Balmakboor's Top 50 Movie Characters

[balmakboor]

I've wanted to do a list for a while. I haven't done one since my RT days when I did a -- by now -- ridiculously obsolete Top 100 movies list. But I didn't really feel the urge to do favorite movies. Oh, I would think about it and opened numerous instances of Notepad over the past few months to start hammering things out. But I'd always stop after a while and close the file without saving. The other day I realized that more often than not a movie stays with me not in its totality necessarily, but as a vivid memory of some fantastic element, very often a character. Sometimes, upon further reflection, I'd realize that the only reason the movie was worth remembering at all was that one special character -- and maybe not even a main character. (One lucky movie actually has three characters on this list.)

I sat down and let favorite characters come to me until I had about 75. Whatever first came to mind, I figured, did so for a reason. Then I sorted through them and ordered them and tossed out the bottom 25 or so to end up with this top 50. The characters range in size from carrying the movie to only lasting one scene. The movies range from masterpieces to just so so. There are some obvious usual suspects here including -- I apologize -- the number one pick. But hopefully the list offers at least a few surprises.

Oh, and one other thing. In a moment of craziness, I added "the camera" from the movie I Am Cuba as a favorite character. But then I returned to my senses and took it back off the list. Nope, nothing as off-the-wall as that. All but one or two of the choices are clearly people of one sort or another.

So, without further ado...

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number50.jpg

50. Terror/Pee-Wee - The Wanderers

Okay, I'm beginning my list with something like a cheat. But a huge part of what I found so memorable about both of these characters is the visual contrast between them -- huge, hulking, brute and head of the gang 'The Baldies' cuddling up with diminutive, boyish girl played by Linda Manz. What's most endearing is how lived-in their relationship feels. You get a clear sense that, in spite of it all, they are very much in love, perhaps the only people in love in the whole movie.

[Duncan]

Cool. I like the idiosyncrasies of your taste.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number49.jpg

49. Harry Voss - Crazy Love

This is really a three part characterization played by two different actors. Clearly for me the most memorable is the middle section with Harry covered head to toe with zits -- big, monumentally ugly zits -- as he tries to get close to the pretty girl in school. I'll just say that I could easily identify with his predicament.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number48.jpg

48. San Te - The 36th Chamber of the Shaolin

I've watched a number of martial arts movies now and so far my favorite images have been of San Te tumbling into the water and stumbling about as he works his way through the chambers. This is the most I've cheered for a hero to prove himself since I first watched Luke Skywalker destroy the Death Star.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number47.jpg

47. Terry 'The Toad' Fields - American Graffiti

I've always been a big fan of Charles Martin Smith and his memorable night (he'd possibly like to forget) spent chasing the girl of his dreams, losing his friend's car, securing booze, and puking his guts out is easily my favorite. This nerd is another guy I understood immediately.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number46.jpg

46. Hannah Bailey - American Teen

High school is a turbulent time and I've never seen the difficulty writ as large as with Hannah. We see her go from self-assurance to total wreck to on the road back to somewhere -- and all over a boy. I remember going from happy days to near suicidal days as a teen. Hannah made me worry about my 17-year-old daughter who feels her current boyfriend is "the one." I could've done without the rest of American Teen and just watched Hannah's story for two or three hours.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number45.jpg

45. Håkan - Let the Right One In

There is only one vampire movie I like more than this one and it isn't even technically a vampire movie (more later). I loved how he meticulously set out to secure fresh warm blood for Eli. I loved how through Håkan we see peer into the future at Oskar's relationship with Eli. Such a pleasant surprise in a year otherwise haunted by Twilight.

[Grouchy]

Hannah made me worry about my 17-year-old daughter who feels her current boyfriend is "the one."
Eh, if at 17 years old you don't feel like you're 100% correct about everything, then you're a very strange 17 year old. I remembered this recently when I grew a little exasperated talking about music with a friend's younger brother.

Great list, although the only movie I've seen so far is Let the Right One In. Keep them coming!

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number44.jpg

44. Willy Wonka - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

This was the first movie I ever saw without my parents, just me and my friends. And for years when it would show up on television I would pace the room impatiently waiting through all the boring stuff so I could get to Wonkaland and Wonka himself. Then I would plunk down on the couch and be transfixed. I still think the moment at the end when he turns on an Everlasting Gobstopper from mean to embracing is the most effective "feel good" moment in movie history.

[Pop Trash]

I'm having a psychic premonition...this list will be very 70s. Not that this is a bad thing.

[balmakboor]

I'm having a psychic premonition...this list will be very 70s. Not that this is a bad thing.

We'll just have to see how acute your psychic skills are. ;)

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number43.jpg

43. Asami Yamazaki - Audition

I felt every bit as much the sucker as this beautiful monster's victim. I was so attracted to this shy little cutie that I would have readily left all common sense far behind and got myself tortured beyond belief as well. The first images where we know once and for all that she's a demon and he's in deep shit are probably the most unsettling I've ever seen in a horror film.

[Grouchy]

Excellent. Asami is a great movie monster and I share your sentiments - Eihi Shiina is so attractive it's tough not to imagine yourself falling into the trap.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number42.jpg

42. Mick Jagger - Gimme Shelter

So he's playing himself. So what? Jagger's transformation from Cocky Rooster to cowering hen is startling. I always try to read his mind while he's up on stage at Altamont singing Under My Thumb while a guy is freaking out about 20 feet away. Is he wishing he'd studied harder at the London School of Economics?

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number41.jpg

41. Layla - Buffalo '66

I don't know what it is exactly that I like so much about Layla. Maybe its that she fits my ideal of female beauty so precisely. Maybe its those images of her in a bowling alley moving to the sounds of King Crimson. Or maybe its just that she is has hard to figure out as any female I've ever had a crush on. Hmmm, I may never know, but I'll keep watching and keep trying to find the answer.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number40.jpg

40. Pee-Wee - Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

I wonder what exactly this choice says about me. I know that it says that when it comes to comedy for me the sillier the better. I know that it unmasks me as a kid who is still struggling (though not very hard) to grow up. But the character of Pee-Wee here is just so charmingly, touchingly innocent that I can't get enough of him. And that voice. He makes me laugh just by opening his mouth. About the only other actor who has ever done that for me is Bobcat Goldthwait.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number39.jpg

39. Tom Frank - Nashville

Tom is such a beautiful creation. So simple really. Perhaps the most "me centered" character ever and existly purely for the pleasures of the moment. But damn if Carradine isn't the very definition of smoldering slow burn and his performance of I'm Easy while every woman in the room thinks he's addressing her is one of my all-time favorite musical moments. Maybe the song is a response to Carly Simon's Your So Vain. He may as well be singing "I'm so vain..."

[balmakboor]

Calling it a night. Just thought I'd end with an image of one of my favorite honorable mentions.

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/Bub.jpg

[Spaceman Spiff]

Eh, if at 17 years old you don't feel like you're 100% correct about everything, then you're a very strange 17 year old.

I'm not sure that's true. I was a bag of neuroses at 17 and still got laid and had friends.

[Grouchy]

I'm not sure that's true. I was a bag of neuroses at 17 and still got laid and had friends.
No, I was a disaster as well. What I meant is that, at that age, you tend to perceive yourself as wiser and more experienced than you really are.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number38.jpg

38. Boris Lermontov - The Red Shoes

From my recent review of the movie:
"Horror director George Romero (“Dawn of the Dead”) has long admitted Powell and Pressburger among his favorite directors. And watching “The Red Shoes” makes this seem perfectly natural. The movie is dark, obsessive, and tortured. It plays like a horror film. And at the center is Lermontov, a character of brooding intensity. He constantly emerges from and then retreats back into the movie’s many expressionistic shadows. He is a character whose destructive nature borders on bloodlust.

"Yes, in its aching heart, “The Red Shoes” is one of the all-time great vampire movies. As you watch, consider this: Lermontov is an elegantly dressed man with a pale complexion who is seen almost exclusively indoors or at night. When we see him outdoors in daylight, the cinematography is pointedly, blindingly bright and he always wears dark glasses as if cringing from the light.

"And consider the way he treats Craster and Page as people to be sucked in, bled dry, and then discarded. “The Red Shoes” is like “Nosferatu” with the neck bites tastefully removed."

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number37.jpg

37. Riff Randell - Rock 'n' Roll High School

Riff reminds me of this girl when I was in high school that every boy wanted to date, but none could. She seemed from her every movement and action to be the walking definition of fun. But she always had her heart set on chasing down David Lee Roth. Riff's bedroom fantasy scene of being joined by the Ramones is one of the most purely blissful musical moments I've ever sat for half an hour watching over and over again. (Maybe I should do a list of favorite musical moments.)

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number36.jpg

36. Philip 'Rip Van' Marlowe - The Long Goodbye

From the first time Altman's camera slinks into Marlowe room to find him awaking from what could well be decades long sleep and I heard him mumbling away to himself, I was hooked. I'm sure the fact that I'm a cat person and understand well how moody they can be adds to my enjoyment. This is my favorite Altman movie. Style and music and detectives and semi-naked hippy chicks and Elliot Gould. What a perfect concoction.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number35.jpg

35. Lester - Zack and Miri Make a Porno

I didn't like this movie, almost not at all. But Lester. Wow. I thought about this guy for days and weeks. What a courageous performance. What a perfect match of role and "actor." I only wish that someone who actually knows something about the porn world would give Jason Mewes a part as a lanky porn stud. Are you listens P.T.A.?

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number34.jpg

34. Stella - Rear Window

Stewart is great. Kelly is great. The set with all of those terrific picture window subsets across the courtyard is brilliant. But what sets Read Window apart and makes it so memorable for me is Stella's constantly witty and very funny commentary that ties all of the elements together.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number33.jpg

33. Seita/Setsuko - Grave of the Fireflies

Ok, another two character cheat I guess. I just watched this with my Miyazaki loving daughter because she wanted to "try some other stuff and see if I like it." I was kinda worried that she might find it way too sad. But we both just got so sucked into these brother/sister characters and found the deep sadness to be the only way we wanted to feel. She and I then had one of our longest conversations in a while during which she declared, "Dad. I think all countries should be run by women. The world would be a much better place." Then it was time for bed.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number32.jpg

32. Jun/Mitsuko - Mystery Train

She likes Elvis. He likes Carl Perkins. They're both wandering through Memphis as if in search of one ghost or the other. He has talents with a lighter. She can do nifty things with lipstick. And together they are the coolest couple Jarmusch has ever conjured up on film.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number31.jpg

31. Passenger watching silhouette - Taxi Driver

I first saw Taxi Driver very appropriately in a grimy, smelly, rundown theater a few blocks off campus in 1980. I had no idea who Martin Scorsese was, it being very early in my cinema appreciation infancy. And the movie really shook me up. But it wasn't so much Travis Bickle or the bloodbath at the end that haunted me. I laid awake thinking about that creepy, fast talking little bearded man in the backseat of Bickle's taxi and how much I feared for Bickle for those few long minutes.

[Boner M]

Awesome list, esp. the last two choices. I like that you're including characters from films you don't care for; most lists of this sort would just include the leads in Acceptable Canon Classics or memorable supporting villains. Good job.

[Grouchy]

Oh, yeah, Stella is awesome. Thelma Ritter is always very watchable.

[Ezee E]

Lester came up for me while some guys at the station were spying on the computer.

AWKWARD.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number30.jpg

30. David Wooderson - Dazed and Confused

Few actors have announced their arrival as impressively as Matthew McConaughey did for me here. I immediately sat up and started wondering, "Who is this guy?" His line "That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age" is the best in the movie. Maybe the best of the '90s. Everyone knows a Wooderson. One of the life guards at our community center pool is a Wooderson. He'll never grow up. He gets in trouble all the time. He has a young wife and baby, but chooses to spend as much time as possible at the pool flirting with the 15-17 year old girl life guards. And the weird thing is all of the girls think he's hot.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number29.jpg

29. Lois Kaiser - Short Cuts

Short Cuts is a big sprawling and wonderful mess of a movie filled with characters that are always interesting though often too broad and stylized to be entirely believable. There are a few exceptions though like Fred Ward's telling his wife about the dead body immediately after having sex with her. That is one very truthful moment. And then there's Lois Kaiser. I saw truth in every moment of Jennifer Jason Leigh's portrayal of a mom who takes phone sex calls while feeding and changing her kids' diapers. Also on the money is how her bored and matter of fact ability to turn on and off is driving her husband crazy.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number28.jpg

28. George McFly - Back to the Future

It is certainly my nerdish nature coming out again when I admit that I've always identified with George McFly. This is like the ultimate heroic fantasy of any shy kid who wants the pretty girl and has to get past an alpha male to do so. His fumbling line "I'm your density" is the perfect result of his shaken nerves mixed with his science fiction mind. My wife knew how much I liked the line and had the variation "You're my density" inscribed inside my wedding band.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number27.jpg

27. Leatherface - The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

There is a scene in this movie that is probably my favorite from any horror movie. Leatherface has just killed an intruder to his home and he moves to the livingroom. He paces about, confused, rattled, maybe even frightened. Where are all of these people coming from? What do they want from me? Why can't they just leave me alone? It's a moment of great vulnerability and great empathy. The final shot of him spinning around in the rode with a whirring chainsaw is one of my favorite closing shots ever.

[balmakboor]

Lester came up for me while some guys at the station were spying on the computer.

AWKWARD.

:)

Sorry about that. I hope they didn't get too wrong of an idea.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number26.jpg

26. General Jack Ripper - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Those low angle shots of Ripper and his cigar are among my favorites of all Kubrick. His slowly delivering his line "He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids" and the Peter Sellers' stunned and terrified reaction is my favorite expression of madness.

[Dukefrukem]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number35.jpg

35. Lester - Zack and Miri Make a Porno

I didn't like this movie, almost not at all. But Lester. Wow. I thought about this guy for days and weeks. What a courageous performance. What a perfect match of role and "actor." I only wish that someone who actually knows something about the porn world would give Jason Mewes a part as a lanky porn stud. Are you listens P.T.A.?

really?

[Pop Trash]

Awesome list, esp. the last two choices. I like that you're including characters from films you don't care for; most lists of this sort would just include the leads in Acceptable Canon Classics or memorable supporting villains. Good job.

Me too. You're definately one of the better posters here Balmak.* Keep up the good work.



*But I still think Boorman's Exorcist II sucks.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number25.jpg

25. Reinhold Hoffmann - Berlin Alexanderplatz

He doesn't make his entrance in Fassbinder's masterpiece until about the 3 1/2 hour mark, but that is the moment where the movie truly comes to life making the remaining 10 hours of the main body of the film race by. In his dark and frightening, stuttering, womanizing, friendship abusing, greedy, self-centered presence; the movie has found the monumental villain it needed to gain traction. And his tall, sinewy physique and almost twisted face is the perfect contrast to Franz Biberkopf's soft featured, rotund doughboy of a man. Franz is a man made to be stomped on. Reinhold is the man made to do the stomping.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number24.jpg

24. Barbara Jean - Nashville

We're all been there. Watching a character in a movie or tv show who makes us squirm about in our seat, wanting to leave the room, but unable to do so as if paralysed by "car wreck" fascination. Barbara Jean's character arc climaxing in her extended and bravura on-stage breakdown is one of those for me. If it wasn't so public, I'd feel I shouldn't even be permitted to watch such a personally devasting moment. The only director who has made me feel more uncomfortable (in a good way) as an observer of his characters is John Cassavetes. More on him later.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number23.jpg

23. Lord Bullingdon - Barry Lyndon

Who's the villain and who's the hero in this story? It would be easy to consider Bullingdon to be the bad guy. He's such a pathetic worm of a character, just the sort of pampered upper class dandy that everyone loves to hate. But everything he accuses Barry of doing during the movie is true. Barry is a common opportunist who has weaseled his way into their lives without having any true love for Lady Lyndon. And he is clearly on a course to destroy a fine family fortune. He is a threat to take away everything Lord Bullingdon has to his name. Bullingdon's trembling and vomiting during the climactic duel is about the best expression of cowardice I can think of.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number22.jpg

22. 'Conspiracy A-Go-Go' Author - Slacker

Talking about a small part, this guy is on screen for only three or four minutes. He has such a wonderfully one-track mind. All he's interested in, all he thinks about day in and day out is theories of the JFK assassination. First, he traps a young woman in an Austin bookstore and subjects her to his ramblings about all the great books on the subject including his own work in progress eventually to be titled Conspiracy A-Go-Go. She makes a narrow escape and he soon leaves the now empty bookstore in search of other listening ears. He comes across two acquaintances who are working on a car. They have similar one-track minds -- autos. What follows is hilariously sad as the poor guy slowly realizes that these two auto freaks aren't interested in a word he's saying. Then he slumps off to find someone who is interested in his life's passion, which we feel will probably never happen.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number21.jpg

21. Tomi Hirayama - Tokyo Story

There is a rare moment for Ozu at the center of Tokyo Story. Tomi Hirayama is at the top of a small hill casually talking too her grandchild and music lightly plays under the scene, highlighting the emotions. The touch is light, but unusually heavy for Ozu. It's like he realized that if any character in his work had earned such an emotionally open moment it was her. When she first drops to her knees while at the vacation resort, it is again a subtle moment by most any director's standards, but here it has the effect of an earthquake sending a tsunami racing toward his characters as they calmly go through life taking their parents for granted.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number19A.jpg
http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number19B.jpg

19. (tie) Bill Maplewood - Happiness/Ronnie J. McGorvey - Little Children

These two characters naturally pair off in a number of ways. Obviously, they are two of the most indelible portraits of pedophiles in recent movies. They also represent two different approaches that all polar opposites. Maplewood is such a small-scale, up close and personnal look with scenes like the desperate moment where he can't contain himself and masturbates to images of boys in a magazine in the back seat of his car. McGorvey is on a grander, public scale with the simply amazing scene of him showing up at a public pool, being recognized, causing a panic in the crowd, and being hauled away by the police. These two characters are also the only ones that really worked for me in their respective films. But boy did they ever work. They more than made up for everything that failed to work and made these movies pretty essential. I last watched them as part of a rather unsettling triple bill along with American Beauty. I didn't find much at all to redeem that one though.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number18.jpg

18. Myrtle Gordon - Opening Night

This is, I think, Cassavetes' greatest film. And at its center is Myrtle Gordon, a woman fighting off ghosts past, present, and future by climbing into a bottle. Consisting heavily of her performances in a play within the film, Rowlands is clearly on ground here that she understands fully and her performances of the scenes within the scene, straying far from "the script," were constant reminders to me of one thing I'll always prefer with stage over film. On film, the scene will always play the same. On stage, the scene changes from night to night depending on mishaps and miscues and whatever is going on in the personal lives of the performers that day. It's that volatility of the stage that Myrtle and Opening Night capture so well. It is also fascinating to watch her character actually grow and draw closer to some sense of the truth the more drunk she becomes.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number17.jpg

17. The Black Knight - Monty Python & the Holy Grail

This is an absolutely hilarious parody of the Threshold Guardian archetype. Hero is on his journey and needs to pass through that forest or over that bridge (that should bring to mind another funny Threshold Guardian from the movie) to continue on his quest, but a force stands in his way. At first, he is dark, stern, even scary (or at least I thought so when I was young and I would watch this on public television about twice a year), but gradually one limb at a time and after much blood squirting things turn increasing silly. Just as the titles went from serious to silly, the Black Knight also captures the essence of the whole movie. It's like watching Arthurian legend unravel (something that unfortunately has made it impossible to watch any subsequent films on the subject like Excalibur with a straight face).

[Derek]

[QUOTE=balmakboor;210048]Ronnie J. McGorvey - Little Children[/B]

Ewwww. Though you made up for this pick and more with Myrtle. My fave Cassavetes as well.

[megladon8]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number25.jpg

25. Reinhold Hoffmann - Berlin Alexanderplatz


Is that the actor who played General Ourumov in Goldeneye?

[Grouchy]

Awesome last two picks.

[Eleven]

Is that the actor who played General Ourumov in Goldeneye?

Good eye.

[megladon8]

Good eye.


I could never forget a nose like that.

[balmakboor]

Is that the actor who played General Ourumov in Goldeneye?

Thanks for pointing that out. So far Gottfried John has just been a Fassbinder regular to me. I should try to see more.

[Pop Trash]

I knew Derek would make a snarky remark about Little Children.

[balmakboor]

I knew Derek would make a snarky remark about Little Children.

I know some people hated Little Children. I can't remember which ones though. I liked it enough to watch it twice in one day even though some things about it didn't quite work.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number16.jpg

16. Selma Jezkova - Dancer in the Dark

This is a big, strange, and compulsively watcheable movie and Selma holds its center. She is heroically, epically good in a world where the good suffer. And suffer she does. She's like Job in the degree to which she suffers. Everything about Dancer in the Dark is big, her goodness, her suffering, her musical number crises. She makes you understand how good people can be driven to bad things. This is my favorite example of a pop star turned actor ever. She breaks my heart every time.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number15.jpg

15. Jenny Curran - Forrest Gump

A scene that brings a tear to my eye every time -- it is so sweet, so beautiful -- is the one where young Jenny offers the seat next to her on the bus to Forrest. It is heartwarming. I melt every time I watch it. Forrest doesn't change at all during the movie. That seems to be the point and Hanks gets the most out of it. But this movie belongs to Jenny and the pair of actresses who play her. The movie shows Forrest staying the same, maintaining his goodness, as the world around him goes through troubled times and changes, mostly for the worst. And the movie is filled with cliches to communicate the changing times. But there's nothing about Jenny that's cliche. She's the complete opposite of Forrest, a character that never stops changing. She's like a mirror held up to the times. And she, for me, single-handedly takes a movie that could've been terribly shallow and obvious and turns it into a classic.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number14.jpg

14. Amon Goeth - Schindler's List

If Selma Jezkova is heroically, epically good; Amon Goeth is just the opposite. He gives a face to evil that I'll never shake from my head. It's probably a character I never should shake away. I've only seen Schindler's List twice. It's not a movie to be watched often. And there are a number of scenes and images that stay with me. But, for me, remembering the movie means one image over all others. Goeth finishing his breakfast and lounging about on a luxurious balcony without his shirt on -- torso adorned with baby fat -- and randomly shooting Jewish prisoners as casually as someone playing a morning game of solitaire.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number13.jpg

13. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Amadeus

Word had it that Milos Forman originally wanted Mick Jagger for the role of Mozart. And that would've been interesting. The character has been conceived as a rock star stuck in an earlier era. There is something about the boyish charm we find in Tom Hulce though that Jagger would've never approached. His Mozart is like an extension of his Animal House character with and angel over one shoulder and a devil over the other. That combined with his goofy good looks makes him one of the movies' most memorably creations -- along with that laugh. It's a laugh that you never forget. It follows you out of the theater and all the way home and then stays with you for the rest of your life.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number12.jpg

12. The Baby - Eraserhead

If I'm interpreting the movie correctly, it is about the fears of parenthood. The fear of being tied down by a child who depends on you at every moment. The fears of loss of freedom and loss of sleep and loss of a love life. The fears that after all those sacrifices that disease or some other malady can rip the child right out of your arms which results in the fear of allowing oneself to love the baby too much. The Eraserhead baby manifests all of these fears for poor Henry Spencer and he asked for none of it. He feels tricked somehow into this situation. But, damn it, vaporizers and all, he's going to do his best to make a go of it.

[balmakboor]

One more tonight and then I'll get into my super duper top 10 over the weekend. It's sure to cause a stir. Or maybe not. And don't forget, some lucky movie will find itself with three entries and the number one is the character that is single-handedly responsible for my love of movies and, therefore, my being here to create this list at all.

[balmakboor]

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11. Jules Winnfield - Pulp Fiction

If dialog could be thought of as music, then Pulp Fiction would be a grand opera and Samuel Jackson would be its Placido Domingo. I once talked with a fellow movie fan about the movie and we both agreed. We could turn this on and go to the next room to do something and just listen to the dialog. Jules stands out for me as the character with the best stuff to say. His casually badass banter during the early scene with the young drug dealers ("Sorry, did I break your concentration?") and his back against the wall negotiating during the climactic restaurant scene still remain Tarantino's most dazzling bits of writing.

[balmakboor]

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10. Gunnery Sgt. Hartman - Full Metal Jacket

Few characters have taken charge of the screen as completely as Sgt. Hartman for the length of their screen time. I might even dare say none. How many people have said words like, "Full Metal Jacket, wow, really great first 40 minutes. Then it all goes downhill." While I don't really agree with the "then it all goes downhill" part I definitely agree that J. Lee Ermy's definitive drill Sgt. is a monumentally tough act to follow. His mouth never stops playing out dizzying arpeggios of profanity, each one topping the last, until, finally, something happens that catches him speechless.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number9.jpg

9. Roman and Minnie Castavet - Rosemary's Baby

Evil is so tangible and identifiable when it wears a hockey mask and holds a blood-dripping meat cleaver. You know, unless you are some young stupid person in a slasher pic, to run away fast. But oh how easy it is to get sucked in and enveloped by evil like a big bear hug when it resembles someone's kindly old grandma and grandpa. Roman and Minnie are my favorite horror film monsters for the simple reason that they don't seem monsterous at all, at least not until it is far too late.

[balmakboor]

http://www.und.nodak.edu/org/ndlsc/top50images/number8.jpg

8. The Truck - Duel

I wonder sometimes just how many trucks Spielberg looked at before choosing this one. It was one of the most important vehicular casting decisions ever. However many it was though, it was enough for him to find a perfect co-star for Dennis Weaver and his also perfectly cast little wimp of a car. This big, grimy, macho machine just screams killer, it screams "you dissed me mutherfucker and now you've gotta pay!" It can almost be heard laughing as it tries tauntingly threatens to push the car into the path of a train (the train also seems to be laughing at the whole game, it's like two bullies in cahoots). And what also sticks in my memory is how, also in perfect bully fashion, the truck screams and whines as it plunges to its death.

[balmakboor]

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7. Sueleen Gay - Nashville

My favorite scene in all of Altman's movies is when Sueleen gets her chance to be a singer, her life's dream. She's greeted by enthusiastic applause. She's encouraged. She's happy. She starts singing and it is terrible, warbly terrible, and yet we are with her. We know how much this means to her. We want her to find her voice. But the crowd of men doesn't share our sympathy and grows restless and starts to hoot and howl until someone shouts "Take it off." Sueleen's perfectly controlled transition from happy to heartbreakingly sad to resigned as she realizes she's been set up to be a stripper then ensues, complete with the knowing touch of tissues falling from her stuffed bra. Those tissues are a giveaway that she knew at least subconsciously that her marketable talent was not her voice.

[balmakboor]

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6. Nigel Tufnel - This Is Spinal Tap

I haven't checked the latest edition of Webster's yet, but I heard they added a new definition for the word "eleven." Of course I'm joking, but I'd bet that an awful lot of people would find it unsurprising to find a dictionary defining that word as "Top setting on Nigel Tufnel's modified 'push it over the cliff' amplifier." This character is just so perfect in every detail, so committed to finding rockstar truth, and so confident that if it finds the truth the laughs will inevitably follow. My favorite scene in the movie is not the often quoted "eleven" scene though. My favorite opens with Tufnel sitting at a piano tinkling out the loveliest of melodies as Marty DeBergi sits and listens. When he pauses, Marty asks him the name of the tune and Tufnel deadpans, "Lick My Love Pump."

[Benny Profane]

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28. George McFly - Back to the Future

It is certainly my nerdish nature coming out again when I admit that I've always identified with George McFly. This is like the ultimate heroic fantasy of any shy kid who wants the pretty girl and has to get past an alpha male to do so. His fumbling line "I'm your density" is the perfect result of his shaken nerves mixed with his science fiction mind. My wife knew how much I liked the line and had the variation "You're my density" inscribed inside my wedding band.


Hah! Great story, and truly one of the best supporting characters/performances in any movie. Would be higher on my list. Nice call.

[balmakboor]

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5. Jeanne Dielman - Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

I took a break from this list yesterday and watched this for the third time just to make sure I wasn't over praising it or anything. And wow, I liked it even more than ever. I first saw JD back in 1982 and it has stuck with me ever since. I wrote a screenplay about a secretary that goes through the same sort of process in its honor. Jeanne is such a fascinating character of habit. She almost verges on OCD and actually, and probably why it has such resonance with me, she reminds me a lot of my mom. My mom isn't a prostitute of course but she is such a habitual, every has a place person who goes through the exact same routines day after day, week after week. And I've also seen her get all out of sorts when something knocks her off her routine. In JD, when something happens that knocks Jeanne off her routine, it has a fascinating effect. Little things like not closing a window become troublesome. Dropping a shoe brush to the floor sounds like an earthquake. Having to push a chair up to a table feels like a major irritation and the process of making a cup of coffee becomes uncharacteristically suspenseful and unsettling. And its all thanks to Jeanne being a character you simply can't take your eyes off of.

[[ETM]]

I'd bet that an awful lot of people would find it unsurprising to find a dictionary defining that word as "Top setting on Nigel Tufnel's modified 'push it over the cliff' amplifier."

It's definition No. 9 for "eleven" at the Urban Dictionary.

[dreamdead]

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48. San Te - The 36th Chamber of the Shaolin

I've watched a number of martial arts movies now and so far my favorite images have been of San Te tumbling into the water and stumbling about as he works his way through the chambers. This is the most I've cheered for a hero to prove himself since I first watched Luke Skywalker destroy the Death Star.

Nice pick here. I think the simplicity of the framing, as well as the expert handling of the build-up, adds greatly to San Te's journey. There's something monumental about his attempts to leap across the waters that is counteracted by the apparent simplicity of the action. It's that kind of counterbalance that lets the film gain its strength, and if the rest of the film somehow can't capture the poetry of that montage, it's forgiven since it captures the perfect artistry inherent to how a montage should be paced and orchestrated.


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38. Boris Lermontov - The Red Shoes

From my recent review of the movie:
"Horror director George Romero (“Dawn of the Dead”) has long admitted Powell and Pressburger among his favorite directors. And watching “The Red Shoes” makes this seem perfectly natural. The movie is dark, obsessive, and tortured. It plays like a horror film. And at the center is Lermontov, a character of brooding intensity. He constantly emerges from and then retreats back into the movie’s many expressionistic shadows. He is a character whose destructive nature borders on bloodlust.


Wonderful thoughts on the latent horror elements inherent to this film. I hadn't considered that angle of a vampire, since I'd always abided by the more traditional reading of art > life. Yet the sense of draining the human element out of Victoria Page is so key, especially as she is slowly gaining her own agency and sense of independence, that it acts as a solid supplemental angle. And it gives the film another narrative angle in a film that has many already. Just one more reason why I'm so drawn to this film.



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10. Gunnery Sgt. Hartman - Full Metal Jacket

Few characters have taken charge of the screen as completely as Sgt. Hartman for the length of their screen time. I might even dare say none. How many people have said words like, "Full Metal Jacket, wow, really great first 40 minutes. Then it all goes downhill." While I don't really agree with the "then it all goes downhill" part I definitely agree that J. Lee Ermy's definitive drill Sgt. is a monumentally tough act to follow. His mouth never stops playing out dizzying arpeggios of profanity, each one topping the last, until, finally, something happens that catches him speechless.

I love your last sentence here. And I think you capture one of the key concepts in the film: language as a suppressant. Hartman uses it so emphatically to deny his troops any sense of familiarity or belonging save for their belonging to him; when Pvt. Pyle finally turns mute, it's something antithetical to what Hartman had conditioned the men to feel. They are to be obedient, but rhetorically so. Pvt. Pyle refuses that condition. And with the ultimate suppressant acted out, the film cannot recovery the energy (though it does retain the mastery) of the first half.

[balmakboor]

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4. Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore - Apocalypse Now

I know that part of the reason I've always liked the Redux cut of this movie is that it means more screen time for Col. Kilgore. So what if it means his role then ends by piffling out into a pathetic like "where's my surfboard" moment instead of his perfect "sometime this war is going to end." Kilgore is that character that you see all the time in war movies. The one who walks about proudly, conchalantly without getting a scratch while everyone around him trembles before getting blown to pieces. And no character has done it better. And I think what elevates it is the element of surfing. I mean what a crazy juxtaposition. The laid back, live in the moment waiting for the next sweet wave mentality in the midst of war. (He is also of course made memorable by his preference for Wagner.) I watched Waltz with Bashir recently and I swear there were two moments in Kilgore's memory. There's a war journalist who walks done the street oblivious to the gunfire while his photographer crawls on the ground, terrified. And there are surfing soldiers falling from their boards as shells strke the water all around them. Yes, Kilgore has been very influential. He even inspired a song by the Clash.

[balmakboor]

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3. Madeleine Elster/Judy Barton - Vertigo

How often does an actor get to play a character that is really two indelible characters? Kim Novak really struck gold here. There are two scenes that often come to my mind as odd, unusual behavior that makes perfect sense within the context of the movie. As Madeleine, she fakes being unconscious after faking a drowning suicide and allows Scottie to undress her. When she "comes to," she doesn't slap him in the face or anything when he admits to having essentially helped himself to seeing her naked. But she isn't Madeleine, she's Judy, someone being paid to let him do these things. When Judy allows Scottie to walk into her apartment, just some guy off the street, she isn't really doing anything strange because she's not Judy, she's Madeleine, the woman who fell in love with him. And yet from her perspective it's all so perverse, even creepy as my daughters would put it. She's allowing herself to shack up with a man who's obviously in love with a dead woman and he's the kind of man who would help himself to seeing a helpless woman naked. And he's so obsessed that he doesn't even question why this woman who shouldn't know him from Jack has let him walk right on into her apartment and right into her life.

[balmakboor]

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2. Kanji Watanabe - Ikiru

My mom once asked me what my goal in life was. I told her that I wanted to create something by which I would always be remembered. That was 30 years ago. And so far what have I created? Certainly not that novel I've always talked about writing. There's certainly no school in my name as was the case with my grandfather. All I can really lay claim to having created so far is two terrific daughters, but I don't think that's the sort of thing I was talking about 30 years ago. Kanji Watanabe is a man at the end of his life who is facing this dilemma. What has he done with his life besides push paper from one side of his desk to the other? (The image of him seated at his desk surrounded by paperwork is a perfect expression of his life "accomlishments." In fact, Kurosawa was really hitting on all cylinders with Ikiru, I think the best directed movie of his career.) His forming a fatherly relationship with a younger woman and his determination to turn a public eyesore into a children's playground is like his admission that his whole life went off the tracks from youth and now he's going to take the opportunity during his final days to roll back the clock and set things straight. What a beautiful image of completeness for him and his project to see him seated on a playground swing as snowflakes cover his head.

[dreamdead]

Yeah, reminiscing on Ikiru always works to put things in the proper perspective in terms of self-worth and accomplishment. I go back and habitually watch the last act of the film, and between the quietude of the snow, the calm of the singing, and the final fade-out, the film just works every time. One that gets better as I get older.

[balmakboor]

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1. Michael Corleone - The Godfather I & II

And yes, I wasn't much of a movie buff until I sat down and watched the first two Godfather movies. After that roughly six hour experience, I was changed. The character of Michael as he goes from war hero to alone in the world, everyone who used to surround him now dead, is a tragedy of almost unequaled proportions. But, it's the allegorical implications of his story that make the Godfathers penultimate American classics. He tells Sonny before killing Solozo, "It's just business." And everything he will do, everyone he will kill, is in the name of business. Watching Capitalism: A Love Story today, I thought about Michael (actually with a lot of help from the other Michael, Mr. Moore, who references The Godfather). Michael begins by believing in an ideal the family represents (like one believing in the ideal of free enterprise) and then gradually gets drawn deeper and deeper into the corrupt reality of the mafia (like the beasts at the heart of American capitalism, like the major banks, like Wall Street). When he sits in the garden alone at the end of Godfather II, it is like a vision of the future for that one all powerful person who will end up holding all of the wealth and power at the expense of everyone else. It is an image both of ultimate power and ultimate vulnerability. When you've eliminated all of those who stand beside you, all that's left is those who stand against you. In a way, I see the true Godfather III to be Scarface. Once again, we have Al Pacino all alone and under seige and ultimately killed. It's like De Palma saying "Francis. You ended your masterpiece one shot too early." All of Michael's enemies including all of his alienated family should have climbed over that garden wall behind him and slit his throat.

[balmakboor]

That's all folks. I've found this experience and especially my attempts at pithy write-ups to be very valuable. They've forced me to think about and even re-evaluate many of the films for the first time in as many as five years in some cases. It gave me renewed interest in re-visiting more than a few of the films and characters on the list.

[Boner M]

This is my favorite MC list in a while. Great job, BMB.

[Bosco B Thug]

Interesting, odd Nashville choices. The most unlikeable, the most pitiable, and the most oddly alien and alienating (Barbara Jean, for me).

Props for Lermontov and Madeline/Judy, and you can't go wrong with Pee-Wee and Asami as two opposite sides of the cinema spectrum.

To throw some wrenches in there, Sterling Hayden's character would be my pick in The Long Goodbye cuz, I dunno, I didn't really connect with Marlowe. And for a really big wrench... as much as I love Stella, anyone else think Rear Window would've been perfectly fine without her? Or at least altered the film in ways not necessarily negative?

[balmakboor]

To throw some wrenches in there, Sterling Hayden's character would be my pick in The Long Goodbye cuz, I dunno, I didn't really connect with Marlowe. And for a really big wrench... as much as I love Stella, anyone else think Rear Window would've been perfectly fine without her? Or at least altered the film in ways not necessarily negative?

Hayden's performance is another very strong character in The Long Goodbye. In fact, this list was a reminder of how much I love Altman movies in general. Another character from The Long Goodbye actually made my first cut -- Mark Rydell's Marty Augustine, the most terrifyingly "in the moment" villain ever. I mean, how do you top the bottle scene?

I think Stella is indispensible to Rear Window's darkly comic mood and for the commentary she provides. I think I'll re-watch it again soon though and think about your questioning how essential she is. I recall her functioning as a key agent in the plot, the one who keeps pushing things into motion, but it has been a few years.

[Adam]

It's pretty interesting to me how you apparently get so much out of characters that I'm wholly indifferent to. Different strokes and all, I suppose. I have dreamed of Riff Randell sitting on my face for a while now, though, so I guess we have that in common. I'm also a big time Altman fan. Shelly Duvall's Olive Oyl and both McCabe and Mrs. Miller might crack my top 50 film characters, but I'll never make one of these so I guess I'll never know

Anyway, yep, nice list. Are you happy with it? Seems like the kind of thing you could easily make some personally egregious omissions on

[Bosco B Thug]

Hayden's performance is another very strong character in The Long Goodbye. In fact, this list was a reminder of how much I love Altman movies in general. Another character from The Long Goodbye actually made my first cut -- Mark Rydell's Marty Augustine, the most terrifyingly "in the moment" villain ever. I mean, how do you top the bottle scene? Yeah, that really got me the first time I watched the film.

It just occurred to me Henry Gibson's character's bitch slap acts sort of like a sister scene to the bottle bit. That's a great character too. Whoo Altman.


I think Stella is indispensible to Rear Window's darkly comic mood and for the commentary she provides. I think I'll re-watch it again soon though and think about your questioning how essential she is. I recall her functioning as a key agent in the plot, the one who keeps pushing things into motion, but it has been a few years. I think for me it's a matter of she being the arc-less "relief" character. Take her out and we'd get to spend more time with James Stewart and Grace Kelly perhaps doing a sort of Bad Timing deal.

[balmakboor]

Anyway, yep, nice list. Are you happy with it? Seems like the kind of thing you could easily make some personally egregious omissions on

I try not to think too much about who I may have forgotten. It could start to drive me crazy and then I'd have to do a sequel.