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

Huh. 4k more than Graceland. I'm assuming you're capping posts at this .....hm. Nope.

I agree with this. I think the best part of these countdowns is seeing the individual lists at the end, and finding out what movies made people's lists, but didn't make the countdown.

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Did we ever see @Chypmunk's list? Did I miss it?

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It was sadly refused entry to the fun on the grounds it hadn't been made. Jolly unfair if you ask me

Indeed. It just seems totally skewed by English language films.

I think his point it's that it's not necessarily "skewed" when the audience is overwhelmingly English-speaking. It's kind of a tough question. That it's overwhelmingly English-speaking is obvious, but that it's disproportionately so isn't as obvious.

The top 20 definitely is, that's what I was mainly talking about here. Overall, in the 100 - we have some great films from Russia, Japan, Mexico etc. But the top 20 all being in English, is,.............well it's a shame, I'll just put it like that.

Ah, the Top 20 clarification is helpful. Makes a little more sense to me, then.

We're probably not going to agree on this totally (and that's fine). I think we're simply bringing different assumptions both to what "should" be and, as alluded to earlier, just what people are measuring anyway. And maybe even different assumptions about what cinema's supposed to do, as an art form.

Can't possibly unpack it all, and it's probably not important that we do. I just wanted to note the distinction between being heavily English-speaking and being inappropriately or disproportionately so.

For the record, here is my list:

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (#1)
2. The Wicker Man (1973)
3. The Muppet Movie (1979)
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark (#8)
5. Singin' in the Rain (#64)
6. Lawrence of Arabia (#15)
7. Night of the Living Dead
8. The Third Man (#48)
9. Young Frankenstein (#77)
10. Alien (#13)
11. Once Upon a Time in the West (#31)
12. The Conversation
13. Mulholland Dr (#66)
14. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
15. Hedwig and the Angry Inch
16. Sunset Boulevard (#53)
17. Stalker (#25)
18. Time Bandits
19. The Hourglass Sanitorium
20. Touch of Evil
21. Mad Max: Fury Road
22. Arsenic and Old Lace
23. RoboCop (1987)
24. Metropolis (#73)
25. Psycho (1960) (#27)

Some notes:

The movies I thought might make it (but obviously didn't) were Night of the Living Dead, The Conversation, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Touch of Evil, and Mad Max: Fury Road. NotLD appears to have been crowded out by The Thing and maybe Halloween for horror. The Conversation was eclipsed by the Godfathers and Apocalypse Now, but it's my favorite of Coppola's films. No Herzog appears to have made it, which is interesting. For me it was either Aguirre or Kaspar Hauser. Touch of Evil is maybe not as great or influentitial as Citizen Kane, but it's pretty great all the same. Fury Road I thought had the best chance of recent films, and I was surprised to see Her instead (it looks like a few people really liked Her).

The Wicker Man is perhaps the movie most responsible for deepening my interest in movies after I watched it in my 20s. It is so weird and memorable and unclassifiable; it opened some doors for me. The Muppet Movie has given me more joy than probably any other movie ever, and I've certainly seen it more often than any other movie. I watched it endlessly as a kid, and I've seen it many many times since, at home, in theaters, with my son. I went to a screening with a Q&A with Austin Pendleton (who played Max) which thrilled my 9-year-old soul.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a show that I saw several times, both in its original incarnation at Jane Street and at its Broadway revival. (Who can say they've been carwashed by Neil Patrick Harris? I can.) In between I've seen the movie adaptation even more often, including at its NY premiere. So I needed to honor it here.

Time Bandits is another childhood favorite--I was just about the exact same age as Kevin when the movie came out, and I connected immediately with its wild historical fantasies (and what I like to imagine is the most accurate portrayal of Robin Hood in film).

The Hourglass Sanitorium is a bizarre film from Wojciech Has. I've only seen it once, on a big screen at BAM, but it left an impression, if it was real. I recommend it so that others can confirm I didn't just dream it.

Arsenic and Old Lace, also a childhood favorite, of the old school variety. You can have It's a Wonderful Life from Capra (no offense to it), give me this any day.

Robocop I love partly because it was filmed in my hometown of Dallas but also because it's really good, y'all.

I think I saw Hourglass Sanitorium at a theater as well. Not sure exactly, but I have a copy in a drawer next to me, so I'll only assume it must exist.

Unless I don't exist either, which is a distinct possibility.

I've got a copy as well, but I've learned not to take these things for granted. But I feel a bit better that I may not exist not alone.

Any update on letting us see what the next 100 films would have been 101-200 or the whole list even? Been kinda looking forward to it.

Cheers.

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Yep, was literally working on that when I saw the mention pop up. Hopefully today or tomorrow, just wanna clean things up and put it on Google Sheets and stuff so people don't need to open it with a program or anything.

Awesome cheers.

Amelie probably should have been on my list, as I adore it, and it's a better film than some of the titles I included. I haven't seen it in years, which is partially to blame, I guess.

And as I mentioned previously, I had also considered both Three Colors: Blue and Ran for me list. Again, two amazing films - probably should have stayed on my list.

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Just going of on this list, I think we would get along, taste-wise. Especially appreciate the shout-out to The Hourglass Sanatorium, which, while probably not making my personal top 25, would be on my list of greatest movies ever made.

Not really sure how valuable my input is here, since I'm new and didn't participate, but I'm from Belgium and I'm pretty sure that if you tried to make a list like this over here, English-language movies would still dominate the list. English-language movies, especially American ones, pretty much domineer what people watch around the world.


In fact, I used to be on a Dutch forum where we did this, and the list doesn't look much different from what we had there, except that there were far more recent titles (so I salute you guys on that!).

Oh, I agree, but to my mind that's part of the point. It's two-pronged: first, that the English-speaking world makes an incredible number of movies, with far more resources (both in terms of human capital and actual capital) than everyone else, and that people would generally gravitate towards films in their own language even from that already uneven baseline. So reasonable people can disagree as to how many of these films "should" be on best-of lists (even though this isn't exactly a best-of list), obviously it's going to be slanted that way.

A point I'm not sure has been made yet, also, is that because there's such a developed and successful film industry here, people who natively speak other languages often end up making films in English anyway. Those still count as "English" for these purposes even if they're made by, say, the recent wave of virtuoso Mexican directors.

Sounds good yods, I'm praying that some of my ballots made it on the 200 - 101 list , it's gonna be interesting to see which movies didn't make the cut

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Welcome to the Dance: My Favorite 20 High School Movies
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Just thought to post since I forgot to post the popcorn ratings for 20-1