The Godfather Parts I & II (1972 & 1974, dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
So I included a few staples. I can’t be revisionist and post-modern all the time.
Yep, we can all quote the thing to death (“It’s a mob message: Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”). But at the heart of this legendary cultural document is a story about the good son, forced to take over the family business when his father passes away—and his brother gets whacked. It’s the dark side of George Bailey’s no-win situation in It’s a Wonderful Life, albiet one that far fewer of us will actually experience.
But so what if Coppola’s gangster costume drama is somewhat lacking in accessibility? Does that really blunt the impact of the Greek tragedy arc of the life of Michael Corleone (Al Pacino, before he was horrifying to look at)? Where Capra’s film shows his hero overcoming self-hatred and appreciating his purpose in life, Coppola sets Michael Corleone’s life-house on fire and watches it burn. Michael’s certainly a good man to begin with, but his moral anguish at what he must do to maintain his father’s empire ends up devouring just about everything around him. When Michael closes the door on Kay (Diane Keaton) in Part II, it’s an act of mercy more than anything else.
Knocked Up (2007, dir. Judd Apatow)
I feel weird putting a film with such a glaring flaw (not Katherine Heigl herself, but casting her) on a “top 10” list. But Judd Apatow’s 2007 manchild epic about an ugly unemployed guy (Seth Rogen) who knocks up a beautiful television correspondent (Heigl) has so many great things to say about modern manhood that I couldn’t resist.
Apatow’s filmography is essentially a travelogue through different stages of arrested development, with Knocked Up chronicling the (failed) transition to adult life. Ben Stone (Rogen) lives in a ramshackle ranch house with his buddies (Jason Segel, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, and Martin Starr, all nailing it). The guys basically smoke pot and play video games while they put off developing a website that allows you to see just the parts of movies where your favorite actresses get naked. But in a bit of brilliant meta-humor, the guys discover that a site that does the same thing (real-life celeb nudie cite Mr. Skin) already exists. So Ben’s only hope of supporting his new baby goes down the drain, and Alison (Heigl) understandably flips out.
Heigl is miscast, and I don’t buy for a second that she and Rogen would end up together. (Original star Anne Hathaway, on the other hand, would have made a much better choice.) But the way Apatow portrays Ben and his friends, as a lovable bunch of fuck-ups who were never taught they had to have a life, is so perfectly spot-on that Knocked Up emerges as a modern classic. Maybe I’m just too invested in the lost 20-something milieu of the film, but I get the sense that Apatow has captured something really quintessential about growing up. “You’re not doomed,” the film seems to say. “Just do something.” When Ben decides to get a real job to support his child towards the end of the movie, it seems less like a radical transformation than someone turning on a light switch.
The 400 Blows (1959, dir. François Truffaut)
I’d argue no list of movies about good men is complete without one about trying to be a good boy. Truffaut’s French New Wave classic follows a French schoolboy (Jean-Pierre Léaud) caught between his oppressive, post-WWII Paris schoolhouse and his depressive, proletarian home-life. His parents are trapped in a loveless marriage and his schoolmaster is a complete prick, but everyone seems to blame Doinel (Léaud) for his bad attitude. Would you be any better? Life deals Doinel crappy hand after crappy hand until he finally ends up in a school for troubled youth on the French coastline. The most famous scene in the film is actually the last, as Doinel escapes and heads for the beach he longed all his life to see.
The film contains a number of striking qualities, but the thing that most resonates is the inevitability of Doinel’s doom. Just about everything around him seems arrayed to screw him over. Doinel’s not a particularly smart or noble kid, but Jean-Pierre Léaud does make him a real person, which makes his downfall all the more affecting. The French New Wave canon is full of basically plotless tone poems about love triangles (Jules and Jim), aimless revolutionaries (La Chinoise), and fucked-up relationships (literally everything else), but Truffaut’s autobiographical story about a hapless street-rat is one of the best. Watch it with your kids.
The Searchers (1956, dir. John Ford)
It’s well known that audiences hated The Searchers when it was first released in 1956, and it’s not hard to see why. The basic Western stuff that’s there is mindless, hackneyed tripe, and the one badass in the film (John Wayne) is so heartless and awful that it’s hard to cheer along as he slaughters cowboy and Indian alike. The film follows Ethan Edwards (Wayne) in years-long quest to find his niece Debbie (Lana Wood) who’s been abducted by Comanche tribesmen. Ford throws Debbie’s adopted brother Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter) so that Ethan has someone to say horrible things about Indians to.
The Searchers has grown in stature since its release to become perhaps the most critically-acclaimed Western of all time. And that’s a load of garbage, if you ask me. This is another deeply flawed film (seriously, the stuff with Martin and his girlfriend is right out of those cheesy Western double-features from the ’20s), but it contains one of the most trenchant deconstructions of the Western archetype ever put to film. The Searchers‘ steel-eyed murderer of a protagonist isn’t the type of character most of us are liable to meet in our everyday lives, and that’s primarily because most of us don’t live in the Old West. Hollywood delighted in painting the settlers as a band of sweetly idealistic patriots (and the occasional gun-toting lawman with a heart of gold), but, as Patton Oswalt put it, the Old West was settled by “big, white, racist psychopaths.” Kinda makes you wanna tell your kids to hold off on the cowboys and Indians.
Rocky (1976, dir. John Avildsen)
Another perennial favorite, included both because I’d be hanged if I didn’t include a sports movie and because it’s damn good. Star and screenwriter Sylvester Stallone eventually sullied the legacy of this film (and its excellent sequel) with a series that got progressively stupider, more implausible, and weirdly jingoistic as it wore on. But John Avildsen’s simple story of a small-time boxer who goes the distance against the champ (Carl Weathers) is a classic for a reason.
The fight scenes are magnificent, of course, and Bill Conti’s iconic score gets even the most ardent sports-hater’s blood pumping. Elsewhere, Stallone creates a quiet, convincing romance between Rocky and Adrian (Talia Shire), which succeeds in spite of the vast difference between the two characters’ temperaments. Avildsen gets great performances out of the rest of his cast, including Weathers as Apollo Creed, Burt Young as Paulie, and an iconic Burgess Meredith as Rocky’s trainer, Mickey.
This has been a list populated by films about drunks, neurotics, and fuck-ups young and old. But occasionally, you just feel like watching a good ol’ fashioned sports movie. You’ll never get the chance to fight Apollo Creed, but Rocky will make you think you can go the distance for at least a few hours. And sometimes that’s all the good man needs.
—Main photo hsuanwei/Flickr
I don’t like the list. I was expecting better movies, maybe less known, about not only a good person but an impeccable one. The kind of movies that put you in a perfect inspiring mood. For example, I recently re watched Akira Kurosawa’s Red Beard (the best IMO), High and Low, Sanjuro and Yojimbo. Give them a try even if you feel Japanese or black and white movies are not your thing, impeccable movies about impeccable characters.
Any post that proposes a “Ten Best List” of anything is fraught with problems. That said, I’d like to include two films that deserve mention. The first is John Sayles’ Lone Star (1996). It offers a instructive spectrum of men. Kristofferson. Cooper. Joe Morton. Matthew McConaughey. Yaphet Kotto. This film demonstrates the complicated legacies men receive from the fathers. My second choice is John Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970). The relationship between Harry, Archie, and Gus (played by long-time co-conspirators Ben Gazarra, Peter Falk, and Cassavetes respectively) is a great portrait of men in grief for the loss of their friend and… Read more »
Hahahaha – some of the feedback is hilarious… Does this planet have a testosterone bar along which “all things manly” can be measured? I mean, somewhere in a museum in Paris is the ultimate “one meter” bar, for example…. 🙂 Impossible, I think. Three billion men on Planet Earth, and they all like their coffee different from the neighbour – hahahaha My ultimate dick flick: Shipping News, with an outstanding cast, and the best final line ever for a movie. Paris Texas would have done well too here, in this list. Thanks, well done! Like the courage with which you… Read more »
A limited list, but not bad. I would add Clint Eastwood’s “Grand Torino”, “Million Dollar Baby” and “Unforgiven” to the list. Each one depicts a man who must grapple with morality in a real way. Spike Lee’s “The Miracle of Saint Anna” was great too. This was more than just a war movie. It was about redemption. Jack Nicholson in “As Good as it Gets” plays a misanthrope who breaks out and finds decency and compassion in his life. Add to the list Bruce Willis in “Unbeakable” and “The Sixth Sense:. These men had to face their destiny. And as… Read more »
trying to narrow it down to 10 is definitely difficult and kudos for making the effort because you open yourself to a lot of scrutiny putting something like this together. BUT a fairly week top ten – one foreign film (major flaw) and so many missing that I have to question your overall experience as a cinemaphile. No offense but here are some I would have on MY top ten: He Got Game (Not DTR); Cinema Paradiso; Billy Elliot (how could you not include that??); Nothing in Common; Fight Club (hello?); Sleepers. You worked against yourself when you mentioned Cool… Read more »
eh i liked sideways but now that i think about it i only like a few bits and for the rest I felt like it was overly pompous. but for a foreign film that we’ve all forgotten that i really think is a beautiful representation of a father son relationship and the struggles we all face in life, i think you have to consider The Bicycle Thief. 400 blows is great and you’re right that Billy Elliot deserves a place up here, but what about the Full monty then too. It has nothing in common with Billy elliott and i… Read more »
good list. i like that you picked the searchers but i can’t get over the fact i’ve seen teak tables that are less wooden then john wayne. what about the good the bad and the ugly or, better yet, once upon a time in the west as a western addition to the list? admittedly I like leone a lot but these movies are chock full of lessons and do their best to upend an old western stereotype (however, while also creating a stereotype of their own i guess, that of the stylish, fiercely independent gunslinger who actually wins). actually thinking… Read more »
I’d like to add that, in “Nobody’s Fool,” although Sully has neglected his relationship with his own family, there are at least half a dozen people in that small town who would not survive without Sully’s help. Sully had always been a good man, even if he had not been able to figure out how to be a good father. His son’s recognition of his father’s virtues makes their reconciliation possible.
How about Smoke Signals?
Great list. I would have included Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
Good, not great list. I would take off Knocked Up because it’s horrible and Seth Rogen’s character is so unlikeable and because it portrays marriage so poorly. Leslie Mann and Kate Heigl are written as vicious shrews. Do the Right Thing is belongs on a different list. It’s characters do so much wrong that when right is done it’s overshadowed by the car wrecks they cause. Good film. Spike Lee’s second best movie after Malcolm X. I would include When A Man Loves A Woman. Andy Garcia’s performance is terrific. He shows what co-dependency can do to a human being,… Read more »
You would choose Knocked Up over I Love You, Man? Holy cow. Knocked Up is one of the worst comedies I’ve seen in the last several years. The latter film goes right to the heart of how m/m loving friendships are developed. Required viewing for guys, IMHO.
This reminds me of that time that we took a pop quiz in psychology that said, within the instructions, “this test is optional,” but only like four people read it and the rest of the class took the test and then after were like oh dang. Imagine how much internet vitriol/disagreement could be saved if people just read shit before they commented on it! We could probably power a good sized city with that energy.
Brokeback Mountain? really? When I think of “good men movies”, I’m thinking about movies that I would want to watch while with other men (ie: Rocky, Do the Right Thing, are all good ones and i like the reviews), and maybe one of those men would be my pops or my son. So, sorry, nice try with the curveball – maybe BBM would fly because you are a softy boy living with mom, but then again, GET THE EFF OUT OF THE HOUSE…maybe it’s time to hang with the guys? Sheesh, dude. And no – i’m not a homophobe –… Read more »
“These are movies about the men we want to be, the men we actually are, and the men we’re glad we aren’t.” “So these are the movies that (we hope) get you talking about the issues that real men face.” I feel as though he was abundantly clear of what he meant by ‘good men’ and what sorts of films were going to be mentioned, and for that matter not mentioned, in the list. Brokeback Mountain is definitely a curveball, but it is by no means inappropriate or inconsistent with the content of this site, or the article. But way… Read more »
Nobody’s Fool: brilliant, brilliant choice. You failed to mention Bruce Willis’ role as the guy who gets what’s coming to him.
The list of movies kinda sucks and the definition of “real men” is bogus.
To each their own.
Can’t really argue if you don’t like the list, but I’m curious as to why you take issue with the definition of “real men.” I defined it broadly as men who don’t carry laser guns, swords, or sleep with exorbitant amounts of people while foiling the plots of international terrorist organizations.
Brokeback Mountain?…no First Blood? (Rambo one)…have your mom make you some kraft mac and cheese, call your BF and make an afternoon of a real man’s movie…
I…what? Return to beginning of article. Do not pass GO. Read first sentence.
PS Mac and Cheese for LIFE.