Cappuccino's Ten Favorite Movies

Paring the list down to just ten was like putting a knife to my own throat.

I’m a sucker for listicles, which is why I’m making one for you today, and at no inconsiderable pain to myself. I hate committing to a top ten movie countdown when there are literally hundreds of movies I love. It feels disloyal. Also, by necessity, I am committing multiple sins of omission, so I’m sure there’s a warm place in hell set aside just for me.

It’s a fluid list, my top ten. Drive My Car, for instance, is a recent entrant. Some of these are movies you know, some you might not. A few have subtitles, which I realize a surprising number of folks have problems with. Knowing that, I thought long and hard before including them, but it’s just not possible to put together a cohesive narrative of favorites without including foreign films.

True story: when I was six, I experienced my first movie-related crisis of conscience. The fact that I remember it so vividly tells you a lot about how weird I am. One day at a drinking fountain, I realized that Winnie the Pooh was no longer my favorite movie. It had been replaced by The Aristocats, Lady and the Tramp, and 101 Dalmatians, in that order. I was horrified by my own treachery. Who stabs a “tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff” in the heart like that? What kind of monster was I?

I’m still a monster, only now with live action movies instead of animated ones.

Here then is my top ten list, which I hope to follow with an honorable mentions list, and then perhaps a list of guilty favorites. Today, I’m going to do you one better than a standard top ten. Instead of just making a pitch (or abject sniveling justification) for loving a movie, I’m going to tell you why you might not. I’m hoping this will make it easier for you to decide whether you want to include it in your next Netflix-and-chill binge-a-palooza.

10. American Hustle
    

    With such a heavyweight-title-holding cast, this 2013 black comedy crime drama had more than a fighting chance of delivering spectacular entertainment. Director David O. Russell may be a gross pig, but his masterpiece, American Hustle, isn’t. The film stars Christian Bale and Amy Adams as two con artists who are forced by an FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) to set up an elaborate sting operation on corrupt politicians, including a beloved mayor of Camden, New Jersey. Jennifer Lawrence turns in a megawatt performance as Bale’s lovable but emotionally manipulative wife. Cooper is incandescent as the FBI agent. And Bale takes a sledgehammer to his fratty good looks by gaining forty-three pounds and gluing a hairpiece to his head.

    Why you’ll love it: it’s darkly funny, and the performances are riveting.
    
    Why you’ll hate it: Bale’s physical transformation may be slightly traumatizing to those of us who remember how hot he was in The Dark Knight.

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9. Gone With The Wind
   
   This 1939 classic is a must-see, not only for history buffs and cinephiles, but for all fans of great storytelling. Sometimes we find ourselves avoiding classics simply because they are so iconic, we no longer feel as though we need to see them. Make an exception here. I actually drove my daughter from Houston to Austin so she could watch Gone With The Wind on the big screen. I’ve read Margaret Mitchell’s book (the movie is based on it) over twenty times. And yes, I named my daughter Katie Scarlett after the main character, so there’s real love here.
   
   Gone With The Wind is an epic historical romance set during the Civil War. Scarlett O’Hara (Vivian Leigh) and Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) are doomed to love each other at all the wrong times. There’s a reason the movie qualifies as an epic. No film before or since has managed to capture the essence of this period in American history.

   Why you’ll love it: the storytelling is superb, as are the costumes, art direction, and overall faithfulness to the book, one of the few adaptations I love.
   
   Why you’ll hate it: some people find Scarlett O’Hara mean, shallow, and manipulative. I see her as a survivor, but I get how she’s not everyone’s ideal. Also, the issue of slavery, while abhorrent on every level, gets a brisk scrubbing here, making it as palatable as possible for a 1939 audience barely seventy years past its abolition.

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8. The Matrix
   
   There are actual humans walking this earth who have never seen this culturally important 1999 science fiction/cyberpunk/action film. Its sequels, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, and The Matrix Resurrections are barely watchable, but The Matrix itself, I feel it safe to say, changed the way we looked at the world. Keanu Reeves plays mild-mannered Thomas Anderson, a computer programmer by day and hacker by night who goes in search of a real world beyond the computer-generated simulation that presently exists. The Matrix feels even more relevant today than when it came out. We are all struggling to come to grips with what’s real these days—and the answer feels increasingly elusive.

   Why you’ll love it: its themes are mind-bending and the movie stays with you long after you’ve finished watching it. Also Laurence Fishburne playing Morpheus is no small matter.
   
   Why you’ll hate it: soooooo many guns. These are movie guns, of course, but when Keanu Reeves strides through a heavily secured building in a leather duster while sporting a Micro Uzi with a bent trigger guard, you start to get creepy Columbine vibes.

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7. Casablanca
   
   Here’s another American film classic that too many people “forget” to watch because hey, it was made in 1942, so how good could it be? Casablanca is quite possibly the best movie ever made: structurally flawless, intensely high stakes, and the recipient of a slew of Academy Awards. Humphrey Bogart plays a disillusioned nightclub owner in 1941 Casablanca. With a World War raging all around him, his formerly neutral position is thrown into question when the woman he loves (Ingrid Bergman) comes to Casablanca with her husband. Bogart’s Rick Blaine is the ultimate broken-hearted reluctant hero, but the themes in this movie (the heart wants what the heart wants, the ineluctability of the past) are relatable, even today. There’s a reason this movie finds its way onto nearly every ten ten list.

   Why you’ll love it: the perfection of the screenplay, Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Ingrid Bergman’s performances, plus the high-stakes plot.
   
   Why you’ll hate it: black-and-white films are a drag for some people. Personally, I forget I’m watching one after about five minutes. Also, the rapid-fire delivery of thirties and forties dialogue can sound hokey and off-putting to the 21st century ear.

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   6. Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days
   
   I won’t lie. This movie is not for the faint of heart. It’s riveting and powerful rather than entertaining, and not everyone’s on board with a film that makes demands. It’s part of the Romanian New Wave school of filmmaking that I’m wild about: lots of minimalist, dialogue-driven naturalism. And it’s also a cautionary tale, of sorts, decrying the criminalization of abortion.
   
   The scene is set in the final years of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Communist Romania. A college-age woman finds herself pregnant, and her best friend and roommate turns their world inside out trying to procure an illegal abortion for her. The BBC ranks it #15 on its 100 Greatest Films of the 21st Century. Fair warning: it will set up a tent inside your brain and never ever leave.

   Why you’ll love it: this is the most anti-glamor, anti-Hollywood film you’re ever going to see. Romanian Director Cristian Mingiu explores the consequences of state authority having control over the most private spaces of human life. Also, the acting is incredible.
   
   Why you’ll hate it: Subtitles. Like I said, not everybody loves them. But in this case, they’re worth it.

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   5. Boogie Nights
   
   I have a fondness for American period comedy dramas, and Boogie Nights checks all the boxes. Set in the San Fernando Valley of seventies and eighties’ California, the film is about a young nightclub dishwasher/high school dropout (Mark Wahlberg) whose sizable attributes launch him into the porn industry. As “Dirk Diggler,” Wahlberg gets pulled into a Bohemian, cocaine-fueled lifestyle that eventually derails his career, but director Paul Thomas Anderson never lets you watch these developments with a cynical eye.

   Why you’ll love it: Julianne Moore is one of the best actresses of this or any other generation. The late Burt Reynolds turns in a bravura performance as a pornographer. The equally brilliant Philip Seymour Hoffman displays need and vulnerability like I have never seen before. His death in 2014 was a loss on so many levels.
   
   Why you’ll hate it: some people complain that the movie has no “heroes,” and while that may be technically true (Don Cheadle’s Buck Swope is perhaps the closest we come to heroism), the characterizations, script, direction, and acting keep you fully immersed in this demimonde of seventies’ porn.

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   4. The Big Lebowski
   
   If awards were given out for most devoted fan, I would receive one for my love of Coen Brothers’ films. The Big Lebowski is, by their own admission, their favorite one. It’s a black comedy neo-noir yarn that takes place in early nineties Los Angeles. Jeffrey Lebowski aka “The Dude” (brilliantly played by Jeff Bridges) is a lazy, dope-smoking, White-Russian-drinking, unemployed bowler who becomes entangled in the far more sinister world of a wealthy philanthropist who has the same name. The Dude’s bowling partners, Walter Sobchak (John Goodman in a masterpiece of a performance) and Donny Kerabatsos (the incomparable Steve Buscemi) are as much a part of the ensemble as the Dude himself. Surprisingly, The Big Lebowski opened to mediocre reviews, but caught fire with the public—an adoration so enormous, it hardly qualifies as a “cult” following anymore.

   Why you’ll love it: Julianne Moore’s Maude Lebowski is one of the best roles ever written for a woman. The acting is a full 360 degrees. Also, dialogue that truly sparkles. The Dude: “Hey, I know that guy, he's a nihilist.”
   
   Why you’ll hate it: there’s nothing to hate. If you hate this movie, something’s wrong with you.

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   3. Goodbye, Lenin!
   
   This 2003 German tragicomedy gets you right in the feels. The storyline centers around a family in East Germany living under communist rule before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The mother, a devoted Party member, falls into a coma. When she awakens eight months later, the world is a completely different place. To protect her from the inevitable shock of knowing her beloved communism has collapsed, her son, played by Daniel Bruhl, goes to elaborate lengths to conceal the truth from her, including tracking down consumer products that no longer exist and staging “news” shows on the television.

   Why you’ll love it: every emotion is earned. Nothing is wheedled or manipulated out of you. You will care deeply about all these characters because the storytelling, the acting, the editing, and the direction are first rate.
   
   Why you’ll hate it: Subtitles. But if you’re not willing to make peace with them, you’re going to miss some amazing films.

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   2. Drive My Car
   
   This 2021 Japanese drama with English subtitles is an unlikely pick for me since I have a decided preference for western fare. But this I can tell you: Drive My Car is a beautiful and riveting masterpiece. The story is about a stage director and his chauffeur, both of whom must come to grips with personal tragedy, the paradoxical quality of love, old rivalries, unresolved guilt, and the fallout from emotional trauma.

   Why you’ll love it: the writing, cinematography, acting, set design, and soundtrack. This movie is elegiac without lapsing into brooding self-pity. Also, panoramas of lovely Japan.
   
   Why you’ll hate it. There are those pesky subtitles again. It’s also a long movie, albeit necessarily so. I doubt you’ll even notice how much time has passed.

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   1. The Seventh Seal
   
   Wikipedia describes The Seventh Seal as a “1957 Swedish historical fantasy film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman,” but even that much seems reductionist and off-topic. I’m not alone in believing The Seventh Seal to be the greatest movie of all time. Watching it is a deeply emotional experience for me, one that always results in an hour of sobbing along with baffled looks from John, who doesn’t get it.
   
   No one but Bergman has ever taken such a stark, unflinching look at the nature of life and death. In Bergman’s 14th-century Sweden, death sits on every shoulder. His mouthpiece, a knight named Antonius Block, has returned from the Crusades to find his homeland riven with plague. His soul’s craving is to finally understand where God was amid the destruction and chaos. Even when Death comes for Block, who challenges him to a high-stakes game of chess, God remains silent.

   Why you’ll love it: Bergman is starkly existential in this movie, and it is true that some people find it slow and grim. But there is genius here, which is why the film continues to inspire so much admiration while at the same time boring first-year film students. For any movie to survive this long at the top of most critics’ best movies’ list means it’s the real deal.
   
   Why you’ll hate it: Swedish, subtitles, shot in black-and-white, and very very arty. It also deals with weighty, abstract themes. Perhaps you’ll watch the movie and hate me for suggesting it, but you’re not likely to forget The Seventh Seal, and that’s no small thing in this era of schlocky, over-processed, Marvel-comics, tentpole franchises.

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   What’s your top ten? I want to hear! Be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments section below.
   
   Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin