A Personal Journey with The Gunslinger45 through the Movies: A Top 50+

[Mr Minio]

My watchlist consists of 850 titles right now. I remember the times when it was 'only' 300. I add films to watch like a maniac.

[Guaporense]

I love most movies I have watched here. Though I found a bit too premature to make a new top 50 after just 6-7 months (I guess). My top 100 did not change much over the past 8 months to allow any change (it's mainly because I have been working 60 hours a week and so unable to watch many movies since, I had a long period, from mid 2012 to mid 2013, when I had plenty of free time so I watched over 300 movies and my top 100 changed a lot, now I guess I would maybe add one of two movies in a new top 100 since).

[Nostromo87]

enjoy essentially everything i've seen here. there's quite a few i still need to see & are high up on my to-see list

Nostromo here is that list ya wanted.

1. Taxi Driver: rating_5 * perfect rating *
2. Blue Velvet: rating_4+
3. Red Dawn:
4. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: rating_4+
5. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb: rating_4_5
6. Apocalypse Now: rating_4_5
7. Seven Samurai: rating_4+
8. Clerks II:
9. The Avengers: rating_3_5
10. It’s a Wonderful Life: rating_4
11. Stalker:
12. The Boondock Saints:
13. Clerks:
14. Vice Squad:
15. Gran Torino:
16. Hobo with a Shotgun:
17. Rashomon:
18. Blazing Saddles:
19. The Producers:
20. Eraserhead:
21. Casablanca: rating_4_5+
22. Dirty Harry: rating_3_5+
23. Dawn of the Dead: rating_4
24. Jaws: rating_4
25. Goodfellas: rating_4_5+
26. The Dark Knight: rating_3_5++
27. A Fistful of Dollars: rating_3_5+
28. Team America: World Police:
29. Tokyo Story:
30. Terminator 2: Judgment Day: rating_5 * perfect rating *
31. The Wolf of Wall Street:
32. The Hunt for Red October: rating_3_5
33. The Road:
34. Book of Eli:
35. Ben-Hur: rating_3_5
36. Tropic Thunder: 3.5
37. Die Hard: rating_4
38. Night of the Living Dead: rating_4
39. The Road Warrior rating_3_5
40. Vertigo: rating_4_5
41. Serenity: rating_3+
42. The Ten Commandments:
43. Evil Dead II: rating_4+
44. The King of Comedy:
45. Mulholland Drive:
46. Empire Strikes Back: rating_4_5+
47. Raiders of the Lost Ark: rating_4_5+
48. Dogma:
49. Ikiru:
50. Sansho the Bailiff:


Honorable Mentions:

Art House/ Foreign

The Passion of Joan of Arc:
2001 A Space Odyssey:
M: rating_4
The Battle of Algiers:
Man Bites Dog: 1992
La Haine:


Fun with VHS

Superman:
Ghostbusters rating_3_5++
Back to the Future rating_4_5
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
The Land Before Time: rating_3_5
The Great Muppet Caper
King Kong vs Godzilla


Tales from Blockbuster Video

The Wolf Man rating_3_5+
Tremors
Bram Stoker’s Dracula:
Army of Darkness: rating_3_5+
Halloween : rating_5 * perfect rating *
The Exorcist: rating_5 * perfect rating *


Honorable mentions: The beginning aka Disney movies

Sleeping Beauty:
The Little Mermaid: rating_3_5
Beauty and the Beast: rating_3_5+
Aladdin: rating_4
The Princess and the Frog:
Frozen:


Exploitation and Cult Films

Death Wish:
The Rocky Horror Picture Show:
Coffy:
The Toxic Avenger:
Escape from New York: rating_3_5+
Pink Flamingos:

Let’s all Go Out to the Movies

LOTR Trilogy: how to rate the entire trilogy? well, rating_4_5 for Fellowship. it descends slightly from there rating_4 for the Two Towers, rating_3_5+ for Return of the King
Independence Day rating_3+
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl rating_4+
Drive Angry
Gravity rating_3_5+

there's a certain Kubrick film absent tho :P

[Guaporense]

By Country:

USA: 41
Japan: 5
Russia: 1
Canada: 1
Italy: 1
Australia: 1

From my top 50:

USA: 19
Japan: 18
Russia: 4
Italy: 4
Germany: 2
UK: 1
Sweden: 1
Denmark: 1

So far, France didn't make anything that cracked my top 50, I don't really get French cinema. The other countries are well represented though (Brazil didn't show up because my favorite Brazilian film is in the 50's on my top 200 ranking).

[Nostromo87]

it'd be false to say there aren't 'foreign' films that i like, yet honestly, even the foreign movies i enjoy most are crafted with an awareness of western culture... such as Seven Samurai, the Dollar Trilogy, etc.

there are plenty of good movies made outside of America, and plenty with great core messages. though not many outside of the US i've seen that have been made with quite the style of storytelling i enjoy, as far as the total package, that can top my list of favorites

maybe it's not quite as scholarly to say, but i still believe America has produced easily the most quality great movies compared to any other country, as far as i'm concerned

Japan has a lot of good ones too though, mainly from their Toho Studios days

[Sane]

maybe it's not quite as scholarly to say, but i still believe America has produced easily the most quality great movies compared to any other country, as far as i'm concerned


That would be true of most people I would imagine but it would generally come down to how many people actually watch. I used to watch 95% American movies so 95% of the great movies I saw were American.

Now I would say about 30% of the great movies I watch are American - which seems about right because when you take out the crappy horror movies and other stuff I watch, I probably watch about 30%-40% American movies.

There are many excellent directors putting together astounding catalog's of movies that many people would never have even heard of - Tetsuya Nakashima, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Weerasethakul, Lee Chang Dong, Majid Majidi, Shunji Iwai and so on.

[Sane]

Ph, BTW, nice list Gunslinger. Don't think I've seen anyone put as much effort and "love" into a list :)

[Nostromo87]

That would be true of most people I would imagine but it would generally come down to how many people actually watch. I used to watch 95% American movies so 95% of the great movies I saw were American.

Now I would say about 30% of the great movies I watch are American - which seems about right because when you take out the crappy horror movies and other stuff I watch, I probably watch about 30%-40% American movies.

There are many excellent directors putting together astounding catalog's of movies that many people would never have even heard of - Tetsuya Nakashima, Hou Hsiao Hsien, Weerasethakul, Lee Chang Dong, Majid Majidi, Shunji Iwai and so on.

i cannot deny this possibility compared to what said above, and it's quite possible i'm being ignorant

i do think the US has done very well in the medium of film tho, historically speaking

[Sane]

i cannot deny this possibility compared to what said above, and it's quite possible i'm being ignorant

i do think the US has done very well in the medium of film tho, historically speaking
That's true. I probably have more non-American films in my top 100 but that would be because there is about 50 years of American cinema where I have watched very little. Hopefully I'll fix that up when we do more decade countdowns :)

[Guaporense]

it'd be false to say there aren't 'foreign' films that i like, yet honestly, even the foreign movies i enjoy most are crafted with an awareness of western culture... such as Seven Samurai, the Dollar Trilogy, etc.

there are plenty of good movies made outside of America, and plenty with great core messages. though not many outside of the US i've seen that have been made with quite the style of storytelling i enjoy, as far as the total package, that can top my list of favorites

maybe it's not quite as scholarly to say, but i still believe America has produced easily the most quality great movies compared to any other country, as far as i'm concerned

Japan has a lot of good ones too though, mainly from their Toho Studios days

Statistically speaking, US and India have the largest film industries, so most great films made today are probably made in US and India. Japan's film industry declined after the 1950's and now most talent is in manga, anime and drama TV, their current live action film industry is very weak compared to the current US film industry.

I have so many Japanese films in my top 50 because of Miyazaki and his minions in Ghibli (also because of Kurosawa), removing the Ghibli stuff from my top 50 would remove 10 Japanese movies and open space for 8 US movies. So it's a bias in my top 50, my "unbiased" top 50 would have about 27 US movies instead of 19.

Americans also watch more movies than other countries: per capita ticket sales are higher in the US than in Europe, Brazil, China and Japan and so the market for movies is also larger, in other countries popular culture takes other shapes (in Japan currently, much more creative talent is in manga than in film). Also considering the higher per capita income of the US versus India, means that US films have better production values and it clearly shows compared to Indian films and other non-English language films. Contemporary Japanese and Chinese live action films also suffer from low budgets if compared to American films.

So overall, it's true that US is dominant in film, specially live action film (if you consider animation, though, the US is clearly far behind Japan: Japanese output is about 7-8 times larger: in 2006, Japanese cinemas screened 133 animated films, US cinemas screened about 18, I also find that Japanese animation is technically superior to US animation in the same way that US live action is technically superior to non-US live action, in terms of cinematography/special effects/etc). So I watch non-Hollywood stuff mostly for the stuff that the US doesn't actually make, such as slow paced art films such as Tarkovsky's (nothing in the English language is comparable to his films, Sane also cited some other art directors (which I find to be much weaker than Tarkovsky though)) and serious adult animation (which is only made in Japan in large quantities), but considering the stuff Hollywood specializes on they are clearly the dominant force and many if not most great movies in those fields come from the US.

[The Gunslinger45]

Ph, BTW, nice list Gunslinger. Don't think I've seen anyone put as much effort and "love" into a list :)

Why thank you. I am glad you noticed.

[Captain Spaulding]

After first stumbling across this forum, I spent quite some time browsing some of the 100-Favorite-Films lists that the members have accumulated. It was those lists that kept me coming back. It's one thing to post pictures from a movie or write a quick synopsis, but what I enjoy the most is when a person takes the time to explain why so-and-so movie is one of his or her favorites.

Watching movies is a very personal thing. What speaks to you isn't necessarily what speaks to me, and vice-versa. This list is proof of that. You identify with some of these films because of your religion, others because they represent a nostalgic memory, and some films just appeal to you because of your perverse sense of humor.

But it's because of lists like yours, Gunslinger, that I'm glad I discovered this forum and decided to become a member. Our tastes in film is very, very different, but I enjoyed reading your personal reasons for why you identify with these films. So I want to thank you for taking the time to assemble the list and expose that tiny bit of yourself that each of these films represent. Nice job.:highfive:

[The Gunslinger45]

After first stumbling across this forum, I spent quite some time browsing some of the 100-Favorite-Films lists that the members have accumulated. It was those lists that kept me coming back. It's one thing to post pictures from a movie or write a quick synopsis, but what I enjoy the most is when a person takes the time to explain why so-and-so movie is one of his or her favorites.

Watching movies is a very personal thing. What speaks to you isn't necessarily what speaks to me, and vice-versa. This list is proof of that. You identify with some of these films because of your religion, others because they represent a nostalgic memory, and some films just appeal to you because of your perverse sense of humor.

But it's because of lists like yours, Gunslinger, that I'm glad I discovered this forum and decided to become a member. Our tastes in film is very, very different, but I enjoyed reading your personal reasons for why you identify with these films. So I want to thank you for taking the time to assemble the list and expose that tiny bit of yourself that each of these films represent. Nice job.:highfive:

Glad you liked it. :) Welcome to the forums.

BTW JayDee, can ya hook me up with putting this with the rest of the top 50's / 100's please? :)

[Mr Minio]

Good God, where does Guap take these statistics from?

[donniedarko]

Great work with this, I really like the descriptions of watching these movies

[mark f]

Good God, where does Guap take these statistics from?
I think most of it comes from the Spike Jonze flick Being Guaporense.

[cricket]

Blue Velvet and Temple of Doom are awesome and I especially love Taxi Driver. I have to see Dr. Strangelove again; I was half asleep when I watched it a few months ago. I saw Red Dawn at the movies, but I don't remember it. I'd like to try it again. I just got The Avengers from the library about 20 minutes ago and will watch it tomorrow.

Great list bud!:up:

[The Gunslinger45]

Blue Velvet and Temple of Doom are awesome and I especially love Taxi Driver. I have to see Dr. Strangelove again; I was half asleep when I watched it a few months ago. I saw Red Dawn at the movies, but I don't remember it. I'd like to try it again. I just got The Avengers from the library about 20 minutes ago and will watch it tomorrow.

Great list bud!:up:

Thanks dude!

[donniedarko]

I think most of it comes from the Spike Jonze flick Being Guaporense.

Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense
Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense
Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense
Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense, Guaporense

[mark f]

Think fast, Guaporense! Bang!

[honeykid]

It's an excellent thread, GS. As others have already said, you've obviously put a lot of thought into it and spent a lot of time on it and it's all paid off. Congratulations. :)

The only think I would say is that, while Milius did write the USS Indianapolis speech, it's Shaw's rewritten version which appears in the film.

[The Gunslinger45]

It's an excellent thread, GS. As others have already said, you've obviously put a lot of thought into it and spent a lot of time on it and it's all paid off. Congratulations. :)

The only think I would say is that, while Milius did write the USS Indianapolis speech, it's Shaw's rewritten version which appears in the film.

Wasn't Shaw's rewritten speech mostly a shortened version of Milius' stuff?

[Guaporense]

Good God, where does Guap take these statistics from?

From the internet. Duh!

The 133 animated films screened in Japan in 2006 comes from a document from a Japanese association in the animation industry, the 18 movies figure for the US is roughly the average number of films that can be indicated to the best animation Oscar in a given year, both figures include foreign films (though in the case of Japan, the number of foreign films is probably less than 10, in the US, less than 5-6, yielding a domestic output of 125 in Japan compared to 12-13 in the US, according to wikipedia, France also produced 10 animated feature length films in 2010).

The per capita ticket sales I got from a blog post in a place I forgot, but it shows that the US, UK and Australia are much more into movies than in continental Europe and Japan, currently (4 tickets per person sold per year in US and Australia versus 2.5 in France and Germany and 1.5 in Japan). Which helps to explain the dominance of English speaking films: the English speaking countries are proportionally the largest markets as well, even though per capita ticket sales in the US now are way lower than they were in the 1950's.

[jiraffejustin]

Maybe provide links with your sources and they will give you less of a hard time about it.

[Swan]

We want a complete work cited in your posts.

[Guaporense]

Maybe provide links with your sources and they will give you less of a hard time about it.

As if I would remember the links from each individual source which I have assembled to write those posts.

[jiraffejustin]

Just a suggestion.

[edarsenal]

ah, the love for the movies and the passion they bring out of us ALWAYS makes for great review/list readings

ya done nailed it, gunslinger!! BRAVO
DAMN fine list, my friend!

[christine]

I've only just read all your list Gunslinger. Good work. Enjoyed reading your reviews. I always like reading reviews where the films mean something special to a person, most often those which we've seen as kids, so I liked reading about your childhood Disney favourites :)

[Gideon58]

Absolutely love The King of Comedy...my favorite De Niro performance and I have never enjoyed Jerry Lewis onscreen more.