Seems like many of my favorites breakdown neatly into categories, though admittedly many could fit under more than one rubric.
A Parable of Regeneration
1.Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasathekul)
The Parables of Melancholy
2a. Inland Empire (David Lynch)
2b. The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin)
The Parables of Betrayal
3a. The Assassination of Jesse James (Andrew Dominik)
3b.Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
The Parables of Love
4a. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai)
4b. 3-iron (Ki-duk Kim)
The Parables of Modernity
5a. Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
5b. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
The Parables of History
6a. Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
6b. The New World (Terrence Malick)
6c. There Will Be Blood (P.T. Anderson)
The Parables of Truth
7a. Hero (Zhang Yimou)
7b. Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano)
The Parables of Family
8a. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-ada)
8b. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
8c. Together (Lukas Moodaysoon)
The Parables of War
9a.Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku)
9b. Devils on the Doorstep (Wen Jiang)
9c. Election (Johnnie To)
The Parables of Decay
10a. Death of Mr. Lazerescu (Cristi Puiu)
10b. Synecdoche, NY (Charlie Kaufman)
10c. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr)
If we’re talking all animation, including short work, then a ton of Dave Fleischer cartoons from the 30s and early 40s. “Swing You Sinners” (1930) might be the greatest work of surrealist art ever produced in America. Also recommended: “Bimbo’s Initiation,” “Crazy Town,” “Snow White,” “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead” – each represents a perfect specimen of American madness in its most perverse and poetic manifestation. The Popeye and Superman cartoons are great too, but a touch too controlled for my taste.
See also Tex Avery, especially his fabulous Egghead cartoons.
Chuck Jones’ work is often great, especially his Road Runner cartoons, which play with greater and greater levels of abstraction.
Most Disney shorts after the departure of Ub Iwerks (post-29) bore me, but those early Mickey cartoons are fantastic.
The early Disney features are extraordinary products of high craft, and Pinnochio in particular might be the most visually beautiful American movie ever made.
For some reason, the French animated sci-fi film Fantastic Planet (1973) doesn’t have the massive cult following it deserves.
Ralph Bakshi’s work is very erratic, but Heavy Traffic (1973) has some great things in it.
I’m not as taken by the Pixar movies as most people, but the first third of Wall-E (2008) is some of the best filmmaking of the last decade.
Bruno Barretto’s Allegro Non Troppo (1976) is hilarious, beautiful and horrifying, often all at the same time.
Heavy Metal (1981) is one of the most juvenile movies ever made, but if you ever feel like being directly plugged into the id of a 14 year old boy from 90 minutes, it’ll get the job done in a rather exuberant manner.
Tim Burton’s short film “Vincent” (1982) is probably the best thing he’s ever done.
Will Vinton’s claymation feature “The Adventures of Mark Twain” (1986) represents the apotheosis of that very singular form.
Mikhail Titov’s “Srazhnie” might be the coolest movie ever made from a Stephen King story.
The Brave Little Toaster (1988) appears to be utterly forgotten, but it’s attractively made, and as I recall has unusually good musical numbers.
Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit shorts all manage to achieve a glorious kind of low-key perfection (wish I liked Cure of the Wererabbit half as much as the shorts).
Billy Plympton’s work is uneven, but some of it, such as “25 Ways to Quit Smoking” is gleefully malicious in a way that makes me feel better about the human race.
Don Hertzfeldt’s work is marvelously disturbing, and increasingly some of the most poignant American filmmaking around.
The Go-Betweens – The Friends of Rachel Worth
Daft Punk – Discovery
The Coup – Party Music
Andrew Wk – I Get Wet
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Arcade Fire – Funeral
Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
MIA – Kala
TV on the Radio – Dear Science
Raphael Saadiq – The Way I See It
Pains of Being Pure at Heart -s/t
I’m excluding “performance movies” (whether they be music concerts – such as Wattstax or Stop Making Sense – or stand-up -such as Richard Pryor: Live in Concert) and “essay films” (Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil or Jonas Mekas’ He Stands in the Desert…) that might otherwise qualify. Such movies seem to me to exist in spheres somewhat separate from what I usually consider documentary, though the distinction is admittedly highly arbitrary.
Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955) – Really pushing the distinction made above between the essay film and documentary, but if the distinction makes sense it’s that documentaries primarily serve to bear witness to an event in the world, and this is one of the greatest examples of cinema’s ability to fulfill that responsibility.
Salesman (Albert Maysles, 1968) The life of quiet desperation placed under the microscope.
The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls, 1969) Cinema as detective, judge, and redeemer.
Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman, 1969) Wiseman’s observer technique in its most minimalist manifestation.
Harlan County USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976) Cinema as an act of solidarity.
La Soufriere (Werner Herzog, 1977) The thin line between brave genius and reckless fool thoroughly erased.
Gate of Heaven (Errol Morris, 1978) A testament to the strangeness of America.
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) Cinema meets the burden of memory.
Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994) Cinema as outrageous portraiture, every flaw and crevice of the soul revealed to the naked eye.
Southern Comfort (Kate Davis, 2001) Portrait of a proud Southern man who happened to be born a woman turns what could have been a simple though noble polemic into a great film about love and identity.
Intriguingly stuck midway between late-Classical Hollywood Dragnet clichés and New Hollywood grittiness. Nearly collapses from the formal schizophrenia, but Don Siegel inserts enough half-brilliant “What the Hell?” touches to keep the whole thing afloat.
Fellini – 8 1/2
Bergman – Persona
Kurosawa – Ran
Truffaut – Jules and Jim
Renoir – Rules of the Game
Fassbinder – Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant
Herzog – Aquirre the Wrath of God
Godard – Vivre sa Vie
Antonioni – Zabriskie Point
Bresson – Diary of a Country Priest
Hitchcock – North by Northwest
Bunuel – Belle de Jour
Lang – M
Tarkovsky – Andrei Rublev
Mizoguchi – Osaka Elegy
Rossellini – Open City
Altman – McCabe & Mrs. Miller
De Sica – The Bicycle Thieves
Polanski – Chinatown
Rivette – Celine and Jule Go Boating
Wenders – Until the End of the World
Rohmer – My Night at Maud’s
Melville – Army of Shadows
Kubrick – The Shining
Just posted about this on the best animated films thread, and I agree it’s pretty fantastic. In some ways I actually like it better than Fantasia – Bozzetto’s playful vulgarity moves me more than Disney & co’s affected gentility, though the high level of artistry of course redeems that picture. Bozzetto’s taste for the grotesque – the kissing couple who tear each other’s faces off, the marathon runner sawed in half by the ribbon – put some people who I’ve recommend the movie to off, but said grotesqueries accounts for why I find it interesting. I’ve long wanted to explore Italian animation, to see what other wonders tun up.
Has anyone seen his Mr. Rossi cartoons? I gather those are a major source of his acclaim in Italy, but I don’t know if any are available in the States.
If you put a print of Cantet’s film in the same room as Dangerous Minds, Goodbye Mr Chips, or pretty much every film ever made about teaching before, all those movies would probably combust. An incisive corrective to any number of humanist homilies about education, though last series of shots a bit too on the nose, and at times threatens to become rather formless.
Recommended double feature: The Class & Frederick Wiseman’s High School (1968).
I think FACES is the film that most clearly displays all that was fascinating and revolutionary about him. It’s a let-it-all-hang-out movie which feels genuinely dangerous because it feels so out of control and wobbly.
A CHILD IS WAITING is one of the most profoundly moving films I’ve ever seen. It’s far more conventional than most Cassavetes movies, but his observation technique works wonders with a subject (a school for the mentally disabled) that could have easily turned into pablum in the hands of a more conventionally manipulative filmmaker.
I like THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, but consider it a kind of litmus test for Cassavetes admirers, since it’s such a messy, ugly, shaggy dog of a movie – through in a brilliant way. I’ve known people driven kind of nuts by the movies refusal to be anything like a normal gangster movie. If you ever wanted to know precisely what it felt like to sit in a sleazy nightclub for a couple of hours while men waste lives of quiet desperation, it’s the movie for you, just like it was the movie for me.
I also love HUSBANDS, but the aesthetics of embarrassment it employs definitely turn a lot of people off.
Pretty typical, and pretty wrong (i.e. I respectfully disagree)
Maybe it helps to have been an easy to please six year old whose brain rotted away from a combination of too much junk food and reruns of Mr. Belvedere, but I always rather liked Howard the Duck.
And I always thought Manos: the Hands of Fate played a bit like a Tarkovsky movie, if Tarkovsky had a lobotomy and then was given $14.54 to make a movie, and then gave the results to a blind four year old to edit. You know, all those wonderful long takes of the Texas hinderlands from a station wagon window. I see the seeds of Solaris there, and I’m only 9/10ths kidding.
As an aficionado of low budget psychotronica, I must insist Plan 9 isn’t that bad. It’s ridiculous, sure, but at least it moves well (compare to something by Jerry Warren) and it’s rather well-lit, not something you can say about a lot of movies made on Plan 9’s budget. And I consider the line “You people of Earth are idiots” to be among the finest pieces of philosophical wisdom of the 20th century.
I’ve spared myself Epic Movie and Pearl Harbor, so I can’t comment.
So off the top of my head (i.e. the movies I see I’ve rated a 1 at Imdb, selections from letters A -L) the real answers are:
A Beautiful Mind, an experimental movie made by Richie Cunningham (he killed Opie Taylor, a director of fine, unpretentious comedies like Splash and Night Shift, in late ’99 and cruelly took his identity) that tested the hypothesis that it was possible to make Jennifer Connelly seem completely uninteresting. And the bastard pulled it off, and for that he got an Oscar.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) Shakespearean tripe, the nastiest kind. The thought of the things Ally McBeal did to the Bard’s immortal lines haunts me to this day.
A Separate Peace- The worst novel ever assigned in Freshman English transformed into a major motion picture. Just to viscerally illustrate how stupid the novel is, I guess.
A Time to Kill – Not just stupid, manipulative too. It’s a multi-tasker.
Austin Powers in Goldmember – Why would you continue to beat a horse not only after it’s long dead, but after its bones have crumbled into dust and you’re just pounding gravel? Only Mike Myers and his accountant know for sure.
Change of Habit – Elvis Presley, M.D., cures autism, tempts Mary Taylor Moore into eternal damnation, and sings “Rubberneckin.’” And yet, the movie sucks.
Creepshow III – Oh dear lord. Oh, sweet jesus. No, no, no. Quit it. Quit it now. Please. Oh, it hurts. It hurts bad. Real bad. Lordy. Lordy. Lordy. Jesus wept.
Disclosure – A stand-in for the complete oeuvre of Barry Levinson, excepting Diner.
Fair Game – I’m still shocked that this movie about the Russian mafia starring Cindy Crawford and William Baldwin turned out to be really, really awful. Shocked, I tell you.
Godspell – The poor man’s Jesus Christ Superstar (which was no Calloway Went Thataway itself) reminds me of something James Agee said in response to the wave of idiotic biblical epics that began pouring out of studios in the late 1940s, namely that some compassionate agnostic needs to form a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to God to protest films like this.
Jack – Maybe the single worst movie made by a great director. And keep in mind, this is even worse than The Cotton Club, The Godfather III or Gardens of Stone.
Kidco – A kid friendly ode to joys of comsumer whoredom. Only in the 80s. And maybe the 90s. And almost certainly the 00s. But now I’m pretty sure we’ve turned the page of this crap. I mean, if not, what good is voting anyway.
Jingle All the Way – see Kidco.
Lethal Weapon 4 – Theoretically, I like stupid. Theoretically, I can even admire crassness. As long as the movie also has a little smarts and style, which this ain’t got.
I’ve always loved Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. I know most people compare it unfavorably to the novel, which just suggests to me that a lot of people liked that damned robotic pooch a lot more than I did. I like the movie because though it loves literature, it refuses to have anything to do with high art, mourning the destruction of Stendahl and Ray Bradbury and Mad magazine paperbacks with equal fervor, I love the scene where Montag reads a poem aloud and awakens in a woman a depth of feeling neither she nor we never knew she had, I love the scene where the estranged wife played by Julie Christie casually throws a book into her suitcase as she leaves Montag, and most of all I love the ending, the beautiful ending on the lake with the book people waltzing back and forth in the snow reciting their lines into an uncertain eternity. I’ve never more strongly desired to cross over into the movie I’m watching than during that ending.
All the early Capra movies from this era are great, but especially Ladies of Leisure, a remarkably sensuous drama with a great turn by Barbara Stanwyck.
James Whale’s Waterloo Bridge is a remarkably fluid movie that demonstrates Whale’s skill beyond the horror genre, and features a fabulous performance by Mae Clarke.
Three on a Match is a great frenzied lunatic of a movie that crams about fours hours of plot into one hour, which has a somewhat moralizing tone which it doesn’t take seriously in the slightest.
Female from 1933 falls off badly at the end, but it’s smart and sexy, and features a fabulous seduction sequence where Ruth Chatterton takes a boy toy to be.
And Baby Face has a lot of fun being slightly naughty. Part of what’s great about these movies is that though they often tack on a moral lecture at the very end, as whole they’re wonderfully delighted by female sexuality. When in Baby Face, Barbara Stanwyck sleeps her way up the top of the corporate ladder, the movie buzzes with a sense of joy at Stanwyck’s voraciousness.
I agree with the comment that contemporary movies, though arguably more frank, are actually much more censorious in their judgments about female sexuality.
Well, my favorite novel, If On a Winter’s Night, a Traveler by Italo Calvino, hasn’t been made into a film, but that book is so much about the act of reading itself that I think even a quite good film adaptation would inherently miss the point.
Similarly, I adore Cat’s Cradle, but the voice of that book is so much a part of what makes it great, that I’m not sure I care to see an adaptation.
One book I would absolutely love to see turned into movie is The Drive-In by Joe Lansdale. It’s a great silly-stupid-brilliant novel about alien abduction, cannibalism, and two headed monster-men in a drive-in that’s unspooling an all night horror movie marathon that includes Night of the Living Dead and I Dismember Mama. I would love to see Joe Dante do, though it might be an ideal comeback vehicle for Fred Dekker (Night of the Creeps, The Monster Squad).
I think his score for FAHRENHEIT 451 is gorgeous, a lyrical, wistful piece of work that is also full of tension. The score for the final scene is like the golden yellow of the world’s loveliest autumn transferred to sound.
I think his score for Larry Cohen’s monster baby movie IT’S ALIVE is underrated. It sounds like a rough draft for his score for TAXI DRIVER. I love the jazziness of his late work.I wish he had lived on for another decade, just to see how far he would take that influence.
16 Lovers Lane – the Go-Betweens
Liberty Belle & the Black Diamond Express – the Go-Betweens
Tallulah – the Go-Betweens
Before Hollywood – the Go-Betweens
The Queen is Dead – the Smiths
Louder Than Bombs – the Smiths
Technique – New Order
Power, Corruption & Lies – New Order
Brotherhood – New Order
Low-Life – New Order
Dreamtime – Tom Verlaine
Avalon – Roxy Music
The Nightfly – Donald Fagen
Swordfishtrombones – Tom Waits
Rain Dogs – Tom Waits
Dirty Mind – Prince
Controversy – Prince
1999 – Prince
Purple Rain – Prince
Parade – Prince
Sing O the Times – Prince
Let It Be – the Replacements
Tim – the Replacements
Pleased to Meet Me – the Replacements
Blood & Chocolate – Elvis Costello
Legendary Hearts – Lou Reed
Beauty and the Beat – the Go Gos
Mars Needs Guitars – Hoodoo Gurus
Remain in Light – Talking Heads
Speaking in Tongues – Talking Heads
Crazy Rhythms – the Feelies
Too Tough to Die – the Ramones
Tom Tom Club – the Tom Tom Club
Street Songs – Rick James
The River – Bruce Springsteen
Nebraska – Bruce Springsteen
Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen
Tunnel of Love – Bruce Springsteen
Yo! Bum Rush the Show – Public Enemy
Thriller – Michael Jackson
Murmur – REM
Green – REM
Daydream Nation – Sonic Youth
Strictly Business – EPMD
Unfinished Business – EPMD
The Raw and the Cooked – the Fine Young Cannibals
She’s So Unusual – Cyndi Lauper
The Pretenders – the Pretenders
Learning to Crawl – the Pretenders
Psychocandy – the Jesus & Mary Chain
Surfer Rosa – the Pixies
Doolittle – the Pixies
The Mekons Rock & Roll – the Mekons
3 Feet High and Rising – De La Soul
Greta Garbo in a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Edward G. Robinson as Tevye in a version of Fiddler on the Roof directed by Stanley Donen.
THE ROMANTICS directed by Nicholas Ray written by Clifford Odets 1956
Starring
Montgomery Clift as Percy Shelley
Marlon Brando as Lord Byron
James Dean as John Keats
Kim Hunter as Mary Shelley
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES directed by David Cronenberg 1989
Starring
Jeremy Irons as Sherlock Holmes
Richard E. Grant as Dr. Watson
Daniel Day-Lewis – Sir Henry Baskerville
A smart, scruffy comedy about an all female private detective agency made in 1980 and starring Jessica Harper, PJ Soles, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Directed by Joe Dante. Written by John Sayles.
A spaghetti western tribute, THE MARAUDERS, written and directed by John Carpenter. 1986
Starring Kurt Russell, Harry Dean Stanton, Elizabeth McGovern, William Hickey, and Terence Stamp.
I saw it a couple of weeks ago. It’s very much a late period film, by which I mean it reminded me of movies like Howard Hawks’s Hatari and John Ford’s Donovan’s Reef or Fellini’s Intervista, in that it’s an unhurried hang out movie, where the director indulges himself in all his peculiar pleasures and idiosyncrasies. It’s not great, and I’m not sure I would even call it particularly good, but I enjoyed it because it gives off the buzz of a movie made by a man who enjoyed himself while making it. I don’t know exactly why everybody on the island speaks with an Irish accent, but I get the feeling it’s probably because Romero just really likes overdone Irish accents (remember the radio operator from Day of the Dead). And he’s clearly in love with the idea of making a zombie western. I like the relatively plain, unforced style, and Romero is a writer/director who clearly tends to like his characters. There’s very little cynicism in this movie. On the downside, the acting is erratic, the dialogue is occasionally groan worthy, character motivations often fail to make sense, and the movie isn’t scary in the least (even Diary had the great hospital sequence). It is probably the best looking film from his late period work, though I miss the EC comics style over saturation of his work with Michael Gornick during the late 70s/early 80s. Still, if you like Romero, you might get some pleasure from this, as I did. It might be slightly superior to Diary of the Dead, since it’s less burdened by a drive to seem contemporary and urgent.
1. A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester)
2. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Paradjanov)
3. Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda)
4. Kwaidan (Masaki Koboyashi)
5. Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard)
6. The T.A.M.I. Show (Steve Binder)
7. Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo)
8. Seduced and Abandoned (Pietro Germi)
9. Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava)
10. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
11. Lilith (Robert Rossen)
12. Pajama Party (Don Weis)
13. Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock)
14. Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman)
15. First Men in the Moon (Nathan Juran)
16. The Cavern (Edgar Ulmer)
17. 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (George Pal)
18. The Naked Kiss (Sam Fuller)
19. The Gorgon (Terrence Fisher)
20. Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonionni)
1. Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
2. Stagecoach (John Ford)
3. Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford)
4. Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch)
5. Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford)
6. The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh)
7. You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (George Marshall)
8. Beau Geste (William Wellman)
9. At the Circus (Edward Buzzell)
10. Son of Frankenstein (Rowland V. Lee)
11. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra)
12. Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock)
13. Hound of the Baskervilles (Sidney Lanfield)
14. Gunga Din (George Stevnes)
15. The Cat and the Canary (Elliott Nugent)
16. Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
17. Clouds Over Europe (Arthur B. Woods)
18. Jesse James (Henry King)
19. Huchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle)
20. It’s a Wonderful World (W.S. Van Dyke)
MovieGuide1 -Thanks for letting me know about the poll. I’ve busy with various obligations and haven’t been following Mubi in the last couple of weeks.
1. Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (Errol Morris)
2. The Mirror (Jafar Panahi)
3. The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
4. Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino)
5. Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
6. The River (Tsai Ming-liang)
7. My Best Friend’s Wedding (P.J. Hogan)
8. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
9. Event Horizon (Paul W.S. Anderson)
10. Mimic (Guillermo del Toro)
11. Junk Mail (Pal Sletaune)
12. Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven)
13. The Man Who Knew Too Little (Jon Amiel)
14. Gadjo Dilo (Tony Gatlif)
15. Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood)
16. Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi)
17. Eye of God (Tim Blake Nelson)
18. The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan)
19. East Side Story (Dana Ranga)
20. Ulee’s Gold (Victor Nunez)
1. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
2. Carrie (Brian De Palma)
3. Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter)
4. Harlan County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple)
5. Blue Sunshine (Jeff Leiberman)
6. Gold Told Me To (Larry Cohen)
7. Hollywood Boulevard (Joe Dante)
8. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
9. Obsession (Brian De Palma)
10. The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati)
11. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicholas Roeg)
12. The Magic Blade (Yuen Chor)
13. The Big Racket (Enzo Castellari)
14. Squirm (Jeff Lieberman)
15. The Front (Martin Ritt)
16. Marathon Man (John Schlesinger)
17. Network (Sidney Lumet)
18. In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima Nagisa)
19. Underground (Emile de Antonio)
20. Heart of Glass (Werner Herzog)
1. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
2. Eraserhead (David Lynch)
3. Carrie (Brian De Palma)
4. Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter)
5. Harlan County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple)
6. Blue Sunshine (Jeff Leiberman)
7. Gold Told Me To (Larry Cohen)
8. Hollywood Boulevard (Joe Dante)
9. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
10. Obsession (Brian De Palma)
11. The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati)
12. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicholas Roeg)
13. The Magic Blade (Yuen Chor)
14. The Big Racket (Enzo Castellari)
15. Squirm (Jeff Lieberman)
16. The Front (Martin Ritt)
17. Marathon Man (John Schlesinger)
18. Network (Sidney Lumet)
19. In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima Nagisa)
20. Underground (Emile de Antonio)
1. “What’s Opera, Doc?” (Chuck Jones)
2. Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur)
3. The Tall T (Budd Boetticher)
4. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
5. 3:10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves)
6. Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
7. Tokyo Twilight (Yasujiro Ozu)
8. A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan)
9. “Three Little Bops” (Friz Freleng)
10. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa)
11. Kanal (Andrej Wajda)
12. The Mysterians (Ishiro Honda)
13. Curse of Frankenstein (Terrence Fisher)
14. Decision at Sundown (Budd Boetticher)
15. Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick)
16. The Pajama Game (Stanley Donen)
17. Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold)
18. Il Grido (Michaelangelo Antonionni)
19. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Frank Tashlin)
20. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman)
THE AUTEURS BEST OF THE DECADE: FILMS over 2 years ago
Seems like many of my favorites breakdown neatly into categories, though admittedly many could fit under more than one rubric.
A Parable of Regeneration
1.Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasathekul)
The Parables of Melancholy
2a. Inland Empire (David Lynch)
2b. The Saddest Music in the World (Guy Maddin)
The Parables of Betrayal
3a. The Assassination of Jesse James (Andrew Dominik)
3b.Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
The Parables of Love
4a. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai)
4b. 3-iron (Ki-duk Kim)
The Parables of Modernity
5a. Pulse (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
5b. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
The Parables of History
6a. Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
6b. The New World (Terrence Malick)
6c. There Will Be Blood (P.T. Anderson)
The Parables of Truth
7a. Hero (Zhang Yimou)
7b. Zatoichi (Takeshi Kitano)
The Parables of Family
8a. Nobody Knows (Hirokazu Kore-ada)
8b. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
8c. Together (Lukas Moodaysoon)
The Parables of War
9a.Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku)
9b. Devils on the Doorstep (Wen Jiang)
9c. Election (Johnnie To)
The Parables of Decay
10a. Death of Mr. Lazerescu (Cristi Puiu)
10b. Synecdoche, NY (Charlie Kaufman)
10c. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr)
Go to Comment
Name two films where same song was used over 2 years ago
Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It” in THE GIRL CAN’T HELP IT & PINK FLAMINGOS
Go to Comment
Last movie you saw and rate it over 2 years ago
Deep End 1971 8/10
A bitter answer film to The Graduate.
Go to Comment
Top Animated Films over 2 years ago
If we’re talking all animation, including short work, then a ton of Dave Fleischer cartoons from the 30s and early 40s. “Swing You Sinners” (1930) might be the greatest work of surrealist art ever produced in America. Also recommended: “Bimbo’s Initiation,” “Crazy Town,” “Snow White,” “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead” – each represents a perfect specimen of American madness in its most perverse and poetic manifestation. The Popeye and Superman cartoons are great too, but a touch too controlled for my taste.
See also Tex Avery, especially his fabulous Egghead cartoons.
Chuck Jones’ work is often great, especially his Road Runner cartoons, which play with greater and greater levels of abstraction.
Most Disney shorts after the departure of Ub Iwerks (post-29) bore me, but those early Mickey cartoons are fantastic.
The early Disney features are extraordinary products of high craft, and Pinnochio in particular might be the most visually beautiful American movie ever made.
For some reason, the French animated sci-fi film Fantastic Planet (1973) doesn’t have the massive cult following it deserves.
Ralph Bakshi’s work is very erratic, but Heavy Traffic (1973) has some great things in it.
I’m not as taken by the Pixar movies as most people, but the first third of Wall-E (2008) is some of the best filmmaking of the last decade.
Bruno Barretto’s Allegro Non Troppo (1976) is hilarious, beautiful and horrifying, often all at the same time.
Heavy Metal (1981) is one of the most juvenile movies ever made, but if you ever feel like being directly plugged into the id of a 14 year old boy from 90 minutes, it’ll get the job done in a rather exuberant manner.
Tim Burton’s short film “Vincent” (1982) is probably the best thing he’s ever done.
Will Vinton’s claymation feature “The Adventures of Mark Twain” (1986) represents the apotheosis of that very singular form.
Mikhail Titov’s “Srazhnie” might be the coolest movie ever made from a Stephen King story.
The Brave Little Toaster (1988) appears to be utterly forgotten, but it’s attractively made, and as I recall has unusually good musical numbers.
Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit shorts all manage to achieve a glorious kind of low-key perfection (wish I liked Cure of the Wererabbit half as much as the shorts).
Billy Plympton’s work is uneven, but some of it, such as “25 Ways to Quit Smoking” is gleefully malicious in a way that makes me feel better about the human race.
Don Hertzfeldt’s work is marvelously disturbing, and increasingly some of the most poignant American filmmaking around.
Go to Comment
The Trailers Thread over 2 years ago
Go to Comment
I guess it's not really relevant, but... best albums of the decade? over 2 years ago
The Go-Betweens – The Friends of Rachel Worth
Daft Punk – Discovery
The Coup – Party Music
Andrew Wk – I Get Wet
The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
The Arcade Fire – Funeral
Belle & Sebastian – The Life Pursuit
MIA – Kala
TV on the Radio – Dear Science
Raphael Saadiq – The Way I See It
Pains of Being Pure at Heart -s/t
Go to Comment
Favorite Documentaries over 2 years ago
I’m excluding “performance movies” (whether they be music concerts – such as Wattstax or Stop Making Sense – or stand-up -such as Richard Pryor: Live in Concert) and “essay films” (Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil or Jonas Mekas’ He Stands in the Desert…) that might otherwise qualify. Such movies seem to me to exist in spheres somewhat separate from what I usually consider documentary, though the distinction is admittedly highly arbitrary.
Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955) – Really pushing the distinction made above between the essay film and documentary, but if the distinction makes sense it’s that documentaries primarily serve to bear witness to an event in the world, and this is one of the greatest examples of cinema’s ability to fulfill that responsibility.
Salesman (Albert Maysles, 1968) The life of quiet desperation placed under the microscope.
The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophuls, 1969) Cinema as detective, judge, and redeemer.
Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman, 1969) Wiseman’s observer technique in its most minimalist manifestation.
Harlan County USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976) Cinema as an act of solidarity.
La Soufriere (Werner Herzog, 1977) The thin line between brave genius and reckless fool thoroughly erased.
Gate of Heaven (Errol Morris, 1978) A testament to the strangeness of America.
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985) Cinema meets the burden of memory.
Crumb (Terry Zwigoff, 1994) Cinema as outrageous portraiture, every flaw and crevice of the soul revealed to the naked eye.
Southern Comfort (Kate Davis, 2001) Portrait of a proud Southern man who happened to be born a woman turns what could have been a simple though noble polemic into a great film about love and identity.
Go to Comment
Last movie you saw and rate it over 2 years ago
Madigan 7/10
Intriguingly stuck midway between late-Classical Hollywood Dragnet clichés and New Hollywood grittiness. Nearly collapses from the formal schizophrenia, but Don Siegel inserts enough half-brilliant “What the Hell?” touches to keep the whole thing afloat.
Go to Comment
Best film by each of these directors over 2 years ago
Fellini – 8 1/2
Bergman – Persona
Kurosawa – Ran
Truffaut – Jules and Jim
Renoir – Rules of the Game
Fassbinder – Bitter Tears of Petra Van Kant
Herzog – Aquirre the Wrath of God
Godard – Vivre sa Vie
Antonioni – Zabriskie Point
Bresson – Diary of a Country Priest
Hitchcock – North by Northwest
Bunuel – Belle de Jour
Lang – M
Tarkovsky – Andrei Rublev
Mizoguchi – Osaka Elegy
Rossellini – Open City
Altman – McCabe & Mrs. Miller
De Sica – The Bicycle Thieves
Polanski – Chinatown
Rivette – Celine and Jule Go Boating
Wenders – Until the End of the World
Rohmer – My Night at Maud’s
Melville – Army of Shadows
Kubrick – The Shining
Go to Comment
Ani-mazing! over 2 years ago
Just posted about this on the best animated films thread, and I agree it’s pretty fantastic. In some ways I actually like it better than Fantasia – Bozzetto’s playful vulgarity moves me more than Disney & co’s affected gentility, though the high level of artistry of course redeems that picture. Bozzetto’s taste for the grotesque – the kissing couple who tear each other’s faces off, the marathon runner sawed in half by the ribbon – put some people who I’ve recommend the movie to off, but said grotesqueries accounts for why I find it interesting. I’ve long wanted to explore Italian animation, to see what other wonders tun up.
Go to Comment
Ani-mazing! over 2 years ago
Has anyone seen his Mr. Rossi cartoons? I gather those are a major source of his acclaim in Italy, but I don’t know if any are available in the States.
Go to Comment
Last movie you saw and rate it over 2 years ago
The Class 8/10
If you put a print of Cantet’s film in the same room as Dangerous Minds, Goodbye Mr Chips, or pretty much every film ever made about teaching before, all those movies would probably combust. An incisive corrective to any number of humanist homilies about education, though last series of shots a bit too on the nose, and at times threatens to become rather formless.
Recommended double feature: The Class & Frederick Wiseman’s High School (1968).
Go to Comment
where to start with cassavetes if you have not seen any of his films? about 2 years ago
I think FACES is the film that most clearly displays all that was fascinating and revolutionary about him. It’s a let-it-all-hang-out movie which feels genuinely dangerous because it feels so out of control and wobbly.
A CHILD IS WAITING is one of the most profoundly moving films I’ve ever seen. It’s far more conventional than most Cassavetes movies, but his observation technique works wonders with a subject (a school for the mentally disabled) that could have easily turned into pablum in the hands of a more conventionally manipulative filmmaker.I like THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, but consider it a kind of litmus test for Cassavetes admirers, since it’s such a messy, ugly, shaggy dog of a movie – through in a brilliant way. I’ve known people driven kind of nuts by the movies refusal to be anything like a normal gangster movie. If you ever wanted to know precisely what it felt like to sit in a sleazy nightclub for a couple of hours while men waste lives of quiet desperation, it’s the movie for you, just like it was the movie for me.
I also love HUSBANDS, but the aesthetics of embarrassment it employs definitely turn a lot of people off.
Go to Comment
Worst films you have ever seen about 2 years ago
Pretty typical, and pretty wrong (i.e. I respectfully disagree)
Maybe it helps to have been an easy to please six year old whose brain rotted away from a combination of too much junk food and reruns of Mr. Belvedere, but I always rather liked Howard the Duck.
And I always thought Manos: the Hands of Fate played a bit like a Tarkovsky movie, if Tarkovsky had a lobotomy and then was given $14.54 to make a movie, and then gave the results to a blind four year old to edit. You know, all those wonderful long takes of the Texas hinderlands from a station wagon window. I see the seeds of Solaris there, and I’m only 9/10ths kidding.
As an aficionado of low budget psychotronica, I must insist Plan 9 isn’t that bad. It’s ridiculous, sure, but at least it moves well (compare to something by Jerry Warren) and it’s rather well-lit, not something you can say about a lot of movies made on Plan 9’s budget. And I consider the line “You people of Earth are idiots” to be among the finest pieces of philosophical wisdom of the 20th century.
I’ve spared myself Epic Movie and Pearl Harbor, so I can’t comment.
So off the top of my head (i.e. the movies I see I’ve rated a 1 at Imdb, selections from letters A -L) the real answers are:
A Beautiful Mind, an experimental movie made by Richie Cunningham (he killed Opie Taylor, a director of fine, unpretentious comedies like Splash and Night Shift, in late ’99 and cruelly took his identity) that tested the hypothesis that it was possible to make Jennifer Connelly seem completely uninteresting. And the bastard pulled it off, and for that he got an Oscar.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999) Shakespearean tripe, the nastiest kind. The thought of the things Ally McBeal did to the Bard’s immortal lines haunts me to this day.
A Separate Peace- The worst novel ever assigned in Freshman English transformed into a major motion picture. Just to viscerally illustrate how stupid the novel is, I guess.
A Time to Kill – Not just stupid, manipulative too. It’s a multi-tasker.
Austin Powers in Goldmember – Why would you continue to beat a horse not only after it’s long dead, but after its bones have crumbled into dust and you’re just pounding gravel? Only Mike Myers and his accountant know for sure.
Change of Habit – Elvis Presley, M.D., cures autism, tempts Mary Taylor Moore into eternal damnation, and sings “Rubberneckin.’” And yet, the movie sucks.
Creepshow III – Oh dear lord. Oh, sweet jesus. No, no, no. Quit it. Quit it now. Please. Oh, it hurts. It hurts bad. Real bad. Lordy. Lordy. Lordy. Jesus wept.
Disclosure – A stand-in for the complete oeuvre of Barry Levinson, excepting Diner.
Fair Game – I’m still shocked that this movie about the Russian mafia starring Cindy Crawford and William Baldwin turned out to be really, really awful. Shocked, I tell you.
Godspell – The poor man’s Jesus Christ Superstar (which was no Calloway Went Thataway itself) reminds me of something James Agee said in response to the wave of idiotic biblical epics that began pouring out of studios in the late 1940s, namely that some compassionate agnostic needs to form a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to God to protest films like this.
Jack – Maybe the single worst movie made by a great director. And keep in mind, this is even worse than The Cotton Club, The Godfather III or Gardens of Stone.
Kidco – A kid friendly ode to joys of comsumer whoredom. Only in the 80s. And maybe the 90s. And almost certainly the 00s. But now I’m pretty sure we’ve turned the page of this crap. I mean, if not, what good is voting anyway.
Jingle All the Way – see Kidco.
Lethal Weapon 4 – Theoretically, I like stupid. Theoretically, I can even admire crassness. As long as the movie also has a little smarts and style, which this ain’t got.
Go to Comment
Films you love but most people hate. about 2 years ago
I’ve always loved Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. I know most people compare it unfavorably to the novel, which just suggests to me that a lot of people liked that damned robotic pooch a lot more than I did. I like the movie because though it loves literature, it refuses to have anything to do with high art, mourning the destruction of Stendahl and Ray Bradbury and Mad magazine paperbacks with equal fervor, I love the scene where Montag reads a poem aloud and awakens in a woman a depth of feeling neither she nor we never knew she had, I love the scene where the estranged wife played by Julie Christie casually throws a book into her suitcase as she leaves Montag, and most of all I love the ending, the beautiful ending on the lake with the book people waltzing back and forth in the snow reciting their lines into an uncertain eternity. I’ve never more strongly desired to cross over into the movie I’m watching than during that ending.
Go to Comment
Pre-Code Hollywood? about 2 years ago
All the early Capra movies from this era are great, but especially Ladies of Leisure, a remarkably sensuous drama with a great turn by Barbara Stanwyck.
James Whale’s Waterloo Bridge is a remarkably fluid movie that demonstrates Whale’s skill beyond the horror genre, and features a fabulous performance by Mae Clarke.
Three on a Match is a great frenzied lunatic of a movie that crams about fours hours of plot into one hour, which has a somewhat moralizing tone which it doesn’t take seriously in the slightest.
Female from 1933 falls off badly at the end, but it’s smart and sexy, and features a fabulous seduction sequence where Ruth Chatterton takes a boy toy to be.And Baby Face has a lot of fun being slightly naughty. Part of what’s great about these movies is that though they often tack on a moral lecture at the very end, as whole they’re wonderfully delighted by female sexuality. When in Baby Face, Barbara Stanwyck sleeps her way up the top of the corporate ladder, the movie buzzes with a sense of joy at Stanwyck’s voraciousness.
I agree with the comment that contemporary movies, though arguably more frank, are actually much more censorious in their judgments about female sexuality.Go to Comment
The Best books that haven't been made into films about 2 years ago
Well, my favorite novel, If On a Winter’s Night, a Traveler by Italo Calvino, hasn’t been made into a film, but that book is so much about the act of reading itself that I think even a quite good film adaptation would inherently miss the point.
Similarly, I adore Cat’s Cradle, but the voice of that book is so much a part of what makes it great, that I’m not sure I care to see an adaptation.
One book I would absolutely love to see turned into movie is The Drive-In by Joe Lansdale. It’s a great silly-stupid-brilliant novel about alien abduction, cannibalism, and two headed monster-men in a drive-in that’s unspooling an all night horror movie marathon that includes Night of the Living Dead and I Dismember Mama. I would love to see Joe Dante do, though it might be an ideal comeback vehicle for Fred Dekker (Night of the Creeps, The Monster Squad).
Go to Comment
Favorite Bernard Herrmann Scores about 2 years ago
I think his score for FAHRENHEIT 451 is gorgeous, a lyrical, wistful piece of work that is also full of tension. The score for the final scene is like the golden yellow of the world’s loveliest autumn transferred to sound.
I think his score for Larry Cohen’s monster baby movie IT’S ALIVE is underrated. It sounds like a rough draft for his score for TAXI DRIVER. I love the jazziness of his late work.I wish he had lived on for another decade, just to see how far he would take that influence.
Go to Comment
Best Albums of the 1980s about 2 years ago
16 Lovers Lane – the Go-Betweens
Liberty Belle & the Black Diamond Express – the Go-Betweens
Tallulah – the Go-Betweens
Before Hollywood – the Go-Betweens
The Queen is Dead – the Smiths
Louder Than Bombs – the Smiths
Technique – New Order
Power, Corruption & Lies – New Order
Brotherhood – New Order
Low-Life – New Order
Dreamtime – Tom Verlaine
Avalon – Roxy Music
The Nightfly – Donald Fagen
Swordfishtrombones – Tom Waits
Rain Dogs – Tom Waits
Dirty Mind – Prince
Controversy – Prince
1999 – Prince
Purple Rain – Prince
Parade – Prince
Sing O the Times – Prince
Let It Be – the Replacements
Tim – the Replacements
Pleased to Meet Me – the Replacements
Blood & Chocolate – Elvis Costello
Legendary Hearts – Lou Reed
Beauty and the Beat – the Go Gos
Mars Needs Guitars – Hoodoo Gurus
Remain in Light – Talking Heads
Speaking in Tongues – Talking Heads
Crazy Rhythms – the Feelies
Too Tough to Die – the Ramones
Tom Tom Club – the Tom Tom Club
Street Songs – Rick James
The River – Bruce Springsteen
Nebraska – Bruce Springsteen
Born in the USA – Bruce Springsteen
Tunnel of Love – Bruce Springsteen
Yo! Bum Rush the Show – Public Enemy
Thriller – Michael Jackson
Murmur – REM
Green – REM
Daydream Nation – Sonic Youth
Strictly Business – EPMD
Unfinished Business – EPMD
The Raw and the Cooked – the Fine Young Cannibals
She’s So Unusual – Cyndi Lauper
The Pretenders – the Pretenders
Learning to Crawl – the Pretenders
Psychocandy – the Jesus & Mary Chain
Surfer Rosa – the Pixies
Doolittle – the Pixies
The Mekons Rock & Roll – the Mekons
3 Feet High and Rising – De La Soul
Go to Comment
YOUR CHOICE OF ACTORS/ACTRESSES/DIRECTORS YOU'D LIKE IN A MOVIE TOGETHER! DEAD OR ALIVE! about 2 years ago
Greta Garbo in a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Edward G. Robinson as Tevye in a version of Fiddler on the Roof directed by Stanley Donen.
THE ROMANTICS directed by Nicholas Ray written by Clifford Odets 1956
Starring
Montgomery Clift as Percy Shelley
Marlon Brando as Lord Byron
James Dean as John Keats
Kim Hunter as Mary Shelley
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES directed by David Cronenberg 1989
Starring
Jeremy Irons as Sherlock Holmes
Richard E. Grant as Dr. Watson
Daniel Day-Lewis – Sir Henry Baskerville
A smart, scruffy comedy about an all female private detective agency made in 1980 and starring Jessica Harper, PJ Soles, and Jamie Lee Curtis. Directed by Joe Dante. Written by John Sayles.
A spaghetti western tribute, THE MARAUDERS, written and directed by John Carpenter. 1986
Starring Kurt Russell, Harry Dean Stanton, Elizabeth McGovern, William Hickey, and Terence Stamp.
Go to Comment
Anyone See Romero's Newest Zombie Offering? about 2 years ago
I saw it a couple of weeks ago. It’s very much a late period film, by which I mean it reminded me of movies like Howard Hawks’s Hatari and John Ford’s Donovan’s Reef or Fellini’s Intervista, in that it’s an unhurried hang out movie, where the director indulges himself in all his peculiar pleasures and idiosyncrasies. It’s not great, and I’m not sure I would even call it particularly good, but I enjoyed it because it gives off the buzz of a movie made by a man who enjoyed himself while making it. I don’t know exactly why everybody on the island speaks with an Irish accent, but I get the feeling it’s probably because Romero just really likes overdone Irish accents (remember the radio operator from Day of the Dead). And he’s clearly in love with the idea of making a zombie western. I like the relatively plain, unforced style, and Romero is a writer/director who clearly tends to like his characters. There’s very little cynicism in this movie. On the downside, the acting is erratic, the dialogue is occasionally groan worthy, character motivations often fail to make sense, and the movie isn’t scary in the least (even Diary had the great hospital sequence). It is probably the best looking film from his late period work, though I miss the EC comics style over saturation of his work with Michael Gornick during the late 70s/early 80s. Still, if you like Romero, you might get some pleasure from this, as I did. It might be slightly superior to Diary of the Dead, since it’s less burdened by a drive to seem contemporary and urgent.
Go to Comment
1964 POLL almost 2 years ago
1. A Hard Day’s Night (Richard Lester)
2. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Paradjanov)
3. Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda)
4. Kwaidan (Masaki Koboyashi)
5. Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard)
6. The T.A.M.I. Show (Steve Binder)
7. Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo)
8. Seduced and Abandoned (Pietro Germi)
9. Blood and Black Lace (Mario Bava)
10. Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
11. Lilith (Robert Rossen)
12. Pajama Party (Don Weis)
13. Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock)
14. Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman)
15. First Men in the Moon (Nathan Juran)
16. The Cavern (Edgar Ulmer)
17. 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (George Pal)
18. The Naked Kiss (Sam Fuller)
19. The Gorgon (Terrence Fisher)
20. Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonionni)
Go to Comment
1939 POLL almost 2 years ago
1. Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
2. Stagecoach (John Ford)
3. Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford)
4. Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch)
5. Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford)
6. The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh)
7. You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (George Marshall)
8. Beau Geste (William Wellman)
9. At the Circus (Edward Buzzell)
10. Son of Frankenstein (Rowland V. Lee)
11. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra)
12. Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock)
13. Hound of the Baskervilles (Sidney Lanfield)
14. Gunga Din (George Stevnes)
15. The Cat and the Canary (Elliott Nugent)
16. Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming)
17. Clouds Over Europe (Arthur B. Woods)
18. Jesse James (Henry King)
19. Huchback of Notre Dame (William Dieterle)
20. It’s a Wonderful World (W.S. Van Dyke)
MovieGuide1 -Thanks for letting me know about the poll. I’ve busy with various obligations and haven’t been following Mubi in the last couple of weeks.
Go to Comment
1997 POLL almost 2 years ago
1. Fast, Cheap and Out of Control (Errol Morris)
2. The Mirror (Jafar Panahi)
3. The Apostle (Robert Duvall)
4. Jackie Brown (Quentin Tarantino)
5. Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
6. The River (Tsai Ming-liang)
7. My Best Friend’s Wedding (P.J. Hogan)
8. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
9. Event Horizon (Paul W.S. Anderson)
10. Mimic (Guillermo del Toro)
11. Junk Mail (Pal Sletaune)
12. Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven)
13. The Man Who Knew Too Little (Jon Amiel)
14. Gadjo Dilo (Tony Gatlif)
15. Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood)
16. Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi)
17. Eye of God (Tim Blake Nelson)
18. The Butcher Boy (Neil Jordan)
19. East Side Story (Dana Ranga)
20. Ulee’s Gold (Victor Nunez)
Go to Comment
1997 POLL almost 2 years ago
Just trying to erase a double post here. By the way, these polls are fun. Thanks for doing them.
Go to Comment
1976 Poll over 1 year ago
1. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
2. Carrie (Brian De Palma)
3. Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter)
4. Harlan County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple)
5. Blue Sunshine (Jeff Leiberman)
6. Gold Told Me To (Larry Cohen)
7. Hollywood Boulevard (Joe Dante)
8. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
9. Obsession (Brian De Palma)
10. The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati)
11. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicholas Roeg)
12. The Magic Blade (Yuen Chor)
13. The Big Racket (Enzo Castellari)
14. Squirm (Jeff Lieberman)
15. The Front (Martin Ritt)
16. Marathon Man (John Schlesinger)
17. Network (Sidney Lumet)
18. In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima Nagisa)
19. Underground (Emile de Antonio)
20. Heart of Glass (Werner Herzog)
Go to Comment
1976 Poll over 1 year ago
I didn’t think Eraserhead was publicly screened until 77. If 76 was the release date, then I need to revise my list at some point.
Go to Comment
1976 Poll over 1 year ago
With Eraserhead factored in as a 76 release:
1. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
2. Eraserhead (David Lynch)
3. Carrie (Brian De Palma)
4. Assault on Precinct 13 (John Carpenter)
5. Harlan County U.S.A. (Barbara Kopple)
6. Blue Sunshine (Jeff Leiberman)
7. Gold Told Me To (Larry Cohen)
8. Hollywood Boulevard (Joe Dante)
9. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
10. Obsession (Brian De Palma)
11. The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati)
12. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicholas Roeg)
13. The Magic Blade (Yuen Chor)
14. The Big Racket (Enzo Castellari)
15. Squirm (Jeff Lieberman)
16. The Front (Martin Ritt)
17. Marathon Man (John Schlesinger)
18. Network (Sidney Lumet)
19. In the Realm of the Senses (Oshima Nagisa)
20. Underground (Emile de Antonio)
Go to Comment
1976 Poll over 1 year ago
So go by my first list posted, not the second list. That way Herzog’s Heart of Glass gets one additional vote.
Go to Comment
1957 poll over 1 year ago
1. “What’s Opera, Doc?” (Chuck Jones)
2. Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur)
3. The Tall T (Budd Boetticher)
4. Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
5. 3:10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves)
6. Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini)
7. Tokyo Twilight (Yasujiro Ozu)
8. A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan)
9. “Three Little Bops” (Friz Freleng)
10. Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa)
11. Kanal (Andrej Wajda)
12. The Mysterians (Ishiro Honda)
13. Curse of Frankenstein (Terrence Fisher)
14. Decision at Sundown (Budd Boetticher)
15. Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick)
16. The Pajama Game (Stanley Donen)
17. Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold)
18. Il Grido (Michaelangelo Antonionni)
19. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (Frank Tashlin)
20. The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman)
Go to Comment