Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

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

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

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.

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

Now that's a great film. :Cool:

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

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

I'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), and one that I'm sure @Deschain will be happy to see, if I can tempt him to come in here...

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.

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 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

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.

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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."

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.

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

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

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

Probably my second favorite Western ever.

Definitely my favorite western ever.

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

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From the sublime to the ridiculous.

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.

Never heard of any of these choices. Carry on.

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 (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.

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