For everyone's enjoyment!

1) Amadeus: If you haven't watched this movie yet, run don't walk to get it. Are there highly fictionalized elements? Yes. Could they have found a better conductor than Marriner? Yes. Those flaws aside, this movie won Best Picture because it deserved it! In fact, it won 8 Academy Awards. From the sturm and drung of the 25th symphony to the perfect Requiem... it defies words. The otherwise flawless movie captures so much of the genius of the one and only Mozart, this is truly a can't-miss picture. Seriously, everyone already watched this one, right?

2) Immortal Beloved: Gary Oldman might be a self-admitted a-hole in real life, but this movie is to Beethoven what "Amadeus" is to Mozart. Somewhat fictionalized, but real enough and with plenty of the great man's music and awesome moments that it is another must-see for Fans of Classical Music. Just wait until they get to the 9th!

3) Impromptu: Not as great as the first two, but you have a young Hugh Grant playing mousy Chopin, you have a young Julian Sands as love-em-and-leave-em-phase Liszt, and what more do you need? Maybe a little more of them without Judy Davis stealing the show as George Sand (a woman in the 19th century... who wears trousers!), but still.... I guess I can't complain about too much Judy Davis in my movies. The pros of this movie for Fans of Classical far outweigh the cons, and who doesn't recognize the might of Chopin?

4) Shine: Ok, I'm not the biggest Rachmaninov fan, but this movie convinces me. Geoffrey Rush's powerhouse (Best Actor) performance of a troubled pianist is the real Shine, and the musicality of the movie makes it a must-see. Tell people you are a Fan of Classical Music long enough and someone will inevitably ask you what you think of Shine.

5) Red Violin: I posted about this movie on the front page, and I recommend it again here. A fictional story of a legendary, Stradivarius-like violin that changes hands through the centuries. It has a great selection of music, fun, emotion, and Samuel L. Jackson, who can make any movie a good movie, even Snakes on a Plane, and he doesn't even have to yell in Red Violin. Joshua Bell's fiery performance style on the violin is perfectly suited to this movie. The violin yells.

6) Ran: Akira Kurosawa is the greatest director of all time. Just ask Steven Speilberg, ask George Lucas, ask any director worth his salt who the best was, and the answer is always Kurosawa, Kurosawa, Kurosawa. Well, Lucas should credit him since Star Wars IV was a rip-off of Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress," and Fistful of Dollars was a rip-off of "Yojimbo," and Magnificent 7 was a rip-off of "Seven Samurai," and I'm getting off subject. Anyways, that towards the end of his awesome career Kurosawa revisited doing Samurai adaptations of Shakespeare, this time with King Lear as his subject, you know you are in for a depressing ride. At least this one is in color, but that just helps to see the blood. The choice to have one of the great late 20th century composers, the incomparable Toru Takemitsu, score the film made for a marriage of brilliance. There is a war scene, perhaps (probably, yeah), the greatest war scene in all of film history, where Kurosawa doesn't have any sound but Takemitsu's chilling music taking over for minute after minute after brutal, horrifying minute. This isn't a Friday Night popcorn movie. When you have enough depression and time, knowing Kurosawa's wife died during the production of this film, enough effete intellectualism to power through a 3 hour epic of having to read subtitles, suffering brilliant despair, appreciating deep focus directing, and still come out renewed at the end, this is the movie to watch. Wow, I'm bummed out just thinking about it. Even Olivier's BBC King Lear was more fun and that will make anybody cry. I'm crying right now.

7) 2001: A Space Odyssey: On the subject of depressing directors, perhaps no director was ever more of a Fan of Classical Music than Stanley Kubrick. We know the rampant Beethoven fetishism in "A Clockwork Orange." We know in "Eyes Wide Shut" he had Mozart, Liszt, Shostakovich, Ligeti, and more. He didn't just randomly choose the music: scoring scenes to Classical Music was an integral part of Kubrick's filmmaking paradigm. Yet, nowhere is this more apparent than in "2001".... From the opening brilliance of Also Sprach Zarathustra to the space-tumbling of the Blue Danube Waltz to Khachaturyan and a bunch of Ligeti (yeah, Ligeti again, he's really good). No list for Fans of Classical Music is complete without this one, and it is a classic sci-fi movie as well. My god, it's full of stars.

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