Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

[Iroquois]

Watch this space.

[Iroquois]

#100. Police Story
(Jackie Chan, 1985)

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"That's enough!"

The last line of the film comes on the heels of a solid 90 minutes of carnage playing out on the streets of Hong Kong as the police go to war with one particularly tenacious Triad. The generic title betrays just how much of a relentless parade of cop-movie clichés the plot itself provides with its story involving a particularly uncooperative witness (Brigitte Lin) and the obnoxious detective (Jackie Chan) who is charged with protecting her. However, this is but a pretense on which the film can hang all manner of setpieces and silliness, especially when it comes to seeing Chan's arrogant buffoon of a protagonist constantly get himself into hot water (especially with Maggie Cheung as his long-suffering girlfriend, whose shabby treatment is the only real strike against the film). I already listed Shanghai Noon on a previous Top 100, and while that did show what Chan could do in the context of a high-concept parody of the Western genre, his Hollywood output still demonstrated only a fraction of the talent that he was showing off during his Hong Kong peak. While you can certainly debate whether or not this is his true masterpiece (his Drunken Master and Project A films are certainly worthy contenders), this is my current pick for the best of what the clown prince of Chinese cinema could pull off as he starts the film by hanging off a speeding bus with an umbrella and finishes by breaking an entire shopping mall's worth of glass panes.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Rockatansky]

The mall fight is in the shortlist for my favourite action sequence.


I'll be reading.

[Iroquois]

#99. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
(Liu Chia-Liang, 1978)

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"We have only thirty-five chambers. There is no thirty-six."
"I know that...but I want to create a new chamber."

When a Shaw Brothers film begins with that Warner-aping shield logo over that colourfully-backlit frosted glass while triumphant fanfare blares on the soundtrack, it's usually a sign that you're in for one of the more enjoyable pieces of work to come out of Hong Kong during the studio's heyday. This is especially true of one of the jewels in the studio's crown, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Much like the previous film on this countdown, the plot isn't of much consequence - a young student (Gordon Liu) becomes a Shaolin monk in an attempt to fight back against the Manchurian overlords who have oppressed his hometown - as it instead focuses on the many trials required to master the secret Shaolin art of kung fu. I'm not sure how often you get films where watching the protagonist develop their skills ultimately proves more exciting than actually seeing them deploy said skills against their sworn enemies. Such a thing is to be treasured, especially when it's the bullet-headed Liu enduring physical trials that are humourous without undercutting the overall seriousness of his mission or the remarkable and painstaking physical prowess required to accomplish them. That's before he even gets around to having any classically hyper-stylised fights with exaggerated sound effects (every movement makes a whoosh or clang or thwack) and a camera that moves in such perfectly-choreographed tandem with fighters' heavily-staged but nevertheless fascinating moves.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #97

[crumbsroom]

I'm not sure how often you get films where watching the protagonist develop their skills ultimately proves more exciting than actually seeing them deploy said skills against their sworn enemies.


For me, it's just this and Batman Begins.

[Iroquois]

#98. Yojimbo
(Akira Kurosawa, 1961)

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"I'll get paid for killing, and this town is full of people who deserve to die."

The plot of an individual who exists as a disdainful third party in the midst of a feud between two warring factions is such a classic plot that I've included it on previous countdowns through separate films - A Fistful of Dollars in 2005, Miller's Crossing in 2013 - and it makes enough sense to grant that courtesy to a third film, so why not the big one? Though the mercenary mentality of the eponymous wanderer prevents this from attaining quite the same richness and depth as many of Kurosawa's other classics, there's something to be said for him delivering so well on such a reliable setup. That reliability is matched by the legendary Toshiro Mifune making quite the meal of his role as the mysterious Sanjuro, once against showcasing his trademark intensity as he muses on how to turn this small-town turf war to his advantage or barks at anyone who tries to give him guff. A sturdy cast of supporting characters are there to either cynically observe or wantonly participate in the feud (Tatsuya Nakadai is an obvious plus as a revolver-wielding villain, but it's Eijiro Tono who perpetually steals scenes as the grouchy innkeeper) - however, it's Kurosawa himself who's able to stage one of his most action-oriented films in a way that seems just as built around inaction and guile, adding quite the edge to the moments where our roaming anti-hero takes his blades to those who are foolish enough to cross him.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[SpelingError]

Yojimbo is great.

[Iroquois]

#97. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(Nicholas Meyer, 1982)

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"He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up!"

I'll admit it, this film was a bad influence. A few too many of the Star Trek franchise's subsequent cinematic entries fell into the trap of giving their respective crews an antagonist who sought only vengeance against our spacefaring heroes (or, failing even that level of definition, a similar urge towards senseless carnage). And to what end? There's no way any of those attempts could have truly hoped to match Wrath of Khan, a Hail Mary intended to follow up the grandiose but inert The Motion Picture that actually served as a solid reckoning for the notably-aged crew - the cocky Kirk (William Shatner) is made to face the consequences of long-forgotten adventures as the psychotic superhuman Khan (Richard Montalban) re-emerges to engage him in a battle of wills that puts loved ones old and new at risk, to say nothing of the galaxy itself. Even with its more action-oriented plot, it is still able to conjure so much of what is enjoyable about Trek - fantastic ensemble cast sparring with each other, heady sci-fi concepts given colourful (if imperfect) visual renditions, and a true sense of the grandeur of outer space even though it does ultimately come down to the people with whom they (or is that we?) share it. That it manages to earn what could have been such a trite and terrible ending is reason enough to list it here.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Rockatansky]

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin is great, and is probably the one I'd pick if I had to introduce somebody to Shaw Brothers or the kung fu genre as a whole, although there are others I prefer slightly. If you ever have the opportunity to see it in a theatre, I would strongly recommend doing so (assuming you feel safe/comfortable). I used to be fairly indifferent between seeing a movie at home versus seeing it in a theatre, but experiencing a Shaw Brothers retrospective with a properly enthused crowd is something you can't replicate at home.


I rewatched Yojimbo last year when I was doing the Criterion Challenge on Letterboxd (which was supposed to be focused on new viewings, but I was feeling lazy and also wanted an excuse to watch the pile of Criterions I'd acquired over the years). As you argue, it's a a great entertainment (love the way Kurosawa will have the action ricochet across the edges of the frame as the hero dispatches any number of baddies). But this time around I tuned in more to the way Kurosawa critiques the way society conflates institutions and authority with morality, when the former is shown to be corrupt and worthy of derision while the latter is demonstrated by the supposedly disreputable hero acting against his own self interest. It's a "lighter" movie than some of Kurosawa's other masterpieces, but there's more depth than I'd initially given it credit for.


I owe Wrath of Khan a rewatch at some point. I only saw it in high school and preferred a few of the other TOS movies at the time. Mainly my reference point for it is how badly Star Trek Into Darkness handled similar material (and I say this being a fan of the 2009 movie).

[Iroquois]

I actually did get to attend a Hong Kong action retrospective many years ago - I can't exactly recall if I did manage to see The 36th Chamber of Shaolin on that run, but I imagine if I was going to the trouble of seeing comparative obscurities like The Prodigal Son or Full Contact then I surely must've made time for 36th Chamber (then again, you think I'd remember - too bad I didn't have Letterboxd or anything back then to keep track).

[Iroquois]

#96. Thief
(Michael Mann, 1981)

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"I wear $150 slacks, I wear silk shirts, I wear $800 suits, I wear a gold watch, I wear a perfect, D-flawless three carat ring. I change cars like other guys change their f*cking shoes. I'm a thief. I've been in prison, all right?"

There's a maxim I've seen attributed to Truffaut about how a director keeps making the same film over and over, presumably intended less as a disdainful accusation of repetition than observing an artist making variations on a theme. This kind of auteurist outlook definitely works well when it comes to Michael Mann, who's built a career on depicting various professionals and their struggles to balance the demands of their frequently dangerous occupations with their willingness to self-actualise as human beings - whether the answer is balance or entropy or synthesis, you're never quite getting the same result. The Mann urtext that boils this thesis down to its core components is his theatrical debut Thief and its tale of Frank (James Caan), a no-nonsense safe-cracker who eventually elects to take down one final score that'll set him up for the life he's been dreaming of. A well-worn set-up, of course, but Mann infuses the proceedings with a sense of tactical precision befitting its criminal protagonist and colours in the background with icy neo-noir textures (wet streets reflecting harsh teal streetlights, nighthawk locations where both jargon-filled shop talk and blunt romance can unfold, a suitably paranoid Tangerine Dream score that was somehow nominated for a Razzie). Mann would obviously go on to refine his cinematic approach in the years to come, but there's no denying the strength of the sharp and steely calling card he dropped here.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[StuSmallz]

I owe Wrath of Khan a rewatch at some point. I only saw it in high school and preferred a few of the other TOS movies at the time.You mean like... Undiscovered Country, maybe?

[Rockatansky]

With the caveat that I haven't sen any of these in years and will make no attempt to explain the rankings:


VI
IV
III
II
I
V

[Iroquois]

My ranking would be something like II > VI > IV > III > V > I

[TheUsualSuspect]

.... this guy with another list.






I'm going to actually try and watch every movie on this list

[Iroquois]

.... this guy with another list.






I'm going to actually try and watch every movie on this list

https://i.gifer.com/G20.gif

[John W Constantine]

Everyone needs a list these days.

[Iroquois]

#95. The Wild Bunch
(Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

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"If they move, kill 'em."

It seems almost appropriate that this film ascended the ranks in previous countdowns only to drop down hard as the years wore on, reflecting the film's own focus on ageing bandits whose best days are behind them. That it still makes the list means there's still something to distinguish it, much of it to do with it being one of the key turning points in a genre's history (I think of it having a similar effect on the Western that Psycho had on horror or 2001 had on science fiction). The sea change it heralds is reflected not only in the creased faces of its haggard cast but also in how Peckinpah pushed the boundaries for what violence could be accepted in mainstream Hollywood cinema, which makes sense given how hard it wants to deconstruct the romanticised image of outlaw cowboys by showing what havoc they and nominally lawful people can wreak upon one another for even the most seemingly noble of causes (though it does ultimately gesture towards reconstruction as it nears its notoriously bloody conclusion). While it seems all but likely that it won't make a hypothetical fourth countdown, at least it'll make like its grizzled anti-heroes and go down fighting.

2005 ranking: #65
2013 ranking: #38

[rauldc14]

I should prioritize Thief. I have never cared for The Wild Bunch though.

[SpelingError]

The Wild Bunch is among my favorites too.

[Iroquois]

#94. Dazed and Confused
(Richard Linklater, 1993)

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"All I'm saying is that, if I ever start referring to these as the best years of my life, remind me to kill myself."

In making a film based on his experiences as a teenager in 1970s Texas, Linklater didn't set out to make an overly nostalgic vehicle - that a sizeable chunk of the film's runtime is spent on seniors hazing freshmen definitely takes the screws to that idea, to say nothing of the various ways in which it wrings comedy out of the more questionable aspects of the film's milieu (I especially like the liquor store clerk blithely giving parenting advice to a pregnant customer before selling beer to the 14-year-old protagonist - contrast that against a modern imitator like Superbad making its entire plot about a desperate all-night-long odyssey simply to acquire any alcohol). Despite all the ways in which Linklater paints a decidedly unflattering portrayal of his younger years, even he can't avoid giving in to the party vibes he's depicting with a rocking soundtrack and an aimless filmmaking approach as indebted to Altman as American Graffiti that perfectly captures the sensation of wandering from group to group at a party with little in the way of external plot or action driving the various intertwining narratives. Underneath it all, he grounds his vast array of high school stereotypes with just enough depth (or the right lack of it) to make its tale of busting loose for one night (or possibly more) really sing.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #40

[StuSmallz]

#96. Thief
(Michael Mann, 1981)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/3204/cache-30106-1638448044/image-w1280.jpgWhile I still need to watch The Insider, this is currently my favorite Michael Mann (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/tag/mann/reviews/) movie, due to how confident his tone/aesthetic was, even that early in his career, and the way it comes off as the Goldilocks "just right" of his filmography; something like Collateral is a tight, taught Thriller, but not quite ambitious enough to be a great movie, while Heat reaches for greatness, but bloats itself with a few too many unnecessary characters/sub-plots, while Thief comes off as the perfect middle ground in terms of ambition, if you ask me.

[Iroquois]

I'm definitely considering doing a full Mann watch at some point this year since I've only seen most of his movies once (or, in the case of his made-for-TV movies, not at all) - as of writing, only this, Heat and Miami Vice are the current standouts in my estimation simply by virtue of being the only ones I've watched in the past few years so I'm hoping that revisiting the others might shake things up a bit.

[Iroquois]

#93. Tokyo Story
(Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)

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"Isn't life disappointing?"

I briefly contemplated making this a one-film-per-director list not just to guarantee a wider variety of films but also because a significant cross-section of my choices were going to essentially serve as catch-all representations for directors that I generally like but don't have too many specific favourites if that makes any sense. Tokyo Story is admittedly the boring choice for a favourite Ozu (especially since it was the first Ozu I ever saw as well precisely because of its high placement within the all-timer canon) and not exactly representative as its plot about a pair of holidaying seniors inadvertently causing trouble for their already-busy children (and eventually for themselves) is quite different from the handful of other films of his that I've seen (though Setsuko Hara as an unmarried woman is as much of a constant as the perpetually-grounded camera and deep-focus interiors). The genteel and extremely mannered approach both in terms of technique and drama may be intended as a negation of style, but absence of style is still a style - there's a line in Enter the Dragon where Bruce Lee says that the highest technique in martial arts is to have no technique and Tokyo Story is definitely proof of how such precise avoidance of convention can ultimately point the way to transcendence.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Iroquois]

#92. The Passion of Joan of Arc
(Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1928)

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"You claim that I am sent by the Devil. It's not true. To make me suffer, the Devil has sent you...and you...and you...and you."

My first countdown featured one silent film, Un Chien Andalou. My second countdown had no silent films on it whatsoever. Now I circle back around and put this on, not merely out of a sense of tokenistic obligation like the one-film-per-director idea I floated earlier but because, well, it's undeniable. In crafting a dramatisation based on records taken from the religious rebel's trial, Dreyer paints a stark portrayal of the proceedings as Joan (Renée Falconetti) endures the disdain and accusations of the assorted clergy with a thousand-yard stare while pleading her case as an apparent messenger of God. Appreciable for its innovative technical aplomb (especially when it comes to close-ups) and its dense approach to matters of faith and how they affect (or are affected by) individuals and institutions alike, The Passion of Joan of Arc might end up being the only silent film on this countdown but even so it's certainly one of the best to represent the form.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Iroquois]

#91. Harakiri
(Masaki Kobayashi, 1962)

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"After all, this thing we call samurai honour is ultimately nothing but a facade."

I'm surprised it took as long for me to find out about Kobayashi as it did - on the basis of this and the other films of this that I've seen, it definitely feels like I should've heard of him around the same time I first started to hear about Kurosawa. That might be because, where Kurosawa's exercises in samurai fiction still tended towards epic tales of adventure and swordplay whose appeal could easily translate to Western audiences, something like Harakiri is much more precise and melancholy in how it mines Japanese history and customs for such enervating levels of pathos that even its occasional foray into conventional and well-motivated swordplay doesn't evoke much in the way of catharsis. The legendary Tatsuya Nakadai excels as the haggard ronin who makes a principled stand against a local samurai clan, questioning the honour they display by enforcing the eponymous suicide ritual that other clans do not. Such an interrogation of traditional Japanese systems and attitudes that have persisted beyond the age of the samurai is able to supplement an already-intriguing mystery, resulting in a classic that I hope future generations don't have to wait as long to hear about as I did.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[SpelingError]

Harakiri is pretty great.

[Iroquois]

#90. House
(Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

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"That's weird...Just my imagination!"

Ostensibly a horror movie about a schoolgirl who invites her friends to take a holiday at the home of her elderly aunt only for the group to discover that the aunt is a witch and the house is haunted, what really distinguishes House is the sheer level of energy that goes into creating its own variation on such familiar horror tropes. Images within images, animated interludes, characters' comical under- or over-reactions to whatever paranormal (or even just normal) insanity is unfolding before their eyes...all of which is shot through at such a relentless pace even for a horror that barely grazes the 90-minute mark. It would be one thing if this manic and irreverent approach was all that House had going for it, but all this face-melting absurdity remains grounded in inter-generational conflict - protagonist "Gorgeous" (Kimiko Ikegami) instigates the trip in order to rebel against her father and new stepmother - and historical trauma - Gorgeous' aunt (Yoko Minamada) has motives that extend back to the emotional fallout of World War II. Such concerns and themes were still showing up in Obayashi's work as late as hsi 2019 swansong Labyrinth of Cinema, but their presence in his most iconic film is very much appreciated simply for lending it more substance than its seemingly wacky surface would suggest.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[TheUsualSuspect]

I got my friends to watch Hausu.... they did not know what to make of it.

[Miss Vicky]

I got my friends to watch Hausu.... they did not know what to make of it.

That was pretty much my experience the one time I watched it, though I think it still got my vote for the 70s list.

For the rest of this list, I've only seen Dazed and Confused, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Harakiri. I really enjoyed Harakiri but didn't care for the other two.

[Rockatansky]

House rules


Kung Fu MVP

[Rockatansky]

https://youtu.be/tlSnwHExWjk

[SpelingError]

Hausu is great, though it's never been a favorite.

[rauldc14]

Hausu is a favorite of mine. Probably would make a top 200 for me.

[rauldc14]

Oh, also Tokyo Story is among the greatest ever for me. Like top 30.

[Iroquois]

#89. Perfect Blue
(Satoshi Kon, 1997)

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"There is no way illusions can come to life."

I remain utterly fascinated by the fact that this was originally supposed to be made in live-action - I'm sure it would've been fine, but so much of what makes Perfect Blue sing comes down to what Kon and co. were able to do through simple but effective animation. Pop idol Mima (Junko Iwao) decides to transition from singing to acting, but between the demanding nature of the work and the blank-eyed stalker that starts following (and threatening) her, she begins to lose her grip on reality; this is an admittedly standard scenario (as reflected in the plot of the hoary detective show where Mima is the newest guest star) but it is definitely improved by the elasticity of the medium. It would be one thing if Kon simply used the freedom of animation to conjure up a variety of images to depict Mima's fraying mental state - joyful dance numbers meet discomforting sexuality meet grisly murders in rapid succession and begin to bleed together as the film progresses. What he does even better is show a keen understanding of the importance of editing as he strings such a chaotic stream of events together without a viewer ever getting too lost in what is real or imagined but still maintaining enough ambiguity about the proceedings while also communicating the headspace not only of Mima, but also those of the characters around her (be they colleagues or fans, all of which reflect different levels of engagement with - and entitlement to - Mima as a public persona). I'm certainly able to pick apart similarities to other live-action films that have come out before and since, but few of them manage to pull everything together into such a powerful and indelible package as Perfect Blue.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[John W Constantine]

Still thinking about that one months later after seeing it for the first time. Sort of like the other Satoshi Kon I watched last year.

[Rockatansky]

Still need to see that. I dug Paprika a lot when I watched out a few years ago but was left completely cold by Millennium Actress.

[SpelingError]

Perfect Blue is terrific.

[Iroquois]

I only recently watched Millennium Actress and, while it's still got that indelible Kon touch, it didn't hit me the way that his other features (and Paranoia Agent) did. Paprika runs a close second as it takes the reality-bending to a much grander and more surreal level, though I also appreciate the more mundane material in Tokyo Godfathers. Might have to rewatch them all to be completely sure, but in any case Perfect Blue is undeniable.

[Miss Vicky]

Perfect Blue is great, though I prefer Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika.

[Iroquois]

#88. The Empire Strikes Back
(Irvin Kershner, 1980)

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"I'll try."
"No! Try not. Do or do not. There is no try."

I sometimes wonder if I will ever well and truly tire of Star Wars. Certainly, the Disney-led revival during the past decade has largely felt like an exercise in diluting George Lucas's idiosyncratic genre hybrid into something even more aggressively commercialised than it already was (which is saying something), but should I let that tarnish the stellar reputations of the classic originals? The answer is...okay, maybe a little. This is ultimately a franchise about learning to embrace change (at least it was meant to be once) and Empire gets the nod for building upon the imaginative world and mythology that was established but largely hinted at during its groundbreaking predecessor, digging deeper into the galactic conflict between Empire and Rebels while also delving into the ways of the mysterious Jedi order and what it means for young novice Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). It may still be the middle part of a trilogy that is wholly reliant on the original to make any sense whatsoever, but it still remains as strong a representation of what makes the series even remotely worthwhile as ever.

2005 ranking: #55
2013 ranking: #83

[Rockatansky]

[center]#88. The Empire Strikes Back
(Irvin Kershner, 1980)

It may still be the middle part of a trilogy that is wholly reliant on the original to make any sense whatsoever


I probably don't need to step up to defend this beloved classic (especially as you included it in your list), but I do think it contains a lot of narrative meat within itself. It isn't just telling you to hold out for cool stuff in a subsequent entry (like a certain modern franchise tends to do).

[Iroquois]

Maybe, I just meant in the sense of it hypothetically being the first Star Wars film you ever saw.

[John W Constantine]

If you've seen one, you've seen em all, am I righ, am I righ?

[Rockatansky]

If you've seen one, you've seen em all, am I righ, am I righ?

https://i.imgur.com/KlGKXpF.gif

[Iroquois]

#87. Dawn of the Dead
(George A. Romero, 1978)

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"When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the Earth."

It's almost the fate of every great satire to be at least somewhat misunderstood - at least, that's how it feels to rewatch Dawn of the Dead in the 21st century and see how the consumerism allegory that gives the film its edge has been diluted by the emergence of a mindset that would see the prospect of living out the end times in a shopping mall as an indulgent upside rather than a gilded cage for the living and undead alike. Even that isn't enough to rob Dawn itself of its own power, a sprawling zombie epic about four survivors' efforts to stay alive ultimately leading them to hide out in an abandoned mall. It's a curiously shambolic and slow-burning beast (its first major casualty occurs around the same time that most other zombie movies reach their end credits) but it earns that time thanks to its charismatic leads who sell a story that is engaging both in how it depicts the granular details of securing the mall and the emotional devastation of the world continuing to crumble under the weight of the living dead even within the confines of the mall. The satirical element may not be subtle ("this used to be an important place in their lives") but considering how much Internet ink I've seen spilled over how many people's "zombie plans" would involve heading straight to the mall, I'm not sure it needs to be.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #89

[Rockatansky]

Gaylen Ross was one of my biggest crushes as a teenager thanks to that movie.

[SpelingError]

Either Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later is my favorite zombie film. Both are excellent.

[Wyldesyde19]

Either Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later is my favorite zombie film. Both are excellent.
I need to rewatch both. I watched DotD about 12 or 13 years ago and 28 Days was at the theatres when it was first released. I barely remember anything about 28 days, since it’s been so long, that I’m not even going to count it was watched atm.

[SpelingError]

I need to rewatch both. I watched DotD about 12 or 13 years ago and 28 Days was at the theatres when it was first released. I barely remember anything about 28 days, since it’s been so long, that I’m not even going to count it was watched atm.

Funnily enough, during an opening scene in Dawn of the Dead where Wooley blows a tenant's head off with a shotgun (not to be confused with Wooley, of course; I'm sure he's much nicer :D), you'll see that the man is actually a mannequin if you pause the film.

86108

[Iroquois]

#86. Brazil
(Terry Gilliam, 1985)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/211/cache-47688-1617723708/image-w1280.jpg

"Here is your receipt - and this is my receipt for your receipt."

There was quite a bit to like about Terry Gilliam once, the guy who transitioned from making silly little animated interludes for Monty Python to being the director of his own large-scale adventures into the surreal. Though I think he ultimately faltered due to his reach exceeding his grasp (especially in his later years), but he still produced one masterpiece with his pseudo-Orwellian dystopia Brazil. That it hinges on a stuffy bureaucrat (Jonathan Pryce) breaking out of his buttoned-down routine in order to romantically pursue a trucker (Kim Greist) who resembles the angelic woman he keeps fantasising about is ultimately besides the point (and the film itself practically treats it as such) - this is just a means of motivating him to move through a world that looks like hell on Earth even before his dreams and nightmares start to bleed into reality, allowing Gilliam and co. to show off all manner of weird reflections of the real world through art direction that packs every frame with bizarre details as its government-focused satire fills the foreground. Some parts definitely seem questionable (a major plot point involves Robert De Niro and Bob Hoskins as feuding repairmen, the former deemed a terrorist simply for skipping paperwork and the latter a gleefully vindictive union member who would much rather break everything) and that's a big part of why it's dropped down in recent years (and may continue to drop), but Gilliam's commitment to building such an elaborate waking nightmare of a universe is still enough to warrant a modicum of respect.

2005 ranking: #43
2013 ranking: #19

[Iroquois]

#85. The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/1409/cache-50195-1546239612/image-w1280.jpg

"I think people need each other, they're made that way. But they haven't learnt how to live together."

I remember reading once that every relationship between two people is ultimately controlled by whichever person cares less about the other - such a perspective is amply reflected across Fassbinder's extensive filmography in a variety of forms, but for now I'll settle for picking this claustrophobic chamber drama set entirely within the lavish studio apartment owned by the eponymous fashion designer (Margit Carstensen). Petra is a vainglorious woman who is alternately dismissive of and dependent upon the other women with whom she shares the same space for a minute or two, whether it's assistant Marlene (Irm Hermann) silently hovering in the background for much of the film or newest attraction Karin (Hanna Schygulla) whose arrival in Petra's life proves to be a challenge to her own sense of dominance. Legendary cinematographer Michael Ballhaus manages to roam the luxurious but cramped room in which the film unfolds and uses such precise blocking in order to emphasise just how constrictive this melodramatic tale is on the women who suffer, perpetuate, or even try to resist its narrative. I still think there are a few other contenders for my favourite Fassbinder that may yet overtake this, but this sets a pretty high standard all the same.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[John W Constantine]

I made my way thru Fassbinder's catalogue a few years back and enjoyed each one quite a bit including this one. Never did get around to Berlin Alexanderplatz which I've been told is really good also.

[Iroquois]

#84. The Princess Bride
(Rob Reiner, 1987)

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"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."
"You seem a decent fellow. I hate to die."

With this latest version of the countdown, I'm less inclined to include either comedies or childhood favourites - we all have to grow up sometime, and how much am I really getting out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory these days? That being said, this means the ones that stay have to be truly exceptional and, while you could still question its inclusion here, I'm still throwing in for The Princess Bride. A simple throwback to the swashbuckling fare of yore with just enough of a meta twist thanks to the familial bickering of its framing story to make it different without overriding the genuine joys of the experience, it works as a swift and effective homage to every aspect - the flowery romance, the thrilling adventure, and especially the quick-witted comedy between a variety of well-observed characters. The pleasures offered by The Princess Bride don't exactly run too deep, but it still resonates in the way that stories passed from grandfathers to grandsons do.

2005 ranking: #26
2013 ranking: #24

[honeykid]

I got my friends to watch Hausu.... they did not know what to make of it.

So your friends don't know crap when they see it? Interesting. :D

It's an interesting read, Iro, and I'll continue to follow. I don't really need to comment on the films, do I? I'm sure you're more than aware (or at least would be able to guess) which I liked and which I didn't. :D

[Iroquois]

If I like them all this much, then I'm sure you hate every single one.

[Iroquois]

#83. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1975)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/319/cache-8082-1643969173/image-w1280.jpg

"Ni!"

Monty Python's sure taken a hit in my estimation over the years - I went from putting three of their films on the 2005 list to kicking this well out of the top ten this time around. Maybe it has reached a point where its status as a heavily-quoted entry into the geek canon has worn out its welcome (it is a hazard with those kinds of movies where one can hear the quotes so many times that it renders the act of actually sitting down to watch the movie redundant). There is still fun to be had in bearing witness to the legendary troupe's parody of Arthurian legend that encompasses everything from deconstructing royalty and nobility to poking fun at their own limited resources. This willingness to parody anything and everything occasionally hits its limits (the punchline of the "Tale of Sir Galahad" sequence being that it's so unfunny and drawn-out is a strong example of this), but moments such as Arthur (Graham Chapman) dueling the belligerent Black Knight (John Cleese) or attempting to cross the Bridge of Death still stand out as some of the best in the group's output and, by extension, great moments in cinematic comedy.

2005 ranking: #7
2013 ranking: #6

[John W Constantine]

A pair of Top 10 finishes all the way down to #83

[SpelingError]

The Princess Bride is a lot of fun. Need to watch The Holy Grail soon. That I haven't watched it yet is a complete surprise to me.

[Iroquois]

A pair of Top 10 finishes all the way down to #83

Yeah, I revisited it a while back for the first time in years and just felt differently - like I said, hard to feel like actually watching it start to finish when it's been memed to death over the past few decades and it didn't inspire much in the way of actual laughter due to overexposure. Still amusing enough that I can't get rid of it entirely, though. Makes me think that, once I'm done here, I'll have to go back and count how many comedies cracked each of my lists.

[TheUsualSuspect]

Holy Grail grows on me with time. I didn't get the love for it originally, maybe I was too young? My dad loved it though.

[Iroquois]

#82. Chinatown
(Roman Polanski, 1974)

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"Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown."

Last time I put this on a list, I remarked that this was the kind of film I wish I could forget so I could experience it all again - not just the shocking twists and turns of its central murder mystery, but simply the flair with which it executed everything from the clever detecting methods and on-his-feet thinking of J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) to the deftness with which it conducted all manner of cryptic conversations and all-important reveals (or even just how these characters move about, as is definitely the case with Faye Dunaway's Mrs. Mulwray playing a particularly wounded variation on the femme fatale). This is probably an irrational reason to rank it as low as I have this time around - it's not the film's fault that I can only go in fresh one time (and even had it spoiled beforehand) - but even so, I can't go past just how smoothly Robert Towne's watertight script flows like so much run-off from a drought-ridden California's water reserves. An effective exercise in adapting the already-dark sensibilities of film noir for the even more downbeat era of the 1970s, taking considerable advantage of the expansion of creative freedom to paint a seamier portrait of the 1930s and truly underline just what kind of monsters are vying for power and why (with John Huston's glowering tycoon making the most of limited screen-time to become one of cinema's best - possibly most underrated - villains).

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #37

[StuSmallz]

Yeah, I love Chinatown (http://matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?7947-Stu-Presents-Genre-Deconstruction-In-Film-A-Crash-Course!/page2&p=635424&viewfull=1#post635424) too; like, if I had to pick just one all-time favorite work of Neo-Noir, I honestly can't think of anything I'd put any higher than it.

[honeykid]

If I like them all this much, then I'm sure you hate every single one.

C'mon. You know that ain't true. You've got three of my 100 already and I loved Dazed & Confused.

[Iroquois]

#81. Event Horizon
(Paul W.S. Anderson, 1997)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/14147/cache-34104-1540339208/image-w1280.jpg

"Oh, my God. What happened to your eyes?"
"Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

Probably bound to be one of the most controversial choices on this list, Event Horizon is arguably the finest work from vulgar auteur extraordinaire Paul W.S. Anderson. A film about an experimental spaceship that disappears during its maiden voyage only to reappear at the edges of known space years later, one can easily recognise its influences (it starts off like Solaris and finishes like Hellraiser) and look askance at its goofier, more dated aspects. That being said, Anderson is able to tie it all together into an atmospheric mid-budget horror full of disturbing visions, spacebound dangers, and some genuinely hellish visuals. The characters tend towards sci-fi/horror stereotypes, but they do tend to be bolstered by some solid performances (most obviously Sam Neill as the ship's troubled designer and Laurence Fishburne as the taciturn captain of the recon team). Knowing that there was once a much longer cut (now lost forever) with even more horrific material to show can't help but intrigue, but this proves a gory and unsettling exercise all the same.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[StuSmallz]

I watched that once, and I don't remember caring for it, and this was when I was 15 (and would like just about anything), so I can't imagine it would hold up very well if I ever rewatched it...

[Wyldesyde19]

Count me as a fan of Event Horizon.

[xSookieStackhouse]

#81. Event Horizon
(Paul W.S. Anderson, 1997)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/14147/cache-34104-1540339208/image-w1280.jpg

"Oh, my God. What happened to your eyes?"
"Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see."

Probably bound to be one of the most controversial choices on this list, Event Horizon is arguably the finest work from vulgar auteur extraordinaire Paul W.S. Anderson. A film about an experimental spaceship that disappears during its maiden voyage only to reappear at the edges of known space years later, one can easily recognise its influences (it starts off like Solaris and finishes like Hellraiser) and look askance at its goofier, more dated aspects. That being said, Anderson is able to tie it all together into an atmospheric mid-budget horror full of disturbing visions, spacebound dangers, and some genuinely hellish visuals. The characters tend towards sci-fi/horror stereotypes, but they do tend to be bolstered by some solid performances (most obviously Sam Neill as the ship's troubled designer and Laurence Fishburne as the taciturn captain of the recon team). Knowing that there was once a much longer cut (now lost forever) with even more horrific material to show can't help but intrigue, but this proves a gory and unsettling exercise all the same.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A
omg i remember seeing this movie yrs ago on tv. i need to rewatch this movie

[Iroquois]

#80. Silence
(Martin Scorsese, 2016)

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"I pray, but I am lost. Am I just praying to silence?"

I suppose I can see how this may get underrated both within Scorsese's output and on its own terms - in the context of a filmography filled with electrifying tales of crime and chaos, an extremely patient and lengthy period drama that addresses matters of faith using methods that are literally and figuratively torturous is not exactly going to win over everyone. However, I'd argue that this difference is what distinguishes it for the better as Scorsese explores a whole other filmmaking mode in telling the tale of two Portuguese priests (Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver) traveling to Japan in search of their allegedly-apostatised colleague (Liam Neeson) and coming face-to-face with the very real danger posed by practicing Christianity in 17th-century Japan. Such a premise could settle into a simple narrative about the inherent immorality of religious persecution that positions Garfield and Driver as the film's unambiguous heroes, but what follows is instead a more complex interrogation of what faith means - a source of unwarranted personal pride? A weapon wielded by colonising forces no less brutal than the persecutors who resist? A belief that is tainted by misunderstanding and miscommunication on the part of both believer and skeptic? Even a filmmaker as thoroughly Catholic as Scorsese understands that there is nuance to the subject even (especially?) when one side is shown using lethal force against the other. The collection of calmly-depicted diatribes between Portuguese and Japanese not only shows Scorsese's own influence from Japanese cinema but speaks to the importance of the material above all else. Silence may not move like a Scorsese film usually moves, but deep down it still feels very much like his.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[SpelingError]

I enjoyed Silence more than I expected. Not sure if I'll ever return to it though.

[ynwtf]

I had no idea there was a longer cut of Event Horizon. That might have changed my perspective on the movie, had it been available. Hm. This is a movie that I'll revisit every five years or so because it has so much potential. It's great sci-fi horror in concept, the effects are mostly spot on (with the exception of water sloshing around in a plastic bottle within the abandoned, and frozen Event Horizon ship---I could be wrong on that frozen part, but that's the memory that stuck), it had weird nods to Hellraiser, which I was a long fan of by this release, and had a mostly great cast. Sam Neill was perfect in this role, IMO, showing a scientific restraint, all the while subtly slipping into madness as the story played out.

Perhaps it was Jack Noseworthy burnout from his Mtv's Dead at 21 run. Perhaps it was the awkward shift in tone during the final third. For sure it was a bottle of water.

Idunno.

I always find myself repeating most of these same comments whenever this title pops up here. It's like I've come out of a bad relationship but still can't find the strength to let go and just move on. I see so much potential, "if only..." Regrettably, whatever was missing for me was never there and never will be. I need to accept that and come to terms with it. I need to move on with my life. A rebound viewing of Ghosts of Mars should help. you know, something quick and easy but nothing that I'd introduce to mom. Then maybe I can try to enjoy other movies that I've been too reluctant to get involved with. Now might be the time to take another look at Under the Skin. Or to restart Stalker. I might even be open to experiencing Annihilation again! No. Wait. That's too much. I'm not sure I have it in me yet for that. Hm... Maybe I should just try to reach back out to Event Horizon. I admit that I might have misunderstood things. Or that maybe I expected too much. I can't put it all off on the movie. There were two of us, here, I mean. Surely, I am as responsible for the things not working out between us? I wonder if I could watch it tonight, maybe? I saw, recently, it's available for streaming. Maybe the things that used to bother me won't this time? Maybe I've changed with age? Maybe this movie has too? I think I owe it to myself to at least try again? Maybe this time will be different??

[ynwtf]

Oh. I didn't want to clutter my mostly serious reply, above, with this throw away comment but I'm liking a lot of posts here. 50/50 because I think the movies are great (though I'm somewhat surprised to see them so relatively low, making me curious what else is to come) and because I know Iro truly appreciates the thumbs-up notifications. Truly.

I got u, bro.

[Torgo]

Say what you want about Event Horizon, but you can't deny that its explanation of wormholes is unparalleled:

https://www.movieforums.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=86186&stc=1&d=1647964584

[Iroquois]

#79. Battle Royale
(Kinji Fukusaku, 2000)

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"Life is a game, so fight for survival and see if you're worth it."

One of my favourite premises is that of "the most dangerous game", the extremely simple set-up wherein a person is deliberately forced into a scenario where they must survive against someone who is hunting them simply for sport. The eponymous government-mandated game in Battle Royale offers its own variation on this set-up by taking a whole class of middle-school students to a remote island and forcing them to kill each other in three days or else they all die by explosive collar. The whole thing unfolds as teen drama writ large - while some characters try to hack the system or go on killing sprees, others settle for such simple goals as chasing their crushes or hanging out with their friends for as long as they can. This gained itself a cult reputation due to its controversial post-Columbine release and Tarantino's seal of approval, but it's hard to do what a long-absent MoFo did once and call this film "cool" - despite the gratuitous violence and black comedy that pulsate throughout this film, at the end of the day this is still a film about children being forced to fight each other to the death and Fukusaku (himself a child during World War II) understands the severity of being exposed to such violence at such a young age to the point that the film nails what could be hopelessly overwrought exercises in drama and satire.

2005 ranking: #13
2013 ranking: #68

[Iroquois]

#78. Wings of Desire
(Wim Wenders, 1987)

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"I can't see you, but I know you're there."

The premise of a guardian angel (Bruno Ganz) who finds himself wishing to experience the pleasures of being human is such a straightforward one that it was translated far too easily into a treacly English-language remake, but Wenders still manages to find a significantly more high-minded approach through his choices (such as angels only seeing the world in black-and-white) and exploring the possibilities offered by the concept rather than focusing too heavily on the admittedly rather one-sided romance between Ganz's invisible immortal and the trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin) with whom he becomes especially intrigued. Everything from ponderously philosophical conversations between angels to them being privy to humans' internal monologues of innermost despair and trying their best to comfort them through a limited range of influence builds to create an immersive experience. Even stunt-casting Peter Falk as himself in a sub-plot where he is shooting a film in Berlin is a move that seems like it shouldn't work but does because of how well he commits to what the film is doing.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[SpelingError]

I plan to finally get to that one this week.

[Harry Lime]

Good list so far, Iro. Lots of N/As and big drops in your list. Will be interesting to watch how it unfolds.. A lot changes in almost a decade. But really, one thing, Chinatown should be much higher.

[Takoma11]

#78. Wings of Desire
(Wim Wenders, 1987)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/200/cache-8024-1563228004/image-w1280.jpg

"I can't see you, but I know you're there."

The premise of a guardian angel (Bruno Ganz) who finds himself wishing to experience the pleasures of being human is such a straightforward one that it was translated far too easily into a treacly English-language remake, but Wenders still manages to find a significantly more high-minded approach through his choices (such as angels only seeing the world in black-and-white) and exploring the possibilities offered by the concept rather than focusing too heavily on the admittedly rather one-sided romance between Ganz's invisible immortal and the trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin) with whom he becomes especially intrigued. Everything from ponderously philosophical conversations between angels to them being privy to humans' internal monologues of innermost despair and trying their best to comfort them through a limited range of influence builds to create an immersive experience. Even stunt-casting Peter Falk as himself in a sub-plot where he is shooting a film in Berlin is a move that seems like it shouldn't work but does because of how well he commits to what the film is doing.

I love this movie so much that it almost hurts.

[Iroquois]

Good list so far, Iro. Lots of N/As and big drops in your list. Will be interesting to watch how it unfolds.. A lot changes in almost a decade. But really, one thing, Chinatown should be much higher.

When I first re-did the list, there was a roughly 50% influx of new additions and a lot of titles I'd underrated got pushed up the list to accommodate that. Will probably count the final number of additions/drops/jumps once it's over because the stats will be interesting. As for Chinatown, like I said I think it's almost too perfect a mystery film in that I want to space out my viewings of it as opposed to a good chunk of my other selections being favourites by virtue of how comparatively easy they are to throw on.

[Iroquois]

#77. Possession
(Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/22493/cache-47367-1528422475/image-w1280.jpg

"I can't exist by myself because I'm afraid of myself, because I'm the maker of my own evil."

Ostensibly a story about the disintegrating relationship between a husband (Sam Neill) and wife (Isabelle Adjani), it doesn't take long for Possession to start plumbing even stranger depths that externalise their shared anguish in manners ranging from slight (Neill's dangerous and time-consuming occupation as a secret agent causing friction at home) to staggering (the sudden appearance of a grotesque monster that Adjani will kill to protect). Shades of the apocalypse bleed profusely into the corners of the film as its domestic disputes and occasionally blackly humour (a key element being Heinz Bennent as the thoroughly eccentric individual with whom Adjani has an affair) gives way to bleak nihilism and strong disgust, all of which is amplified by the stark West Berlin setting (Adjani's infamously intense breakdown is all the more striking for happening in a gloomy and sickly green subway tunnel). The vibes are absolutely rancid with Possession, but that gives it a power most of my other favourite horror films don't really seem to possess (sorry) - this really does feel like something that escaped from another universe and exists purely to infect all others.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Iroquois]

#76. Unforgiven
(Clint Eastwood, 1992)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/3044/cache-33535-1546156848/image-w1280.jpg

"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away everything he's got - and everything he's ever gonna have."

Clint Eastwood's straight-shooter screen persona is more than adequately reflected in his directorial filmography, admittedly to a fault if his tendency to power through productions with decidedly mixed results is any indication. In any case, he still produced at least one indisputable masterpiece in Unforgiven. his own personal farewell to the genre that made him a star. The simple set-up naturally lacks pretention as Eastwood plays a retired outlaw who is coaxed back into his old ways by a cocky young gunslinger (Jaimz Woolvett) intent on collecting a particularly large bounty, but that does not mean the surrounding circumstances and players do not lack nuance or depth (especially when it comes to this film quite literally running a revisionist Western playbook in the form of Saul Rubinek's author changing his books' focus from Richard Harris's sophisticated braggart to Gene Hackman's brutally honest sheriff). Eastwood's characteristically blunt style is a good match for material where there are few (if any) genuine innocents here and even the supposedly noble goal of achieving justice for a disfigured woman is riddled with such a grey sense of morality, but at the same time it is capable of finding a genuine sense of heart and lyricism to the proceedings (even as the score can change from gentle guitars to foreboding orchestras on a dime).

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #62

[SpelingError]

Need to watch Possession soon. Unforgiven is great.

[honeykid]

Unforgiven is another from my 100. See, Iro, we do have things in common. That said, Possession isn't one of them. What a load of old tut that was. :D

[Iroquois]

#75. This Is Spinal Tap
(Rob Reiner, 1984)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/317/cache-32245-1535029818/image-w1280.jpg

"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."

Back in high school, I decided to make a point of showing This Is Spinal Tap to all of my best friends - such was its impact on me that I felt it above all other films needed to be shared with those whose friendship I truly valued. Such an enthusiastic level of proselytising ultimately did not last too long past graduation, but even now it's not hard to see why I thought it was worth going to such effort. The film follows fictional British rock band Spinal Tap as they undertake one particularly disastrous tour of the United States, dealing with everything from technical difficulties during gigs to interpersonal friction within and without the band. It's a pitch-perfect parody of the rock star experience, drawing on all manner of influences across popular music to craft its particular mix of juvenile songs and behind-the-scenes drama. Of course, that it manages to maintain a genuine sense of drama through tensions within the band - most obviously in how guitarist Nigel (Christopher Guest) and frontman David (Michael McKean) see their lifelong friendship following the arrival of the latter's girlfriend, Jeanine (June Chadwick) - helps to ground what is largely a scattershot series of skits that have threaded together into an extremely tight 80 minutes. I get chills at the ending every time, which isn't bad for a movie that features a baroque classical piece titled "Lick My Love Pump".

2005 ranking: #20
2013 ranking: #11

[Takoma11]

Need to watch Possession soon. Unforgiven is great.

Possession is up there in the cluster of films that might be my favorite horror movies of all time. I have seen it twice in the theater (thanks, AFI!) and it is a stunning experience every time.

[Iroquois]

#74. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
(Robert Altman, 1971)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/951/cache-28164-1572841977/image-w1280.jpg

"If a man is fool enough to get into business with a woman, she ain't going to think much of him."

Would-be entrepreneur John McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides into a snowy mining outpost to the anachronistic tune of Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song", making a striking variation on the familiar Western trope of a drifter arriving in town that perfectly sets the stage for New Hollywood maverick Altman's own spin on the genre. The revisionist subversion kicks in when the blustering McCabe is made to realise that he is in over his head and must ultimately rely on the much more knowledgeable Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) to help him run the only game in town, but it doesn't take long before their combined success starts drawing the wrong kind of attention not from lawless bandits but a monopolistic mining corporation. The most American of genres gets a crash course in ostensibly progressive cynicism - as much as the film deals in a sort of sex-positive feminism through Mrs. Miller's bordello philosophising (to say nothing of how she ultimately proves to be the brains behind the duo's operation), it soon becomes clear that even this small slice of independence isn't set to last as a capitalist version of manifest destiny bears down on its foolhardy hero. That its bittersweet fable is rendered in warm and wintry hues by the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond goes a long way in bolstering its already-powerful sense of tragic romance - not just between the eponymous duo, but for the dream of something better to the American myth than what ultimately transpired.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #46

[Takoma11]

McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a really unique film for me. While I didn't personally click with the characters or the narrative all that much, there's a specialness to the film itself that made it a compelling watch.

[Rockatansky]

I revisted Posession last year and found it held up beautifully.


I don't think I've seen Unforgiven since high school, so definitely should give it a rewatch one of these days.


Back in high school, I used to show my friends some of my favourite movies, but as we lived far apart, this would be done during our lunch hour in the lunch room on a portable DVD player one of them had. I think Spinal Tap was one of the ones we watched, although as my DVD didn't have subtitles (if I recall correctly), it was a bit of a challenge in that environment.


I owe McCabe and Mrs. Miller a rewatch as well. I don't always gel to Altman's ensemble style, although there are obviously plenty of things to love in the movie.

[Captain Spaulding]

Seen everything except Wrath of Khan and Wings of Desire. The minor-classic status of Wrath of Khan means I'll watch it someday, but I have zero interest in anything Star Trek. Wenders has hit a home run for me each time so far with Alice in the Cities, The American Friend and Paris, Texas, so my expectations are extremely high for Wings of Desire.

The comedy in Police Story is so bad that it sours the whole movie for me. I've watched the first four in the series, and Super Cop is my favorite. To be honest, though, the best part of each of them is the gag reel at the end. Very happy to see The 36th Chamber of Shaolin on here. That was my introduction to Shaw Brothers, and a few dozen films later, it remains head and shoulders above anything else I've seen from the studio. Give me Gordon Liu over Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee or Jet Li.

Watching Yojimbo after having seen A Fistful of Dollars multiple times was a weird experience, making the original feel like the copycat. I need to revisit it. Thief is great. Might be my favorite Mann; if not, it's at least neck-and-neck with Heat. A shame to see The Wild Bunch take such a tumble from your previous list. Same goes for Dazed and Confused, which I think is the perfect version of that sorta plotless, coming-of-age, nostalgic time-trip subgenre that American Graffiti grandfathered.

Ozu just doesn't excite me, as every film I've seen from him feels nearly identical. I guess I'd prop up Tokyo Story as his most accomplished, but all of them blend together for me. If you're going to include a silent out of tokenistic obligation, you can't go wrong with Passion of Joan of Arc. My choice would probably be Nosferatu -- certainly not the "best" silent I've seen, but the one I seem to revisit the most often. Sadly, however, despite loving many silent films, I rarely re-watch any of them enough to qualify as personal favorites.

Samurai Rebellion is top-100 material for me, so when I watched the very similar Harakiri, which is often referred to as the superior of the two, I walked away a tad underwhelmed. It's possible my opinion would be reversed had I seen Harakiri first. House is yet another I should revisit. It's great as a source of WTF .GIFs, but as a whole I found the film exhausting and irritating -- a Scooby-Doo cartoon on acid -- but maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind. Perfect Blue is possibly my favorite anime. Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars film (with the caveat that I haven't seen the newest ones). Dawn of the Dead is my least favorite of the original trilogy, but still one of the best (and certainly most influential and iconic) zombie films ever made. Hated Brazil.

It won't surprise me if Princess Bride, Holy Grail and Spinal Tap all crack the top ten in the upcoming Comedy Countdown. I guess the sharp decline each has suffered from your previous list befits your reputation as MoFo's biggest curmudgeon. F**k laughter and amusement. Makes me curious to see if The Blues Brothers has been supplanted. Judging by past discussions/debates I've seen you have on here, it surprises me that you're not the type of person who refuses to watch Polanski due to moral principles, but I'm glad that's not the case because Chinatown is brilliant.

You're possibly the biggest champion of Paul W.S. Anderson I know. Even though I personally hated Resident Evil: Retribution, I'm hoping it joins Event Horizon on the list just because it'd be such a bold, unusual choice for a top 100. Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Silence are the most unexpected inclusions so far, especially the latter, which is probably one of the last Scorsese films that spring to mind when people think of the director. Its emotional impact was muted for me by watching and loving the 1971 version beforehand. There are a few Fassbinder films I'd place ahead of Petra von Kant (and I've still yet to see a ton of his stuff), but it's very good. The type of film where you hear about it and think, "That will probably be boring as shit," but it's surprisingly compelling.

Battle Royale seems like the type of flick I'd love, but I was lukewarm on it. Still not sure what I think of Possession until I revisit it, but Isabelle Adjani was incredible. Unforgiven is a masterpiece. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is one of those heralded classics that I thought was good not great, but it's likely that I'd appreciate it more with a second viewing.

[Iroquois]

#73. Before Sunrise
(Richard Linklater, 1995)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/194/cache-31719-1544007608/image-w1280.jpg

"Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?"

Linklater's always been good at doing these character-driven pieces that don't really concern themselves too heavily with plot or externalised action - while his earlier features dealt in broad ensembles, here he opts to focus exclusively on the duo of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) as a spur-of-the-moment decision to get off their train in Vienna together leads to the two sharing their own brief romantic encounter over the course of a single night. It's a simple set-up and one that has to be carried entirely by the chemistry between its leads as they get into all manner of conversations, arguments, and monologues as they wander through such a picturesque city. They are more than capable of delivering on this premise - admittedly a simple one, but so hard to get right.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #92

[Iroquois]

#72. Before Sunset
(Richard Linklater, 2004)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/195/cache-8020-1546477213/image-w1280.jpg

"Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past."

I had a loose guideline of sorts for drafting this list where I would limit myself to picking one film per franchise, figuring that this would allow for a more diverse range of films and also force me to choose which entry best represented its particular franchise. The Before series, on the other hand, warranted an exception despite each installment sharing the same fundamentally basic premise of two people having a feature-length conversation. While Sunrise was an instant favourite, Sunset took a while to grow on me - I think that's mostly to do with how I'm now closer to the age that Jesse and Celine are in this one than they were in Sunrise so I'm better able to appreciate the greater sense of maturity that has been added to the proceedings. As they catch up on a decade's worth of developments since their last meeting, they inevitably turn from topical small talk (a reference to "freedom fries" places this squarely in 2004) to questions of how differently things could've been if they'd done this or that (especially if they'd reunited sooner as they'd originally planned in the previous film). That's enough to give it an edge not just within the trilogy but within Linklater's entire filmography.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Iroquois]

#71. 8½
(Federico Fellini, 1963)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/150/cache-8001-1544810432/image-w1280.jpg

"All the confusion of my life...has been a reflection of myself! Myself as I am, not as I'd like to be. "

Could I be a filmmaker? It's a question I've asked myself for many years now and have even made steps towards doing in some fashion, but a film like 8½ really does do a horrifying spectacular job of showing just how difficult it would be not merely in terms of overcoming the mundane challenges associated with directing a film but also how they intersect with the existential challenges of simply being alive and existing as a person who has left a mark on (and been marked by) a life that was lived, if not necessarily lived too well. As renowned filmmaker Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) sets to work on his latest film, he finds himself caught up in all manner of personal strife (often involving women from his past and present) that causes him to launch into all manner of reveries as he has to contend with an encroaching sense of writer's block. Fellini spins Guido's malaise into cinematic gold, building on the wryly comedic approach to observing the particulars of Italian life he'd demonstrated in earlier features in a way that is also pointedly turned inwards even as the film ultimately ends up resorting to full-blown surrealism to communicate the character's inner turmoil. There is always risk when it comes to making films about the artistic process (especially filmmaking itself) for fear of coming across as narcissistic or self-conscious in a way that the finished product ultimately does not justify, but 8½ is maybe the finest example because Fellini ironically does not do anything in this film by half.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Iroquois]

#70. Hard Boiled
(John Woo, 1992)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/523/cache-109367-1546745464/image-w1280.jpg

"Give a man a gun, he's Superman. Give him two, he's God."

The above quote (taken from the admittedly not very good English dub) seems like it summarises exactly what makes John Woo's instantly-iconic brand of dual-wielding heroic bloodshed so superficially awesome to witness in terms of action-movie spectacle. The context in which it's delivered - being yelled at supercop protagonist "Tequila" (Chow Yun-fat) in the aftermath of the teahouse shoot-out that opens the film - undercuts said superficiality and makes it clear that Woo will hold his lawman hero as accountable as the criminal protagonists of his previous films. That certainly helps to ground a film as excessive as Hard Boiled, which might not be the best Woo film (The Killer is arguably the most well-rounded film he's made) but which certainly delivers on the action front with some staggering setpieces that even now feel like the standard against which I measure all other action movies (30 years on and I still don't think anything's really matched that one long take towards the end of the film). Having it turn into a buddy cop movie involving Chow's reckless detective teaming with Tony Leung's undercover agent certainly doesn't hurt the proceedings either, especially as the latter steals the show with his double-life angst that serves as a strong backbone to such viscerally balletic conflicts.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #33

[John-Connor]

Great pick Iro, love Hard Boiled, I have it at #75 on my all time top 250, #4 on my top 100 action films list and #35 on my fav 90's films list.

[honeykid]

I think The Killer is better, but few things are as much fun as Hard Boiled. One of the few films I rented (back in 'the day') and then went out and bought the same week.

It's the tail end of your list, so I'm sure there's much worse to come, but at this rate, I might start to think you're develping taste. :p:D

[Iroquois]

Don't worry, I already know I got taste because there aren't any Drew Barrymore movies on my list.

[SpelingError]

I love Hard-Boiled. With that film and The Killers, Woo is currently 2 for 2 with great films for me.

[TheUsualSuspect]

#70. Hard Boiled
(John Woo, 1992)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/523/cache-109367-1546745464/image-w1280.jpg

"Give a man a gun, he's Superman. Give him two, he's God."

The above quote (taken from the admittedly not very good English dub) seems like it summarises exactly what makes John Woo's instantly-iconic brand of dual-wielding heroic bloodshed so superficially awesome to witness in terms of action-movie spectacle. The context in which it's delivered - being yelled at supercop protagonist "Tequila" (Chow Yun-fat) in the aftermath of the teahouse shoot-out that opens the film - undercuts said superficiality and makes it clear that Woo will hold his lawman hero as accountable as the criminal protagonists of his previous films. That certainly helps to ground a film as excessive as Hard Boiled, which might not be the best Woo film (The Killer is arguably the most well-rounded film he's made) but which certainly delivers on the action front with some staggering setpieces that even now feel like the standard against which I measure all other action movies (30 years on and I still don't think anything's really matched that one long take towards the end of the film). Having it turn into a buddy cop movie involving Chow's reckless detective teaming with Tony Leung's undercover agent certainly doesn't hurt the proceedings either, especially as the latter steals the show with his double-life angst that serves as a strong backbone to such viscerally balletic conflicts.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #33

My friends and I are doing movie theme watches over discord and have been since the pandemic. One of the themes was 90's action movies.

I picked Hard Boiled.

Had never seen it, only knew of it by reputation in the action community. While I had a vague idea of what to expect, neither of my friends did. Towards the hospital sequence my one friend finally said..."this movie is not at all what I expected".

Solid action film. Would watch again.

[TheUsualSuspect]

#72. Before Sunset
(Richard Linklater, 2004)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/195/cache-8020-1546477213/image-w1280.jpg

"Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past."

I had a loose guideline of sorts for drafting this list where I would limit myself to picking one film per franchise, figuring that this would allow for a more diverse range of films and also force me to choose which entry best represented its particular franchise. The Before series, on the other hand, warranted an exception despite each installment sharing the same fundamentally basic premise of two people having a feature-length conversation. While Sunrise was an instant favourite, Sunset took a while to grow on me - I think that's mostly to do with how I'm now closer to the age that Jesse and Celine are in this one than they were in Sunrise so I'm better able to appreciate the greater sense of maturity that has been added to the proceedings. As they catch up on a decade's worth of developments since their last meeting, they inevitably turn from topical small talk (a reference to "freedom fries" places this squarely in 2004) to questions of how differently things could've been if they'd done this or that (especially if they'd reunited sooner as they'd originally planned in the previous film). That's enough to give it an edge not just within the trilogy but within Linklater's entire filmography.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

I watched this trilogy for the firs time last year. Sunset would be my favourite as we know the history, they are more comfortable, the writing is a tad better and I just felt really engrossed by the atmosphere.

I'd rank sunrise at the bottom, but all are solid films.

[TheUsualSuspect]

Unforgiven is a huge blindspot for me and has been for years. I own it on dvd. Ha.

[John W Constantine]

Hard-Boiled is pretty good, I need to get around to The Killer.

[crumbsroom]

Unforgiven is as good a Western as has ever been made. I'd put it alongside of films by Leone, Ford, Mann, Hawks etc. It's pretty much a masterpiece. As well as astonishingly entertaining. And sad. And has a depth in regards to its ideas of the mythology of violence that remain just as relevant as ever.

[Iroquois]

#69. Shaun of the Dead
(Edgar Wright, 2004)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/2458/cache-28162-1568990183/image-w1280.jpg

"You've got red on you."

I admit that the cracks have really started to show in Edgar Wright's style-is-substance approach to filmmaking in recent years, but more often than not he's managed to filter his combination of genre influence and technical precision into films I've liked a whole lot. The stand-out for me is still his breakout feature Shaun of the Dead, the story of the eponymous slacker (Simon Pegg) who tries to deal with various relationship problems in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. This makes for a simple but effective cross-genre parody on which Wright can build all manner of audio-visual flourishes that serves as jokes in and of themselves as well as making for a flashier means of framing an already-funny story. Pegg is great as the beleagured straight man, but he's more than backed up by a solid ensemble cast, chief among them being recurring Wright/Pegg collaborator Nick Frost as Shaun's even lazier best friend, Ed. Wright's subsequent work has gotten much more technically ambitious and more varied in its recurring themes regarding arrested development, but there's still something to be said for the power of a solid and straightforward debut like this.

2005 ranking: #31
2013 ranking: #23

[SpelingError]

I love Shaun of the Dead.

[Takoma11]

Hot Fuzz is the Wright vehicle that does the most for me in its mix of witty dialogue and visual storytelling, but I can't fault anyone who has Shaun of the Dead as their favorite.

[StuSmallz]

#69. Shaun of the Dead
(Edgar Wright, 2004)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/2458/cache-28162-1568990183/image-w1280.jpg

"You've got red on you."

I admit that the cracks have really started to show in Edgar Wright's style-is-substance approach to filmmaking in recent years, but more often than not he's managed to filter his combination of genre influence and technical precision into films I've liked a whole lot. The stand-out for me is still his breakout feature Shaun of the Dead, the story of the eponymous slacker (Simon Pegg) who tries to deal with various relationship problems in the midst of the zombie apocalypse. This makes for a simple but effective cross-genre parody on which Wright can build all manner of audio-visual flourishes that serves as jokes in and of themselves as well as making for a flashier means of framing an already-funny story. Pegg is great as the beleagured straight man, but he's more than backed up by a solid ensemble cast, chief among them being recurring Wright/Pegg collaborator Nick Frost as Shaun's even lazier best friend, Ed. Wright's subsequent work has gotten much more technically ambitious and more varied in its recurring themes regarding arrested development, but there's still something to be said for the power of a solid and straightforward debut like this.

2005 ranking: #31
2013 ranking: #23"Ohh, you make me live"...



<3

[Iroquois]

Hot Fuzz is the Wright vehicle that does the most for me in its mix of witty dialogue and visual storytelling, but I can't fault anyone who has Shaun of the Dead as their favorite.

Hot Fuzz was on my last list, but now I'd consider it my least favourite Cornetto film (almost put The World's End on this list). It certainly seems like the easiest to like because of its slow hangout mystery vibe with moments of action that contrasts against the pronounced horror of Shaun and the middle-aged bummer of End, I'll give it that.

[crumbsroom]

I think Hot Buzz is incredibly clever. And it's really well done. But there is a part of me that can't entirely commit to loving it, as I do Shaun of the Dead.

[Iroquois]

I mean, I might as well drop a quick Wright ranking:

Shaun of the Dead
The World's End
Hot Fuzz
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Baby Driver
The Sparks Brothers
Last Night in Soho

[crumbsroom]

Shaun of the Dead
Sparks Brothers
Hot Fuzz
World's End

Baby Driver


I haven't seen the rest

[Iroquois]

Scott Pilgrim is solid enough, hyper-stylised even by Wright's standards with its mix of comic book action and late-'00s hipster nerd rom-com. Last Night in Soho is him trying to do a more serious horror film with...mixed results, to put it mildly.

[Rockatansky]

Hot Fuzz
Shaun of the Dead
The World's End
Baby Driver
Scott Pilgrim
Last Night in Soho


Love the first two, dislike the last two.

[crumbsroom]

Scott Pilgrim is solid enough, hyper-stylised even by Wright's standards with its mix of comic book action and late-'00s hipster nerd rom-com. Last Night in Soho is him trying to do a more serious horror film with...mixed results, to put it mildly.


I'm interested in eventually seeing both of them.


The horribleness of Babydriver hasn't obscured my awareness that everything else I've seen by him I've really liked or respected.

[Rockatansky]

I'm interested in eventually seeing both of them.


The horribleness of Babydriver hasn't obscured my awareness that everything else I've seen by him I've really liked or respected.
Soho has more on its mind than Baby Driver, but what it's trying to say is dumb and bad, and its style is no less impersonal. It's like he spent an entire movie apologizing for the time he popped a boner watching The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (substitute any sexy giallo of your choosing), but with no grasp of what made that movie work, and having pulled all his arguments from the dumbest possible thinkpiece. Guaranteed to drive you up a wall.


Scott Pilgrim has some conceptually clever action scenes, but they go on for far too long and the repetitive structure doesn't help. You also really notice the value of Pegg and Frost providing a centre to his better movies when you're saddled with Michael Cera as the lead. Some good supporting performances, but at least one completely terrible one (Mae Whitman).

[crumbsroom]

Guaranteed to drive you up a wall.


You may have a point.

[StuSmallz]

I think Hot Fuzz is incredibly clever. And it's really well done. But there is a part of me that can't entirely commit to loving it, as I do Shaun of the Dead.Yeah; it's entertaining, but Shaun has the most heart of any of his movies to date, which still puts it at the top of his filmography for me right now.

[Iroquois]

Soho has more on its mind than Baby Driver, but what it's trying to say is dumb and bad, and its style is no less impersonal. It's like he spent an entire movie apologizing for the time he popped a boner watching The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (substitute any sexy giallo of your choosing), but with no grasp of what made that movie work, and having pulled all his arguments from the dumbest possible thinkpiece. Guaranteed to drive you up a wall.

Yeah, if you weren't already aware of how fundamentally prudish Wright's work tends to be, you definitely were after watching Soho (though this is perhaps an intentional by-product of his films' aforementioned preoccupation with arrested development, but that's debatable). Also maybe trying to over-extend himself because he'd gotten a rep for making films with shallow female characters and felt the need to prove otherwise by making one based around women (complete with female co-writer). I definitely wonder if I'll ever give it a second viewing at this rate.

Yeah; it's entertaining, but Shaun has the most heart of any of his movies to date, which still puts it at the top of his filmography for me right now.

I think there's a case to be made for World's End and its tale of a broken man trying to reassemble his friends in order to recreate the happiest day of his life, especially given how much of it was inspired by Pegg's own struggles with alcoholism that give it an edge.

[Takoma11]

Hot Fuzz was on my last list, but now I'd consider it my least favourite Cornetto film (almost put The World's End on this list). It certainly seems like the easiest to like because of its slow hangout mystery vibe with moments of action that contrasts against the pronounced horror of Shaun and the middle-aged bummer of End, I'll give it that.

This may sound superficial or whatever, but part of what I like about Hot Fuzz is that not a single, solitary moment of it makes me sad. I realize that this is the price of having a less deep/involved character arc, but it's something I'm willing to sacrifice for a film I can watch in any mood, at any time of day, and jump into it at any point in the story.

[StuSmallz]

This may sound superficial or whatever, but part of what I like about Hot Fuzz is that not a single, solitary moment of it makes me sad. I realize that this is the price of having a less deep/involved character arc, but it's something I'm willing to sacrifice for a film I can watch in any mood, at any time of day, and jump into it at any point in the story.I respect that, but for me, the presence of a super-emotional scene like this is what puts Shaun over anything else Wright has directed since:



https://youtu.be/qkYFVKLzFrk

[Iroquois]

#68. There Will Be Blood
(Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/75/cache-47484-1531855116/image-w1280.jpg

"I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people."

The second Paul Anderson film to make my list. Though I'm still not entirely sure on where I stand on PTA as a filmmaker (though I generally like most of what he's done), this is the one that stands out almost entirely because of how different it is from the rest of his filmography. One can certainly pick the thematic and structural similarities that reoccur throughout his work, especially the ways in which many of his favoured archetypes - eccentric entrepreneur, flawed father figure, and all-around difficult bastard - are so perfectly crystallised in the form of fledgling oil baron Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), himself giving a grandiose performance as if to perfectly delineate Anderson entering a new artistic phase. The film itself reflects that amply, centring on this ruthlessly capitalistic figure as he imposes himself on a potentially lucrative section of land and only seems to meet competition from local preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), whose holier-than-thou ways not only make him seem custom-built to be the perfect antagonist to Plainview but also mark him as the other side of the same willful coin that sees other people as a resource to be exploited even under the guise of piety. It's not subtle about it, but this is Anderson attempting to carry out his own particular take on the historical epic and that much is reflected in everything from Robert Elswit's crisp cinematography to Jonny Greenwood's hypnotic score.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #79

[Takoma11]

[center]#68. There Will Be Blood
(Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/75/cache-47484-1531855116/image-w1280.jpg

Jonny Greenwood's hypnotic score.

I saw this film in the theater with my family. My main impression of the film (unusually for me) is the score. I don't know if the theater had the volume at just the right level--not too loud, not too soft--but it felt like that music was gently rattling my bones and my heart.

[Iroquois]

#67. The Seventh Seal
(Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/173/cache-47562-1558111471/image-w1280.jpg

"Faith is a torment. It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call. "

Part of the reason I find redoing this list to be so interesting (even at the considerably staggered rate of once every eight or nine years) is realising just how much things can and do change - especially when it comes not just to new favourite films but new favourite directors. Bergman has readily earned such honours and, as rote a choice as it may be within cinephile circles, I have to throw some acknowledgment to the first film of his that I saw. The film is a grim jaunt through medieval times that sees a crusader (Max von Sydow) brought face-to-face with the literal embodiment of Death (Bengt Ekerot) before going on his own journey through a milieu so terrible that it makes the promise of death seem more like a reprieve than a punishment. Not the first or the last instance of Bergman's exercises in reckoning with matters of faith and existentialism, the decision to frame this one as a dark fairytale set in the Middle Ages not only allows him space to get more visually expressive than usual but see which age-old concepts continue to bleed into the modern world no matter how much the spectre of death glides over all.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[honeykid]

Now that's a great film. :Cool:

[Iroquois]

#66. Mad Max 2
(George Miller, 1981)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/9881/cache-33619-1628068375/image-w1280.jpg

"There has been too much violence. Too much pain. But I have an honourable compromise. Just walk away. Give me your pump, the oil, the gasoline, and the whole compound, and I'll spare your lives. Just walk away and we'll give you a safe passageway in the wastelands. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror."

Sequels are more often than not about escalation, expanding upon the concepts and tensions at the hearts of their predecessors and hopefully taking them in powerfully unprecedented directions. Few films accomplish quite like Mad Max 2, in which George Miller takes the original's quasi-dystopian carsploitation and pushes it into the post-apocalyptic, placing the eponymous road warrior (Mel Gibson) in the midst of a power struggle between an oil-refining collective and the marauding gang looking to pillage their operation. Owing as much to Western tropes as to sci-fi, the film sets up Max as a classic drifter archetype with plenty of self-serving reluctance covering a wounded soul - leading a cast of crazed characters (chief among them being local legend Bruce Spence as a gyrocopter pilot imaginatively named "The Gyro Captain") as they speed back and forth across the dusty outback in a series of frantic and impressively practical setpieces that deliver a lot in terms of vehicular carnage to the point of holding up four decades later. Though Miller would arguably craft a technically superior variation on proceedings with Fury Road, there's still a lot to be said for what he manages to accomplish on a scale that is smaller but not slower.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[StuSmallz]

Owing as much to Western tropes as to sci-fiI'd say it owes pretty much nothing to Sci-Fi, since the pure post-apocalyptic environment it depicts contains absolutely zero elements of futuristic technology, and it's basically showing what the world would be like if a nuclear war had started the year it was filmed, and then the survivors had to scrape together whatever was left over from that period. All unnecessary quibbling over the point aside though, I do feel The Road Warrior is a great pick (as you can see here) (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/mad-max-2/1/), and one that I'm sure Deschain will be happy to see, if I can tempt him to come in here...

[Iroquois]

Leaving aside the idea that science fiction has to be defined predominantly in terms of technology, I'd argue that the Mad Max franchise still qualifies because its very first film is set up as taking place "a few years from now" so the series has always been set in the future regardless of how advanced its technology might be (and one could contend that the changes to police vehicles, itself the main thing to distinguish the world of the film from how 1970s Australia already looked, is in itself enough of a technological change). In any case, I generally consider post-apocalyptic fiction to be sci-fi by default unless it's explicitly specified that the catalyst was explicitly supernatural as opposed to something that can be scientifically explained.

[StuSmallz]

I dunno; I kind of think you have to have some sort of advanced tech for a movie to be Sci-Fi, so something like Face/Off (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/face-off/) qualifies as part of the genre more than Warrior does for me, even though its setting is completely contemporary, but, I don't want to derail your nice thread any further with this, you know? : P

[Harry Lime]

A running total in your first post would be cool. I find it's tough to get a full picture of the list with a handful on each page. Anyway that's your call. This list is pretty great so far. A lot that would place on my top 100 - a list which every time I open it up it gets rearranged a bit and then there is also a "second 100" list that's actually more like 170 films...one day I'll post an updated top 100 here but it will just be the list. In the meantime, I will enjoy yours, Iro.

[Iroquois]

I dunno; I kind of think you have to have some sort of advanced tech for a movie to be Sci-Fi, so something like Face/Off (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/film/face-off/) qualifies as part of the genre more than Warrior does for me, even though its setting is completely contemporary, but, I don't want to derail your nice thread any further with this, you know? : P

I'll concede that the majority of the genre invokes advanced technology by default since so much of the genre is centred on inventing something new as a metaphorical means of exploring an existing concept, I just don't think that's the be-all and end-all of what the genre represents. Then again, I now have to wonder whether or not the refinery equipment that is used by the good tribe in The Road Warrior fulfills the "advanced tech" criteria anyway.

A running total in your first post would be cool. I find it's tough to get a full picture of the list with a handful on each page. Anyway that's your call. This list is pretty great so far. A lot that would place on my top 100 - a list which every time I open it up it gets rearranged a bit and then there is also a "second 100" list that's actually more like 170 films...one day I'll post an updated top 100 here but it will just be the list. In the meantime, I will enjoy yours, Iro.

Not a bad idea, I should start that before I post too many more titles.

[Iroquois]

#65. Lawrence of Arabia
(David Lean, 1962)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/498/cache-8179-1639047547/image-w1280.jpg?size=1200x

"Nothing is written."

That I only ever seem to revisit this whenever I need to double-check whether it still deserves a place in my Top 100 (a place that slips each time) seems like it would indicate that I shouldn't consider it a favourite next to countless films I rewatch more frequently within shorter periods of time, but such is the power of Lawrence. The lengthy runtime may make the prospect of rewatches a little daunting, but this only matches the staggering scope involved in Lean's depiction of the titular British officer (Peter O'Toole) and his various exploits during World War I. It's one thing to be like the eccentric Lawrence and get caught up in the grandeur and adventure promised by the journey (itself reflected in such rousing aspects of the filmmaking ranging from searing cinematography to grandiose score to sharp editing, especially when they are weaved together so expertly in many of the film's most iconic moments); it's another entirely to feel the comedown as Lawrence becomes increasingly jaded by a variety of unpleasant experiences that slowly but surely chip away at his earnest demeanour, whether it's bearing witness to (and sometimes causing) the deaths of beloved allies or being made to lose a little more of his soul as he continues to fight his campaign. O'Toole's piercing blue eyes do a lot to sell that initial sense of whimsy being whittled down to nothing, but even his astounding sense of presence must depend on being matched against a strong ensemble who can challenge him on a scene-to-scene basis (chief among them being Omar Sharif as the fictionalised Sherif Ali, admittedly a concession to not letting the truth get in the way of a good yarn if it meant creating a pointed sense of interplay amidst scorching deserts and campfire light).

2005 ranking: #8
2013 ranking: #25

[Iroquois]

#64. Once Upon a Time in the West
(Sergio Leone, 1968)

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"The future don't matter to us. Nothing matters now - not the land, not the money, not the woman. I came here to see you, 'cause I know that now you'll tell me what you're after."
"Only at the point of dying"

Leone feels like another one of those directors who proved a strong favourite during my early days as a cinephile but who has started to slip in my estimation as I discover new favourites. This much is felt upon revisiting Once Upon a Time in the West, an operatic deconstruction of the mercenary Wild West thrills spread throughout his Dollars trilogy that features another trio of gunslingers - the good (Charles Bronson), the bad (Henry Fonda), and the ugly (Jason Robards) - as they all become wrapped up in the personal affairs of a widow (Claudia Cardinale) who is trying to pick up the pieces of a recently-shattered life. Not the most perfect narrative - Cardinale exists in a largely passive capacity whose claim on a profitable tract of land essentially makes her a living MacGuffin to be pushed around by the men in the story and potentially contradict the idea that she is an avatar of civilisation coming to tame the Wild West - but it compensates amply enough by weaving in various other threads for its other leads and how they represent different facets of the West that are all on their way out as the railroads make their way west. Robards works as the scruffy bandit with a heart of gold, but it's the brewing feud between Fonda's sadistic hired gun and Bronson's vengeful drifter (both pointedly clad in black and white respectively) that really stands out to the point of threatening to overtake the aforementioned plot about land if only because it is painted and orchestrated on some of the most grandiose strokes in this entire film (which is saying something).

2005 ranking: #16
2013 ranking: #29

[rauldc14]

Probably my second favorite Western ever.

[pahaK]

Probably my second favorite Western ever.

Definitely my favorite western ever.

[SpelingError]

It's my second favorite Leone, right behind GBU.

[honeykid]

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

[crumbsroom]

Once Upon a Time in the West is the culmination of everything Leone was great at, committed to screen with perfection, sustained for the duration of an entire film.


As great as all of the movies he made were that proceeded it, OUATITW is his Orson Welles moment. It is beyond the beyond. Untouchable.

[John W Constantine]

Never heard of any of these choices. Carry on.

[StuSmallz]

It's my second favorite Leone, right behind GBU.It's been kind of a long time since I've watched it, when it was on TV once; I do remember liking it, just not as much as The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?anchor=1&p=2293543#post2293543) (which is still my #1 Leone), due to how sluggish the pacing seemed at times (though part of that was surely due to commericals bloating it out), but since I obviously just rewatched that other one, I should probably go ahead and rewatch West in a more optimal way as soon as possible, I think.

[Iroquois]

#63. The Third Man
(Carol Reed, 1949)

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly. "

Probably my favourite classic noir, The Third Man certainly takes a wry approach to the genre in having its cold-on-the-trail protagonist (Joseph Cotten) be a hacky American author who arrives in postwar Vienna and being confounded at every turn, most obviously by the fact that the friend (Orson Welles) who he intends to meet has apparently been murdered. It certainly wrings no small amount of amusement out of his attempts to solve the predicament, not least when said friend turns out to have been alive all along (spoiler alert, but sadly the barn door's been open on such an iconic reveal for almost 80 years now so yeah). That it sets such a tale of diabolical racketeering and callous disregard for human life amidst the bombed-out streets and dank sewers of a city still in the midst of rebuilding itself in reality makes for particularly poignant proceedings - Cotten and Welles having a verbal sparring match within the confines of a ferris wheel cab is arguably the best example of the nicer side of town having its own dark underbelly, which is as key an element for the noir experience as it gets..

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #53

[SpelingError]

The Third Man is great.

[Iroquois]

#62. It's Such A Beautiful Day
(Don Hertzfeldt, 2012)

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"The next thing you know you're looking back instead of forward. And now, at the climax of all those years of worry, sleepless nights, and denials, Bill finally finds himself staring his death in the face, surrounded by people he no longer recognizes and feels no closer attachment to than the thousands of relatives who'd come before. And as the sun continues to set, he finally comes to realize the dumb irony in how he had been waiting for this moment his entire life, this stupid awkward moment of death that had invaded and distracted so many days with stress and wasted time."

It's become a cliché of sorts in recent years for Western animation oriented towards adults to deal not just in juvenile humour but also to make its own overly-concerted efforts to engage with the breadth and depth of human emotion (especially the negative ones) as if it has something to prove about the medium having more cinematic merit than being a delivery system for merchandising profits. The success of these efforts will naturally vary and be prone to scrutiny, but I do think that Don Hertzfeldt has consistently proven himself a worthy auteur within the field with his independently-crafted shorts that deal in the absurd, surreal, and downright depressing. Such is the case with this film following the mundane misadventures of a behatted stick figure named Bill, whose boring life take a turn for the worse once his physical and mental wellbeing start to deteriorate in a manner implied to be extremely hereditary. Hertzfeldt blithely narrates his protagonist's many trials in aggressive detail as the simple cartoons explode outwards in discordant frames within frames, turning life into a seemingly relentless barrage of cacophonous nonsense and unsettling imagery while still finding the room for moments that are quiet without being peaceful.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Iroquois]

#61. Fanny and Alexander
(Ingmar Bergman, 1982)

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"Everything can happen. Everything is possible and probable. Time and space do not exist. On a flimsy framework of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns."

At once a sprawling and lavish epic (both in theatrical and televised formats) that stands out in a career compiled largely of monochromatic little ventures and yet very much a story rooted in the same notions of fate and faith, Fanny and Alexander may well be Bergman's magnum opus. Following one very turbulent year in the life of an affluent family, it centres mainly on the titular children (Bertil Guve and Pernilla Allwin) as their recently-widowed mother (Ewa Froling) marries a local bishop (Jan Malmsjö) and trades the theatrical opulence of their relatives for the pious austerity of a new husband - a narrative clearly in line with fairytales of old as the bishop reveals a cruel authoritarian streak from which the children seek to escape. Perhaps not the deepest of Bergman's works with its "wicked stepfather" plot, it nevertheless remains one of his most evocative as he allows himself to stretch out and develop a rich and varied world in terms of character and setting before tightening it into a starkness worthy of his earlier classics.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[SpelingError]

Out of curiosity, are you referring to the 3 hour version or the mini series?

I've only seen the 3 hour version, which would probably land somewhere in my top 3 Bergman films. I should check out the mini series as well.

[Iroquois]

I've seen the theatrical version twice and the television version once. The former is obviously more concise and communicates enough of what makes the whole project good, but the latter finds interesting new ways to expand upon matters without wearing out its welcome.

[SpelingError]

I'll have to check it out then.

[crumbsroom]

I often rank It's a Beautiful Day as the greatest animated film ever made, which I've increasingly come to view as a bit of an understatement. It's begun to creep up on me that I probably think it is one of the greatest films I've ever seen, period. Top 30 almost for sure.



It does everything I want from a piece of art. It is frightening, inscrutable, funny, joyous and depressing, all at once. Hertzfeldt feels like he is very much in control of every single element, and yet open enough to the spontaneous act of creation that it seems to be coming straight from the top of his head. Both masterfully composed and seemingly improvised moment to moment. Add to the fact that Hertzfeldt has developed not only a visual style, but a sense of humour and an eye for the weirdly beautiful, that is so uniquely his own it is indistinguishable from anyone else.


And from what I know of him, he's still resisting commodifying his art, or compromising in any way, and he should be seen as a real hero when it comes to the idea of the artist as self contained unit who cannot have his vision bought or sold, reduced or simplified. And yet, as deeply personal his work ultimately is, it still should be easy to relate to by anyone open enough to accept his deeply eccentric vision of what life is and how to survive it. This film is about all of us, whether we want it to be or not.

[Iroquois]

#60. Citizen Kane
(Orson Welles, 1941)

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"You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in sixty years."

In a way, I guess I have Mank to thank for this. Though I found David Fincher's biopic of the titular screenwriter to be rather mediocre in its own right, it did give me the motivation to revisit Citizen Kane itself as a means of refamiliarising myself with a film whose reputation more than speaks for itself (and in a theatre to boot) only to rediscover how much of said reputation was well and truly warranted. An elemental story of the eponymous newspaper tycoon (Orson Welles) and his journey from rags to riches as recounted by those closest to him, Kane fires on all cylinders - one understandably acknowledges certain degrees of technical innovation such as Gregg Toland's deep focus cinematography or even just how certain sequences are blocked and lit, but so much of it is driven by an ensemble so strong that not even Welles' grandstanding turn is enough to overshadow them. Chief among all is the delightfully acerbic script that finds a mean side to even the most innocent of characters and pressure-cooks them in everything from sensationalist journalism to political scandal, infusing the proceedings with damn near every possible emotion as it finds the uncomfortable humour in a montage showing a crumbling marriage or the tragedy in seeing lifelong partnerships come apart due to the clash between loyalty and integrity. Regardless of whether or not Mank was altogether accurate in its approach to the film's authorship, there's no denying how tightly-written the whole thing proves to be.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[rauldc14]

Need to see Citizen again but I liked it

[honeykid]

The script to Kane might be the most underrated thing about it... And it won an Oscar. Genuis film.

[TheUsualSuspect]

I took my wife to see There Will Be Blood in theatres and she turned to me after the opening 20 minutes and complained that no one was talking. I simply nodded and said, yeah, isn't it great?

She has yet to forgive me for that night.

[Iroquois]

#59. Aliens
(James Cameron, 1986)

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"I say we take off and nuke the whole site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Though I admit I'm having second thoughts about placing it this high (the downside of posting these titles one at a time is that you get more time to think about whether your ranking was "correct"), I do reckon Aliens still warrants considerable attention. One can retroactively see it as a rough draft for the genre-shifting sequel work Cameron would do in Terminator 2 for better and for worse, seeing how it reinvents untrained survivor Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) into an active warrior against the threat of xenomorphs and the last best hope when an entire colony (and the rescue team) falls prey to their ruthless bloodthirst. This does mean that it effectively recycles many of the original's concepts into a "bigger and better" framework (most obviously the contention with a bloody-minded corporation who are frustratingly bureaucratic even without the looming threat of militaristic malfeasance), though it does make enough of its variations on the source material not just in terms of characterisation (swapping from civilian space truckers to military hardasses ends up selling the threat at least as well, if not better) but in terms of narrative (giving Ripley an orphaned child to protect, even if that does skew into a vaguely reductive idea of strong female character as surrogate mother in a way that is literalised in a decidedly inferior director's cut). Of course, taken on its own terms it's a worthy exercise in melding action with horror and infusing it with the kind of elaborate sci-fi world-building that never distracts but manages to make everything about this world feel lived in until death incarnate starts infesting it.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #85

[StuSmallz]

I never liked Aliens as much as the original (as you can see here (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/tag/alien/reviews/)), because the series inevitably lost something in going from Giger's truly "alien" production design to those anonymous, FPS-y industrial corridors, along with turning the Xenomorph from an unstoppable monster to endless waves of cannon fodder (as well as removing some of the creature's mystique, as ThatDarnMKS has mentioned before), but it is still a great movie in its own right, and the best possible result we could've gotten from the series going from Horror to balls-to-the-wall Action, IMO.

[Iroquois]

#58. Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky
(Lam Nai-choi, 1991)

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"You got a lot of guts, Oscar!"

Unlike Aliens, I'm not really having second thoughts about sticking this infamously insane exercise in kung-fu ultraviolence over the likes of Citizen Kane. Set in a dystopian 2001 where prisons are run for profit (good thing that would never happen in real life), the recently-incarcerated Ricky (Fan Siu-wong) just wants to do his time quietly but the sheer brutality carried out on the general population by everyone from sadistic inmates to iron-fisted wardens means that he has to spend the whole movie fighting for his life - and fight he does. Riki-Oh turns the human body into a plasticine playground that's just waiting to be damaged and destroyed in all manner of cartoonishly gory ways - whatever fighting skill the rather capable performers display is secondary to the visceral displays of carnage they can wreak upon one another, putting the whole affair closer in tone to The Evil Dead or Braindead than The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Throw in an impressively overwrought English dub (the context in which the above pull-quote occurs has to be seen to be believed) and you have one of the genuine Hong Kong cult classics.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[TheUsualSuspect]

I've seen The Story of Ricky several times. I still get some laughs out of it.

[Iroquois]

#57. Repo Man
(Alex Cox, 1984)

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"Repo man's always intense. Let's get a drink."

For all the films that I do love and appreciate, there are very few that I look at and think to myself, "I wish I'd made that." Repo Man is such a film - the messy debut of a film critic who crafts a kitchen-sink narrative made up of off-beat observational humour, car repossession anecdotes, hardcore punk philosophy (or lack thereof), and bizarre sci-fi tangents. It's everything and nothing all at once, roiling from one mode to another at the drop of the hat with little to carry it beyond momentum and vibes. The individual elements - a suitably eccentric cast of character actors (with Harry Dean Stanton being a consummate professional as the cantankerous mentor to Emilio Estevez's snot-nosed protagonist), Robby Müller's sharp neon-tinged cinematography, a soundtrack riddled with punk rock and surf guitar, weird little bits of production design like the generic consumer goods and Christmas tree air fresheners - are more than capable of accomplishing such a task, aptly furnishing Cox's exercise in capturing the zeitgeist of 1980s America from a decidedly off-kilter angle.

2005 ranking: #24
2013 ranking: #17

[Rockatansky]

"The lights are growing dim Otto. I know a life of crime has led me to this sorry fate, and yet, I blame society. Society made me what I am."

"That's ********. You're a white suburban punk just like me."

"Yeah, but it still hurts."

[Iroquois]

#56. Raging Bull
(Martin Scorsese, 1980)

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"You didn't get me down, Ray."

Scorsese does take a fair bit of guff from those who would argue that his tendency to direct films about violent, maladjusted men and the damage they cause others proves emptily voyeuristic at best and toxically valorising at worst - this is a view I find easy to dispute more often than not, but Raging Bull definitely pushes that envelope with its blunt efforts to depict the life and times of boxing champion Jake La Motta (Robert De Niro). Scorsese's health scares inspired him to treat this as what would potentially be his final film and that can be felt in both the tangible filmmaking choices - the texture of black-and-white film sharpening both the frantically gliding attempts to capture La Motta's fighting within the ring and the statically unflinching dramatisations of the violence he inflicts outside it, pointedly soundtracking its more poignant moments with grandiose opera but largely letting the soundtrack consist of the painful sounds of punches and slaps. Throughout it all, De Niro turns in an almost too-dedicated performance tracing La Motta's rise and fall as he alienates and dominates (or occasionally charms) the people around him with his brutishness - it's one thing to see him convincingly punch his way through professional bouts, but something else entirely to see him tearfully screaming and pounding at a concrete wall.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #84

[StuSmallz]

#56. Raging Bull
(Martin Scorsese, 1980)

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"You didn't get me down, Ray."

Scorsese does take a fair bit of guff from those who would argue that his tendency to direct films about violent, maladjusted men and the damage they cause others proves emptily voyeuristic at best and toxically valorising at worstPsssh, have those people even watched his movies? That's like when people claim that he's "weak" with his female characters; c'mon!

[Iroquois]

What, you're telling me that depiction does not always equal endorsement?

[Iroquois]

#55. Pulp Fiction
(Quentin Tarantino, 1994)

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"Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character."

Like many up-and-coming cinephiles from the past 30 years, I too ended up latching onto the shamelessly plagiaristic and provocative filmography of Quentin Tarantino. The crown jewel in his compact but indelible career was this gangster anthology that found room for a variety of conflicts involving all kinds of bizarre characters and objects - one MacGuffin is left totally unexplained, another is explained in hilarious detail. As with Tarantino's other exercises in the crime genre, themes of honour and redemption run rampant through each of these crooked tales - a hitman (Samuel L. Jackson) starts to rethink his life during one particularly unusual day on the job, his partner (John Travolta) must navigate the difficulties involved with taking the boss's wife (Uma Thurman) out for dinner, and a prizefighter (Bruce Willis) finds himself in a truly unpredictable situation after refusing to take a dive for said boss (Ving Rhames). Every element of the proceedings is peppered with Tarantino's many idiosyncrasies - a '90s movie with everything about its cultural milieu stuck between 1950 and 1979, all manner of physical and verbal profanity, and a tendency towards stylised and sometimes comical violence that nevertheless finds the wherewithal to end on a pacifistic grace note.

2005 ranking: #10
2013 ranking: #9

[Iroquois]

#54. Mad Max: Fury Road
(George Miller, 2015)

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"Oh, what a day! What a lovely day!"

Soft reboots and legacy sequels are all the rage these days with the vast majority of them being little more than vacuous exercises in brand management and increasing profit margins. Fury Road readily distinguishes itself as being more than just another exercise in reheating intellectual property as Miller brings his post-apocalyptic franchise roaring back to life for the first time in decades, swapping out Mel Gibson for Tom Hardy as the titular road warrior who gets drawn into a high-speed pursuit between a decrepit warlord (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and a defecting soldier (Charlize Theron) who has escaped with his long-suffering group of enslaved wives. Though it does have its fair share of concessions to advances in digital technology, there is something so delightfully analog about how Fury Road stages its feature-length chase across the scorched earth and finding all manner of ways in which to escalate and pace the proceedings, never truly losing sight of the battered and broken humans at the heart of the maelstrom (Theron's Furiosa proves an especially worthy deuteragonist in this regard) and sets what should have been a blueprint for how 21st-century blockbusters should have been. Wandering the wasteland in search of our better selves indeed.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Iroquois]

#53. Predator
(John McTiernan, 1987)

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"If it bleeds, we can kill it."

Another spin on the idea of the most dangerous game, this time things take a turn for the extraterrestrial as a team of American commandos returning from their latest mission are targeted and attacked by an alien hunter looking for worthy prey. In the context of a decade where the action genre was riddled with all manner of gung-ho military adventures, I definitely appreciate how Predator opts for sci-fi subversion as it enters its back half and gives its overconfident human characters a real challenge that their propensity for high-octane firepower and arm-wrestling machismo hasn't exactly prepared them for. McTiernan readily proves himself one of the key action filmmakers of his generation not merely by indulging the genre's usual trappings such as explosive shoot-outs or cool one-liners, but also by steadily cutting them down to size as the film progresses and the heroes are eliminated, ultimately leaving Schwarzenegger's swaggering major humbled and fending for himself using the most primitive of battle tactics. Subtextually interesting in how it regards matters of military intervention and the relevance of superior weaponry, though its ultimate ambivalence proves a double-edged sword. In any case, this proves one of the finer Schwarzenegger vehicles simply for giving him an antagonist who can actually put up a real fight.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #72

[Iroquois]

#52. Heathers
(Michael Lehmann, 1988)

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"Our love is God. Let's go get a Slushie."

While one of the high school films to make my list was a lackadaisical depiction of growing up in the 1970s, the other is a thoroughly cynical and acerbic tale of how it feels to navigate the cruelties and violations of growing up in the 1980s. A jaded mean girl (Winona Ryder) hooks up with a mysterious rebel (Christian Slater) and their plans to get a little petty revenge on the school's most popular girl (Kim Chandler) get lethally out of hand, launching the whole community into a frenzy about teen suicide. The result is a pitch-black satire that takes swings at anything and everything to do with the pains of growing up in a society riddled with callous classmates and useless adults, but still finds room for a sliver of hope amidst the sharply-written jokes about chainsaw-f*cking and brain tumours (it is still very funny that screenwriter Daniel Waters wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct this, but at the same time one can see how this might fit the man's sensibilities).

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #70

[Iroquois]

#51. Barry Lyndon
(Stanley Kubrick, 1975)

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"No lad who has liberty for the first time, and twenty guineas in his pocket, is very sad, and Barry rode towards Dublin thinking not so much of the kind mother left alone, and of the home behind him, but of tomorrow, and all the wonders it would bring."

Like Tarantino, Kubrick is another one of those directors that a budding cinephile can and will latch onto for having a similarly small but potent filmography that spans genres and tones with technical and directorial aplomb. Such a mercurial talent is reflected in how my own estimation of his filmography ebbs and flows over the years. Enter Barry Lyndon, a Regency-era comedy of errors that seems unassuming when placed between much bolder and more infamous Kubrick ventures involving futuristic gang-rapists and haunted hotels but which nonetheless has won me over with a more measured approach to the sheer brutality coded into society - it's far from his most brutal film, but everything from gentlemanly duels to pugilistic brawls to catastrophic military operations ultimately serve as extensions of a world in which one's ability to compose one's self in polite company can either slip at a moment's notice (if not be thrown off without hesitation) or thoroughly mask an unremitting callousness towards one's fellow man. Throughout this misbegotten excuse for a world, the eponymous rogue (Ryan O'Neal) stumbles from misfortune to misfortune and even his odd moments of good luck come with immeasurable downsides. Both the opulence and the carnage of his misadventures are rendered through truly stunning cinematography (possibly the best in a filmography that is by and large defined by it) that captures the light on each tableau in a way that emphasises the darkness underneath.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[honeykid]

Heathers is the pick of these for me, I think. I can quote-a-long with Pulp Fiction but I'm not sure I feel it as much as Heathers now. Maybe that's just a trick of the mind? I love Predator but, as I've said before, it gets worse every time I see it, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable or cheesy. In fact, it sort of increases both with every watch.

I've still not gotten around to Barry Lyndon.

[Iroquois]

Just glad to get a reply, it was starting to get lonely posting nothing but titles.

[Iroquois]

#50. Kwaidan
(Masaki Kobayashi, 1964)

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"I intended to treat you like the other man. But I couldn't help feeling pity for you because you're so young. You're a handsome boy. I will not hurt you now. But if you ever tell anybody - even your own mother - about what you've seen tonight, I'll know it. And then I'll kill you. Remember that. Understand?"

The anthology format seems like it's perfectly suited to the horror genre as creators must tighten every element - fear, tension, impact - in order to fit into shorter periods of time, but at the same time there seem to be so few genuinely classic horror anthologies. Kwaidan stands head and shoulders above the others that I've seen (yes, even the still-very-good Creepshow), taking a truly audacious three-hour runtime in order to tell four ghost stories set in medieval Japan. A far cry from Kobayashi's more grounded and monochromatic tales of samurai and soldiers, here he goes all-out in playing up cinematic artifice - eyes painted onto the sky haunting a hapless traveler, the aftermath of an ocean battle spawning an army of spirits, smiling souls hovering in cups of water - and crafts some truly indelible imagery in the process (just look at the still in this post). It's still in keeping with his career-long focus on honour and tragedy, whether in the form of tearing down institutions like samurai clans or observing the rotten luck that can befall innocent civilians. Harakiri or the Human Condition trilogy may be more obvious choices for his masterpiece, but there's a lot to be said for him doing something this audacious and having it pay off.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Takoma11]

These are all favorites of mine, aside from Barry Lyndon which bores me despite its amazing visuals.

Predator used to be my midnight on a Friday go-to, but recently that spot has been taken over by one of its sequels, Predators. I will say, though, that there's a really great director's commentary on Predator, including the rationale for the different casting decisions and the ways that the film subverts some of the action movie tropes about violence and masculinity.

[Little Ash]

I don't have time or the current mental focus to articulate my why's, but I looking over the last two pages, Barry Lyndon and Citizen Kane both fall into my top 10 list, if that's any sign of encouragement.

[TheUsualSuspect]

Crazy how Pulp Fiction goes from #9 to #55.

[honeykid]

I may sound childish or flippant, but I wonder if it's just growing up? In your teens/twenties it's so cool (I was in my early 20's when PF came out and it felt like something I'd just never see or heard before) and it's one of the few films I've ever seen more than once at the cinema. I was watching it a couple of years ago and, like I said, even though I was quoting along with the film and enjoying it, I wasn't loving it like I used to. In fact, take the nostalgia away and I wasn't loving it at all, just really liking it. Would Pulp Fiction make my 100 now? Probably. It's still really good and I love the 90's, but even in my late 30's I had it at #52 on my 100.

[Little Ash]

Slight alternative take - movies that are fun for one reason or another may burn themselves out on the fun factor?
And after that happens, you may still appreciate their good attributes, but without that buzz, they seem a little less shiny in the mind's eye.


Also possible, whatever seemed new to you at the time, you may eventually just take for granted a couple decades down the line.


Both of those might be heightened by just being exposed to more stuff that might make the movie seem less unique. Which, I don't know how much of that is growing old, doing deep dives, or the fact that as a society, we're awash in so much more cultural products at the fingertips (both old and new, indie and mainstream, international and domestic) in the past decade than ever before. I've noticed as I've aged, it's sometimes hard to tell if things are changing because I'm getting older, or if things are actually changing.

[Little Ash]

As a point of comparison (interesting or not), Pulp Fiction came out in early high school for me. I watched Apocalypse Now just before starting high school and am pretty sure I had seen Kane by that point. Was that why I enjoyed Pulp Fiction, but it didn't register as, "greatest movie of all time," like it did for other people? Maybe.


But that was also my middle-brow teen years where I was also taking the Oscars as my cue for what constituted the year's best movie. And while I think it was nominated, the signals at that age also de-emphasized genre and emphasized drama (regardless of the quality).


And by the time I got to college and was actually getting whiff that some people just took it for granted it was one of the greatest movies, I had been working through various New Hollywood stuff from the 70s the immediate years prior.
French New Wave, I wouldn't get to until after college (WKW and Zhang Yimou were big during those years, so that's where my attention was pointed).


I also probably didn't appreciate the cultural drought that Pulp Fiction emerged during because of some of that.


Just trying to construct those disjointed pieces on the single test case of me on that one.

[SpelingError]

For some time, Pulp Fiction was near the end of my top 30, but was pushed off of it a while ago. It's still a great film, but I'm not sure if it would even make my top 100 now.

[StuSmallz]

Predator used to be my midnight on a Friday go-to, but recently that spot has been taken over by one of its sequels, Predators. I will say, though, that there's a really great director's commentary on Predator, including the rationale for the different casting decisions and the ways that the film subverts some of the action movie tropes about violence and masculinity.You mean like this section here?:

h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?t=891&v=InyKZ0F-fVU&feature=youtu.be

[KeyserCorleone]

Tha'ts actually a REALLY keen outlook on Predator, more than I was willing to give a story that kind of replaces the story set up in the first act with a new one, which was a leading criticism on my part. I first saw it when I was 15. Dad told me if Predator scares me, then I'm not ready for Alien.

I wasn't even scared by Alien, although artistically it's the scariest "made" movie I've seen. Tbh, I gotta watch Predator again, because currently I'd say, while it's a good one, The Blob remake is better as a gory sci-fi romp.

But no, The Blob actually managed to scare me a couple times. Giving it big points for that.

[Iroquois]

I may sound childish or flippant, but I wonder if it's just growing up? In your teens/twenties it's so cool (I was in my early 20's when PF came out and it felt like something I'd just never see or heard before) and it's one of the few films I've ever seen more than once at the cinema. I was watching it a couple of years ago and, like I said, even though I was quoting along with the film and enjoying it, I wasn't loving it like I used to. In fact, take the nostalgia away and I wasn't loving it at all, just really liking it. Would Pulp Fiction make my 100 now? Probably. It's still really good and I love the 90's, but even in my late 30's I had it at #52 on my 100.

Slight alternative take - movies that are fun for one reason or another may burn themselves out on the fun factor?
And after that happens, you may still appreciate their good attributes, but without that buzz, they seem a little less shiny in the mind's eye.


Also possible, whatever seemed new to you at the time, you may eventually just take for granted a couple decades down the line.


Both of those might be heightened by just being exposed to more stuff that might make the movie seem less unique. Which, I don't know how much of that is growing old, doing deep dives, or the fact that as a society, we're awash in so much more cultural products at the fingertips (both old and new, indie and mainstream, international and domestic) in the past decade than ever before. I've noticed as I've aged, it's sometimes hard to tell if things are changing because I'm getting older, or if things are actually changing.

Both these posts get it, it's pretty much a combination of both outgrowing Pulp Fiction just a little and also just finding new cinematic discoveries that can't help but push it down the list. Including how certain films fared on previous countdowns is an interesting means of tracking how things change over the years, to say nothing of the post I made in my last countdown thread (https://www.movieforums.com/community/showthread.php?p=971922#post971922) where I offer my reasons for cutting films that had appeared on the previous countdown (and which I may do again with this countdown as well). That the film made three separate countdowns when most films make it onto one at best should say enough regardless of where it actually placed.

[Iroquois]

#49. Paris, Texas
(Wim Wenders, 1984)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/1502/cache-47456-1580726159/image-w1280.jpg

"I'm not afraid of heights. I'm afraid of falling."

Wenders' Palme-winning film begins with its haggard protagonist Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) wandering the Texas desert in a wordless fugue, running from a past he will soon be made to confront after his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) finally tracks him down and brings him home. A decidedly calm and patient exercise in addressing the traumas that have happened to its characters (to say nothing of the ones who are indirectly affected by the aftermath of whatever happened in Travis's mysterious past) to the point where repeat viewings may call into question just how much that calmness is genuinely warranted, but that renowned third act in which Travis finally locates his lost love Jane (Nastassja Kinski) and works to resolve what has happened to make him and everyone else the way they are. The languid pacing and matter-of-fact approach to the characters' lives is granted a certain mundane beauty by its German creators' exercises in depicting America, especially Robby Müller once again delivering indelible imagery as he depicts dusty deserts and neon-tinged establishments. Ry Cooder's melancholy slide guitar is the real icing on the cake, amply complementing this particular tale of how to rebuild a life as best one can.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #49

[Takoma11]

You mean like this section here?:

h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?t=891&v=InyKZ0F-fVU&feature=youtu.be

Exactly. The whole commentary is really interesting.

[SpelingError]

That one used to be my favorite Wenders until Wings of Desire took its place.

[StuSmallz]

For some time, Pulp Fiction was near the end of my top 30, but was pushed off of it a while ago. It's still a great film, but I'm not sure if it would even make my top 100 now.Ditto; I mean, it's still a great movie, but when I rewatched it years later as a non-teenager, the more edgelord-y tendencies of the film got on my nerves more (in particular the entire pawnshop sequence), along with the realization that it could've pretty much cut an entire half of "The Bonnie Situation" section without losing anything essential. Still, it is great, and still one of Tarantino's (https://letterboxd.com/stusmallz/tag/tarantino/reviews/) best movie, if you ask me.Exactly. The whole commentary is really interesting.Yeah, though I'd still say that Die Hard is even more of a deconstruction of Action movies, as you can read here if you want to: http://matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?7947-Stu-Presents-Genre-Deconstruction-In-Film-A-Crash-Course!/page2&p=635718&viewfull=1#post635718

[Iroquois]

Yeah, I'd say one thing that has worked against Pulp Fiction as time goes on is realising that it has a bit too much dead air here and there - I basically treat everything between Captain Koons' gold watch monologue and Butch arriving at his old apartment like an intermission at this point. Most of his movies are of a similar length so this might just be endemic to Tarantino and something you have to accept about him at this point.

[Iroquois]

#48. Spirited Away
(Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/979/cache-30752-1615460383/image-w1280.jpg

"Once you do something, you never forget. Even if you can't remember."

I am genuinely surprised that I did not have any Studio Ghibli films on either of my previous countdowns - 2005, perhaps, but not even 2013? I had Beavis and Butt-Head Do America on there but not this? Anyway, Spirited Away. Arguably the biggest jewel in the renowned studio's crown with its tale of Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi) and her parents taking a detour into a magical town full of spirits where she ends up as an indentured servant to the witch (Mari Natsuki) who runs the local bathhouse while her parents are transformed into pigs. All manner of witchcraft and fantasy unfolds as a variety of colourful creatures come and go through the bathhouse, be they employees or customers - this is as perfect a vehicle for Miyazaki's fruitful imagination as any other film he's done, bolstering an admittedly straightforward fairytale narrative with gusto. This does have the effect of making it seem relatively generic next to other Miyazaki projects that more readily reflect the idiosyncratic aspects of his passions and craftsmanship, but it nevertheless remains one of the prime examples of how he's distinguished himself as one of the medium's best creators.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[Rockatansky]

I only got to Studio Ghibli's output two years ago, but Spirited Away easily ranks near the top. It's packed with more great visual ideas by the minute than any other animated movie I've ever seen. If it occasionally gets a little overwhelming, well, that's a pretty good problem to have.


As for Pulp Fiction, it blew me away when I was a teenager, and while I likely wouldn't rank it as highly among my favourites by virtue of having seen more movies, a rewatch a year and a half ago was like revisiting an old friend. I don't have any problems with the movie (except maybe one line). I even like Tarantino's performance.

[Rockatansky]

And Paris, Texas is great, but I prefer a certain other Harry Dean Stanton movie from 1984.

[StuSmallz]

And Paris, Texas is great, but I prefer a certain other Harry Dean Stanton movie from 1984.Red Dawn?

[Takoma11]

Yeah, though I'd still say that Die Hard is even more of a deconstruction of Action movies, as you can read here if you want to: http://matchcut.artboiled.com/showthread.php?7947-Stu-Presents-Genre-Deconstruction-In-Film-A-Crash-Course!/page2&p=635718&viewfull=1#post635718

Right, though the commentary is good not just because of talking about the deconstruction of the action tropes but also because of the insight into the casting process and the logistics of shooting the film in its jungle setting.

[KeyserCorleone]

When I die and my soul is carried away to Heaven, I'll be holding a Spirited Away DVD.

[Rockatansky]

Red Dawn?


AAAAVEEEEEEENNNNNGGGGEEEE MEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!


No.

[Little Ash]

AAAAVEEEEEEENNNNNGGGGEEEE MEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!


No.


Your replies are always intense.

[Rockatansky]

Your replies are always intense.

The life of a [title of movie I'm referring to] is always intense.

[Iroquois]

Trying to decide which of those movies to rank above the other was a tough one.

[Wyldesyde19]

Red Dawn?
Since Red Daen was rejected I’ll go with Repo Man.

[KeyserCorleone]

AAAAVEEEEEEENNNNNGGGGEEEE MEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

No.

When you type more than one silent e, you know shit's going down,

[Iroquois]

#47. Ghost in the Shell
(Mamoru Oshii, 1995)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/104/cache-90744-1608760349/image-w1280.jpg

"If we all reacted the same way, we'd be predictable, and there's always more than one way to view a situation. What's true for the group is also true for the individual. It's simple: Overspecialise, and you breed in weakness. It's slow death."

When I was getting into anime for the first time, this was suggested as one of the key features alongside the likes of Akira or Ninja Scroll. However, those films had much more immediately tangible thrills and spectacles to offer as opposed to this one, whose much more contemplative approach to cyberpunk meant that I took a long time to truly come around on it (its placement in the 2005 countdown now reads as more conciliatory than genuine). Now the tale of cyborg commando Motoko Kusanagi (Atsuko Tanaka) and her life that alternates between intense criminal investigations and existential crises is now far clearer to me than ever before, dealing in a lot of the usual questions of what constitutes artificial life and how it starts to bleed into the world of flesh. The slow pacing and emphasis on atmosphere now makes much more sense as Kusanagi and co. muse on these questions and what it means to truly be alive in a world where the line between human and machine keeps growing thinner - this sense of blurring boundaries even extends to the moments where it does spring into fully-fledged action (a climactic body-rending battle has the same kind of ethereal soundtrack as a calm river voyage). All things considered, I'm glad that I appreciate this late rather than never.

2005 ranking: #91
2013 ranking: N/A

[StuSmallz]

Did you ever watch Stand Alone Complex, Iro?

[Iroquois]

I got a copy of it last Christmas, but I haven't gotten around to it - not much of a TV watcher these days, to be honest. I'll watch it eventually.

[StuSmallz]

Season one was okay from what I saw of it, but two was ****ing awesome, if I remember correctly.

[Wooley]

#99. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
(Liu Chia-Liang, 1978)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/23430/cache-42574-1445907433/image-w1280.jpg

"We have only thirty-five chambers. There is no thirty-six."
"I know that...but I want to create a new chamber."

When a Shaw Brothers film begins with that Warner-aping shield logo over that colourfully-backlit frosted glass while triumphant fanfare blares on the soundtrack, it's usually a sign that you're in for one of the more enjoyable pieces of work to come out of Hong Kong during the studio's heyday. This is especially true of one of the jewels in the studio's crown, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Much like the previous film on this countdown, the plot isn't of much consequence - a young student (Gordon Liu) becomes a Shaolin monk in an attempt to fight back against the Manchurian overlords who have oppressed his hometown - as it instead focuses on the many trials required to master the secret Shaolin art of kung fu. I'm not sure how often you get films where watching the protagonist develop their skills ultimately proves more exciting than actually seeing them deploy said skills against their sworn enemies. Such a thing is to be treasured, especially when it's the bullet-headed Liu enduring physical trials that are humourous without undercutting the overall seriousness of his mission or the remarkable and painstaking physical prowess required to accomplish them. That's before he even gets around to having any classically hyper-stylised fights with exaggerated sound effects (every movement makes a whoosh or clang or thwack) and a camera that moves in such perfectly-choreographed tandem with fighters' heavily-staged but nevertheless fascinating moves.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #97

I haven't seen this but I am looking forward to it more and more with each review of it I read or positive (which they all are) mention of it I come across.

[Wooley]

#97. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
(Nicholas Meyer, 1982)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/17480/cache-29835-1571018393/image-w1280.jpg

"He tasks me. He tasks me and I shall have him! I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up!"



Hell yeah.

[Wooley]

#92. The Passion of Joan of Arc
(Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1928)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/228/cache-39030-1610998586/image-w1280.jpg

"You claim that I am sent by the Devil. It's not true. To make me suffer, the Devil has sent you...and you...and you...and you."

My first countdown featured one silent film, Un Chien Andalou. My second countdown had no silent films on it whatsoever. Now I circle back around and put this on, not merely out of a sense of tokenistic obligation like the one-film-per-director idea I floated earlier but because, well, it's undeniable. In crafting a dramatisation based on records taken from the religious rebel's trial, Dreyer paints a stark portrayal of the proceedings as Joan (Renée Falconetti) endures the disdain and accusations of the assorted clergy with a thousand-yard stare while pleading her case as an apparent messenger of God. Appreciable for its innovative technical aplomb (especially when it comes to close-ups) and its dense approach to matters of faith and how they affect (or are affected by) individuals and institutions alike, The Passion of Joan of Arc might end up being the only silent film on this countdown but even so it's certainly one of the best to represent the form.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

I'm gonna try not to reaction-bomb your thread (which I think I just discovered) but I saw this movie for the first time about 2 years ago and it fairly blew me away. Can't believe I waited so long to see it and yet I'm glad I waited so long to see it so that there are still movies like this out there for me to see.
Aside from how good the film is in every other way, Falconetti just blew my mind. I didn't know there was screen-acting that good that early.

[ScarletLion]

The Passion of Joan is one of the greatest films ever made. It's so sad what happened to Maria Falconetti

[Wooley]

Funnily enough, during an opening scene in Dawn of the Dead where Wooley blows a tenant's head off with a shotgun (not to be confused with Wooley, of course; I'm sure he's much nicer :D), you'll see that the man is actually a mannequin if you pause the film.

86108

Oh, I'll blow your g*ddamn head right off.

[SpelingError]

I'm pretty sure we can say damn on this forum.

[Rockatansky]

I believe ******* gets censored though.

[Wooley]

#74. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
(Robert Altman, 1971)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/951/cache-28164-1572841977/image-w1280.jpg

"If a man is fool enough to get into business with a woman, she ain't going to think much of him."

Would-be entrepreneur John McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides into a snowy mining outpost to the anachronistic tune of Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song", making a striking variation on the familiar Western trope of a drifter arriving in town that perfectly sets the stage for New Hollywood maverick Altman's own spin on the genre. The revisionist subversion kicks in when the blustering McCabe is made to realise that he is in over his head and must ultimately rely on the much more knowledgeable Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) to help him run the only game in town, but it doesn't take long before their combined success starts drawing the wrong kind of attention not from lawless bandits but a monopolistic mining corporation. The most American of genres gets a crash course in ostensibly progressive cynicism - as much as the film deals in a sort of sex-positive feminism through Mrs. Miller's bordello philosophising (to say nothing of how she ultimately proves to be the brains behind the duo's operation), it soon becomes clear that even this small slice of independence isn't set to last as a capitalist version of manifest destiny bears down on its foolhardy hero. That its bittersweet fable is rendered in warm and wintry hues by the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond goes a long way in bolstering its already-powerful sense of tragic romance - not just between the eponymous duo, but for the dream of something better to the American myth than what ultimately transpired.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #46

This is the movie that convinced me that Altman was an historically great director.
I already liked him a lot and saw him as a bigger deal than any contemporary director I could think of, but this was the one that pushed me over the edge on him.

[Wooley]

#49. Paris, Texas
(Wim Wenders, 1984)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/1502/cache-47456-1580726159/image-w1280.jpg

"I'm not afraid of heights. I'm afraid of falling."

Wenders' Palme-winning film begins with its haggard protagonist Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) wandering the Texas desert in a wordless fugue, running from a past he will soon be made to confront after his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) finally tracks him down and brings him home. A decidedly calm and patient exercise in addressing the traumas that have happened to its characters (to say nothing of the ones who are indirectly affected by the aftermath of whatever happened in Travis's mysterious past) to the point where repeat viewings may call into question just how much that calmness is genuinely warranted, but that renowned third act in which Travis finally locates his lost love Jane (Nastassja Kinski) and works to resolve what has happened to make him and everyone else the way they are. The languid pacing and matter-of-fact approach to the characters' lives is granted a certain mundane beauty by its German creators' exercises in depicting America, especially Robby Müller once again delivering indelible imagery as he depicts dusty deserts and neon-tinged establishments. Ry Cooder's melancholy slide guitar is the real icing on the cake, amply complementing this particular tale of how to rebuild a life as best one can.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #49

My personal No.2.
(And that only if you count The Rocky Horror Picture Show which is so its own thing I almost think it should be separate, making P, T No.1.)

[Iroquois]

#46. Big Trouble in Little China
(John Carpenter, 1986)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/3684/cache-10312-1612284086/image-w1280.jpg

"This is Jack Burton and you're listening to the Pork Chop Express. It's like I told my last wife, I says, 'Honey, I never drive faster than I can see - and besides that, it's all in the reflexes.'"

It's become something of a cliché for critics and fans alike to point out how the thing that makes Big Trouble in Little China work so well is how it treats nominal all-American action hero protagonist Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) like a bumbling doofus while his ostensible sidekick Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is the genuinely capable and knowledgable warrior whose search for his kidnapped fiancée (Suzee Pai) is the real driving force behind the film. At the same time, it's impossible to deny that it's a genius move that only helps to distinguish Carpenter's genre-bending kung-fu odyssey in the midst of a decade where American action cinema was largely defined by powerful, hypermasculine, and predominantly white leads. Even leaving that aside, the fact that it's one of his rare shots at doing a comparatively big picture means that he goes all-out in staging not just hyperkinetic scenes of mortal combat but also coming up with all manner of bizarre mythological creatures and designs to colour in the story's mystical adventure framework - there's a Bigfoot-esque monster and a creature covered in eyeballs, but the humanoid villains such as cursed sorcerer Lo Pan (James Hong) or the Raiden-esque Three Storms are themselves great texture for such a journey. Throughout it all, Russell makes for an endearingly naive buffoon that is far removed from the jaded badasses he played in other Carpenter films (and his snappy back-and-forth with Kim Cattrall's feisty activist Gracie Law is also a highlight), making this another peak in Carpenter's impeccable '76-'88 run.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #43

[John-Connor]

Great pick, love BTILC :heart:

Already one of my fav top 100 lists on mofo..

https://i.imgur.com/DPu5rP3.gif?noredirect

[Iroquois]

#45. Chungking Express
(Wong Kar-wai, 1994)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/226/cache-8030-1617296968/image-w1280.jpg

" If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries."

Wong is another director who has been on my radar for about as long as I've been making lists but it's taken me far too long to actually include. Chungking Express may not necessarily be his masterpiece, but it's not for a lack of trying with its bifurcated narrative involving two separate police officers (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung) trying to navigate rough patches in their love lives at the same that they cross paths with potential new love interests (Brigitte Lin and Faye Wong respectively). Beyond that, the specifics vary wildly - Kaneshiro's Officer 223 struggles to move on and latches onto disinterested criminal Lin, while Leung's Officer 663 is oblivious to Wong's growing infatuation that spirals into such bizarre behaviour as sneaking into his apartment to redecorate. They are both different sides of the same coin, covering vast ground in depicting unconventional romance on the bright and smoky streets of Hong Kong (rendered with noirish grain and free-floating movement by Wong's mostly-regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle) and creating a film that you can feel in your heart and lungs. When a film manages to needle-drop the exact same song as many times as this one does with "California Dreamin'" and it never gets old, that's a classic.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[SpelingError]

Nott my favorite Wong, but still really good.

[Iroquois]

#44. Do the Right Thing
(Spike Lee, 1989)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/286/cache-51135-1562323444/image-w1280.jpg

"Free country? I oughta f*ck you up for saying a thing like that."

For the longest time, Kevin Smith's Clerks was a major favourite for showing a young me how much could be done when a film was just a bunch of colourful characters hanging around in the same location for a single day. Of course, he does have a reputation for being the kind of filmmaker that cinephiles are meant to grow beyond and part of that is realising that a film like Do the Right Thing accomplishes so much more within the same loose format involving a single day revolving around a small business and the locals who can be found in and around its vicinity. That the business is an Italian-run pizzeria located in a predominantly Black neighbourhood creates an underlying tension that is only exacerbated as the summer heat builds up and people are pushed to their own boiling points as the day wears on. Lee works with a remarkable ensemble of actors to create a richly-observed microcosm in which to unfold his exercise on examining race relations in modern America, not settling for a simplistic polemic by emphasising that all his characters have their own significant flaws and therefore resisting any easy sense of moralising - but on the rare moment where it does go for the jugular, it's never without reason. Even leaving aside the ways in which it crafts such a nuanced narrative, one can't exactly find much fault in how Lee delivers in terms of an indelible experience from its rip-roaring opening credits blasting "Fight the Power" to its momentary digressions that toy with the reality of the film's world without breaking it apart.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[honeykid]

Do The Right Thing is such a great and powerful film. My favourite of Lee's work (though I've not seen much) but this early Lee (She's Gotta Have It, Skool Daze) was the Lee that I saw and really liked. I saw Malcolm X and Jungle Fever but remember little of them. Both films I'd like to see again just to see what I'm sure I missed and have since learned. 4 Little Girls and Summer Of Sam is where I left Lee though. I've not seen any of his work since then. The former is a good, heartbreaking documentary, the latter not really what I was expecting and fairly hit and miss.

[Iroquois]

I'm all over the place when it comes to Lee - I did enjoy his recent one-two punch of Da 5 Bloods and David Byrne's American Utopia, but have also had to contend with the likes of She Hate Me and his Oldboy remake. Still have to see quite a few of his other big/early films, but I find even his duds to be at least a little interesting and worth watching.

[Iroquois]

#43. Sunset Blvd.
(Billy Wilder, 1950)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/167/cache-8009-1524865854/image-w1280.jpg

"I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

Hard not to be a little self-conscious about the comparative lack of significantly older films (read: pre-1960s) on this list, especially when one of the few I have included is a film that came out in 1950 and is already built on the idea that people don't give a damn about older films and especially not the people who made them. Wilder's noirish tale of burnt-out screenwriter Joe GIllis (William Holden) ending up in the employ of eccentric silent-era actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) makes for a sharp indictment of Hollywood's film industry and how it'll hang its older stars out to dry due to the mercurial nature of audience demands (to say nothing of how it treats writers, memorably mocking audiences for thinking that actors make up their lines as they go). At the same time, there's nuance to how it depicts Norma as a tragic figure who is prone to manic outbursts out of long-harboured delusions about a potential comeback. It's enough to ground what is otherwise a pitch-black show business satire, where even weird spectacles such as Norma holding a nighttime funeral for a deceased monkey in her own backyard don't come across as the laughable kind of absurd.

2005 ranking: #87
2013 ranking: N/A

[StuSmallz]

I'm all over the place when it comes to Lee - I did enjoy his recent one-two punch of Da 5 Bloods and David Byrne's American Utopia, but have also had to contend with the likes of She Hate Me and his Oldboy remake. Still have to see quite a few of his other big/early films, but I find even his duds to be at least a little interesting and worth watching.BlacKKKlansman was good too.

[Iroquois]

I remember liking BlacKkKlansman when I saw it in theatres, but I haven't felt much urge to revisit it and I've read some critiques of it that question its approach to depicting police officers even in the name of thwarting the KKK. I figure I can keep working my way through the ones I haven't seen before I ever get back to it.

[doubledenim]

I credit Lee with forcing Rosie Perez to occupy a large part of real estate in my young conscience. Decades before anyone had ever thought of living rent-free.

[Miss Vicky]

Looks like I've failed to visit this thread for the last 3 months. Whoops.
Unsurprisingly, there's very little overlap in our tastes, but I do really like the effort you've put into the presentation and the explanations of why you appreciate each movie. :up:

[honeykid]

BlacKKKlansman was good too.
I remember liking BlacKkKlansman when I saw it in theatres,
That was the last Lee film I really did want to see. I still haven't, but I do intend to at some point (which is closer than I get to seeing most films I'm interested in. :D )

[Wooley]

#45. Chungking Express
(Wong Kar-wai, 1994)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/226/cache-8030-1617296968/image-w1280.jpg

" If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates? If so, I hope they last for centuries."

Wong is another director who has been on my radar for about as long as I've been making lists but it's taken me far too long to actually include. Chungking Express may not necessarily be his masterpiece, but it's not for a lack of trying with its bifurcated narrative involving two separate police officers (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung) trying to navigate rough patches in their love lives at the same that they cross paths with potential new love interests (Brigitte Lin and Faye Wong respectively). Beyond that, the specifics vary wildly - Kaneshiro's Officer 223 struggles to move on and latches onto disinterested criminal Lin, while Leung's Officer 663 is oblivious to Wong's growing infatuation that spirals into such bizarre behaviour as sneaking into his apartment to redecorate. They are both different sides of the same coin, covering vast ground in depicting unconventional romance on the bright and smoky streets of Hong Kong (rendered with noirish grain and free-floating movement by Wong's mostly-regular cinematographer Christopher Doyle) and creating a film that you can feel in your heart and lungs. When a film manages to needle-drop the exact same song as many times as this one does with "California Dreamin'" and it never gets old, that's a classic.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

And this was the film that really opened up East Asian cinema to me.

[Wooley]

#43. Sunset Blvd.
(Billy Wilder, 1950)

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"I am big. It's the pictures that got small."

Hard not to be a little self-conscious about the comparative lack of significantly older films (read: pre-1960s) on this list, especially when one of the few I have included is a film that came out in 1950 and is already built on the idea that people don't give a damn about older films and especially not the people who made them. Wilder's noirish tale of burnt-out screenwriter Joe GIllis (William Holden) ending up in the employ of eccentric silent-era actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) makes for a sharp indictment of Hollywood's film industry and how it'll hang its older stars out to dry due to the mercurial nature of audience demands (to say nothing of how it treats writers, memorably mocking audiences for thinking that actors make up their lines as they go). At the same time, there's nuance to how it depicts Norma as a tragic figure who is prone to manic outbursts out of long-harboured delusions about a potential comeback. It's enough to ground what is otherwise a pitch-black show business satire, where even weird spectacles such as Norma holding a nighttime funeral for a deceased monkey in her own backyard don't come across as the laughable kind of absurd.

2005 ranking: #87
2013 ranking: N/A

A classic at least as good as its reputation.

[Iroquois]

#42. Suspiria
(Dario Argento, 1977)

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"I don't give a damn about getting thrown out. You wouldn't believe me if I told it to you. It all seems so absurd...so fantastic!"

Seven times. That's how many times I've managed to catch Suspiria in theatres - and they were the first seven times I've ever seen it, too. One can see right from its very first scene of American ballet dancer Suzy (Jessica Harper) walking through an airport that is inexplicably bathed in the same red light that appears constantly throughout the rest of the film that it's going to be quite the maximalist exercise in horror that demands as big a screen and as powerful a sound system as possible to communicate its searing visuals and cacophonous soundtrack. A film that's as ratcheted up to eleven in so many departments - bombastic yet sinister score, exaggerated but fitting performances, gut-wrenching demonstrations of suspense and violence - as this one definitely leaves an impression that carries it through the simplistic structure of its dark fairytale narrative involving a ballet academy that is home to a coven of witches.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

[honeykid]

Suspiria just looks gorgeous. I don't think there's an ugly frame in the whole film. It's mental, but looks fantastic. That quote you posted with the pic just sums it up perfectly.

[SpelingError]

I wasn't the biggest fan of Suspiria when I first watched it for some reasons I don't remember well, but I warmed up to it over time to the point it's now one of my favorite horror films (top 10, probably).

[Wooley]

#42. Suspiria
(Dario Argento, 1977)

https://images.mubicdn.net/images/film/511/cache-27653-1540598415/image-w1280.jpg

"I don't give a damn about getting thrown out. You wouldn't believe me if I told it to you. It all seems so absurd...so fantastic!"

Seven times. That's how many times I've managed to catch Suspiria in theatres - and they were the first seven times I've ever seen it, too. One can see right from its very first scene of American ballet dancer Suzy (Jessica Harper) walking through an airport that is inexplicably bathed in the same red light that appears constantly throughout the rest of the film that it's going to be quite the maximalist exercise in horror that demands as big a screen and as powerful a sound system as possible to communicate its searing visuals and cacophonous soundtrack. A film that's as ratcheted up to eleven in so many departments - bombastic yet sinister score, exaggerated but fitting performances, gut-wrenching demonstrations of suspense and violence - as this one definitely leaves an impression that carries it through the simplistic structure of its dark fairytale narrative involving a ballet academy that is home to a coven of witches.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

I still remember the time that I saw it, when I was doubting if it was nearly as good as I remembered, and said at the end, "Well, it's some kind of masterpiece."
That was a good night.

(I haven't always been able to convince others of this, though.)

[Wooley]

Oh, a funny thing is that the first time I saw it, about 20 years ago, I hated Goblin's score.
Hated it.

[pahaK]

I just don't understand what happened to Argento in 75-77. He made his best two films back to back and never before or after got even close to their quality. And no, that doesn't mean that everything else is garbage, but those two are masterpieces while the others range from pretty good to quite bad (I really need to rewatch some, though).

[crumbsroom]

I hated Goblin's score.


The greatest of all sins.


I'm sure you've come around since, but this is almost a conversation ender for me. And I'm someone who will knowingly and deliberately pound any point I have home, gladly, for hours upon hours and words upon words. But anytime I talk about this movie (and it is only rapturously) I'll just quickly change the subject when (invariably) it is brought up that the score is unlistenable.



"So how about that weather we've been having lately", may be my only response to such madness. I'd rather descend into a hellscape of small talk than listen to how the Suspiria score is just a bunch of noise. Or that it is distracting from the film. Or any other opinion that doesn't see it as the greatest non-Leone composed score in the history of film.

[Iroquois]

One of the screenings of Suspiria that I attended did have Goblin providing a live score. And you think that stuff goes hard on the soundtrack.

I don't think there's that much of a gulf in quality regarding the stuff he did up to and including Opera - Deep Red and Suspiria are the obvious stand-outs, but stuff like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage or Inferno doesn't seem too much worse in that regard. My point of comparison for a director who turns out one or two classics while everything else is mediocre to awful would probably be John Landis - man drops The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London back-to-back but there's nothing special about anything he dropped on either side of that.

[crumbsroom]

I just don't understand what happened to Argento in 75-77. He made his best two films back to back and never before or after got even close to their quality. And no, that doesn't mean that everything else is garbage, but those two are masterpieces while the others range from pretty good to quite bad (I really need to rewatch some, though).


I think the reality of Argento is that even at his absolute peak, his films are always precariously balanced and sometimes almost tipping towards total nonsensical oblivion. Both narratively and stylistically. He lives right at that intersection where good and bad taste meet. Move anyway too far to the right or left, and it either becomes just a little too tame, or just a little too wildly stupid.

I'm just happy he's got as many great to good films as he does. And I've mostly avoided the supposedly terrible terrible terrible ones.

[crumbsroom]

All good to great Argento films:


Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Four Flies on Grey Velvet
Deep Red
Tenebre
Inferno
Suspiria
Sleepless
Phenomena
Opera

[pahaK]

My point of comparison for a director who turns out one or two classics while everything else is mediocre to awful would probably be John Landis - man drops The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London back-to-back but there's nothing special about anything he dropped on either side of that.

That comparison doesn't really work for me because I don't even like those two supposedly good ones. Actually, if I'd have to name the best two Landis movies I'd probably go with Animal House and Innocent Blood :shrug:

[Little Ash]

Well, with Landis, we actually do know what happened to his career post-Twilight Zone the movie.

[Iroquois]

I wish I liked Innocent Blood more but I think it kinda sucks (pun intended) because it teases a vampire mafia plot that's way more interesting than whatever's going on with the sexy lead vampire, whereas Animal House is not something I find overly amusing in the first place. Would still take either of them over something as crushingly dull as Into the Night or Beverly Hills Cop III, I suppose.

[Iroquois]

#41. The Terminator
(James Cameron, 1984)

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"Don't you get it? That Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear - and it absolutely will not stop - ever - until you are dead."

As much fun as there is to be had with the high-octane slickness of its much more beloved sequel, I've always preferred Cameron's original venture into the world of futuristic cyborg assassins, helped in no small part by the analog grit involved in rendering the eponymous killing machine (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as he stalks his prey (Linda Hamilton) through nightclubs, police stations, and factories. The janky animatronics readily showed their age even when I first watched the film almost 20 years ago now, but they're now part of the film's retro charm (look no further than the "TechNoir" sequence and how much it contributed to the synthwave aesthetic of later years) and there's a lot to be said for how much Cameron and co. are able to accomplish on a comparatively small budget not just in terms of rendering the Terminator's artificial form but glimpses of a machine-dominated future. Even the most conventional scenes such as car chases or shoot-outs on the sickly green streets of Los Angeles carry with them with a ruthless efficiency. Centring it all is the bizarre time-travel romance between Hamilton's Sarah Connor and her human guardian Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) as they both struggle to survive or fight back against their implacable enemy - without their unlikely chemistry, even the ambitious B-grade cool of the film's other elements wouldn't work quite as well.

2005 ranking: #5
2013 ranking: #42

[Rockatansky]

Argento was on fire until the end of the '80s, and had a few pretty ones after that. Not a bad run, IMO.


As far as Landis goes, Trading Places is my favourite. I actually do like Into the Night quite a bit, but I'm easily dazzled by stars and fun cameos and the movie has a lot of them. BHC III though, yeesh. Apparently Murphy was unhappy with the direction his career was taking and tried to dial down the humour, and the movie is substantially worse off.

[Takoma11]

Centring it all is the bizarre time-travel romance between Hamilton's Sarah Connor and her human guardian Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) as they both struggle to survive or fight back against their implacable enemy - without their unlikely chemistry, even the ambitious B-grade cool of the film's other elements wouldn't work quite as well.


I expected to like The Terminator, but the success of the human side of things--both the romance and just Hamilton on her own---really lift it up to a higher tier.

[Captain Terror]

One of the screenings of Suspiria that I attended did have Goblin providing a live score.

:eek:
WTFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

[Captain Terror]

Question:

Did any of you embrace Suspiria immediately after your first viewing? I find it's been pretty common to hear folks claim that it was a rewatch that convinced them it was great, myself included. It's my theory that it takes one viewing to get you acclimated, and then once you know what you're in for you can really settle in for your 2nd viewing.

I first saw it in my early 20s, back when my expectations about horror movies were a lot more rigid, and my underwhelmed reaction was "well, that wasn't what I was expecting". But in my defense, how could I have expected Suspiria? Who watches Suspiria for the first time and thinks, "Yep, that's exactly what I thought it would be"? Especially in the pre-internet 90s when stumbling upon an Argento film on TV was not something that happened.
So for a young Universal fanboy who preferred his horror films to be B&W and stodgy, Suspiria was a shock to the senses. I mean, I used to think Hammer films were too garish so you can imagine my distaste for Argento. Luckily I came around eventually, and seeing it on the big screen a few years ago is one of my favorite cinema memories.

[Iroquois]

I think I first saw it in my early-20s, but it was in a horror-themed triple bill with House On Haunted Hill and another film I can't recall but which was in that similar kind of semi-ironic fun kind of horror vibe (and, as noted, the outsized nature of Suspiria has a certain air of camp about it) so my initial impression was about a 3.5 or so. I think it was around the time that they started doing rep screenings for the 40th anniversary 4K restoration that I decided to give it another shot and really took in what a blast it was.

[Wooley]

Question:

Did any of you embrace Suspiria immediately after your first viewing? I find it's been pretty common to hear folks claim that it was a rewatch that convinced them it was great, myself included. It's my theory that it takes one viewing to get you acclimated, and then once you know what you're in for you can really settle in for your 2nd viewing.

I first saw it in my early 20s, back when my expectations about horror movies were a lot more rigid, and my underwhelmed reaction was "well, that wasn't what I was expecting". But in my defense, how could I have expected Suspiria? Who watches Suspiria for the first time and thinks, "Yep, that's exactly what I thought it would be"? Especially in the pre-internet 90s when stumbling upon an Argento film on TV was not something that happened.
So for a young Universal fanboy who preferred his horror films to be B&W and stodgy, Suspiria was a shock to the senses. I mean, I used to think Hammer films were too garish so you can imagine my distaste for Argento. Luckily I came around eventually, and seeing it on the big screen a few years ago is one of my favorite cinema memories.

I liked it a lot on my first viewing. Opened up hundreds of films that were new to me as possibilities.
But I loved it on my second.

But I get where you're coming from, if it's your gateway into 70s European Horror and all that that spawned, and it is for most people, I think, then, yeah, who's prepared for that?

[Little Ash]

I didn't see Suspiria until about 10 years ago. So after nearly a decade of hearing about it on RT, mostly in the context that gave me the sense it was a horror movie that even non-horror movie people cared about, I was primed for liking it. And it was a surprise watch in one of those 24 hour horror things I went to, so hundreds of other people, in a line-up where some of the movies that preceded it were Q, The Driller Killer, and X-tro. And then Suspiria came on (keep in mind, we didn't know what was coming up as they played, though the hint for Suspiria was Euro-horror classic, so I actually had my hopes that would be it), and man, it was a beautiful, crisp, 35mm print (this was at least a few years before the 4k restorations, because I remember then slumming around a few years ordering blu-rays of bad transfers from overseas). I managed to get through the entire thing without realizing the plot was complete nonsense. I think some of it was the mystery covered it up, and by the time you got "the reveal" (what reveal?), I was already under the spell of the movie.

When I watched Inferno later that year on blu-ray, by myself, by itself, with the knowledge that people cared for that one a lot less, the problems with the story were much more of an issue. But I warmed up to it with each subsequent viewing. So, I think my experience with Inferno matches what other people's experience with Suspiria was.

[Little Ash]

in a line-up where some of the movies that preceded it were Q, The Driller Killer, and X-tro.

I had to look up the actual line-up, and had forgotten all of those were together. I swear, the first half of that year was probably the most crazy, strong line-up I've experienced at those things. The second half of that year... started to regress towards the mean.

[crumbsroom]

Suspiria was the movie I was looking for my entire life, so when I found it, I was prepared. It was the Rosetta Stone that linked all the art house garbage I was watching with all of the B-movie poetry I was simultaneously awash in. As soon as it ended I put it on again. Then watched it the next two or three nights as well. It was a drug. From those opening drums rolls to the completely underwhelming climax, it was all mine. And I wanted every second of it.



How disappointing though when every person I showed it to was completely underwhelmed. So Suspiria was also the beginning of me beginning to understand I was seeing something in movies most mortals aren't terribly interested in. But that's their loss.

[Rockatansky]

I loved Suspiria with my first watch, but I think I was at the perfect exploratory phase to be won over by that movie.


Inferno I definitely owe a rewatch though. I was a bit underwhelmed when I saw it (or rather, the movie felt like it miscalculated on the Suspiria magic), but I'd like to give it another shot.

[Captain Terror]

I liked it a lot on my first viewing. Opened up hundreds of films that were new to me as possibilities.
But I loved it on my second.



But even so you did hate the score that first time which supports my theory that very few of us are completely ready for Suspiria when we first encounter it.


This theory probably doesn't apply to younger folks who have more info at their disposal and can come to it better-researched than I. Like where would I even find a Suspiria trailer to watch back in '92? I just had to rent it completely blind.


Another thing to remember is that I first watched it after having spent the 80s ignoring any and all slashers, so I didn't even have that base line to fall back on. So I was no doubt even less prepared than the average viewer.

[Rockatansky]

Yeah, I don't think I'd watched a trailer, but I was definitely somewhat aware of what I was getting into. I'd seen snippets when a truncated version was played on some channel with a horror host (not one of the good ones), and the story had actually been referenced by a cartoon I'd watched as a kid (Martin Mystery, a Canadian cartoon from the early 2000s that was about a group of paranormal investigators, fun stuff if I recall correctly).

[Little Ash]

You know, despite people referring to Suspiria on RT, I had no idea what it was about nor its tone. The most I had seen was a screenshot or so (I seem to recall it was the face against the glass, or the yellow eyes through the glass - which... doesn't give you much).
I think just being primed that it was a euro-horror classic probably made the biggest difference. That and just all of the other stuff they showed. Like, I'm pretty sure I saw Possession the summer before...

It's hard to guess what my response would have been if I had seen it in my 20s. I remember seeing Naked Lunch (and Lost Highway) in college and being... confused. Because I basically wanted it to be something more straightforward in the connection between the real world and the fantastical world (something that we'd all get later with Pan's Labyrinth and by that point, such straightforwardness was less desired).

Granted, the first time I saw Naked Lunch, I didn't know much about Burrows, didn't know the novel, and didn't appreciate that there was no fantastical story going on, it was all supposed to be just a drug trip, no ambiguity intended on that front at all.