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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of certain TV shows — for starters, "The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April Is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," "Look Who's Stalking," "The Garage Door," "Charlie Gets Crippled," "Wind Sprints," and "Corner Boys" — you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings, or at any rate a heartfelt attempt to interpret them. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« A Volume Of Automotive Haiku |Main| Part 4 »

January 31, 2005

Ten Movies Worth Remembering, Part 4

By Dan Carlson
A friend of mine recently commented that some of these posts come across like I have access to knowledge others don't, or feel smarter than others, etc. I think the word he was going for was 'pedantic,' but there's no way to use the word 'pedantic' without sounding precisely that, so I wasn't about to prompt him. But he has a point: I do feel like I have to do my best to encourage everyone I see know to see good films and understand why they're good. With that in mind, I've come up with ten more movies that everyone should see that, for one reason or another, have fallen off our collective cultural radar. (See the first, second, and third lists here.) Enjoy.

1. Gorky Park (1983)

2. The Contender (2000)

3. The Deep End (2001)

4. Miller's Crossing (1990)

5. The Mission (1986)

6. The Candidate (1972)

7. The Paper Chase (1973)

8. Shallow Grave (1994)

9. Whale Rider (2003)

10. Three Days of the Condor (1975)

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"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
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— Francois Truffaut

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— Paul Giamatti, quoted in the Los Angeles Times, 12/14/04

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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
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Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
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We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

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— Me, Fall 2003

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