Paul's Favourites
The 7th Arts's highest level of achievement can be judged alongside great literature, great music, and great painting, with many filmmakers creating enduring masterpieces.
The list of film titles below may not all be enduring masterpieces, but I have however, fond lingering memories of all of them. They all fit the criteria of what I feel films can or should do, to not only be well crafted, but also to entertain, inform, enlighten and more often than not, take the viewer down roads less travelled...
Can only hope you also will discover or rediscover some viewing pleasures among my all-time favourites' listed below.
The Mosquito Coast (1986)
6.6/10
Director: Peter Weir
Starring: Harrison Ford, Helen Mirren, River Phoenix, Conrad Roberts, Andre Gregory, Marth...
Director Peter Weir ('Witness') re-teams with Harrison Ford as they tackle Paul Theroux`s novel of an obsessive American inventor who transplants his... Read more
The Music of Chance (1993)
7.2/10
Director: Philip Haas
Starring: Mandy Patinkin, James Spader, M Emmet Walsh, Charles Durning, Joel Grey, Samanth...
The feature debut of documentary filmmaker Philip Haas (Money Man) is an adaptation of Paul Auster's allegorical novel. Mandy Patinkin plays a drifter... Read more
The Night of the Hunter (1955)
8/10
Director: Charles Laughton
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish
Robert Mitchum gives one of his best performances as Harry Powell, a psychotic self-styled preacher who is after the stolen money of a hanged man. Set... Read more
The Night of the Hunter ( Blu-ray ) (1955)
8/10
Director: Charles Laughton
Starring: Lillian Gish, Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters
Robert Mitchum gives one of his best performances as Harry Powell, a psychotic self-styled preacher who is after the stolen money of a hanged man. Set... Read more
The Nutty Professor (1963)
6.7/10
Director: Jerry Lewis
Starring: Jerry Lewis, Stella Stevens, Del Moore
Jerry Lewis is a mild mannered chemistry professor who follows in the footsteps of Dr Jekyll and becomes Buddy Love, a heartless lounge lizard and hea... Read more
The Producers (1968)
7.7/10
Director: Mel Brooks
Starring: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Kenneth Mars, Dick Shawn
Mel Brook's hilarious hit about a producer who comes up with a surefire scheme for making money... on a musical production that he is absolutely cert... Read more
The Rapture (1991)
6.4/10
Director: Michael Tolkin
Starring: Mimi Rogers, Patrick Bauchau, David Duchovny
A thought-provoking film where virtually no others have dared to tread, about a young woman in a brain-dead job who becomes involved with a fundamenta... Read more
The Roaring Twenties (1939)
7.9/10
Director: Raoul Walsh
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Priscilla Lane
James Cagney stars as a good man turned crook in this recreation of the world of bootleggers, speakeasies and violence; Humphrey Bogart is the gangste... Read more
The Saddest Music in the World (2003)
7.2/10
Director: Guy Maddin
Starring: Isabella Rossellini, Mark McKinney, Maria de Medeiros, David Fox
Director Guy Maddin's works are like a window to an alternate film universe - this unforgettable feverish whirligig of a movie is the closest the cul... Read more
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
9.3/10
Director: Frank Darabont
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton, Tim Robbins, William Sadler, Clancy Brown, Gil Bello...
Director Frank Darabont's powerful adaptation of the novella by Stephen King stars Tim Robbins as a man serving two life sentences in New England's Sh... Read more