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

The Thing used to be in my top 10 for a while. Though it fell out of my all-time favorites list since then, it still makes my short list of favorite horror movies. In addition to its immediate strengths (the claustrophobia, suspense, practical effects, Morricone's score), I also like how deceptively simple the film is. Of course, the ending is fun to speculate over, but beyond that, each viewing seems to reveal another layer of subtlety, with various camera movements, character motivations, or shots taking on far greater implications the more you rewatch it, getting a sense of the path the alien took on the base or various actions the characters took. With my most recent viewing, I noticed more insight about Blair which I didn't pick up on beforehand. Really, it's subtle scenes like these which makes the film so smart and worthy of multiple viewings. I thought the 2011 prequel was alright, but it can't hold a candle to this film.

As for Vertigo, that film was #7 on my ballot, making it my favorite Hitchcock film. It has quite a bit more character depth than the other Hitchcock films I've seen and this is largely due to how layered Scottie is.

My updated ballot:

1. Stalker (#25)
2.
3.
4. The Tree of Life (#62)
5.
6. Persona (#45)
7. Vertigo (#19)
8. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (#23)
9.
10. Come and See (#54)
11.
12. Andrei Rublev (#67)
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18. A Clockwork Orange (#32)
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.

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Vertigo is WAAAAAAAAAAY WAAAAAAAY WAY WAY WAY WAAAAAAAAAAAY too low... it should have been top 10 for sure, likely too 5 and perhaps even top 3... what the hell’s wrong with y’all. I’m shooketh, I’m broken, I’m devastated!!!!

I don’t have more to say now. I’m trying to cope with this.

I might be the only person who actually enjoyed the prequel. It’s not great, or anything, and the CGI wasn’t that impressive but it was good enough.
Also enjoyed the original version from 1951 version. Was surprised by it, considering I was worried it would seem antiquated by comparison but it didn’t feel that way at all.

It's still wild how the 2011 Thing was originally intended to use practical effects but the makers were ultimately made to use CGI. Now that would be a worthwhile director's cut.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK: It's heresy to say, but I've never liked this. And I say this knowing full well, without any real question, it's the best 'film' of the lot. I think it has something to do with going to see it in the theater with my grandmother, when I was about four, and how it was held against me by her for most of my childhood afterwards. A week hardly went by without her chastizing my generation for liking such nonsense. She'd never been so bored. The things the characters said were so dumb. What the **** is a lightsaber, and what kind of name is Luke Skywalker??? I felt complicit, even though I also thought it was boring as I sat next to her in the theater, and I didn't even ask to see it in the first place. I wouldn't dare deprive my grandmother the satisfaction of being mad at me on a cultural front. That's love.


When I eventually revisited it, at around ten, it still bored me. It didn't make me want to re-enact anything I was seeing on screen, like the original did. It didn't have any hint of Jabba the Huts palace or a Cantina scene. It just had a few awesome moments on that frozen ice planet, and Luke Skywalker living in the entrails of a Wampa. Ultimately, I think I just felt what probably makes this a good movie, the fact that it takes its high stakes intergalactic wars so seriously, is not what I was looking for.



SEVEN - My roommate in university spoiled this entire film for me before I'd even heard of it. But even with all of the shock siphoned out of it, this still made a real impression on me. The only Fincher I would ever conisder for a top 25 would be Zodiac (which didn't make it either), but this is very good. Watching Pitt be stuttering sad about Gwynyths head in a box will always be funny.



RETURN OF THE KING: Remember nothing of this beyond it never ending. Just lots of Hobbit hugs for the last half hour or so. I think they even jump on a bed, if I'm not mistaken. But still, regardless of this, it is my favorite of the lot. I know it entertained me, without any pretense of trying to do anything else. That's a big feat for my miserable soul.


PSYCHO: The best. Never has a bit of popcorn fluff, structured mostly just to shock its audience, been treated with such a sense of poetry. Every minute is perfection. Except that stumbling down the stairs scene everyone likes so much. The movie felt weightless until this moment where you can see Hitchcock over think everything, and gravity snatches the whole film down to the earth for a moment. Almost like, um, Arbogasts fall. I guess the movie actually is perfect after all.


SEVEN SAMURAI: Also perfection. That opening scene of the starving farmers sitting in the dust, dejected, ridiculed, somehow sets the stage for one of the most rousing and otherworly of all action epics. It understands the essence of defeat as well as victory. Very Samurai like.



STALKER: Stalker makes me feel dumb. It's the one Tarkovsky that I watch and I'm "huh....what's this all about". But not necessarily in a good way. I feel left out watching it, which almost makes me sympathize with those who just generally dislike Tarkovsky on principal. Not really though. I still judge them and excuse my own failures here as a one off. I definitely need to give it another shot though. The copy I initially watched was terrible, and so even the majesty of his films compositions were very compromised. Therefore, I'm undoubtedly wrong about everything I'm saying.


THE MATRIX: Is better than it should be. It's already been discussed at length why it's a weird one to be top 25 material, but also completely understandable, so I won't waste anyones time more than I already am. I like its surface philosophical trappings, and don't like its special effects. What great analysis, crumbsroom! Way to go!


THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY: The music alone should make it one of the greatest of all time. It's a movie that I don't love as much as other Leone's though. Which still means its one of the greatest ever. All three leads are aces, all sorts of great set pieces, diabolically black humor, a nihilistic view of the world. Yumyumyum.


12 ANGRY MEN: Great actors. Great dialogue. Direction that knows when to get out of the way. And all in the service of lacerating the jury system. I knew I made an ass out of myself in a courtroom in order to get out it for a good reason. I would have punched Lee J Cobb in the face.


THE SHINING: Somehow this didn't make my list. It should have. In many ways it was probably my first introduction into arthouse cinema. I was mesmerized by it as a child. It seemed like an entire universe inside of a hotel. To truncate its length would have just made it any other place where tourists ****. My kid brain would not have appreciated that. It wanted to roam around in this infinite space where anything could happen, from drowning in rivers of blood, to getting asphyxiated by a bloated woman corpse. Oh, to be a child again!



THE THING: Maybe Carpenter's best? Undoubtedly the greatest showing of practical effects ever put on screen. And for those who inevitably complain that so many of the characters are interchangeable, duh! Personality is overrated. Even the Thing knows this. The fact that we can't really know anyone is the terror of the film.



VERTIGO: One of the slowest creeps to greatness I've ever personally experienced with a film. Man, I thought this was boring the first time. The second? Hmm, this Jimmy Stewart character kind of seems like a creep. By the fifth or sixth, Wow, this movie is a total freak. It is so polite in its perversity, it almost can exist in every day society like its one of us. But it isn't. It's better than most, even if it might follow you home at night. Not good enough to make my list though. In fact, I don't think any Hitchcock made it. Sigh. The terrors of terrible taste.

Se7en was spoiled for me, too. I can't really say ruined, because the guy who told me about it did so with my own permission, we were spending hours every day stuffing envelopes so we were desperate for things to talk about, so he recounted pretty much the entire film for me (I was 11 when it came out so I wasn't going to see it for a a year or so anyway, in all likelihood). Still blew me away knowing everything, but definitely sad I didn't get to see it totally fresh, as an adult.

I'd never even heard of it when my roommate came home and just started spewing. Every. Single. Detail.


I remember watching it for the first time and thinking "maybe he didn't tell me what happens here". And then it would turn out that, yes, he told me. In excruciating detail.



It was made good enough to survive all of that though. Would have been nice to have it just, like, happen to me though

I remember agreeing with you about the prequel, but then again, I haven't felt like revisiting it since and it has pretty much vanished from my memory and that's usually not a good sign. It's probably a C+ film, or B- at best.

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As frustrating as that kinda thing is, I guess it's really a testament (heh) to the film's strength. I think a LOT of people who saw it when it first came out were dying to tell everyone.

Ditto on all points.

This is my old review of The Thing that caused a whole lot of upset despite the fact I gave it I like the movie I just don't think it qualifies as one of the greatest films ever made.

The 2011 Thing is a decent bit of entertainment which has some neat thrills here and there and a solid performance from Winstead which keeps it somewhat together. With that being said though, I left it behind after I finished watching it and I haven't thought much about it since. I don't plan on watching it again.

Back in high school, I found a book in a library called (iirc) 101 Violent Films That Changed Cinema and I ended up spoiling way too many canonical classics for myself as a result of reading it. So it goes.

A four-film update, you say. It must mean that something from my ballot made the list, right?

I don't think I've seen 12 Angry Men or Vertigo (maybe I've seen the latter as a kid, but I just don't remember).

The Shining is, in my opinion, vastly overrated (like Kubrick in general). I'm with @mark f and say it's just good (and even that only barely). It didn't make my horror ballot, and I most certainly didn't vote it here either.

The Thing, on the other hand, is my favorite Carpenter (closely followed by Prince of Darkness) and it was enough for my #18. Such a great combination of icy isolation, paranoia, and insane practical effects.

Seen 62/82
My list this far:
01: The Exorcist (1973) [#47]
02: Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) [#31]
05: Aliens (1986) [#37]
10: The Matrix (1999) [#24]
13: The Seventh Seal (1957) [honorable mention]
14: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) [#23]
15: The Terminator (1984) [#56]
18: The Thing (1982)
25: Poison for the Fairies (1984) [1-pointer]

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I prefer The Thing From Another World, it has some really creepy scenes and one of the scariest looking firewalks done by an actor that I've ever seen. They would never do a firewalk like that today, way too dangerous.

Re: spoilers, if I had a penny for all the times I've heard people walking to me, or someone else, saying "Man, I saw this film! So good! In the end, the guy does this and that!", I'd be rich. I still don't understand how people can be so oblivious to it, but some people just don't get it. Thankfully, Seven is one I walked in fresh and the reaction of everybody in the room was priceless.

Not on my list but a worthy film for our humble countdown....

It's so quaint when you see old movies like [REDACTED] or [REDACTED] that straight-up have a mind-blowing twist ending and then before the credits roll warn the audiences not to spoil it for anyone else.

Ha! I've been thinking of Psycho throughout the past three or so pages of this thread.

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I sympathize with you.. There are not 18 better made films than Vertigo. I personally put it at #2. But --to keep from banging your head against the wall-- keep in mind that this is pretty much a "favorites" films list; not a "best made" list.

I was thinking of different films that didn't make the list (so far, anyway).