Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

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Welcome to the human race...
#77. Possession
(Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)



"I can't exist by myself because I'm afraid of myself, because I'm the maker of my own evil."

Ostensibly a story about the disintegrating relationship between a husband (Sam Neill) and wife (Isabelle Adjani), it doesn't take long for Possession to start plumbing even stranger depths that externalise their shared anguish in manners ranging from slight (Neill's dangerous and time-consuming occupation as a secret agent causing friction at home) to staggering (the sudden appearance of a grotesque monster that Adjani will kill to protect). Shades of the apocalypse bleed profusely into the corners of the film as its domestic disputes and occasionally blackly humour (a key element being Heinz Bennent as the thoroughly eccentric individual with whom Adjani has an affair) gives way to bleak nihilism and strong disgust, all of which is amplified by the stark West Berlin setting (Adjani's infamously intense breakdown is all the more striking for happening in a gloomy and sickly green subway tunnel). The vibes are absolutely rancid with Possession, but that gives it a power most of my other favourite horror films don't really seem to possess (sorry) - this really does feel like something that escaped from another universe and exists purely to infect all others.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A
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I really just want you all angry and confused the whole time.
Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0



Welcome to the human race...
#76. Unforgiven
(Clint Eastwood, 1992)



"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away everything he's got - and everything he's ever gonna have."

Clint Eastwood's straight-shooter screen persona is more than adequately reflected in his directorial filmography, admittedly to a fault if his tendency to power through productions with decidedly mixed results is any indication. In any case, he still produced at least one indisputable masterpiece in Unforgiven. his own personal farewell to the genre that made him a star. The simple set-up naturally lacks pretention as Eastwood plays a retired outlaw who is coaxed back into his old ways by a cocky young gunslinger (Jaimz Woolvett) intent on collecting a particularly large bounty, but that does not mean the surrounding circumstances and players do not lack nuance or depth (especially when it comes to this film quite literally running a revisionist Western playbook in the form of Saul Rubinek's author changing his books' focus from Richard Harris's sophisticated braggart to Gene Hackman's brutally honest sheriff). Eastwood's characteristically blunt style is a good match for material where there are few (if any) genuine innocents here and even the supposedly noble goal of achieving justice for a disfigured woman is riddled with such a grey sense of morality, but at the same time it is capable of finding a genuine sense of heart and lyricism to the proceedings (even as the score can change from gentle guitars to foreboding orchestras on a dime).

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #62



Unforgiven is another from my 100. See, Iro, we do have things in common. That said, Possession isn't one of them. What a load of old tut that was.
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5-time MoFo Award winner.



Welcome to the human race...
#75. This Is Spinal Tap
(Rob Reiner, 1984)



"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."

Back in high school, I decided to make a point of showing This Is Spinal Tap to all of my best friends - such was its impact on me that I felt it above all other films needed to be shared with those whose friendship I truly valued. Such an enthusiastic level of proselytising ultimately did not last too long past graduation, but even now it's not hard to see why I thought it was worth going to such effort. The film follows fictional British rock band Spinal Tap as they undertake one particularly disastrous tour of the United States, dealing with everything from technical difficulties during gigs to interpersonal friction within and without the band. It's a pitch-perfect parody of the rock star experience, drawing on all manner of influences across popular music to craft its particular mix of juvenile songs and behind-the-scenes drama. Of course, that it manages to maintain a genuine sense of drama through tensions within the band - most obviously in how guitarist Nigel (Christopher Guest) and frontman David (Michael McKean) see their lifelong friendship following the arrival of the latter's girlfriend, Jeanine (June Chadwick) - helps to ground what is largely a scattershot series of skits that have threaded together into an extremely tight 80 minutes. I get chills at the ending every time, which isn't bad for a movie that features a baroque classical piece titled "Lick My Love Pump".

2005 ranking: #20
2013 ranking: #11



Need to watch Possession soon. Unforgiven is great.
Possession is up there in the cluster of films that might be my favorite horror movies of all time. I have seen it twice in the theater (thanks, AFI!) and it is a stunning experience every time.



Welcome to the human race...
#74. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
(Robert Altman, 1971)



"If a man is fool enough to get into business with a woman, she ain't going to think much of him."

Would-be entrepreneur John McCabe (Warren Beatty) rides into a snowy mining outpost to the anachronistic tune of Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song", making a striking variation on the familiar Western trope of a drifter arriving in town that perfectly sets the stage for New Hollywood maverick Altman's own spin on the genre. The revisionist subversion kicks in when the blustering McCabe is made to realise that he is in over his head and must ultimately rely on the much more knowledgeable Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie) to help him run the only game in town, but it doesn't take long before their combined success starts drawing the wrong kind of attention not from lawless bandits but a monopolistic mining corporation. The most American of genres gets a crash course in ostensibly progressive cynicism - as much as the film deals in a sort of sex-positive feminism through Mrs. Miller's bordello philosophising (to say nothing of how she ultimately proves to be the brains behind the duo's operation), it soon becomes clear that even this small slice of independence isn't set to last as a capitalist version of manifest destiny bears down on its foolhardy hero. That its bittersweet fable is rendered in warm and wintry hues by the legendary Vilmos Zsigmond goes a long way in bolstering its already-powerful sense of tragic romance - not just between the eponymous duo, but for the dream of something better to the American myth than what ultimately transpired.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #46



McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a really unique film for me. While I didn't personally click with the characters or the narrative all that much, there's a specialness to the film itself that made it a compelling watch.



I revisted Posession last year and found it held up beautifully.


I don't think I've seen Unforgiven since high school, so definitely should give it a rewatch one of these days.


Back in high school, I used to show my friends some of my favourite movies, but as we lived far apart, this would be done during our lunch hour in the lunch room on a portable DVD player one of them had. I think Spinal Tap was one of the ones we watched, although as my DVD didn't have subtitles (if I recall correctly), it was a bit of a challenge in that environment.


I owe McCabe and Mrs. Miller a rewatch as well. I don't always gel to Altman's ensemble style, although there are obviously plenty of things to love in the movie.



Seen everything except Wrath of Khan and Wings of Desire. The minor-classic status of Wrath of Khan means I'll watch it someday, but I have zero interest in anything Star Trek. Wenders has hit a home run for me each time so far with Alice in the Cities, The American Friend and Paris, Texas, so my expectations are extremely high for Wings of Desire.

The comedy in Police Story is so bad that it sours the whole movie for me. I've watched the first four in the series, and Super Cop is my favorite. To be honest, though, the best part of each of them is the gag reel at the end. Very happy to see The 36th Chamber of Shaolin on here. That was my introduction to Shaw Brothers, and a few dozen films later, it remains head and shoulders above anything else I've seen from the studio. Give me Gordon Liu over Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee or Jet Li.

Watching Yojimbo after having seen A Fistful of Dollars multiple times was a weird experience, making the original feel like the copycat. I need to revisit it. Thief is great. Might be my favorite Mann; if not, it's at least neck-and-neck with Heat. A shame to see The Wild Bunch take such a tumble from your previous list. Same goes for Dazed and Confused, which I think is the perfect version of that sorta plotless, coming-of-age, nostalgic time-trip subgenre that American Graffiti grandfathered.

Ozu just doesn't excite me, as every film I've seen from him feels nearly identical. I guess I'd prop up Tokyo Story as his most accomplished, but all of them blend together for me. If you're going to include a silent out of tokenistic obligation, you can't go wrong with Passion of Joan of Arc. My choice would probably be Nosferatu -- certainly not the "best" silent I've seen, but the one I seem to revisit the most often. Sadly, however, despite loving many silent films, I rarely re-watch any of them enough to qualify as personal favorites.

Samurai Rebellion is top-100 material for me, so when I watched the very similar Harakiri, which is often referred to as the superior of the two, I walked away a tad underwhelmed. It's possible my opinion would be reversed had I seen Harakiri first. House is yet another I should revisit. It's great as a source of WTF .GIFs, but as a whole I found the film exhausting and irritating -- a Scooby-Doo cartoon on acid -- but maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind. Perfect Blue is possibly my favorite anime. Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars film (with the caveat that I haven't seen the newest ones). Dawn of the Dead is my least favorite of the original trilogy, but still one of the best (and certainly most influential and iconic) zombie films ever made. Hated Brazil.

It won't surprise me if Princess Bride, Holy Grail and Spinal Tap all crack the top ten in the upcoming Comedy Countdown. I guess the sharp decline each has suffered from your previous list befits your reputation as MoFo's biggest curmudgeon. F**k laughter and amusement. Makes me curious to see if The Blues Brothers has been supplanted. Judging by past discussions/debates I've seen you have on here, it surprises me that you're not the type of person who refuses to watch Polanski due to moral principles, but I'm glad that's not the case because Chinatown is brilliant.

You're possibly the biggest champion of Paul W.S. Anderson I know. Even though I personally hated Resident Evil: Retribution, I'm hoping it joins Event Horizon on the list just because it'd be such a bold, unusual choice for a top 100. Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Silence are the most unexpected inclusions so far, especially the latter, which is probably one of the last Scorsese films that spring to mind when people think of the director. Its emotional impact was muted for me by watching and loving the 1971 version beforehand. There are a few Fassbinder films I'd place ahead of Petra von Kant (and I've still yet to see a ton of his stuff), but it's very good. The type of film where you hear about it and think, "That will probably be boring as shit," but it's surprisingly compelling.

Battle Royale seems like the type of flick I'd love, but I was lukewarm on it. Still not sure what I think of Possession until I revisit it, but Isabelle Adjani was incredible. Unforgiven is a masterpiece. McCabe & Mrs. Miller is one of those heralded classics that I thought was good not great, but it's likely that I'd appreciate it more with a second viewing.
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Welcome to the human race...
#73. Before Sunrise
(Richard Linklater, 1995)



"Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?"

Linklater's always been good at doing these character-driven pieces that don't really concern themselves too heavily with plot or externalised action - while his earlier features dealt in broad ensembles, here he opts to focus exclusively on the duo of Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) as a spur-of-the-moment decision to get off their train in Vienna together leads to the two sharing their own brief romantic encounter over the course of a single night. It's a simple set-up and one that has to be carried entirely by the chemistry between its leads as they get into all manner of conversations, arguments, and monologues as they wander through such a picturesque city. They are more than capable of delivering on this premise - admittedly a simple one, but so hard to get right.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #92



Welcome to the human race...
#72. Before Sunset
(Richard Linklater, 2004)



"Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past."

I had a loose guideline of sorts for drafting this list where I would limit myself to picking one film per franchise, figuring that this would allow for a more diverse range of films and also force me to choose which entry best represented its particular franchise. The Before series, on the other hand, warranted an exception despite each installment sharing the same fundamentally basic premise of two people having a feature-length conversation. While Sunrise was an instant favourite, Sunset took a while to grow on me - I think that's mostly to do with how I'm now closer to the age that Jesse and Celine are in this one than they were in Sunrise so I'm better able to appreciate the greater sense of maturity that has been added to the proceedings. As they catch up on a decade's worth of developments since their last meeting, they inevitably turn from topical small talk (a reference to "freedom fries" places this squarely in 2004) to questions of how differently things could've been if they'd done this or that (especially if they'd reunited sooner as they'd originally planned in the previous film). That's enough to give it an edge not just within the trilogy but within Linklater's entire filmography.

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



Welcome to the human race...
#71.
(Federico Fellini, 1963)



"All the confusion of my life...has been a reflection of myself! Myself as I am, not as I'd like to be. "

Could I be a filmmaker? It's a question I've asked myself for many years now and have even made steps towards doing in some fashion, but a film like really does do a horrifying spectacular job of showing just how difficult it would be not merely in terms of overcoming the mundane challenges associated with directing a film but also how they intersect with the existential challenges of simply being alive and existing as a person who has left a mark on (and been marked by) a life that was lived, if not necessarily lived too well. As renowned filmmaker Guido (Marcello Mastroianni) sets to work on his latest film, he finds himself caught up in all manner of personal strife (often involving women from his past and present) that causes him to launch into all manner of reveries as he has to contend with an encroaching sense of writer's block. Fellini spins Guido's malaise into cinematic gold, building on the wryly comedic approach to observing the particulars of Italian life he'd demonstrated in earlier features in a way that is also pointedly turned inwards even as the film ultimately ends up resorting to full-blown surrealism to communicate the character's inner turmoil. There is always risk when it comes to making films about the artistic process (especially filmmaking itself) for fear of coming across as narcissistic or self-conscious in a way that the finished product ultimately does not justify, but is maybe the finest example because Fellini ironically does not do anything in this film by half.

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



Welcome to the human race...
#70. Hard Boiled
(John Woo, 1992)



"Give a man a gun, he's Superman. Give him two, he's God."

The above quote (taken from the admittedly not very good English dub) seems like it summarises exactly what makes John Woo's instantly-iconic brand of dual-wielding heroic bloodshed so superficially awesome to witness in terms of action-movie spectacle. The context in which it's delivered - being yelled at supercop protagonist "Tequila" (Chow Yun-fat) in the aftermath of the teahouse shoot-out that opens the film - undercuts said superficiality and makes it clear that Woo will hold his lawman hero as accountable as the criminal protagonists of his previous films. That certainly helps to ground a film as excessive as Hard Boiled, which might not be the best Woo film (The Killer is arguably the most well-rounded film he's made) but which certainly delivers on the action front with some staggering setpieces that even now feel like the standard against which I measure all other action movies (30 years on and I still don't think anything's really matched that one long take towards the end of the film). Having it turn into a buddy cop movie involving Chow's reckless detective teaming with Tony Leung's undercover agent certainly doesn't hurt the proceedings either, especially as the latter steals the show with his double-life angst that serves as a strong backbone to such viscerally balletic conflicts.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #33



I think The Killer is better, but few things are as much fun as Hard Boiled. One of the few films I rented (back in 'the day') and then went out and bought the same week.

It's the tail end of your list, so I'm sure there's much worse to come, but at this rate, I might start to think you're develping taste.



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
#70. Hard Boiled
(John Woo, 1992)



"Give a man a gun, he's Superman. Give him two, he's God."

The above quote (taken from the admittedly not very good English dub) seems like it summarises exactly what makes John Woo's instantly-iconic brand of dual-wielding heroic bloodshed so superficially awesome to witness in terms of action-movie spectacle. The context in which it's delivered - being yelled at supercop protagonist "Tequila" (Chow Yun-fat) in the aftermath of the teahouse shoot-out that opens the film - undercuts said superficiality and makes it clear that Woo will hold his lawman hero as accountable as the criminal protagonists of his previous films. That certainly helps to ground a film as excessive as Hard Boiled, which might not be the best Woo film (The Killer is arguably the most well-rounded film he's made) but which certainly delivers on the action front with some staggering setpieces that even now feel like the standard against which I measure all other action movies (30 years on and I still don't think anything's really matched that one long take towards the end of the film). Having it turn into a buddy cop movie involving Chow's reckless detective teaming with Tony Leung's undercover agent certainly doesn't hurt the proceedings either, especially as the latter steals the show with his double-life angst that serves as a strong backbone to such viscerally balletic conflicts.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: #33
My friends and I are doing movie theme watches over discord and have been since the pandemic. One of the themes was 90's action movies.

I picked Hard Boiled.

Had never seen it, only knew of it by reputation in the action community. While I had a vague idea of what to expect, neither of my friends did. Towards the hospital sequence my one friend finally said..."this movie is not at all what I expected".

Solid action film. Would watch again.
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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews



28 days...6 hours...42 minutes...12 seconds
#72. Before Sunset
(Richard Linklater, 2004)



"Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past."

I had a loose guideline of sorts for drafting this list where I would limit myself to picking one film per franchise, figuring that this would allow for a more diverse range of films and also force me to choose which entry best represented its particular franchise. The Before series, on the other hand, warranted an exception despite each installment sharing the same fundamentally basic premise of two people having a feature-length conversation. While Sunrise was an instant favourite, Sunset took a while to grow on me - I think that's mostly to do with how I'm now closer to the age that Jesse and Celine are in this one than they were in Sunrise so I'm better able to appreciate the greater sense of maturity that has been added to the proceedings. As they catch up on a decade's worth of developments since their last meeting, they inevitably turn from topical small talk (a reference to "freedom fries" places this squarely in 2004) to questions of how differently things could've been if they'd done this or that (especially if they'd reunited sooner as they'd originally planned in the previous film). That's enough to give it an edge not just within the trilogy but within Linklater's entire filmography.

2005 ranking: N/A
2013 ranking: N/A
I watched this trilogy for the firs time last year. Sunset would be my favourite as we know the history, they are more comfortable, the writing is a tad better and I just felt really engrossed by the atmosphere.

I'd rank sunrise at the bottom, but all are solid films.