Desert Island Movies

This originally appeared at the Online Film Critics Society in April 2000, back when I was still a member. The article seems to have disappeared since the OFCS joined forces with Rotten Tomatoes.

I never quite get these "desert island" things. I mean, if I knew I was gonna be stuck in the middle of nowhere and could plan for it, I'd bring along a satellite phone and the number of the nearest search-and-rescue team.
But of course, you're not supposed to think too much about this kind of exercise. So I didn't think too much about what five films I couldn't live without -- I didn't agonize over choosing "the best" films I could come up with, or the "most worthy" films. Instead, these are, quite simply, movies I would never get tired of watching over and over and over again. Indeed, I have watched these movies dozens of times each and always discover something new about them, and always find myself supremely entertained by even the familiar aspects of them.
The first four were total no-brainers, occurring to me instantly, and in this order:

THE ADVENTURES OF BUCKAROO BANZAI: ACROSS THE EIGHTH DIMENSION: I must have watched this movie once a week during my teenage years, and to my 15-year-old brain, this was, hands down, the coolest damn movie ever made. And you know what? It still is the coolest damn movie ever made. With highly quotable, often non-sequitur dialogue -- which gets funnier and weirder the more you think about it -- visual and sound effects jokes, and actors who would go on to much bigger things (John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, Clancy Brown, Peter Weller, Ellen Barkin) cutting loose and having a ball since practically no one was watching, this gonzo SF satire is endlessly inventive. And did I mention that it's the coolest damn movie ever made? Oh, man, did I ever want to be a member of Team Banzai. I still do.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE: Do you know what "to the pain" and "to blave" mean? This movie is sort of a yardstick for how I judge people: I look askance at anyone who says they didn't like -- or worse, didn't get -- Rob Reiner's fast-moving and slyly clever deconstruction of fairy tales. With delicious men (Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin) having swordfights, adventure and excitement, good guys who turn into bad guys and vice versa, and, again, an eminently quotable script, what's not to love? This movie never ceases to tickle me. [read my review]

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE: RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is The Movie... the one that hooked me on movies and convinced 12-year-old me that not only was I gonna be a movie director when I grew up, I was gonna be Steven Spielberg. The likelihood of that happening grows ever more remote, but I still get that same visceral rush from RAIDERS. I'd take LAST CRUSADE with me to my desert island, though, because it's RAIDERS times ten -- it out-RAIDERS RAIDERS. The biggest, fastest, funniest, most exciting of the Indy flicks, this is Hollywood movie magic at its very best. Plus, it would be very nice to have both Harrison Ford and Sean Connery for company.

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: I was determined not to be a weasel and cheat by calling the STAR WARS films one big story that should as such be counted as one film. Nope. I picked the best of the original trilogy -- EMPIRE would totally satisfy my STAR WARS jones. It's the darkest and most emotional of all the SW movies, and it contains both one of the great screen kisses (Han and Leia, of course) and one of the most startling, most visceral moments in all of film history: "No, Luke, I am your father." That line still gives me a chill. Plus, it has some of the best movie music ever written: "The Imperial March," which isn't in STAR WARS! [read my review]

For my fifth film, though, I was torn. How could I leave behind GHOSTBUSTERS, FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF, GOODFELLAS, MIDNIGHT RUN, A CHRISTMAS STORY, ALIENS, MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, THE FUGITIVE, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, and just about everything by the Marx Brothers? But I decided I could live without them if I could take along:

CASABLANCA: Unlike just about every other movie I've mentioned here -- including my top four -- this is not a movie that pegs me as a child of the 80s, and it's not one that hit me with a wallop when I was an impressionable teenager and has stuck with me ever since. No, I first saw this, probably the most perfect movie ever made, only last year, though I've watched it a dozen times since. (I think I watched it every night for a week after that first mind-blowing viewing.) I'm madly in love with Rick Blaine, which is reason enough to bring this one along to my own private Gilligan's Island, but I think why I love this film so (and what it has in common, I suddenly realize, with my other four choices) is that it's about people living through what is not only the most exciting, most dangerous times of their lives, but the most exciting, most dangerous periods in the histories of their worlds. [read my review]

Those are the kinds of stakes that make movies so thrilling, and so worth rewatching.

MaryAnn Johanson
The Flick Filosopher
April 2000

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