Thursday's Top 100 (2016)

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I also saw Wadjda in that hof. While not a favourite i enjoyed it, it's a well made important film. Not a fan of West Side Story, it looked amazing but i hated the songs and dancing. Reservoir Dogs is my fave Tarantino.



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I'll admit I wasn't keen on the dancing in WSS at first, but I think being familiar with the songs beforehand probably helped. I think there are some really good lyrics and some really memorable tunes.



I haven't seen West Side Story in ages, but last time I watched it, I really liked the songs/dancing and story. I even read the novel when I was a kid (no singing or dancing there)



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#35
Interstella 5555



This is a bit of a niche entry, but it’s a film that I love anyway. This is basically an animated film that accompanies the Daft Punk album Discovery in its entireity. It’s not a musical; the characters are a band and perform the first song, but otherwise we follow their adventures without dialogue as they are kidnapped from space and brought to Earth by an unscrupulous record company, with a Daft Punk soundtrack. I don’t know if it’s an entirely unique concept for a film, but it’s a good one that works well. I like the retro-anime animation style and the sci-fi vibe, and the music, of course. There are also a host of humorous details in there, including an appearance from an animated Daft Punk themselves. It’s definitely worth sticking with it past the first song as it gets considerably better once all the action kicks in.

Super Soundtrack: One More Time, Digital Love, Harder Better Faster Stronger



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#34
Fight Club




Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club!

I think Fight Club has suffered a bit of a backlash in recent years, which is a shame, because I think it’s just a really good film. Along with The Matrix, it is one of the millennial movies, filled with action and a fairly grim view of the way the world is going and the idiots who inhabit it, tempered with sardonic humour and just a pinch of hope at the end. Directed by David Fincher, who does a good line in elegantly violent and entertainingly disturbing, adapted from a cult book by Chuck Palahniuk, it’s an intelligent, stylish, thought-provoking movie with memorable performances from Ed Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham-Carter.

Memorable lines: I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection



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#33
Quills





"Some things belong on paper, others in life. It's a blessed fool who can't tell the difference."

(Not as high as Miss Vicky would like, no doubt.) At one time (when it was first released) this was my #1. I remember counting down the days to the dvd release. Of course I’ve seen a lot of films in the last seventeen years, but Quills is still one of the best. A good-looking costume drama but one soaked in blood and sex, it’s got wit, attractive stars in Joaquin Phoenix and Kate Winslet (who have an involving doomed romance), an explosive central performance from Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade and an admittedly over-the-top villain in Michael Caine’s hypocritical doctor. What I like best about Quills, though, is the intelligent points it makes about freedom of speech and art, and the transportative effects of fiction.

Memorable lines: "Are your convictions so fragile they cannot stand in opposition to mine? Is your god so flimsy, so weak! For shame."



#34
Fight Club




Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club!

I think Fight Club has suffered a bit of a backlash in recent years, which is a shame, because I think it’s just a really good film. Along with The Matrix, it is one of the millennial movies, filled with action and a fairly grim view of the way the world is going and the idiots who inhabit it, tempered with sardonic humour and just a pinch of hope at the end. Directed by David Fincher, who does a good line in elegantly violent and entertainingly disturbing, adapted from a cult book by Chuck Palahniuk, it’s an intelligent, stylish, thought-provoking movie with memorable performances from Ed Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham-Carter.

Memorable lines: I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection
I wish down repping was a thing



I really like Quills a lot. The scene I always think of first is the play scene, one of the funniest things I've seen in my life.

I'm not in love with Fight Club yet, but I seem to enjoy it more with each viewing.

Never heard of the animation before!



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I really like Quills a lot. The scene I always think of first is the play scene, one of the funniest things I've seen in my life.
Yes! It really is very funny and that is one of the best scenes.



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#32
Aliens (1986)





"Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?"

The first film is good, especially the start, but ultimately it’s more of a claustrophobic horror film, whereas this sequel is just more my cup of tea. Plenty of alien-fighting action, but more importantly I really like the characters - they felt genuine and I cared about them which isn’t always the case when you know most of them are going to die. Ripley’s even more of an iconic character here as she deals with a bunch of marines and an orphaned child and lots and lots of aliens.

Honourable mention: Alien 3.
WARNING: "Alien3" spoilers below
Yes, it pisses all over the hard-won happy-ish ending of this one, but I still like it on its own bleak terms.



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#31
The Terminator (1984)




"Come with me if you want to live."

For some reason I find it hard to separate Aliens and The Terminator. So here they appear together again. Conversely, with this franchise I prefer the first installment. The second is a bit too mainstream, too crowd-pleasing, too many jokes, lacking the tech-noir atmosphere. The Terminator is a sci-fi action time travel romance movie about a man from the future who helps a woman from the 80s (and oh boy is it 80s) escape from the time-travelling killer cyborg who wants to kill her before she can become the mother of the future resistance leader. Arnold Schwarzenegger as a robot is perfect casting. And I didn’t say it in the Aliens write-up so I’ll say it here, I like Michael Biehn.



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#30
Spirited Away (2001)



A film to which the phrase ‘modern classic’ can be justifiably applied. An archetypal journey into a fantasy land in the vein of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or The Wizard of Oz, this is a film for all ages - not a kids film with a few jokes for the parents thrown in. Beautifully animated and completely enthralling, it’s just the right amount of strange balanced with just the right amount of sweet.



Aliens and The Terminator were my numbers 3 and 5 on my Sci-Fi list, and that doesn't do justice to how much I love them. I think it gets overlooked how great Michael Biehn is in them.

Saw Spirited Away twice. I respect it but it doesn't maintain my interest.



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#29
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)




It's the oldest question of all, George. Who can spy on the spies?

The absolute best of British acting talent is on show in this mesmerising film about loyalty, betrayal and a declining way of life in the spy industry directed by Let the Right One In’s Tomas Alfredson, starring Gary Oldman as a retired spy trying to root out a mole among the top brass of the secret service, with John Hurt, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones, Stephen Graham and Tom Hardy also appearing. This is about as far from Bond as you can get (not that I don’t also enjoy Skyfall) - it’s slow, measured and subdued. It looks fantastic, the production design is incredibly detailed and the muted colours perfectly suitable - everything seen through a haze of smoke and sepia.



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#28
Farewell My Concubine (1993)



Farewell My Concubine is at once a very personal story of the relationships between the three main characters in changing times and a sweeping epic detailing the massive changes on a national scale that swept across China in the 20th Century. The tensions between the political upheaval, the theatre and its traditions and the individual and his or her identity are the main concerns of the film. It is beautiful and lavishly filmed in vivid colour, horrifying at times in the events it depicts and deeply moving.



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#27
Underground (1995)


Once upon a time... there was a country...


An absolute riot of a film, a no-holds-barred comic epic (and there’s two words that don’t often go together). Shocking, imaginative, surreal, ridiculous, tragic, semi-allegorical chronicle of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia. A conman perpetrates a mass deception, neglecting to tell an underground group that the war is over, in order to make money selling to the communists. There are numerous betrayals and darkly comic mishaps of all kinds. It looks fantastic and the music is excellent too.