30 Coolest Films Ever
i fucking LOVE Miller’s Crossing. definitely in my personal canon. Coens’ best by far.
yes! ^
;^p to Blue
I put Raising Arizona up there as well because of the perfection with which it executes it’s universe. And oh yeah, it’s also hilarious. Comedies get the short shift (?) in these discussions, but they really shouldn’t. Hence why Holy Grail is on my top 20 list.
I say Miller’s Crossing and Things to Do In Denver because of the dialogue and delivery as well as others things, and I consider Hal Hartley films cool for the same reason, but it’s more of an artificial cool, but cool still.
And comedy is hard, part of what makes comedies like Office Space (a damn cool movie) is because of how uncool some things are in it.
It seems that the cool of comedy is what is uncool, and that becomes cool.
Borrowing liberally from the lists above, I’ll add one too. Not all good films, just ‘cool’ ones, though some are distant memories right now and my recollection might be off:
Le Samourai – Melville
Z – Costa Gavras
The Gunfighter – H King
Tokyo Drifter – Suzuki
California Split – Altman
Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia – Peckinpah
Out of Sight – Soderbergh
Seven Men From Now – Boetticher
In a Lonely Place – Ray
Trouble in Paradise – Lubitsch
The Killers – Siodmak
The Devil Thumbs a Ride – Feist
Ley Lines – Miike
Pulp Fiction – Tarantino
Day of the Jackal – Zinneman
Last Train from Gun Hill – J Sturges
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie – Cassavetes
I don’t know what is cool about Japanese new wave, it’s too humanist to be cool.
I made a list myself
01 Trainspotting Danny Boyle 02 American Psycho Mary Harron 03 Machete Robert Rodriguez 04 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Quentin Tarantino 05 Pulp Fiction Quentin Tarantino 06 The Big Lebowski Joel Coen 07 Le samouraï Jean-Pierre Melville 08 Oldboy Park Chan-wook 09 Jackie Brown Quentin Tarantino 10 Death Proof Quentin Tarantino 11 Reservoir Dogs Quentin Tarantino 12 El Mariachi Robert Rodriguez 13 Scarface Brian De Palma 14 Casino Martin Scorsese 15 Goodfellas Martin Scorsese 16 Taxi Driver Martin Scorsese 17 Fallen Angels Wong Kar-wai 18 Chungking Express Wong Kar-wai 19 The Wild Bunch Sam Peckinpah 20 Django Sergio Corbucci 21 For a Few Dollars More Sergio Leone 22 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Sergio Leone 23 Heartbreak Ridge Clint Eastwood 24 Easy Rider Dennis Hopper 25 Inland Empire David Lynch 26 Wild at Heart David Lynch 27 Fight Club David Fincher 28 Enter the Void Gaspar Noé 29 A Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrick 30 Lolita Stanley Kubrick 31 Dazed and Confused Richard Linklater 32 Basic Instinct Paul Verhoeven 33 City of God Fernando Meirelles 34 Zabriskie Point Michelangelo Antonioni 35 Blow-Up Michelangelo Antonioni 36 Our Day Will Come Romain Gavras 37 Beavis and Butt-Head Do America Mike Judge 38 I Saw the Devil Kim Ji-woon 39 The Asphalt Jungle John Huston 40 Get Rich or Die Tryin’ Jim Sheridan 41 Training Day Antoine Fuqua 42 La haine Mathieu Kassovitz 43 Vivre sa vie Jean-Luc Godard 44 Breathless Jean-Luc Godard 45 Drive Nicolas Winding Refn 46 The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans Werner Herzog 47 New Rose Hotel Abel Ferrara 48 Back to the Future Robert Zemeckis 49 The Limits of Control Jim Jarmusch 50 Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai Jim Jarmusch 51 Coffee and Cigarettes Jim Jarmusch 52 Waking Life Richard Linklater 53 Run Lola Run Tom Tykwer 54 Bringing Out the Dead Martin Scorsese 55 Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Terry Gilliam 56 The Blackout Abel Ferrara 57 From Dusk Till Dawn Robert Rodriguez 58 Die Hard John McTiernan 59 Die Hard: With a Vengeance John McTiernan 60 Natural Born Killers Oliver Stone 61 Equilibrium Kurt Wimmer 62 Idle Hands Rodman Flender 63 Black Dynamite Scott Sanders 64 Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle Danny Leiner 65 Escape from New York John Carpenter 66 Django Unchained Quentin Tarantino 67 Nude Nuns with Big Guns Joseph Guzmanpulp fiction (or any tarantino)
doom generation
dr. strangelove
the professional
band of outsiders
blue velvet/wild at heart
ghost dog/mystery train (or any jarmusch)
big trouble in little china
youth of the beast (or any jo + suzuki’s)
chunking express
le cercle rouge
true romance
do the right thing/she’s gotta have it
repo man
naked lunch/videodrome/dead ringers/the fly era cronenberg
evil dead 2
escape from new york
badlands
rumble fish
once upon a time in the west (spaghetti in general)
mean streets
faster pussycat kill kill
wayne’s world
re-animator
vanishing point (other car movies)
the man who fell to earth
miller’s crossing
enter the dragon (any kung fu/martial arts)
the warriors
blow out
friday
the long goodbye
scarface
buffalo ’66
drive
near dark
mona lisa
the long good friday
battle royale
the last days of disco
hard boiled
suspiria
scott pilgrim
midnight cowboy
the loveless
casablanca
phantom of the paradise
dear wendy
the yakuza
house
strange brew
the last detail
high fidelity
the graduate
white dog
the american friend
dead or alive
the friends of eddie coyle
the killing of a chinese bookie
lone wolf and cub movies
wise blood
fox and his friends
my own private idaho
el topo/holy mountain
point blank
beyond the valley of the dolls
leaving las vegas
american pop
little big man
snatch
This is THE definitive list…because I said so
Christiane F
Rebel without a Cause
Touch of Evil
The Tenant
Danger Diabolik
The Wild One
Performance
The Hunger
Barbarella
Point Blank
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
Diva
The Damned (Visconti)
Saturday Night Fever
The Nightmare Before Christmas
Cat People (Schrader)
Lost in Translation
To Die For
Get Shorty
Decline of Western Civilization
Blazing Saddles
The Big Gundown
Quadrophenia
Spellbound
The Strange One
The Man with the Golden Arm
Oceans 11 (60)
Dirty Harry
Nosferatu (Herzog)
Dawn of the Dead
Rick from Casablanca was like, the definition of cool.
????
the entire filmography of this man
or anything with matti in
and then some more cool sweeties
stoll & rebella
mariano llinas
martin rejtman
and what about the teenage boy bedroom ennui cool of le diable probablement?
and cockfighter. that’s so cool it’ll file the divorce papers for you. bah.
whoever says uncool shall die
Răzvi
^ :)
i forgot elia suleiman
Top Gun
007 YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (’67)
(Connery) Bond: “Do you have any commandos here?”
(Tetsuro Tanba) Tiger Tanaka: “I have much, much better… Ninjas! Top-secret, Bond-san. This is my ninja training school…”
I tried to make a list that balanced cool characters, cool stories, and cool film techniques…
1. Raiders of the Lost Ark
2. Breathless
3. Cool Hand Luke
4. GoodFellas
5. Rebel without a Cause
6. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
7. In Bruges
8. The Limey
9. Chinatown
10. Inglourious Basterds
11. Casablanca
12. Drive
13. Fight Club
14. Porco Rosso
15. The Silence of the Lambs
16. American Graffiti
17. Pierrot le fou
18. A Clockwork Orange
19. Fantastic Mr. Fox
20. The Evil Dead
21. Mulholland Dr.
22. Jackie Brown
23. Man on Wire
24. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
25. In the Cut
26. Band of Outsiders
27. Escape from New York
28. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
29. Boogie Nights
30. Brick
Okay, if I had it my way… and in no particular order…
And some of the qualities I associate with “cool” cinema are:
a willingness to experiment
youthful, physically attractive characters
heroes (or antiheroes) with a certain sense of personal code but utter disregard for authority and rules
altered states of consciousness
“dionysian’ as opposed to “apollonian”
an unflappable attitude regarding death
fun; exuberance
an open attitude towards sexuality, drugs, etc.
1. The Harder They Come
2. Platform
3. Tetsuo the Iron Man
4. Young and Healthy as a Rose
5. Eros Plus Massacre
6. Kill Bill vol. 1
7. Days of Being Wild
8. Le Samourai
9. Temptation of St. Tony
10. Dr. Strangelove
11. Branded to Kill
12. The Killer (John Woo)
13. Forty Nights of a Dreamer
14. Evdokia
15. The Needle(Rashid Nugmanov)
16. The Unscrupulous Ones
17. Mulholland Drive
18. Meshes of the Afternoon
19. Daisies
20. W.R. Mysteries of the Organism
21. Fight Club
22. La Jetee
23. Breathless
24. Badlands
25. Touki Bouki
26. Go Go Second Time Virgin
27. Spectator (Frans Zwartjes)
28. El Topo
29. Io Island
30. The Mother and the Whore
It finally came to me, partly thanks to Blue’s guidelines—
Enter the Dragon, coolest film ever.
I don’t know what is cool about Japanese new wave, it’s too humanist to be cool.
This is one of the more depressing things I’ve ever read at this site.
To view the qualities of “humanist” and “cool” to be somehow incompatible is… well… I’ll just keep it to myself.
Yes, “cool” films tend to feature many antihero and nihilistic types. But usually, the whole point is that the outward “immorality” or “amorality” is usually a tough act put on by the characters to compensate for their fears, insecurities, and so on. They are flawed human beings, and actually witnessing human frailty can be a very moving and "humanist’ experience.
And I’ve no idea how many Japanese New Wave films you’ve seen, but I seriously doubt that anyone well versed in Japanese cinema would stamp the entire JNW as “too humanist”. It’s one of the strangest generalizations made about that particular group of films.
Enter the Dragon, coolest film ever.
Certainly, Bruce Lee’s character in that film is one of the coolest ever.
Oh so are we just picking ours? I’m down.
In no order:
1. Drive
2. Le Samurai
3. Masculin Feminin
4. Goldfinger
5. Kill Bill
6. The Limits of Control
7. Fantastic Planet
8. Reservoir Dogs
9. Sin City
10. The Killer
11. 2046
12. American Gangster
13. Attack the Block
14. Heavy Traffic
15. L.A. Confidential
16. La Notte Brava
17. Style Wars
18. Shoot the Piano Player
19. El Topo
20. Videodrome
21. Dirty Harry
22. The Getaway
23. Ocean’s Eleven
24. Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
25. Yojimbo
26. Alphaville
27. The Castle of Cagliostro
28. Django
29. Snatch
30. Bullitt
Notes on Cool
Coolness is not necessarily a value judgment, but a bad movie can never be cool. There is nothing less cool than trying to be cool and failing. Brian De Palma constantly straddles this line.
Coolness is not necessarily anti-humanist, but a cool film’s primary concern will not be the internal (emotion); it must always be the external. One might say that the fundamental subject of a cool film is itself.
It is not uncool to feel, but it is rarely cool to express those feelings, except through action. Emotion is typically hot. Hot is obviously not cool.
Coolness does not necessarily value style over substance. Rather, the style is the substance.
Some films are cool to like, but they are not cool films. That is, liking them makes you appear cool, but the film itself is not cool. Most Herzog and Von Trier films, for example, would fall into this camp.
Thinking about the audience — either trying to please them or trying to manipulate them - is not cool. The cool film must place style over the demands and expectations of the audience. For this reason, comedy is not usually cool though it can be, especially when it’s deadpan - Jarmusch, Withnail and I, The Trouble with Harry (perhaps Hitchcock’s coolest film). Buster Keaton and Jacques Tati are cool. Charlie Chaplin is not.
Horror, which is generally concerned with audience manipulation, is not very cool. Again, there are exceptions. House of the Devil is cool. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is cool.
Is it cool to be shocking? Only when the film is not intending to shock (or does not appear to be intending to shock). When a film is shocking simply because it does not care about certain social boundaries, then it is cool. William Friedkin is a master of this particular type of cool. Sam Peckinpah is another.
It is easier to make a cool action film than to make a cool film in any other genre.
Except film noir. Film noir is always cool.
Some film characters are cool, but the movies they are in are not. The Wild One is a classic example of this phenomenon. Bond is a cool character, but the Bond films are typically too silly to be cool.
Some cool directors and one of their coolest films:
Jean-Pierre Melville (Le Samourai)
Jules Dassin (Rififi)
Michael Mann (Thief)
Wong Kar-Wai (Chungking Express)
Orson Welles (The Trial)
Park Chan-wook (Oldboy)
Sergio Leone (Man With No Name trilogy)
Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise)
Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight)
Jean-Luc Godard (’60s) (Alphaville)
Takashi Miike (Dead or Alive)
Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive)
For the record, accidentally putting strikethrough on part of your post is not cool.
Nice. I don’t agree with all of your points necessarily but I think your post is very cool.
For example, there is a scene in Die Hard which is chock full of emotion—the ‘flat feet’ scene, for those that have seen it—in which the hero is stripped bare of all his machismo and armor, and reduced to pessimistic tears as he realizes he may not be up to the challenge and exposes his humanity. For an 80s action film this is entirely unique, and part of the film’s lasting appeal. Truly an ordinary man under extraordinary circumstances. The rest of the film is popcorn at its best, but that scene alone makes it transcendent—an action film that really humanizes its hero.
It is not uncool to feel, but it is rarely cool to express those feelings, except through action.
Thanks for that explanation.
@ Blue K, Custodian of the Cinema
“Yes, “cool” films tend to feature many antihero and nihilistic types. But usually, the whole point is that the outward “immorality” or “amorality” is usually a tough act put on by the characters to compensate for their fears, insecurities, and so on. They are flawed human beings, and actually witnessing human frailty can be a very moving and “humanist’ experience.”
Here, Tarantino is being a solid definition of the meaning of cool, you really think he actually cares about humanity?
“And I’ve no idea how many Japanese New Wave films you’ve seen, but I seriously doubt that anyone well versed in Japanese cinema would stamp the entire JNW as “too humanist”. It’s one of the strangest generalizations made about that particular group of films.”
I never said JNW is too humanist, i said JNW is too humanist to be in the mix with the kind of films we are talking about.
If JNW is cool, then all the melodramas in the world and all the disney pictures are cool.
@Wolfman: “It is easier to make a cool action film than to make a cool film in any other genre. Except film noir. Film noir is always cool.”
I agree that noir is pretty cool in general. Westerns are also often cool I think. But I think you gave a lot of reasons why action films are not generally all that cool. For example you said:
“Thinking about the audience — either trying to please them or trying to manipulate them — is not cool”
@Alex: “If JNW is cool, then all the melodramas in the world and all the disney pictures are cool.”
You must know about some completely different Japanese New Wave than the one I know about.
Maybe i missed something, but I am talking about Ozu, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi etc…
not cool=bad movies. HELL NO. Looks like you guys are thinking i mean that. Usually the movies with topics like faith or hope are not exactly cool. And westerns from the 30’s or 40’s are not exactly cool either, as they usually have some kind of moralist message, Leone is something else and it’s definitely cool.
ah, that’s a relief. i thought i was going mad. when most people talk about the japanese new wave they mean stuff like this. definitely cool.
NEONBEAR
I agree that chunking deserves a spot on the cool list. if anything, because of this scene alone and even then because of the small chef salad delivery in the middle.
if you want to go for a hipster cool list though, you’re going to need to change it up completely. that changes everything. your list will consist of movies like angel heart and dolls and parents and any other random assortment of VHS feeling movies. the campier the better.