It’s been a long time since a proper list day, so here’s a few lists. First off comes a meme from Aziz that will take the place of the usual random ten songs:
Seven Songs I Am Into Right Now
- DragonForce – “Through The Fire And Flames”
- Weezer – “Only in Dreams”
- Tool – “10,000 Days (Wings Pt 2)”
- The Heavy – “That Kind of Man”
- Radiohead – “Bodysnatchers”
- UNKLE – “Nursery Rhyme / Breather”
- Mr. Bungle – “Carousel”
So basically, I need to start listening to some new music. Heh.
Top 5 Heist Movies
- Ocean’s Eleven (2001): Probably the most purely entertaining films of this century, and very well made too.
- Heat: Michael Mann’s brilliant cops and robbers story contains some of the more memorable realistic heists, including one of the best gunfights in film history. Perhaps a little long and a little unfocused, but it all works for me.
- (tie) Bob le flambeur and The Good Thief: Yes, I’m cheating, this is a tie. However, The Good Thief is a remake of Bob le flambeur, and they’re both pretty good examples of the heist genre. The newer film has more of the modern conventions of heist films (and it does a good job subverting them as well), while the original helped establish the conventions of heist films (the original is a little slower than the remake, but still worth a watch). The ending of both approaches what Roger Ebert describes as “cosmic irony.”
- The Killing: Before Stanley Kubrick made a name for himself, he worked on a couple of genre pics, this being one of the finest examples of film noir and heist films.
- The Bank: Underrated Australian caper flick that might be a little out of place on this list, but I wanted to put it on because almost no one has seen it and it’s worth a watch…
This was hard, there are lots of movies I wanted to put on the list, but fell off for various reasons, including The Usual Suspects (the capers really aren’t the focus of the film though), The Asphalt Jungle (pretty much the blueprint for the modern heist film), The Killers (not really a heist film, though it does feature a heist shown with a great tracking shot), Heist and Die Hard
Top 5 Heist Movies I should Have Seen Before Compiling the Above List
Interestingly, it seems that most of these films are on Filmspotting’s next marathon. Score.
5 More Good Heist Movies I forgot to mention earlier
Ok, so now that I’ve mentioned 20 heist films (without mentioning Dog Day Afternoon!), I guess I should stop.
ahhh.. Sneakers! that was just a classic. I loved that film.
The modern remake of Italian Job was also quite gripping – Mark Wahlberg played the lead and really kept the focus.
Yeah, and I didn’t immediately think of it when thinking about heist films, but then I started looking around the net and someone put that on a list and totally smacked my head. Of course.
I enjoyed the modern remake of Italian Job, but it didn’t make a huge impression on me either (still want to see the original).