Bride of Frankenjohn

"To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in the cinema or at home, to love and to cherish 'till warring film lists do us part."

Yesterday, I asked my lovely wife to make a list for me. She hadn't yet seen my list nor had we talked about it beforehand.

She sent me a good list off the top of her head right away. Then, she agonized over the idea for half the morning, finally deciding to just go with those first films that hopped into her mind. There are certainly many more films that she's forgotten and that she'd slap herself on the forehead for forgetting if she was the type of person to slap herself on the forehead for forgetting.

I thought about including some of the funny correspondence of her trying to remember the names of these films, but I'll leave the list without further ado.

Abigail's Top Ten (if you asked her on the morning of August 24th, Anno Domini 2012)

Julien Donkey-Boy (Korine, 1999)
Encounters at the End of the World (Herzog, 2007)
There Will Be Blood (Anderson, 2007)
Tree of Life (Malick, 2011)
Ivan's Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962)
The Mill and the Cross (Majewski, 2011)
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Hitchcock, 1941)
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (Miyazaki, 1984)
Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Hughes, 1968)
La France (Bozon, 2007)

Honorable mentions:
Every Hitchcock film she's ever seen.
Any film starring Carey Grant.
30s romantic comedies.
I Love You Again.
Blast of Silence. Shoot the Piano Player. The 400 Blows. Days of Heaven. The Apostle. On the Waterfront. James and the Giant Peach. Trapped in Paradise. Woman on the Moon.

If you know how to count, you'll probably notice that I let her get away with 11 picks besides the honorables. That's partially because I was so pleased that she put La France as the 11th movie. It's a great, great film that the rest of you have ignored for far too long, even though I've been praising it for five years.

Also, how about that JDB pick, eh? I showed JDB to her on our wedding night and I told her that she had to love it unconditionally just as she loves me and she said, "I do." Just kidding. I didn't even own a DVD copy until maybe five years ago, which is probably about when she watched it. She saw the good in it that Brandon refuses to see. Which is just one of the many, many reasons why I am married to this beautiful, intelligent woman and not to my Film Club compadre.

Brandon, you'll be happy to hear that Abby was trying to get the title of another film out of me when I arrived home yesterday evening.

Night of the Hunter.

It got a strong last minute honorable mention. I wasn't expecting it.