She loooooved it.

So did I, kind of. So tragic! Such love! Sex! Hey, we were, like, fourteen.

I keep remembering movies I didn't originally list, like The Haunting, which I usually watch twice a year usually.

It's so freakin' great! Robert Wise, who directed it, specifically wanted to get back to the kind of filmmaking he had done at the beginning of his career making those fantastic, moody RKO horror movies like Curse of the Cat People. Also, whenever I watch it I think "Claire Bloom! She and Philip Roth had an affair for decades!"

Robert Wise did such a variety of films in his career, it was really amazing. Everything from The Sound of Music to The Andromeda Strain. (Oooh, and I just double-checked his filmography, and he also did The Day the Earth Stood Still!)

The Cultural Attache at the embassy in Athens, that is, the man responsible for promoting American culture overseas, deemed The Haunting "the worst movie I have ever seen."

Shame, because otherwise he seemed like a really smart guy.

Robert Wise did such a variety of films in his career, it was really amazing. Everything from The Sound of Music to The Andromeda Strain. (Oooh, and I just double-checked his filmography, and he also did The Day the Earth Stood Still!)

He also did a great real-time (as in, the movie is the same length of time as the story) noir called THE SETUP.

I think I've talked about my Wise affection before when he died, but he also did the classic noir The Set-up (boxing film with Robert Ryan) and the very cool, yet little known noir-western Blood on the Moon (which we jokingly called Plaid on the Moon around my house because of certain costuming decisions).

Oddly, despite the number of stone classics he worked on as director or editor, he was frequently dissed by cinephiles. He was seen as a studio hack -- plus they wouldn't forgive him for Sound of Music.

The Cultural Attache at the embassy in Athens, that is, the man responsible for promoting American culture overseas, deemed The Haunting "the worst movie I have ever seen."

If he was talking about the Jan DeBont remake, he's not too far off the mark. In and of itself it's a wretched movie; as a version of the novel or even as just a remake of the Wise version, it's a crime against humanity (especially since they had a cast that could have easily pulled off a REAL version of the story).

Wise also did West Side Story, which had that brilliant opening shot of zooming in from above to the closeup of the Jets on the playground.

The Haunting is a nearly perfect movie in every way. ETA And I do mean the Robert Wise version. The remake was execrable.

Another strong contender is Rosemary's Baby, which is so true to the novel, it's a little freaky. (It's also one of my favorite books, so I may be biased.) I will say, though, that much as I like Mia Farrow, she wouldn't have been my first choice for Rosemary, since R. was supposed to be Midwestern to the bone and Mia Farrow came across as a bit too cosmopolitan.

Another strong contender is Rosemary's Baby, which is so true to the novel, it's a little freaky.

Heh. I heard that the reason for that is because it was Polanski's first attempt at adapting someone else's work and he didn't realize you didn't necessarily stay that close to a novel.