I came across a list I had made in 2003 of 100 reasons why I loved cinema. My love of the silver screen still stands, but I had to refresh a few entries with some recent refs before I could present it below 🙂
1 – “What have you been doing all these years?” – “I’ve been going to bed early.”
2 – You want to move to Montana to learn fly fishing
3 – “I am your father, Luke”
4 – Steward Granger and Edwige Feuillère in “Woman Hater”
5 – The pale face of Alec Guiness when he first appears in “The Lady Killers”
6 – Anita Ekberg wades into a fountain and you want to be Marcello Mastroianni.
7 – Tiffany’s will never look the same at dawn
8 – “We’re gonna need a bigger boat”
9 – Monsters do exist in movies
10 – Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration
11 – “We have all the time in the world.”
12 – You still hope Steve McQueen is going to make it in “The Great Escape” even though you’ve already seen the movie a zillion times
13 – The race in Ben-Hur
14 – James Stewart discovers that life is wonderful, and it’s wonderful
15 – The bridge scene in Sicario
16 – You know who is Kaiser Söse and wish you didn’t so that you can find out again
17 – “I am Wind In His Hair! Do you see that I am your friend? Can you see that you will always be my friend?”
18 – “So, I hear you, like, ran into these things before? – “Yeah.” – “What did you do?” – “I died.”
19 – You want to spend your next holiday in Rome
20 – “My name is Lymon Zerga”
21 – You can prove that Sherlock Holmes made a cameo in Star Wars
22 – Peugeot will still make cars in 2049
23 – You are not afraid of witches provided there’s some water nearby
24 – “My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die!”
25 – The mere reference to Groundhog day makes you laugh
26 – You never take showers in motels anymore
27 – Taming leopards is nothing more than knowing the right song
28 – “Oh, but you can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just because some watery tart threw a sword at you!”
29 – You know who Wong Fei-Hong is, and you just don’t want to mess with him
30 – “Ooh, I’m really scared. Help! There’s a peck with an acorn pointed at me!”
31 – Tiny bits of burning paper flying in the night in the name of the father
32 – You know the names of the magnificent seven by heart
33 – Communication with aliens is nothing more than knowing the right tune
34 – “You jump, I jump, remember?”
35 – “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”
36 – You’d like to know if that smoke shop really exists in that special corner of Brooklyn
37 – What the heck is in Marcellus’ briefcase?
38 – “Movies don’t create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!”
39 – Youth pills elaborated by monkeys work too well
40 – “Never fall in love with a woman who sells herself. It always ends bad!”
41 – “I’m the guy telling you the way it is.”
42 – You’ll still wonder if Totoros really exist
43 – You know the names of the seven samurais by heart
44 – Fantasy fight: Captain Vallo vs Captain Jack Sparrow
45 – “Me fifth element – Supreme being. Me protect you.”
46 – “Death is… whimsical… today.”
47 – Paula Alquist is right to be afraid of gaslights.
48 – “Truth is, I help horses with people problems.”
49 – There are some fish that cannot be caught. It’s not that they are faster or stronger than other fish, they’re just touched by something extra.
50 – The mere reference to Groundhog day makes you laugh
51 – Richard Gere proves that statement #40 is not always accurate
52 – Vincent Pryce’s escape in ‘Brazil’
53 – 12 monkeys are not always what they seem
54 – Al Pacino’s TV in “Heat”
55 – You know where snow comes from
56 – The milk and the cookies in “Man on the Moon”
57 – Painting a whole town in bright red and renaming it “Hell”
58 – Lessons from the past: in “Star Trek” there are no flies in teleport rooms
59 – You’re waiting for a train. A train that will take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t know for sure. Yet it doesn’t matter…
60 – Skynet bugged on August 29th 1997
61 – When you’re on acid, Las Vegas looks… different
62 – Father Gabriel’s clarinet in “The Mission”
63 – Wayne’s guitar in “Wayne’s World”
64 – Christopher Walken’s haunting eyes
65 – “My house, My rules, My coffee”
66 – The cow boy in “The Big Lebowsky”
67 – The way of the samurai is honorable but deadly
68 – Note to self: a cross won’t work against a Jewish vampire
69 – “The bartender never gets killed.” well, sometimes, he does
70 – Lefty in “Donnie Brasco”
71 – Tim Roth’s hoax to be admitted in the gang in “Reservoir Dogs”
72 – “You ever dance with the devil by the pale moonlight?”
73 – “Grease” is the word
74 – “I am a man of constant sorrow” is in your top 10
75 – “There can be only one.” Sequels not accepted.
76 – William H. Macy in “Fargo”
77 – Everyone says “I love you”
78 – John MacLane’s bare feet
79 – Greta Garbo’s laugh
80 – Spock is allied with the body snatchers
81 – Nobody puts Baby in the corner
82 – “War’s first casualty is innocence”
83 – You can watch “Mulholland Drive” fifty times and still understand nothing
84 – You know that “the rain is Spain stays mainly in the plain” and you pronounce it perfectly
85 – William Munny is the best cow boy character ever
86 – Saturday nights will never be the same
87 – You learn all the prime numbers in case there’s a cube somewhere
88 – The plastic bag in “American Beauty”
89 – Perhaps “nobody’s perfect”, but some movies are
90 – You can tell the difference between “Rio Bravo” and “El Dorado”
91 – Tyler Durden has a funny way to tell stories
92 – Marty MacFly’s car really can fly
93 – Harrison Ford’s hat in “American Graffiti”
94 – A piano left on a beach for weeks can still make good music
95 – Rick nods in Casablanca, and everything changes
96 – “I have very fond memories of that dog.”
97 – Cross over: you just know that Captain Nemo’s real name is Lidenbrok.
98 – The Untouchables will always be four, even in the end
99 – Yul Brynner is a terrific terminator
100 – Life is like a box of chocolate, and sometimes it’s the kind you like