When I say "A Perfect Film", What One Film Pops Into Your Head First?

Seven Samurai, This is a difficult question to answer satisfactorily. It is a good question and easy enough to answer if one goes with one’s gut feeling. It’s just so hard not to pick one many people will think of.
Also 2001: A Space Odyssey

8 1/2 AND 2001: a space odysse

Zulu

the shop on main street
dr. strangelove
seven samurai
little dieter needs to fly
the virgin spring
ju dou
love and death (the best comedy ever)
raging bull
monty python’s holy grail

high and low
annie hall

It’s a 3-way tie for me: The Godfather I and II and American Beauty

Orlando and Barry Lyndon

ROBOCOP

Sunset Boulevard

The Last laugh

Last year at Marienbad

Playtime

City Lights

L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat

The Third Man, the score has a lot to do with it.

L’Eclisse

I have a thing for movies that are about blocking. 3 Iron would count, too, but it’s a lot more whimsical about it. The opening and closing scenes of L’Eclisse are exactly the statement on cinema that I find myself ultimately adhering to; the opening, where she is searching for the right “framing” to understand the relationship, and the closing, where that search ends because there isn’t a finality.

By the way, one of my favorite movies ever is called Frames of Reference. It’s not even on the IMDb. It’s a couple of physics professors doing a short documentary explaining relativity, but it’s absolutely brilliant. It starts out with the first professor explaining, to the camera, what the documentary is going to be about, and then, midway through his opening sentence, the other professor shows up, upside-down, on the screen. The two regard each other in mock surprise for a moment, and then the second professor says, “Get down from there…” The camera dollies back and the first professor, who was originally in a typical medium shot, is actually hanging upside down from the ceiling. The camera flips and the professor gets down from the ceiling. This simple, silly joke is, to me, profound in movies. And they continue:

-There is a dot. Then the camera dollies back and it’s revealed that the dot is actually moving in a circle, the camera was just moving with it. Then the camera stops and pans to the right, and it’s shown that the circle was actually a wheel and the dot was a marker drawing a wave on a plane of glass.

-At one point they’re playing air hockey, but every time the puck gets hit by the first professor, it just turns around on its own and comes back to him. This is because the two professors and the camera are on a revolving platform.

-Foucault’s Pendulum is explored.

-The professors sit down on a moving table. Then the camera cuts to a position on the moving table, where they continue this discussion only the background seems to be moving instead of the professors. The professors say “From our frame of reference, the background seems to be moving, when it’s actually us that’s moving. Or is it?” and just as they say that, a studio hand appears at the end of the background, and it turns out that between the cuts the professors sat down at a unmoving table and that it actually IS the background that is moving while the professors are static.

This, my friends, is pure cinema. How our eyes and interpretations of what goes on on screen is entirely devoted to where the camera is and what it’s looking at. And this movie isn’t even considered “cinema” or a “film” or even a documentary of import. It’s just one of those silly classroom documentaries that bore children to tears. But I was amazed by it.

Another good science documentary that makes great cinema as well is Powers of Ten. That one IS included on the IMDb because it has something of a cult following.

—PolarisDiB

Wait… wait… it’s a tie!

Satantango
Bicycle Thieves

My top 10 Favorite Films of all time.
1. Brokeback Mountain
2. Network
3. 2001: A Space Odyssey
4. The Searchers
5. City Lilghts
6. The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
7. Hud
8. Touch of Evil
9. Amelie
10. Brief Encounter

Ran

i think Seven Samurai and Schindler’s List are two films that are as close to flawless as you can get. maybe not eveyrone’s favorite, but without a doubt had what the film makers wanted and achieved EXACTLY the vision that they wanted, and that would translate the best to the audience.

High School Musical 3!

Trainspotting, La Haine, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Clockwork Orange, Revolver, Everybody Loves Sunshine, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, City of God, Tropa De Elite, The Doom Generation, Natural Born Killers, Running Scared, Pulp Fiction, City Of Men, Reservoir Dogs, Nowhere, Huevos De Oro, Volver, La Mala Educacion, One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest, Kika, Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios, Átame, La Flor de Mi Secreto, Carne Trémula, Todo Sobre Mi Madre, Hable Con Ella, Yo soy la Juani, Son de mar, Volavérunt, Bámbola, La teta y la luna, Jamón, Jamón, Broken Flowers, Coffee and Cigarettes, Dead Man, Stranger Than Paradise, My Own Private Idaho, Elephant, Good Will Hunting, Mogari No Mori, Wild At Heart, 21 Grams, The Usual Suspects, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, The Headless Woman, Va Savoir, Derecho De Familia, Blindness, O Ceu De Suely, Baise Moi, Rocknrolla, XXY, Amores Perros, Naked, Gomorra, Elementary Particles, Eyes Wide Shut, BeetleJuice, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Clean, Mala Noche, Irma Vep, Mar Adrento, Hey DJ, Tesis, Platoon, Intermission, Yo Puta, Angel Heart, Snatch, Alfie, Bound, American Beauty, The Science Of Sleep, Love Songs, Lost In Translation, Closer, Doberman, Fight Club, Sin Noticias De Dios, Dead Poets Society, Requiem For A Dream,Crash,Die Welle,Elephant,Barry Lyndon,Chinatown,Down By Law,Goodfellas…………………….

-City of God
-La Haine
-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
-Trainspotting
-A Clockwork Orange
-Revolver
-One Flew Over Cuckoo’s Nest
-Everybody Loves Sunshine
-Eyes Wide Shut
-Intermission
-My Own Private Idaho
-La Mala Educacion
-Goodfellas
-Lost Highway
-Requiem For A Dream
-Closer
-Huevos De Oro
-Amores Perros
-Pulp Fiction
-21 Grams

“2001”
“City of God”
“8 1/2”
“Le Samourai”

So much for “first”. I wish I could think as parallel-y as all that. That would be very useful. I could, for instance, be typing this and holding a cellphone conversation with a friend all at once.

;p

—PolarisDiB

Seven Samurai

There are many films I love and can’t think of any errors or problems with (hence, “perfect”). But one that has always stood out for me is “The Dead” by John Huston. A flawless 84-minute (I think) jewel existing in its own space and time with perfect casting of Irish and American actors, a moving script from a supposedly “unfilmable” source (James Joyce). When Anjelica Huston stands on the stairs listening to the tenor sing the beautful, sad love lament, triggering her devastating personal memory which she confides to her husband later, I cannot move. It’s a long, stationary take and it’s galvanizing. I could go on and on.

And there are many others, if I were to reflect, that could make the list. (I’m a big Hitchcock and Kubrick fan.)

I feel like this might be a little objected to, but i would say a flawless film is No Country for Old Men, I also would put Third Man there also.

Raging Bull,I think.Also Lawrence of Arabia,Once Upon a Time in the West,The Godfather also called pefect.

Vertigo.

Took me a few seconds, but “A Clockwork Orange” was the first I decided on. It just screams perfection.

Fargo

absolutely brilliant and perfect in my mind.

Spirit of the Beehive. Bicycle Thieves. Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Barry Lyndon. That’s the one that first pops into my mind. But L’eclisse is right beside it. There is hardly any daylight between them. Both are exquisite.

“A letter from an unknown woman”