Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Top Ten Chick Flicks

By Sheila, Tom and Uncle Louis

Okay, I’ve done my favorite sci-fi flicks. It’s time to give my sweetie equal time with a top ten list she can appreciate. To wit – Sheila’s top ten chick flicks list in order of when they came to mind (hey this isn’t rocket science).

Sheila’s List

1. An Affair to Remember – Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr: This is like the ultimate tear jerker. It’s got everything, rich playboy, repressed cool beauty, true love, romance, a cruise ship, separation, a rendezvous atop the Empire State building, disability! Bring your hankies. Women really dig this one! It’s probably the number one of all time.

2. Little Women – Susan Sarandon, Christian Bale, Winona Ryder: Sisters, an idealized father who isn’t around because he’s off to war, self-sufficient women, a dying sister provides the hankie time, a handsome neighbor, spoiled sister, Jo’s search for true love.

3. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir – Rex Harrison, Gene Tierney: The ideal chick flick romance. Here’s a love interest who’s really unattainable. He’s dead! Separated by time and ectoplasm, the heroine achieves her romantic goals by dying in the end. What is it with women and romantic deaths?

4. How to Lose a Guy in 10 days: Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson: Another doomed in advance romance where true love wins out in the end. Something that never works out in real life.

5. Sleepless in Seattle - Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan: Long distance romance this time, lonely girl, tragic man with small cute son brought together by a radio program. Recycles the meeting on the Empire State Building deal only this time it’s successful! Even I like this one, especially when the guy’s make fun of film #1 by crying over “The Dirty Dozen”.

6. Annie Hall – Diane Keaton, Woody Allen: Won an academy award. Watched it twice and still can’t remember what it was about.

7. Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman: Boy finds girl, boy loses girl because of Nazis, boy tortures himself, boy finds girl again, but gets involved in a love triangle, boy gives up girl for the good of mankind.

8. Gone With the Wind – Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh: Fancy dress, girl resists handsome rogue, girl wins handsome rogue, girl in love triangle, girl loses handsome rogue, Atlanta burns. Frankly my dear…..

9. Philadelphia Story – Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, James Stewart: Offbeat love triangle with the classic guy won girl but lost her, gets involved in romantic triangle, breaks up wedding with 3rd guy and wins girl back. This chick flick is yar!

10. Jerry Maquire – Tom Cruise, Rene Zellwiger: Handsome guy doesn’t notice great girl right in front of him, notices, then wins girl, loses girl, but in the process he finds himself and becomes a better man. Girl completes him……

Sheila

I go to chick flicks too. For every two man flicks I go see, I have to take Sheila to at least one chick flick. It helps that she likes the same kinds of SF and guy films I do. Here are my favorite “chick flicks” in no particular order – I have a headache and ranking anything right now is painful.

Okay, that's the list Sheila gave me. Here's:

Tom’s List

1. Sleepless in Seattle – The scene where the guys weep over Jim Brown’s death scene in “Dirty Dozen” is priceless.

2. Failure to Launch – I love slackers who fall in love in spite of themselves and Matthew McConaughey is from Texas!

3. You’ve got Mail – Love by e-mail. I love Meg Ryan if you can’t tell. I’m 3 into the list and she’s in two of them so far. Love saved by technology. “I hoped it would be you!” I even had to have a hankie.

4. Jerry Maquire – Love interspersed with football. I am complete!

5. The African Queen – Katherine Hepburn is a feisty little thing and you gotta love the way she alternately bullies and then gets all submissive with Humphrey Bogart. He’s so confused by the end of the movie he marries her which is, I suspect, how that happens to most of us guys.

6. Rooster Cogburn and the Lady
– John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn ‘duke’ it out in the wild west with outlaws, explosives and a Gatling gun. How cool is that? Kate is some kinda woman.

7. The Quiet Man
– John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara as a feisty Irish gal in this guy wins girl, guy loses girl, guy wins girl, guy loses girl again, guy drags girl 5 miles across the Irish countryside to give her back to her brother, guy beats up brother, guy wins girl. They all go out drinking. 

8. Ever After – Drew Barrymore as a tough, self-sufficient Cinderella who brings the prince to his senses with the help of Leonardo da Vinci and saves herself from the bad guy with a sword.

9. 50 First Dates – Drew Barrymore again as the perfect woman. Every night when she goes to sleep, she forgets what happened the day before. How cool is that? No matter how many times you screw up, she can’t use it against you in a future argument. You can take a day off and be a jerk once in a while and she won’t remember it in the morning. Adam Sandler is a genius.

10. The Princess Bride – Cary Elwes, Robyn Wright, Mandy Patinkin, Andre the Giant: Fencing, kidnapping, pirates, sword fights. This one has everything.

Tom

Finally, my Uncle Louis (name changed to protect "Uncle Louis" whose wife doesn't find him all that funny) wanted to contribute his own top ten chick flick list which he says is far superior to either of ours. With trepidation, here goes.


Uncle Louis’s List

1. Alien – Sigourney Weaver’s complex relationship with a 20 foot tall acid dripping alien bent on killing everyone on her spaceship. I cried buckets when it burst out of John Hurt’s stomach.

2. Aliens- Sigourney’s back in that tight sweaty t-shirt and this time there are hundreds of aliens. Makes for really complex relationships.

3. McClintock – John Wayne spanks Maureen O’Hara AND Stephanie Powers

4. Donovan’s Reef – John Wayne spanks Elizabeth Allen and throws Dorothy Lamour out of a second floor window into a pond.

5. The Quiet Man – John Wayne spanks Maureen O’Hara

6. Star Wars VI - Return of the Jedi: Harrison Ford finally says “I love you” to Princess Leia when she pulls a big gun out of her coveralls and, of course, there's the gold metal bikini……

7. Rio Grande – John Wayne may have spanked Maureen O’Hara in this one too. If he didn’t, he should have!

8. True Lies – Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis are married, she’s a mousy housewife who doesn’t know her hubbie is a superspy. Before it’s over she’s hanging from a helicopter in a very short tight red dress. Did I mention it has Arnold Schwarzenegger?

9. The Terminator – Linda Hamilton meets the guy of her dream, gets pregnant, he dies and she kills a robot killing machine. Did I mention it has Arnold in it?

10. Some Like it Hot – Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe? Funny with gangsters, cross dressing and did I mention Marilyn?

Uncle Louis

No comments:

Post a Comment