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Philby Bear

@philbybear.bsky.social

1.3K followers 740 following 20K posts

A game master, voracious bookworm and cinephile, a tired socialist and a manic depressive chocolate salesperson from Montreal. They/them. 33.

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Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 48m

(PAUSE)

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 51m

51. The Truman Show (dir. Peter Weir, 1998).

Ed Harris is so good in this as, metaphorically speaking, God. Seriously.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 56m

50. The Magnificent Seven (dir. Sturges, 1960).

No, that's not true.

The Magnificent Seven might be. A pulpier send up of Kurosawa's original so good Kurosawa himself gifted Sturges with his family's ancestral katana. I can't think of a higher compliment!

"We deal in lead, friend."

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 59m

49. The Great Escape (dir. Sturges, 1963).

Maybe one of my favourite WWII movies as a whole, I'd say. Elmer Bernstein's famous theme, the motorcycle chase at the end, the relationships between the POW's?

This might be my most boomer-ass movie, unabashedly.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

SUCH. A. QUOTABLE. GOD. DAMN. MOVIE.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

48. Orca (dir. Michael Anderson, 1977).

Where *else* will you find a graphic, tragic and torturous sequence of whale abortion practical effects?! I ask you!

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

47. Tropic Thunder (dir. Ben Stiller, 2008).

... full confession, I... can quote this entire movie, verbatim, at the drop of a hat. I don't know what that suggests about me.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

46. Bastard Swordsman (dir. Chun-Ku, 1983).

One of the funniest group movie nights my friends and I ever had involved spending a solid 30min rules lawyering a major and bizarre plot point in the movie... about its virgin-powered/cursed martial art techniques.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

45. Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (dir. Okawara, 1995).

I'm really starting to think kaiju designs truly peaked in this era.

Biollante and Destoroyah? Oh, baby, the MonsterVerse could never imagine anything as badass.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

PFFFFFFT

That's amazing, I'd do the same thing.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

⛈️

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

44. A Streetcar Named Desire (dir. Kazan, 1951).

It's fascinating to watch this as a kind of... transitionary period film, where Brando embodied the newer school of acting while Leigh very much still practiced old Hollywood stagecraft, and the film leans into it for its drama and it's brilliant!

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

41, 42 & 43. The Samurai Trilogy (dir. Inagaki, 1954-1956).

One of the film series that truly solidified Toshiro Mifune as an icon of Japanese masculinity for all time, by stepping into the shoes of Japan's greatest historical badass.

Its rendition of the famous duel with Kojiro is- 👨‍🍳👌

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

40. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (dirs. Jones, Gilliam, 1975).

I... I know it's clichéd to cite this, I know it's been over-quoted by the most obnoxious dorks who made it their whole personality, and I know half the Pythons turned out to be cranks in old age.

I still adore it, sadly.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

39. Midnight Cowboy (dir. Scheslinger, 1969).

It's gives me whiplash to look at early Jon Voight, whose career includes at least two haunting films (Cowboy and Deliverance) about sexual violence and the scars it inflicts on the psyche of the American male, and then to the weirdo he is now. Sheesh.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

38. Bicycle Thieves (dir. De Sica, 1948).

I'll never forget, one semester in film, watching this one evening in class as part of a course on Italian film history, looking around at my classmates in the auditorium...

Not a dry eye in the house.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 1h

This!

Context! Is! Everything!

Girard Spriggan @eijaksa.bsky.social · 2h

Yeah, he isn't yet Ingmar Bergman, austere genius, but a talented director mostly making films for a domestic audience that wants a bit of comic relief with their existential suffering. I quite like the light comedy in some of his films of this era.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

The bizarre influence of Disney's Hercules on modern adaptations of Greek mythology has been under-discussed, I reckon.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

37. Barbarella (dir. Vadim, 1968).

I don't know which early scene was the moment that made me fall in love with this awesomely silly movie: the five minute zero-g strip-tease set to 60s groovy lounge pop or Barbarella traversing an alien world with a ground manta sleigh.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

Boy, I... can only hope she was going through some personal shit and, eventually, with age, mellowed the hell out.

Reposted by Philby Bear

Stuart McReady @stuartmwilke.bsky.social · 2h

"I can't go now, I have a performance tonight!"

"It's canceled. Because of a death :)"

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

What a WEIRD thing to get angry about!

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

... to which Death can only give him the pained smile of anyone who's ever worked a retail job, and shake his head.

The tree falls, TIMBERRRR... and as a discretion shot?

Rather than show us a dead body, an adorable squirrel hops onto the tree stump where the man had once been.

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

For example, there's an entire sequence where a man tries to escape Death by climbing up a tree... and Death proceeds to casually saw the tree down like a lumberjack.

The entire time, they have this polite conversation where the former keeps trying to weasel his way out for a reprieve...

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

36. The Seventh Seal (dir. Bergman, 1957).

Speaking of films no one credits for being as funny as they were? Everyone parodies the chess scene, everyone cites it as the stereotypical old foreign art film, etc. But, again, few ever highlight its sense of humour!

Philby Bear @philbybear.bsky.social · 2h

(PAUSE)