Reader Anne-Kari recently suggested that we talk about
Favorite and least favorite movies within specific genres (drama, b&w, scifi, comedy)?
So that’s what we’re doing all this week. Today’s question:
What are your all-time favorite and least favorite drama movies?
I’m thinking, for our purposes here, about defining drama as a film with no fantastical elements, and one in which drama outweighs whatever elements of action or adventure that might be present. So I have to choose GoodFellas, a film that rocked me when I first saw and has stuck with me ever since, and one that I never fail to thoroughly enjoy on re-viewings. I suspect that one reason why this movie appeals to much to me is that while it is based on a true story and so couldn’t be any more completely grounded in reality, it does evince a feeling that there is something fantastical in the peek it offers us into a way of life that most of us have no experience of.
Worst dramas for me are those that favor phony and contrived sentiment over authentic emotion. So any movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel would “win” here.
Your turn…
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
“Once Upon a Time in America”.
“Secrets and Lies” by Mike Leigh is rather wonderful.
I recall finding “A Love Song for Bobby Long” plenty mawkish. I generally avoid manipulative and sentimental drama like the plague.
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Favourite: A tie between Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. Magnolia dazzles with its emotional capaciousness and freedom of form. The Leopard is an ironic Marxist elegy for the waning of the Sicilian aristocracy during the 19th Century Italian Risorgimento.
Least favourite – Kevin Macdonald’s – The Last King of Scotland. The worst kind of self-regarding English dreck.
Wings of Desire
Least favorite is Autumn Sonata because I couldn’t sit through it.
Best: Lawrence of Arabia, Jaws, The Elephant Man, Secrets and Lies, Network, The Third Man, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Shattered Glass, 12 Angry Men, Schindler’s List, A Separation, Good Will Hunting, American History X, Tyrannosaur, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Notes on a Scandal, Dead Man Walking, Born on the Fourth of July
Worst: Reefer Madness, Novocaine, Blue Crush, Glen or Glenda?, Possession, Match Point, Ride with the Devil, Blue Velvet, The Bone Collector, Troy, Melinda and Melinda… and, if you can call them dramas, Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch
*blank stare*
I have no clue here. Sad, but true. Heck, I have never even seen Goodfellas!
*thinks harder*
Memento?
Fargo?
The Usual Suspects?
Do those count as dramas?
No clue on least favorite.
Favorite Dramas based on reality: Ghandi, Chariots of Fire, Apollo 13
Favorite Dramas that are fictional: 12 Angry Men, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, To Kill a Mockingbird
I can’t think of any least favorites.
However, one favorite did skip my mind completely: On The Beach – taught me so much about mortality.
Lots of good suggestions made already; would also include ‘Apollo 13’, ‘To kill a mockingbird’ and ‘Magnolia’. Other faves for me are ‘In the name of the father’ (‘cos it’s very satisfying when justice does prevail….eventually), ‘Brassed off’ (maybe it’s just a Pete Postlethwaite thing?) and ‘Truly, Madly, Deeply’ (which may or may not count under this heading depending on whether or not one interprets the action as ‘fantastical’). Much harder to think of ‘least favourite’ under this heading, than with comedy or SF.
Favorite: The Cure-starring Joey Mazzello (Jurassic Park) and Brad Renfro (The Client) About the friendship of two boys, one of whom has AIDS. Maybe it’s mostly so good because the score underlying the whole movie.
Also a favorite: The Man from Snowy River. Also a good score. Though I cannot watch it on cable with closed captioning on (I like captions because for some reason there is a slight delay in my brain understanding what was said.) The captions are all wrong. They keep calling the colt a cult, for instance, causing me to yell, “COOOOOLT” with increasing volume as the movie goes on.
Is A Knight’s Tale a drama? Hated it at first (“Why is she dressed like that?! In that time period, whe should be stoned! Why are they doing that? They should be stoned!”) Once I ignored the anachronisms, I really liked it. Plus, it was my introduction to Paul Bettany, now one of my favorite actors. “Trudging. You know, trudging? To trudge: the slow, weary, depressing yet determined walk of a man who has nothing left in life except the impulse to simply soldier on.”
“…for the cult from old regret had got away…” Actually, that sounds MORE entertaining – you should consider yourself lucky! ;-)
Drama’s pretty broad. “Fargo” and “Dazed and Confused” get my vote among a thousand others, probably.
Worst is stuff that think it’s important but is actually making a ridiculous farce of itself. I’m thinking 2005’s “Crash” Some saw it as the next “Do the Right Thing” (also in my best), because their themes and plots are similar, but “Do the Right Thing” wore its racial tensions underneath its sleeves. “Crash”‘s circus of racial slurs can’t even compare.
Looks like we were thinking similarly about this category . . . it’s tough to define the boundaries of “drama,” isn’t it? I actually have always regarded both Fargo and Dazed and Confused as comedies, for instance.
Yup. Dazed and Confused and Fargo are both laugh-out-loud…dramas, for sure. Drama is inherently wide-ranging because serious moments and subjects matter find their way into just about everything.
This one is hard for me to wrap my mind around because it is so wide-ranging. How do I compare A Streetcar Named Desire to Dances with Wolves, or Laura to Raging Bull? I guess I have to break them down a little further in my mind, since there are so many sub-genres . . . Just among those I’ve pulled out of my hat (all of which are excellent), there’s overlaps with Westerns, film noir, and biopics.
I can think of several least favorites, though . . . Gandhi is a tedious, overwrought hagiography that inexplicably won the Oscar in the year that gave us E.T. and Blade Runner. Seven Years in Tibet is excruciating, both for its own heavy-handedness and Brad Pitt’s terrible Austrian accent. Actually, the whole genre of Oscar-bait biopics is rife with turkeys, at least one a year. I mean, who thought it would be a good idea for Leo DiCaprio to play J. Edgar Hoover, for crying out loud?
What I’m finding interesting is how many of my favourite films don’t fit into any of these neat categories:
Where does “The Double Life of Veronique” fit? “Orphee”? “La Belle Et La Bete”?
OK, excluding those, I present for your delectation:
Black Book, City of God, Ice Cold In Alex, 8 Women, La Lectrice , A Prophet, Shanghai Express and 5 Fingers.
Hated:
Any. Fucking. Chick. Flick (pardon my language)
They are product and to be despised
On the subject of what is drama, Wikipedia offers the following list of drama films:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_drama_films
Not sure it helps though (Rugrats Go Wild?)
Hmmmm. Favourite is really hard, my favourites tend to have a fantastical element (like Stanger Than Fiction). Sense & Sensibility is probably out by virtue of being a period piece, but it’s perfect. I guess I’ll have to be a cliche and go with Shawshank.
Worst – Titanic. Absolutely despise it.
Just one favorite?
Schindler’s List–though I feel weird describing that as a favorite since like most dramas of that nature, it’s something that is better respected from an artistic pov than enjoyed the way one enjoys a regular movie. It’s probably the best drama that I’ve seen thus far–though considering the vast number of dramas I haven’t seen, that isn’t saying a lot.
Runners-up:
Casablanca
The Godfather
The Godfather: Part Two
Chinatown
El Norte
Gallipoli
Blood Simple
The Elephant Man
A Man for All Seasons
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
Memento
I’m probably missing something obvious but hey, that’s a good start…
Least favorite:
Magnolia
Crazy/Beautiful
Dazed and Confused: I actually lived through that period of Texas history–though not in Austin–and I was still bored to tears. And movies have been combining drama and comedy since the days of Dinner at Eight. ..Just saying.
My list used to be much longer but my memories have been merciful as of late.
Favorites I’d say To Kill A Mockingbird, Remains of the Day- to be honest I’m sort of going blank on dramas.
The worst- Lawrence of Arabia- how can the story of such an interesting man be made *SO BORING* it was like an 8 hour movie or something.
For me, it was “The Godfather.”
As to least favorite, I have never understood why anyone was moved, at all, by “Stand By Me,” which I thought unconvincing and silly.
And, making use of the runners-up exemption:
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Lives of Others
The Hospital
Tokyo Story
The Rules of the Game
The Reader
Odd Man Out
The Last Picture Show
The Grapes of Wrath
Ikiru
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Citizen Kane (there’s reasons it’s a classic!)
…I really can’t think of any, good or bad. I guess I really don’t like dramas! maybe Benny and Joon? Is that a drama?
I do like older movies like Casablanca. Maybe they had less melo in their drama. Or maybe everything’s better in black and white.