The Greatest Movie of all time

[Guest godthedog]

Un Chien Andalou is great, visually stimulating surrealism. Eraserhead is extremely dull, irritating surrealism IMO. Haven't seen anything else by Lynch though, so can't comment on him overall.

i'm cool with that. if you think lynch is just a weak filmmaker that's fine (cause in some areas he is rather weak), but to dismiss this whole class of movies for not making any literal sense is just ignorant.

[Guest Pop Culture God]

It's impossible to say one movie is the greatest of all time. Instead, take one genre or sub-genre at a time and decide the best representitive of it is.

 

CONCERT FILM: Stop Making Sense

WESTERN: Unforgiven

MAFIOSO: Godfather Part Two

GANGSTER: The Glass Key

CRIME: The Maltese Falcon

ROMANCE: Casablanca

PERIOD DRAMA: Gone With the Wind

MOD. TRAGEDY: Citizen Kane

HORROR: Dawn of the Dead

PSYCHO-HORROR: Silence of the Lambs

SCIENCE-FICTION: The Empire Strikes Back

ACTION: Die Hard

ADVENTURE: Raiders of the Lost Ark

SPY FILM: Goldfinger

EPIC: Ben-Hur

BIO-PIC: Patton

SPORTS: Raging Bull

COMIC-BOOK: Batman Returns

ANIMATED: The Lion King

BLACK COMEDY: Dr. Strangelove

KUNG-FU: The Chinese Connection

COP DRAMA: Magnum Force

WORLD WAR II: A Bridge Too Far

VIETNAM WAR: Full Metal Jacket

HORROR/COMEDY: Army of Darkness

GOTHIC HORROR: The Horror of Dracula

LEGAL DRAMA: Kramer v. Kramer

ROMANTIC COMEDY:

BLAXPLOITATION: Shaft

NEO-NOIR: Resevoir Dogs

FILM NOIR: The Third Man

CHILDREN'S: The Wizard of Oz

MUSICAL: Sound of Music (Fuck It)

SAMURAI: Yojimbo

FANTASY: Excalibur

 

 

More to come...

[Guest Retro Rob]

I didn't see these...

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Kingpin

Fight Club

[Guest Marshall]

That looked like fun. I think I'll try:

 

CONCERT FILM: The Original Kings of Comedy

WESTERN: True Grit

MAFIOSO: Goodfellas (I think)

GANGSTER: Carlito's Way

CRIME: ?

ROMANCE: You've Got Mail (sorry)

PERIOD DRAMA: Emma

MOD. TRAGEDY: Citizen Kane(yep)

HORROR: Blair Witch

PSYCHO-HORROR: Psycho (1960 version please, fuck Gus Van Sant)

SCIENCE-FICTION: Alien

ACTION: Predator

ADVENTURE: Romace in the Stone

SPY FILM: Fletch

EPIC: Apocalypse Now

BIO-PIC: Ed Wood

SPORTS: Slam Dunk Ernest (couldn't think of any sports movies, but this is pretty good. Ernest get magic shoes [sarcasm]comedy gold [/sarcasm]

COMIC-BOOK: Superman

ANIMATED: Iron Giant

BLACK COMEDY: Dr. Strangelove

KUNG-FU: Enter the Dragon

COP DRAMA: Lethal Weapon

WORLD WAR II: The Long and the Short and the Tall

VIETNAM WAR: Apocalypse Now

HORROR/COMEDY: Evil Dead II

GOTHIC HORROR: ?

LEGAL DRAMA: My Cousin Vinny

 

 

I was right, that was fun. Except for the two question marks.

[Guest Mark4steamboat]

the untouchables

Traffic

Gladiator

[Guest bps "The Truth" 21]

I'm too lazy to look...

 

Is Psycho on there?

[Guest Pop Culture God]

I didn't see these...

 

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Kingpin

Fight Club

I wasn't finished.

 

Don't hold your breath for Kingpin

[Guest Pop Culture God]

You've Got Mail? FUCK YOU dude. Let me say this once and for all. Everyone's allowed to have opinions, EXCEPT when they say Fucking YOU'VE GOT MAIL is Better than fucking CASABLANCA. I hope Bogart's corpse crawls out of it's grave and strangles you, stopping only to sign an autograph for me. What the holy fucking Hell is wrong with you? A fucking Meg Ryan picture over the GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME. FUCK FUCK YOU STUPID FUCK!

 

Oh and by the way Die Hard was waaay better than Predator which is Sci-Fi anyway.

[Guest godthedog]

CONCERT FILM: don't remember any off the top of my head

WESTERN: unforgiven

MAFIOSO: godfather

GANGSTER: okay, what the hell is the difference between a mafia movie, a gangster movie and a crime movie?

CRIME: bob le flambeur if i understand the categories correctly

ROMANCE: the graduate (muahaha)

PERIOD DRAMA: chimes at midnight

MOD. TRAGEDY: citizen kane, why not

HORROR: repulsion

PSYCHO-HORROR: halloween--psycho's overrated

SCIENCE-FICTION: 2001

ACTION: deliverance

ADVENTURE: again, what's the difference between action & adventure?

SPY FILM: notorious

EPIC: schindler's list

BIO-PIC: raging bull

SPORTS: raging bull

COMIC-BOOK: batman, i guess

ANIMATED: duck amuck

BLACK COMEDY: Dr. Strangelove

 

you left out comedy: the graduate

 

KUNG-FU: legend of drunken master

COP DRAMA: heat

WORLD WAR II: why do world war II and vietnam get separate categories? why can't it just be "war"? cause as it stands, the best war movie ever made (paths of glory) can't make it on the list

VIETNAM WAR: won't answer in protest

HORROR/COMEDY: way too specific

GOTHIC HORROR: don't know

LEGAL DRAMA: most movies in this category are just mediocre, leaving a huge hole where "best" should go

ROMANTIC COMEDY: the graduate

BLAXPLOITATION: no clue

NEO-NOIR: bob le flambeur

FILM NOIR: touch of evil (as much as it pains me to leave out the third man, the maltese falcon & the big sleep)

CHILDREN'S: mary poppins, beotch

MUSICAL: mary poppins, beotch

SAMURAI: that's a really specific category, but i'll go with ran

FANTASY: Excalibur

[Guest Pop Culture God]

Mafioso films involve specifically members oif the Italian Mafia. Gangster films usually involve racketeers of any race and is a sub-genre of Crime films.

 

 

So nyah

[Guest Pop Culture God]

Action and Adventure are simalra but Adventure is more like Indiana Jones while action is Arnold, Bruce, Stallone movies.

 

Get it. Got it. Good.

[Guest Marshall]

You've Got Mail? FUCK YOU dude. Let me say this once and for all. Everyone's allowed to have opinions, EXCEPT when they say Fucking YOU'VE GOT MAIL is Better than fucking CASABLANCA. I hope Bogart's corpse crawls out of it's grave and strangles you, stopping only to sign an autograph for me. What the holy fucking Hell is wrong with you? A fucking Meg Ryan picture over the GREATEST FILM OF ALL TIME. FUCK FUCK YOU STUPID FUCK!

 

Oh and by the way Die Hard was waaay better than Predator which is Sci-Fi anyway.

I never saw Casablanca and You've Got Mail was the first romance movie I thought of. In retrospect I should have said Chasing Amy or something. Oh well

[Guest Pop Culture God]

Comedy is WAY too specific.

 

Samurai is radically different then any other sub-genre.

 

Oh by the way The Graduate is SUPREMELY overrated.

 

Paths of Glory isn't as good as Full Metal Jacket.

 

Horror/Comedy isn't as specific as you might think. I can name a great deal of Horror Comedies: Scream 1,2,3, Evil Dead Trilogy, American Werewolf in London/Paris, Gremlins 1,2 Critters1-4 Child's Play1-4 etc.

[Guest WrestlingDeacon]

I'm very intrigued by Pop Culture God's post. In my thinking, a truly great film transcends boundaries. Despite what genre a script might put it in, a movie with the best of the best in direction, acting and technical specs will relate to a wide range of people outside of what a strictly genre defined pic would be. I also believe it is even harder to define what certain genres are and what movies fit into them, then just to pick movies that are truly great. Let's look at your list a bit shall we.

 

Concert Film: Nothing much to say here, I would just go with The Last Waltz.

 

Western: Unforgiven is probably the best example of a modern western, but to pick the best western ever I think you need to go with something from the peak of the genre. Such as The Searchers, High Noon, Stagecoach or even the beginnings of the modern western ideal with Leone's Fist Full of Dollars and The Good The Bad and the Ugly.

 

Mafioso/Gangster: I find it interesting that you would split these up. I see the Mafioso films as just being the evolution of the gangster films of the 30's and 40's. The mafioso is the modern gangster movie, much like I see differences in modern and golden age westerns. Oddly, I love the Pacino parts in II, but can live without the Dinero segments.

 

Period Drama: I find Gone with the Wind to be a quaint little time capsle of late 30's filmmaking, but not the most representative of the period drama genre. Recent films such as Glory have been much more historically accurate and more emotionally involving thant GwtW as far as the Civil War is concerned. I also think that movies like Ben-Hur, Spartacus and Lawrence of Arabia are funner movies to watch and in some ways much better. An idea to get your thoughts on, how do you define period drama? Technically anything not set in the current time frame can be a period drama. Boogie Nights, Ed Wood, the forthcoming Auto Focus, westerns, the above mentioned Godfather movies can all be considered period movies and rely heavily on the specific unit of time they are set.

 

How do you define psycho-horror? Are slasher flicks psycho horror?

 

Gothic Horror: Is this period horror or a movie that just has a gothic feel to it? In that case you are ignoring a lot of the classic Universal movies that the Hammer films like Horror of Dracula were playing off of, most notably the Bride of Frakenstein.

 

Cop drama: Do you differ from cop action and cop drama? While it's great to see props for Magnum Force, I think there are much better cop dramas such as Serpico and Touch of Evil. Even Eastwood's own Tightrope, which is really a diamond in the ruff picture, that has more solid psychological underpinnings and plays off of the Dirty Harry iconism.

 

Legal Drama: Nothing really again, my pick would just be the Verdict.

 

I would also like to hear how you define black comedy and epic and do you recognize that films can cross genres and sometimes have both feet firmly planted in two, sometimes three different genres.

[Guest godthedog]

Comedy is WAY too specific.

i think you meant to say general here.

 

Samurai is radically different then any other sub-genre.

but there's so comparatively few of them that it hardly matters. and all the great samurai movies i can think of can easily fit into other genres ('rashomon': art film, 'yojimbo': black comedy, 'seven samurai': epic, 'ran': epic or shakespeare, and they all count as period dramas).

 

Oh by the way The Graduate is SUPREMELY overrated.

right, and you can believe the hype with 'gone with the wind'.

 

Paths of Glory isn't as good as Full Metal Jacket.

full metal jacket is 2 short stories thrown together that have practically nothing to do with each other, and suffers from being lopsided, as the first story is TONS better than the second. it also has no cohesive theme other than the standard 'war is hell' stuff, which seemingly was just thrown in there as an excuse to show all the fights & the prostitution & such. and the characters aren't really likable.

 

Horror/Comedy isn't as specific as you might think. I can name a great deal of Horror Comedies: Scream 1,2,3, Evil Dead Trilogy, American Werewolf in London/Paris, Gremlins 1,2 Critters1-4 Child's Play1-4 etc.

point taken.

[Guest NaturalBornThriller4:20]

Under Siege( Hey, I was a Steven Seagal Mark)

Lethal Weapon

Rocky

 

FUCK TITANIC.

[Guest Youth N Asia]

Here's what I think we should do

 

...where the list was at 104, I think we should pick the final 24 out of there...that's where I last have it copied on my computer anyway...

 

SO, of the ones past 104 post the ones you feel most strongly about keeping on the list

 

And I did not add the movies where people did

 

Best COmedy:...

Best Action...

 

It's too much of a pain for a cut and paste job

 

Cool Hand Luke

Mallrats

Dawn of the Dead

The Godfather

Fletch

Memento

Ghostbusters

The Crow

Caddyshack

Transformers: The Movie

Lawrence of Arabia

Citizen Kane

The Godfather Part II

Se7en

Young Frankenstein

Clerks

The Shining

Searching For Bobby Fischer

Ed Wood

Jacob's Ladder

Taxi Driver

Scarface

A Bronx Tale

Boyz N The Hood

AKIRA

Fight Club

12 Monkeys

Star Wars: A New Hope

The Empire Strikes Back

Back to the Future

Goodfellas

Pulp Fiction

Jaws

American Beauty

The Truman Show

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Vertigo

The Searchers

Color of Money

North by Northwest

The Princess Bride

Grosse Pointe Blank

Evil Dead 2

Full Metal Jacket

Better Off Dead

Young Guns

Braveheart

Silence of the Lambs

The Terminator

Terminator 2

Scent of a Woman

Tombstone

Unforgiven

The Killer

Leon: the Professional

Falling Down

Get Shorty

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Airplane!

Spaceballs

Ferris Beuller's Day Off

Sixteen Candles

The Naked Gun

Schindler's List

Death Race 2000

Night of the Living Dead

Happy Gilmore

Army of Darkness

High Fidelity

Spiderman

A Clockwork Orange

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Heat

The Big Lebowski

Wet Hot American Summer

Reservoir Dogs

Moulin Rouge

Donnie Darko

The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Third Man

Gone With The Wind

Life Is Beautiful

Blade Runner

The Shawshank Redemption

The Usual Suspects

The Matrix

Three Colours Trilogy

Das Boot

Nosferatu (1922 version)

The Bicycle Thief

Nightmare on Elm Street

Halloween

Road to Perdition

True Romance

Superman

The Wizard of Oz

Say Anything

The Hustler

The Warriors

Die Hard

Saving Private Ryan

The Night of the Hunter

Alien

Aliens

 

--------------------------

104

--------------------------

 

Casablanca

Touch of Evil

Blazing Saddles

Almost Famous

Magnolia

Happiness

Hard Eight

Fargo

The Man Who Wasn't There

Boogie Nights

A Better Place

Amelie

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Princess Mononoke

Battle Royale

Seven Samurai

The Sweet Hereafter

Braveheart

the 400 blows

ran

jules and jim

chimes at midnight

un chien andalou

repulsion

deliverance

greed

rear window

the road warrior

ghost world

waking life

trainspotting

being john malkovich

the war room

lost highway

eraserhead

Training Day

The Sting

The Hunt for Red October

Rocky

Sleepaway Camp

Drive

Ski School

Van Wilder

Unbreakable

Chasing Amy

Speed

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The Quick and the Dead

Rudy

Hoosiers

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Kingpin

the untouchables

Traffic

Gladiator

Under Siege

Lethal Weapon

 

33 over

[Guest Smell the ratings!!!]

EDIT: Stop the presses! I'm retarded!

 

Magnolia is in fact on there. It's one of the post 100 that has to be kept. However, Requiem for a Dream is not, and that is so very wrong on so many levels.

 

Here are the extras to keep: Magnolia, Hard Eight, Fargo, Traffic, Nightmare before Christmas, Unbreakable, Malkovich, Rear Window.

 

If that's too many, you can take off some of the steaming piles from the original list. Happy Gilmore? Sixteen Candles? Spiderman? Who are you people?

[Guest NaturalBornThriller4:20]

Where the Hell did Van Wilder come from?

 

That's no where near being a Greatest Movie Of All Time Candidate.

 

Take that one off.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

How many movies are we looking for here? Is this going to be a poll, a tournament, or what?

 

Here's the ones I'd keep from the ones above 104.

 

Casablanca

Blazing Saddles

Fargo

Seven Samurai

Braveheart

rear window

trainspotting

being john malkovich

Rocky

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Traffic

 

There's a bunch from the main list that need to go, IMO, like:

 

Mallrats

Ghostbusters

The Crow

Transformers: The Movie

AKIRA

The Truman Show

Young Guns

Airplane!

Sixteen Candles

The Naked Gun

Death Race 2000

Happy Gilmore

Spiderman

Moulin Rouge

 

Seriously, are any of these movies something that could be considered the best ever, maybe AKIRA, if you like anime, but I fucking hate the shit, so I'm biased on that one.

[Guest Smell the ratings!!!]

hey now, Truman, Moulin Rouge, and Akira are all very good movies. Death Race 2000 is one of the all time great unintentional comedies. If Evil Dead stays, Death Race stays.

 

You'll get no argument on the others though. Who the hell said Young Guns, anyway?

[Guest imajackoff?]

Of the post 104 crowd, Id keep:

 

Casablanca

Fargo

Braveheart

Rear window

Rocky

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Untouchables

 

IMO, the most undeserving of being on the list is Happy Gilmore.

[Guest godthedog]

keep:

 

Casablanca

Touch of Evil

Magnolia

Fargo

Seven Samurai

the 400 blows

ran

jules and jim

un chien andalou

rear window

Rocky

Chasing Amy

Rudy

Hoosiers

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

[Guest WrestlingDeacon]

Here's some of what you dump from the whole list to make it respectable:

 

Mallrats

Fletch

Transformers: The Movie

Jacob's Ladder

AKIRA

Better Off Dead

Young Guns

Leon: the Professional

Falling Down

Get Shorty

Spaceballs

Happy Gilmore

High Fidelity

Spiderman

Moulin Rouge

Almost Famous

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Princess Mononoke

Sleepaway Camp

Drive

Ski School

Van Wilder

Unbreakable

Under Siege

Kingpin

 

of the over crowd, the most keepable are:

Casablanca

Touch of Evil

Blazing Saddles

Fargo

Boogie Nights

Seven Samurai

the 400 blows

ran

un chien andalou

The Sting

Rocky

Hoosiers

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Traffic

Gladiator

 

Think about it. Do you want to cut out best picture winners and nominees that are also universally fairly well regarded in favor of cult favorites picked by a select few?

[Guest NaturalBornThriller4:20]

Keep Under Siege!

[Guest C.H.U.D.]

Are Blade Runner, Heathers or Who Framed Roger Rabbit? on that list?

[Guest bps "The Truth" 21]

Dumping Jacob's Ladder is the dumbest idea I've ever heard...

 

and I've listened to Anglesault.

[Guest Vern Gagne]

Double Indemnity

Stalag 17

Some like it Hot

[Guest DawnBTVS]

Of the above over 104 I'd keep the following:

 

Casablanca

Almost Famous

Fargo

Amelie

Braveheart

Rocky

Speed

Rudy

Hoosiers

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The Untouchables

Traffic

Lethal Weapon

[Guest Crucifixio Jones]

Has this thread lost all of its credibility yet?

 

Did it ever have any?