Best films of all time

[David]

[think positive]

[Pies4shaw]

[David]

Oh, I wish I could say it's the only embarrassing omission in my film viewing. There are holes all over the place, sometimes encompassing entire directors' filmographies! And the older I get, the less time there seems to be to rectify those gaps...

(I have seen Carné's later Three Rooms in Manhattan, though, which I liked very much.)

[Pies4shaw]

Yes, time's a factor. I struggle to find the space to get through The Blues Brothers more than twice a week, these days. Still, I make the effort. I see that isn't on the list, either.

[stui magpie]

[David]

Honestly, I'm not sure you're missing much – it's a long time since I've seen it, but I remember feeling pretty disengaged. But then, gangster films have never really been my cup of tea (I don't go in much for Scorsese, either).

[think positive]

i agree the only one i liked was kevin costner in The untouchables with Sean Connery. i find them cheesy and sleazy!

Mob wives was fun to watch tough!!! well til Big Ange passed away!

[LaurieHolden]

[watt price tully]

[Pies4shaw]

Yes, Laurie, like wpt I went (many, many times) to the Valhalla when it was in Victoria St. I don't think I've been to the Valhalla since it moved to Westgarth.

Originally, I had to catch the train to Adelaide to see this unrivalled masterpiece. It barely got any screenings in Melbourne on its first run (pre-Christmas 1980) and I missed it with work (in those days I had a full-time job and also played in bands 8 or 9 times a week, so there wasn't much room in my schedule). Anyway, the music industry used to go quiet in Melbourne for a couple of weeks in the new year, so I took a fortnight off and went interstate to see it. First screening for me was 18 January 1981 - I went to the Adelaide Oval to watch Greg Chappell bat (and Jeff Thomson bowl) in the SA v Qld game and saw The Blues Brothers in the evening, then several more times over the rest of the fortnight. It's hard to explain the impact, now, given we have the internet. Every time I wanted to learn to play a new Ray Charles number in those days, I had to copy it from a record onto a cassette that I could stop and start and rewind, over and over, until I could identify all the notes (an extraordinary ask because Ray basically played sophisticated hard bop and his chord voicings were at once spectacular and spectacularly complex) and you never really knew if you "had" it because you never saw these people play. Anyhow, after Otis Spann's untimely death ten years earlier, Ray and Aretha and John Lee were like my personal deities - but I had never seen any of them perform, even on TV (and, let's be blunt, records were always shit, so we never really heard them properly at home until CDs came along during that decade) - and seeing Dunn and Cropper, who had played on almost all of Otis Redding's great records, was jaw-dropping. It was all revelatory for me. Startlingly, it remains as fresh for me every time I watch it as it was the first time. An extraordinary piece of art.

"They broke my watch".

[roar]

Introducing our kids to The Blues Brothers was such a joy, for us and them.

[Bruce Gonsalves]

The Vallhalla in Richmond is a blast from a misspent early adulthood. We'd head there plenty of times on a Friday or Saturday night in '81 and '82. A few bongs beforehand and movies such as Eraserhead, Deerhunter and The Blues Brothers before it became a wankfest. Funny enough, I don't remember many of the other movies.