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 Wild Bunch (1969)
8/10
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Starring: William Holden, Warren Oates, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Ben Johnson
Peckinpah at his violent best. In the Southwest of 1913, Pike Bishop (William Holden) is leader of 'The Wild Bunch', a gang of outlaws coerced by a Me... Read more
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
8/10
Director: Victor Fleming
Starring: Ray Bolger, Judy Garland, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Billie Burke, Frank Morgan, Mar...
Follow Dorothy over the rainbow and down the Yellow Brick Road, along with the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, Cowardly Lion and Toto, too, for fun and adven... Read more
Vitus (2006)
7.7/10
Director: Fredi M Murer
Starring: Teo Gheorghiu, Bruno Ganz, Fabrizio Borsani, Julika Jenkins, Urs Jucker
A compelling domestic drama showing the family dynamics and ambititions surrounding child prodigy Vitus. A piano master by age six, Vitus' future seem... Read more
Whose Life Is It Anyway? (1981)
7.4/10
Director: John Badham
Starring: Richard Dreyfuss, John Cassavetes, Christine Lahti
Richard Dreyfuss is phenomenal as a sculptor who is left a quadriplegic after a car accident and decides that he wants to be allowed to die, a choice... Read more
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
4.4/10
Director: Mel Stuart
Starring: Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum, Gene Wilder, Roy Kinnear, Julie Dawn Cole
One of the most memorably strange children's films ever made, equally influenced by the dark underpinnings of Roald Dahl's original book ("Charlie and... Read more
Winter Kills (1979)
6.3/10
Director: William Richert
Starring: Richard Boone, Jeff Bridges, Sterling Hayden, John Huston, Anthony Perkins, Eliz...
A rare example of a film so wild, so utterly rambunctious and so bursting with invention that it defies description. Based on the novel by Richard Con... Read more
Winter's Bone (2010)
7.2/10
Director: Debra Granik
Starring: John Hawkes, Jennifer Lawrence
With the threat of her family being evicted from their home in the Ozarks if her bail-jumping father isn't caught within the week, 17-year-old Ree Dol... Read more
Wise Blood (1979)
7.2/10
Director: John Huston
Starring: Brad Dourif, Harry Dean Stanton, Ned Beatty, Dan Shor
An unlikely religious leader (Brad Dourif) recruits a ragtag band of followers for his Church of Christ Without Christ in order to expose the hypocris... Read more