Tue 25 Mar 2008
THE 137 GREATEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME, PLUS 863 UNMITIGATED CALAMITIES
Posted by Leapster under Generalor
HOW 100+ YEARS’ WORTH OF TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT, CRAFTSMANSHIP, CREATIVITY AND GENIUS LED INEXORABLY TO THE INVENTION OF NATIONAL LAMPOON’S ANIMAL HOUSE
News travels slow in Leapsternet land.
Just the other day I stumbled across the fact that in 2004 a certain broadsheet of record had released a book entitled “The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made”.
(As opposed to the greatest 1000 movies never made, presumably – a more innovative concept for a book, but difficult to get picture material on.)
You can see a partial list of these movies at:
New York Times Best 1000 Movies List
What I liked about it straight away was that with 1000 movies to play with, the critics evidently felt there was enough free-range stretching room to include a number of vivid, idiosyncratic, full-blooded movies that never get within parking distance of a mention on the usual, brain-squelchingly conventional “100 Greatest Movies of All Time” lists. (Such as the annual, and annually slightly depressing American Film Institute selection.)
It was nice to see “Sleeper”, W.C. Fields’ “It’s a Gift”, “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein”, “Dawn of the Dead”, “The Sweet Smell of Success”, “This is Spinal Tap”, “What’s Up Doc?”, a classically tough boxing picture of the 40s, like “The Set-Up”, “Goldfinger” (Why not? – a very near perfect ‘Big Entertainment’ type picture with unforgettable set-pieces, leavening black humour and a ton of style), “Cabaret”, “Dead of Night” and the early Sam Peckinpah movie “Ride the High Country” ushered in from the critical cold for a change. And the compilers at least deserve some credit for bravery in attempting the resurrection one of Ralph Bakshi’s 1970s animated pictures (“Heavy Traffic”). Not to mention a medal for someone finally getting around to rescuing “The King of Marvin Gardens” with Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern.
The first five Disney animated features are in there, and they probably should be too – not just because of technical and artistic considerations, or pioneering work in feature-length animation, but because they are all outstanding examples of involving motion picture storytelling taken to the point of near-hypnosis. (Well, “Fantasia” isn’t, but “Fantasia” had a range of other charms, attributes and effects working for it, as it still does.) The usual “100 Greatest” list doesn’t have room for all of them, and the usual routine of handling this is just to insert “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and just let it stand for the rest of the Disney features in code.
The downsides of the selection – well break out a deckchair and a preferred beverage and I’ll sing you an extended Bob Dylan style 63-verse ballad of emotional pain and gastric discomfort, in electrified print.
Basically this breaks down into three categories.
(1) The USUAL SUSPECTS
Not the movie of that title, although, astoundingly, it’s on the list, much to my crusty, gavel-wielding, Lifesavers-smashing chagrin.
Of course, what I’m referring to is all the ‘usual suspects’ movies that inevitably turn up on all the standard-issue, “We already printed the forms so why change the stationery now?” critical lists of “All-Time Great Movies”. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on the site, (in the review of “Edge of the City”), you get the impression with some of the more superannuated items that nobody’s bothered to take a look at some of these babies in about four or five decades, because if anyone had, they wouldn’t be coming within a basketballer’s femur’s distance of any list that wasn’t headed: “Return to Store, Insisting on Full Refund”.
I guess there are still people who think that, for example, “The African Queen”, “Bringing Up Baby”, “Bad Day at Black Rock” and “The Best Years of Our Lives” (Homer Simpson-flavoured revulsion-shudder on that last one) play like the greatest movies of all time NOW, but you’d have to picture most of them in nursing homes. They’re all good and memorable movies (well, three of them are) but time hasn’t been conspicuously kind to any of them, and after their robotic inclusion on every single list of this type in mortal history, you get to resent the equally valid or better choices that the sheer bloat of the kneejerk choices force out of contention.
“Key Largo” is arguably a better Bogart picture than “African Queen” – actually it’s arguably better than all these movies. It’s also not on this list. Any number of routinely greatest list-proof Marx Bros and W.C. Fields pictures of the 30s and 40s may well play much funnier to audiences now than the frenzied ‘takes’, mannered rhythms, and gimmick dialogue of “Bringing Up Baby” and its generic screwball ilk. (“Animal Crackers”, “Monkey Business”, “Horsefeathers”, and “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” all omitted – the latter one of the greatest comedy movies ever made.) “Bad Day at Black Rock” is a powerful but powerfully dated ‘issue’ picture. “The Best Years of Our Lives” is soap, and not that good at it either. Anyone that would put “Marty” in a list of “greatest movies” hasn’t seen it recently. The not dissimilarly-themed “Requiem for a Heavyweight” plays a lot tougher, truer and tighter now, but will never make “Best x-hundred movie” consideration, presumably because of the ‘TV-stink’ of being derived from Rod Serling’s teleplay.
“The Apartment”, even as a 1960 comedy, now seems like such an antediluvean conception of comedic sexual sophistication, that you suspect it probably starts with a crank. And it’s right there on the New York Times list, dead on schedule.
Etc etc
(2) TOO NEW FOR SCHOOL
The end-product of all these types of lists, right across popular culture, but with a particular eye to both movies and pop/rock/contemporary music, has long since convinced me that the practice of sporting halls of fame should be followed, and contemporary movies/albums/whatever should be barred from consideration until they’ve survived some sort of test of time. Perspective is not like instant coffee – you just can’t add water and gargle the finished product right away. Attempts to ignore this most basic of precepts invariably result in choices whose only possible merit abides in the considerable face-flushing embarrassment they must later inflict on the nurks who included them, not to mention the generous hilarity afforded to all onlookers. About a 15 year moratorium sounds right to me, although you can probably whittle me down to 10 in a good mood.
Selections which strongly suggest the NYT 1000 list might have benefitted from this policy, in terms of raw sanity, include but are not limited to:
“The Usual Suspects”, “Being John Malkovich”, “Apollo 13”, “The Full Monty”, “Gangs of New York”, “Ghost World”, “Groundhog Day”, “L.A. Confidential”, “The Hours”, “The Man Who Wasn’t There”, “Saving Private Ryan”, “Shakespeare in Love”, “Amelie”, “Hamlet” (2000), “Chicago”, “Adaptation”, and I view with the greatest suspicion any movie listed from 2000 on, including the ones I haven’t seen, because of that little matter of perspective – what hits the cerebral sweet-spot for one reviewer right now might look like last century’s fruit platter in just a couple of years’ time. It’s amazing how often that is exactly the case. I even liked some of those movies, but none of them struck me as undeniably “Pick me! Pick me!” indelible ink choices as great films when I saw them. As light sparkling mineral water entertainments, “Groundhog Day” or “Shakespeare in Love”, might have legs, but let’s give them an extra 5-10 years to prove it, presuming they ever do. (And I’m struggling mightily with the notion that there haven’t been one thousand better films made in movie history than “Groundhog Day”. Or 5,000 for that matter.) Charlie Kaufman’s pictures are fun, gimmicked up, rollercoasters for smarter children in the class, (well “Malkovich” was fun) but for me right now, that’s about the extent of the sandwich. I’d like to see who’s talking about them in 20 years’ time. Also, some of these are just plain old generic-wrapper El Crappo choices. Which brings us to…
(3) WHAT ARE YOU, INSANE?
The way the NYT 1000 Greatest Movies list breaks down for me goes approximately a lot like this. A bunch of people get together for a long, long lunch that lasts several weeks, and they’re movie critics, so there’s a lot of talking with their mouths full, tuna/onion bagel breath, and resultant food stains on clothing and all surrounding staff and draperies. They had the usual 100 movies that always go on these lists, and they rubber-stamped those right in there. Then there was the 100 other movies they could all kind of agree on and tickle each other to giggling point about how daring they were, what with putting 100 movies in there that aren’t in the official, time-capsule, “No Earthquake Can Shift This” regular 100 list.
Then they did some solid and exhaustive circle work with a ‘J’, where they all gave in with varying degrees of ill-tempered bemusement to each other’s more bizarre choices, and each squeezed in about two or three Professor Weirdstein choices apiece, while they all congratulated themselves on the thoroughgoing eclecticism of their collective choice, awarded each other sundry doctorates and academic tenure, and accidentally spat flecks of beetroot in everyone’s eyes.
That left them around 700 movies short, which was when they gave up entirely, hit the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide, and started frantically grabbing at anything on display where the book fell open to make up the numbers, with the chief critical guiding principle that they wanted to get out of the meeting before the baseball season was over. That’s as near as I can read it anyway.
It’s also the only way to explain some of the inclusions on this list. Let me dance you through a few fistfuls of examples:
“Amadeus” – a nice movie. Has anyone (and I mean on the planet) watched this since it won the Best Picture Oscar?
“Back to the Future” – One presumes that at least two of the National Lampoon “Vacation” pictures were also shortlisted.
“Beetlejuice” – Loved it all those years ago. Imaginative design, entertaining picture. Shouldn’t be here in a million years.
“Being There” – Not then, not now, not ever. Whoever put it in should be required by law to sit down and watch it now, all the way through, with no breaks for entertainment.
“Beverly Hills Cop” – I liked it, but its listing here is the funniest thing about this picture by a long chalk.
“The Big Chill” – Much like when a Warner Bros cartoon character turns on a washing machine, the result was a mess of soap. Smug, sloppy, soppy, half-cocked and fully drab. Great soundtrack though. The good version of this movie was called “Return of the Secaucus Seven” and I wouldn’t put that in a top 1000 movies either.
“The Big Red One” – They’ve now gone nuts on Sam Fuller pictures – there must be half his career on the list – but I’ve seen this one, and though it’s good, and game, it’s not one of the 1000 best pictures ever made.
“Blue Velvet” – cult suck-up movie of the time, well made and modishly sick, but who watches it now? “Eraserhead” as weird as it is, is the David Lynch movie with the courage of its convictions – the rest – at least of the early ones – look pretty mannered now.
“Body Heat” – Lawrence Kasdan. Really?
“Boogie Nights” – I doubt it.
“Breaker Morant” – Your superior BBC drama-like thoughtful, respectable dramatic entertainment, which is all fine and dandy right up to the point where you try and force that kind of square-block into this round-hole-oriented greatest MOVIES type of list.
“The Breakfast Club” – Ah, the magic of time and place. This is a more interesting choice than some of the others though.
“California Suite” – Ok, someone was really desperate to get home and pay the babysitter.
“Chariots of Fire” – See “Breaker Morant”.
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” – Yes, I had one with the insides of my eyelids. Portentous, ominous, voluminous sleepwear.
“Crumb” – Hi-impact documentary on a subject both worthy (Robert Crumb) and jaw-droppingly discombooberating (Robert Crumb and his family), but one of the all-time great documentaries? Who knows. Another decade’s worth of fermentation in the common movie gene-pool would give us a lot better idea.
“The Crying Game” – right, does this hold true for every viewer after 1992, who all, by definition, are aware of the trick ending?
“Dead Calm” – At least one half of this movie’s title was spot on the money. Had to read a synopsis to remind me that this profoundly suspense-resistant thriller was kind of a mini-“Cape Fear” set on a fairly small boat. As I remember, Nicole Kidman was too young for the part but not horrible, Sam Neill has been less starchy almost everywhere else, and Billy Zane probably would like to wipe this one off the resume – if he’d have had two more legs and a coat of varnish, he could have passed for a table. A flat-out bad movie from a good director (Phil Noyce), and one of the most inexplicable brain-explosions on the New York Times Best 1000 movie list.
“Dead End” – No, not now. Skid row soap that plays around gingerly with gangster elements, and less gingerly with what they used to call “bathos” and highly predictable bathos at that. For this they left out both versions of “Scarface”?
“Dead Ringers” – I like Cronenberg, particularly doing horror, but I think they’re stretching here.
“Diary of a Chambermaid” – A lot of Bunuel’s pictures are overrated, some aren’t, and this one takes the cake and entire bakery. Long-winded, labours like a draft-horse, and to me is evidently inferior to the equally bizarre but a lot shorter Renoir version of the same material.
“Die Hard” – Dunno. Not convinced it belongs.
“Diva” – another cult-sucker timepiece. The chocolate box was lovely, and the contents seemed mostly like chocolate flavoured air. I doubt time has been kind.
“Down by Law” – more cult-sucking material. Probably dates better than the others cited, but I’m still struggling.
“Dracula” – love this, Bela Lugosi is my boy, but it’s half a great movie and half a fabulous night’s sleep. Horror movies of that time like “The Black Cat” and “Island of Lost Souls” play a lot better now, and weren’t included on the list. Has undoubted and inestimable historical value, but historical value is another list entirely.
“Driving Miss Daisy” – Are you sure?
“The Elephant Man” – See “Breaker Morant” and “Chariots of Fire” and factor in a memorable lead performance and suave manipulation of German expressionist silent movie iconography (and a great shooting job by Freddie Francis) and you still don’t have a great movie.
“The Entertainer” – Love the showbiz-gone-sour theme and the tatty British seaside setting, but didn’t quite get there as a whole movie for me. Kind of had that grittier-than-usual upmarket telly play feel to me, and I thought the actual later telemovie version with Jack Lemmon wasn’t that far off this. Not the worst choice on the list though.
“ET – The Extraterrestrial” – Well, it’s a better choice than “Close Encounters”. Actually as a piece of pure Spielberg storytelling and manipulation with a touch of the old-school Disneys, I never really had a problem with it. I put it here, because I think some other people might. Maybe the last flowering of Spielberg form and good judgement, ahead of grabbing hold of the helium tank of grimly serious subject matter, and pumping himself full of it. The Spielberg movie that should be on here is “Duel”.
“Fatal Attraction” – It certainly provided convenient memorable iconography for cheating men who are scared of women, and definitely did us the service of introducing the clinical expression ‘bunny-boiler’ to the language. And give or take Glenn Close being an excellent actress, which she pretty much always is, what else has it done for anyone lately? Or ever. Sometimes the right movie hits the right previously unexposed nerve at the right time, provoking widespread knee-jerks. This is a no-doubt invaluable medical service but has got very little of anything to do with being a great movie.
“The Fisher King” – Gilliam’s conventional feel-good picture, which was his worst right up until he went out of his way the last five or ten years to make every new film his worst. Aging badly as we speak.
“The Fly” (original) – Well it stood the test of time and it’s entertaining, but there must be one or two hundred better horror movies than this.
“The Fortune Cookie” – Theme remains contemporary, great comedy cast, all-time great director, and nothing funny going on in the city.
“Frenzy” – Later Hitchcock with keynote moments, that probably plays way too loose in the crotch these days.
“Full Metal Jacket” – can think of two Vietnam War movies of the time that were a lot more well-rounded, atmospheric and complete as movies than this. It’s good, but might struggle to make Kubrick’s top five pictures.
“The Full Monty” – Everyone likes a lolly now and then, but you wouldn’t necessary take up plate-space with one when ordering your last meal.
“Gallipolli” – I’m going with the “Breaker Morant” deal again on this one.
“GoodFellas” – Does it hold the attention? Does it fold, spindle and mutilate the attention for that matter? Big-time yes on all counts. With major stunt-performances to stake a career on. But Scorsese has made a lot better movies than this. “Casino” should be on the list. “GoodFellas” to me was always over-rated, and I’ll wear the extreme-minority opinion tag on that with beaming, well-meaning equanimity. He raised the bar, or at least laid the foundations and completed the remodelling on updating the “Godfather” model of crime family depiction to the modern-day template (“Sopranos” et al) and that’s significant, but significant doesn’t necessarily make a great movie. A great show-reel maybe. Kind of your extended gangster MTV music video.
“The Graduate” – Maybe the whole older sexy woman as a potential shag thing was more of a revelation back then, in the halcyon swingin’ sixties days of a previous century. In the context of more modern popular culture/real life “Everybody shags everything” values, this seems quaint. Beyond that, there’s not enough funny in the comedy.
“The Grapes of Wrath” – As long as I don’t have to watch it. Influential, important in its time, and both book and particularly movie seem grindingly pious, long-winded and backdated now.
“The Grifters” – Everyone dressed up nice for the occasion, and there’s some appealing players there, the only problem is, it just was never that good.
“Hair” – I’m presuming that while everyone was on a toilet break, someone slipped this in as a joke. One of the worst movies ever made – musical or viewable – worth seeing as inadvertent comedy now, with a resoundingly salami-like lead performance by Treat Williams that will leave no thigh unslapped. Even his name is funny.
“Hannah and Her Sisters” – One of the ‘acceptably serious’ Woody Allen later-middle-stretch zzzz-friendly pictures that coffee-table intellects with no sense of humour seemed to find more trustworthy than his earlier, funnier pictures. Most of these are messy, pretentious, laugh-resistant and dull, no matter the quality of performance and craftsmanship, and this is emphatically no exception. Five minutes of small-scale Woody comedies like “Zelig” or “Radio Days” are worth 58 movies like this. Let alone his earlier, funnier films.
“Henry Fool” – With most people they’d probably get away with slipping this one in quietly, but unfortunately I saw it. Unlike most of the cult-suckers, had a theme (and an intriguing one too, on the subject of creativity), some actual content as opposed to picturesque sleaze and cool people in offbeat clothing, substituted a good dose of gloom for the usual conceptual post-modern arse-bargling about, and Parker Posey. And diddled around forever before falling away into the usual cess-hole of general death and depression. Not entirely valueless, but pretty much your standard issue art-house mess in the end. Not a great picture’s arsehole.
“Husbands and Wives” – AKA “The Year My Brittle Dialogue Broke”. Woody Allen runs out of ideas and funny, and rotates through every verbal, plot and stylistic cliché of his “We’re all grown up now so let’s talk dysfunctional relationships in an exceptionally dull manner” period to the point where it becomes like a comedy sketch parodying Woody Allen, thus providing the only entertainment value of the enterprise. What he was thinking with the early 60s Godard like camera/editing jiggery-pokery will forever remain a secret between Woody and his shrink, but it’s no bargain on our side of the screen. A complete mess. I can no longer remember if I actually walked out on this, or just fantasised about it in a catatonic state with my mouth and eyebrows frozen in the classic, disbelieving Skipper-reacting-to-Gilligan arrangement throughout. He’s made films nearly as dull (most of the ones without him in them) and he’s made movies that were at least as much of a brutally ill-conceived luncheon spill (“Hollywood Ending” comes roaring to mind) but he may never have combined both qualities on the one pizza like this. Was, should and will be remembered solely for Judy Davis giving one of the greatest performances ever seen in a cripplingly shitty movie. Seriously, if a scientist could create a scale that goes low enough and is finely enough calibrated, it might be possible to prove that this movie is even worse than “Hair”.
“I Know Where I’m Going!” – Lovely, warm-hearted, atmospheric and it has Wendy Hiller in it, one of the most joyously playful and idiosyncratic female leads in movie history – but it’s probably bound to come over as long, repetitive, predictable, and sentimental now. Patronising in its attitude to the headstrong female main character too, which won’t make it play any better. It’s the Paddle Pop that hits the spot on a summer walk, rather than the sit-down Beef Wellington you look for in an all-time great banquet.
“Jailhouse Rock” – Great movie? Or they wanted to get one Elvis picture in there. Probably a better choice than “Fun in Acapulco”..
“The Jazz Singer” (1927) – Other than seeing Al Jolson in some facsimile of his stage heyday (and possibly including that) the value here is exclusively historical, and as mentioned before, that’s a different list.
“Jerry Maguire” – Maybe, I don’t think so, and I’d prefer to give it another ten years and then suck it and see.
“The Killing Fields” – No. See “Breaker Morant” scenario above and add in a budget.
“Kramer vs Kramer” – Thought it was upmarket soap then in its Oscars-destroying heyday, and who’s watched it since?
“National Lampoon’s Animal House” – What in the name of God and John Belushi were they thinking? If you’re going to put a gross-out-heavy teen comedy in there, which is all this is, prototype or not, “Caddyshack” was more varied, inventive, had a better array of comic talent, and was funnier. And that probably shouldn’t be in here either.
“The Pink Panther” – As hysterical a performer as Sellers was, and as emblematic of its times (or the aspirations of certain people within those times) as this movie was, someone really ought to take a look at it now. Long dull stretches of plot obscuring the comedy movie, too much David Niven, far from the funniest Pink Panther movie.
“Playtime” – The two other Jacques Tati movies on the NY Times list (“M. Hulot’s Holiday”, “Mon Oncle”) absolutely belong there. As much as I love the character, as good as some moments are, this unravels under pressure of exceptionally slow pacing, and doesn’t deliver enough by way of pay-off to justify that. He was a great movie-maker who made two great feature films.
“Poltergeist” – A proficient entertainment, and that’s all she wrote.
“The Purple Rose of Cairo” – Woody Allen’s extended, soft-hearted and headed fudge-around with territory Buster Keaton already nailed decades earlier in “Sherlock Jr”. Even a lot of his light, middling kind of pictures (which are really only ‘middling’ by the giddily high standards of his best stuff anyway) , like “Broadway Danny Rose” have a lot more guts and laughs than this. It’s a less atrocious choice than the ones mentioned above, but “Radio Days” and “Zelig”, not to mention “Bananas”, “Take the Money and Run”, “Play It Again, Sam”, “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex” and “Stardust Memories” should all have been in way ahead of this. (And are all missing in action. “Sleeper” and “Love and Death” surprisingly made the cut, as did the obvious choices that followed those movies. The non-Allen directed (but Allen-starring) “The Front” is an insane omission – just the kind of thing that leads to spontaneous conflagration of the dander in comparison to some of the frankly idiotic choices that did make the cut.
“Quadrophenia” – The only problem there is that the original double-album is a better movie than the movie version. Well, that’s not the only problem, as atmospheric as “Quadrophenia” was in certain moments. Again, this is probably one of those “time and place” type selections.
“Raiders of the Lost Ark” – The only part that stood out for me, in terms of the guy making it really working up a lather, was the weird, angry Old Testament stuff about the Nazis. Otherwise you might as well put in an old Flash Gordon movie serial.
“Re-Animator” – Liked it a lot (in a slightly disgusted sort of way) and Stuart Gordon is or was a pretty interesting talent, but no, not really. If you’re picking a Stuart Gordon picture, it’s his version of “The Pit and the Pendulum”, and that even deserves to be on this list, even if no-one has heard of it. Even Oliver Reed, late in his career, was good in it.
“Repo Man” – Modish cult-sucker of the day with better torque than most of the species. Can’t see it not being dated now. Don’t know of too many who do see it now.
“Robocop” – I’m struggling with it in this context.
“Saturday Night Fever” – Where is the queue for people who weren’t marks for disco?
“Saving Private Ryan” – Plot contrivances up the wazoo and some hilariously stereotyped storytelling contrivances. I’ll never forget my stomach skipping the down elevator and plummeting 37 floors in freefall with that scene with the war-ravaged French town, the soldiers lounging around the patios, and the gramophone someone finds and cranks up with that frikking Edith Piaf song. Spielberg’s natural storytelling facility surfaces fitfully, attached to absolutely nothing of any significance. One of the most over-rated films of all time – the WWII equivalent of the equally shifty, slimy and hopelessly cliché-infested “Platoon” .
“Shaft” – Good entertainment, and holds up as such, but there were better blaxploitation pictures than this. “Across 110th Street” seems like the obvious omission here.
“A Shot in the Dark” – Funny, but the 70s yielded two funnier Pink Panther movies, and “The Party” is an inexcusable omission from the list.
“Stop Making Sense” – I think they just did. Well, I guess yesteryear’s art-school grad crowd got their licks in, what with this and “Henry Fool”.
“10” – OK, clearly we’ve changed the premise of the list now. Going by the Kevin Kline movie from earlier and this one, the criterion is now movies featuring one or two big boobs.
“Tootsie” – If Americans had lived through all those “Carry On” movies presumably they wouldn’t have got quite this worked up about a pretty routine drag comedy with a tediously drill-pressed message. At least it wasn’t “Mrs Doubtfire”.
“Total Recall” – Interesting choice, but no. Not even close really. “Blade Runner” you could have made a case for.
“The Trouble with Harry” – The black comedy odd-one-out from Hitchcock’s “golden” total-control US period. It’s long-winded, tediously arch and not funny. Anyone who’d actually troubled to look at it in the last 50 years could have worked that out for themselves.
“Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” – Whatever the technological achievements, whatever the historical value of reviving classic Hollywood characters in full animation (and in unprecedented teamings of those characters), whatever its value in returning theatrical feature cartoons to the production mainstream, it pimped on the characters it purported to love, and sublimated them (in a way that perverted the gleeful unfettered anarchy of those great comedy archetypes) to a morbid, third-rate and thoroughly annoying crime story. The degree to which it misunderstood the vintage characters it exploited was the only thing about the movie which was epic. The only place it flirted with greatness was in the animated Roger Rabbit short that opened the movie, and was at about the level of a decent Tom & Jerry MGM theatrical cartoon. That’s no insult, unlike the rest of this overrated clod-heap.
“Woodstock” – As a greatest MOVIE? Again, the historical and musical value of what’s in it (and even how it was shot) is incomparable, but I’ve never thought of it as a great movie as such. How do you compare it to something like “The Conversation”, or “The Wizard of Oz”? Great documentary? Well, hmmm, with an extra mmmm. It’s a music movie, isn’t it? I’m not sure concert movies should be in there at all. I found “Gimme Shelter” just as odd a choice.
And that ought to about do her for now.
Those who check out the New York Times list via the above link will see that there were plenty more inclusions worth questioning, but I left out the ones I hadn’t seen, or had only partially seen, or couldn’t remember clearly. Also I covered the bases on the most gorge-raising, risible choices, and left even the more ropey of the partially defensible ones alone.
Another time I might go into some detail on the movies which, amazingly, with a thousand places going begging, somehow managed to fly under that particular radar, but for now, it’s “Kirk Out”.
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(One thing I noticed when first reading the NY Times list, which I decided not to include in the blather above for simplicity’s sake, but now feel that I should mention, for clarity, and because it indicates a specific, and large, exclusion zone within the NYT “Best 1000 Movies” parameters that is implicit but not specifically mentioned at the website reference given above (although the preface to the NYT book that you can access at the same interweb address does mention it in passing) - the list includes no movies from the silent era at all. Everything prior to “The Jazz Singer” is excluded. That certainly will kick around the potential parameters for a “greatest movies” list, if you head in that direction. Since the book was a collection of old New York Times movie reviews, maybe they just didn’t have a comprehensive selection of reviews from those days, or at least nothing they wanted to reprint in 2004.
It still seems like a peculiar way to go about the enterprise. It’s difficult not to feel that for every D.W Griffith, Chaplin or Keaton picture on there, there would have been at least been one “Hair” or “National Lampoon’s Animal House” squeezed out. It’s also ignoring a fairly substantial chunk of movie history, and formative history at that. One possible assumption is that silent movies were omitted with an eye to making the end-product more commercially viable. Since I didn’t see any other explanation in the preface or introduction available on-line - and it may very well be in the book (well, you’d hope) - I can’t readily conjure up any better reason.)
6 Responses to “THE 137 GREATEST MOVIES OF ALL TIME, PLUS 863 UNMITIGATED CALAMITIES”
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March 27th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
You are a cantankerous one, Larry… I put my hands up for half of your “What are you, insane” list. For everyone’s benefit, I have limited it to nine:
Amadeus - To the unfeeling, a work of pretentiousness and pomp. To the lucky ones, a flamboyant romp exploring highbrow versus lowbrow. Imminently re-watchable.
Back to the Future - Trying to get your parents together whilst your mother has the hots for you. Freud dressed as Walt Disney. This is truly sublime entertainment. Have a heart, will ya…
Being There - Have watched this one at least a dozen times. Please re-watch the leaving home scene with the funky “Thus Spake Zarathustra” backing music. Worth the price of the DVD for this alone.
Boogie Nights - OK, a bit of a Goodfellas ripoff, but with such an impassioned delivery that you almost want to hang out with the characters. Lurid, funny, dramatic, violent, sexy. What a delicious soup!
Hannah And Her Sisters - Come on, this is classic Woody. Love triangles, witty dialogue, complex characters, excessive masturbation. Was it Max von Sydow’s character denigrating wrestling that turned you off this one? Please re-watch and check for a pulse.
Total Recall - Intriguing story, brilliantly executed by Verhoeven. Not a single dull moment in this flick. This is a wonderfully cheesy spectacle that, deceptively, has a lot more to offer.
Goodfellas - Influence must count for something. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” also held one’s attention, but it changed music profoundly. Surely, Goodfellas approaches this sort of impact.
ET - It might be candy floss, but it stretches beyond sweet. Visually stunning and dramatically childish (in a good way). There aren’t many movies from a child’s perspective that don’t condescend.
The Crying Game - One of the most original movies I have ever seen. No-one could make a very convincing case that the entire movie relies on a “trick ending”. Ostensibly an IRA movie that changes direction beautifully. Part action, part love story, part fable. My goodness, this certainly deserves its place.
April 4th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I am a cantankerous Larry, as can clearly be heard each week on “All Over the Shop” Thursdays, 2-4pm on RRR. Or witnessed right here in this blobsite.
Thanks for the comments. When someone is expressing strong opinions about “greatest movie” type selections, it does kind of inherently suck around for a contrary opinion or two.
Re your nine instances of degging to biffer, in some cases I was reminded of the old W.C. Fields line to a waitress:
“I didn’t say the steak was tough, dear - I just said that I didn’t see the horse that is normally tethered outside” - i.e. my objections to the movies weren’t always exactly the ones you cited.
Anyway, let’s have a roll through ‘em:
AMADEUS - In my case, I didn’t say it was pompous or pretentious. I didn’t think that when I saw it either. I thought it was a lovely big historical confection - kind of like those big creamy cakes from Acland St. Musically, they did a great job of making a Mozart “Greatest Hits” album. To me it was one of that period of “Coffee table special” Academy Awards choices, when they used to pick subject matter that seemed ‘important’ rather than worry about movies that worked as movies. Consequently there’s a whole raft of Oscar-winning Best Pictures from that run that basically hardly anyone has ever watched since. I put “Amadeus” right in there with those. I’d feel comfortable with saying hardly anyone watches it now. It’s not exactly a staple of revival houses (such as there are any anymore). It never became a TV ‘family favourite’ must-watch. There’s no groundswell of ‘people’s choice’ home video type support that I’m aware of.
If a great movie falls over in the forest and no-one cares to see it, much less come along and sweep up the debris, how great a movie can it be?
Continual mass appeal is admittedly only one way of gauging a movie’s worth. There’s inherent worth and that counts too. But I always saw this as inherently a *** movie.
BACK TO THE FUTURE - To me, regardless of any subtext, it’s a zippy entertainment vehicle of the time. Nothing personal against this movie, or the ensuing series of movies, but to me you might as well put in “Home Alone” or “Look Who’s Talking” or that one with the group of kids lost in the big city. I see this entirely in that line, and I don’t really understand what any of them are doing within several shopping centre carparks’ distance of a discussion about the 1,000 greatest movies ever made. If you want a time-slip themed movies, I’d be putting “12 Monkeys” in lifetimes ahead of “Back to the Future”. Or “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” for that matter. And I doubt I’d put the latter in, and probably not the former either.
BEING THERE - I put this kind of in the “Amadeus” camp. Again, who watches it now? (Well, possibly aside from Pokksey.)
It was talked up big-time at the time - serious reputation author, Peter Sellers’ longtime pet project, serious subject, comedy with a very straight face - and since then the critical consensus seems to mostly be that it was something of a well-meaning misfire. I thought this one was bloated and pretentious at the time. I don’t know of too many people who care since. Well, any. As a representation of Peter Sellers’ talents for making giddy, joyous insane comedy, I’d put “The Party” in a “1000 best films” list streets ahead of this, even with the rotten last 10-15 minutes of that movie.
BOOGIE NIGHTS - This one immediately punches my “There must have been 1000 movies better than this” button. But I’ll give it another watch. Overlength and resultant loss of focus were my primary gripes. This also falls into my “All contemporary movies are by definition at least half an hour too long” basket.
HANNAH AND HER SISTERS - Anyone who says this is ‘classic Woody’ and defines ‘classic Woody’ as love triangles and witty dialogue is pretty much wiping off all the flat-out comedies he made before he headed (much to my chagrin) in that direction. To me the best of Woody Allen - the comic invention, the laughter, even the movie-making and the ‘message’ - is in the ‘earlier, funnier’ films - “Take the Money and Run”, “Bananas”, “Sleeper”, “Play it Again Sam” (it’s still his, even if he didn’t direct it), “Love and Death” “Everything…Sex”, and “Annie Hall” as the bridging movie.
By “Hannah and Her Sisters”/”Crimes and Misdemeanours”‘”Husbands and Wives”, he’s swallowed too much of his own angst and bathwater, believes his own publicity and he’s just running riffs to me. I find all of these not just episodic but messy. The earlier pictures had focus and these didn’t. Not that there aren’t good moments and good performances in them, but that’s all I’ll give them. Tremendously pretentious, pompous, self-inflated poppycock to me.
It’s funny that people said all that stuff about “Stardust Memories” and then fell over themselves to grab at these more conventional and thus accessible movies. “Stardust Memories” is an eerily icy black comedy in which he pillories himself (and elements of his audience, and the pretentious film fest ethos and crowd), It’s his last great picture.
Of the other later ones that are really solid movies, I’ve mentioned those in the original post at various points, so I won’t go over that ground again. I’ll just add “Deconstructing Harry” as his latter-day, more slapdash-looking, documentary-style variation/update on “Stardust Memories”. It’s not as thoroughly or well constructed, but it’s a stand-out in his later run.
TOTAL RECALL - Yeah there was more in it than the standard megaplex science-fiction flick - it was adapted from a P.K. Dick story. And Paul Verhoeven is a talented guy. I also liked it a lot more than many far more popular megaplex SF movies. And I still wouldn’t put it anywhere near a “1000 best movies of all time” list. For incredible design and integration of that design with movie storytelling and the elements of that story - plot, character and subtext - I’d put another Philip K Dick adaptation - “Blade Runner” - way ahead of this in the queue for the waiting room for the “1000 movies” list. I’d also put “Escape from New York” ahead of it. And the colour version of “The Thing” which might even MAKE my list, if I was ever to do one.
GOODFELLAS - Well, the one thing I credited it with, other than visceral impact, was influence. It’s the movie’s greatest case for inclusion. I still don’t see this as going anywhere near Scorsese’s most rigorously considered and executed pictures - “Taxi Driver”, “King of Comedy”, “Raging Bull”. To me he’s running big ’spots’ and lacking perspective and discipline in “Goodfellas”, or at least the movie is. I would put “Casino” ahead of this, and I don’t rate “Casino” with the other pictures mentioned.
ET - I don’t see this quite as an all-timer in the kids/adults classic movie stakes, as I do “Wizard of Oz” or “Snow White”, but I thought it was a good sentimental kids movie that adults could enjoy. I think I tried to make the case why it could be included, in the original post. Again, I’m not sure that there’d be any great consensus on that point.
THE CRYING GAME - All the hubbub about it at the time and the way it entered popular culture was centred entirely on the ‘trick ending’, (well, actually a plot twist, not the ending - my error.). That’s entirely and very firmly how I remember the situation, and I bet how most people do, regardless of any other charms and qualities it may well have had. The entire US ad campaign (where it became a ’sleeper’ hit after apparently not going so well in the initial UK release) was centred on the movie’s “secret”.
I can’t comment further since I’ve never seen it, mostly because I already knew the trick bit, which may have been short-sighted. It’s one of around 38,000 movies I plan on getting around to sometime. I do wonder how many people would really consider it among the 1000 best movies ever made, which is the point of a list like this, and the point I seem to be coming back to all the time, on the original post and here.
To me there’s a difference between movies you or I or anyone enjoyed a lot, revelled in, lived in, whatever - and movies that can fit into the 1000 best movies of all time. To me most of my objections were fundamentally centred on the idea that there are clearly 1000 movies in existence that deserve to be there more. In some cases, such as “Animal House” and “Poltergeist”, probably 10,000 movies, and 1000 just in each respective genre.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Whenever I come across these lists I check to see if my favourite films are there (Bicycle Thief, Mulholland Drive, Exterminating Angel) and if so, I’ll check out the rest of the list.
I agree - ‘The Party’ is a notable ommission. So is (in my opinion) Russian Ark, An American Werewolf In London, Dead Man, Rio Bravo, The Great Escape and The Tenant.
There’s about 400 in that list that I think are bloody hopeless, and leading that list would be Sex, Lies and Videotape which is my all time ‘most over-rated’ leader (just beating American Beauty).
I agree withe the dude above - ‘Being There’ is worth another shot. It’s the same plot as Forrest Gump, but with the complete opposite message. Where Gump said, “Stupid people can be a success as long as they are patriotic,”, Being There just said, “People are stupid.”
I hated The Crying Game as well. Everybody kept telling me there was an amazing ‘twist’. Near the end of the film I was thinking, “Maybe he’s in the IRA”, but then the credits came up. Turns out the ‘twist’ was a reference to a part which I considered nothing more than ‘plot development’.
Try watching ‘10′ again. It’s funny, especially when he comes back from the dentist. To say it’s just a boob film is down-selling it. They were very, very good boobs.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:24 am
At the risk of pestering, thought I would make some small points (with tongue planted firmly in cheek):
1. The critics’ list is a celebration of elitism. Its primary aim is to make the public feel stupid. I, for one, feel blessed that such a social contract exists. Consensus with the listed films gives me reason enough for feeling smarmy and smug
2. OF COURSE no-one has seen most of these films in years, that’s precisely the point. Elitism is a means to an end: reviving the industry through guilt and, most importantly, perpetuities from DVD sales.
3. One should not even attempt to discuss a film that one has not seen - if you please…
4. I’ll bet you can’t wait for the next list…
April 15th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Of the movies I’ve seen that Perseus mentioned, I can see the point with “American Werewolf” although I reckon if I ever did a list - which I’m considering actually having a go at sometime, during a very slow week - it wouldn’t crack my best 1,000; agree on “The Tenant”; “The Great Escape” I’d have similar reservations to the ones I’ve expressed on “Bridge on the River Kwai” only moreso, but plenty of people would make a case for both of them; and can also see the point on “Bicycle Thief” which I suppose would also go for “Rome - Open City” and some of the other Italian neo-realist pictures in the wake of WWII, although I have to admit, it’s been years since I’ve seen any of them.
The others mentioned, I haven’t seen yet.
April 15th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Re Pokksey’s second comment/s:
1 - If “elitism” in this case meant ranking some films higher than others - an attempt to create a movie meritocracy - I’d agree, but I’d just call that one aspect of criticism, rather than “elitism”.
To me, in any kind of criticism, if there’s no attempt to show/say/demonstrate that some books/movies/comics/whatever are better than others, by some system of objective determination, then there’s little point to the exercise. Again that’s just one aspect of criticism, but without it, it’s just everybody sitting around and blathering on about their own favourites, based on how pleasurably those movies/tunes/whatever bounced off their own brain cells - a unique, unqualified and non-transferable experience which would seem to be the exact opposite of criticism. I’m all for the theory that every person is created (or evolved, or hatched, or whatever term is preferred) equal, but I have the greatest possible wariness about any suggestion that all books/movies/albums/whatever are created equal.
If by elitism, you mean - as I think you fairly clearly outline - that the point of such lists (as the NY Times Best 1,000 Movies) is to alienate or in some way deride the mass audience, I don’t agree. Presumably the idea is to help create a recognised body of “great work” to help steer people towards watching better movies.
I mean Pokksey gets out of a list like the NY Times one what he gets out of it, and that’s his privilege, but if the Times editors’ aim was to make the public feel inferior, then they were wasting their time. The vast majority of the public, and even the somewhat smaller part of that public who you could realistically call movie-goers, don’t give a flying femur for movie history. You can bang on all you like about “Citizen Kane” and “Singing in the Rain”, and even other antique movies that don’t rhyme, and you won’t even detectably slow the velocity of their page-turning as they breeze right on past the discussion.
(And that’s skating lightly over the questionable areas of how many of them habitually read about movies, how many of them habitually read, and how many of them read the New York Times when they are reading.)
My experience is that, even in discussion with people who have some pop culture inclination, most people under my age don’t know that there even was an original “Scarface” for Brian De Palma to (sort of) remake in the Al Pacino/druggie version. I reckon if you did an improvised supermarket exit poll on the subject, you’d find that most people had no idea about the Howard Hawks/Paul Muni “Scarface”, and that some of the younger ones might not even know about the Pacino version now.
People in that category are hardly going to be shamed when this week’s version of the authoritative “All Time Movie Greats” list comes out filled with titles like “The African Queen”, “Mean Streets”, “The Grapes of Wrath”, “Double Indemnity” or whatever - they’ll never have heard of any of them, and will relate to that list in no way whatsoever. When you’re in your mid-20s to mid-30s and your idea of a critical pantheon is the “Die Hard” movies, “The Bourne Altimeter”, “The Matrix”, “XXX”, and maybe that movie with Keanu Reeves on an exploding bus as your write-in ‘vintage classic’, what possible perspective do you have to feel anything about the usual critics’R'us greatest movies listing? To them, it’s just old movies that some crusties watch, and thus completely irrelevant.
2 - If someone does ever get out a DVD of a classic movie because of one of these lists, that’s fine by me. It’s kind of the point of the exercise in a way. I guess my point was that whoever compiles such a list should have seen the movie in question within the last couple of decades to avoid “rose-coloured memory” syndrome if nothing else. In the case of some of the usual suspects which always get a guernsey on these lists, I have a strong suspicion that nobody has bothered to watch them again, because if they had, they wouldn’t have put the movie on the list.
3 - If you re-read the comment I made above, you’ll see it contains nothing that couldn’t be ascertained without watching the movie. I also said I hadn’t watched the movie, so people to whom that necessarily renders my comments valueless are free to make that determination on their own.
4 - Bear in mind that I “waited” three years after publication before I saw that NY Times list, and then stumbled across it by accident. I can’t honestly say that I ever wait for any “greatest anything” list with bated breath - generally I just respond to them with irritation when they eventually bumble into my path.