1.
Gray's Sports Almanac, Back To The Future II (1989)
Objects
don't come more pedestrian than the dull recitation of facts and figures
comprising Gray's Sports Almanac—unless, of course, you have a
time-traveling DeLorean, in which case it's a ticket to untold riches.
Perpetually shortsighted when it comes to maintaining the space-time continuum,
Marty McFly recognizes the chance to make his fortune with a few "sure thing"
bets—an egregiously greedy plan, considering that his most recent
tinkering with the fabric of time already bumped him up a couple of tax
brackets—but he's shot down by the ever-conscientious Doc Brown, who once
again warns the myopic Marty of the dire consequences inherent in toying with
the past. Multigenerational bully Biff Tannen provides a more concrete
illustration: He steals the almanac, the DeLorean, and Marty's plan, then returns
to 1955 to give his teenage self the chance to rewrite his life. Never has so
much hung in the balance over a mere collection of sports scores—except
perhaps in a Martin Scorsese movie.
2. The Fountain Of Youth, The Fountain (2006)
Since his debut feature, Pi, about a mathematician's
attempt to find a numerical formula for everything from patterns in the stock
market to God's presence in the Torah, director Darren Aronofsky has been
interested in impossible quests. In his madly ambitious studio fantasia The
Fountain,
Aronofsky follows mankind's desire for immortality throughout the ages, as seen
in a scientist convinced that death is a disease that can be cured, and a tai-chi-practicing
astronaut who floats around in space inside a bubble full of magic. Or something
like that. But the third story, about a 16th-century Spanish conquistador, is
inspired by Ponce De León's actual quest to find the Fountain Of Youth in what's
now known as Florida, except here, the conquistador succeeds in finding the "Tree
Of Life." Pierce it with a Mayan dagger, and you get the healthiest maple syrup
in creation.
3.
Treasure map, Treasure Island (1920, 1934, 1950, etc.)
With
his first novel, Treasure Island, Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson almost
single-handedly put together all of the major elements of the still-thriving
pirate genre. (Except for their longstanding antipathy to ninjas.) And just as the
story's swashbuckling sailors and parrot-bedecked scurvy dogs are spurred into
action by the discovery of a secret map showing the location of long-lost
buried pirate loot, the book itself was inspired by a map drawn by Stevenson's
stepson. His creativity piqued, Stevenson elaborated grandly on the boy's initial
watercolor painting with tantalizing place names like "Skeleton Island" and "Spyglass
Hill," not to mention a chest of stolen gold—it's from this map that we
get the phrase "X marks the spot." He eventually spent weeks spinning the tale
into a full-fledged, much-adapted-to-film novel featuring the unforgettable
one-legged, treacherous rogue Long John Silver. And with it, he sailed into
literary history.
4. White Castle burgers, Harold & Kumar
Go To White Castle (2004)
It's said that one of marijuana's negative effects
is that it robs a person of ambition. So when a couple of young eggheads—Indian
medical student Kal Penn and Korean investment banker John Cho—smoke
their weight in weed in Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, their life goals are
downgraded significantly. Suddenly, a simple trip to square-mini-burger
paradise becomes an epic journey fraught with perils, including bad directions,
vicious animals, skinheads, a racist police officer, the Asian-American
Students Association, and Neil Patrick Harris as a manic, horndog hitchhiker
named Neil Patrick Harris. For anyone who's spent a lazy hour trying to
motivate themselves to go get that bag of chips a few feet from the couch, this
is a movie that understands how hard it can be.
5. A bike, The Bicycle Thief (1948) and Pee-wee's
Big Adventure
(1985)
On the surface, Vittoria De Sica's neo-realist
classic and Tim Burton's rollicking, cartoonish comedy seem to have little in
common, but under the surface… well, they don't have much in common there,
either. But they do share lead characters who believe a bike is the most
important thing they own, and who are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to
find it once it's been stolen. For a poor laborer and his son in post-war Rome,
the bike represents their livelihood and survival; as they conduct a
needle-in-a-haystack search for it, De Sica tours through a devastated city and
into the hearts of fundamentally decent people forced into a shameful act.
Pee-wee's beloved bicycle is a more tricked-out, one-of-a-kind creation, but
finding it takes him on a circuitous journey where he survives run-ins with
leather-clad biker toughs, an escaped convict, and the ghost of a trucker named
Large Marge. All roads lead to The Alamo, in the basement.
6. The
Mysterious Briefcase Of Doom, Kiss Me Deadly (1955) and Pulp Fiction (1994)
Robert Aldrich's
1955 pulp masterpiece Kiss Me Deadly pushes the darkness and brutality of film noir and
pulp fiction to surreal extremes. Big slab of beefcake Ralph Meeker stars as
Mickey Spillane's iconic Mike Hammer, a tough-as-nails shamus chasing down a
mysterious nuclear valise that just might bring about the end of the world. In
the process, Aldrich gave the world the very first atomic detective and
provided a haunting metaphor for the free-floating paranoia and apocalyptic
danger of the Cold War. Thirty-nine years later, pop-culture magpie Quentin
Tarantino "borrowed" the concept of a mysteriously glowing briefcase for 1994's Pulp Fiction, this
time putting it in the loving care of a pair of philosophical, wisecracking
hoods (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta) who inhabit the same hardboiled
universe as Meeker's unsentimental gumshoe. In paying homage to his pulp
predecessor, Tarantino once again embodies the old adage that the good borrow,
while the great steal.
7.
The Maltese Falcon, The Maltese Falcon (1941)
For
his 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett constructed a labyrinthine plot
of murder and deception in which all paths lead to a black statue of a bird.
Filmed three times—most famously by John Huston with Humphrey Bogart as
Hammett's iconic private eye Sam Spade—the story follows the pursuit of a
priceless, long-lost, bejeweled bird later covered in enamel to hide its value.
In the climactic scene of Huston's take, the bad guys get their coveted bird,
only to find nothing of value beneath the black coating. All that in pursuit of
a worthless trinket. Or maybe it was, in Bogart's famous closing lines, truly
the stuff that dreams are made of.
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8.
1964 Chevrolet Malibu, Repo Man (1984)
In
the grungy world of Alex Cox's caustic cult classic Repo Man, products like beer and
food come in generic white packages labeled with their contents in big black
letters: "BEER." "FOOD (meat-flavored)." Which could be taken as an
anti-consumerist, anti-merchandising message, or just an indication that
nothing in the movie's grimy world is particularly special or
significant—neither the products nor the worn-down people using them. But
one item does stand out: the 1964 Chevy Malibu that all the film's repo men are
trying to get their hands on, for the remarkable $20,000 bounty. The FBI wants
it, too. Why? That's the point of the film, and the key to its bizarre,
transcendent ending. But here's a hint: It's glowing, dangerous, and another
clear reference to that nuclear briefcase in Kiss Me Deadly.
9.
The Holy Grail, Excalibur (1981)
The
Holy Grail isn't the original elusive object of desire, but it's undoubtedly
the one that's dominated the Western imagination since the popularization of
Arthurian legends began in the 12th century. It's been in countless films, but
few played up its symbolic value to the degree of John Boorman's Carl Jung- and Golden Bough-informed Excalibur.
The Grail quest comes relatively late in the film as Arthur lies sickened and
sends his knights out on a desperate quest for this earthly token of Christ's
time on Earth. Only the purest of them, Perceval (filling the role usually
played by Galahad), makes it to the Grail and obtains it, only after realizing
that the King and England are one, and when one is healed, the other will
return to greatness. Cue blossoming flowers. Cue "Carmina Burana."
10. The Ark Of The Covenant, Raiders Of The
Lost Ark
(1981)
Though Raiders Of The Lost Ark opens with daredevil
archaeologist Harrison Ford escaping an impossible series of traps to get his
hands on a golden idol, the idol is only the first in a string of treasures
that Ford and an assortment of Nazis and fortune-hunters hotly pursue. At the
end of the trail: a legendary golden box which is said to contain the remnants
of the original Ten Commandments. Those who possess it wield the power of God
and shall smite all enemies. (Unless God doesn't want them to have it, in which
case… It's face-meltin' time!) The ultimate fate of the ark provides Raiders' creepy ending: The U.S.
government seizes the property from Ford, crates it up, and wheels into a
warehouse full of secrets, effectively re-burying it in a bureaucracy that no
action hero can overcome.
11. The Necronomicon, Army Of Darkness (1993)
Reluctant monster-slayer Bruce Campbell—and
his Oldsmobile—get dropped through a time warp and land back in the 14th
century, where Campbell is imprisoned. A priest advises him that he can return to
his own time if he retrieves the ancient Book Of The Dead and beats back the
encroaching hordes of demonic "Deadites." All he has to do is say three magic
words: "Klaatu barada nikto." When he messes up the spell, supernatural mayhem
ensues, so Campbell grabs The Necronomicon and mounts a defense against the armies of
the undead, led by an evil version of himself. All of which only
proves—as if the first two Evil Dead movies hadn't already—that maybe
some books are better left unopened.
12. The "intercostal clavicle" of a
brontosaurus, Bringing Up Baby (1938) The
mild-mannered paleontologist played by Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby might just be able to
extricate himself from the smothering attentions of flibbertigibbet socialite
Katharine Hepburn, if only he could get his hands on the rare dinosaur bone
that Hepburn's dog has stolen and buried. Over the course of one long outing in
Connecticut, Grant ducks Hepburn's other pet—a leopard named
Baby—and the attentions of the local authorities, in order to complete
his brontosaurus skeleton and land a million-dollar grant for his museum. Now
where did that dog bury that bone?
13. The treasure of the Sierra Madre, The
Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948)
It's an old story: Poor, desperate men go
searching for gold, and end up driven insane by all-consuming greed once the
treasure is found. The definitive cinematic telling of this classic morality
tale is unquestionably John Huston's masterful The Treasure Of The Sierra
Madre, where
buried gold ends up being as fleeting as the wealth and status it represents to
three destitute Americans (played by Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, and Tim
Holt). A parable about the dark side of capitalism, The Treasure Of The Sierra
Madre suggests
that the pursuit of money ultimately leads to betrayal, hatred, and death.
Worst of all, the riches you've attained end up scattered to the wind, like
dirt or lost dreams.
14. The One Ring, The Lord Of The Rings trilogy (2001-2003)
For all their epic, larger-than-life stateliness,
it's easy to forget that the Lord Of The Rings films are essentially one
long (really
long) chase movie, and what's being chased is the destructive, all-powerful
Ring. But unlike most stories featuring an elusive object, the point of getting
the Ring isn't to possess it—at least not for our hero Frodo—but to
destroy it. Holding out against the persuasive powers of the Ring prove
difficult, however. After finally making it to Mount Doom, the only place where
the Ring can be annihilated, Frodo is overcome with a desire to keep it for
himself. In the end, though, it's Gollum, the Ring's most committed pursuer, who
ends up both winning and losing the great Ring sweepstakes.
15. The gold watch, Pulp Fiction (1994)
Sure, the mysterious glowing briefcase gets plenty
of deserved attention in Pulp Fiction, but if Bruce Willis' cutie-pie French girlfriend
hadn't forgotten his gold watch when packing for their escape, a good chunk of
the film wouldn't exist. First there's the incredible backstory: Christopher
Walken's monologue about the watch's history, from its purchase generations
before to its notorious travels ("I hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up my
ass two years") is one of the film's most memorable moments. And of course
there's the major plot point: If the watch didn't mean so much to Willis, he
never would have gone home to retrieve it, thus never going on his little "adventure"
with Ving Rhames.
16.
Declaration Of Independence, National Treasure (2004)
The
Declaration Of Independence isn't all that interesting in and of
itself—it's just some old piece of paper that constituted the backbone of
American government. Sure, it's a heavily guarded historical artifact kept
under thick glass at the National Archives in Washington DC, but really, all
that security is just for show. No one would ever want to steal it… Unless, of
course, it also happens to include a secret hidden treasure map only visible
through Benjamin Franklin's bifocals. Which just so happens to be the plot of
Jon Turteltaub's adventure movie National Treasure. Nicolas Cage and his
unstoppable band of American-history buffs waste no time in stealing the
Declaration Of Independence/map-to-the-most-overblown-treasure-in-the-world,
and then spend the rest of the movie carrying it around in a special sling, and
fighting to keep it out of the hands of evil people who are always interested
in things like secret treasure maps.