Weekly Lists #23: Robin Williams-edition
Every Wednesday, I post a list of random stuff. This week: 5 films that star Robin Williams that I feel everybody should have seen (just because they’re so awesome)
I may or may not have mentionned this before, but Robin Williams is, basically, just about my all time favourite actor ever – I don’t actually think there’s any films of his (that I’ve seen) that I didn’t love, and here’s just a couple of those!
1. What Dreams May Come, 1998, also starring Cuba Gooding Jr.
Also known as the movie that made me fall absolutely in love with everything Robin Williams had ever been in – apart from the fact that the cinematography cannot be described as anything but Art-with-a-capital-A, that the script is heart-breaking, the performances tear-inducing and the soundtrack incredibly touching: shouldn’t the fact that I’ve watched this movie 26 times to this day, and still have not grown tired of it be a recommendation all on its own?
2. Bicentennial Man, 1999:
Also known as the movie that gave the world this highstanding bit of philosophical amazingness: “I would rather die a man, than live for all eternity as a machine”
I saw this film for the first time when I was about 10, and it really got to me – the questions about humanity, to what extent being human is a matter of biology, psychology, birth, growth, etc. stayed with me throughout the years it took me to find this movie again (ironically I found it through What Dreams May Come, as I eventually googled what other films Robin Williams had been in, and you can guess my surprise as I found a movie I’d been looking for for approximately 6 years) and through the many times I’ve since watched it – it’s a movie that truly always shows me something else, something more, and so I don’t think I’ll ever really grow tired of watching it time and time again.
3. Hook, 1991, also starring Dustin Hofman
I loved the alternative take on the story of Peter Pan, the way that reality is shown to really be able to ‘crack’ everyone – even the eternally young Peter Pan. And more than anything, ‘bangerang’ is a concept that has actually left its mark on me, something that to this day I still use and strife for – along with the ability to make-believe food, because that just looked so many different levels of awesome!
4. Aladdin, 1992
Yes, I know that this is technically cheating: he isn’t really physically in it, but come on! His voicing of the Genie is basically what made this movie into what it is: genius.
And that’s really all that needs to be said about that.
5. Dead Poet’s Society, 1989
Is this an immensely clichéd choice? Yes? Does that make it any less absolutely right for this movie to be here? No. Although this is actually one of the last films of his I saw, it left me crying – sobbing even. So many people focus on Robin Williams career as a comic, and although I never do anything but (at the least) like him in his ‘funny work’, it’s always his drama’s that stay with me the longest – the way he expresses such a range of emotions with the tiniest change of expression has never left me anything but gobsmacked and reaching for tissues, and I love every minute of it.
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