The Great Films

The Great Films – My Neighbor Totoro

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  • Title: My Neighbor Totoro
  • IMDb: link

Universally regarded as one of the best animated films of all time, 1988’s My Neighbor Totoro follows 10 year-old Satsuki Kusakabe (Noriko Hidaka | Dakota Fanning) and 4 year-old Mei Kusakabe (Chika Sakamoto | Elle Fanning) on an amazing adventure after the move to the countryside with their father Tatsuo (Shigesato Itoi | Tim Daly). Shortly after arriving, the girls discover their new home is different finding dust spites in the house. Mei later follows two more unusual characters through the woods where she encounters the slumbering Totoro who more fascinates the young girl than scares her.

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The Great Films – The Third Man

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  • Title: The Third Man
  • IMDb: link

Set in post-WWII Europe, director Carol Reed‘s cinematic masterpiece begins with the arrival of American pulp writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) in occupied Austria only to learn the friend he had come to visit on his last dime, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), is dead. Despite everyone he meets telling him he should return home, Holly sticks around the city playing amateur detective hoping to learn more about how and why Harry died.

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Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

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  • Title: Chinatown
  • IMDb: link

I don’t know if 1974’s Chinatown is without doubt the best film for everyone involved, both in front and behind the camera, but one could certainly make the case. Director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne come together with a neo-noir staple which provided Jack Nicholson one of his most famous roles as private investigator J. J. Gittes who struggles to find the truth surrounding the death of chief engineer at the Department of Water and Power (Darrell Zwerling), who Gittes was hired to surveil by a woman (Diane Ladd) pretending to be his wife (Faye Dunaway), and uncover how that death plays into a larger conspiracy of the Los Angeles draught and a land scheme which allows 30s Los Angeles to become a major character in the film.

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Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown. Read More »

The Great Films – Galaxy Quest

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  • Title: Galaxy Quest
  • IMDb: link

Galaxy Quest

Far from a flop, but not the box office family comedy smash the fledging DreamWorks Pictures was hoping for, Galaxy Quest came and went in the winter of 1999 and early 2000 with marginal success. Those lucky enough to see the film in the theaters were in for a treat that stayed around the top 10 of the box office for several weeks earning positive reviews from critics and earning back double its production costs.  Without really knowing what they had on their hands, bungling the marketing of the film and hamstringing its release, DreamWorks had nevertheless produced the best Star Trek movie ever made.

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Seven Samurai

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  • Title: Seven Samurai
  • IMDb: link

Seven Samurai

Widely regarded as on of the finest, and most influential, films in the history of cinema, the Criterion Collection releases this new 4K/Blu-ray combo featuring the extras of previous releases and the film available in 4K for the first time. Akira Kurosawa‘s classic about a group of ronin hired to protect a village provided a template that would be reused, repurposed, and remade countless times over the years from The Magnificent Seven to Three Amigos to “The Magnificent Ferengi” while specific scenes from the film have inspired sequences in everything from Blade Runner to Mad Max: Fury Road.

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