Читать книгу The Book Of Lists - David Wallechinsky - Страница 30

‘Extreme chef’ Anthony Bourdain, born in New York in 1956, rose from dishwasher to executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York City via a stint with the CIA (Culinary Institute of America). He is the author of two novels, Gone Bamboo (1995) and Bone in the Throat (1997), as well as Kitchen Confidential (2000), ‘part autobiography, part restaurant-goer’s survival manual’.

‘Is it good? Is it realistic? (That leaves out The Godfather). Is it a timeless ‘how-to’? Those are the criteria here. No good guys or bad guys – just a moral quagmire of betrayal, lust, greed and crushing, grim inevitability. That’s my recipe for a good time at the movies!’

1 THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (1973, dir. Peter Yates) You can smell the beer on Robert Mitchum as aging hood/ part-time informer Eddie, running out one last scam in a swamp of atmospheric betrayal.

2 GET CARTER (1971, dir. Mike Hodges) Maybe the most vicious, hardcore – and magnificent – revenge melodrama ever filmed. Accept no substitutes. (The Stallone remake was a sin against God.)

3 BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1955, dir. Jean-Pierre Melville) Elegant, beautiful, sad and wise caper movie. And the hero gets away!

4 RIFIFI (1956, dir. Jules Dassin) The Citizen Kane of caper flicks.

5 THE KILLING (1956, dir. Stanley Kubrick) Seedy, delicious – and with Sterling Hayden! Pure crack for film nerds.

6 THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950, dir. John Huston) The jumbo, king-Hell noir to beat all noirs. A crime masterpiece told from the criminals’ point of view.

7 GOODFELLAS (1990, dir. Martin Scorsese) Simply the best American movie ever made. Every word, every move, every inflection thoroughly believable. And funny – as only real mobsters can be.

8 MEAN STREETS (1973, dir. Martin Scorsese) Scorsese’s breathtaking low-budget portrait of small-time hoods in Little Italy. It changed everything.

9 THIEF (1981, dir. Michael Mann) An underrated classic. James Caan as a professional safecracker – just out of prison – trying to steal his way to a ‘normal’ life. Beautiful, grimly realistic, technically groundbreaking.

10 THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (1980, dir. John Mackenzie) Bob Hoskins owned this part. And yet a shatteringly good Helen Mirren still steals the movie. Brit-crime at its very very best.