the death of the main character. Be warned, though. After watching this flick, you might just have a little more understanding on the Middle East situation today, and what's more, you'll enjoy the experience.

Honorable Mention: Citizen Kane, Frank Ott's Sneeze, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Casablanca, and about 3,419 more.
The is hardly a definitive list. If we wrote the list of 100 greatest flicks of all time, we might be able to get all our favorites in.

We didn't even touch on such greats as Orson Welles or Terry Gilliam, nor did we even make it further back than the 60s, and there are some classics back there.

Nor were we able to bouch on the fantastic wealth of foreign films, with such greats as Ran, Das Boot, Wild Strawberries, and (our favorite) La Femme Nikita.

We were able to build you, gentle reader, a list of movies that your collection, sadly, is lacking, we're sure, since you are not the cinematophile and art house expert that we are. If you are nice to us, maybe we'll make a list of the weirdest movies ever, so we can include such greats as Liquid Sky.

Happy watching. Don't forget the popcorn and be sure to buy your copy from our Amazon store (hint-hint).