POLL RESULTS: Top 100 Films of the 1980s

The Hidden (44 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0780628586.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

28 Up (44 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0002S64SC.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments? (I can't search anything on ILX right now...damn server!)

In any case, the central conceit of the piece is to document the lives of a handful of Brits from very disparate social, economic, and ethnic factors, interviewing them every seven years to see how their lives are unfolding. One of the genius techniques this involves is a consistent amount of intercutting between the current and prior films, oftentimes directly comparing views on a given subject between each seven year period. Occasionally participants drop out, are untraceable, and return; either way, it's fascinating to watch and anticipate what's to happen. I've never seen the first three, but I recommend going through them all in order. You don't need to, since they all back-reference, but as they only take a small amount from the old installments forwards as needed, you will be missing a fair amount. It's also fun to see how the imaging technology has grown along with the group.

Make certain not to miss 49 Up if you have the chance when it lands later this year.

Mystery Train (45 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0792844033.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

"Mystery Train" is great. I love the scenes with Joe Strummer and Steve Buschemi. The spiel the local drifter lays on the Brazilian widow is also pretty cool.
"You're not even my brother in law and you shot me."

"Elvis sent me all the way here to give you this comb."

-- earlnash

Beetlejuice (46 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0790731479.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

So good you almost forget that one of the characters you're rooting for is played by ALEC BALDWIN.

-- Dee

i should stick up for beetlejuice, the first half of that is near perfect. plus, a great supporting cast, even ryder is okay, and keaton isn't that annoying for the first fifteen minutes of his screentime.

-- ethan

BeetleJuice might be a bit eighties (Yuppies! Bright Colours! Jeffrey Jones!) but it's still a great kids story.

-- Andrew Farrell

Predator (47 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005221L.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Predator was pretty good as far as 80's action movies go. But of course it leaned a bit towards ci-fi/horror as well.

-- latebloomer

I mean, it's not an emotional blockbuster or anything, but it's a beautifully edited, beautifully conceived action movie. The ending could be improved.

-- amateurist

Cinema Paradiso (48 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305648522.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I know its airbrushed and sanitised, but I'm a sucker.

-- Will

Fletch (49 points, 2 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0783227981.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Chase is terrific in Fletch, but my problem with that film is that NOBODY else in the movie is allowed to be funny or react to the absurd stuff coming out of his mouth (except Joe Don Baker, who isn't gonna be cowed around by some fucking smartass comedian NO HOW). Lots of great lines but the film just gets damn repetitive.

-- Anthony Miccio

so many great moments - 'what kind of a name is poon?' 'now, i can't have my wages garnisheed' etc.

-- ron

i rented fletch on friday night and it was great! took me back to when i was 12 years old and it was my favorite film. chevy chase seemed SO COOL in it. and it's before i got into boring pretentious art-films.

-- j fail

My brother and I can spend HOURS quoting "Fletch" and laughing our asses off. "It's me, Mr. Rosenrosen."

-- Jeanne Fury

So if I was to compare say the book of say Fletch with the film of Fletch (a good example as the book is very dialogue heavy) I could certainly compare the narrative pacing - which the film drops for Chevy's basketball mugging. However the film improves on the book in the structure of its own mystery, which in its realization is made all the more plausible from the books relatively hokey premise. And both get tot he same place via a diferent route. I prefer the book because it presents Fletch as more selfish and tricky - and cos it doesn't have Chevy Chase in it. But I can compare and contrast the way they try to do the same thing.

-- Pete

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (49 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0792157850.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

i've always loved the human sacrifice part in the temple of doom, especially as a kid. i'd go outside and re-enact thosescenes with my little brother. i'd tear his heart out and hold it in my fist, chanting "Kali-ma! KALI_MA!!!" After the ceromony was over i'd use my magic powers (where i got those from, i've not a clue) to heal him back up. my lil bro looked forward to it every day. eventualy we got bored with it. he didn't like the new game we'd play after that, whcih was based on my new favorite movie, "Deliverance".

-- latebloomer

The part where dude pulls out that heart is pretty dark and unsettling, Ned! (Not quite as unsettling as the face-melting in Raiders but still...)
Aslo, Kate Capshaw sucks but really who else could have done that role (besides Sharon Stone)?

I have unreasoning lURve for Temple.

That restaurant scene in Temple of Doom is MAGIC.

-- The Ghost of Dan Perry

Big (49 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000K3CR.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

actually, seriously, after seeing the movie BIG in like 4th grade I think I decided I wanted to be a TOY executive like Tom Hanks is in the movie. BECAUSE THEY WERE LIKE COMEDIANS & BUSINESS WOMEN IN ONE.

-- mandee

big was the peak, everything after was pitiful dross.

-- Geoff

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (50 points, 2 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000059H9F.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Ever since "Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown", Almodóvar hasn't done a film that wasn't good in one way or another (and most of his films before "Women..." are worth the watch as well, though they're often less focused than his more recent work). "Tie Me Up!" is somewhat underrated, but personally I think it's maybe his best.

-- Tuomas

My Life As a Dog (50 points, 2 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000087EY5.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

Real Genius (50 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000065U1Q.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Portrays the geeks as the Good Guys, professors as either good or bad, and a whole lot of Cold War-era paranoia. And popcorn. Lots and lots of popcorn.

-- Dee

Ah, 1985, how I love thee. Val Kilmer has a classic downward career arc -- after Top Secret and Real Genius, he couldn't do anything else better.

-- Ned Raggett

Nick and I watched Real Genius this past weekend so we could better understand this thread. I liked it when the woman asked him if he could hammer a 6 inch nail through a board with his penis.

-- Sarah McLusky

Manhunter (51 points, 3 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305972575.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The only reason I voted this underrated and underwatched film first is because it will need as many votes as it can get to even chart, which it won’t anyway, thus consigning the small paean I am about to compose to its utter, utter genius to the vortex of oblivion and rendering my thoughtful construction of it an exercise in futility. Nevertheless, I intend to
go a bit about this one.

Off the bat, I should confess straight up that I am mildly obsessed with this picture. Like all Michael Mann films, the closer you look at the construction of the movie, the more you have to wonder at the attention to detail and sheer love that goes into making each of his pieces a unique cinematic experience. But more than any other of his films, I think Manhunter retains a curious unresolved disturbance at its heart, perhaps it executes an unpalatable exposure of a truth that is better left unspoken. As a means to open us up to the uncomfortable questions the film poses, I think Mann deliberately sets out to systematically destabilise the viewer throughout the unfolding of this film, perhaps echoing William Petersen’s character Detective Graham’s gradual descent into the serial killer mindset.

For example, the much-maligned score veers spectacularly from pisspoor
80’s power balladry to the monumental bad taste drug fuelled 60’s anthem In-A-Gada-Da-Vidda (incidentally, a favourite tune of an incarcerated serial killer Mann studied while researching the picture), and I think this tasteless unevenness is a device to prise the viewer from their comfort zone. You couldn’t say that this film is good fun, and nor is it easy on the eye. While the music is making you squirm, what’s happening on the screen is making you strain your eyes to catch the details. Mr. Spinotti puts in some fine work here, particularly using iridescent greens and pale lights set against deep shadows to heighten the ireality and take us into the lunar-like world that the killer Dollarhyde inhabits (after all, Dollarhyde himself kills in accordance with lunar cycles). It really is a beautiful film to look at, in a dingy understated way – very unlike the later Harris adaptations, which are all flash and predictable slash, Manhunter is much more edgy, thoughtful, understated, claustrophobic and for all this, disturbing.

In some ways, I think Manhunter’s ‘success’ is due to what is happening off the screen. Mann succeeds in drawing our thoughts towards dark possibilities while keeping us in the loop via glimpses into the fucked up reality that is unfolding. Brian Cox’s Dr. Lecktor for example, is hardly in the picture at all, but his presence and terrible intent, the force of his destructive will, looms over the story like a brooding puppet master. It’s almost as if he is orchestrating the entire piece. While I’m on the subject, ahhhhh, Dr. Lecktor. Fuck Hopkins’s cartoonish rendering – seriously, if you haven’t seen this picture, let me tell you, it’s all about Cox. Watching the man work in this film is truly fascinating, he is by turns charming, affable, repellent, engagingly intelligent and all the while, clearly insane. The dialogues between Graham and Lecktor are some of my favourite in any movie of any decade. Just as the movie is steadily stripping away the viewer’s defences and putting them in the same space as the killer, Lecktor sets about rigorously stripping Graham’s painstakingly constructed barriers against the rampant animal he keeps caged inside. Cox’s Lecktor really is a delight, one of those forgotten characters who litter overlooked movies but once stumbled across, is certainly one any viewer will cherish.

Actually, that’s another great thing about this film: characters. We see enough of each of the key players, Graham and his prey Dollarhyde, to have a strong grasp of who they are and where they come from. We like Graham but we don’t love the guy, he’s too cold and too distant, and we see enough of him to wonder what he’s really got coiled up inside of him. And although Noonan’s Dollarhyde is one of the scariest killers you’ll see on celluloid, like Graham himself says, “as a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster.” Francis D. may well look like a monster (and believe me, when he appears on screen for the first time with a stocking over his head and a spindly light shade dangling behind him like a pagan halo, saying, “well, here I… am” it really is a case of “Jesus fucking Christ…”), but he also carries a heavy sense of sadness across the screen with him, almost like he knows that he can never be anything other than
the beast that he is: this film is not a clear cut case of good guy/bad guy, indeed, I think Mann successfully sets out to make the point that we each of us carry that line inside of us, as well as the inherent potential to watch helplessly as circumstance blurs the definition.

Noonan’s work in this picture is deserving of extra note. His killer is a study in car-crash complexity, with convincing flashes of light and dark shades of character, twisting Dollarhyde’s drives from delicate poignancy (taking Reba to see the tiger) to terrifyingly calm psychopathy (ruthlessly shooting down the guy who walks Reba home or setting fire to the journalist Freddy Lounds and skating him down the slope to a multi-storey carpark tied to a wheelchair). All the while, there is a certain hideous plausibility to Dollarhyde, unlike Hopkins’s Lector or Fiennes’s shockingly tame and leaden incarnation of the same ‘Tooth Fairy’ (for which he should be ashamed). Apparently, during filming, Noonan asked to be kept apart from Petersen throughout, to heighten the tension between the characters and perpetuate the realism of the hunt. The picture was thus painstakingly filmed to ensure that the first time the two actors met was the climactic raid on Dollarhyde’s house: when Graham crashes through the plate glass window into Dollarhyde’s embrace – that’s the first time the two actors saw each other.

An excellent support cast too, helps us buy the plausibility and motives of the leads, and the journalist Lounds in particular, is another gem of well-essayed characterisation. A first class cock-sure wanker, we see him one minute jagging off to his own ego and bringing the shit down on Graham, the next, breaking into small pieces and choking on his own tears as he realises he ain’t gonna survive the night. It’s all done in a way far removed from the usual shocks and screams you would associate with Hollywood killer thrillers. While Dollarhyde has him tied to a chair, Lounds talks quietly, like a man who has just pissed himself might do, and Francis himself is completely calm while in the apex of his delusions: “Mr. Lounds, you're a reporter,” he whispers matter-of-factly, “you're here to
titillate your readers. If you don't open your eyes, I'll staple your eyelids to your forehead.” OK. Right. I mean you could laugh, but somehow, it’s a bit too dark for that.

The calmness I’m talking about here, that Lecktor, Dollarhyde and Graham all possess, goes to the heart of perhaps this movies greatest success, it’s humanity. Rather than playing up to the camera and giving us theatre, as Hopkins does in the later Hannibal movies, Mann is at pains to show us people who seem to recognise their darker inner workings, and set about compartmentalising them, just as most of us do. Obviously, the film deals with the philosophy of violence, the physiognomy of killing, so the urges and thought processes on show are extremes, but in the same way that we all try to quantify our lusts and imaginations, the characters in this film, fight a similar battle, each in a different way. Watching the two central protagonists struggle against themselves in many senses, is absorbing and chilling, and above all, believable.

Dr Lecktor: “We don't invent our natures, They're issued to us. Along with our lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it?”

-- Five Eight

One great pleasure that those who know Atlanta well enough will discover upon watching this movie - Hannibal apparently is incarcerated in the High Museum of Art.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

An Asian-American guy I was dating recently did a mean Short Round impression. ("Anything Goes" and the jitterbug from "1941" show why I'd rather see Spielberg directing musicals than Baz fuckin' Luhrmann and that "Chicago" hack.)

Diva (52 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000059PPB.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

Zelig (52 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005O06N.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

i also think zelig is massively underrated, that the early stuff was a lot like the more recent stuff, sporadically good but a real sense of desperation at work.

-- arthur woodlouse

I finally saw it a few months ago, and the answer is: some of it. During the opening scene at the science fair, the talk about excimer lasers is factually correct. Everything after that is basically garbage.

Now you know.

To Live and Die in L.A. (53 points, 2 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005JLJW.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

Prince of the City (53 points, 2 votes)

http://img.epinions.com/images/opti/cb/9e/1016734-movie-resized200.jpg

I haven't seen it in years, but I remember really enjoying 'Prince of the City' as well - a twisting crime thriller stuffed with great character actors

-- Andrew L

Excalibur (53 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305558167.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

If you absolutely love your Arthurian legends as I do, then you can’t really go wrong with this film. If it helps, I’m prepared engage anybody who says that Nicol Williamson’s superbly surrealist Merlin is the weak link, in a fist-fight to the death.

-- Five Eight

The John Boorman film, starring Nigel terry, Cherie Lunghi, Nicol Williamson.
Fuck this Bruckheimer shit, I already hate it.

This is a weird, strange thing of beauty and ugliness.

Also best Merlin ever.

What do you say?

-- Masked Gazza

Classic: sex scene in full armor! Camelot's knights had COCK WINDOWS in their armor! How can that be anything but classic? It can't be. Lock the thread.

-- Tep

this movie is great because it's two hours of SCREAMING DIALOGUE nonstop.

-- cutty

Apparently Boorman made this in lieu of an LOTR film, which he was trying to get backing for
Which obv. would have been considerably more interesting than the trilogy we've ended up with

Just imagine Nicol Williamson as Gandalf

Excalibur is classic. Things I love about it: the use of 'Seigfreid's Rhine Journey', and of the Parsifal prelude just as Percival sheds his armour underwater and then enters the Grail castle, Guinevere dancing at the beginning, the whole Uther Pendragon prelude which shows how Arthur was concieved with the power of the Dragon, the whole 'you and the land are one' theme, which like Merlin and Morgana sets the atmosphere of paganism and christianity existing alongside eachother, a bearded repentant Launcelot at the battle of Camlann which also features nicely bloody fight between father and son, and of course Merlin.

-- de

I haven't seen Prince of the City (#14) in years or it might be higher -- badly needs a DVD release; Serpico without the sentimentality and bland romances. Jerry Orbach kicks ass as the fiercest of corrupt cops. An argument for Lumet's best, with Dog Day Afternoon.

Gregory's Girl (54 points, 2 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005O06T.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

the moment the camera pulls back as they're lying down dancing, and it's just giggling and waving arms and sunset.

-- lauren

awww the sense of joy and innocence in Gregory's girl, as seen on saturday night in my snotty state, it was the perfect thing.

-- chris

A Chinese Ghost Story (55 points, 2 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305020876.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

A kung-fu fantasy flick featuring a rapping Buddhist monk and Satan himself! Great fun.

-- Tuomas

The two that kicked off the Hong Kong horror genre are Mr Vampire and A Chinese Ghost Story so search them out, alongside Japan's Battle Royale and Audition which have been surprise Western hits (the former is overrated IMO while Audition is well worth catching).

-- C-Man

When Harry Met Sally (55 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00003CXDC.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Sweet, funny, touching. A shining example of how good romantic comedies can be without all the usual funny cloying sweetness.

-- Dee

If you can look at those shots of the two of them strolling through Central Park in Autumn and not be moved, you're a fucking replicant.

-- Alex in NYC

Meg Ryan's faking orgasm in the restaurant (When Harry Met Sally) is one of my favorite moments on film. As a projectionist, I enjoyed observing audiences reactions. This was one of the best moments. I played this film for a seniors group once and they damn near died laughing too, which only goes to show ya...

-- jim wentworth

Labyrinth (56 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000K3D4.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

A rare example of a great children's film from the '80s.

-- Dee

I can't believe I've loved this film for so long and only this week noticed that it was written-for-the-screen by Terry Jones. It all makes sense now.

-- nickalicious

Also, I've found I don't watch Labyrinth thinking how 80s it is, which is weird, cause it ... is.

It's also a very different thing watching it with kids, cause they laugh at different stuff.

-- Tep

Poltergeist (57 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0792833201.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

one of my earliest viewing experience was Poltergeist and I still am haunted by the shot of JoBeth Williams barrelling down a hallway as it stretches out in front of her.

-- Eric H.

I was thinking about it the other day actually, how it really appealed to kids because of the girl getting pulled into the TV (is that what happened?), I remember seeing that scene and the attraction of her being unreachable by her parents, something else was commanding her attention/taking her away

-- cuspidorian

Yeah, Poltergeist is really an amazing movie for me because I loved it so much as a kid, and got so much out of it -- without being able to use these words, I thought it had more substance than, you know, The Amazing Randy And Mickey The Monkey or whatever -- and now it's still one of my favorite movies but for completely different reasons. It's like two different movies.

-- Tep

I saw Poltergeist when I wasn't supposed to when I was like 6. I remember being terrified of my closet and making my mother keep the doors open "so I could see my clothes". I also would start crying if my parents left me alone in the bathtub. To this day I loathe the smell of Mr. Bubbles.

-- Carey

Poltergeist was the only film to scare the shit out of me when I was a teenager. I don't know if it still would.

-- N.

Amadeus (59 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6304712936.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

It's really not supposed to be a historical film, to begin with. It's about Salieri, as pointed out above, or more accurately, the feelings that Salieri represents in all of us (not necessarily re artistic jealousy, per se - I think we all have at least one overachiever in our past whom we felt didn't deserve their successes). So whether or not this is the real Mozart, a historically fictionalized Mozart, or just someone who has the same name and is really similar in odd ways to the real Mozart...none of this matters - it's not really a Mozart film or even a Salieri film - it's about resentment and mediocrity in the face of genius. Just happens that they chose real people to fit to the characters.

The most interesting thing, I think, about the film is that it really seems to posit the thesis that Mozart's place in the canon of the time was akin to the shock of punk music on the then-contemporary popular music scene, and the lifestyle, sensibility, rebelliousness, and outrageous fashion choices (wigs, especially) of Mozart seem to reflect this. Punk Mozart, hmm.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

And I think nearly half of the points were mine. It's still probably the single film from the top 50 or so domestic grossing films from the decade that I would save from a studio vault fire.

It's like two different movies.

Exactly. It's the most efficient rendering of Spielberg's Jeckyll and Hyde impulses.

Anyway, yay Pretty in Pink! Yay When Harry Met Sally! Yay Beetlejuice! Yay Real Genius! Yay Labyrinth! Yay -- odd comments? Well, at least the Real Genius and Beetlejuice ones make sense. Anyway -- I can't wait to see what else makes this list that also made my list. :)

(BTW, When Harry Met Sally is currently airing on Oxygen. Yay for that!)

When I was in college, for whatever reason, the student film committee showed this every semester. Some friends and I would always go. We started calling out dialogue. We even learned a little Swedish. I'm not sure why the obsession. But I saw it again on cable recently, and I still loved it to pieces. It's all the cliches of coming-of-age films (coming to grips with mortality, leaving/losing parents, the old budding-sexuality gambit), plus all the cliches of small-eccentric-village films, but...it just gets everything right. The boxing scene at the end where he starts barking like a dog could be corny, but it's actually kind of heartbreaking.

There better be more mature Bill Forsyth to come.

Amadeus was a hamhanded filming of a flamboyant theatre piece. The ingenue's LawnGuyland accent didn't help.

(Plus Poltergeist's presence already gives this list a leg up over the '90s one.)

An American Werewolf in London (60 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005LC4E.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

American Werewolf In London = Classic. There isn't a more downbeat film in his career than this one. Without a doubt my favorite John Landis movie. There's something very surreal and humorous to it that just makes it completely engaging for me. Plus the make up effects are damn good for '81... this was the first movie to ever win an oscar for best make up. Anyone who hasn't seen it definately should check it out. I wouldn't waste time with American Werewolf in Paris... like many other sequels, it takes a good thing, recycles it, and makes it trash.

-- The Man they call Dan

If you have not seen it, shame on you. If you have seen it but have not revisited it in a while, shame on you.
Best film ever?

Possibly. "A naked American man stole my baloons". "I'm sorry I called you a meatloaf Jack". "Have you ever tried talking to a corpse? It's boring!" "Beware the moon lads, and stick to the road".

A classic of the highest order.

-- Mad Mike

'...werewolf...' *kills*. absolutely. treads an incredibly fine line between hilariousness and absolute horror like no other film would/could ever dare to. there's no way that script would get past draft one these days. 'shaun of the dead' and the like try to do the same, and fail spectacularly.
one of the best things said about '...werewolf...' was the comment from a lady who got up and walked out at a test screening, and is quoted on the dvd. 'it's not that i don't like the film, it's just you can't bear to see that happen to people you care about'.

landis *rocks*.

..but yeah vic morrow.

-- piscesboy

Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (60 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000A0MFJ.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The Python team’s best work, besides their regular TV sketch work. Yes, that’s right, it’s better than Brian and Grail. This is a twisted comic mannerist master-piece, that stretches satire to snapping point. It’s pitch black, uncomfortable, uncompromising, brutal and at times even the actors seem on the brink of freaking out, they are pushing it so hard (witness Cleese and Chapman in the liver-doner sketch – Cleese looks like his head’s about to explode). But despite the unbearable truths this movie exposes, some of the sketches have reduced me to tears of laughter, in particular Palin on the Parade ground, where again, he is putting so much into yelling his head off at the recruits, he looks like he’s about to have an aneurysm.

This film points the finger at all of us, and what makes us ‘us’, rather than focussing on our stupid life support apparatus and systems. Of course, it wouldn’t be Python if it didn’t reduce a few institutions to rubble with a couple of choice lines along the way, but ‘Meaning Of’ laughs in the face of birth, sex, family and death and cruelly and convincingly, I think, points out to us that basically, it’s all fucked actually. Life is fucked. All you can do is laugh in the face of it.

-- Five Eight

Sherman's March (61 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0001ADAS8.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Sherman's March was good, but in a real sickly kind of way. I have to see that again. I remember it seeming pretty humiliating for its director. It felt condescending too for some reason. Maybe I'm just being defensive about the South, but both Sherman's March and the Errol Morris one about the town in Florida have a Cohen-brother-style "aloof among idiots" tone. Though to be fair Errol Morris's great project seems to have become finding the most eccentric and intense people that he can.

-- Tracer Hand

submit to Russ McElwee's charm. This must be what hardcore bloggers aspired to before blogging. Seems destined to be a boring failure of a movie, and yet it works so well.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

The Terminator (62 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005N5S5.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

A Christmas Story (63 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000AYJUW.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

A Christmas Story is a perfect period piece, a beautiful invocation of the American nature of Christmas (ie, God and Jesus don't come up for discussion once), has a great ensemble cast, the best cameo dogs in the history of cinema and of course Jean Shepherd's narration. Its brilliance is clear.

-- Ned Raggett

The TBS Christmas Story marathon is always on the whole day (thankfully, it replaced the Yule Log several years ago). We all have our favorite parts. Mine, for some reason, is when the dad says "What a great lamp!" - makes me crack up every time. I don't believe there has been a movie since that portrays kids as they really are, rather than portraying them as the 'miniature wisecracking adults' we've unfortunately become accustomed to. When Flick cries 'uncle' and whines like a little bitch after gettintg his tongue stuck on the pole (watch his hands, helplessly flailing around - very real), it's exactly how a little kid would act.

-- Roger Fidelity

Sans soleil (64 points, 2 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6302765587.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I went to 'Sans Soleil' on Friday. Notwithstanding the fact that cinema 2 at the ICA has the tiniest screen in London, and there was a big galoot in front of me obscuring half the subtitles, I found it an absolutely astonishing experience. When I got home, I reread Thomson's entry on Marker in ABDoF and discovered that it was made in 1984 - which made the experience even more astonishing, because it seemed such a profoundly modern film. Not so much in the way it looked (although the look was spectacular, too), but in its sensibility - like some gorgeous hybrid of Roland Barthes, Patrick Keiller and Steve Erickson. I think we're still catching up with things Marker was thinking about decades ago.

-- Jerry the Nipper

my fascination with Sans Soleil is in the narrative, the flow, the flashbacks, it is a documentary unlike any documentary... so richly personal and engaging.

-- gygax!

A Fish Called Wanda (64 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305161879.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The scene in Fish Called Wanda where Kevin Kline alternately apologizes to John Cleese and kicks his lifeless body.

-- Kenan Hebert

John Cleese walks into the room and says "Champagne!" and then screams in horror when he finds his wife there instead of Jamie Lee Curtis, and then he finds Curtis hiding behind a china cabinet, and then Kevin Kline steps out from behind a door and makes up a totally preposterous story about being a CIA agent searching for a fugitive. The look on Cleese's face when Kevin Kline appears out of nowhere is the funniest thing I've ever seen on film in my life: shock, fear, bewilderment, confusion, relief, all melded into one. CLASSIC.

-- jewelly

A Fish Called Wanda may be a classic Ealing Studio comedy revamp but it is done oh so perfectly -- last time I saw it was a few months back, visiting my folks and my mom suggested watching it. Still great, it would rank up there.

-- Ned Raggett

Kline's calls of "Asshole!" in A Fish Called Wanda have always left me in hysterics.

-- Andrew

When I saw this the first time I nearly vomited I was laughing so hard. Now THAT's dedication, my friends.

-- luna

Nice.

Should at least keep me buzzing until The Goonies shows up thirty slots higher.

The Fly (65 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6300248135.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

Kiki's Delivery Service (66 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005JM2O.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Kind of slow getting going, but a fine film. The city Kiki lives in is a nice fairy-tale hodgepodge -- Europe as imagined by someone whose primary reference is Disney films.

-- JesseFox

i always cry at the end of kiki's delivery service

-- phil-two

I cried all the way through that sucker, even during the happy parts. It's one of a few movies that can totally reduce me to ... I dunno. I think it's Miyazaki's gentleness that does it. I find the experience of watching any of his movies the same as sitting on my grandfather's knee and being told a really odd story.

-- Remy (null)

i think kiki is magical- a girl finding her own way. learning how to use her powers. living above a bakery. making friends. being crushed on by a bespectacled preppie boy.

-- may

Kiki's Delivery Service is the Sweet Valley High book series of Miyazaki's career. That's not a bad thing, necessarily.

-- nickalicious

I put The Fly 28th. A sweet Act I romantic comedy, followed by a techno-thriller, followed by tragedy. Best Goldblum perf. I think Cronenberg said "In every relationship, someone turns into a monster."

Diner (68 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004RE27.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The best (and also most affectionate) nostalgia trip of the decade.

-- D. Keebler

steve gutenberg is *great* in this... so warm, so rich in period detail, its a masterpiece.

-- stevie

When I saw this, all I could think was how amazed I was at how great a movie with such a shitty collection of actors - Mickey Rourke, Paul Reiser, Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern.

-- n/a

i love this movie, too. i watched it a lot growing up, along with avalon (we had both on betamax). it has so much heart to it, and so much affection for the characters and the period and the place (contrast with a smarmfest like american grafiti).

-- lauren

Only seen it once, a looong time ago, but loved it and I've been getting around to rewatching it. I think I freaked out a date once, by describing the popcorn scene while we were in a cinema. Wasn't the best idea I've ever had really.

-- JimD

God, I've seen this movie so many times. My parents liked it so much that we had it on videodisc (!), one of those kind that you had to flip over halfway through, and we watched it so much that it started skipping and fuzzing up in a few spots. I think everyone in my family can recite entire passages from it (kind of like the guy in the movie who recites lines from Sweet Smell of Success -- the first time I saw that, I recognized all those lines from Diner).
Anyway, I think Diner kind of invented, or at least prefigured, a whole generation of sitcoms. Not just the ones that the guys in Diner were in, but most obviously Seinfeld and Friends, that whole '90s slacker jokes-and-arguments-about-nothing thing. The ensemble cast works really well. Daniel Stern ranks in the top 3 music geeks on film ever. I love Kevin Bacon in this movie ("He was punching out the wise men?"). And Ellen Barkin -- rowr. Mickey Rourke's great, yeah. It's real real good. Maybe the best thing anyone involved in it has ever done. Definitely the best thing Levinson ever did.

-- gypsy mothra

Caddyshack (68 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004RF8A.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Caddyshack *is* still the last word in cutting edge comedy.

-- Lord Byron Lived Here

Where to begin? How about "It's no big deal! It's no big deal!"? One of the best comedy line deliveries ever.

-- antexit

Berlin Alexanderplatz (69 points, 3 votes)

http://www.subcin.com/balexebay.jpg

Comments?

The Thing (70 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0002CHK1S.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

This is another film I came to late, I think I saw it for the first time a year or so ago. Oh my God, what the fuck??? There’s absolutely no need for this film. It’s got serious problems. But that’s what makes it so compelling. The twisted imaginations that dreamt this piece up, and made it visible need to take a long cold shower. It’s messy, weird, violent and unpretentious – I don’t think the movie has any grand ambition to be anything other than it is (ie. a low budget alien thriller) and directing to these narrow objectives allows Carpenter to strip away any inconsequential froth or glitter and get on with making the film as claustrophobic and twisted as he can possibly make it. The much-lauded effects are genuinely disturbing, the unpredictable storyline is disturbing (no motives or explanations are offered) and the grainy dark look to it all is disturbing. Morricone’s score helps, for once, Kurt Russell isn’t embarrassing (although here’s a thing with Russell, when you hear the guy speak off camera, he comes across as one of the most interesting, intelligent and individual actors working today), and the tension is taut throughout. Overall, I’d rate this above the Alien films.

-- Five Eight

oh yeah, one more thing. Morricone's soundtrack for The Thing fucking rules.great iceberg music.

-- scott seward

the thing's plot is perfect, better than any de palma plot ever (also more curious abt girls than any de palma plot ever, though possible also more ignorant)

-- mark s

Sometime in 82 I went to the NFT to attend a John Carpenter/Guardian lecture. For some reason Carpenter had to drop out at the very last second, so instead he sent over a print of his just-completed new movie, 'the Thing'. It was an amazing experience to watch this film without any kind of prior knowledge - the incredible escalation of paranoia and isolation, plus Rob Bottin's mindblowing gore effects, which to my mind have never really been surpassed (so sad that CGI has now totally replaced the kind of mechanical effects that can be staged in front of a camera, in real time...)
The blood test scene is one of the greatest movie moments ever; terrific Morricone score (mostly electronic, IIRC, something of a rarity and an obv. trib to Carpenter); even Kurt Russell doing his Clint schtick was OK (I love the moment when he pours whiskey into his computer!) Plus a really sharp script by Burt Lancaster's son!

-- Andrew L

The Thing is a masterful horror movie, which improves upon Hawks original by having a better monster (after all that giant carrot...) This body horror has never been bettered - the actual melting of people.....

-- Pete

Definately Carpenter's best movie. And the gore effects were definitive; I still can't get some of those images out of my head.

-- Sean

All I could think of when I watched this movie last night (on my new dvd, hooray) was that all poor MacReady wants to do is go up to his shack and drink, and that it's pretty rude of the Thing to keep a man from his shack-drinkin'.

-- Jordan

Dead Ringers (70 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1559408871.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Without a doubt, the funniest scene ever is ... in Dead Ringers when the twins play switcheroo while examining Claire. It's really subtle and very telling of my sense of humor, but if you think about the scene from Claire's point of view, it's extremely funny to imagine that your gynecologist stops examining to leave the room, change into a tuxedo, and finish the exam. Luckily Cronenberg doesn't hit you over the head with it. End.

-- TEH ONE AN ONLEY DEANN GULBAREY

Well 'Dead Ringers' shocked and astounded me a fair bit when I first saw it, but I was pretty young. It's still a fantastic movie, though.

-- Andrew Thames

i think cronenbergs best is probably dead ringers

-- s trife

May I also add that while Jeremy Irons was very fine in "Reversal of Fortue" (funny, even); "Dead Ringers" is the film he should have won an Academy Award for.

-- Sean

bought that one the other day

"It can't be love if it does that to you."

This seems to suggest that I have a subtle sense of humor, which is not true. This scene is amazing though. Awesome, awesome film.

Not, at least, while there was still an M. Butterfly lurking around the corner.

this is a joke, right?

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (72 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005PJ6N.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

So, Bill & Ted, we can all agree this is like the best film ever, right? So let's go beyond that, is it so much better than the best film ever that it deserves some word besides "best"? I think so. You'll never see such a great performance by Keanu Reeves as long as you live, I can guarantee that. Plus: it was filmed where I used to live. I've BEEN on those waterslides.

-- Ally

It's the greatest film ever!! It never gets boring! Apart from Star Wars it's the only film I actually own on video. "69 dude"...*air guitar*...Bob Genghis Khan. I think I live my life wanting to be Bill and Ted. No one out there hates this film, they might say they do, but they have no coherent arguement to back up this stance!

-- james e l

Bill and Ted is beyond classic. Mind you, the sequel is classic too esp. for giving The Grim Reaper a wedgie and Evil Bill and Ted playing basketball with each others heads.

-- Michael

Does this mean it should be a higher number?

I'm not sure what this means (Ebert's taste is dependably undependable), but I smell a number of Chris Columbus films coming.

Dead Ringers = best twins ever; easily best Irons perf. Considered both it and Videodrome to join The Fly, not quite.

Alexanderplatz my #9, Fassbinder's Lola #2. Veronika Voss and Lili Marleen not first-rate, and Querelle plain sucked.

Never seen Caddyshack or The Thing. I turned off both Bill & Teds after 20 minutes.

Diner is Barry Levinson's best movie and I never considered it.

>so much affection for the characters and the period and the place (contrast with a smarmfest like american grafiti).<

Oh poo, who needs affection, esp for dimwitted '50s males? AG reigns.

Matewan (73 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005Y7R6.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

about a coal strike in West Virginia. WILL OLDHAM puts in the performance of his life, along with Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, many others.

-- Tracer Hand

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (75 points, 3 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0767812158.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Captivating from beginning to end, with only one morality-free character.

-- Dee

Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape is one of the best films ever! His hollywood career, I'm not sure of (I've only seen Traffic), but at least no one can claim that his talentless as a director.

-- Tuomas

Sex, lies, and videotape is a very sexy movie (if you're into James Spader, which I am - I mean, which I would be if I didn't have such a great bf...).

-- Sarah McLusky

I am in love with Sex Lies and Videotape.

-- N.

The last movie I saw was Sex, Lies, and Videotape. It's quite good and has neat droney synth music in it.

-- sundar subramanian

Videodrome (77 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0002DB50E.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The special effects might be a tad dated, I love this film about living video-tapes and technology playing with our minds. Classick

-- helen fordsdale

I love "Videodrome" & thibnk it is the best film it's director ever made Long live the new flesh etc etc

-- Norman Phay

love it...tv's sucking me in...must go now...

-- geoff

The best. Debbie's so good in this, how come she hasn't been good in anything else? I mean, she was alright in Hairspray in a broad John Waters sort of way, but in Videodrome she's just incredible.

-- Arthur

If there was an actual channel showing the sort of stuff they had on the 'Videodrome' channel, I'd never leave the house! Va-va-vooom!

-- dave q

David Cronenberg is a genius, and this is one of his best films.

-- Sean

The Decalogue (78 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00009Y3OK.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

10 types of depression. that one about the kid drowning makes me sad just thinking about it. brrr.

-- zappi

Gremlins (78 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000067FP7.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

used to know this film by heart when I was younger. Joe Dante is just awesome, man. I still crack up at the flasher gremlin - I think there used to be a plastic lifesize model you could get of him back in the day....why oh why don't I have one? The "Snow White" scene is also perhaps the best use of a movie within a movie in a long time. Did I mention that Joe Dante is god?

-- Girolamo Savonarola

Cold War paranoia dressed up as children's action film.
Okay..maybe not... children's action film with implicit Cold War paranoia subtext. Memorable for being particularly unpleasant and gruesome in several parts. I remember, as a child, liking the part where the gremlin went in the liquidiser. So did most of my friends.
I'm wondering if this makes me disturbed, or just normal??

-- hobart paving

That's one thing that makes a film "good"--the presence of gremlins. (Or is that "Gremlins"?)

-- s1utsky

Sixteen Candles (80 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00008438T.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Very sweet and good-natured. It may be a bit cartoonish at times, but never lets the parents or other central characters stray from being unrealistic.

-- Dee

But the end of Sixteen Candles where Molly Ringwald and that terrible Matt Dillon lookalike are sitting on the table with her birthday cake = most classic Hughes moment of all for me. Don't know why.

-- Archel

The Shining (85 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005ATQJ.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

A million and one horror films could make you jump at a basic level, but The Shining doesn't need to do that...there's a constant pervading sense of dread and unease from start to finish, that's where the scares come from. And even if it doesn't scare you, it's hard to deny that it's one of the most technically accomplished horror films ever...

I think The Shining might be the greatest horror film ever made, it utterly transcends.

-- David-Graham Steans

Nobody I ask ever remembers the scene in "The Shining" when Shelley Duvall, with big knife in hand, runs upstairs after locking Jack in the storage room. She gets to the top of the stairs, looks down a long hallway, and sees someone in a bear costume going down on a guy in a tux. Whoa.... Just thinking about it gives me the creeps.

-- Sean Desjardins

The Shining = perfection.

-- Eric H.

"The Shining" still creeps me out. The kid on the big wheel riding through the halls while the dolly follows him with that fish-eye extreme low angle shot--incredible.

-- jay blanchard

Crimes and Misdemeanors (85 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005AUJK.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Crimes & Misdemeanours is probably Allen's last "great" film, at least among of the ones I've seen (as I Said, I've yet to catch Sweet and Lowdown).

-- Tuomas

this is almost as depressing as when i realized how similar i was to alan alda's character in crimes and misdemeanors

-- dave k

Die Hard (88 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0002B15WE.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

die hard is good, die harder is mostly shit, die hard with a vengeance was maybe the best action movie ever, he should do more of those instead of armageddon or whatever, i love death becomes her, the fifth element, twelve monkeys

-- s trife

Die Hard (which is great) vs. John Woo's reputed best film, and I'm still going with Die Hard.

-- miloauckerman

Die Hard makes no bones about adhering to an accepted remit and trajectory and should not be criticised for it. We know Mclain is the hero from the start and there's no point putting him in situations where he has to question what he is doing when a) he's a cop and thinks like one, b) his wife - the cause and solution to all his problems - is among the hostages, c) Alan Rickman has a really annoying accent (tho he is excellent in this film for sure). What's great is watching him deal with each situation that is presented to him, coupled with the whole negotiating of a path vertically i.e. the ascension theme which always appeals to me greatly, aforementioned claustrophobia aspect (which is what was sorely lacking from the sequels) and a relatively healthy mix of punch dialogue and one-liners...perhaps it is handles too lightly at times (McTiernan favours this gung-ho comic book approach and tries to evoke some sort of romantic element at the end via use of music in Die Hard and at the end of Predator a 'reunion' of sorts with the characters many of who we saw blown apart by nasty spacemang...but Woo and Verhoeven are far more cynical and twisted with that shit)

-- stevem

The Last Temptation of Christ (89 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1559409037.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I like the fact that Willem Dafoe can flaunt a resume that includes playing both Jesus and the Green Goblin.

-- Nate in ST.P

The only Scorcese that I have any patience for. Classic. It was one of the films that lapsed my atheism into a nice, tepid agnosticism.

-- Leee Majors

I saw it in the theater; it's pretty great. Why is it that the Mel Gibson movie has christian groups urging people to see it but Scorsese's film was picketed and boycotted?? Despite the film - like the source novel - depicting Jesus as imagining before his death what his life might have been like had he married and raised a familiy, I saw it as a profoundly devout and spiritual film.

-- Sean

My favorite moment in the DVD commentary is the scene where Dafoe is in a room with cobras, and he was saying to the crew, "Uh, I'm safe...right? There's no danger, right?" [no response] "Well, say something! Tell me it's okay, and I'm going to be fine!" "Uh......you're going to be fine..."

-- Joe

Classic.
I like Barbara Hershey. She's excellent. I am a huge fan of Mr. Dafoe. Supercool as Jesus.

The ending with the technicolored Stan Brakhage type stuff was awesome.

-- Star Hustler

Judas with a Brooklyn accent = SUBLIME.

-- Star Hustler

I think it was John Waters who described it as Jesus: Uncut.

-- tokyo rosemary

Everything that happens inside the building is tight, unpredictable, and massively entertaining and every character is well-acted (aside from maybe the yuppie cokehead), while everything outside the building exists to remind the audience that we're still in Hollywood. Roger Ebert is only partly right about the Paul Gleason's police chief derailing the film, because the TV reporter and the "Family Matters" cop undercut it nicely as well. This is like two different films, one great, one terrible.

The Last Temptation of Christ is a terrific film.

I didn't vote for The Decalogue cuz it's obv a TV series, while Fassbinder preferred that Alexanderplatz be seen in 2 big chunks.

"Temptation" aside -- a respectable tho uneven film -- this list is getting silly now.

As for Dek being 10 stories, true...but ten stories behind one concept. Whereas some films are one story behind several concepts - how is that different? Or any film that has very distinct parts? Is Distant Voices Still Lives a film, or should we vote on each half instead?

I know that not all will agree with me, but I believe that a miniseries is, for better or worse, the only option a filmmaker has when they want to make a large-canvas film in one go. And that's the key - in one go, without the intention or ability to directly continue or cancel in the middle depending on ratings is exactly what makes a miniseries similar to a film. Just because you can't digest it easily in one chunk is irrelevant. I believe that all miniseries would be intended to be viewed in one sitting if it were practical and possible, but they do not expect that of a viewer. Is that so impure?

You have got to be kidding.

I read many ponderous critiques saying that Willis was the revenge of white male invidivualism against feminism, the Japanese takeover, bureacracy, diversity, etc.--sort of the flipside of Bonfire of the Vanities. But Die Hard doesn't take anything seriously except the logistical plot details of its heist and Willis's counter-attack, which are utterly persuasive. Bruce Willis manages to be an entertaining straight man simply by taking us step by step through the scenario of trying to be an action hero in cut-up bare feet.

And is there a better action villain than Alan Rickman's Hans? At the time, I thought he was just a way for Willis to triumph over homosexuality as well as everything else. But Hans stands the test of time.

So do homosexuals.

Huh?

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (92 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00003CXC0.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

'THEY'RE NOT PILLOWS!'

-- Mike B

You know, I recently saw Planes, Trains and Automobiles again and I loved it. One of the 10 best of the decade, in my opinion.

-- slutsky

I always thought Planes, Trains & Automobiles had one of the best weepy endings I've ever seen, although everything else in the film is a comedy.

-- Ste

The Road Warrior (92 points, 7 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0790729342.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

i finally saw Mad Max 2/Road Warrior all the way thru for the first time like 2 weeks ago. they really DID cop a lot of stuff from that film for the Fallout games...

-- kingfish

i love these movies. i have to admit that gibson really has a ton of charisma on screen.
i think i prefer The Road Warrior because it's just so relentless.

-- ryan

Well, there are more mohawks and buttless leather chaps in The Road Warrior. To me, that always makes for a better film.

-- Alex in NYC

My dad rented Mad Max and the Road Warrior for me when I must have been 8 or 9 and they blew my mind. Before that I was so into the whole slick '80s neon futuristic vision of the world but these movies turned me all cyberpunk. I think Mad Max probably affected me in the same way that Star Wars affected the people who were a few years older.

-- walter kranz

Mad Max 2, (or 'The Road Warrior' in the USA) is far better than MM, and quite possibly the best action movie ever, though if you're applying to film school, don't write an extended essay about its obvious similarities to the Leone/Eastwood films, as you won't get in (at least a friend of mine didn't). Wayne's World 2 is better than the first too, though that doesn't actually make it high art or anything.

-- Snotty Moore

The Road Warrior! But of course! Best Western of the 80s.

-- David Nolan

It would have made my top 15, easy.

YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY

Down by Law (94 points, 3 votes, 2 first-place votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005JKFX.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

somewhat overrated (let's face it, a lot of Jarmusch is...), but still great. A nice tale that doesn't seem to bog itself down too much in the typical "needs" of plot devices, and perhaps the best cinematography of the decade.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

DBL is my favorite Jarmusch, and maybe the last time Benigni was transcendent. Robby Muller has DP'd lotsa great stuff, from Fassbinder to Hollywood.

-- Dr Morbius

DBL is probably my favorite Jarmusch. I especially like how the introduction of Benigni's character switches the movie at the halfway point from gritty drama to bizarre comedy.

-- na

I love "Down By Law". It's one of the few films that can have a rock star actor, cameo or lead, that doesn't seem ridiculous (i.e. Jack White in Cold Mountain).

-- jay blanchard

My Neighbor Totoro (94 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00003CXCZ.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I really love My Neighbor Totoro -- it's probably my favourite animated feature of all time.

-- PVC

Totoro says: "Calm down, children, calm down..."

How can you say no to Totoro?

-- Tuomas

Man, all his stuff is great. I was all ready for My Neighbor Totoro to suck, but I watched it tonight and it was very nearly as great as Spirited Away!

-- Dan I.

i watched totoro the other day for the first time and the bit at the bus stop made me laugh more anything else has done in years.

-- zappi

the best film ever made. okay, not really, but on most days my favorite film of all time. pastoral picture book tale of two sisters moving to the country where they encounter giant, plush-toy ready beastie. very japanese, in that not much "happens." very keenly observed, detailed (and not even in an animation quality sense.) the portrayal of children is brilliant (if a bit idyllic.)

-- jess

the catbus in totoro is, if nothing else, proof that they have LSD in japan 8)

-- koogs

Dangerous Liaisons (94 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6304696515.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I...just...can't...stop...myself...from...watching...no...matter...what...I'm...doing... Frears and Malkovich in top form, only to be overtaken by Glenn Close (still her best work). Amusing but appropriately naive turns by Keanu and Uma.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

Paris, Texas (95 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0002XL35G.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The best epic of the 80s.

-- D. Keebler

And that speech in Paris, Texas about how there were these two people...
Harry Dean Stanton is a God among character actors.

-- sunburned and snowblind

Fitzcarraldo (96 points, 4 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00001ODHV.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

The scene in Fitzcarraldo where Klaus is standing on the river boat when he hears natives playing drums playing in the forest. Fearing that he is about to be attacked, Fitz sets up the Victrola on deck to play Caruso to the forest. Caruso plays, along with the drums in the forest, and you see a profile shot of Fitz and the lush green forest scrolling by. Absolutely one of the most beautiful moments I have ever seen captured on film and the reason I love film today.

-- Jeff-PTTL

Fitzcarraldo (which really ought to be called Aguirre 2: The Opera)

-- m.e.a.

but seriously, I think Fitzcarraldo is probably the most Amateuristian of the Herzog I have seen. so that's where I'd start.

-- Stormy Davis

i think it was new! maybe it wasn't. they were dragging the bus up the mountain and uter said "i feel like i'm in fitzcarraldo" and nelson puncehs him and says " that movie was flawed!".

-- scott seward

God's REALLY gonna get you for that, unless you're a teenager.

(But I expect the comedy rankings to get even worse.)

I probably would've voted for Down by Law if I hadn't seen it a few months ago and noticed how it tails off once they're outta stir.

"Liaisons" similarly gets a slight downgrade based on my first viewing in awhile. Frears' chameleonic oeuvre suggests a Brit Lumet, but I might prefer "Sammy & Rosie Get Laid" to DL.

Burden of Dreams > Fitzcarraldo

Paris, Texas is quite fine til that long Nastassja monologue near the end.

That movie is flawed!

--First of all, any movie that wears its Woody Allen homage on its sleeve like this gets a pass for charges of being a ripoff, come on, "It Had to Be You"?
--If you find Billy Crystal funny, which I do, it does have good lines and bits. I also like City Slickers and Analyze This, but that's me.
--The movie shows characters changing over many years, which is one of those things movies do so well, and don't do enough.
--It has a miserable New Year's Eve scene, which I appreciate.
--It deals with the close relationship between attraction and annoyance, and has a great friends-into-lovers crossover, both subjects that movies deal with rarely enough that those who respond tend to attach themselves to the scenes.
--The wagon wheel part. Something about my enduring crush on Carrie Fisher.

This is half-right. I actually think it starts to go wonky during the whole Harry Dean-makin'-friends-with-the-kid thing, which is just a little precious. But yeah, that interminable scene in the strip club, with her talking to him over his shoulder through the mirror (such ART, Wim!) is terrible. Kinski's Southern accent is a crime against an entire region of the country. Yes, the movie looks beautiful, I admit it. But it's still bollocks. No wonder Wenders is Bono's idea of a great artist.

Koyaanisqatsi (97 points, 4 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000068OCS.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Like being taken into a dream world. Teaches the importance of having a sense of balance in one's life but without preaching.

-- Dee

definitely one of the top cinematic experiences of my life.

-- jay blanchard

Koyanisqaatsi is one of my favourite films ever.

-- Nick Southall

After Koyaanisqatsi, any documentaries showing the desert, volcanoes the ocean etc. always has Glass-esque music.

-- WilliamR

what can I possibly say about this except that it should be mandatory watching. I've heard mixed things about the other two, so I'm kinda tepid about seeing them, since I'd rather not spoil the grand impressions this one made on me.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

The Blues Brothers (97 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/078322804X.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Forget Grease. THIS is the classic modern film musical.

-- Dee

My all time favorite has to be the Blues Brothers.I can watch it again and again,and it never loses its appeal.The list of celebs who make appearances is something that many of todays films would struggle to compete with.The music is incredible,the car chases are unreal,and the characters played by Ackroyd and Belushi become unforgettable from the moment they are on screen.Just DON'T talk to me about Blues Brothers 2000.Dogshit.

-- Eugene Speed

And don't forget The Blues Brothers, a film that by all logic shouldn't work but does anyway.

-- Autumn Almanac

"No, I didn't. Honest. I ran outta gas. I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from outta town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake, a terrible flood, locusts. It wasn't my fault!! I swear to God!!"

-- Chris Barrus

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (99 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0792157869.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Hmmm. Completing this exercise has made me realise I have a bit of a thing for bad films starring Sean Connery. This is another film in which many might think the great man is an embarrassment. But for me, it’s one of his finest moments. This film is great fun I reckon. Ford and Connery spark brilliantly together – and the pace is sharp and witty. It’s got Mr Bronson in it to, appearing as the man he was born to play, the Fuhrer himself. Yeah, it’s just a good ole rollercoaster of a movie, and in fact, my favourite of the Jones trilogy. Bring on 4.

-- Five Eight

"Last Crusade" and "Godfather II"---both the best films of their respective trilogy. Not often the case with movies shown on TV.

-- jay blanchard

I must admit to loving Last Crusade -- the Indy/Dad dialogue (from Tom Stoppard, I think) is classic.

-- Chuck Tatum

The Jones films though are class. Crusade is possibly Connery's finest hour (discounting of course, his worthy Oscar winning performance in Untouchables where he essays an Irish American Cop with typical subtlety). "Und zis is how ve say goodbye in Germany Dr Jones" cue *sickening headbutt*

-- Alex K

Last Crusade is on my short list of Perfect Movies. I might be biased from loving it since I was wee, but there it is. It's one of the best scripts ever, there's hardly a line that's not quotable, and it's definitely the funniest of the Indy movies.

-- Jordan

The best movie in the trilogy, great performances by two of the most charismatic male actors of our time.

-- Tuomas

The only time I ever heard cheering in the cinema was when I went to see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, at the bit when Sean Connery gets rid of the birds by waving his umbrella at them. That in itself made me laugh.
Then again, I don't generally go to the kind of films people would cheer at.

-- ailsa

The Killer (100 points, 7 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000009EBU.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

The Right Stuff (101 points, 5 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000092T6N.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Teaching generations of children born generations after the pioneering '60s astronautical heyday about the heroic lives of space explorers.

-- Dee

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (101 points, 8 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00001MXXH.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

"When Cameron was in Egypt's land...let my Cameron go..."
and of course:
"Ferris Bueller, you're my hero."
Tim, wouldn't a more classic interpretation be that Cameron is the superego, Ferris is the id, and Sloane is the hot chick?

-- NA.

Cameron is cute. I like his suspenders.

-- Sarah McLUsky

I'm having second thoughts, can't make up my mind whether it's really the secret story of a career educationalist realising the futility of teaching or the story of an agry young woman's quest for inner peace, realised during her pummelling of a dodgy headteacher.

-- chris

*cringe* Yeah, I think I took this project a bit too seriously.

You are all wrong. BEST. FILM. EVER.

Stranger Than Paradise (103 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0792846834.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Three people. One car. Three cities. One winnah. Three acts. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. It put a spell on me.

-- D. Keebler

jim jarmusch's stranger than paradise is the best black and white film* ever.

*made in the 1980s.

-- splooge

Another similar example is the movie Stranger Than Paradise by Jim Jarmusch. It is an ordeal to watch this movie. Incredibly slow. About halfway through it, you are hating life. Then, at the end, things start happening quickly, and then it ends abruptly unresolved, and you're thinking "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!". Eventually, your opinion shifts from "What a waste of time!" to "That was brilliant!".

-- Ernest P.

The last time I watched Ferris Bueller, I just about choked on the film's noxiously suburban-sheltered take on both anarchism and cosmopolitanism. Still, as far as the sacred '80s cows go, I admit it's still among the most entertaining.

The Breakfast Club (104 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000A98ZP.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

An '80s classic. Delves slightly into stereotyping but redeems itself in the final message.

-- Dee

Very timely. I just watched the film a few nights ago, and was in hysterics for most of it. My favourite moment is when Andrew smokes the joint and goes on his big parade around the library, topping it off with his primal scream that shatters glass. ;)

-- Andrew

Its one of the great ideology vs ethics movies. The film is anti-authoritarian in the rebellion of the teens (as they are not adults this is where the power struggle is vested). WHen they do win out over the power struggle they grapple to make their own identity, which is to ape the values and ideals of the authority they have seemingly usurped. This is in a lot of ways the masterstroke of the movie - viewers can watch it not only as a satire on US society (hence the very broad brush strokes of the the archetypal characters) but a parody of "Movie Of The Week" style films where everyone learns a lesson.
And it has the stupidest excuse for a dance sequence evah!

-- Pete

I know there are those around here who really dislike "The Breakfast Club", but that movie is what made seventh grade bearable for me. Was anyone shocked when the characters I most identified with were Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall, and Ally Sheedy? NOPE. It's like the three major components of my personality split apart and given life (and silly soliloquies).

-- Dan Perry

The Breakfast Club is the best movie ever made, better than even Gladiator and their pimp costumes. Judd Nelson = CLASSIC. The only reason the movie sucks is because of that stupid makeover they give Ally Sheedy, like she wasn't way better dressed like a psychopath. Molly Ringwald sucks.

-- Ally

Exactly. Could've used a lot more.

This is in a lot of ways the masterstroke of the movie - viewers can watch it not only as a satire on US society (hence the very broad brush strokes of the the archetypal characters) but a parody of "Movie Of The Week" style films where everyone learns a lesson.

Now I've probably called a lot of films "parodies" without much merit -- probably most famously when I thought The Fury was one big long burlesque on those separate girl/boy puberty sex-ed films -- but I don't really see this.

Akira (106 points, 8 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005MAM2.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Akira was the first I saw and got me turned on to the genre.

-- webcrack

That's one of the only Anime movies I own.

-- Ally

Akira = grate visuals (10+ yrs. later), nice vague cosmic plot

-- jess

Akira is an interesting one for me because it's probably the only film I've watched about 5 or 6 times dubbed before finally viewing a subtitled version. Which was a rather interseting experience because there are so many parts of the script that the dubbed version just completely ignores. This was a revelation for me because there were so many parts of the film that suddenly made sense. This is assuming the subtitlers didn't just decide to add their own explanations of the events.

-- Chewshabadoo

This cyberpunk sci-fi anime flick was and still is the high point of traditional animation. Features one of the scariest dream sequences ever seen on screen.

-- Tuomas

Best colour film is Akira.

-- Johnney B

Stop Making Sense (111 points, 8 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000021Y7X.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

I'd say "Stop Making Sense" was the peak for them. There's a reason nobody remembers anything they did afterward.

-- Barry Bruner

The opposite of Ziggy Stardust. Very well directed, and totally thrilling.

-- Kenan Hebert

Blood Simple (116 points, 5 votes, 1 first-place vote)

ihttp://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005LC4P.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I think Blood Simple is maybe the best movie I have ever seen.

-- bnw

Blood Simple is a classic noir film. All meat, no gristle or fat. It's stripped of all unnecessary elements.

-- NA

my favourite coens is 'blood simple', almost for the title alone.

-- cºzen

Why does nobody make films like Blood Simple anymore? John Dahl needs to make a comeback too.

-- @d@ml

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005LC4P.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Say Anything

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00003CXCI.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Bittersweet. No one's an out-and-out villain in this one. Made Peter Gabriel's music the most romantic out there.

-- Dee

"Say Anything," aside from the mistake of casting Ione Skye as any kind of genius, already looks like [a stone classic] now.

-- Anthony Miccio

i think 'say anything' holds up well in every sense

-- Dallas Yertle

Say Anything is kind of a generational touchstone. I remember a friend beating me with it (figuratively) when I became momentarily obsessed with Steely Dan. "You know who listens to Steely Dan? That old guy in Say Anything!" I also remember an old girlfriend saying that I had described her to someone else in such a way that "I sound like that annoying girl from Say Anything." Then of course there's the constantly-invoked iconography of John Cusack in the raincoat holding the boom box playing "In Your Eyes" (ack) over his head. I don't think I really have an opinion on this film except that it's heartwarming and occasionally very accurate and also occasionally very ugly (visually). My thoughts on Crowe in general: I don't have many, except that he uses the telephoto lens a lot and sometimes cuts in without changing the angle too much, which makes me jumpy.

-- amateurist

The commentary to Say Anything (Crowe, Cusack, Skye) is great for largely the same reason as Ghostbusters: perspective, and the fact that these guys haven't seen each other in awhile. There's actually twenty minutes of commentary before the movie even starts, as everyone talks about pre-production, and how they became involved in the movie, and Cusack's reluctance to take a teen role, etc.

-- Tep

Cameron Crowe before he became a photocopy of himself.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

Pee Wee's Big Adventure (116 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0790749408.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The best 80's comedy there ever was. I've seen it dozens of times. And it still makes me laugh every time. Again, I think the second half is better sometimes. The "Tequila" biker bar scene, the pet shop fire, Wayne from the Wonder Years as the snotty Hollywood brat, and the file in the foot long hot dog are great.

-- Cub

I always say this is Tim Burton's best film (along with Beetlejuice) because it's the only one with a really good script! (co-written by Phil Hartman, incidentally)

-- Justyn Dillingham

Oh, an utter classic. It came out when I was in high school, and the 'group' I was part of in our psychology class (taught, amazingly, by someone called Dick Koch) were straight-A slackers and way too giddy in class. "Call me Dick" (he must have been good: by the beginning of the second month *nobody* snickered like Beavis and Butthead when exhorted to do this - which must have been some kind of achievement as Minnesota is obviously a repressed Dan to Thread kinda place) assigned our group some independent study: go see Pee-Wee. Report back.
We had an absolute blast.

-- suzy

One of my all-time favorite films; so tweaked and surreal but also totally childlike and innocent. If you ever get the urge to do nitrous oxide and watch a motion picture, there is no other film more appropriate than the Big Adventure.

-- nickalicious

For me, Pee Wee's Big Adventure and The Muppet Movie are much more fun takes on the heroic journey narrative than Star Wars is (which is ALWAYS used as an example for Joseph Campbell's mythology theories). And they're actually pretty similar in a couple of othe ways. Both are "kids movies" with a lot of adult jokes and rampant surrealism. And both end in an extravaganza of pomo self-referentiality.

-- jaymc

http://66.34.30.230/0/Running/empty121.jpg

1) I don't remember making that comment!
2) I've never seen the movie!! (it's one of those films I'm perenially intending to see, but still haven't to this day. I've heard the soundtrack, of course -- which is what I was commenting about, I assume)

(Okay, I'm seriously tripping on how many of the films I nominated have appeared on this thread thus far. And feeling as though I should've spent more time on those comments!)

The satire in The Right Stuff (quite a good film) was toned waaaaaaaay down from the Wolfe book.

>{The Breakfast Club] redeems itself in the final message.

All kids can be united in hatred of their parents.

C'mon. You're trying to treat this as if I'd said The Breakfast Club was this grand statement on the status of humanity or something. As a teen film, it says quite a lot. Even as a regular film, it has a message rooted in adolescence. It's not a message that has enough of an impact to reach toward society in general, though one could very logically argue that it could (seeing as though we are ALL sorta slotted into "castes", though we should logically see how bogus *that* is). It's just a really good movie that speaks to and about adolescents. God. Now I'm starting to wonder if I should apologize full stop for my comments on this movie.

Only a teen could be gullible enough to fall for Hughes' pandering.

Now I'm sorry I even wanted to participate in this thing, period. I mean, if people were going to get THIS out-of-shape over something I typed up in maybe ten seconds or so.... I'll just leave you Serious People alone while I return to engaging in mindless chatter -- how about that?

And aren't you, like me, waiting for an Aki Kaurismaki film to show up here? (I guess it'd behis American 'hit', Leningrad Cowboys, which I've never seen.)

If you actually do mean ILE rather than ILM, I think you'll find that the regulars have high standards in entertainment as well (the website is associated with a blog that runs a club called Poptimism, ffs). Also people having strong emotional atteachment to films about teenagers that they saw as teenagers shocker.

(also your use of sitcom as an insult tells us more about you than your target etc)

xpost - you really don't know where you are do, you?

I'd guess most Breakfast Club lovers here were pre-teens, toddlers or zygotes when it was released.

xpost - Say Anything was my #22, Stop Making Sense #24.

Do you want sitcom or do you want the truth?

nerds = neutered gays?

Did I fucking say "dumb," asshole? Leave it out of my attributed quote, kthxbye.

Anyway, as to the latest in the ILF witch huntery, I wouldn't compare John Hughes to sitcoms myself... but rather their inclusion high up on a list of top 100 films of the '80s strikes me about the same as the inclusion of the books of Dean Koontz (or Beverly Cleary) on a hypothetical book poll. It's not that pop culture is icky (I'm not going to post my ballot or anything; I'm sure it's a lost cause), but rather that there are better candidates within pop culture.

but hey, if I'm wrong about the way certain posters are acting on this thread, anyone can stop me at any time.

xpost

stick around, see, but I don't think there's a need for some of the comments that have been posted. Dee took it all sort of personally for a reason!

People with raging superiority complexes have valid reasons for liking the films they like, too.

Also, I have valid reasons for liking the so-called inferior films I like, what makes their reasons better?

It gives them as much right as you have to accuse them of not liking the movies they claim to like simply because they have "reputations."

We're going in circles now and I'm getting bored. Let's just settle on the notion that we're matching vanity against vanity.

I have a raging superiority complex, but that has nothing to do with the fact that I do not now, and did not then, like such films, and take umbrage at the implication that only those with such complexes could not. Thinking about what other people (one's self included) should like is part of what criticism is about. Is it automatically a good thing to like something? Is it ever a bad thing to examine why something is liked? For instance, I actually do sort of like Ferris Bueller (alone, excepting Say Anything, among the teencult/action/comedy flix on the list, though that'll change when/if we hit Ghostbusters, Dirty Dancing, WarGames, etc.), because I don't immediately reject a punkrock-not-the-same-as-anarchic aesthetic when it's embodied by popular kids (or theater kids dressing up as same), but only sort of because I regard the questions raised by Eric as open ones - isn't answering such questions the reason people come here in the first place?

http://filmlinc.com/fcm/5-6-2005/sarris.htm

"I never argue with people about movies. We all see different movies. We all go to the movies and see our friends, our family, our loved ones. Brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers. Lost loves. Failed loves. People we hate. Movies are as old as psychoanalysis. So if I were to put you or anyone else on a couch and say, 'Tell me your favorite movies,' it would be a way of psychoanalyzing you."

(And still, this "elitism" jazz would never play out this way if music was the bone...)

Criticism = this thing is better. Elitism = I am better.

And I never came close to saying so, Blount. Piss off.

I know it's not the same thing as calling someone an idiot, but saying this after Dee, an adult, has told why she likes the film is kinda harsh.

It gives them as much right as you have to accuse them of not liking the movies they claim to like simply because they have "reputations."

Hey, I never actually said that, but if the cap fits...

(er xpost - I'm not aiming for defensiveness, honest, but I think people decrying dee and others - other people voted for these films, you know - for less worthy taste are a teensy bit out of order.)

Basically the is shit fit reminds me of Michael Moore saying I had to watch "Friends" to bond with the hoi polloi.

Blurb on. (and the whole self-conscious "fun" flag on ILX is really puerile.)

(I'll resist getting pedantic over spelling.) I don't think I've ever met anyone who loves Japanese movies more than I do (any Japanese arts, probably - I've written about many of Freaky Trigger, and there is much, much more to come). Nonetheless, that will be me. I've also written a lot about entertainment being horribly undervalued (not just in films - the gulf in literary criticism is even worse), and I stand by that too. This does not mean I like John Hughes movies. (It also doesn't mean I believe the bit I quoted to be serious, BTW.)

anything that precludes thought is hardly intellectual eric.

i mean if you want to know what rockists and corny indie fuxx look like when you switch to a difference medium - ta-da!

I don't know where you're coming from, but I'd hardly consider, say, Chris Marker or even Kieslowski to be paralleling Dave Matthews Band on the continuum. After all, ILM lurrves it some modern classical, doesn't it?

How about you find me five posts on this thread (what the hey, why not throw in the nominations thread while we're at it?) where I serve as a mouthpiece for auteurism (a word that didn't even pop up on this thread until you used it)?

You might want to take this up with the nice people at IMDb, though.

... could learn a few things from your experience overcoming its shackles of oppression.

You might try that next time, rather than being a prat.

http://www.bkmarcus.com/blog/images/TV/bullshit.jpg

Seems remarkably simple and stress-free.

Which is why I've withdrawn my ballot. The only reason I haven't left the thread yet is because I refuse to ghettoize film conversations to ILF.

And I'll freely admit to being a jerk on the two sets of top 100 film polls on ILX, but I would seriously like for you, blount, to tell me where outside of these special cases I've been an abusive gadfly. Actually, no... at the moment I don't think you're probably apt to find anything I've said here to be anything but overt or coded contempt. And at the moment I'm not inclined to be concerned with explaining otherwise.

Haha... Yeah, I need to stop reading aloud while I type.

eh, it was a dumb joke anyway.

Pointing out your petulant 'demand' that your vote be removed is not the best way to argue that you aren't an abusive gadfly.

anyway--if Back to the Future places anywhere under number 5 this poll and the dicussion throughout this thread is total bullshit!!

You're here to feel self-righteous and superior.

And I found the post where I mentioned auteurism. I am burdened.

Morbius probably has the more tactful approach in making sure his vitriol is reserved for certain films. And then usually offering a different film as an alternative.

I'm sorry, I missed the memo where a fun ILE list was to be considered the rough equivalent of the Sight and Sound poll.

but seriously--either you think there are objective standards for judging films that should be clear to all educated people (and does ANYONE think this anymore?) or you dont. so just let it fucking go for good plz and move on.

In that I too believe in the rhythm method, I plan to withdraw my ballot as well, but only minutes before the top film is announced.

So, yeah, there's probably nothing I can do to shake the patina of "Calum, Jr." now huh?

Well, some things need to be assumed.

>Dr Morbius hates fun!<

No, just Barton Fink.

Really, there's not gonna be a single Albert Brooks film on this, is there? He's entertaining, a triple threat, and 20 times thewriter John Hughes is. YOU ALL HATE FUN!

He definitely would have made my top 100 of the 80s, maybe even a few times, but not in the top 30.

It's obvious. As obvious as my unwillingness to just deal is ill-timed, unwelcomed and probably a piss-poor attempt to get anyone interested in seeing Crime Wave (Paizs).

This is not only OTM, but it clarifies the connection between rockism and elitism (or whatever we're calling the behaviour that's being criticized on this thread).

I don't necessarily see that Morbius in particular is doing anything differently from any number of other commentators on this thread. He appears to be arguing from a fairly gut, intuitive level of personal taste just like everyone else.

>If you really wanted to assemble a Best Film of the 80s poll...<

Wouldn't you call it what this one is called?

Perhaps I called TBC "brainless" when what came closer to my meaning is "adolescent." Its dismissive view of adults and the virtue of teens, complete with trite Bowie epigraph, is either the work of a cynic or a Peter Pan.

How long 'til the first snarky Spielberg barb is aimed at the Dr.?

1) Argue seriously, aesthetically, and as logically as the internet'll let you. Naturally, this will come across as elism or academicism, and somebody with blanket-love for a film you're criticising (even fairly) will come on and call you a snobby, stuck-up ya-ya poop-face who doesn't 'get it.' They'll insult you crudely (e.g. 'eat a bag of dicks') and come off looking funnier and better than you. You'll go home to sponge urine off your mortar-board.

2) Try to discuss the film from the point of view of personal experience "this film makes me think of the time I ... " and you'll be called out for being irrelevent, unsophisticated, or egoistic. Somebody'll point out an inconsistancy, personal distaste, or artistic quibble with the film, and because of the personal bond you've stated with the film, you'll (mistakenly, sometimes) read this as a frontal assault. You're irritated, respond accordingly, and everything gets crummy. See: above. You end-up squeezing pee-pee out of your pigtails.

3) You make an effort to note both good and bad points about the film. Nobody's sure where you stand. The appreciators hate the fact you're pointing out flaws, and the detractors hate your appreciation of some bits. Since nobody's exactly sure if you belong on their side or not, your post is ignored and relegated to internet oblivion. Lonely, unimportant, you drip-dry piss and funnel it into a mason jar under the bed, next to the toenail clippings.

Would it be too twee if I were permitted to just offer an irrational explanation for my behavior in the form of a movie quotation? Let the following words from Anthony Anderson in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle serve as that vessel, swapping out Burger World for "a 1980s film poll that doesn't acknowledge Brian De Palma outside of Scarface," White Castle in exchange for "a 1980s film poll that ignores Scarface in favor of Dressed to Kill and/or Casualties of War" and "grilled onions" with any of the following: split-screens, widescreen compositions that use the entire frame, narrative-logic playfulness at the expense of coherency, honest-albeit-willful examinations of the sex-violence relationship. *Ahem*...

"As a Burger Shack employee for the past three years, if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if you're craving White Castle, the burgers here just don't cut it. In fact, just thinking about those tender little White Castle burgers with those little, itty-bitty grilled onions that just explode in your mouth like flavor crystals every time you bite into one... just makes me want to burn this motherfucker down. Come on, Pookie, let's burn this motherfucker down! Come on, Pookie! Let's burn it, Pookie! Let's burn this motherfucker down! Let's burn it down! Let's burn it!... So you guys maybe should just suck it up and go to White Castle."

*rolls eyes*

*sigh*

And I don't think "auteurist" is a good substitute for "rockist," either. We're all auterists to some degree -- look at what's on the ballots, the names of the movies and directors. Some of the commentary also gets into talking about performers, writers, cinematographers, producers, but we all more or less accept the primacy of the director.

So anyway, I just think it's a more complicated argument than it's being made out. That doesn't mean John Hughes can't have a place at the table, or that people who like John Hughes can't also like Kieslowski, or that the high-low divide has to be respected, or that it's even real. As for demanding that a ballot be withdrawn from a message board film poll, that's almost endearing except for the disrespect it shows toward the person who presumably spent some serious time organizing, promoting and tallying the thing.

Blow Out, yo. (way better than The Conversation, btw)

I will avoid personal attacks and say that I disagree.

(dummy.)

as for diner, i really like that movie but it's the kind of film i TOTALLY understand why people don't like. either you succumb to its particular charms or not...

Drugstore Cowboy (118 points, 5 votes)

ihttp://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305594333.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Two things going on here: the story, told straighter than it first appears and with less fuss and bluster than almost any of the '90s junkie films to come; and van Sant's adoration of Matt Dillon, which, at least for 2 hours, turns him into the prettiest, most soulful American trouble kid since James Dean. (By "To Die For," the crush was apparently over.)

-- gypsy mothra

I only saw this movie for the first time like five years ago, off a shitty fuzzy TV in the shoebox flat I shared in Hackney, just off Murder Mile, one evening home alone. For whatever reason, it was a powerful experience and left an indelible impression on me. I found this is a lyrical and highly seductive piece of work, about a young man’s struggle against disaffection and boredom. It’s about drug addiction too I suppose, and just being young and not giving a fuck. But more than anything else I just loved Dillon’s character; I loved the pseudo cool thing he does throughout, and his sacred codes and superstitions, I really dug the bleached, washed-out visuals and above all, I understood the psychology of the wanderer that the film dissects.

-- Five Eight

yeah yeah, Matt Dillon, Heather Graham... fuck all that. JAMES LE GROS!

-- jaymatter

Chris, it's classic!! Some terrible dialogue, but in a good way.

-- @d@ml

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305594333.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Robocop (119 points, 8 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1559408898.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

One of the deepest stories committed to film in the decade, this is a pitch dark twentieth century Christ metaphor. Peter Weller as Murphy, the central player, the prodigal son, the son of creation is crucified and reborn from his ruination, resurrected by the God of the new century, religion’s greatest debaser Technology. Brought into the world to deliver its children from sin, in the most literal of medieval senses, Murphy is set against the giant superstructures of the new century: Technology and Consumption, the chief props of Capitalism. The Ten Commandments become inbuilt system prerogatives (though even these are corrupted by the touch of Judas, Dick Jones) and Verhoeven sets his creation, the last vestige of the old order of nature, against the cold metal guardians and motiveless criminals that populate the degenerate world of spiralling baroque Capitalism. A twisted world where violent accidental death is called a ‘glitch’, business rivals are murdered, “Big is back, because bigger is better than ever,” the news is mindless trivia and everybody is out to make a dollar.

Virtually every single line in this film is quotable and the picture benefits hugely from having one of the most charismatic bad-guys ever in Kurtwood Smith (in his finest role since starring as John Carson in the A-Team), appearing as Murphy’s nemesis, Clarence Boddicker, the Angel of Death, and with his drugs and guns, guns, guns, the great seducer. Surrounded by his wayward ‘Apostles’ Emil, Leon, Joe, Dougy, Steve and of course Bobby (whom he literally sends heavenwards early in the piece, asking him “can you fly, Bobby?”), Clarence leads his merry band astray and it is up to Murphy to absolve them of their many sins. This he does his with particular biblical resonance, ‘washing’ Emil clean, and Boddicker himself is sent back to the Maker wrapt in a brotherly embrace from Murphy.

As a footnote, the British TV dubbed version is even funnier.

-- Five Eight

Also also RoboCop is astonishingly perceptive and savvy in its politics and its lampooning of corporate culture. I don't know if the satire is all that constructive but it's brilliant just the same.

-- Amateurist

On video, I saw Robocop when I was 9 at a friend's birthday party. I knew I wasn't supposed to see R-rated movies, so I ACTUALLY CALLED MY PARENTS BEFOREHAND. I think they figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal (though they probably disapproved of my friend's parents), so I proceeded to be subjected to the most disturbing acts of violence I'd ever witnessed. (I had a huge fear as a kid of the internal body, to the point where the transplant heart in Airplane! freaked me out. So imagine how I felt about faces getting blown off.)

-- jaymc

although I remembered really enjoying Robocop I was really impressed upon re-visiting recently.

-- slutsky

paul verhoeven has been slandered unduly by the critical media for no reason. did you people see robocop? that was the best sci-fi movie of the 80s, it was like repo man with robots. did you hear me? REPO MAN WITH ROBOTS.

-- ethan

Hannah and Her Sisters (121 points, 4 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005O06J.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

a perfect film

-- jay blanchard

could this be woody allen's best movie? i think it might be. man, is it well-written (look at the scene where woody's fretting about his test results and remembers the last time he got bad news from a doctor, when he found out he was infertile, giving you all of his and mia's backstory). the architecture tour (what a great scene, the way it's set up in the kitchen is so perfect)! max von sydow! the showbiz parents! best woody allen or what?

-- s1ocki

Max Von Sydow was fucking funny in this flick

-- AaronHz

The only thing I remember from this movie is Woody being upset with something and saying he's going to kill himself, but then realizing that would destroy his parents so he'll have to kill them too.
And this is the only movie I've ever seen the day it opened.

-- nickn

its about the only movie i can stand michael caine in - his performance is amazing, painful to watch - i swear i sweat with him when he's at the bookshop with his sister-in-law, and he's likeable as well as pathetiic, until that final chilling scene where he's reassuring himself he's happy now. is he the only character with an audible interior dialogue? its been a while since i saw it.

-- stevie

Not at all - most of the main characters do. For example Dianne Weist in the car after the Architecture tour: "... well it's clear he likes her more. How could i have ever said that about the Guggenheim? my stupid rollerstaking joke" Haha! Also Barbara Hershey thinking about Caine "is it my imagination or does Elliot have a little crush on me" then reading to herself that Cummings poem "somewhere i have never travelled, gladly, beyond" that ends "No one, not even the rain has such small hands" (now a fairly famous Poem and i think it's mainly as a result of this film). And of course Allen himself has a hilarious interior monologe "i probably have a brain tumour" !

One of Allens very best, it has a great supporting cast including the woman who played Rhoda's sister in the TV Series. It had a ton of great lines. I agree about Caine being pretty much unwatchable in most films but he's great here (and won an oscar?).

-- jed_

Tampopo (122 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305154880.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Tampopo by Juzo Itami has to be seen to be believed. I hate to use the word meditation about a movie (coz it's so pretentious), but hey it's a meditation on cooking noodles, sex and the pursuit of an ideal. If nothing else it's the best movie I know about noodle cooking.

-- Billy Dods

Tampopo was [mildly] notorious for the kiss-the-egg-gloop scene, no? That fillum was generally considered (generally = me) to be the Japanese 9-1/2 Weeks. ('Cept obv. better cuz didn't feature twunts Mickey Rourke & Kim Basinger. Or Joe Cocker.)

-- AP

Also, watch Tampopo for the SUPER HOT OH MY GOD I'M GOING TO FAINT CAN YOU HEAR ME PANTING AND BREATHING ALL HEAVY LIKE HOT HOT HOT makin'-out-with-an-egg scene.
and an insight to ramen culture in japan. but mostly for the egg-yolk scene

-- phil-two

ooh, and how could i forget Tampopo? i think it's v. difficult to stay sad after watching that. :)

-- janni

i laughed quite a bit at the scene in tampopo in which the old man chokes on his greedily gulped mochi. the joke was on me several years later when i tried it for the first time and practically needed the heimlich.

-- lauren

Heathers (126 points, 7 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000059PPG.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

This is one of the best high school films simply because it’s so nihilistic.

-- D. Keebler

Wicked fun. Gutsy, quirky, and at times scarily astute.

-- Dee

when i was 12 i was reaaaaaaaaaaaally into heathers. and hairspray. (not that i'm frontin', i still like them both)

-- joseph

heathers dealt with this perhaps best. i.e. rejection of high-school in totality = killing everyone & yrself

-- Sterling Clover

"heathers" is the "all about eve" of high school flicks.

-- Justyn Dillingham

i can't find a picture of veronica in heathers scribbling in her diary...classic. i always wanted [a monocle] for myself (one bad eye) but never have found one.

-- colette

I forgot how wonderfully funny this one was (and in a certain retrospective way, critical of the whole Columbine finger-pointing debacles)

-- Girolamo Savonarola

Top ten quotes from "Heathers":
10. "I've seen a lot of sexually perverse photographs involving tennis rackets."
9. "What is your damage, Heather?"
8. "Bulimia's SO '87."
7. "Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?
6. "I don't patronize bunny rabbits!"
5. "My teen angst bullshit now has a body count."
4. "If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn't be a human being, you'd be a game show host."
3. "Chaos killed the dinosaurs!"
2. "I blame not Heather, but rather a society that tells its children that the answers can be found in the MTV video games!"
1. "Fuck me gently with a chainsaw!"

-- Justyn Dillingham

Anyone who calls Woody Allen out for being yuppie could perhaps not possibly miss the point more if he or she tried. The characters are acknowledged as being a little too wealthy and "comfortable." Of course they are. Their shallowness, however, often runs much, much deeper than that, as does their selfishness, their torture of each other and themselves, and their intelligence.

I like Lloyd Nolan snarling "Her father could be anyone in Actor's Equity!"

Why don't you just argue with me rather than calling me "anyone"?

For starters, please explain how the architecture tour is satirical. Or how we're not meant to admire the interiors of all those nice apartments. Or how the film doesn't share the Allen character's horror of CBGB's. I remember it being very forgiving toward its shallow characters, unlike Manhattan or his '90s movies, which were far darker. Maybe I'm missing something--like I said, it's been a long time since I've seen it...

Raising Arizona (128 points, 7 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305499128.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The first time I saw "Raising Arizona" I thought I was going to split my side. I laughed at the entire thing and was completely straight. The scenes with John Goodman in the therapy circle in the prison where he states "sometimes a man has to choose between a family and a career" and when they break out during the rain storm still kill me.

-- earlnash

I love:
1. How the opening credits don't start until about 10 minutes into the movie, after the entire plot has been developed.
2. The entire sequence where Hi goes to get diapers, robs the store, gets chased by the cops and a pack of dogs, hijacks a car, runs through some houses, and gets picked up by Holly Hunter. WITH THAT FUCKING AWESOME YODELLING MUSIC - probably my favorite piece of film music EVER.

-- n/a

This and Moonstruck are tied for Nick Cage's finest moment.

-- Tonight at ten

Tex Cobb is grebt.

-- Dale the Panopticalist

I've seen Raising Arizona a hundred times and still just reading "You ate sand?!" sends me into a fit of laughter.
Nicolas Cage's hair has never been better than in this movie.

-- rrrobyn

the bad guy tossing the grenade at the rabbit!

-- joseph pot

my vote for the funniest film of all time.
bob monkhouse thought so too, and he should know.

-- piscesboy

The Princess Bride (129 points, 6 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005LOKQ.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I think the bit with Vizzini and Westley and the poison is fabulously witty. In fact Wallace Shawn is just hilarious, in a classically hammy way. And the film career of Carey Elwes may be entirely undistinguished, but ROWR (it's the mask and the boots you know).

-- Archel

It's classic just for the Wallace Shawn poison-in-the-wine-goblet scene.

-- NA.

It does exactly what it sets out to do: tell a simple fairy tale. I love that about it. The movie is great though because it's witty and touching and exciting almost in equal measures.

-- Vinnie

One of my favourite books and favourtie movies of all time. The movie disappointed me on first viewing, but seeing it again a few months later, I admired its levity and appreciated how ingenously it managed to incoporate all the book's themes into 90 odd minutes. On third viewing, I was moved by the revenge plot. By the fourth, I appreciated the poison scene. By the fifth, I was in love with the swordfight. By the 16th or 17th time, I was simply in love with the other person viewing it at the time, who wonderfully enough, appreciated it also. Tasteful girl.
And the dialogue sizzles: "Is this a kissing story?";"What is your name? I must know?" "Get used to disappointment." "What if you don't come back?" "This is true love. You think this happens every day?"'; "Inconceivable!" "You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."; "I'm going to go and kill myself as soon as i get to my room." "How lovely. See you in the morning."

-- Jamie Conway

A most enjoyable film - one of those that I've watched a million times (well, that's a slight exaggeration, maybe, and that I'll happily watch a million more.
I am going to name my next (male) dog "The Dread Pirate Robert" - and Ingio Montoya is one of my all-time favorite names - and he had an excellent tuckus, too.

What were those Wallace Shawn lines about "Never get involved in a land war in Asia...?"

And Cary Elwes is a perfect example of someone that's really easy to fantasize about - sexy and witty and funny and looks good in tights - what more could one ask for? (Yeah, I liked "Men in Tights," too, but not as much.)

Damn - now I know what I'll pop into the DVD player to fall asleep by. Thanks for raising the topic *grin *

-- I'm Passing Open Windows

that's my friend's band!

anyway the freaking out is meant to reflect on his character, not the band

The Princess Bride, cripes. How many of you DID Rob Reiner blow to get on this list 3 times?

This is classist crap. What's wrong with an architecture tour? Do nice apartments make you uncomfortable?

I remember it being very forgiving toward its shallow characters, unlike Manhattan or his '90s movies, which were far darker.

This is a much more valid point, perhaps -- the movie is not as critical of the Michael Caine character as perhaps it should be. But overall, I love the movie's protrayal off th old showbiz parents, the situations (and relative financial comfort) it forced the children into, and their fractured ways of dealing with essentially receiving no parental love.

i hate to say it but eric and morbs otm. to think that stand by me is still to come!

And Spinal Tap!

Because it's a common criticism, not just yours.

Jeez, I thought Spinal Tap had gone by already! Cute and funny, but mocking trad metal bands -- HOW DIFFICULT.

Hooray Tampopo! I worked at a Landmark theater showing it and would go in every time the egg scene would come on.

I still think that's laying your own taste overtop Woody's intentions, though. The punk band is not presented as "music for morons," just "music that this woman is going to see even though she doesn't really belong in that club, just because she's coked up and trying to win approval anywhere she can." I mean, later in the movie she sings "I'm Old Fashioned" at an audition. She is not a punk fan. She's not a moron; that's not why she's there. The point of the scene is that she's there for the wrong reasons. Woody's disgust at the place may be his own, but more importantly it's his characters.

I don't imagine Woody to be such an idiot that he thinks that Punk vs. Jazz is a class issue. Or at least, not that simply.

I'm finding ILM/ILE to be an increasingly cold and lonely place this year. I don't blame you for that, but your response does remind me of a lot of what's turning me off this board. If you'd prefer to argue with an abstraction, go ahead, you're not alone. I'm not even surprised that "rockism" made its way into this thread. But it's so much more fun to talk to each other, or rant at each other, or try to persuade each other, as individuals.

meaning what exactly...?

OK, let me amend: Spinal Tap is funnier than most attempts to parody metal would be. Without Reiner and Shearer, Guest proved you could do worse with smalltown musicales, dog shows and '60s folk.

Hi, Pete! I don't actually know you, which is the other part of the reason I responded the way I did. I'm more than happy to be warm and friendly, really I am. I'll even be a nasty bastard, if that's what makes you happiest.

Nothing personal. Oh, wait...

No way the Rob comedies cited thus far are funnier than CARL Reiner's two masterpieces with Steve Martin, The Man With Two Brains and All of Me. (Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, otoh, is thin enough to be a Rob film.)

R.R. is most notable for directing two starmaking perfs (Cusack / Sure Thing, River / Stand by Me).

Sentiment is OTM.

No way the Rob comedies cited thus far are funnier than CARL Reiner's two masterpieces...

Unfair forced comparison is OTM.

Sheer lunacy.

do you mean i'm otm or someone else is otm? or the idea of sentiment is otm?

Debut is weighted OTM.

it is hard to argue the merits of comedies. though i'd say spinal tap is probably the best comedy, or at least in the top 5, of the '80s. so fuck yeah it belongs on this list unless you're of the mindset that comedies are lesser forms of cinema.

It has become 10000X funnier in the post-VH1 era.

First, my work went on much further than I expected. I simply haven't had free time to do much other than sleep for a few hours.

More importantly, my computer's display is busted. I can't see what I'm doing, and the poll data is there. So until my computer is fixed and returned to me (probably about a week), you'll all just have to wait with baited breath.

In the meantime, why don't you guys decide which decade you want to poll next?

I'm still pushing for any decade between 1930-1960.

Reiner fans, on the other hand, I dunno.

So, let's do this. Next time a poll is pitched, why don't we lay some ground rules about what is and isn't tolerable conversation. Unless the first rule is...

"1. No Eric allowed"

... I think we could all get stand to get past the fragile ego act.

Tone it down and I'll do likewise.

And I'd like a list of all the ILX posters I've abused *personally* so I can offer up apologies. Except for you, blount. I'm still pretty pleased with abusing you.

Gross mischaracterization of ILF.

ilf, that reservoir of three response threads

Not a gross mischaracterization of ILF.

Direct me to the thread where I said those two words in direct quotes. Because I didn't. And I wouldn't. And I won't.

are you calum now professing "i've been good lately, really"

You continue to ignore the multitude of benign, friendly posts I've made on any other threads on ILX. I've apologized time and time again on this thread for my behavior on this thread. It's undoubtedly not my concern if no one forgave me.

Sayonara, blount.

Sayonara, ILE film poll threads.

I just think there are a few people here who are cunts. I find your attitude loathsome, and think it's a slightly more civilised version of troll behaviour. It's why I abandoned going to ILF. I don't want to hang out with people desperate to convince themselves they are better than most everyone else.

so anyway, poll results?

Wings of Desire (130 points, 7 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005JKI7.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Wings of Desire: you gotta love any film where Falk and Nick Cave are the only ppl who speak English.

-- Dr Morbius

WoD introduced me to most of my favorite music, Nick Cave, Tuxedomoon, Crime and The CS.

-- Baaderonixxxorzh

I love Wings of Desire as well, although I hate the Meg Ryan remake which was just a pile of poo.

-- Nicole

I just watched Wings of Desire again - naturally it made me want to go to Berlin again, and soon. But first, Norway beckons.

-- Tag

Enjoying that cup of hot coffee, like Damiel in "Wings of Desire". Once you've found what your own cup of coffee is, you've got it, babe, the meaning of life. Of your life, at least.

-- Simon

Actually, if I have to pick a great filmmaker with drama, I adore Wim Wenders, myself. His Wings of Desire twisted the guardian angel myth into something thoughtful. Same for The American Friend. Where I'd thought the gumshoe detective schtick was already done to death, his use of b/w and various underlying issues made it interesting.

-- Nichole Graham

there are so many beautiful scenes in wings of desire that they excuse bad endings, random nick cave performances, and whatever else. the fly-over shots of berlin, the slow, tracking shots through the library - these are some of the prettiest scenes in any movie i've seen. it's not my favorite wenders film, but it's really worth seeing on the big screen.

-- a spectator bird

and it should have been ranked better.

Evil Dead 2 (130 points, 8 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305841861.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Watch Bruce Campbell get seven shades of shite pummelled out of him in the bug-eyed horror romp.

-- Mike B

Yeah, I think the typical consensus is (and I agree) that Evil Dead 2 is the real masterpiece in the series. It's probably the movie I've seen most in my life, although I haven't seen it for a couple years. In high school we used to watch it at least once a weekend. Sad. But... but it's so perfect!

-- Dan I.

Evil Dead 2 = best film ever, obv.

-- DG

the smashing plates thing in Evil Dead 2 is knock-dead brilliant physical comedy.

-- Sterling Clover

Ran (135 points, 5 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00008973Q.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The self-consciousness of an aging director reframing Lear would undo weaker directors, but Kurosawa just charges straight in. It's a big movie, epic, but full of -- and driven by -- carefully observed intimate relationships. Some of the greatest, most punishing battle scenes ever filmed, I think. And the lord's flight across the stormy fields with the fool is just one of those indelible images. There are plenty of great directors more intellectual than Kurosawa, but not many more open to gusty, embarrassing human emotion.

-- gypsy mothra

But IIRC in Ran, the acting on almost all fronts is more stylistically western, yes? I'm thinking in particular of Lady Kaede (best char ev), a tremendously potent character by virtue of being reserved. Of course, that's a 30-some year gap in b/w Ran and Rashomon, so does changing style wipe away this observation?

-- Leee

It really made me feel that I don't understand film at all - I mean, I know how to write about it as "Shakespeare" for whatever that's worth, but as film it baffles and amazes me, I need to watch more of these things.

-- Gravel Puzzleworth

For all the emphasis on battle scenes/visuals in reviews, it's the one-on-one scenes, eg Kyoami and Hidetora, Kurogane and Kaede, Kaede and Jiro, which make the film. I've only seen a couple of other Kurosawas but I think this is his forte...the tension, ambiguity of emotion in human relationships, summed up at the end of Ran "the gods cannot help men, men like to kill eachother, they prefer sorrow to joy"

(substitute emotionally torture for kill in many examples and you have Kurosawa's mesage, perhaps).

-- Masked Gazza

Eric and I have hardly been giving reacharounds here, but unlike j blount we could probably find our own dicks in the dark.

The results are posted one per post bc I wanted to emulate Gear's format from ILM.

Onwards, then!

After Hours (136 points, 7 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000286RNE.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Marty, you need really need to have FUN more often.

-- D. Keebler

It's all about "After Hours", people....

-- Alex in NYC

i like this film better than "raging bull."

-- amateur!st

I have been known, when pissed, to insist that not only is this Scorsese's finest hour, but also the funniest film of all time.

-- noodle vague

Scorsese aside, also gotta give credit where it's due to the screenwrier Joseph Minion, not only for this but also his great "Vampire's Kiss", Nicolas Cage's finest hour-and-a-half. Two remarkably original scripts, both evoking a distinctly weird 1980s-Manhattan vibe. (At least, evocative for me personally - I've never been there, so I may not know what I'm talking about.)

-- Myonga Von Bontee

glad to know there are other people out there who are haunted/obsessed/overwhelmed by "After Hours". Puzzling and fantastically labyrinthine. When i saw it, it was such an experience: one of the cornerstones of my totally fictious idea of America.

-- Marco Damiani

"Mohawk this guy!"

-- briania

Scarface (145 points, 8 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0000AMRJC.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

What movie better exemplifies the (rhetorical) coke-filled excess of an unfashionably foolish decade? Well look no further than this muscular, train wreck of excess. An excessive sprawling movie about sprawling excess no less. An all-consuming bacchanal orgy built on the [American] dream of bacchanal consumption. You know, this movie might well be a play upon itself. I think that’s why I love it so much. It really is hilarious. I love that G-stars and chavers the world over think its hard and clever to quote the movie wherever possible, without noting that in fact, the film deliciously undermines their gold chains, wannabe criminal aspirations and bad taste in clothes. I find it gloriously tragic that Tony Montana, a man so brazenly thick he is able to say “I always tell the truth, even when I lie” with a straight face, has become a poster boy for pissed off teenies and posturing rock and rap stars. I love that Al Pacino gets to deliver some of the funniest, double edged lines in movie history: “Is this it? That's what it's all about, Manny? Eating, drinking, fucking, sucking? Snorting? Then what? You're 50. You got a bag for a belly. You got tits, you need a bra. They got hair on them. You got a liver, they got spots on it, and you're eating this fuckin' shit, looking like these rich fucking mummies in here...” Pacino could be talking about the movie he himself is the ‘star’ of here and the trajectory his life could have subsequently followed.

Maybe Elvira says it best: “Nothing exceeds like excess. You should know that, Tony.” I think Scarface is built around that tautological premise and in building a Cathedral on top of that idea, De Palma brilliantly exposes the ultimately destructive vacuity of consumption, capitalism, and the so called American Dream.

-- Five Eight

As for Scarface, perhaps his wildest, most OTT performance, its pure comedy, is it not? Tony Montana is a caricature and Pacino treats him as a joke...

-- David Nolan

Pure bloody brilliance. Simple as that.

-- Anthony

CLASSIC. CLASSIC! CLASSIC!! Did I mention that Scarface was CLASSIC!?!?!? Yeah, it is a bit on the stupid side (lessee, how many bullets does it take to kill a coked-up Al Pacino?) But Scarface has some of the most gleefully obscene dialogue of any film, so many classic lines ("Come say hello to my li'l friend!" "Look at you now!" "This town is like a great big pussy, it's jus' waitin' to get FOCKED!" "I'm not gon' kill you. Manny, choot that piece o' CHIT!") Scarface became to me and my college friends what Rocky Horror was to others -- memorized the lines and acted out the characters (you can tell that certain college students had WAY too much time on their hands freshman year). "All I got in this world is my balls an' my word, and I don't break 'em for no-one" is one of my slogans in this here world.

-- Tadeusz Suchodolski

Oh PUL LEEZ. Classic all the coke-snorting way. In many ways it resembled the Godfather: it was also about the American dream.

-- nathalie

Aliens (147 points, 9 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00012FXAE.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

James Cameron can be clumsy sometimes; I think some of his talents were lost when his budgets got huge, and he can't control his mise en scene too much. But there's a basic enthusiasm for storytelling that I can admire. I'd like to say he's at the mercy of his scripts but...doesn't he always write his own scripts? Aliens was a really satisfying and fairly clever mixed-genre movie. Titanic is one of those movies that defies criticism I guess.

-- amateurist

it's one of the best-directed action movies i've ever seen, it's scary, it's working the awesome alien aesthetic, i think bill paxton is great, and the music is terrific!

-- s1ocki

that maternal subtext is HUGE and significantly complicates the subtext of the first (ripley defending her womanhood against the asexual rapaciousness of the alien and the asexual murderous logic of the android)
the sexual subtexts are easily the best thing about the alien movies - why else have giger design the shit? - hell, and scifi and horror movies in general, too, as opposed to scifi and horror novels - and the 2nd movie expands on those subtexts in a way that "alien: resurrection" just don't (now there's a shit movie).

-- vahid

S: the theatrical cut
D: *only* being able to have the extended cut on DVD for a long time, but that's thankfully now corrected

Alien and Aliens are different takes on standard tropes that were successful precisely Scott and crew on the one hand and Cameron and crew on the other were able to hotwire them into something which was so ridiculously successful -- commercially and in terms of effective filmmaking -- that each in their own single-handedly established a slew of new cliches. Which may seem a strange thing to credit them for, but *how* many films since then have essentially tried to be one or the other, borrowing set pieces, concepts, dialogue practically and more? And none are nearly as good as these two.

-- Ned Raggett

Sorry Tom, the design in Aliens rings very true for me and it's actually one of my favorite ever sci-fi visions. I have absolutely no problem with it at all, especially since it was coming from 1986 (you are a bit younger than I am and maybe this is an interesting example of sci-fi expectation). I really like how most of the stuff was just a slight update on current technology. This served the story well as it means we could identify with the Space Marines (and be reminded of Vietnam etc) and with the rest of the technology. I happen to firmly believe that the future will not look very different from the one presented in Aliens (although it will probably be tackier). The same goes for Alien (except for the 'mother' computer room which is terrible now).

-- Spencer Chow

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (152 points, 9 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00029RTCG.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Yesterday I watched the bonus documentary. Nick Cage! Anthony Edwards! I didn't even realize! This is one of my FAVOURITE films evah.

-- Posting in Stereo

What the hell happened to the ticket dude? He was GREAT in that flick, and then, poof.

Oh, Phoebe.

-- David Raposa

Sean Penn's best role evah

-- Aaron W

Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Jason Leigh naked? Sean Penn before he got serious? The hands-down winner!

-- nick

Brazil (163 points, 8 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0780022181.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

Raging Bull (169 points, 8 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00062IVKS.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Its hilarious ("Did you fuck my wife?"). Its terrifying("Did you fuck my wife?") . Its sad (etc).

The boxing scenes - while bearing little resemblance to the actual sport - are extraordinary. And after a while they offer relief from the psychological and emotional violence of LaMotta's home life. Christ, thinking about it makes me want to see it right now...

-- David N

My one caveat when I first saw it in early '81 was "Who gives a fuck about this asshole?" That still hasn't completely evaporated, but theredemption angle -- totally lost on me then -- registers now. Esp after seeing PT Anderson rip it off.

-- Dr Morbius

Again, I reiterate: do not watch Raging Bull in the week prior to watching more recent Scorcese.

-- Allyzay knows a little German

Back to the Future (172 points, 13 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00006AL1E.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The thing with Back to the Future is that rock 'n' roll was already invented and popularized at that point in time, so unless his parents were actually from, like, Manitoba or something, chances were they were familiar with the type of music Marty McFly played at the prom. That really pisses me off.

-- Ally

Let me make quite clear that I is obviously the best; fresh, teeming with ideas and relatively coherent. Call me a rockist, but to suggest that the others might approach it is just absurd.

-- N.

Full Metal Jacket (173 points, 9 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005ATQF.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Is there a strong underlying message to this film? Kubrick's work strikes me as eerily objective in it's dealings with human beings. (which some claim is poor character development - perhaps)
If there is a message in here, then it's strongly tied to Joker's desire to get himself into "the shit". Why would anyone want to do this? Especially when he has firsthand experience (as an army journalist) with people who've been in it, and are much worse off for it.

Certainly this is an anti-war film. The self-glorification of several main characters (ie, them all big-upping themselves for being so hardcore) is offset by either a) their untimely demise, or b) some really, really heavy emotional baggage. (And I'm thinking specifically of the North Vietnamese girl begging "Kill me," in one of the final scenes.)

Hrmm. This makes me want to watch the film again.

-- Andrew

I was obsessed with this film in high school (Apocalypse Now, too) but haven't watched it since I graduated. Suspect I am the only person on earth who prefers the second half to the first. It's still my favorite Kubrick film, after Lolita, and I think it avoids the pitfalls of some of his other work as well as those of most war films, but I'd have to see it again before I could get more specific.

-- Justyn Dillingham

The first part is, of course, largely about the dehumanizing aspect of the military. The second part is a little more problematic in terms of sussing out what Kubrick meant to impart, or at least it is for me. I am always struck by how almost all the dialogue among the soldiers (with the exception of Joker and Pyle) is sarcastic, ironic--it's especially noticeable once the action shifts to Vietnam. In some ways, this makes the whole thing play like a big sardonic joke, and I'm still undecided on whether that that helps its impact or hurts it. If Kubrick meant to show that such humor was being used by the men as an insulator, I'm not sure it was entirely successful. Certainly the soldiers never really crack. Although maybe that's the point--the process illustrated in the film's first section worked.
I'm also struck every time I see it by the way Kubrick uses increasingly silly, even pre-verbal rock tunes on the soundtrack ("Woolly Bully," "Surfin' Bird"), as if to underline the jabbering insanity of war.

-- Lee G

Full Metal Jacket is pretty damn great too, although I don't really think of it as a Vietnam film, but as a Kubrick war film.

-- PVC

But the one Kubrick film that I have loved more and more with each subsequent viewing is Full Metal Jacket. This is the one Kubrick film that received the most mixed critical response, some calling it one of the greatest war films ever made, others calling it a complete cinematic mess. This is Kubrick's most challenging film (in retrospect, even moreso than 2001), and I think the reason for this is that the film's storytelling technique relies less on the acting, dialogue, and usual narrative techniques and more on what we see. It's tough to get, but the way to really appreciate the film is to look not necessarily at what the shot is of, but what's going in the background and corners of the shot, what preceded and followed the shot, how it was shot, and how shots in the "first half" and "second half" of the film connect in the end.

If anything, I think this was Kubrick's greatest strength, the fact that he pushed beyond traditional narrative and strove to make film, a visual art, more visually oriented.

-- Anthony

It's not a "war film". Well ok, maybe it is to some extent, but it shouldn't be Balkanized that way.

-- gabbneb

Ghostbusters (183 points, 12 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000060K4O.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I remember that I was only allowed to rent one movie every Saturday at this local rental place in Milwaukee before there was any Blockbuster around. They had everything in VHS, Beta, and even some in SECAM. I rented Ghostbusters for something ridiculous like 13 weeks in a row - enough that the store bought a second VHS copy so that other people could check it out on weekends. You would've thought that my parents would have caught on and bought a copy after, what, five weeks?

And yeah, watching it again recently on DVD, I definitely missed most of the jokes.

-- Girolamo Savonarola

I think my very first favorite film must've been Ghostbusters, and then Beetlejuice... then Poltergeist and eventually Creepshow. Whatever order those four came in, they were basically my trifecta (the four became three because Ghostbusters was indeed the first one I loved and then the first one I got tired of eventually).

-- Eric H.

movies don't get much more charming, light and watchable than Ghostbusters.

-- Aaron A.

Ghostbusters is about a gang of chain smokers driving a ridiculous car, wearing ridiculous jumpsuits, and using ridiculous special effects to set a 300-foot marshmallow version of the Michelin Man on fire. There is no other movie like it.

-- TOMBOT

Everytime I'm in a room with a piano, I'm required to play that annoying two-note thing and say "They hate that."

-- NA

E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial (192 points, 10 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00003CX9Q.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The first movie I ever went to see in the cinema. I cried all the way home in the car....

-- Mike B

ow often does a film targeted to children reward the adult viewer just as much? Not very often, but this one did, which means the child who enjoyed this film the first go-'round will love this film for decades thereafter.

-- Dee

Its hilarious ("Did you fuck my wife?"). Its terrifying("Did you fuck my wife?") . Its sad (etc).

["E.T." is] bathed in warmth and it seems to clear all the bad thoughts out of your head. This fusion of science fiction and mythology is emotionally rounded and complete; it reminds you of the goofiest dreams you had as a kid, and rehabilitates them.--Pauline Kael

Ghostbusters has nothing going for it except Bill Murray making faces, which he did to better effect elsewhere. Oh, and the huge laugh a frightened fat black maid always gets.

Don't really understand the love for After Hours. Scorsese just doing a low-key low-budget minor laffer after the b.o. disaster of The King of Comedy (his greatest film).

Five Spielberg films worse than E.T.:

The Terminal
A.I.
Amistad
Saving Private Ryan (first twenty minutes are awesome, rest is patriotic drivel)
Jurassic Park II

I'm betting A World Apart and The Night of the Shooting Stars aren't making it here...

Also I was sure BTTF would make top 10.

Withnail and I (201 points, 6 votes, 3 first-place votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005JH9D.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The British Fear & Loathing

-- Mike B

hard to isolate a particular moment, but the scenes preceding their attempt to clean out the sink always send me into wheezing fits.

-- lauren

"GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN!"
I actually finally just saw Withnail the other week. Pretty damned funny. It was nice actually hearing all them Ride/Orbital sample bits in context.

Actually, one of the funniest moments in Withnail, for all the quote possibilities, is strictly visual -- near the end, when McGann's "I" character is slowly waking up in the back of his car, and he's all comfortable and everything's fine...and then it dawns on him that something is very very wrong. It's perfectly done.

-- Ned Raggett

No funny bits in Withnail? Shooting fish in the stream? The camberwell carrot? "Honestly officer, I've only had a few light ales" and the best bit of swearing ever, "Monty, you terrible cunt!"

-- stew s

i have no interest in discussing films with people who don't like Withnail.

-- electric sound of jim

Airplane! (209 points, 12 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004Y62W.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

julie hagerty blowing up otto the autopilot and then leslie nielsen walks in on them in airplane (scratch that, ALL the leslie nielsen scenes in that are totally classic:
"well, there was a choice: steak or fish."
"mmm, yes, i remember. i had the lasagna.")

-- joseph

Think I'm gonna have to go with Airplane. I've seen it many many times since I was 6 or 7 years old and, depending on my mood, there's still several parts I laugh out loud at.

-- oops

Repo Man (232 points, 10 votes, 2 first-place votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/6305971285.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Make of this what you will, but my earliest film memory is Repo Man’s opening scene.

-- D. Keebler

One of the great movies of all time. Over.rated.my.arse, DavidM are you that Scottish cunt that presents films on the BBC? ;)
Filled with so much classic lines. I watched Repo Man so many times with a friend that we know all the dialogue by heart and still use a lot in conversation. Say somebody drops a beer: "Somebody piss on the floor again."

toking on a joint: "What's in the car? Drugs? Hermanos Rodriguez don't do drugs."

"Get in the car white boy"

"Otto?!? Otto Parts?".

"Eh pappa es un gringo en la calle con su coche!"

and the of course the whole "John Wayne was a fag" thing.

-- Omar

"Repo Man" is one of my favourite films - esp. the censored TV version, where they say "Melon Farmer" - best film (poss. only good film) made by alex cox IMO. I may have to watch it again soon. The first time I saw it, BTW, me & a friend watched that & "Raising Arizona" in one sitting. Great evening!!!
x0x0

-- Norman Fay

YAWN* a boring Friday afternoon, so I'd thought go through my GRATE PILE OF VIDEOS I hadn't seen yet, and decided to give Repo Man a go. And...well...

It's bloody marvellous, that's what it is. I looked it up on the IMDB, and to add to the comments previously posted:
"The dubbed dialogue of the TV version (e.g. "melon farmer" as an insult) has achieved cult status in its own right." Intense.

-- DG

Where noise-boys and glam fans and punks hold hands and sing, this movie.

-- Ned Raggett

One of the reasons I like this (and to a lesser extent To Live and Die In L.A.) is that it's an unmistakebly "Los Angeles" film that manages to avoid Get Shorty-esque filming locations.

-- Gear! (can Jung shill it, Mu?)

I always loved and feared how the other repo men were so unpredictable. In any other movie they would have instantly become either the main character's buddies or enemies, and every action they'd take would be either helpful or antagonistic. But in RM people behave just like people (insane people, but still) do in real life; they're on their own side.

-- Dan I.

The King of Comedy (234 points, 12 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00006RCNV.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Not Scorsese’s masterpiece, but on the other hand, at least Marty demonstrated between this film and After Hours that he was much more adept in exploring what defined the 80s (fame, money, less than casual sex, manipulation, advertising) than most of his peers.

-- D. Keebler

eerily prescient

-- Mike B.

I was watching a bit of it again just now. I guess it's my favourite Scorcese film. It gets to the heart of things that are important to me. Especially good is the way the story plays out (Pupkin's routine being neither triumph nor disaster).

-- N.

classic, yeah. isn't Jerry Lewis just playing himself in this movie?

-- Justyn Dillingham

KoC (not to be mistaken with now defunct pub KoC) is Office-like in its squirming unbearableness sometimes. But as a film about celebrity stalking and about the appeal and difficulty of comedy (note Scorcese has never really made a comedy) its both spot on and ahead of its time.

-- Pete

"Maaaaa, please!"
"I can't believe I'm going to kiss you now."

-- Sean

This Is Spinal Tap (234 points, 13 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1559408758.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

Hilarious. And based on Saxon’s tour of America. Hello Mr Dibergi.

-- Five Eight

makes some clever points about epistemology and the nature (that it is always a lie) of the documentary form.

-- Skottie

The Stonehenge scene in Spinal Tap made me laugh real hard the first few times seeing it, and it still makes me chuckle.

-- latebloomer

I'd like to think that VH1's documentaries will help others understand the glory that is This Is Spinal Tap.

-- Anthony Miccio

Spinal Tap is on tv tonight, so some goodies:
Guest cleaning some fluff off his guitar mid-solo as it sustains the note

the zombies-style drummer in their 'Gimme some money' performance

"the druids..no-one knows who they were...or what they were doing..."

Saucy Jack

Artie Fufkin

sandwich-folding

Guest working in a shoe-shop

-- pete s

The Spinal Tap in-character-commentary is hysterical. Actually, the whole DVD package is fab, you get practically enough good extra footage to make an entire other film.

-- Ricardo

Spinal Tap, in particular, is one bitchy little film. We'll call it the pierced nephew of All About Eve.

-- Eric H.

Sandra Bernhard's only approached that level again in parts of her solo shows.

What's amazing in my repeat viewings is that Pupkin's act is no worse than some pro stand-ups.

The script was by a Newsweek film critic. (and Scorsese subsequently worked with Jay Cocks, a onetime Time critic)

But think about it: Both movies throw the plot out the window in their last third. Both are an anti-hero's journey.

Maybe Repo Man is closer to Grease. Any movie that ends with a car flying off into the sky is classic. And greatest opening theme/sequence since Goldfinger.

The Empire Strikes Back (238 points, 12 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0006VIXGQ.01-A3INEY9W97IL96.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The only Star Wars film the world really needs. Oh, except for the original. Wouldn’t make much sense without that huh. Anyway, if only Lucas realised what it was that made this movie the fan’s favourite, the look, the feel, the tone – we wouldn’t have had to sit through the merchandising advert that was Jedi, then watch powerlessly as the man single-handedly sabotaged his own legacy with Episodes I and II, not to mention suffer the futile anticipation for what is certain to be the forthcoming colossal disappointment of Episode III. La la la, we’ve all heard it all before – this is the ‘dark’ one etc etc. But it’s a great story, well told, great to look at still, and it features THE best trad bad guy in movie history, the one and only Lord Vader, a man who risks his entire fleet of star destroyers for the sake of one poxy ship and doesn’t flinch when one of them blows up even while he’s talking to its commander. A man who murders his leading Admiral for bringing the fleet out of lightspeed too close to the Hoth system, because he felt surprise… uhrggghhh… A man whose favoured method of graciously accepting an apology is to asphyxiate. And he comes out on top (if you don’t count the fact that he believes he’s murdered his own son). How often does that happen?

-- Five Eight

due to having it on vhs i'm sure i saw 10 times as much as any other movie before i was 14 or so. actually, that ratio is probably still intact.

-- andrew s

The heart of Star Wars is still "Empire Strikes Back." I'd watch that again right now. I'm not made of stone.

-- slightly more subdued

The new Star Wars are more or less 4-wave nostalgia for me by now cos of all the repackaging, so my childhood is not being stolen at all. I'm old enough to know how marketing works, so it doesn't really phase me. I can still look back to that time when I was 7 or so and mom was making lentil soup while I begged her to let me watch Empire on tv during dinner. It was raining outside and I still hadn't gotten into videogames yet nor He-Man toys, so this was my entire world.

Watching THX and American Graffiti, it seems to me that Lucas isn't all that bad a director, in fact he has the opportunity to be an awesome one, but I think he waited far too long to make the new ones.

One of the main problems with the new ones (besides the obvious acting and writing) is that nothing is given any room to breathe; we see a really complicated landscape filled with new creatures and vehicles and all that, but it wizzes by faster than a toy commercial.

My favorite scenes from the originals (and they are the scenes that will always impress me and spark my imagination) were not shots of spaceships flying busily and all that, they were the artsy bits. Luke standing outside his house in the desert with the twinkling lights from robots around him, looking at the distant twin suns, the shot saturated with purples and oranges and dark browns. When William's majestic score swoops in i think "holy shit, farm boys with robots wanting to be magic knights in outer space" and its just so damn cool to think about.

Another scene I always liked was when Luke and Yoda say their goodbyes in Empire, Obi-Wan as a wizened glowing blue ghost in an alien swamp talking to a wizard that is so old his ears are wider than his head is tall. He mysteriously says "no...there is another" as the ship takes off and we see him light up from blue to red while looking up at the sky. I don't know, maybe it was all this sense of wonder; I think it was something the characters experienced at the same time the audience did and this is why it meant so much to alot of people. The CGI in the new ones is so busy and backdropy, it's like the characters take this universe for granted, and naturally so do we.

I was watching Empire today and had to go to work so i only caught the first half-hour, but i totally loved it and it just makes the new films seem so much worse. Han Solo is hilarious and i had forgotten how handy the references to malfunctioning equipment were - the Falcon was screwing up all the time, making plenty of room for Han and Chewie to do comedy routines about trying to fix it. There's a lot of this in the original series (ie. R2 falling over, etc.) and not only does it add some humor, it makes the world actually seem relatable. I always thought "geez, even in Star Wars shit doesn't work right". Seems just like home.

-- Adam Bruneau

Blade Runner (256 points, 10 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0790729628.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

For me, Blade Runner is the most important and accomplished film of the decade. Not that I’ve seen over half the films on the nominations list mind, but oh my God what a piece of work this film is. Seductively beautiful to look at, richly layered in gravitas, loosely based on a brilliant book by a brilliant author, stunning in its accomplishments, wildly imaginative, fluidly and unselfconsciously inventive, decadent, flawed, and like the films I love best, absolutely rooted in dirty humanity and thereby subtly confronting the conditions of being human.

Some of the dialogue in this film contains lines that wouldn’t be out of place in a book of Nietzschean aphorisms: “Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave,” “if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes” I mean this stuff, taken against the context of the melodrama, chimes right the way through literary and philosophical history. This is a film that stands up to hard critical analysis and throws up more interesting questions than it answers – in my eyes, the mark of a true classic. Yet throughout the film, you never get the feeling you’re being asked turgid fundamental questions or are expected to engage with weighty subtexts. They are there if you want to look, but otherwise, just enjoy the stunning trip into Scott’s dystopian imagination. What the fuck will we do if our world ever ends up looking and feeling like that? Who knows. Whatever. But this is a beautifully executed story that manages to investigate what it means to be human, what it is that might make us ‘human’, without ever being boring or pretentious.

As for the characters Scott runs in front of the lens, well, we get treated to some absolute classics: Decker, Leon, Tyrell, Rachel, Gaff, each of the players brings some quality that helps the film sparkle, but top of the goddamn Christmas tree is Roy. I think Rutger Hauer’s creation in this film is my all time favourite anti-hero, the guy is just fucking unbelievable, off the fucking head. He’s like some post-cyborg vision of brutal Aryan perfection, bubbling with psychotic rage though tempered with childlike sensitivities, a way out sense of humour and beautiful grasp of pathos, and ultimately, he proves to truly possess the grace and empathy of the philosopher. His performance rips of the screen and straight into my brain – the celebrated end sequence in the rain, with the short monologue and the dove – fuck me, to see that kind of thing plausibly visualised with a straight face, it’s pretty fucking special. Prior to that iconoclastic moment, Roy’s slow descent into trauma as his time ebbs away and his explosive anger at his fate, a prescribed fate that neither his advanced cognisance nor iron will nor perfect physique can evade, reaches a
terrifying apex with the murdering of his surrogate ‘father’ (a positively Shakespearean turn; Hamlet, parallels anyone?) and the hunting down of Decker, the man responsible for the deaths of his closest friends, his ‘family’ even. When Roy stalks Decker through the empty building he is reduced to a howling wolf, set naked against the dark, yet even at the
moment of his righteous revenge, Roy transcends his fate, destiny and all expectation, choosing to save the life of the man (is he a man?) whose own studious choices and preoccupations are suddenly exposed not as morality and fortitude but as prejudices and even cowardice. “Ah, kinship” Roy whispers as he grasps Decker’s wrist one handed, leaving the ‘human’ dangling over the abyss. And I guess that’s what this movie is ultimately about.

-- Five Eight

I just saw Blade Runner a couple of months ago, and adored it. I'd recommend the director's cut. That's a movie I could watch repeatedly, and there aren't too many of those.

-- JuliaA

Please do yourself a favor and watch Blade Runner. It's great!! Then you'll finally understand where all those other movies that you have seen that aren't as good ripped everything off from.

-- scott seward

Ridley Scott will probably never surpass Blade Runner again.

-- Tuomas

When I 'did' film studies 'Blade Runner' was the standard 'postmodern' film text, and I think a great deal of its (critical) popularity stems from the fact that you can read into/onto it any old wiffle you like abt pastiche, blankness, simulation and simulacra etc. But of course PKD got there first, and did it sooo much better.

-- Andrew L

Raiders of the Lost Ark (270 points, 12 votes, 1 first-place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0792157648.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Ah, it’s always gonna be a classic when you got the Nazi’s on board. Especially that chap with the wee round specs who gets the medallion pattern branded on to his palm. Great fun, all the way through.

-- Five Eight

It's got not a lick of sense, indulges in lazy racism and upped the Star Wars ante of movies as amusement-park rides. But as rides go, it's a doozy. It marked Harrison Ford's full emergence as Movie Star in a quasi-classic vein, but its secret weapon is Karen Allen. The sequels are both terrible, and her absence is at least part of the reason. I like Spielberg's fake movies more than his "real" movies, and this is his best fake movie. I think it's the last time he really let himself have fun.

-- gypsy mothra

Raiders of the Lost Ark was always my favorite Spielberg film, because of the more haunting qualities that hinted at, well, God being displeased with his gold box being fucked with. I'm not talking about the Nazi meltdown, just some other touches here and there throughout the film.

-- Gear!

Also, upon watching the Raiders DVD for the first time, it struck me that Lucas really DID owe much of his career to the talents of Ben Burtt. the sound design of the Raiders flick is one of its best aspects: Indy's .357 booming like a huge-ass cannon, the breathing effect when they finally crack open the vault holding the Ark, the God-spirit-lightning of the ending with the Nazi gear frying, the meaty punch of indy getting slugged in the stomach, the distant howl of Indy getting smacked inna chin with a mirror

also, i think Raiders began the habit of Harrison Ford getting the total shite kicked out of him onscreen for the next 20 years, even with them changing the ending to Clear & Present Danger so he could get his ass whupped in person instead of just gunning folks down from a chopper.

-- kingfish van vlasic pickles

Karen Allen is great in Raiders!! so much better than Mrs. Spielberg in the second. Every time I see Temple of Doom I wish someone would shoot her.

-- Shakey Mo Collier

Raiders of the Lost Ark is sincerely like one of the best movies that has ever been made.

-- Ally

That said, seeing it again was both a kick for realizing how much I had forgotten in the films -- I didn't even immediately remember the plane fight sequence until it actually started! -- and just a touch disappointing. More than once I was thinking about how some of the action scenes really could be better (like for instance when Indy and Marion get into the fight in the Cairo streets -- I was noticing how Karen Allen had been directed to apparently only slightly pound a bad guy on the head in the side of the shot, where these days I'd be expecting a little more in the way of Michelle Yeoh style asskicking). Also, John Williams' gift and limitations as a composer were pretty obvious; aside from the Raiders march and the Ark theme nearly everything musically just made me think of Star Wars.

Minor complaints, though, it's still a romp and a half, nothing about the film feels wasted, it uses economy to excellent effect, and even more successfully really pulls off suspension of disbelief well (when I first saw it in 1981 I wouldn't have known that the idea of 1936 Nazis having an openly armed force in British-controlled Egypt or a secret base on a Greek island was utterly ridiculous, but even though I do know it's not a worry because that's what Nazis do in the popular mind, have openly armed strike forces everywhere and plenty of secret bases).

Fun geek revelations -- the midget servant (who up until last night I just thought was meant to be a kid) who brings the poisoned dates to Indy and Sallah while they're waiting for the translation of the amulet is played by Kiran Shah, who was Elijah Wood's stand-in in Lord of the Rings which of course also starred John Rhys-Davies who played Sallah etc. Also, the guide who helps Indy into the temple at the start of film ("Throw me the idol, I give you the whip!" etc.) is Alfred Molina! As soon as I saw him on-screen I thought 'wait a minute...' and then his name popped up in the opening credits a couple of seconds later.

Oh and for all that they've changed the name on the packaging (to Indiana Jones and the Raiders etc.) the actual title of the film remained the same in the opening credits. Good thing too.

-- Ned Raggett

http://www.dvdzap.ca/dvd-imgs/3871d0/mac-and-me-pochette-avant.jpg

Do the Right Thing (277 points, 11 votes, 3 first-place votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004XQMV.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

It's hard to remember now how incendiary this felt at the time. Spike Lee's liveliest, most colorful, most electric movie. It simmers on screen. And Danny Aiello confounds any attempt (including Spike's) to unmuddy the waters. Plus, of course, it has "Fight the Power."

-- gypsy mothra

his tremendous skills and his glaring weakness are generally all tied up in the same knot i think — he is good at really unexpected things which he then completely distracts you from by some shouty bit of business (that said, rosie perez shouting in do the right thing is just some of the funniest, sexiest acting in cinema)

-- mark s

i watched do the right thing about six months ago because nancy had never seen it and i must say it holds up remarkably better than i expected it to from the last time i saw it as a freshman film student.

-- mohammed abba

Spike vs. Spielberg is a tough call for me, Lee's such a sloppy filmmaker. He's almost the antithesis of Spielberg - the pedantry without the style. He really only has one great, perfect film and that's "Do the Right Thing". There's good stuff scattered in his other movies (I haven't seen 25th Hour) but by and large its one trainwreck after another... Girl 6, Get on the Bus, Bamboozled, Summer of Sam, etc. Has there ever been a Spike Lee movie that *doesn't* end with someone getting murdered...?

-- Shakey Mo Collier

just this past Sunday I was randomly flipping channels, and I found Do The Right Thing somewhere, about a third of the way into it. I decided to watch because I hadn't seen the thing in ... heck, maybe a decade. It totally made me weep. I'm not really even sure why. I didn't cry when I first saw it as a 17 year old in 1989, even though I knew it was of the most intense things I'd ever witnessed. I'm not prone to crying at all. I guess I never joined in on those crying threads that were active recently, but honestly I can count the number of times I've cried in my adult life on one hand.

-- Mr. Diamond

Blue Velvet (409 points, 15 votes, 4 first-place votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000063JDE.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

It's an obvious choice, but it's obvious for a reason. Blue Velvet (made by a Reagan fan, don't forget) is all the bullshit of '80s Americana, not just exposed (that's easy) but celebrated. Wallowed in. Lynch wants it both ways, the robins AND the beetles, Laura Dern's simpering blondie by day AND Isabella's fuck-me-hit-me brunette by night. And it lets its hero have both. It is a stupendously fucked-up movie, hypocritical and callow, like a Disneyland S&M weekend tour package. And like America, its hypocrisy is what makes it work. It's what makes it honest. I like to imagine Frank Capra emerging from a screening of Blue Velvet, horrified and blinking into the Hollywood sun, and Lynch hollering in his ear, "It's great, isn't it? Just like one of yours!" (Also, on a technical level, the colors and sound and blah blah blah, Lynch is a genius but you already knew that.)

-- gypsy mothra

This film is all about one man. Frank. Indeed, what Hopper and Lynch achieve with this film is something rather spectacular. It is this: To bring to the screen the most utterly fucked up, distressingly disturbed, genuinely terrifying plane-crash of a mash-up man. Frank is unlike any screen character I can think of in that he operates beyond the more recognisable parameters and conventions of fucked up. For a start he’s alarmingly unpredictable, veering dangerously between pussy-cat mewling to screaming psychotic rage in the space of a few seconds. He’s loaded up with more weird idiosyncrasies than a troupe of necrophiliacs, and he’s not afraid of a spot of sudden sickening violence, which he administers with charismatic, almost charming, surreal enthusiasm. He’s an out of control missile, a cataclysm, and every time he lopes onto the screen you actually fear for what he might do. Hopper’s Frank is a fascinating view into the surely tortured imagination of his authors. And though he might be one of cinema’s greatest time-bombs, he is never less than convincing.

-- Five Eight