Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Like many up-and-coming cinephiles from the past 30 years, I too ended up latching onto the shamelessly plagiaristic and provocative filmography of Quentin Tarantino. The crown jewel in his compact but indelible career was this gangster anthology that found room for a variety of conflicts involving all kinds of bizarre characters and objects - one MacGuffin is left totally unexplained, another is explained in hilarious detail. As with Tarantino's other exercises in the crime genre, themes of honour and redemption run rampant through each of these crooked tales - a hitman (Samuel L. Jackson) starts to rethink his life during one particularly unusual day on the job, his partner (John Travolta) must navigate the difficulties involved with taking the boss's wife (Uma Thurman) out for dinner, and a prizefighter (Bruce Willis) finds himself in a truly unpredictable situation after refusing to take a dive for said boss (Ving Rhames). Every element of the proceedings is peppered with Tarantino's many idiosyncrasies - a '90s movie with everything about its cultural milieu stuck between 1950 and 1979, all manner of physical and verbal profanity, and a tendency towards stylised and sometimes comical violence that nevertheless finds the wherewithal to end on a pacifistic grace note.

2005 ranking: #10
2013 ranking: #9

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

Soft reboots and legacy sequels are all the rage these days with the vast majority of them being little more than vacuous exercises in brand management and increasing profit margins. Fury Road readily distinguishes itself as being more than just another exercise in reheating intellectual property as Miller brings his post-apocalyptic franchise roaring back to life for the first time in decades, swapping out Mel Gibson for Tom Hardy as the titular road warrior who gets drawn into a high-speed pursuit between a decrepit warlord (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and a defecting soldier (Charlize Theron) who has escaped with his long-suffering group of enslaved wives. Though it does have its fair share of concessions to advances in digital technology, there is something so delightfully analog about how Fury Road stages its feature-length chase across the scorched earth and finding all manner of ways in which to escalate and pace the proceedings, never truly losing sight of the battered and broken humans at the heart of the maelstrom (Theron's Furiosa proves an especially worthy deuteragonist in this regard) and sets what should have been a blueprint for how 21st-century blockbusters should have been. Wandering the wasteland in search of our better selves indeed.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

Another spin on the idea of the most dangerous game, this time things take a turn for the extraterrestrial as a team of American commandos returning from their latest mission are targeted and attacked by an alien hunter looking for worthy prey. In the context of a decade where the action genre was riddled with all manner of gung-ho military adventures, I definitely appreciate how Predator opts for sci-fi subversion as it enters its back half and gives its overconfident human characters a real challenge that their propensity for high-octane firepower and arm-wrestling machismo hasn't exactly prepared them for. McTiernan readily proves himself one of the key action filmmakers of his generation not merely by indulging the genre's usual trappings such as explosive shoot-outs or cool one-liners, but also by steadily cutting them down to size as the film progresses and the heroes are eliminated, ultimately leaving Schwarzenegger's swaggering major humbled and fending for himself using the most primitive of battle tactics. Subtextually interesting in how it regards matters of military intervention and the relevance of superior weaponry, though its ultimate ambivalence proves a double-edged sword. In any case, this proves one of the finer Schwarzenegger vehicles simply for giving him an antagonist who can actually put up a real fight.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #72

While one of the high school films to make my list was a lackadaisical depiction of growing up in the 1970s, the other is a thoroughly cynical and acerbic tale of how it feels to navigate the cruelties and violations of growing up in the 1980s. A jaded mean girl (Winona Ryder) hooks up with a mysterious rebel (Christian Slater) and their plans to get a little petty revenge on the school's most popular girl (Kim Chandler) get lethally out of hand, launching the whole community into a frenzy about teen suicide. The result is a pitch-black satire that takes swings at anything and everything to do with the pains of growing up in a society riddled with callous classmates and useless adults, but still finds room for a sliver of hope amidst the sharply-written jokes about chainsaw-f*cking and brain tumours (it is still very funny that screenwriter Daniel Waters wanted Stanley Kubrick to direct this, but at the same time one can see how this might fit the man's sensibilities).

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #70

Like Tarantino, Kubrick is another one of those directors that a budding cinephile can and will latch onto for having a similarly small but potent filmography that spans genres and tones with technical and directorial aplomb. Such a mercurial talent is reflected in how my own estimation of his filmography ebbs and flows over the years. Enter Barry Lyndon, a Regency-era comedy of errors that seems unassuming when placed between much bolder and more infamous Kubrick ventures involving futuristic gang-rapists and haunted hotels but which nonetheless has won me over with a more measured approach to the sheer brutality coded into society - it's far from his most brutal film, but everything from gentlemanly duels to pugilistic brawls to catastrophic military operations ultimately serve as extensions of a world in which one's ability to compose one's self in polite company can either slip at a moment's notice (if not be thrown off without hesitation) or thoroughly mask an unremitting callousness towards one's fellow man. Throughout this misbegotten excuse for a world, the eponymous rogue (Ryan O'Neal) stumbles from misfortune to misfortune and even his odd moments of good luck come with immeasurable downsides. Both the opulence and the carnage of his misadventures are rendered through truly stunning cinematography (possibly the best in a filmography that is by and large defined by it) that captures the light on each tableau in a way that emphasises the darkness underneath.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

Heathers is the pick of these for me, I think. I can quote-a-long with Pulp Fiction but I'm not sure I feel it as much as Heathers now. Maybe that's just a trick of the mind? I love Predator but, as I've said before, it gets worse every time I see it, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable or cheesy. In fact, it sort of increases both with every watch.

I've still not gotten around to Barry Lyndon.

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Just glad to get a reply, it was starting to get lonely posting nothing but titles.

The anthology format seems like it's perfectly suited to the horror genre as creators must tighten every element - fear, tension, impact - in order to fit into shorter periods of time, but at the same time there seem to be so few genuinely classic horror anthologies. Kwaidan stands head and shoulders above the others that I've seen (yes, even the still-very-good Creepshow), taking a truly audacious three-hour runtime in order to tell four ghost stories set in medieval Japan. A far cry from Kobayashi's more grounded and monochromatic tales of samurai and soldiers, here he goes all-out in playing up cinematic artifice - eyes painted onto the sky haunting a hapless traveler, the aftermath of an ocean battle spawning an army of spirits, smiling souls hovering in cups of water - and crafts some truly indelible imagery in the process (just look at the still in this post). It's still in keeping with his career-long focus on honour and tragedy, whether in the form of tearing down institutions like samurai clans or observing the rotten luck that can befall innocent civilians. Harakiri or the Human Condition trilogy may be more obvious choices for his masterpiece, but there's a lot to be said for him doing something this audacious and having it pay off.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A

These are all favorites of mine, aside from Barry Lyndon which bores me despite its amazing visuals.

Predator used to be my midnight on a Friday go-to, but recently that spot has been taken over by one of its sequels, Predators. I will say, though, that there's a really great director's commentary on Predator, including the rationale for the different casting decisions and the ways that the film subverts some of the action movie tropes about violence and masculinity.

I don't have time or the current mental focus to articulate my why's, but I looking over the last two pages, Barry Lyndon and Citizen Kane both fall into my top 10 list, if that's any sign of encouragement.

Crazy how Pulp Fiction goes from #9 to #55.

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Suspect's Reviews

I may sound childish or flippant, but I wonder if it's just growing up? In your teens/twenties it's so cool (I was in my early 20's when PF came out and it felt like something I'd just never see or heard before) and it's one of the few films I've ever seen more than once at the cinema. I was watching it a couple of years ago and, like I said, even though I was quoting along with the film and enjoying it, I wasn't loving it like I used to. In fact, take the nostalgia away and I wasn't loving it at all, just really liking it. Would Pulp Fiction make my 100 now? Probably. It's still really good and I love the 90's, but even in my late 30's I had it at #52 on my 100.

Slight alternative take - movies that are fun for one reason or another may burn themselves out on the fun factor?
And after that happens, you may still appreciate their good attributes, but without that buzz, they seem a little less shiny in the mind's eye.


Also possible, whatever seemed new to you at the time, you may eventually just take for granted a couple decades down the line.


Both of those might be heightened by just being exposed to more stuff that might make the movie seem less unique. Which, I don't know how much of that is growing old, doing deep dives, or the fact that as a society, we're awash in so much more cultural products at the fingertips (both old and new, indie and mainstream, international and domestic) in the past decade than ever before. I've noticed as I've aged, it's sometimes hard to tell if things are changing because I'm getting older, or if things are actually changing.

As a point of comparison (interesting or not), Pulp Fiction came out in early high school for me. I watched Apocalypse Now just before starting high school and am pretty sure I had seen Kane by that point. Was that why I enjoyed Pulp Fiction, but it didn't register as, "greatest movie of all time," like it did for other people? Maybe.


But that was also my middle-brow teen years where I was also taking the Oscars as my cue for what constituted the year's best movie. And while I think it was nominated, the signals at that age also de-emphasized genre and emphasized drama (regardless of the quality).


And by the time I got to college and was actually getting whiff that some people just took it for granted it was one of the greatest movies, I had been working through various New Hollywood stuff from the 70s the immediate years prior.
French New Wave, I wouldn't get to until after college (WKW and Zhang Yimou were big during those years, so that's where my attention was pointed).


I also probably didn't appreciate the cultural drought that Pulp Fiction emerged during because of some of that.


Just trying to construct those disjointed pieces on the single test case of me on that one.

For some time, Pulp Fiction was near the end of my top 30, but was pushed off of it a while ago. It's still a great film, but I'm not sure if it would even make my top 100 now.

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You mean like this section here?:

h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?t=891&v=InyKZ0F-fVU&feature=youtu.be

Tha'ts actually a REALLY keen outlook on Predator, more than I was willing to give a story that kind of replaces the story set up in the first act with a new one, which was a leading criticism on my part. I first saw it when I was 15. Dad told me if Predator scares me, then I'm not ready for Alien.

I wasn't even scared by Alien, although artistically it's the scariest "made" movie I've seen. Tbh, I gotta watch Predator again, because currently I'd say, while it's a good one, The Blob remake is better as a gory sci-fi romp.

But no, The Blob actually managed to scare me a couple times. Giving it big points for that.

Both these posts get it, it's pretty much a combination of both outgrowing Pulp Fiction just a little and also just finding new cinematic discoveries that can't help but push it down the list. Including how certain films fared on previous countdowns is an interesting means of tracking how things change over the years, to say nothing of the post I made in my last countdown thread where I offer my reasons for cutting films that had appeared on the previous countdown (and which I may do again with this countdown as well). That the film made three separate countdowns when most films make it onto one at best should say enough regardless of where it actually placed.

Wenders' Palme-winning film begins with its haggard protagonist Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) wandering the Texas desert in a wordless fugue, running from a past he will soon be made to confront after his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) finally tracks him down and brings him home. A decidedly calm and patient exercise in addressing the traumas that have happened to its characters (to say nothing of the ones who are indirectly affected by the aftermath of whatever happened in Travis's mysterious past) to the point where repeat viewings may call into question just how much that calmness is genuinely warranted, but that renowned third act in which Travis finally locates his lost love Jane (Nastassja Kinski) and works to resolve what has happened to make him and everyone else the way they are. The languid pacing and matter-of-fact approach to the characters' lives is granted a certain mundane beauty by its German creators' exercises in depicting America, especially Robby Müller once again delivering indelible imagery as he depicts dusty deserts and neon-tinged establishments. Ry Cooder's melancholy slide guitar is the real icing on the cake, amply complementing this particular tale of how to rebuild a life as best one can.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #49

Exactly. The whole commentary is really interesting.