In 1968 my sisters took my brother and I into Melbourne for the first time to see our first film. It was Oliver! at the Odeon. Unforgettable. Later, in the Seventies, it was the midday double matinee at the Croydon Moviehouse. One rainy day my friends and I watched The Time Machine there: the rain hitting the tin roof and most of us stamping our feet and yelling up a storm as Rod Taylor battled the Morlocks. Ah movies!
Then it was foreign films at the Valhalla in Richmond (re-runs of Jean Luc Godard and the French new wave), or the new SBS station on TV (Jacques Tati!). At the Rivoli in Camberwell I think I watched every Woody Allen film that came out in the Eighties and Nineties (except Crimes And Misdemeanours, which I saw in Paris!). When, disappointed by Deconstructing Harry, I realised I was finally over Woody Allen, it felt like heartbreak.
The films here are pretty much all over the place, as far as genre goes. There’s comedy, old classics, anime films, Australian films, foreign films, cult films and probably some, uh, bad films. There may be a few more science fiction films than others. Maybe more American films than others. When I started using the app Letterboxd I put up all the films I’d ever seen, or at least that I could remember. The grand tally came to over two thousand films. Guess I’m not a film buff, yet.
Must Haves | Want | Love But Not Great Films |
The Wizard of Oz Land and Freedom Cinema Paradiso Mad Max 2 The Year My Voice Broke The Empire Strikes Back The Day the Earth Stood Still It’s A Wonderful Life His Girl Friday A Band Apart The Duellists Days of Heaven Lawrence of Arabia Doctor Zhivago Monty Python and the Holy Grail Singin’ In the Rain Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me Mad Max: Fury Road Forbidden Planet The Incredible Shrinking Man Mr Hulot’s Holiday The Crime of Monsieur Lange Le Grand Chemin Bull Durham The Searchers Lord of the Rings 1,2,3 The Man From Earth Manhattan A Day At the Races Planet of the Apes (1967) The Warriors My Neighbour Totoro Princess Mononoke Beauty and the Beast (Disney) No Way Out Children of Men Gravity Your Name Edge of Tomorrow The Lives of Others The Ploughman’s Lunch Anonymous Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ghost In the Shell (Oshi) The Cat Returns Perfect Blue Millenium Actress Apocalypto Some Like It Hot American Graffiti THX 1138 Miller’s Crossing Dead Man The Big Sleep (1944) Casablanca Double Life of Veronique Three Colors: Red 2 Lane Blacktop Ferris Bueller’s Day Off Ninotchka The Haunting (1961) West Side Story The Thing (1981) Harold and Maude Raiders of the Lost Ark I’m All Right Jack Children of Paradise Umbrellas of Cherbourg Running On Empty Ride With the Devil Sunday Too Far Away The Third Man Vertigo Chinatown Excalibur Don’t Look Up No Time To Die Mary Poppins When Marnie Was There Magnolia City Lights | Isle of Dogs Toy Story 3 Lucy Ex Machina Yesterday Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan Terminator The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension Whip It Tokyo Story Everything Everywhere All at Once A Tale of Summer Death Proof Dawn of the Dead The Wind That Shakes the Barley Serenity Dark City Matewan Hotel Mars Attacks The Matrix FM Dredd Body Double The Fugitive High Fidelity School of Rock Bedazzled The Party Barbarella First Men In the Moon Groundhog Day Alice In Wonderland Everybody Wants Some A League of Their Own Field of Dreams Boyhood Under the Skin Wolf Children Tron The Prestige The Jane Austen Book Club The Butterfly Effect Kill Bills Dances With Wolves River’s Edge Blue Velvet Deep Impact Star Trek: First Contact Persuasion (1995) The Last of the Mohicans Like Water For Chocolate El Salvador Mountains of the Moon Everything, Everywhere, All At Once The Boy and the Heron | Wayne’s World 1 Love and Other Catastrophes Dazed and Confused Streets of Fire Lover Come Back Artists and Models 2020 the Year We Make Contact Contact Lifeforce Big Wednesday Swingers Eddie and the Cruisers Rocky Horror Picture Show The Happening The Core The Time Machine (1961) |
Image by Neotenist from Pixabay