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

Women will be your undoing, P�p�

12-12-20

LOL
me too

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WrinkledMind

Audrey Horne Fan

12-12-20

Haven't watched H&M, but I will. It sounds intriguing enough.

I have watched ET. Don't understand the hate directed towards it. It was always intended to be a commercial blockbuster aimed primarily at kids, but was good enough to pull in the adults. All the kid actors are likeable, even the ones who offer nothing more than the predictable Uranus joke.
More importantly it has inspired other works. Yes I am speaking of 11 and her gang.

Neither in my list.

Pointless trivia.

WARNING: spoilers below

Bollywood shamelessly plagiarised it in a movie called Koi Mil Gaya, but the director chose to cast his adult son in Elliott's part and to make it seem logical, made him mentally disabled in the movie. Desi alien then gives desi Eliott powers and cures his disability. It even had sequels.

In the sequels, desi Elliott's son has superpowers which led to inappropriate jokes directed at the first movie's heroine's character and the alien.

Here's desi Alien and desi Eliott.

MovieGal

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12-12-20

Originally Posted by The Rodent

You older.

Thanks Rodent... thats something I already knew... but thats okay. you should listen to your "elders"... like Cricket and myself

Chypmunk

Registered User

12-12-20

Originally Posted by edarsenal

Seen E.T a few times when it came out and, I do believe I got @Chypmunk beat since I was 18 when it came out.

Not sure why you're dragging me into this 'age thing' Ed but nah, you ain't got me beat sonny Jim

John Dumbear

Out in God's Country

12-12-20

Originally Posted by MovieGal

Thanks Rodent... thats something I already knew... but thats okay. you should listen to your "elders"... like Cricket and myself

Being new here, but can make a run at the oldest poster award.

MovieGal

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12-12-20

Originally Posted by John Dumbear

Being new here, but can make a run at the oldest poster award.

I don't know... but I believe there are a few others up there in age over 60... not sure who exactly is the oldest.. I do know @mark f and @edarsenal are only older than me... not sure about anyone else.

Last edited by Yoda; 12-12-20 at 05:27 PM. Reason: Fixed mention tag for mark f

Thief

Master of None

12-12-20

Originally Posted by SpelingError

That's a good interpretation.

WARNING: spoilers below

With the ending, do you think Harold fell out of touch with his obsession with death? The way I read the ending was that, after experiencing the horrors and tragedy of someone actually committing suicide, he was no longer able to experience the pleasures he used to have from staging fake suicides. By trashing his hearse, I don't think this was so much another of his fake suicides, but a sign that he's going to move on from his past life. However, I haven't seen this interpretation come up elsewhere, so I don't know if it's the case.

WARNING: spoilers below

Even though it's obvious Harold has a morbid sense of humor and an obsession with death, I don't think he necessarily experienced pleasure by staging the "fake suicides". I saw it more as an outlet to express a dissatisfaction with his life and his anger/resentment towards his mom.

As for the ending, I think he's definitely changing the way he looks at life, which is something we see growing during the course of his relationship with Maude. I agree with you that trashing the car (which was a weird amalgamation of what his parents "wanted" from him, i.e. the Jaguar, and what he "wanted" from life, i.e. the hearse/death) means he's definitely moving on from this past life. He's rejecting those past views on life and embracing Maude's; he's playing the banjo and he's dressed different (more colorful).

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edarsenal

Women will be your undoing, P�p�

12-12-20

Originally Posted by Chypmunk

Not sure why you're dragging me into this 'age thing' Ed but nah, you ain't got me beat sonny Jim

sh#te I thought you made the 15 remark. . .

SpelingError

AKA Popcorn Reviews

12-12-20

Originally Posted by Thief

WARNING: spoilers below

I'll have to rewatch the movie to remember why I felt he experienced pleasure from staging the fake suicides. Didn't he confess to Maude that, after he was mistakenly pronounced dead following an explosion, that was when he realized he liked being dead?

WARNING: spoilers below

And yeah, I agree with you on the ending. I don't know if he'll go exactly down her path (in terms of recklessness or taking his life at a certain age), but I do think he definitely fell out of touch with his old ways and began to appreciate life more.

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Chypmunk

Registered User

12-12-20

Originally Posted by edarsenal

sh#te I thought you made the 15 remark. . .

Lol, it's ok - I'm really only twelve now gramps

Captain Spaulding

Defending Champ

12-12-20

I'm mostly apathetic toward the last few films. Surprised that Braveheart once again made the countdown since I only ever seem to hear negative things about it nowadays. I rated the film highly on my one and only viewing, and I think it delivers the entertainment and spectacle and audience-rousing moments that people want and expect from such Hollywood epics, but I never feel any urge to revisit it. (The DVD I purchased many years ago from the $5 Walmart bin remains in plastic. I'll probably revisit it at some point and be like, "That was really good!" and then proceed to not watch it again for 20 years.)

Also surprised to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I forget that movie even exists, let alone that it has such a devoted fanbase. I haven't watched it since it first came out, so I definitely owe it a re-watch. At the time I thought it was a good movie with an interesting premise, but perhaps overrated by budding film fans who were just excited to see something atypical and original make a splash in the mainstream. In that regard, it's always reminded me of Donnie Darko.

One of these days, when a third of the population is in a polyamorous relationship with Siri and another third is cyber-fingering that tramp Alexa, we'll look back on Her as some next-level Nostradamus sh*t. It's a fascinating movie with a lot to say about the nature of relationships, and it's also interesting to see such a tender performance from Phoenix, since I mostly associate him with the opposite nowadays. ScarJo also proved that she can dish out stiffies with just her voice alone. Again, though, I'm somewhat surprised to see it make the countdown. There were probably around 15 movies I preferred from 2013 alone.

I don't recall finding a single moment of Harold and Maude amusing, as I spent most of the movie wishing that the kid didn't suck so much at suicide. The aesthetic reminded me too much of my grandmother's curtains, and the soundtrack ensured that I'll never convert to (Yusuf) Islam.

I wasn't a fan of E.T. as a child, so it never became a staple in my household and I have no nostalgia for it. Re-watching it as an adult simply confirmed that I'm dead inside. E~3: The Extra Testicle, on the other hand, brings tears to my eyes every time.

Rosemary's Baby is the best film to appear so far. An absolute masterpiece. Mia Farrow gives one of the genre's best performances, as she deteriorates helplessly before our eyes. Expertly crafted, acted, written. One of the best endings as well. On my most recent re-watch, I realized that the movie is less about devil spawn than it is about the horrors of being a woman in the 1960's. If we could've expanded our ballots to fifty entries, Rosemary's Baby would've been a lock for for me.

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Austruck

The Adventure Starts Here!

12-12-20

Originally Posted by Yoda

Without sounding too dismissive of people who like Harold and Maude, I do wonder if the music had/has a lot to do with it.

I love the music, but if they had used different music, I'd still love the movie. The humor is so incredibly dark and dry, and the story is so quirky. Can't help loving it.

Cat Stevens merely adds to the fun, but isn't the primary reason I like the movie.

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WHITBISSELL!

Registered User

12-12-20

Originally Posted by SpelingError

Yay, another one who loved First Cow!

Right? It really stayed with me and I need to watch it again.

matt72582

Msg

Please Quote/Tag Or I'll Miss Your Responses

12-12-20

Originally Posted by Jinnistan

I think in a lot of ways it's the perfect Warren Beatty movie. So much so that I sometimes wonder if Ashby was making fun of him a little.

He probably thought this movie was about him.

"You're So Vain"

Yoda

Administrator

12-12-20

Originally Posted by Takoma11

I think that it helps if you shift your focus. Yes, Harold's growth is the most obvious long-arc of the film. But next time you watch it, consider the entire sequence of events as

Well, I did say I "couldn't help" but think of Harold that way, so it's less that I have no point of reference, and more that I thought those issues overwhelmed what it was (maybe) trying to do. The only aspect that sorta-kinda made sense to me is the idea that Maude's overcompensating for past traumas in a way that isn't really praiseworthy, but maybe sort of understandable, and it takes Harold awhile to learn the correct lesson from it.

Under this interpretation, though, I think we still have the problem SpelingError and I were talking about, which is that I'm not sure it lands for most of the people who love the film, who seem to learn the "first" lesson that Harold does without maybe ending up in the same place he (possibly) does. They get stuck on the Manic Pixie Dream Grandma level and think the film's just about being a free spirit.

The rest of the stuff, well...it's pretty heady, to be getting into not just euthanasia, but a totally elective form of it that stems less out of alleviating suffering and more out of preserving some amorphous sense of self, preemptively. Definitely bigger questions than we can settle here, but I don't think it should be surprising that a topic as fraught as that would lead to such different opinions of the film itself.

crumbsroom

Registered User

12-12-20

Originally Posted by Yoda

For goodness' sake somebody sig this.

This, except for the second part where I come to reevaluate and love the film, which has yet to happen. The whole time I couldn't help but think of it as some weird inward-looking phase Harold's going through and will obviously grow out of. But then, I knew a lot of silly teenagers growing up who were, occasionally, very obviously performative about how different they were from others.

I do think the film is polarizing because of stuff like the music (so that one "side" is judging how the whole thing made the film feel, and maybe the other is throwing the music out a bit and talking about all the other more exclusively cinematic elements). I also think the theme makes that polarization inevitable, for the same kinds of reasons overtly heart-focused films (like Eternal Sunshine!) land very differently based on people's own personal experiences, or even the timing of when they see it. Same idea, when you make a film about a misfit adolescent. If that connects with the viewer, it can kinda transcend its cinematic qualities. Which is reasonable, but I think this sort of thing maybe helps the disconnect in reactions we see, beyond the standard disconnect you'll have with any other perceived classic, of course.

I've got no qualms with the weird or inward looking. Yes, maybe it's just a phase they grow out of, but regardless, I'm okay just staying right there with them, and not worrying if they sort things out in the end once the film ends and they grow older and wiser. This is phase of life is one that needs to be captured more often (if you ask me), without the unneccessary tonic of moralizing the mistakes they make. The character of Harold offers a sympathetic shoulder to lean on for the misfits out there watching, who don't necessarily need a role model, but need an awareness that they aren't alone.

As for the matter of Harold and Maude's occassinally immoral and illegal behavior, as tempting as it is to judge, I'd like to think we can see beyond the misdeeds of others and see the human that is there in spite of the car theft. I have the benefit of the fact that I am generally at complete ease around the occassional scoundrel. More often than not, I can see the loneliness and sadness and lack of direction that compels their crimes. It doesn't excuse them, but it also doesn't negate the rest of their story.

The sympathy I ultimately find for Harold's character, ultimately leap frogs any need to fret over these moral issues, and instead goes straight to the monumental invisibility of his entire being at the beginning of the film. He's a character who seems always muddled into the shadows, even in how his voice barely asserts itself whenever he speaks beyond a mumble. He has been raised to think his is a life that doesn't matter. This awkward and inward performance of Cort is essential, because of this. It's why I think it would be a big mistake to cast someone like Malcolm McDowell (as was suggested above). He is, a confident, assertive and charasimatic presence and Harold should not ever be seen in the same room with such gregariousness. At least not until he meets Maude. Such displays of charm would in fact would make his later misdeeds feel all the less earned, and all the more sociopathic. His greatest virtue is remaining a wall flower. I hardly see how the movie works otherwise.

As for the mention of music, I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to take the music out in order to evaluate its cinematic elements. Music is very much a part of those cinematic elements. They've swapped bodily fluids. They are by now one and the same. The song selection is as much a part of the creative decisions of Ashby as his choice for DOP or his editing or how the film was lit. Sure, the right music at the right time can allow a film to take a lot of emotional short cuts to get its audience to feel what it wants us to feel, but I don't think that is the case here. H and M does enough leg work outside of the use of music to have us know who these characters are. The music is simply a perfectly symbiotic accompaniment. An extension of the performances and direction of the film

Takoma11

Registered User

12-12-20

Originally Posted by SpelingError

Harold explains that he got more "positive" emotional attention when he was believed to be dead, and his faked suicides started as a way of chasing that high. But by the time we get fully into the film, we see that aside from a little jump scare, his mother no longer responds to them with anything but contempt and annoyance.

Harold is still stuck in the phase of needing the responses of others to validate his self-worth. Which is why Maude, someone who takes joy in liberating a tree from a smoggy city street, is the perfect person to shake him out of this worldview. Harold's obsession with death isn't anything to do with release or freedom. It's all about the trappings of death: being mourned and paid attention to.

I think that the fact that Maude is a Holocaust survivor is an important aspect of the story. Here is a person who has clearly suffered emotional trauma (and possibly physical/sexual/verbal/etc traumas as well). She knows what it means to be in a situation where you are not in control. I'm not trying to diminish the emotional neglect that Harold has suffered and how it has impacted him, but he does have a degree of control over his life that he can't see because he is playing within the dynamic created by his parents. Maude shows him that you can take a lateral step and move yourself into a different dynamic.

Originally Posted by Austruck

Cat Stevens merely adds to the fun, but isn't the primary reason I like the movie.

Music is just another aspect of how a film is put together. I really enjoy the music and it enhances the film. I mean, even if someone mostly liked the film for the music, I think that's a perfectly valid reason to like a movie. Also, "If you want to sing out" is a fun and easy song to play on the guitar.

mark f

Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.

12-12-20

I didn't vote for either, but they're both

and in my own Top 100. This a summary of my "debate" with Yoda, at least my end (from 11 years ago.)

Originally Posted by mark f

This is a friendly response to what's been posted thus far about Harold and Maude.

Harold and Maude certainly isn't meant to be some political diatribe. It's not about economics or conservatiism vs. liberalism, although it wouldn't be hard to pull that out if you want to discuss where its heart lies. Do I look up to Maude? Of course I do. She's not like anybody else. Is she wacky and a wacko? Of course; that's why I love her. Harold and Maude is just much simpler in its basics than people seem to think it is, although its details can be complex. Harold represents Death and Maude represents Life. That's not anything too tough to grasp. If you find this a simplistic look at life, especially for a draft-age kid who could go to Vietnam at anytime (it was made in 1971) somehow personally insulting, then I think you're taking it much too seriously. Yes, and that includes the fact that Maude is a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp (remember the tattooed number on her arm?)

First and foremost, Harry and Maude is a comedy, and one I've been laughing at out loud at for almost 27 years now. It's definitely one of the blackest comedies ever made, but it probably does have the funniest sets of "deaths" of any black comedy I've seen. I do not find anything reasonable about any of the characters that the film seems to make fun of, nor do I find the concept of being drafted to go and fight in a war which seems to have no meaning something to be proud about doing. Harold was probably supposed to be about seven years older than I am, but I was in the last group that actually had their birth dates numbered in the draft, so even if it happened to me after I saw Harold and Maude, I definitely can relate to something about why Harold sees death as the way to live and "fake death" as preferable to real death.

Secondly, Harold and Maude is very romantic. Yes, the Priest's verbalization of what it would be like for Harold and Maude to make love makes him sick, but I find it hilarious. Harold and Maude is one of those films where you can see why opposites attract or maybe even why people who are actually similar at heart seem to be opposites; they were born at different times and went through similar things at different times. You just need to sit down and talk with someone about why they seem different. I mean, even Harold is a bit taken aback at how brazen Maude's antics seem to be, but whatever you say, Maude never really hurts anybody. At least not compared to what she must have lived through in the camps. Besides, Maude knows what we do not know. Maude knows how everything will turn out, and she lets Harold make his own choice on how to live and whether to die. If you ask me, if Maude wasn't good for Harold, then the ending would have been a much bigger downer than it is.

My fave scenes in the flick, besides Harold's suicides, are the ending, the awesome scene where they're having a picnic, pick flowers and then the camera pulls back to show you where they are, and the scene with the motorcycle cop. If you don't know, the cop is played by Tom Skerritt (Alien), and he's hilarious. Now, if I had some reason to be worried about any of the characters running around loose on the street who might actually endanger people, it would be this cop. If his pistol didn't misfire, he probably would have shot a pedestrian stone dead.

I'm glad that Yoda liked the song score. I find Colin Higgins' script almost perfection, and I also would pick Harold and Maude as Hal Ashby's apex of direction, even if it was only his second film. My rating:

, and yes, it should be in mafo's Top 100.

One of my fave parts of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is when E.T. watches The Quiet Man while Elliott lets the frogs go free. The blonde Elliott kisses is Erika Eleniak.

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Yoda

Administrator

12-12-20

Originally Posted by SpelingError

That's an interesting argument, one that I think about a lot. If enough people misinterpret a character/plot point in a film, is it the fault of that film, even if there is textual evidence which indicates otherwise? For example, many people wrongly interpret the first half of Full Metal Jacket as lightheartedly funny while not recognizing that the insults Sgt. Hartman uses are done to dehumanize the men into killers. Or, with the pic up above, many people wrongly idolize those characters and call them cool, while failing to recognizing that they're ****ty people who shouldn't be idolized.

Yeah, it's a really tough question. I guess in each case we need to audit why people are missing the point. I wrote something a little about this in an essay about Starship Troopers, of all things:

And that, I think, is where the defense of the film breaks down: it mostly consists of simply pointing out that it has satirical ambitions, and then assumes that the number of people who don't realize this must be evidence of its brilliance. But the quality of satire is not measured by the number of people who don't get it. There are two reasons satire can fail to land: because it's way too smart, or because it's too simplistic. It can go under people's heads.

Originally Posted by SpelingError

My take on this though is that Harold and Maude, Full Metal Jacket, and the films and shows in the above pic have enough textual evidence which indicate that these characters aren't meant to be idolized or to be read as kind, good-mannered people. Their flaws are presented clear as day. Yes, people will still misinterpret them, but my issue with holding that against those films is that by showing too much negative ground for them, this could dilute the points of the characters achieving happiness for what they do, which can be an interesting thing to watch in and of itself due to the complex emotional response it can have on me. With Harold and Maude, if it showed too much examples of their actions negatively harming other people, then the point that they achieved happiness might be harder to pick up on.

With that being said though, I'm curious what your take on this argument is. It's an interesting point. If you think what you're describing is a problem with Harold and Maude, how do you feel about Full Metal Jacket, the films and shows in the pic I posted up above, or even It's a Wonderful Life?

I think Full Metal Jacket can be fully (heh) absolved, because it's not really ever "fun" to my mind. I think someone misinterpreting that film is really misinterpreting it.

For Harold and Maude I'm more inclined to place the blame on viewers if I'm forced to pick just one or the other, but I think it's a bit of both. I think maybe the strength of Ruth Gordon's performance is a confounding factor in that it maybe makes the character more sympathetic than she should be, in total. That actually might be a part of all the examples you listed (both in text and with the image): if the actor is effective and charismatic enough, the line between admiring the performance and admiring the character maybe gets blurry.

SpelingError

AKA Popcorn Reviews

12-12-20

Originally Posted by WHITBISSELL!

Right? It really stayed with me and I need to watch it again.

Same. Much has been written on its anti-Capitalist themes and while those discussions are interesting (the only two people who became successful and got noticed by the Chief Factor, the person who's responsible for the poverty in the area, was by stealing from his cow, which symbolizes how he owns the means of production), I was mainly impressed by its thick air of inevitability.