My must watch movie list

I wrote this a month back. Some people have already read it. Now that I have overcome my laziness and created a blog on blogger, I am putting this up here.

Even though my education in movies, as rightly pointed out by many close and kin, is incomplete (some say abhorrently incomplete), I do have a must-watch list. These are the movies, which have made much of what I am today, enhanced my views, screwed with my head, and rendered me beyond repair.

Movies one must see to reach my level of irreparableness (in no particular order):

1. Titanic: Don't judge me by this movie. But for someone my age this movie had probably the first love scene they would have seen in any movie. I saw it in the movie theater with 400 other people. Sitting in the seat between my parents'. And it had Leonardo. And it took me almost 10 years to overcome my hatred for Kate Winslet as Leo died in the end to save her. And I could never watch the movie again. Partly because the melodrama was unbearable and partly because it was intolerable. But I kept dreaming of the scene where Rose alights the stairs to find Jack waiting for her, only it was me instead of her.
2. Jurassic Park: It was 1996 and I was 10. My first movie on the big screen. I didn't sleep for 4 days and couldn't eat custard and jelly, my eternal favorite, for the longest time without thinking that a T-Rex was breathing down my neck. Only 4 years later I read the book and dismissed the movie as a poor adaptation and mind boggling special effects. Jurassic Park left with me an everlasting fascination for chaos theory, fractals, snow flakes and pine trees. And Ian Malcom was an unlikely hero for life. Science is and will always be my first love, and much of the credit goes to Michael Crichton and Jurassic Park.
3. Home Alone 1 & 2: Show me a kid who doesn't like these two movies and I'll show you  a Dutch team victorious in the Football World Cup. It is by far the best slapstick, situational comedy ever. And no, the kid from Home Alone 3, although looks cuter, is not a patch on Maculay Culkin. Kevin's is perhaps the best child character I have ever come across. And I have seen a lot of kiddie movies. He is good at heart and naughty at the same time. Oh-so-vulnerable with a dare-you-mess-with-me attitude. The original funny story with a moral- family and friends are forever for keeps.
4. Scent of a Woman: I heard por una cabaza  the first time while listening to the Polish string-quartet in NCPA, Mumbai. They started out well, but then slowly made me drowsy with their soothing violins. But the last piece they played woke me up like never before and it has been implanted in my head ever since. Someone said this was also in the movie Scent of a Woman and so I had to see it. Don't consider it as blasphemy if I say that it was my first Al Pachino movie. Sadly, it was and I had been unaware of his magnificence as a performer till the first 22 years of my life. Ho-ha! He was fantastic. Incomparable. Peerless. I often recite his lines from the last monologue from the film's climax in my head: "I have seen boys like these, younger than these....." and still get goosebumps all over. That is also noteworthy that por una cabaza is perhaps the most riveting piece of composition I have ever heard.
5. Pretty Woman: Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Need I say more. The way love stories are supposed to be. The way they ought to be. Happy with a dash of humor and intensity. Where the girl is not some damsel waiting to be rescued. But sure is one helluva match. Where the man is chivalrous not chauvinistic. Assertive not aggressive. Caring not overbearing. Like they all really ought to be, but rarely are! And the story is straightforward not some contrived, meandering plot. The Elvis song just adds to this one's glory.
6. You've Got Mail: My favorite version of the original battle of the sexes Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. With my favorite Godfather quip- it has the answer to all the questions in the world. "Which day of the week? What should you do?" Meg Ryan looking so pretty in short hair- as the worthy adversary. Both her and Tom Hanks just looking made for each other. It reassured one that even regular people can meet their soul-mates just like that. Just like Joe and Kathleen. And the way Joe pursues her in the second half still makes my heart ripple with excitement.
7. The Dark Knight: This is not about Batman. Or the special effects. Or the star-cast. This one is all about Chistopher Nolan's interpretation of the story. And Heath Ledger. I liked him a lot before this movie. Afterwards, I loved him. There was no choice. How could you not adore that endearing smile, ear to ear, with the sweet crinkle at the eyes, while he slaughtered just about everyone? I have no superlatives for the way Ledger acted in this movie. He took the Joker, Batman's biggest enemy, to another level of madness and apathy. In fact, there was no degree of mad for his Joker. And Chis Nolan took off from Batman Begins and reach a very high high with this. It remains to be seen what levels of amazing can he reach with his third Batman movie.
8. American Beauty: I hated this movie even before I saw it. A headline splashed across the newspaper: "The Oscar goes to racism." American Beauty had stolen what rightfully belonged to the best movie of that year- the sixth sense. Just because the later was directed by an Indian. When I finally saw American Beauty (which was before   I could have seen The Sixth Sense), I realized what a fool I had been. It was a superb dark comedy of an imploding, dysfunctional family. Kevin Spacy was just out of this world. So was every other actor. And it was so hilariously tragic, that although I have seen it so many times since, I cannot get over the initial impact it had on me. My homage to it is the fact that I have never seen The Sixth Sense.
9. Edward Scissorhands: Jonny Depp. I still can't believe it was Jonny Depp who played Edward. I really don't remember much from the movie as I saw it pretty damn long back, but this list will be incomplete without it. This movie just changed the way I looked at machines, and robots forever. I even looked at Vicky "The Small Wonder" Robot with suspicion post watching this movie. It just was right amount of a bit too weird and creepy. The pale, almost milky, Edward kept haunting me for weeks. And it made me acquire a taste for Jonny Depp for the rest of my life.
10. Inception: My first movie review. This one has to be special. It had me hooked, on the edge of my seat for about two hours. Well, to be honest I was hooked to inception trivia and theories and probabilities for days. It was a big reminder of why I love Leonardo and why Marion Cotillard has already won the Oscar. And prolonged the aftertaste of Elen Page after watching Juno. And I am in love with the way Chis Nolan thinks, however twisted. I liked the Matrix a lot- I felt it was a complicated and intriguing concept and superb special effects ruined by stud-boy-ism by the characters played to imperfection by deadpan-ners who cannot pull it of to save their life! Inception did for me what the Matrix did for everybody else.
11. My Blueberry Nights: Jude Law. Mmmm! Norah Jones. Ah! A movie that reminds you how it feels like after eating melting chocolate by licking it with your fingers. Sweet, sweet, sticky-sweet, orgasmic. The kind of movie that makes feel happy and high from the pit of your stomach. Everything was perfect. The music was more than perfect- it was phenomenal. It gave me goosebumps and made me cranky when it got over. It made me long for the haunting voice of Jones that is as heavenly beautiful as Jude Law. Watching Lizy's journey was like living it vicariously. And you ended up finding a bit of your own soul along with her. It leaves you wishing that there is a Jeremy waiting for you at the end of your journey.
12. Vicky Christina Barcelona: God must have a sense of humor like Woddy Allen's. Or vice-versa. I doesn't matter. But if one have to make a movie on life with all its oddities and scathing funny intact, one can't do better than Allen. I saw this movie in the dead of the night, and it left me in a complete trance. I was transmogrified, certainly irreparably, into an eternal Woddy Allen worshiper. It was light on the mind and yet left an indelible mark. The movie always did the preposterous with utmost, unquestionable flair. I have lost count how many times I have seen the scene with Christina telling Juan Carlos and Maria Elena that she is leaving them. It did not surprise me that Cruz won best supporting actress for her role. Nothing was left to surprise once the movie was over

All these are Hollywood movies. I am making a mental note of coming up with a Bollywood list soon. Till then....Enjoy!