My 5 for Your 5

The previous post (see below) seeks your comments about "The Dead," but lest we get too serious and work-oriented here on this blog, let me try for a bit levity. Since we will watch a film during the balance of the week, maybe you'd be willing draw from your moviegoing careers and nominate your Top 5 films (it doesn't necessarily have to be the best five films, as you'll see from my list, but might also include films that just represented a memorable moviegoing experience). Annotations are optional (but preferred!). This is difficult and provisional, but here's an attempt:

• Wings of Desire: Wim Wenders' most transcendent film; haunting, poetic, beautiful story about an angel who decides to give up immortality to become human.

• Jaws: I can never get enough of this one, perhaps because, while still thrilled by the narrative, I increasingly appreciate the craft and the genius of the filmmaking. It's also probably the most memorable "film event" of my life: my grandparents took me to see it as an eleven year-old, against my mother's strict warning that they not do so! I remember wearing brand new sneakers that night, which ensured that my visceral discomfort stretched from head to toe. Incidentally, my grandparents would further enrage my mother by taking me, the following summer, to see Tarzan -- the version where Bo Derek is naked for about 100 minutes; this film (but for Bo, of course) would undoubtedly be in my list of Top 5 most horrible films I've ever seen.

• The English Patient: this would probably also be in my Top 5 literary works list. I'm a sucker for this film. I was so sad when I learned that the director, Anthony Minghella, died suddenly a few years ago; he was an amazing talent. This is one of those rare cases when book and film nourish and augment each other in the best of ways.

• It's a Wonderful Life: does it need a justification? Is there a film with a bigger emotional payoff at the end than this one?

• Cinema Paradiso: this is perhaps the most flawed of the five films I include, but you have to love a film that celebrates the love of film. And it comes with its own wallop of an emotional payoff during the poignant coda.

It's painful to leave out Peter Jackson's grandly stirring The Lord of the Rings films, as well as the first Alien film (sci-fi suspense doesn't get any better), and somehow I feel the original Star Wars should be in the running merely because of the movie experience it offered to this then twelve year-old ("You're all clear, Kid, now let's blow this thing and go home!" ah, the goosebumps!) -- it's also the only film I ever saw more than twice (five times, in fact) in the theater ... And I've neglected comedies ... Anyway, have at it ... if you'd like! And while you're at it, you could always drop down to the "Canon Fodder" post below (10/5) and add your ten entries for what works you think must be found in a literature curriculum!