15k - Line's NEW Top 100 Films of All Time

[Line]

BTW: Star Wars - The Empire Strikes back is the standard for all sci-fi movies.

2001 dwarfs it in terms of scale and artisan impact.

That sounds like 88 Minutes though... Pacino was teaching grad students

Rushmore's main character, Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman), is, in many ways, a modern day, more complex avatar for Benjamin Braddock -- the protagonist of Mike Nichols' film The Graduate. But whereas Braddock's confusion of what to do with post-grad life - opting merely to "drift" for awhile rather than living out the cynically cyclical American dream of getting married, buying a house, and having 2.5 children - Max never really gets further than the titular prep school and the social confines therein; he's comfortable there, at Rushmore, and doesn't wish to leave, as he can control that particular environment by starting up clubs (to be a part of any changes made to the institution) or putting on plays (in which he virtually acts as god). His longing for control stems from, among other things, a mother he lost all-too young, and a father who has difficulty relating to a teenager with such intergenerationally different angst. It's also prototypically masculine. Max and his friend-cum-youthful surrogate-cum-enemy-cum friend Henry Blum (Bill Murray) both exhibit symptoms of men who are unable to see the bigger picture -- namely how one's surroundings and, moreover, the time spent within these surroundings, affects who we are more so than free will ever could. All this (and more!) is told with a fairly whimsical air, one that's brimming with post-modern minutia and stagy spacial arrangements as to evoke both the director's approach to sentiment and also his own need for controllability. I can find fault with the movie, sure, but I don't think it's anywhere in the "worst movie ever made" territory...haven't seen 88 Minutes though.

Line, have you seen Daniel Espinosa's Snabba Cash (2010) (Guess its going to be called "Easy cash")
(I assume there has been talks about it since there will be a American version soon.)

And if so what do you think about it?



-D

Haven't seen or even heard of it. I'll try to track it down in the coming weeks though, so thanks for the rec.

 

[Line]

97. Adaptation. (Jones, 2002)

Not merely a meta-level assay on artistic development (particularly in the medium of film), Adaptation. is at once a critique of convention and an introspective look at one's own occupational shortcomings. The Charlie Kaufman penned script - which posits Charlie (Nicholas Cage) as having a doltish twin brother named Donald (again Cage) who also aspires to screenwrite - is perhaps one of the more arrogant and, in turn, brave novel-to-film adaptations that I've seen. Rather than adopt the contextual "sprawling New Yorker shit" of Susan Orlean's 1994 novel, The Orchid Thief, into a traditionally told tale of the book's own events, Kaufman tangentially divulges into his own struggles to adapt the work, how artisan adaptation can be seen as a trope for the evolution of certain species, and, lastly, the elicitation of artistic relativism in lieu of traditionalist line-toeing.

 

[Ironslave]

but I don't think it's anywhere in the "worst movie ever made" territory...haven't seen 88 Minutes though.

I think you have, that is why I brought it up, since you mentioned before it wasn't one of your favs :gaysign:

 

[Line]

I think you have, that is why I brought it up, since you mentioned before it wasn't one of your favs :gaysign:

Hmm, I knew the movie you were referring to but really don't recall having seen it. Still, it's possible I have and have just forgotten that I actually bothered watching the thing; that happens from time-to-time.

 

[Robcardu]

I should do a thread like this...of the porn industry, of course.

 

[Line]

96. Funny Games U.S. (Haneke, 2008)

A litmus test of contextual provocations, Haneke's nearly shot-for-shot remake of his 1997 film Funny Games surpasses its predecessor in the way it more closely realizes its directors original vision -- one that was hampered to do budgetary constraints and the Austrian's thematic bone to pick with America's westernization of Europe. Criticized for its almost celebratory mockery of pop culture-perpetuated violence, some may find the picture's subversive nature - subversive in the way it purposefully plays with expectations as to elucidate moviegoers' own bloodlust - to be too blunt or too distractingly essayist to be affecting. But the piece still functions as a worthy experiment in the way its titular games are more telling of audiences and cultural fashioning than it is of the filmmaker himself and to condemn Haneke as supercilious is to ignore how much sensationalism turns real-world tragedy into something worth cheering for.

 

[Line]

95. Santa Sangre (Jodorowsky, 1989)

A stylistically perverse paean to logic in the way it mocks religious tenets, not merely for their absurdist bases, but for the irreparable damage such ideologies can inflict on the psyche - specifically when trying to attach morally suppressive spirituality to real life inscrutability - Santa Sangre is, above all else, as intelligent as it is deranged. But rather than evoke this notion as it pertains to reality, director Alejandro Jodorowsky employs a tapestry of nightmarish, stilted imagery as to convey both the mythical notions of religious gimmickry and the way that religion (and parental oppression, among other things) distances people from a human reality.

 

[Storm]

I wonder how Kubrick's films will place in this new list. Thanks for sharing these, Line (even though I have to keep a translator at hand when reading your critics, you nerdy, insensitive clod!)

 

[tim290280]

Santa Sangre looks interesting. I'll see if they have it at our local rental place.

 

[Line]

94. The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo, 1966)

An admirable work in the way director Gillo Pontecorvo, though clearly of FLN bias, eschews his own political leanings as to present both colonist and colonized as equally amoral in their treatment of human life, The Battle of Algiers remains both a shocking testament of man's potential for barbarity and a efficacious exposition on the power of cinema. Its verité stylings encapsulate a world of guerrilla warfare from what was, at the time, everyday life in French Algeria in order to inform the world not only of the enormity of the situation but also that terrorist tactics - attacks on civilians, café bombings, employment of women and children, and so on - only make such horrors, in the long run, exponentially worse.

 

[Line]

I wonder how Kubrick's films will place in this new list. Thanks for sharing these, Line (even though I have to keep a translator at hand when reading your critics, you nerdy, insensitive clod!)

Kubrick is still my favorite director - though Godard's made quite a push lately - so his films are still ranked favorably. And yes, insensitive clod is exactly the tone I was going for.

Santa Sangre looks interesting. I'll see if they have it at our local rental place.

Any follow up on this?

 

[tim290280]

^^ Wasn't there. It was a long shot. Most of the foreign films are martial arts in that store.

 

[tim290280]

God I hate multi-file downloads.

I'll do a search.

 

[Line]

93. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Mungiu, 2008)

Tentatively defined by its visual style - which can best be described as a hybrid of handheld voyeurism and diligently-framed symmetrical compositions that play with shadow and light as they pertain to a naturalistic environment - 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days doesn't so much condemn the idea of abortion as it does the social limitations that restrict free will. The film takes place in 1980's Romania at which time abortion was illegal. In this, Mungiu's lingering lens follows protagonist Gabriela Dragut (Laura Vasiliu) as she and her friend Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) attempt to procure the procedure for Gabriela after learning of her pregnancy. But rather than merely weigh the moral implications of ending a life before it truly begins, Mungiu focuses his attention on the dangers of limiting one's freedom and how this breeds social and cultural stigmas, the likes of which reach beyond the, albeit tragic, loss of one life.

 

[Pioneer]

Glad to see this film make your top 100, thought it was a great film.

 

[Line]

92. Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)

Legacy and the like abound this Hitchcock thriller -- a director that French New Wave legend Francois Truffaut called the greatest filmmaker of all time. Then again, Truffaut was a crackpot (Jules et Jim notwithstanding). Still, there's a lot of good stuff regarding male-ordered social hierarchies and how the fairer sex, as they have over time, are pushed into the role of the oppressed. A more socially-minded Hitchcock you say? Why yes! And hell, Ingrid Bergman's performance, as well as the exegeses on how females have been used as pawns by increasingly authoritarian political mindsets, enhance the work's immersive qualities to the point where the audience not only empathizes with its protagonist but also sympathizes with her. Carey Grant is also easy on the eyes.

 

[Pioneer]

Carey Grant is also easy on the eyes.

 

[Line]

 

[Line]

91. Europa (Von Trier, 1991)

You will now listen to my voice. My voice will help you and guide you still deeper into Europa. Every time you hear my voice, with every word and every number, you will enter into a still deeper layer, open, relaxed and receptive. I shall now count from one to ten. On the count of ten, you will be in Europa. I say: one. And as your focus and attention are entirely on my voice, you will slowly begin to relax. Two, your hands and your fingers are getting warmer and heavier. Three, the warmth is spreading through your arms, to your shoulders and your neck. Four, your feet and your legs get heavier. Five, the warmth is spreading to the whole of your body. On six, I want you to go deeper. I say: six. And the whole of your relaxed body is slowly beginning to sink. Seven, you go deeper and deeper and deeper. Eight, on every breath you take, you go deeper. Nine, you are floating. On the mental count of ten, you will be in Europa. Be there at ten. I say: ten.

Hypnotically self-aware, the final installment of contempo master Lars von Trier's dystopian trilogy is as technically brilliant as it is politically provocative. Centering on themes of western ignorance - which is more akin to absentee perspectivism than it is specific to American arrogance (though we hardly get off Scott free) - the famed Dane combines plethora of filters and showy craftsmanship as to expound on, via meta-level analysis, how film propagates cultural delineations like post-WWII Denazification and the allocation of guilt to those connected to the Nazi party. In this, von Trier mocks, if you will, the social tenets that largely go unnoticed during times of tumult and, moreover, how foreigners to such political footings are often those most critical.

 

[tim290280]

^^ I have a feeling I've seen this one, something familiar about this descripion. Sandow in it?