The Movie Forums Top 100 of All-Time Refresh: Countdown

Argentine is great at the time. Idk if 12 apes would also make it this occasion, but talk terry gilliam right now my mind is on the frame with munchausen, which impossible.
Fear loathing is good ride, but i think kinda swallowed by the test of time. Those are still his best streak as filmmaker, perhaps.

I didn't like the remake. I sort of agree with Argento on this one: “it did not excite me, it betrayed the spirit of the original film: There is no fear, there is no music. The film has not satisfied me so much.”

I'm gonna be trashy and say that one of my favorite Bergmans is The Magician, which has some of the existential stuff but also a decent dose of thriller-y stuff.

Franny and Alexander is great and I honestly think you will really like it.

Wild Strawberries is a really solid film with some memorable imagery, but I think that it often suffers from an inflated reputation. I find it very charming.

Winter Light is very good, and leans very strongly toward the "inner life of the character" model. The performances are excellent.

Cries and Whispers is incredibly emotionally compelling.

The Silence is weird and wonderful.

The Virgin Spring is a more "conventional" narrative about revenge.

Hour of the Wolf leans more toward horror. I haven't seen it in over a decade, but I know I really liked it.

Through a Glass Darkly is amazing.

The Devil's Eye is a fun little comedy with some surprisingly good chemistry between the leads.

If I sat down and did my top ten Bergman films it would likely be...

1. Wild Strawberries
2. Fanny and Alexander
3. Virgin Spring
4. Scenes from a Marriage
5. Through a Glass Darkly
6. Summer with Monika
7. From the life of Marionettes
8. Cries and Whispers
9. The Magic Flute
10. The Magician

So The Seventh Seal didn't make my top ten of Bergman films it didn't make my top 25. To be fair though I really need to watch that and Persona again.

I said yesterday the "first film you'd see" would involved Numbers and Animals. Well, there was a bit of a trick to that, because the "first film you'd see" is not #100, but in fact our lone Honorable Mention.

It gets Honorable Mention not just because it just missed the cut, but because it lost the #100 spot with the counting of the last ballot! It is:

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Ingmar Bergman, 1957

Hey, one of mine hit right from the top (or is it the bottom). I had Terry Gilliam's Brazil on my list at number nineteen. That accounts for only seven if its 69 points, but that was good enough to propel it onto the list. Brazil is one of those movies, like Citizen Kane and Apocalypse Now, where the behind-the-scenes story is as interesting as the finished film, which may in fact elevate it even higher than its purely artistic merits. In Brazil's case Gilliam's fights - some of them public - with the studio came not during shooting but after the production was completed, over the cut of the film and its release. Happily Gilliam's version has survived and thrived, thanks in large part to The Criterion Collection.

I managed to see Brazil during its brief theatrical run and many times on television and on VHS, including a trippy viewing of the "Happy Ending" cut on local TV late at night that inspired me to read and re-read Jack Matthews' 1987 book The Battle of Brazil: Terry Gilliam v. Universal Pictures in the Fight to the Final Cut. I wondered if Gilliam's true vision would ever be seen. The day the Criterion LaserDisc boxed set was released was a memorable one for me. I spent a glorious dozen hours or so obsessively pouring over the film itself and then the amazing wealth of extras.

It just had to be on my list of Top 25 movies. Even without my 27B/6 paperwork.

HOLDEN'S LIST
19. Brazil (#100)

Hints for tomorrow (#98 and #97):

The version of Brazil that I watched was disc 1 of the 3-disc Criterion Collection. Is there a different version? (I thought the other 2 discs were just extras.)

Also, as far as Suspiria goes, without spoiling anything, how does everyone compare it to the remake?

You're an enigma, cat_sidhe.

The thing about Bergman is that his films evoke very different emotions in me. Ranking them would be very hard because sometimes I want the off-kilter vibe I get from The Silence, while other times I want the simplicity of Winter Light. And sometimes I want the emotional high of Cries and Whispers.