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

I have a hard time wrapping my head around Forrest Gump and I think its mixed messages are why. When Jenny falls in to a pit of despair and gets involved with hippies and the Black Panthers, for instance, it's as if the filmmakers are judging these movements as being loser causes. What's more, Gump's naivety about these movements evidenced by lines like "sorry I had a fight in the middle of your Black Panther party" sort of implies that if they and other resistance movements had simply followed his mom's advice while growing up, they wouldn't have felt the need to resist. In other words, it's as if the movie is a swan song for the Eisenhowerian glory days and a diatribe against the movements that ended it. In other words, it's like a Ready Player One for Boomers.

Yeah, this. I remember writing a somewhat long analysis on Eraserhead some time back at RT. Though it might be fun to return to it (I read it several months ago and, while I agreed with the general framework of it, I disagreed with a few things I initially wrote), just feeling the moods his films give off can also be a rewarding experience.

This is why I continue to return to movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Persona, or much of the films from Lynch, Tarkovsky, etc. while I feel less of a need to revisit, say, Christopher Nolan's films. Like, Memento is brilliant since its plot structure cleverly ties in with Leonard's struggles. The mechanics in Inception and Interstellar, on the other hand, feel like MacGuffins, which are all secondary to Cobb's conflict with his wife or Cooper's relationship with his daughter. Both of those dynamics could exist without the plot mechanics, while the structure of Memento makes Leonard's struggles all the more emotionally resonant. I've seen Inception and Interstellar several times, but with each subsequent viewing, I found myself less interested in the plot mechanics and more so with the character dynamics in those films.

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No Lynch movies made my list, but if one did it would probably be Mulholland Dr.

This plays to why Memento is really the only Nolan film I actually legit love

Wanna both disagree and quibble, in reverse order. The quibble is that this is maybe more the novel's idea, and the filmmakers are just sort of following along (still a valid critique of the story, to be sure).

The disagreement is that I don't think either is necessarily saying this. I think the specific causes are immaterial to the point, which is that Jenny is always drawn to the new thing, to the next community she can start over with, because this time it'll make sense and she'll figure out who she is and it won't end in abuse. Except it always does and she has to leave and start over, since sliding into some premade identity and the pop-up community that comes with it is always preferable to having to be her, and all the confrontation of trauma that involves. If the story is saying anything negative about the causes, it's that their conflation of cause and identity is likely to attract the broken (for reasons both good and bad).

For whatever it's worth, I read it more as a "gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room!" irony. Though "if everyone were nice like Forrest none of this would have been necessary" seems a reasonable (and pretty unobjectionable) interpretation, too.

And just in case anyone cares, I'm not a boomer. By most delineations I juuuuuust sneak by into Millennial (1984).

Despite being a big fan of Twin Peaks, David Lynch for me is a hit or miss at times. But I have no issues with Mulholland drive and it still holds up to this day.


I can't say the same about Forrest Gump. I still like it and still rate it highly, but like others have stated here already, I have watched a little too many times and the novelty has worn off.


Neither in my list.

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I'm curious about the "dr(iving)" bit, though. What did I miss there in the way you formatted that word? I know you had a reason, but I'm too dense to see it!

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Mulholland Dr. is original title of Mulholland Drive. Also there are few scenes of cars driving in the movie.

Yeah, the title is often styled as Mulholland Dr. (like, semi-formally, not just "some people abbreviate it").

I’m not sure how one could consider his films “dated”.

When I first starting watching films Lynch was a director I enjoyed. Blue Velvet was ok, but I enjoyed Lost Highway and loved Mulholland Drive.
Dune was a failure.
At some point, I stopped seeking his films. Despite a short filmography, I never finished it. As he vanished from the spotlight, so too did my interest.
My focus shifted to other directors and film movements and genre. Did I subconsciously think he wasn’t serious enough? Or important enough as other directors?
Maybe this coming year is a good time to revisit his films. Lost Highway needs a rewatch (23 years!). As does Mulholland Drive.
Elephant Man, Inland Empire and The Straight Story have all been vying for my attention for quite some time.
And at some point I really should get to Eraserhead, despite my reservations towards it.
Maybe it’s appearance and placing in this countdown was just the jolt I needed to return to him. It’s been far too long.

I did not know this! This was a good hint then (since I actually got one of the two right for a change).

Oh, Forrest Gump is a decent film as well.

Wait, Inception actually turned up?????

That's a good point about Jenny's intentions for running with those groups. I still think Zemeckis and Hanks let their preferences about their generation shine through too much. I'm not saying I disagree with all of their preferences - I'm also for civil rights, for instance - but the mixed messages that result don't do the movie many favors.

Mulholland Drive is a masterpiece but every cool guy knows that Inland Empire is Lynch's best. Anyway, the hobo and Antonioni ripoff scenes stayed in my mind the most.

Forrest Gump is better left without a comment. A normie cringe-fest for people who watched 20 films in their lives and now act as if they knew anything about cinema (see, so do I but at least I watched 10.700 movies).

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

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