The MoFo Top 100 Films Directed By Women: The Countdown

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I remember thinking it was really amazing upon initial release but I question if it held up (I may have re-watched it at some point, but the fact that I remain uncertain about that seems a little odd) and, while the idea of revisiting again is at the back of my mind, I question if I ever will. As a result, it didn't make my list.
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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0



I liked The Hurt Locker much more than expected, so it made my list at #23.

I'm surprised, or maybe I shouldn't be surprised, that a lot of the movies that made the countdown seem like guy flicks, even though women directed them.



I remember thinking it was really amazing upon initial release but I question if it held up (I may have re-watched it at some point, but the fact that I remain uncertain about that seems a little odd) and, while the idea of revisiting again is at the back of my mind, I question if I ever will. As a result, it didn't make my list.
Yeah, this is my exact situation. Liked it a lot when i watched it around five years ago but i've got a feeling it won't hold up, at least not to the same degree. Didn't vote for it but it was on my initial list before i watched a bunch.

Mildly surprised Point Break is the highest Bigelow, fun film though.



I think I mentioned Bigelow rocks. Hurt Locker has some of the most intense moments put to film. I admit it goes a bit off the rails when Renner goes rogue, but comes back nicely for a appropriate and well done ending.
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Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
The Hurt Locker was my #6.
Originally from a 1-19-10 Movie Tab.
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)
+



You could say (perhaps foolishly) that this film is totally different and far-more serious than Point Break and you could maybe make it stick with those pretentious (I find that a legit word, HA!)-types, but it's amazing to me how similar these films are, although this one has certain flaws (such as episodicness) which the "dumb" flick doesn't share. So, how about I return to this compare/contrast later and talk about why I like this movie so much. This flick is intense. It puts you right into the middle of a dangerous situation for almost the entirety of its 2+hour running time. You know that at any time, sonebody could die, and that's just the way the Iraq War (and the "War on Terror") is. I realize that now people take the Iraq War for granted, but we're still not out. All it'll take are some serious bombings to keep us from pulling out when we said we would. Anyway, this flick does cover three individual, yet totally-realistic soldiers who are in Iraq in 2004 and hope that they can make it out alive.

The main characters are James (Jeremy Renner) who's the bomb disposal team leader and the one who always seems to go out of his way to do too much to try to get killed; Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), who's the leader's by-the-book backup man and safeguard against the theory that "***** happens"; and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), a scared young man who's sure that he's not going to make it out of Iraq alive, especially if James has his way. Some people criticize the James character for being unrealistic in that he's playing with the lives of the other members of his team, but this guy has been doing it his way for some time now and if he's NEVER actually responsible for American soldiers' deaths, it's going to be tough to make him lose his job since he's better at it than anybody else.

Anyway, I do find this to be serious since the Iraq War is real and surfing bank robbers are fiction, but all movies are created equal (at least in my eyes) until you're "allowed" to judge them for themselves. This film shares with Point Break the male bonding, the concept of machismo, the fear of commitment to marriage and a "normal life", and it does it in such a way that maybe it doesn't quite seem as episodic as it is. In this flick, the characters fill in what's missing from a straight storyline by showing and discussing what they want out of life before they die. As such, it's a powerful comment on war in general and a critique of how modern young men look at how they want their lives to turn out. Don't be all that surprised that the Hollywood Foreign Press gave this film no awards at all (the only best drama nominee it failed to do so). The Iraq War is still seen as bad to most of the [foreign] world, and this film is just too honest to pull any punches to not show America as we really are (even if it's not real but only a form of poetic justice).
Seen 95/95
My List
2. Olympia (41)
3. Olivier, Olivier (76)
4. Wonder Woman (17)
5. The Piano (21)
6. The Hurt Locker (6)
7. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (14)
8. 13th (51)
9. The Matrix (20)
10. Boys Don't Cry (11)
11. A New Leaf (67)
12. Europa Europa (24)
13. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (38)
16. Awakenings (13)
17. The Heartbreak Kid (45)
19. Sleepless in Seattle (15)
20. Frida (49)
21. Harlan County, USA (71)
22. Bound (90)
23. Near Daek (8)
24. A League of Their Own (19)
25. Detroit (40)
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Women will be your undoing, Pépé
Have not seen Hurt Locker and don't really have any interest in seeing it. Which is surprising since I do enjoy a good war flick.

And I think I'll start revealing some that won't make it:

Watched: 29/95
#1 A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
#2 Titus
#3 The Matrix
#4 Voices
#5 Strange Days
#6 Ravenous
#7 Yentl

#8 Morvern Callar
#9 It might, maybe
#10 The Ascent
#11 Chocolat
#12 Little Women
#13 Orlando
#14 Maudie

#16 The Dressmaker
#17 Tank Girl
#18 A League of Their Own
#19 A comedy that might yet pop up. A Dark Horse call, if you will
#20 Don't see it happening
#21 Another wonderful flick that won't make it

#22 The Hitch-hiker
#23 Annnd, that's right, more Penny Marshall love - thank you
#24 Still possible
#25 Hope and a prayer for this one
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@edarsenal Maudie, I forgot about that film being directed by a woman or I might have voted for it, so blame me for it not making the list And I bet I'd liked Babs in Yentl but haven't seen it yet, so my fault again!

Was I the ONLY person to vote for Triumph of the Will (1935) Leni Riefenstahl??? Anybody care to own up to voting for it...a dare ya!



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
@edarsenal Maudie, I forgot about that film being directed by a woman or I might have voted for it, so blame me for it not making the list And I bet I'd liked Babs in Yentl but haven't seen it yet, so my fault again!

Was I the ONLY person to vote for Triumph of the Will (1935) Leni Riefenstahl??? Anybody care to own up to voting for it...a dare ya!
I got lucky with adding Maudie at the last second having a film that had both a man and woman team directing it and had to replace it and I had seen Maudie a few days prior.

I think you'd really love Yentl. Babs is the only one that sings. And the singing involves her inner thoughts. What's on her mind. Which I thought was a great little twist of using a soliloquy.

I remember a lot of folks talking about the skill Riefenstahl had when doing that movie, but haven't seen it.



Triumph of the Will is very well made but it's just so abhorrent that i could never vote for it in something like this. Like i enjoyed and was impressed by some of it, while some of it made me feel ill.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Triumph of the Will was my #18. I believe Siddon may have listed it.
Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)


I've had this discussion at other forums, and I always come down on the side that Leni Riefenstahl's films should be studied. It's not really that different from other films. Even though she was making a "documentary" film with what may be perceived as a skewed perspective, and thus it's a propaganda film, every film made is from a perspective and could be perceived as a "propaganda" film. It's only what we know about the Nazis after the fact that turns Leni Riefenstahl into a horrible monster, someone who a few believe is as bad as Hitler himself!

Leni Riefenstahl is an incredibly important and interesting personage in the history of world cinema, and I too find it disturbing that people want to censor her work. This is not because I'm a neo-Nazi; far from it. It's because "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Riefenstahl was a cinematic genius. I posted that incredible film above, The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl because it's a superb three-hour documentary which goes over her entire life, and it mixes many scenes from her movies with an interviewer grilling her in her old age about questions which she mostly answers, but seems a bit uncomfortable in doing so. I'm not here to talk about whether she was a Nazi or not. (She never joined the party.) But, she did stay in Germany when most of the greatest filmmakers and actors took off, so why did she do it? She may have done it just to show that she was a great filmmaker and maybe she was truly naive or didn't actually pay attention to politics. She kept saying, over and over about Triumph of the Will, that the film won awards throughout Europe. She was proud of her skills and proud of the accolades from critics and viewers. I'm not here to rationalize her behavior, but I am here to attest to the fact that she knew how to shoot and edit a film for maximum emotional and aesthetic impact, even when her aesthetics actually do lean towards a form of racism and sexism.



The opening of Triumph of the Will shows a subliminal storytelling skill which few films have ever matched. It begins in the clouds, amongst the Gods, and eventually we see an airplane bringing God (Hitler) down from Heaven to Earth to be with his "children" and nurture them. When "He" arrives, the people all passionately welcome him in a monumental parade. After that, the entire country (especially the youth) seem mobilized to make their country grow in strength and do hard labor to improve the land for "all of us". It's only later at the Nuremberg Rallies where the question of "outsiders and undesirables" is mentioned that the implication that Germany will flourish better if it was "purer" is raised. Riefenstahl claims she had no hand in the staging of all the massive scenes in the film, but sometimes that seems hard to believe because the camera is always in the right place, whether it be for composition, context or maximum impact. Boy, I hope I don't sound like a Nazi here, but this film is a textbook of cinematic vocabulary, even if I find her followup, Olympia, the document of the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, to be far more groundbreaking cinematically. To give Riefenstahl some credit, in Olympia there is at least three times more footage of the African-American star of the Games, Jesse Owens, than there is of Der Fuhrer.



OK, even though there's more to say, I'll cool it and come back later. I hope somebody else responds before I return. Oh, and since I know what Roger Ebert thinks about Song of the South, I'm betting he tries to slam the movie bigtime. Believe me, the movie has things to slam, but it still should never be censored, no matter what Rog may think.



Welcome to the human race...
Yeah, this is my exact situation. Liked it a lot when i watched it around five years ago but i've got a feeling it won't hold up, at least not to the same degree. Didn't vote for it but it was on my initial list before i watched a bunch.

Mildly surprised Point Break is the highest Bigelow, fun film though.
I think it makes sense if you consider Point Break to be her most overall accessible film thanks to it being a relatively light and breezy action movie compared to, well, literally every other film of hers that cracked this list.



Welcome to the human race...
#5.
Point Break

(dir. Kathryn Bigelow, 1991)




2 x 1st, 3 x 2nd, 1 x 5th, 2 x 10th, 1 x 11th, 1 x 13th, 1 x 17th, 1 x 18th, 1 x 21st, 2 x 22nd, 1 x 25th
=
234 points






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@mark f Ebert is actually a defender of Triumph of the Will.

To me, it's amazing to look at and has historical value, but those two are all it has going for me.
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Point Break was my number one. It's an all-time favorite film with great action, beautiful scenery and beautiful people (well not Gary Busey but the rest of the main cast).



I've seen Point Break a couple of times and I like it, but not nearly as much as I want to. I'll try it again at some point but it wasn't in contention for my list. So I voted for 4 Bigelow films, but not the 2 that made it highest on this countdown.



Welcome to the human race...
I had it at #2. Like I said just before, it's Bigelow's most accessible movie but I'd say it's a testament to her filmmaking talents that she takes what could have been an inane extreme-sports bank-robbery B-movie and infuses it with enough technical verve and larger-than-life personality to push it towards greatness.



Voted for Point Break. Not many action films from my teens hold up but this one did when I watched it a few years ago. Cool characters and action beats. Don't know whether to praise it or blame it for starting the rubber masked bank robber trend.



Feel similar to Cricket. It's pretty fun but i don't think it's great so i didn't vote for it. It's better than Big at least though, this sites fascination with that film is so weird to me.



Women will be your undoing, Pépé
Been quite some time since I saw Point Break and enjoyed it, but not enough to make my list

Watched: 30/96
#1 A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
#2 Titus
#3 The Matrix
#4 Voices
#5 Strange Days
#6 Ravenous
#7 Yentl
l#8 Morvern Callar
#9 It might, maybe
#10 The Ascent
#11 Chocolat
#12 Little Women
#13 Orlando
#14 Maudie
#15 Kung Fu Panda #2

#16 The Dressmaker
#17 Tank Girl
#18 A League of Their Own
#19 A comedy that might yet pop up. A Dark Horse call, if you will
#20 Don't see it happening

#21 Belle

#22 The Hitch-hiker
#23 Annnd, that's right, more Penny Marshall love - thank you
#24 Still possible
#25 Hope and a prayer for this one