+7
Yes, the big problem with Film Noir is defining what we mean by that. The actual period is from the '40s until the early '50s or so. Which is a very rich, interesting movement and has hundreds of titles even though it is only twelvish or so years. For those of us who are Film Noir nuts that is more than enough to make a Top 50 for absolute sure but probably even a Top 100. However, getting more than thirty or so MoFos to make super deep dives into the Classic Noir period is basically not gonna happen.
Which means opening it up to Neo Noir so that we could get participation into the sixty-or-so mark that we had for say the Westerns list. But the problem there is while there is plenty of bickering among Noir enthusiasts and scholars about what is and isn't part of the classic canon, when it comes to Neo Noir it is open to much wider interpretation. So wide that it would be difficult to argue too much with somebody about what should or shouldn't count. If somebody says Chinatown and Night Moves (1975), obviously the answer is yes. If somebody else says Body Heat and Blade Runner, yeah, you can see it. But then when it becomes every thriller ever made and somebody wants to include three of the Fast and the Furious flicks on their ballot and The Human Centipede and Donnie Darko and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse it will so dilute the group list that to call it "Noir" of any kind is just ridiculous. And if voters can completely make up their own definition that means all of the cooler, obscure actual Film Noir from the '40s and '50s has absolutely zero chance of making it and being discovered - which to me would be the point of such an exercise. Even the acknowledged classics of the genre would fall well behind David Fincher and Christopher Nolan movies so that something that by all rights and by any objective metric should be obvious Top Ten material on a Film Noir list - Double Indemnity, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, In a Lonely Place, The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing - would be well down the list if there at all.
So instead of Noir you could call it "Thrillers" or "Crime Films" or something else, but again, it becomes so broad that all of the usual suspects from the decade lists rise to the top and maybe you get a handful of actual, classic Film Noir. Maybe.
There are problems with War Films as well. War movies are more than just combat movies. Surely The Best Years of Our Lives and Coming Home are War movies, even though there are no combat scenes in them. As is Downfall. As are POW stories like The Bridge on the River Kwai, Stalag 17 and The Great Escape. So are Holocaust narratives like Schindler's List and The Pianist. Gone with the Wind is surely a War movie. What about The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly? Getting back to combat, do only "real" wars count? If they do, do only dramatized versions of real battles and soldiers count? Saving Private Ryan, though set in the real battlefront and recreating D-Day in the opening, the story and its characters are fictional. Clearly Apocalypse Now is just about 110% fiction. What about Inglourious Basterds, that even changes the outcome of a real war? Still a War film? Kelly's Heroes and Three Kings are hybrids, heist films that take place on battlefields, so still War movies, correct? Fictional thrillers set during wartime like Eye of the Needle and 36 Hours? If you allow fictional characters and battles in real wars to count, how about battles and wars that are entirely fictional? The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers is mostly The Battle of Helms frickin' Deep. Is that a War film? How about The Cold War? Aren't Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove War films? Of course older wars still count as War movies, not just the 20th and 21st century conflicts. Glory, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Kingdom of Heaven, Troy...all War films, yes? John Boorman's Hope & Glory has gotta be a War film. What about Branagh's Belfast? Do The Troubles in Ireland count as a War film? The code breakers of The Imitation Game, surely? But what about a complete B.S. version like Enigma (2001)? Does historical accuracy matter at all? The three fans of John Woo's Code Talkers need to know that answer. How about The Manchurian Candidate, either version? Seven Days in May? Missing (1982)? I think clearly comedy films about War, be they The Americanization of Emily and Jojo Rabbit or MASH and Catch-22 or The Great Dictator and Duck Soup would have to be eligible. But what about peace-time service comedies (Stripes) or non-military characters caught in war-like situations (Tropic Thunder)?
It all gets complicated.
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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