On Five Movies Everyone Should See

Five movies that everyone should, in my opinion, watch at least once.

Y’know, I’ve never given this a moment’s thought. So here goes.

1. A Hard Day’s Night. It’s the first Beatles movie. It’s the black & white Beatles movie. It’s a riot. I love it. I’m too young to know what Beatlemania was, and thankfully this movie encapsulates Beatlemania and what it felt like in ninety minutes of movie-making bliss.

2. The Princess Bride. I really don’t know what to say about The Princess Bride, except that it’s memorable and romantic and funny and very, very quotable.

3. The Bride of Frankenstein. On Halloween, after sitting on my porch for two hours, waiting for the kids who never came, I’ll sit down and watch The Bride of Frankenstein. There are things about it, like, oh, anything with Doctor Pretorius, that are positively insane. I just like the old Universal Monsters movies. They’re triumphs of mood. They just don’t make movies like those any more.

4. V for Vendetta. What is it about British culture that writers seem to think that Britain is only about fifteen minutes away from fascist totalitarian republicanism? (See also P.D. James’ The Children of Men.) That’s not the reason to see the film; I’m always put in mind of that when I watch it. I like the story, which strips Alan Moore’s graphic novel down to the essentials and makes it more pointed and more relevant to these times. I like the drection. I even like the acting — and yes, this once, I can stand Natalie Portman.

5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Self-explanatory, isn’t it?

There. Five movies that everyone should see at least once in their lives.