1. Chinatown Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Robert Towne
The fool's journey as film noir.
2. Monty Python and the Holy Grail Directed by Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones
Written by Gilliam, Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Michael Palin
Years of inept quotation by teenage geeks with fake English accents can't smother the mad comic genius of this movie. It still makes me laugh.
3. The Conversation Written and Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
'70s cinema in a nutshell -- it's got paranoia, guilt, a lone wolf locked into an uneasy relationship with the system, and Gene Hackman.
4. Lenny Directed by Bob Fosse
Written by Julian Barry
A tragedy filled with comedy. Sometimes Dustin Hoffman's performances of Lenny Bruce's routines are funnier than the originals.
5. California Split Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Joseph Walsh
Next time someone tries to tell you that Hollywood always fucks everything up, remind them that Spielberg wanted to direct this one.
6. The Godfather Part 2 Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Written by Coppola and Mario Puzo, from Puzo's novel
A short history of America.
7. A Woman Under the Influence Written and Directed by John Cassavetes
I'd call it the decade's greatest feminist film, except it's too complex, too real, to be contained by any ideology.
8. Phantom of the Paradise Written and Directed by Brian De Palma
A gloriously cracked movie: The Phantom of the Opera meets The Picture of Dorian Gray meets Faust meets The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This is why God put Paul Williams on this earth.
9. Young Frankenstein Directed by Mel Brooks
Written by Brooks and Gene Wilder
Both a loving tribute to the Frankenstein films of the '30s and the funniest picture Mel Brooks ever made. N.B.: Some of the jokes are lifted directly from Son of Frankenstein.
10. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia Directed by Sam Peckinpah
Written by Peckinpah and Gordon Dawson, from a story by Peckinpah and Frank Kowalski
NOW IT IS 1984, KNOCK KNOCK AT YOUR FRONT DOOR: On Wednesday, when I reeled off my favorite movies of 1994, I mentioned that I might have to revise the list if I ever get a chance to see Satantango. For 1984, the movies I regret missing include Ingmar Bergman's After the Rehearsal and Tom Schiller's Nothing Lasts Forever, among many others. Ask me to redo this countdown a few years from now, and it might look very different.
That said:
1. Repo Man Written and Directed by Alex Cox
"It happens sometimes. People just explode. Natural causes."
2. Love Streams Directed by John Cassavetes
Written by Cassavetes and Ted Allan, from a play by Allan
The last and best of Cassavetes' unvarnished, unpredictable character studies. "All through the making of this picture," he later said, "I kept reliving my father's words. 'For every problem there's an answer.' But since Love Streams is about a question of love, there didn't seem to be an answer I could find, that Ted Allan could find, or that our hundred conspirators in this painful study of what love means could find....Even now, I still don't know what the brother and sister really feel about each other."
3. This Is Spinal Tap Directed by Rob Reiner
Written by Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer
My favorite rock movie; the first and best of the Christopher Guest troupe's semi-improvised comedies; and the strongest evidence that, back in the '80s, the now-insufferable Reiner was capable of doing good work.
4. Once Upon a Time in America Directed by Sergio Leone
Written by Leone, Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, and Stuart Kaminsky, from a novel by Harry Grey
The apotheosis of the gangster picture -- arguably even better than The Godfather. Make sure you get the 227-minute version.
5. Antonio Gaudi Directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara
The next best thing to seeing the buildings yourself.
6. Amadeus Directed by Milos Forman
Written by Peter Shaffer, from his play
I was a teenager when this one came out, and it took us all by surprise. I don't think any of us expected a movie about Mozart to be so entertaining.
7. King Lear Directed by Michael Elliott
Written by William Shakespeare
Olivier plays Lear.
8. Before Stonewall Directed by John Scagliotti, Greta Schiller, and Robert Rosenberg
A documentary about gay life before the modern gay rights movement -- and, though it's not billed as the topic, about the history of American bohemia.
9. Secret Honor Directed by Robert Altman
Written by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone, from their play
Altman's Nixon movie. Possibly the only time he worked with a cast of one.
10. Ghostbusters Directed by Ivan Reitman
Written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis
A pleasant little comedy about a small business and its run-ins with the Environmental Protection Agency.
The drawback to this is that, even with the long delay, I keep seeing old movies that I wish I'd included a year or two before. If I could take another crack at the 1982 list I printed here two years ago, I'd find room for Say Amen, Somebody, a wonderful gospel-music documentary that I didn't see until a few months ago. Similarly, that 1993 list really ought to include The Nightmare Before Christmas, a flick I never got around to watching until last month. (And 1992? Make space for Svankmajer's Food!)
Oh, well. Here -- 10 years late but still provisional -- are my favorite films of 1994. If I ever get a chance to see Satantango (aren't they ever going to release that on DVD?), I might feel like rewriting this one as well.
1. Pulp Fiction Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Written by Tarantino and Roger Avery
The most influential American movie of the '90s. Unfortunately, Tarantino is one of those artists, like Hunter Thompson or Marcel Duchamp, who it's better to admire than to imitate. But you can't blame him for that.
2. Crumb Directed by Terry Zwigoff
This has a sequence -- everyone remembers it -- in which a comic book slowly devolves into something else, the illustrations swept aside by page upon page of tiny, illegible words. No movie has ever portrayed a man's descent into madness so effectively.
3. Hoop Dreams Directed by Steve James
Better than every scripted basketball movie I've seen.
4. Before the Rain Written and Directed by Milcho Manchevski
A Balkan time-loop.
5. Red Directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
Written by Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Surveillance, love, and coincidence.
6. Chungking Express Written and Directed by Wong Kar-Wai
More surveillance, more love, more coincidence. There's a plot line in this movie about a woman who keeps sneaking into a man's apartment and rearranging his things. I'm a sucker for stories like that.
7. Ed Wood Directed by Tim Burton
Written by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski
Alexander and Karaszewski went on to write two other movies about misfits, The People vs. Larry Flynt and Man on the Moon. But they were directed by Milos Forman, who turned them into sanctimonious biopics. Burton did much better, because he had the inspired idea to treat Ed Wood's life as a fairy tale.
8. Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter Directed by Deborah Hoffman
It's a touching documentary about Alzheimer's -- and it's funny. No, really.
9. Burnt by the Sun Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov
Written by Mikhalkov and Nikita Mikhalkov
A sad yet comic story of Stalinism, dedicated "to everyone who was burnt by the sun of the Revolution."
10. Pipsqueak Pfollies Written and Directed by Danny Plotnick
In the words of the filmmaker, this brilliant little short "painstakingly details all the crap little kids can get away with."
Honorable mentions:
11. The Last Seduction (John Dahl)
12. The Kingdom (Lars von Trier)
13. Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)
14. The Madness of George III (Nicholas Hytner)
15. Faust (Jan Svankmajer)
16. Barcelona (Whit Stillman)
17. Fresh (Boaz Yakin)
18. The Hudsucker Proxy (Joel Coen)
19. True Lies (James Cameron)
20. Crooklyn (Spike Lee)
ON FINDING MYSELF IN A BOOK: Andy Opel's Micro Radio and the FCC: Media Activism and the Struggle over Broadcast Policy (Praeger, 2004) is a short history of the micro radio movement in the late 1990s. What you are reading right now is not a review of it. It's a statement of how strange it feels to pick up a book and read about yourself. Not a passing reference, not quick citation of something I've written, but a lengthy treatment -- two chapters! -- of some listserv debates in which I was a vocal participant.
It's a little unnerving to see your theoretically transitory words come back to you between two hard covers, though I can't really get upset about it. For one thing, I quoted a few posts from the same e-mail list in my own book on radio, so I'd be a hypocrite to complain. For another, the portrait of me is actually pretty flattering. I have only one comment in the book that I really wish I could rephrase, mostly because I imagine that anyone who reads it will scratch her head and say, "What the hell did he mean by that?" (It's a brief, barely coherent aside about my arcane views on incorporation laws.)
I haven't read the whole book, but it looks like a nice treatment of the subject. Consider this a provisional recommendation, with special force for anyone interested in reading my old flame wars. (Surely there's at least a couple of you. Uh...Mom, maybe?)
Footnote: When not chatting with radio's outsiders, I occasionally talk with a radio insider. Reason's interview with FCC chief Michael Powell, conducted by Drew Clark, Nick Gillespie, and myself, is now online.