to be merely another special effects picture a lot of the credit probably
goes to those special effects which made ET look not only believable but even
lovable my prediction is that of all the films on our list and I don't know your
complete list I'll make this prediction anyway this is the one that will
continue to draw the largest audiences down through the years in the decades to
come like the Wizard of Oz it's a timeless classic I think that's probably
true it gets the repeat audience of young people I'm sure always will what I
liked about it in addition to the special effects of the creature and then
the heartwarming element was that the film had a very good sense of the way
kids talk without being gross it was very acutely observing the suburban
world it Spielberg does so well it took the fantasy of ET and rooted him in the
reality of these kids was this movie anywhere on your top 10 list it would
have been about number 13 or 14 oh come on no really really yeah that's where I
had it done my number two choice the Holocaust documentary Shoah and when
that film was released I wrote that this was the greatest use of film because it
revived a lost world Shoah is a nine and a half hour documentary that takes us
back 45 years in contemporary interviews with some of the men and women who
survived the Nazi death camps and some of the men and women who made them
possible director Claude Lonsman doesn't show any of the often seen vintage
death camp footage instead we listen to people tell their horrifying stories and
we don't need anything more than their words to know the shame of it all and
then one of the couples they came in and said barbers you have to do a job to
make to believe all those women that came in that they just taking a haircut
and going and to take a shower and from there they go out from this place but we
know already that there is no way going out from this room because this room is
the last place where they went in a life and they will never go out alive again
Claude Lansman reveals the dark side of human nature better than any horror film
I've ever seen he also corrects a lot of lies that have persisted for years about
weak-willed Jews about neighbors not knowing about the nearby death camps
millions died we learned in this film because a lot of people wanted them dead
because the rest of the world didn't care enough to keep them alive what an
achievement show it is I agree with you that this is one of the greatest uses of
film that I've ever seen it's not on my top ten list for a very strange reason
if you remember the year this movie came out it wasn't on my top ten list that
year either and what I did was I said I put it in a separate category didn't
seem to me that a nine and a half hour documentary of this importance and this
scope belong on the same list with two hour entertainment movies and feature
films that are going to be playing down at the corner on Friday night it seemed
to me to be a different not only use of film but kind of film and I still feel
that way that it doesn't it doesn't seem to me to belong in the same continuum
with these other films we're talking about as a different sort of thing it's
that great you're saying it's that great it's that important that somehow it just
belongs in a different category at home when you can study this film and it can
be quite intimate you can have your own personal relationship with this movie
you can take a break occasionally yeah it's extraordinary coming up next our
choices for the best film of the 1980s
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watchers get ready I'm ready I'm ready get ready for the John Elway show join
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Taco Bell home with a 59 cent value menu I'm ready I knew I was in trouble as
soon as I woke up a water pipe had broken what a mess I call my shelter
agent Bill said not to worry my policy cover just about every
disaster a short time later Bill came to the house and you know something else he
brought a builder and the plumber hey now that's service with shelters
homeowners insurance personal service is our policy when we did the 500th
broadcast of this show I mentioned that my favorite film of the last 14 years
since Roger and I began doing this show was raging bull obviously it is also my
favorite film of this decade Martin Scorsese's raging bull is of course the
Jake Lamotta story the boxing story with Robert De Niro playing a human animal
taking terrible punishment shot in beautiful black and white raging bull
reaffirms Scorsese as the preeminent filmmaker of our generation he's using
all of his techniques in this picture while still telling us a great street
story finding life among the low life the first film on my list for 1980s is
exactly the same film Martin Scorsese's raging bull and there was no question in
my mind I think that's kind of amazing that we would be in agreement on that
but of the films that I saw in the last 10 years this is the one that went out
there on a high on a high wire and it never looked down and it kept right on
going this is the one where the director was really swinging for the bleachers and
also of course I think it has the best performance of the last 10 years in this
remarkable work by Robert De Niro from beginning to end raging bull is an
amazing motion picture when I think when I think of that picture I don't think
oddly enough of the boxing sequences first I think of some of those that lazy
like the weekend afternoon when Jake goes over to try and pick up Vicki at the
pool and I look at those beautiful images and I think that there's a lot of
dreams there there's something in the colors it's almost like silky sheets the
white the color it's just it's just such a beautiful piece of filmmaking it's a
film about an entire life it's a film about the spaces in between the high
points it's a film about the end of that life when Jake Lamont is running a
nightclub down in Florida and he's he's out of shape and he's kind of a figure
of jest now instead of being that person who for a second there was great and it's
also about the obsessions that he allows to destroy his life the jealousy the
insecurity by the end of that movie you really feel you know that person there
isn't anything more I need to know about Jake LaMotta that I got in that film
what an achievement that is it's a great film what we haven't done yet on this
show is provide a complete rundown of all ten of the titles on each of our
lists so here's my list of the best films of the 1980s number ten House of
Games the strange and hypnotic David Mamet film about a psychologist who
wanted to know all about common and found out a lot more than she really
wanted to know number nine platoon Oliver Stone's harrowing film about the
daily lives of infantrymen in Vietnam more than any other Vietnam film it
reproduced the experience of actually being under fire and under incredible
pressure in combat number eight Mississippi burning which recreated an
era of recent American history when segregation was still the law the movie
contained one of the great performances of the decade by Gene Hackman as an FBI
man number seven ran a magnificent epic by the great Japanese director Akira
Kurosawa based on Shakespeare's King Lear and classic samurai legends number
six on my list Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark one of the
greatest adventure movies ever made an influential throughout the decade I've
already discussed the top five titles on my list once again they were Louie
Mao's my dinner with Andre Spike Lee's do the right thing Steven Spielberg's ET
Philip Kaufman's the right stuff and number one Martin Scorsese's raging
bull a couple reactions to your list do you think Mississippi burning will last
in the way that some of the other pictures are right you know I I would
defend Mississippi burning in the same way that you were describing Shoah this
is a movie that people need to see in order to know that this time existed and
the people had these feelings it is a part of American history the young kids
today really don't know about even though it was only 25 years ago and I
think it's important for that reason yeah I think I don't think it's as
factual and that of course there was a lot of talk about that at the time it's
factual about its feelings it's the most important thing to be factual it's
factual about it's the hate that was present in the air that's for sure the
other thing no comedies as such how do you react to that um Tootsie could have
been on the list it almost made mine it wasn't on my list I don't know I just
looked what I did was I took the ten best list of every year for the last ten
years so I had a hundred films to choose from and started taking them out until I
came up with this ten so I didn't do it from the other point of view which
comedy which drama to choose I did it you know but Woody Allen makes the point
that comedies aren't as important as serious film there was a film that would
have made my top ten list it would have been his Hannah and her sisters but the
question is to what degree is that really a comedy okay now let's take a
look at my choices of the best films of the 1980s number ten Akira Kurosawa's
kagamusha the shadow warrior a revisionist look at the samurai legend
number nine Stephen Frears Sid and Nancy the punk rock tragedy the best of the
drug films for a drug-influenced decade number eight Jersey skolomowski's
moonlighting that's not the TV show no this was the epic film about workers and
masters told on a small scale during the rehabbing of a London townhouse number
seven Sergio Leone's once upon a time in America the long version of course of
that film not the chopped up one that was originally released it's an epic
film of the immigrant experience of the dream twisted through corruption number
six Spike Lee's do the right thing the gloriously filmed racial drama number
five who framed Roger Rabbit for my dinner with Andre three the right stuff
to show up and number one raging ball you know looking at your list there were
two films that almost made my list and they were kagamusha by Kurosawa but
then I went with ran instead which I think is a better film and sit and Nancy
which I think it was really overlooked in a way but had such great performances
and was such a strong portrait of those lives you know that I'm sitting Nancy
when I looked back it didn't make my top ten in that year and now I'm putting in
the top ten of the decade because I realized just how strong that film it
was close to making my top ten list but now that film has just grown and grown I
think you're trying you know this is the drug decade it has been the drug decade
and boy that film is strong about it one thing that happened to me I have I have a
list of every ten top ten list I've made since I became a movie critic right
hundreds of films here so I went back and I look at the films of the 70s as
well and you know what I found in the 70s the best films generally speaking
were foreign films that was a decade when the great directors like Fellini
and Bergman and Truffaut and Romer were still not only active but were coming
up every year with some of their best work and then in the 1980s foreign films
seemed to drop out of the picture more and it's more Hollywood films more
commercial film well we've still basically the the years of the 80s were
not as good as the years of the 70s in terms of film what but America has
steamrolled the whole movie industry that's well known we're obliterating the
film cultures of the other countries and now some of them these are good films
we're talking about the good stuff now but of course that's happened in just
commercial product as well that's it for this week next time we'll be back with
reviews of new movies and until then the balcony is closed
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