Pass the Popcorn

"Which have been your favorite movies?" I'm often asked. Well, I've enjoyed the usual famous movies, especially those with critical acclaim. My favorites have been those which have most strongly moved me intellectually or emotionally, which I would see more than twice, and sometimes which were not objectively great or well known. Some which come to mind are "Dr. Strangelove" (1960s), "2001: A Space Odyssey" ('60s), "The Graduate" ('60s), "Looking for Mr. Goodbar" ('70s), "Oh, God" ('70s), "Catholics" (t.v. movie, '70s), "The Exorcist" ('70s), "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" ('80s), "Mass Appeal" ('80s), "Electric Dreams" ('80s), "The Apostle" ('80s), "Peggy Sue Got Married" ('80s), "The Professional" ('90s), "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" ('00s), "Prairie Home Companion" ('00s). One of the most unusual movies I've encountered is "Russian Ark" ('90s). This one, set in the late 1800s in St. Petersburg, Russia, is a semi-documentary of the city's famous Hermitage Art Museum. What makes it striking is the fact that its entire 90 minutes were filmed with the same, ONE camera shot, i.e., no breaks in the camera's recording, no editing, no goofs---an hour and a half of one constant shot moving in and out of different rooms in the Hermitage, capturing different people in dialog and coming and going, etc.

About ten years ago, the Vatican surprised the world by out of the blue announcing its list of the best 100 movies (or was it 40, the Biblical number?---I forget) ever made in its opinion. The list was full not of such religious films as "The Ten Commandments," "Ben Hur, "Jesus of Nazareth," but of most of the famous, critically acclaimed secular movies which you and I have seen over the years. Maybe B-16 (Pope Benedict XVI) in the evening enjoys watching "Das Boot."

-Old Doc