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Stijn
The
best movie of 2001 fore me is Lord of Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring.
Visually, it's the best I have ever seen. Before the picture came out
on Belgian screens I knew nothing about the story, but now I cannot
wait until the end of this year when the second film is coming out.
Other films that were surely worth watching are Moulin Rouge and Artificial
Intelligence from Steven Spielberg. |
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Nils
I also very much like the work of other great American filmmakers such as Brian De Palma (Casualties of War, Scarface), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil), Oliver Stone (JFK, Nixon), Steven Spielberg (Schindler's List), Joel Coen (Miller's Crossing), David Lynch (The Elephant Man), Michael Mann (The Insider), Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) among many others. Furthermore, I admire the films of non-American directors such as Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho, Rear Window), David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia), Fritz Lang (M, Metropolis) and Sergio Leone (Once upon a Time in America/the West). Bernardo Bertolucci's Il Conformista (based on the Alberto Moravia novel) and Luchino Visconti's The Dammed (also known as La Caduta Degli Dei) are the two greatest European films I have ever seen. Last but not least I have to mention original film makers such as Lars Von Trier (Europa), Kristof Kieslowski (Trois Couleurs trilogy), Zhang Yimou (To Live, Raise the Red Lantern) and Wong Kar-Wai (Chungking Express, Fallen Angels). |
My
favorite movie of all-time is without any doubt The Insider from director
Michael Mann. It tells the story about a man (Russel Crowe) who gets
involved in a struggle against the powerful industry, when he reveals
some secret information about a company in the nicotine business.
I was deeply moved by this picture after I had seen it. The outstanding
acting performances of Russel Crowe, Al Pacino and Christophe Plummer,
the dramatic and true story and the strong emotions make it unforgettable,
certainly in my case. The film received 7 Academy Award nominations
but failed to win one, because 1999 was the year of American Beauty.
Since The Insider, Russel Crowe is my favorite actor. His performances
in LA Confidential en Gladiator were great and in A Beautiful Mind
he is again at his very best, playing economist John Nash. I do not
really have a favorite actress, although Nicole Kidman certainly is
one of the best actresses at the moment as she played brilliantly
in Moulin Rouge and The Others. 
I
am a great fan of the work of American directors such as Stanley Kubrick,
Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space
Odyssey is without any doubt the greatest movie I have ever seen. It's
a paradoxical story concerning the man-computer relationship, an almost
religious meditation on the place of the human kind in a cosmos which
is far beyond its imagination. Never in film history a director explored
the possibilities of film technique as Kubrick did when filming 2001.
Concerning the other Kubrick films I like Barry Lyndon the most. There
are very few films that contain so many beautiful images. Raging Bull
is the finest result of the cooperation between director Martin Scorsese,
scenarist Paul Schrader, leading actor Robert De Niro, cinematographer
Michael Chapman and editor Thelma Schoonmaker. They all delivered the
best work in their career. I think I have never seen a greater scene
than the Jake La Motta vs. Sugar Ray Robinson fight in Raging Bull.
Other Scorsese films such as Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Age of Innocence
and Casino are all favorite films. Francis Coppola's three Godfather
films and Apocalypse Now are all genuine classics. However, we may not
forget that he also made the more experimental masterpiece The Conversation.