Favorite Movies of All Time

 

 
The Wild Bunch
review by Carrie Gorringe
"I wouldn't have it any other way." -- this sentence becomes the rationale for one of the most famous moments of screen violence on film, as the outlaws in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch (1969) prepare to do battle with a corrupt and vicious Mexican general and his troops.
 

 
Taxi Driver
review by Carrie Gorringe
In 1976, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver was released and became his first financially successful feature. Five years later, the film found itself in the unfortunate position of being swallowed whole by the controversy surrounding the link between would-be presidential assassin Hinckley and his obsession with Jodie Foster. It became prima facie evidence for those on the political right who were convinced of the causal relationship between the depiction of fictional violence and its translation into real life, so much so that it is now almost impossible to separate Taxi Driver from this discourse.
 

 
Toy Story
review by Carrie Gorringe
If, when you were a child, you wondered whether or not your old toys ever suffered from sibling rivalry when a new toy entered your life, wonder no more. Toy Story lets you know that just when you thought you had exorcised all of your childhood guilt about being mean to your brothers or sisters, you now have something else to worry about, such as a nocturnal strangulation from that neglected Slinky toy stuffed in your crawl space. Woody the cowboy (Hanks) has someone he'd like to strangle -- one Buzz Lightyear (Allen), a space explorer toy built along the lines of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
 

 
Lord of the Rings Trilogy
review by Emma French, Dan Lybarger, Cynthia Fuchs
A rare instance of a film that lives up to its hype, the ambition, visual styling and set piece scenes of The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King constantly emphasise that doing justice to Tolkien’s extraordinary imaginative legacy has only recently become technically possible through the medium of cinema.
 

 
Kill Bill
review by KJ Doughton, Cynthia Fuchs
Kill Bill is a whirlwind of glorious bloodshed that simultaneously shocks and exhilarates. Fumigating us with its heady, mind-melting rush of wild set pieces, Quentin Tarantino’s fourth movie induces cinematic psychosis with its gory tale of a bullet-riddled bride settling scores. Like Peckinpah, DePalma, and Woo before him, Tarantino pounds us with brutality in a way that is so stylized, fresh, and unpredictable that we not only welcome it – we hand him the sledgehammer.
 

 

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