Fave movie!

This is a really hard question to answer - like certain of my fellow whores, I am fickle about movies. My favorite one day is not my favorite another day.

There are so many ways I could have gone in naming ONE favorite (ONE favorite?).

Runners up included My Fair Lady (the movie of the musical, which always delights, esp. Rex Harrison) Terminator 2 (one of the best action films ever) or Miss Congeniality (oh, I could watch it over and over and over—Sandra Bullock undercover in a Miss America pageant, what’s not to love? It’s so sweet and wonderful.)

But edging all those out, for the awesome characters and sheer plotty deliciousness, something I prize highly in a movie, is The Usual Suspects. 

The Usual Suspects stars Gabriel Byrne, Chazz Palminteri, Stephen Baldwin, Kevin Spacey and Benicio del Toro in his most delectable role to date.

For those unfamiliarati, the plot, at the outset, is simple: a group of random criminals are rounded up for a crime the cops can’t solve, just to round anybody up, and while they’re in the holding cell together, they mastermind a real crime.

But it’s way more than that. Ack, this plot is so rich and multi-layered…I know lot of people hated it, but I loved how it turned on itself. I thought it was so brilliant. And the ending is such a surprise, but not really—you go back in your mind through the movie and you see how it all adds up, and you look at everything in a new fresh way.  

 Oh, I can watch it over and over. The movie was very important to me as a writer, because it showed me how you can twist things, and make up your own rules. It is not a highly emotional movie, but there is something quite pure and perfect about it.  

Here are the characters when they're first rounded up together for a lineup.



This won't be working for long, so here is the link:

Here are the actors in the beginning, in the line-up.

Let me just point out the amazingness of Benicio del Toro #3 (red shirt, black jacket) and his strange line deliveries. Have you seen it? Do you remember Benicio as a kind of weird and dangerous disco criminal? This character he plays is so magnificent, because you just don’t know what the deal is with him, but whenever he is on screen, he is galvanizing. All these characters.

Oh, this crazy movie.