favorite film?
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samlowrysloveslave — 20 years ago(January 30, 2006 02:00 PM)
yeah so, moving back to the topic at hand
i love cassavetesdefinitely one of the most important american (no offense, but calling folks from the USA 'americans' is a convention that i won't even bother to challenge at the present moment) filmmakers in history
my top 5 personal favorites:- A Woman Under The Influenece (Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk are simply amazing)
- Faces (indeed one of the most important films ever made)
- Husbands (always surprised people don't like this morei think it's phenomenal for those reasons already listed)
- Shadows (amateur-ish for sure, but it's the acorn that grew into the oak)
- Gloria (yeah, that kid was no Brando but Gena kicks some serious ass in this one and i love her for it)
I'm afraid she's upped stumps and retired to the pavillion.
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freudified_n_funkified — 19 years ago(July 10, 2006 11:05 PM)
From earth-shatteringly brilliant to damn good stuff, in that order.
- Husbands
- A Woman Under the Influence
- Faces
- Love Streams
- Killing of a Chinese Bookie (long cut)
- Minnie and Moskowitz
- Opening Night
- Shadows
- Gloria
All but Gloria are 10/10s by the way. Gloria's probably an 8.
Cassavetes had the same quality as a director as he did as an actor when he was on-screen performing he had what can only be described as "it". You can't take your eyes off of him, and find yourself bored when he's not around. That's exactly how his filmmaking career was - cinema got boring when Cassavetes wasn't around.
Also some love should go out to SHE'S SO LOVELY. God only knows what Cassavetes would have done with this had he been able to helm it. It doesn't have hardly any of his directorial sensibilities, but it feels a little like how if those other 9 movies mentioned above were novels, SHE'S SO LOVELY is a nice little short story. I've got a lot of analogies today.
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haciendacaliente — 19 years ago(November 20, 2006 07:26 PM)
I personally find it hard to subjectively "categorize" many of Cassavetes' films as being better/worse than the others, but I'll try (note: I haven't seen Husbands or Too Late Blues yet).
Greatest works:
Faces
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (the 1976 versionpersonally, if it weren't for Faces, this would probably be his greatest film)
Love Streams
A Woman Under The Influence
Just a shade below:
Opening Night
Minnie & Moskowitz (the scene with Zelmo is priceless)
Still pretty incredible, though not as essential:
Shadows
A Child Is Waiting
Blah:
Gloria