MoFo LISTS: reactions, reviews, checklists

OK, now that the MoFo Lists has become a part of the site, we should have a thread to discuss them.

It's cool if you want to discuss what's actually on the lists, which if you haven't checked them out yet are things like the various AFI and BFI lists from recent years. While they're fun to fill out and see how you stack up against other board members, part of the point, I hope, is that they serve as an encouragement and reminder about the various classic films you might not have gotten around to, for whatever reasons. That next time you are at the video store on a Saturday evening or filling up your NetFlix que and all the new releases are gone, go down those lists and look for a classic instead.

If and when you do start viewing things you hadn't seen before, come into this thread. You can give us your thoughts or reviews, or even just announce which you're checking off this time. Or, if you're like Ðèstîñy, qualify those that you've seen but you truly didn't care for. Goodness know you're probably not going to like every movie on every list (I know I don't), and some titles you may out and out despise, but even the things that don't become instant favorites are the kinds of flicks every movie fan should see at least once for themselves. Though I expect most of you will love many of these movies and wonder why you waited so long to see them.


Chat it up, y'all!

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Well, my lists were all pretty much full to begin, except for five or six titles on the BFI List. I have gotten around to a couple of those already.



The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954) and Passport to Pimlico (1949) were two English comedies I had never seen. They may well be staples on U.K.TV, but I had never come across them before here in The States. Luckily I have a kick-ass independent video store about a dozen blocks from my house.

I liked Belles, it was fun, and I've always liked Alastair Sim who is terrific in a dual role as the headmistress and her unscrupulous brother who aids the girls in their various criminal schemes. Don't know that I liked it enough to get any of the sequels, but I'm glad I saw it. Passport to Pimlico I liked even more. I've seen many of the Ealing comedies, including every single one Alec Guinness ever did (many times), but I had somehow missed the post-war gem Pimlico. Margaret Rutherford is wonderful, as always, so I'm glad I finally saw this one too.

I've rented but have not yet watched both the Humphrey Jennings documentary Fires Were Started and the WWII flick The Cruel Sea. Plus I have another Ealing comedy, Whiskey Galore!, coming soon. I think that just leaves The Railway Children and Carry On...Up the Khyber as the two I won't have seen on the BFI list. I've seen five or six of the Carry On... films over the years, but not Khyber (and I'm having trouble locating it here, so far).


So...yeah.

I love Passport To Pimlico. I taped it off the TV years ago and have watched it repeatedly. I think I saw Belles years and years ago, but don't really remember it. Same goes for The Cruel Sea, which I don't recall being all that fond of. It was okay, I think but not memorable. Now Whiskey Galore I think your gonna love, Holden. It's a terrific little film. And have you seen Genevieve? It may be about the best in the bunch.

This is getting remade with Rupert Everett in the Alistair Sim role. I really should get round to seeing the original...

These are the films I watched in September as a result of the Mofo Lists:

Diner
Fast Times At Ridgemont High
Adam’s Rib
A Hard Day’s Night
The Commitments
Body Heat
Ninotchka
North by Northwest
The Postman Always Rings Twice



Ok, a combination of Mofo lists and these movies happening to be on TCM or Film4...You may well scoff and say I should have seen these before, but I hadn't, and now I have.

I think I put comments on movie tab, but haven't got round to reviewing any yet. North by Northwest was definitely the best of these, although I also really enjoyed Body Heat and I wasn't expecting to.


100 laughs is still the list I have seen least of, probably because it is a lot of old US comedy, which isn't usually what I'd choose to watch. Adam's Rib was alright, but it seemed to show me that comedy dates a lot. However, Ninotchka, while still very much of its time in some ways in other ways seemed more timeless (if that makes sense!) in that I could imagine it being made now, although perhaps she would be an alien instead of a communist (Star Trek Voyager, anyone?)

So...that's it so far. Next to watch: anything shown on TCM or Film4 next week...

Yes, I had already seen Genevieve, and yes, I do love it. I don't know how I've never seen Whisky Galore! over the years. When I read the plot synopsis I could tell it's one I'm probably going to go for. I'm glad the BFI list alerted me to my error in not catching it yet.

Here are the films I've watched because of the MoFo lists...


All About Eve
Great. It's just like a play on film...about plays. Good acting all round in this one. To be honest I never really heard much about it before, that or I never really took notice. But because I saw it on the AFI list, and in a TV Guide, I decided to watch it.

The Searchers
I've always been well aware of this film. I've just never really wanted to watch it. I just don't like John Wayne. I used to like Rio Bravo, but that was when I first got into Westerns. Now I think it's a bit rubbish (mainly because of Wayne). The Searchers was alright, though. But I'm not in a rush to see it again.

Modern Times
I was going to watch this anyway cause I knew it would be good. After all, it is Chaplin.

The Maltese Falcon
Another one I've been meaning to see. I thouht it was excellent, nothing on The Treasure of the Sierra Madre though. But I'm glad I bought the DVD.

Angels with Dirty Faces
I heard this was pretty average somewhere so I put it off for a while. I find it anything but average. A great movie, with a great performance from Cagney.

The Grapes of Wrath
An important film which, I admit, I wasn't looking forward to, as John Ford had yet to impress me. SO much better than The Searchers...by far.

American Graffiti
Lucas has good taste in music. I was meaning to see this but never got round to it. The checklist made me buy the DVD (that and the £3 price tag).

To Kill a Mockingbird
Now this completely blew me away. Easily my favourite out of the movies I've seen cause of these lists. Possible one of my new favourites of all-time too. I already want to watch this one again. Top performance from Peck, and two very good child performances too.




This new feature really has given me a goal. My rental list at LOVEFiLM has The General, The Bridge on the River Kwai and A Night at the Opera listed at the top. I bought Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid yesterday, I've placed orders for Brief Encounter and Doctor Zhivago, and I just bought Bringing Up Baby off eBay.


I love this idea of having checklists. I can't wait for the MoFo top one-hundreds to be added.

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TOP 100 | "Don't let the bastards grind you down!"

Yeah, Adam's Rib is not that great a film, but the voter's clearly wanted to get another Hepburn/Tracy flick on there (I don't think Woman of the Year is anything amazing, either, though I like it more than Adam's Rib). There are many, many better comedies I would have put on the list long before I ever got to Adam's Rib. No, it hasn't dated very well, but outside of the star chemistry I don't know that it was ever hailed as any kind of masterpiece, even in 1949.

But your idea that "comedy doesn't date well" is really unfounded. Good comedy doesn't date, period. If you start catching the movies on that list you'll find the vast majority are of the same timeless quality as Ninotchka (great flick), and very few are of the Adam's Rib variety. A great movie, comedy or otherwise, is a great movie. I don't care when it was made. Duck Soup, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, The General, Harvey, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, To Be or Not to Be, My Man Godfrey, The Gold Rush, etc.; these are all wonderful and still very funny movies, true classics in every sense of the word.

You'll have fun checking them off your lists.

Think the main ones i've been purchased and watched since the lists are Lawrence of Arabia so i could watch it all properly again and Third Man since felt guilty having not seen the number 1 on Bfi list. Also brought The Apartment and Sunset Blvd which are both films i've had my eye on to watch and the lists prompted me into. Finally watched One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There's still several titles on the lists i've got on DVD but have yet to watch fully to justify marking off- Psycho, Icpress File, Brief Encounter, Raging Bull, Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Thing From Another World, Peeping Tom and ones i've got because of the lists Rear Window, Harvey as well as the ones mentioned.

Been wanting to get Touch of Evil and If... but they're pretty expensive and also want to get Bridge on River Kwai and In The Heat of the Night and probably Rocky since i barely remember it.

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Two films I'm not looking forward to: Gone With the Wind and The Sound of Music.

I vaguely remember Sound of Music being on TV around Christmas time when I was a kid. My whole family sat down and watched it, while I unwillingly sat in the room. And Gone With the Wind was on a few years ago. I tried to enjoy it, but it just bored the hell out of me.

They both bored me before, and they'll probably bore me again. But I'll still watch them, just in case I'm wrong. But yeah, definitely not looking forward to it.

Mine's barely a quarter full.
I doubt I'll be interested in watching the rest of them, since most of the films in the list are too old for my taste and not to mention hard to come by.

The St Trinians films were TV staples when I was a kid but I've not seen them for years. George Cole and Joyce Grenfell were quality actors but I'll always remember the series for possibly my first sight of women (lets face it, all the 'schoolgirls' looked to be aged at least 30) wearing suspenders...

I bet you'll love The Cruel Sea and adore Whiskey Galore!. I finally bought the latter on DVD a couple of weeks ago and it's been watched 3 times since (sadly, not yet with the unexpected bonus of a commentary track, but that's one for the weekend).

Finally, if you're desperate to see some Carry On movies, check out Carry On Teacher. It was one of the first in the series and one of my favourites. Much less camp than St Trinians and happily lacking in the tiresome convention that marred the later Carry Ons.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Yeah, stuff like Blade Runner, Casablanca and Pulp Fiction are really hard to come by...

I wouldn't say there are any films on the lists that I won't watch. Westerns and horror are not my genre favourites, so they'd probably be last, but I wouldn't rule out watching them. I think it's unlikely that I'll ever watch Pink Flamingos (sorry, John Waters fans...) but that aside I'd like to give them all a fair chance.

That's why I like these lists. It's all very well choosing films you think you'll like, but sometimes lists like these open your eyes to films you never thought you would like/ couldn't be bothered to watch that actually turn out to be really good.

Really? That's interesting, because to me Ninotchka (1939) seems dated while Adam's Rib (1949) seems timeless. Maybe that's because I was born in 1943, and Hepburn and Tracy were on the screen during much of my life, where as Ninotchka was Garbo's next-to-last picture prior to Two-faced Woman in 1941.

The Searchers has been rated by many--me included--as the best Western ever, but I know it's not to everyone's taste (my wife doesn't like it). Wayne made a lot of bad movies, many of the B-Westerns he was in during his early years and a lot of the repetative Westerns he walked through in his later years with casts that seemed always to include 1 popular singing star, 1 famous athlete, 1 well-known character actor (Walter Brennan or Jack Elam) and 1 future leading man (Dean Martin or James Caan). But ever so often, Wayne took a role where he demonstrated what a great actor he could be. His best film ever was The Quite Man, but a close second was The High and the Mighty, one of the first airline-disaster films--at least one of the first for the 1950s.

Whoever told you Angels With Dirty Faces was "just average" should have had his mouth washed with soap. As for The Maltese Falcon (1941)—true, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is Bogart’s best performance ever, but as Sam Spade would say, “Just look at the number of items on the other side.” Falcon is generally credited as the first Hollywood movie in the film noir genre. It was based on John Huston’s screenplay, which was very faithful to Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel. It marked Huston’s crossover from script writer to director. It was Sydney Greenstreet’s first talkie film. It was nominated for 3 Oscars, Best Picture, Greenstreet as Best Supporting Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, but won none. It was arguably Mary Astor’s best role, playing against type, and although neither she nor Bogart were nominated for their famous performances in that film, she won the the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in The Great Lie (1941). Has anyone ever heard of that film, much less seen it?

A couple more items: Bogart thought up his last line for the movie—“The stuff that dreams are made of.” Hammett reportedly was the first writer to use “gunsel” to describe a armed hoodlum; the term previously was used to describe a young, passive, and inexperienced homosexual male, both of which applied to the character of Wilma, played by Elijah Cook Jr. In fact, the film is unusually up front in depicting the characters played by Cook, Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre as homosexual without ever actually saying so.

To fully appreciate how good The Maltese Falcon really is, you should read the book and watch the first two films made from it: Dangerous Female (1931) aka The Maltese Falcon, and Satan Met a Lady (1936) with Bette Davis in Astor’s role.

Well Rufnek, I don't agree with your choice of the best John Wayne movies so I made another thread for it.

http://www.movieforums.com/community...360#post386360

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

Don't get me wrong, rufnek, I thought The Maltese Falcon was a tremendous film, and an excellent noir. I was just saying that in my opinion, it wasn't nearly as good as the timeless classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which is one of my all-time favourites. Their both great of course, but I think both Huston and Bogart showcase their talents a lot better in Treasure. That's what I think, anyway.

I am shocked at how low the percentages for the BFi list are across MoFo in general. Not that I'm all that proud of my 40%, either, I know it ought to be higher. But the people who only have less than 5%

I know there are quite a lot of older movies on there, and these are the ones on all the lists that a lot of us just haven't watched, but I am amazed that more film fans haven't seen films like Withnail & I, Trainspotting, Lawrence of Arabia or A Clockwork Orange.

On the subject of British films, I am really annoyed that I forgot to record Passport to Pimlico which was on bbc4 last night

I can't speak for the others, but I know I hadn't even checked off anything in the BFI lists and still had a whole 9% marked off. I'm assuming it's the cross-referencing that gave an automatic percentage. Maybe some of the others haven't gone into the BFI list either.

I finally did go back in and pay attention to it though. Now I'm at 23%.

In case anyone's interested, I've calculated the sitewide averages:

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies
Average: 52%

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
Average: 35%

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills
Average: 51%

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions
Average: 33%

AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers
Average: 39%

AFI's 100 Years of Musicals
Average: 41%

BFI's Top 100 British Films
Average: 32%

Film4's 50 Films To See Before You Die
Average: 50%

Some of these might be skewed a bit; for example, I think the BFI list hasn't been filled out as often as some of the others, and is made up almost entirely of very high and very low numbers. So it's definitely an average, and not a median or anything.

These averages will be regularly available on the Lists page shortly, hopefully followed before long by a more detailed statistics page, but for now, I figured this might make for some good conversational fodder.

Anyone surprised by any of the numbers so far?

I still haven't watched Fires Were Started or The Cruel Sea, but I do now have them in my possession along with Whiskey Galore! and The Railway Children as well. Maybe this weekend I'll get around to some of them, depending on how many more A.L. games there are and what my theatrical experience is (plan on seeing a couple things).