12th House Personal List: Best Movies

1. Bram Stoker's Dracula
I saw this in a theater full of drunken college students that laughed at most of the places my heart was soaring and beating. My then-husband and I turned to each other during the first raucous outbreak and he raised his eyebrow and I frowned: "Why are they laughing?" I asked him. "They've never really been in love" he said.

2. The Wizard of Oz
How many images and quotes come to your head?

3. Dangerous Liaisons
What is a woman's power in the 18th century world? What was the result of ambition thwarted and twisted for lack of outlets? In the late 20th? Not too different it turned out. The sly dark humor, the customs, the red hot passion (reportedly real and devastating) between Michelle Pfeiffer and John Malcovitz, Uma's sly turn from convent child to knowing lover, and finally Glenn Close's harrowing portrait of an ultra-intelligent woman who found her niche in cruel manipulation that still seems to be the refuge of most women today.

4. Young Frankenstein
Gene Wilder was my first movie star crush. His blond curls, blue eyes, deft combination of humor, pathos and suave come hither sexuality did me in. And this take off on 1930s horror films has the kind of out loud laughs you hope for in a comedy. Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Mel Brooks, Terri Garr...we can only hope they had as much fun making this as the rest of us have watching it 30 years later and running.

5. Police Story: Naked Gun. Most Blake Edward's Pink Panther movies.
Bad day? Someone in one of these movies had a worse one. And they're reaction was a lot funnier. Watch their version to magically erase the one you had today.

6. Whale Watcher
A young woman who has to fight just about everyone close to her and her own family history of inertia to become who she needed to be in the world, only to be validated by nature first and finally her society.