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Best Movies Alphabetically N Movies beginning with the letter N
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ChrisJarmick's Review
Best N Movies to watch, own, give as gifts discover, treasure
into movies that tell a great story, a Movie Guru, a lover of quirky unique films, a cult film connoisseur, a fan of movies that take chances
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18
2008
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Naked Spur (1941) Directed by Anthony Mann
One of Anthony Mann’s best Westerns and James Stewart collaborations—which means it is one of the best ever made. A play by his own rules bounty hunter (Stewart) tries to capture Robert Ryan who stirs trouble up between Steward and his partners. Beautifully shot on location in the Rockies.
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) Directed by Eddie Cline
Consider it the Being John Malkovich of its day. An absurd, almost surrealistic comedy that begins with Uncle Bill ( Fields) and his niece (Gloria Jean) at the studio. He explains a crazy plot for a new movie to a studio executive (Franklin Pangborn) that involves him falling out of airplane after a flask of booze and landing in a remote mountain top plateau with Mrs. Hemoglobin (Margaret Dumont!!!), her beautiful daughter and a gorilla. Oh there’s competition from Leon Errol too. It ends with a crazed high-speed chase scene through Hollywood (footage of which was used in the Abbott And Costello movie In Society and several others). The chase scene’s special effects, to the modern eye, looks cheesy, but it was impressive in its day. This was ironically Fields’ last feature film. Don’t miss Fields’ best known movie THE BANK DICK (1940) (which is on a beautiful Criterion DVD disk) . In BANK DICK Fields plays a hen-pecked husband who becomes an unlikely hero foiling a bank robbery. I’ve previously touted IT’S A GIFT which is Fields’ very best.
A Night at the Opera (1935) Directed by Sam Wood
The Marx Brothers begin their work at MGM in the movie Groucho thought was his best. Some of the scenes were done as stage skits for live audiences before being included in the film. Allen Jones and Kitty Carlisle play the straight romantic leads and warble some decent operetta tunes. One comic bit after another with highlights including the contract, “Party of the First Part” getting ripped to shreds, and the ocean liner state room scene (you know small room w/too many people). Inventive, funny, a classic.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1969) directed by George Romero
Claustrophobic, terrifying, nightmare inducing low, low budget ground-breaking horror film that inspired dozens of imitators and launched a sub genre of film. It was once considered one of the most shocking films ever made. It’s horrifying, humorous and has a message too. The dead come back to life to eat the flesh of the living and a group of strangers try to fight the zombies while trapped in a tiny farm-house. An award winning commercial director name George Romero shot this cult classic just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And yes, it absolutely deserves a place on any top films of the 60s.
The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982), aka La Notte di San Lorenzo or The Night of San Lorenzo, Italy, directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani
This is a fable about a platoon of Italian peasants in the last days of WWII who escape their ravaged village in the middle of the night to search for the liberating American Allied forces. There are so many pitch-perfect moments I can’t begin to tell you about them in a couple of sentences. Make sure you see this one.
Nightmare Alley (1947) Directed by Edmun Goulding
Now considered a noir classic, audiences originally didn’t take to this down-beat morbid tale of carnival worker Tyrone Power involved with assorted carnival show characters and freaks. It’s powerful and very well done.
Nights of Cabiria (1957) Directed by Federico Fellini.
The Bob Fosse musical Sweet Charity which eventually became a pretty good movie with Shirley MacClaine was based on this Fellini gem. It’s the tragic-comic story of a prostitute (Giuletta Masina) who always and I mean always tries to see the bright-side of life even though her life is full of bitter disappointments and sorrows. Man this movie is good.
NO MAN’S LAND (2001) Directed by Danis Tanovic
Tanovic’s satire is about a Serb and a Bosnian who are trapped together in a foxhole right in the middle of an area called No Man’s Land. It’s a Strangelove kind of comically absurb view of war that is as disturbing as it is comic. It is also a film where the tension remains high and when the peacemakers and negotiators begin to quarrel and fight, we know this will not have a happy ending. It doesn’t compromise. See it soon.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (1959) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Hitch showed the world how to put together a breezy witty, sophisticated classy continental thriller. Okay he cheated because he had that Cary Grant fellow but really, I know we wouldn’t have gotten things like Charade and Arabesque without this movie and I also don’t think we would have gotten Sean Connery in the first half dozen Bond movies either. This one tops all of them. You know the story right? Cary Grant is mistaken for a spy by both the good guys and the bad guys and as he’s on the run trying to figure all of this out he runs into Eva Marie Saint. Can he trust her? Can he save her? Should he? Should he save himself? James Mason is slick and slimy, Martin Landau is pretty much just slimy and Leo G. Carroll is as trustworthy as a favorite Uncle (oh I’m so funny, huh*?). Bernard Herrman’s score is incredible and the credits are pretty cool too. Screenplay by Ernst Lehman (who just died) is as clever and funny as the best comedies ever made.
EL NORTE(1983) directed by Gregory Nava
A near epic story (though low budget) about a brother and sister who flee violence torn Guatemala to come North to the promised land of the United States. The first half is about their difficult grueling journey and the second half is about how they try to survive in the United States. A compassionate unforgettable movie, not to be missed.
Nosferatu (1922) Directed by F. W. Murnau
F.W. Murnau's classic first surviving film adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula is still atmospheric and creepy. Some may have seen poorly presented version of the film run at the wrong film speed which made parts of it seem like a Keystone Cop Comedy. That's a real pity. See a properly restored copy and marvel at how beautiful the shots are composed, how utterly frightening and rodent like Max Schreck truly is. A masterpiece you may need to see again. (a behind the scenes fictional fantasy story was concocted as the movie Shadow of the Vampire in 2000 with Willem Dafoe --Oscar nominated as Schreck/Nosferatu --I didn’t care fo SOTV much myself though Dafoe was good).
Last edited on Jan 28, 2009
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