Here’s the fifth set of movies in my onging Patrick’s 100.

Sometimes the fun of a list of movies you like comes in just throwing out ten titles that aren’t of the same genre and have no real connection to each other at all. I’ve done a few sets that were all sci-fi, for example. This set, is a little of many genres just for fun.

As before, these are in no particular order. In fact, these are about as random as they come.

61. Carbon Copy (1981) - George Segal is a successful businessman (thanks to his wife’s father’s company) when a young Denzel Washington shows up on his door and calling him “daddy.” Hilarity ensues as Segal finds himself kicked out of the wife’s house and forced to live in the slums with his son…and learn a little about prejudice along the way.

62. The Caine Mutiny (1954) - As a general rule, I hate war pictures. This one is a rare exception. Humphrey Bogart is great at Captan Queeg, the paranoid soldier who puts his ship at risk leaving his senior crew members no choice but to take command of the ship.

63. The Cannonball Run (1981) - Yes, I’m serious. It is what it is, and that’s mindless entertainment, which we all need once in a while. And the bloopers during the credits are worth watching the whole movie for.

64. All The President’s Men (1976) - The story of the Watergate break-in from the vantage point of the reporters who wouldn’t stop searching for the truth. There are genuine scary moments in this tense drama, and that, I think is part of the point: Nixon’s White House was accused of almost everything under the sun, and finding yourself on the wrong side of that Oval Office was supposed to be scary.

65. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974) - Who’d want to hijack a subway train? A group of heavily-armed men with a plan to make their crazy idea work. Some of the wisecracks are a little dated today, but it’s still a great film, headed by Walter Matthau as the New York City transit detective who’s determined to track down the hijackers down to the last Gesundheit.

66. A Christmas Story (1983) - Need I say more?

67. Outbreak (1995) - This is probably not a film that a hypochondriac should enjoy, but this medical thriller about a deadly virus on the loose in a California town is definitely on my list. There’s even a government conspiracy plot here. What’s not to love?

68. The Fugitive (1993) - One of the best movies Harrison Ford ever did, and Tommy Lee Jones steals the show repeatedly as the quick-witted marshall who is trailing the man wrongly accused of killing his wife. This is a long movie, but it pulls you in and doesn’t feel long at all.

69. Quiz Show (1994) - Robert Redford directed this movie about the quiz show scandals of the 1950s and the story of an American hero who fell hard after admitting that all was not as it appeared.

70. Wag the Dog (1997) - This is probably one of my all-time favorite comedies. A president gets involved in a sex scandal, so his secret advisers hire a Hollywood producer to fabricate a small world to unite the country around him and ignore the accusations. Despite all the laughs — and there are lots of them — it’s a little scary how plausible this made-up scenario seems to be.

Look for the remaining 30 in my list over the next couple of weeks.

Here’s the fifth set of movies in my onging Patrick’s 100.

Let’s hear it for some horror! Here’s a collection of ten movies on my list of 100 films I enjoy that are not for the faint of heart. Or something like that.

As before, these are in no particular order.

51. Halloween (1978) - What a great movie. The suspense really gets you, and for those of us who were lucky enough to see it when it first debuted, the shocks were amazing. Nowadays, this same kind of movie is so predictable that it’s almost hard to even fake surprise when the killer appears out of nowhere. But this one packed a real punch and still does. And that little music cue that happens when Jamie Lee Curtis is slumped against the doorway as Michael Myers rises up…if that doesn’t give you a chill, you’re not a horror fan.

52. The Thing (1982) - A murderous alien monster attacking scientists in a remote research station in the arctic. It’s tight quarters and no one knows who to trust. With a hint of cabin fever mixed in for good measure.

53. Christine (1983) - Another great horror soundtrack in this Stephen King story of the car that will not die, but will kill whenever it gets in gear.

54. Phantoms (1998) - Of all of the movies made from Dean Koontz novels, this one is the best, and really the only decent one. There’s a good mix of suspense and humor and somehow you’re left wondering if it just might be possible….

55. The Tingler (1959) - This is as campy a horror movie as has ever been made, but with Vincent Price as a mad scientist who discovers a live organism in the spines of people who have been scared to death, how can you lose? When this film first hit theaters, select seats were rigged with electrodes that would fire off at a critical moment to make the movie-goers feel like the Tingler had grabbed on. And there’s a masterfully-done color scene in this otherwise-black-and-white movie in which a deaf mute gets a fatal case of the Tingler’s grasp.

56. The Deadly Game (1982) - This was a stage play shot for television and aired on HBO in the early 80s. George Segal is an American traveling salesman in Switzerland who gets caught in a snowstorm and finds himself in the home of a collection of retired lawyers who have developed an odd parlor game. They invite him to play, and he agrees, not realizing that it’s a game that’s played to the death.

57. The Vanishing (1993) - Want to see the difference between what a European audience wants and what an American audience wants when it comes to the big ending? Then just rent the American version and the French version and watch them back to back, French first. The story involves a teacher who works up the courage to do something really terrible, and a man obsessed with finding, once and for all, the victim of the teacher’s little experiment.

58. Thr3e (2006) - Based on the book by Christian author Ted Dekker, Thr3e is the story of a college student tormented by a secret in his past and stalked by a psychopath. You won’t see the end coming, but they cleverly show you how all of the seemingly unlikely pieces of the puzzle do, in fact, fit together! Despite a few over-the-top performances, it’s still an entertaining, if lesser-known, picture.

59. Pet Sematary (1989) - Despite one of the most ridiculous songs, “I don’t want to be buried…in a pet sematary” and some spectacularly bad acting in parts, this Stephen King movie is still entertaining.

60. Poltergeist (1982) - “They’re here.” And of course, the problem starts with the television. Yeah, yeah…blame TV. This little movie is the only Poltergeist flick you ever need to see. Don’t waste your time with Part II, and don’t even consider Part III, which feels as though the script was blank after about page 20. Sometimes, you do everything you can and should do in the original.

There are more of my 100 Movies coming before the Arch-a-thon wraps up at noon, so stick with me.

Here’s the fourth set of movies in my onging Patrick’s 100.

The first eight movies in this set of ten get me every time. Somewhere during the film, I will tear up at something that happens. This is why I watch a lot of movies alone! The last two are comedies that make me laugh out loud, which is a good thing because if I had tried to do 10 tear-jerkers, I might have shorted out the keyboard.

The first 10 of my favorite motion pictures can be found here. As before, these are in no particular order.

By the way, where’s your list of movies? Don’t make me come over there!

31. ‘Night, Mother (1986) - This is an intensely disturbing movie. Based on the play of the same name, it features Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft in a story about a young, troubled woman and her blissfully clueless simpleton mother. By the time the night is over (and with it, the film), a shocking event will have changed their lives forever. And the character study leading up to those final moments will put you through the wringer. I think part of what gets me about this story is the realization that we can be very close to those around us and not see what’s really going on.

32. Steel Magnolias (1989) - Yeah, yeah…I’m a sap. Get over it. This movie, also based on a play, is like a slice of life. It picks up in the middle of one situation and ends in the middle of another one, but along the way, you fall in love with some colorful women who prove that they live up to the title. Shirley MacLaine and Olympia Dukakis’s characters of Ouiser and Clairee provide just enough comedic moments to keep it fun, although I’m not sure which one of them is “too twisted for color TV.”

33. Somewhere In Time (1980) - A man falls in love decades too late. But he manages to will himself back in time to be with the woman of his dreams. It’s such a sweet little story until that pesky penny comes in and destroys everything, proving that even a century ago, a penny wasn’t worth a cent.

34. Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - I don’t care how many remakes they do of this story. The original one with little Natalie Wood is the best. Edmund Gwenn could have been the real Santa. Not sure what about it gets to me but sometimes it does.

35. Tidy Endings (1985) - This was a film based on a play and made for HBO. It starred Stockard Channing and Harvey Fierstein (who wrote the play) as the lovers of the same man who died of AIDS. In a confrontation that is at times cruel, they come to understand each other and appreciate each other’s loss in ways they never imagined they could. If you have ever lost someone close to you, regardless of circumstances, there’s something you can relate to. It’s a powerful study in grief and anger.

36. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) - Does anyone really need to explain why this is such a good movie? If you’ve seen it, you know. If you haven’t seen it, you should go right now and rent it.

37. The Green Mile (1999) - Before this film came out, I’d have said that The Shawshank Redemption was the best prison movie ever. Both were based on stories by Stephen King, so maybe it makes sense that they’re both in the same league. Michael Clarke Duncan is incredible as John Coffey, a special man who appears to be some kind of angel. Note that his initials are also those of Jesus Christ. The pain Coffey feels in sensing the evil in the world around him is enough to make one think about how Christ Himself might actually feel looking around our world.

38. Simon Birch (1998) - I honestly have no idea how I first found out about this picture. I had never heard of it. And it has Jim Carrey in it. Any movie with Carrey is automatically going to go in my “unlikely to see this ever” list, but in this case, Carrey doesn’t go for the silliness and in fact, has a relatively small part at the end. It’s a story about one boy’s search for his father and another boy’s search for his true purpose in the world. I can certainly relate to the latter. If you can make it all the way through this film and not be even slightly moved, I don’t think we’d get along. Unless you bought be a big ribeye at Outback, which is always makes everything okay.

39. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) - A race movie with a smorgasbord of stars. (Yes, I’m amazed that I spelled smorgasbord correctly on the first try!) A robber (Jimmy Durante) crashes his car and uses his last breaths to tell a collection of bystanders (including Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle and Mickey Rooney) about a buried treasure. Each bystander, accompanied by their respective wives, families, or friends, then decides to go after the money. That’s when the fun really begins. The inside story says that Milton Berle tried his best to steal every scene, and tried to find creative ways to stay in the shots longer than anyone else; even so, Ethyl Merman and Dick Swann steal the scenes repeatedly. It’s good clean fun…if you’re into that sort of thing.

40. Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) - I must admit that I’m not a huge Woody Allen fan. This movie, probably one of his least-known, in fact, is the film that could change my mind. Allen and Diane Keaton are a married couple who lives next door to an elderly man they suspect may have murdered his wife, and so she becomes an over-enthusiastic sleuth, much to Allen’s chagrin. When he sees the first signs that Keaton might be right, he goes pale. She tells him that he’s white as a sheet and he responds, “I know. All the blood rushed to my brother.” Alan Alda and Anjelica Huston are the friends who help craft a plan to solve the little mystery once and for all. If you like Allen-style quick wit, you will like this one.

The Arch-a-thon isn’t over, and neither are the movies appearing as part of my 100. I’ve got three more sets of 10 coming before noon tomorrow, so be sure to check back the rest of the weekend!

Here’s the second set of movies in my onging Patrick’s 100. I know that it has been a while since the first post in this series, but I decided I wanted to save a few listings for this special weekend.

The first 10 of my favorite motion pictures can be found here. As before, these are in no particular order, although all of these happen to be films directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock. The first two on this list, Psycho and Vertigo are my favorites of his work.

My longtime readers probably already know that I’m an Alfred Hitchcock fan. I think he was a genius when it came to telling a story and there are still young directors being influenced by his work. There are some obvious titles that any fan of Hitch would have, and at least one that they probably don’t talk about all that much.

11. Psycho (1960) - Probably the best horror movie ever made, as long as you go in not knowing the surprise ending, Psycho was intentionally made in black and white because Hitch felt that color would be too gory. And it was made without nudity so that Hitch could have fun with the censors by creating the famous shower scene that showed no breasts, but made it look like you’d seen everything. So what did Gus Van Sant do in the remake? Go with color and nudity. Way to miss the point! For those of us who rush to get to a movie on time, or at least on time enough that we miss the endless previews and not any of the movie itself, we can thank this film for starting that tradition: in the old days, it was customary for people to just show up in the middle of a film and figure out what was what as it went along. Since the top-billed star of the movie was shockingly killed off in the first third, Hitch demanded that his audience see the movie from the beginning, and got movie theaters to play along, thus adding to the intrigue of what the movie was about. Even today, its low-budget shooting is enough to send a chill on a dark and stormy night.

12. Vertigo (1958) - One of these days, I’m going to go to San Francisco and see some of the real locations that appeared in this film. (If you’ve been reading these Arch-a-thon posts, you’ll know that soon I’ll have another, more important reason to visit that area, too.) Vertigo is a haunting film about a woman tortured by ghosts from the past, and an ex-detective hired to track her to make sure no harm comes to her. The detective becomes obsessed with the woman when tragedy strikes. But after he recovers, his obsession is reignited when he sees someone who could be the spitting image of woman he had been hired to protect.

13. Rope (1948) - This could be one of Hitch’s least-known color pictures, and that’s likely because of the fact that its odd shooting style made the pacing drag throughout. For this movie, Hitch decided to shoot the film as if it were a stage play. The camera moves around the set, following the action, drifting from one conversation to another where appropriate, and films a complete reel at a time. One film reel was about nine or ten minutes long, so you end up with a movie full of ten-minute takes pieced together while the camera pans behind someone’s back: it’s the old reel on one side, and when the camera moves back out from the person’s back, you’ve started a new reel. The problem with this, of course, is that you see precisely what Hitch was trying to hide. Screenwriter Arthur Laurents complained about the casting of the movie, which was supposedly about two gay killers who kill a classmate just to experience the sensation of killing (borrowing from the real-life Leopold and Loeb case) was supposed to have, as some minor subplot, the fact that their teacher had previously had some relationship with one of them; teacher Jimmy Stewart isn’t believable as having had a torrid affair with anyone, and since the alleged “gay” subplot is never even mentioned, you’re left thinking that something isn’t quite right beyond the murder itself. The concept of what they do with the body during a dinner party makes for a suspenseful flick despite the slow points.

14. The Trouble With Harry (1955) - Leave it to Alfred Hitchcock to turn a murder into a black comedy about a corpse that won’t stay in the ground! The whole “whodunit” part is almost lost in the race to keep the victim from being discovered, which makes it all the more fun.

15. Shadow of a Doubt (1943) - This is rumored to be one of Hitchcock’s personal favorites, his daughter has told interviewers, because he loved the idea of bringing menace to a small town. Uncle Charlie is that menace, and his namesake realizes during his visit to her comically-clueless family that all is not what it seems with everyone’s favorite relative.

16. Rear Window (1954) - While I like this movie, I don’t think I like it quite as much as most of Hitchcock fans seem to. I definitely like the concept, though, because if any of us found ourselves immobilized in our apartment which happened to overlook such an oddball collection of characters, we’d all sit there staring. But I think I’d at least be smart enough to make sure the lights were all off first! Raymond Burr plays a great heavy. (Pardon the pun.)

17. The Birds (1963) - Of all of Hitch’s films, this is probably the only one for which I could imagine a valid case for a remake. The technology of special effects back in the 1960s didn’t really do this thriller about birds suddenly turning on mankind justice. Then again, even with some effects that today look like effects, the acting and the suspense is still very enjoyable. A remake, though, could also help produce that ending Hitch wanted but wasn’t able to shoot because of budget constraints. The original ending — at least, the planned ending — had the human victims of the bird attack escaping their small town only to approach the Golden Gate Bridge and find it covered with birds. What an ending that would have been!

18. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) - The crash of the cymbals is the cue to murder. And the journey to that cymbal crash takes a typical American family from Marrakech to London in a web of deceit and espionage. Doris Day surprised the makers of the film for her dramatic acting ability, and the song she performed, “Que Sera, Sera,” became a hit, even if it didn’t make a whole lot of sense in this particular story.

19. Strangers On a Train (1951) - I’ll kill yours…you kill mine. Criss-cross. That’s the proposal from a man who hates his father to a man who hates his wife. The trouble is, one of the men doesn’t take the proposal as seriously as the other. It’s great suspense with some clever moments, including a humorous crowd shot at a tennis match.

20. North by Northwest (1959) - Let me say it upfront: I’m not particularly a fan of Cary Grant. I don’t really know what it was about him, but something just annoys me about him. Still, the fun of watching an ordinary man find himself in the middle of a case of mistaken identity and espionage. There’s that famous scene of Grant being chased through a corn field by a crop duster, and the big chase scene at Mt. Rushmore. Then there’s that shot at the very end of the film, the ultimate of double entendres. But you probably already know about that one, right?

So that’s my top Hitchcock picks. There may be a few more Hitchcock movies somewhere in the list, but these are my favorites of his work. Be sure to check back during the Arch-a-thon because there’ll be plenty more of my 100 Movies appearing this weekend!

Paul of Aurora Walking Vacation just recently finished listing 100 of his own favorite films, so I thought I’d give my own list of 100 favorite movies, also split into ten parts.

You aren’t likely to agree with all of my selections, and that’s okay. There are some of you who will be shocked that some of your favorite movies aren’t on my list. One example will undoubtedly be The Godfather. I’ve never watched that film; I’m just not into gangster movies. I’m also not into westerns. And as a general rule, I’m not into war pictures, either, although I can think of at least two war movies that are on my list.

It’s important to note that these movies are listed in absolutely no particular order at all. I would be hard-pressed to come up with an actual ranking; it was difficult enough to come up with only 100 movies that top my list. There are probably a good 20 or so that should be here that are hanging out in the wings. These first ten are not necessarily my 10 favorite…they’re just 10 of my 100 favorite.

You are more than welcome to tell me with each set of ten how much you agree or disagree with each selection. And I hope you’ll be motivated to come up with your own list of 100 movies! It would be interesting to see how many pictures we all agree about.

So that’s the setup. Here are the first offerings on my list, and these are not my ten favorite movies…they’re just ten random selections out of my 100 choices:

1. Foul Play (1978) - I’ve probably seen this movie more than most of the others on the list. For some reason, I was fascinated with it by the time it made its way to HBO…and it was one of the first movies featured on that channel when my parents first got cable. Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase made a great team in this comedic murder mystery that borrowed several gimmicks from Hitchcock.

2. On Golden Pond (1981) -If Foul Play is the picture I’ve seen the most times out of the 100, this one probably comes in a close second. Katherine Hepburn and Henry Fonda were a great pair as the aging Thayers. The fight to repair a broken relationship between father and daughter was especially poignant when we later learned that much of the emotion the characters were feeling were felt by Fonda and his real-life daughter, Jane. This will sound strange coming from someone who was about 12 the first time he saw the picture, but I felt that I could identify with some aspects of Norman Thayer, Jr. And the older I get, the more I seem to feel that way.

3. Fail-Safe (1964) - If Henry Fonda had ever chosen to run for president in the 1960s, between this movie and The Best Man, he probably would have been elected. Fail-Safe, based on the novel of the same name, tells the terrifying story of a country’s machines getting out of control and launching what could be the start of World War III. The stark black and white photography and tight shots add to the tension as the president makes a stunning decision to save the world. If you’ve never seen this one, do yourself a favor and rent it.

4. 12 Angry Men (1957) - The third Henry Fonda title on my list is this fascinating look inside a jury room. A tough kid from the slums is on trial for murder, and what looks like an open-and-shut case becomes a case study in prejudice and discrimination. As the lone juror who votes “not guilty,” Fonda is brilliant. Lee J. Cobb gives a masterful performance as the last holdout whose trouble with his own son leads to the breaking point.

5. Anatomy of a Murder (1959) - This courtroom drama tells the story of an Army lieutenant who stands accused of murder after shooting a man who raped his overly-flirty wife. It is an interesting look at how society dealt with the subject of rape and temporary insanity.

6. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) - It’s hard to believe that I was a sophomore in high school when this movie came out. At the same time, it’s hard to believe that it wasn’t even longer ago than that. Matthew Broderick is the kid all of us wanted to be in school: the guy who could get away with anything. The fact that none of the rest of us could have begun to pull the stunts he did makes his character so easy to root for. That, and the fact that the vice principal, played by Jeffrey Jones, is exactly the kind of guy you want Bueler to beat at all costs. It was fairly mindless, but it’s the kind of mindlessness that still manages to entertain without making you feel like you’ve given an hour and a half of your life you’ll never get back.

7. WarGames (1983) - At the start of the personal computer revolution, when people were actually beginning to realize that computers in the home wasn’t such an outlandish idea, WarGames put the fear of God into parents who were convinced that their kid would be the one to fool NORAD into thinking the Russians were attacking. Thank goodness the Cold War lasted long enough for this one to get made. There’s just one problem that I’ll complain about as long as I live: when David and Jennifer made the reservation for two airline tickets to Paris, they did so in her name. Later, after David is arrested, McKittrick asks him who he (David) is going to Paris with. If the reservation had been in Jennifer’s name, McKittrick wouldn’t have known that David was even going to Paris.

8. Desk Set (1957) - When most people are asked to name their favorite Spencer Tracy-Katherine Hepburn picture, Desk Set is generally not it. But maybe the appeal of this one is that it is set at the headquarters of a television network and it focuses on the battle of man (actually woman) vs. machine that makes it so appealing. Of course, this was the late 1950s, which meant that the computers were of the giant, mainframe variety. Bet you’ll never guess who wins the war!

9. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) - Another Tracy-Hepburn picture on the list, and this time, the happy couple is married with a grown daughter who decides to get engaged. Trouble is, her intended happens to have, as Tracy’s character says in the famous closing speech, “a pigmentation problem.” Through lots of laughter and even some tears by the picture’s close, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner tackles interracial relationships in a way that really makes you think. The real story with this movie, though, was that Tracy was dying when production started, and insurance companies wouldn’t cover the picture because his health made the venture too risky; Hepburn and director Stanley Kramer put their own salaries in escrow so that they could make the picture, and Tracy made it through to the end during which he delivered a touching speech about the love he felt for his wife, emotion that clearly borrows from the real-life feelings the two legendary actors felt for each other. Tracy died just 17 days after filming ended.

10. Titanic (1997) - It was the film expected to sink two major studios, Paramount and 20th Century Fox. That was the rumor after this monster of a budget-breaker would be released six months late. But there’s something about this picture, framed around fictional survivor Rose Dawson’s story, that makes us think about the people on board the ship rather than the ship itself. There’s humor, there’s a love triangle, there’s the chase of the young lovers as they try to escape her destiny, and the ultimate suspense of the iceburg looming somewhere out there. By the time the burg is finally in sight, you’ve managed to convince yourself that somehow, they’ll miss it, after all. The real question is whether or not Rose actually dies in the last scene. I’m still not sure, although I tend to think she did. It doesn’t really matter, though, because either in reality or in spirit, her gesture of dropping the Heart of the Ocean over the wreckage has joined Rose and Jack together in spirit after all those eighty-plus years.

So there are the first ten of 100 movies on my favorites list. I invite you to come up with your own list as well…just leave a link here or at Paul’s blog.