your favorite movies (of all time)

I searched ILX and the closest I could find was 'your favorite movie', but kenan's thread was a little too specific

Ultimately I'm looking for new movies to watch so please list some of your favorites and indicate the genre and year they were released. And if you want to write a short blurb about the movies feel free to do so

Thanks, I look forward to watching more good movies and upping my geek credentials

The Maltese Falcon, 1940's, film noir.

nobody tells the truth, all the performances are great, the script is bewilderingly smart and sassy. it's got its own threads if you want more info.

i was shattered by the last vignette from the movie nine lives (the glenn close part). unforgettable moviemaking, and very subtle. otoh, also unbearably sad.

bottle rocket

Seven Samurai, but if that seems too long and slow, try Yojimbo.

Blue Velvet (1986)- contemporary 'film noir,' directed by David Lynch, Brazil (1985)- dystopian future, directed by Terry Gilliam, 12 Monkeys (1995)- also Terry Gilliam, probably the reason I have an irrational love for Bruce Willis.

Apologies if you've seen all of these! I know they're not very obscure.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The Sound of Music
The Day of the Jackal
Young Frankenstein

xp no apologies mate, your favorites don't have to be obscure

I'm Gonna Get You Sucka
Amadeus
The Life of Brian
High Fidelity

LAUGH 'TIL IT BLURTS. Romantic Comedy, 1993. Two aspiring young comedians find romance at a comedy camp, but must overcome a fundamental difference revealed by a joke that accidentally reveals too much.

THE CAN MAN. Documentary, 1989. When a soup factory employee's house is destroyed in a floor, a man spends years building a new house entirely from scraps of tin cans salvaged from the factory.

OVER THE PURPLE BRIDGE. Foreign, 1997. A gang of Vietnamese war criminals terrorizes a nearby village until a determined group of children summons the courage to take matters into their own hands and send the bad men back 'over the purple bridge.'

THE SOONER THE BETTER. Comedy, 1972. A con-man grifts his way through a central Oklahoma farming community until realizing he's taken more than he can bargain for.

WHO DID THIS TO ME. Drama, 2005. A woman risks life and limb to discover the identity of the person who did it to her.

JUNGLE JOHN'S BURGER SAFARI. Comedy, 1998. When a Chicago restaurateur is forced to close up shop, strange circumstances lead him to re-open in the unlikeliest of locales: Sub-Saharan Africa!

whoops meant to type "flood" but "floor" came out, tee hee

Le Samourai - Crumbling Assassin navigates cops and betrayal in colourfully grey Paris.
Before Sunrise/Before Sunset - Sometimes douchey duo grapple with youth and ageing in gorgeous European locales.
Days of Heaven - Love Triangle Tragedy held at arm's length in turn of the century Texas where nature indifferently swallows whole the problems of puny mortals.
Kings and Queen - French people doing French things.
Touch of Evil - Film so good it overcomes Charlton Heston playing a Mexican in richly photographed border town where Marlene Dietrich gets the best last line of any film ever.
The Werckmeister Harmonies - Life, the Universe, and Civil Unrest are explored in a small Hungarian town via extended takes, a dead whale, and the local idiot.
Die Hard - Working class impotent regains masculinity, wife by pwning 80s corporate culture and terrorists in sharp suits.
Diary of a Country Priest - Catholic priest mopes through hostile village while grappling with faith and mortality.
Brief Encounter - Stiff Upper Lips tremble at the sight of WWII English housewife malaise.

Seven Samurai, but if that seems too long and slow, try Yojimbo.
― Brad C.

I really do love Seven Samurai. I have affinity for many long atmospheric movies

For instance one of my favorites is The Big Blue (le grand bleu) - a long Luc Besson drama from 1988 about a diver championship (I think I saw the director's cut)

And while I'm listing movie's I love
Ran (1985) - Japanese war drama
Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan (2007) - Mongolian war drama

(I've only seen all the movies I listed in this post once. I wonder if my opinion would change if I watched them more than once)

• Diary of a Country Priest (1951) dir. Robert Bresson — existential drama
• Sunrise (1929), dir. F.W. Murnau — silent melodrama with gorgeous set pieces
• A Matter of Life and Death (1946), dir. Michael Powell — warm hearted love story half technicolor half b&w
• The Mirror (1975), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky — dreamy, moving from one narrative thread to another, roughly autobiographical. Tough to get on one viewing
• The Man Who Fell to Earth (1975), dir. Nicolas Roeg — fractured sci-fi w/ David Bowie as an alien
• The Conformist (1970), dir. Bernardo Bertolucci — prob the best looking film ever made
• Le Samouraï (1967), dir. Jean-Pierre Melville — steely grey french gangster flick w/ Alain Delon as a doomed hitman. Makes you want to slink around back alleys wearing a fedora.
• Ordet (1955), dir. Carl Dreyer — metaphysical family drama, just keeps ratcheting up the sad level throughout the whole thing, I've never cried so much from one movie.
• Late Spring (1949), dir. Yasujiro Ozu — meditative family drama (seeing a pattern?), tender and beautiful

corey, you and i should talk/have beer.

ha for real!

Videodrome - 1983 - Came out the year I was born, I would say it defines my generation and is probably the highlight of 80's Cronenberg.

The Thing - 1982 - John Carpenter's magnum opus. Still my pick for "scariest movie ever."

Blade Runner - 1982 - A perfect film, IMO, especially the director's cut.

Ed Wood - 1994 - One of Johnny Depp's finest performances, Martin Landau is amazing in it too. The lines and gags in this movie are great and its pathos is refined and doesn't resort to melodrama.

Dawn of the Dead - 1978 - The finest zombie movie to ever be filmed.

Wet Hot American Summer - 2001 - Probably my all time favorite comedy. You can see it like 5 times before you catch all the jokes. Definitely gets better with rewatching.

Thats some... I have other favorite movies, like Ghostbusters and Tron, that I am attached to more for childhood nostalgia than anything else. Ghostbusters is pretty damn good though...

M - serial child murdered is hunted down by a city's career crooks; darkly comic police procedural with satirical undertones
Mishima: a Life in 4 Chapters - biography of Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima which interweaves three of his novels with a recreation of his last day; super-stylized visuals meet Philip Glass's best movie score
Simon del Desierto - Saint Simon Stylites is tempted by the Devil, mostly disguised as a saucy schoolgirl; features a tremendous joke about some dude's arm and my favourite ending of any movie ever
Ong-bak - Tony Jaa fucking rules

Wet Hot American Summer - 2001 - Probably my all time favorite comedy. You can see it like 5 times before you catch all the jokes. Definitely gets better with rewatching.

ha maybe so. i watched it .5 times without getting any.

love Mishima's novels and Schrader's book on "Transcendental Style" (even if it's a bit dated and forces a framework of an overriding aesthetic narrative onto varied oeuvres) is an interesting read but I've still never seen that. Need to see Simon too. xp

Capturing the Friedmans – I rented this on DVD and watched it enraptured, then watched all the extras and my mind was even more blown, so I bought the DVD right after renting it. Since then, I have tried to show it to over ten people, all of whom have fallen asleep. SO if you want to be really interested OR fall asleep immediately, this movie will probably do one of those things for you.

Steamboat Bill Jr. – A silent so you can't look at your knitting! Excessively handsome man sadly busts dad out of jail, encounters weather apocalypse, dodges house facades. IMO it is Buster's funniest!

Fantastic Planet aka La Planète Sauvage – Extra beautiful hand-drawn animation, great organic/trippy soundtrack, sort of silly plot about aliens who have people-like creatures as pets.

Who did you "side with" after the Friedmans? Or, more plainly, who did you believe? I found the father and son infuriating; I was with the mother all the way.

ha maybe so. i watched it .5 times without getting any.

lol yup

movie is MAD OVERRATED

I was pretty sure the kid was innocent. The dad definitely had something going on but I really doubt everyone in that computer class was a victim. I am obsessed with the multi-victim multi-offender court case zeitgiest so the movie was really fascinating to me. Esp. all the extras like transcripts of the cops' interviews with kids from his computer class.

xp

Actually, it was the other son who drove me up the wall, not the one who was charged. The computer class was murky, agreed. But placed next to what you factually knew to be true about the father, I wasn't sure how much that mattered. Fascinating film.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Ronaldsay_child_abuse_scandal#Inquiry

Don't know if you've heard about this case, Abbott.

As far as I know there have been precisely no proven cases of ritual abuse anywhere in the world ever?

Tetsuo : The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1990) - Japanese salaryman begins to mutate into scrap metal.
Carnival Of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962) - very odd, very low budget dreamy horror. Imagine Roger Corman directing from a script by Jean Cocteau.
The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 1963) - depressed, terminally ill Swedes mope around a hotel. Better than it sounds. Features midgets.
Aguirre : The Wrath Of God (Werner Herzog, 1972) - Klaus Kinski leads Spanish conquistadors up the Amazon in search of El Dorado. Doesn't quite go according to plan.
Onibaba (Kaneto Shindo, 1964) - not sure how to describe this one.

Big Trouble in Little China for me. My Wife and I put it on regularly as our "falling asleep" movie. I came to this movie in the last couple years. I love how many movies from the 80s take place in the rain. Do movies even do that anymore?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51811F53EYL.jpg

That movie's shit tho iirc

Trying to come up with a list of favorite movies feels random at best, but here's a few that immediately come to mind:

All About Eve
Rosemary's Baby
Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Manhattan
Grizzly Man
The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Tom Dowd and the Language of Music
The Last Detail
Alien
Love and Death

"Devil and Daniel Johnston" is one of my #1 "makes me cry like a baby" movies.

"eclipse" by antonioni

"A Woman of the World" 1925 romantic comedy featuring Pola Negri and Chester Conklin. An italian countess, appalled by her cheating lover, moves to hick american town and stays with her hick american cousin to get over it. The local D.A. thinks she is a fancy hooker and tries to run her out of town. The countess and the D.A. wind each other up something rotten, but are attracted to each other too. At the end, the countess flogs the D.A. with a horsewhip, following which he proposes marriage to her. Very funny in places, appealing characters, somewhat perverse too. Absolutely great from beginning to end. Negri resembles a blowsy, older version of siouxsie and is madd hott.

"Bare Knees" rare surviving genuine "flapper film" - 1928 - starring former child actress Virginia Lee Corbin, a bunch of interchangable '20's good-looking young guys and Jane Winton. A str8-laced couple, on the wife's birthday, are surprised when her wild, lawless flapper girl younger sister arrives out of the blue. Starts off as a dorky fish-out-of-water comedy, then suddenly does a flip about 20m in, pulls the may out of under your feet and turns into a serious and very good drama on jazz-era sexual morality. Great performances, characters & situations are v recognisable & identifiable with, despite the film being like 82 years old or something.

"Gold Diggers of 1933" classic depression-era Busby Berkeley musical. Trio of chorus girls are on their uppers after the show they're about to perform in gets pwned by debt collectors. Great, snappy pre-code WB dialog, amazing berkeley musical numbers, the film is so tightly edited that it's like having a story fired at you from a machine-gun. this is poss my favorite ever film.

"The Red-Headed Woman" - prurient pre-code trash starring Jean Harlow as a low-down, marriage wrecking gold-digger, completely amoral from beginning to end, the final scene shows Harlow's character, having screwed over a bunch of lamer guys, and having shot one of them, happy and living it up with her rich sugar-daddy in France, with her lover in attendance, working as her chauffeur.

In no order:

My Own Private Idaho
Trouble in Paradise
Tootsie
McCabe and Mrs Miller
Early Summer
Anatomy of a Murder

Will supply blurbs on request.

http://i.imgur.com/b4pP7.jpg

Abbott, im a huge fan of Capturing the friedmans too. there are so many unbelievably captivating moments imo

Pash's film picks are always top notch btw

"Devil and Daniel Johnston" is one of my #1 "makes me cry like a baby" movies.

― 17th Century Catholic Spain (Abbbottt)

really? i liked the movie a lot, and i think i did get emotional at one point, but not in a way that left a lasting impression for that reason.

It's related more to personal fears/reasons than anything.

the final scene shows Harlow's character, having screwed over a bunch of lamer guys, and having shot one of them, happy and living it up with her rich sugar-daddy in France, with her lover in attendance, working as her chauffeur.

That sounds amazing!

well, that daniel johnston movie was certainly raw and real.

sometimes i get emotional at scenes where i know i'm being cynically manipulated. ex. a: that scene from the otherwise execrable movie crash (the one involving a child, and i'll say no more). i kicked myself for getting so weepy-ish at that scene.

(xp)

Something Wild - Teenage rape victim in New York runs away from home and forges a strange connection after being held captive by an alcoholic mechanic.
Tokyo Drifter - Gangland tale in eye-popping technicolor madness.
Shoot the Piano Player - Underrated (?) Truffaut.

Something Wild def in my top fifty.

soundtrack by Morton Feldman!

i had capturing the friedmans out from the library once and watched ten minutes before turning it off, feeling really prurient and awkward. maybe you have to persevere through the setup to get to the human bit?, i don't know? i will try again.

not sticking to my guns on this, but here's five faves:
pickpocket, robert bresson
gates of heaven, errol morris
the double life of veronique, krystof kieslowski
tabu, fw murnau
f for fake, orson welles

holy mountain
crumb
fargo
annie hall

Alfred, I want blurbs!

The Thing (1982) - The best sci-fi/horror hybrid of all time, narrowly edging Alien. Everything in the movie, little and big, is top notch - the acting, the score, the effects, even the dog is a great actor. And it makes you think about stuff too! Just a really cool, funny, scary movie.

Crumb (1994) - Mesmerizing documentary about R. Crumb and his family. The portrait of his brother, Charles Crumb, is devastating. R. Crumb's kind of a sick weirdo, but at the same time you come away amazed that he turned out so well compared to the rest of his family. Anyone who comes from a really dysfunctional family will probably find it easy to relate to.

I dunno, that's all I can think of.

Navel-gazing to the nth degree; dismissive of what Morbs has taken to defending as not-boring classicism.

(Which it isn't really, fwiw.)

79. Resident Evil: Retribution

alrighty

https://www.cinematary.com/writing/2018/7/9/the-2018-shmight-shmound-poll

Three Lynch in the top 12 is a little much even for me.

Fascinating that the participation exploded so much this time around tho, and how it arguably flattened the results out a bit from the previous couple years.

Torontonians: In the Mood for Love is screening for free at Christie Pits this Sunday.

hah, once again Revenge of the Sith is the only Star Wars

(or the highest anyway, missed Empire at 275)

As an alternative (or an antidote) to the more conventional movies that appear on the list, I’ve decided to make the Shmight & Shmound Alternative 150. This is a version of the list that removes any films that appear on the Sight & Sound list, the IMDB 250, or the AFI Top 100.

Some WTFs here--Carol?! Speed Racer?!?--but also Margaret, Blow Out, The Long Goodbye and McCabe and Mrs. Miller, so by far the more interesting list of the two.

the Twitter generation *is* going to ruin Lynch for me with their smothering obsession.

Speed Racer?!?

a really incredible film

also

=13. THE END OF EVANGELION

fucking hell yeah

(That's on the edited list, fwiw.)

anime, like TV, should be kept forever separate from cinema.

some movies are animated

morbs that is a wild take

(That's on the edited list, fwiw.)

― I Never Promised You A Hose Harden (Eric H.), Tuesday, July 10, 2018 12:47 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah, i'm aware, it's just surprising that the edited list resembles so much of my taste

Only Looney Tunes and Stan Brakhage count.

it would seem that a number of these "voters" may not be familiar with female directors aside from Akerman and Denis

God i love PC box-checking sooooooo much

It's back:

ok guys, it's that time again: the 2019 SHMIGHT & SHMOUND POLL, film twitter's 4th annual poll of the best movies ever made. doing things different this year... feel free to still tweet out your ballots, but PLEASE submit them here: https://t.co/E9hNkTlnB6

— nathan escar smith (@trillmoregirls) June 12, 2019

terrible voting population

He said he's already gotten 1,000 ballots so definitely this year's results are going to be terrible. But I did my part:

DAISY KENYON (Preminger)
UN CHANT D'AMOUR (Genet)
DUCK AMUCK (Jones)
THE LADIES' MAN (Lewis)
LA JETÉE (Marker)
UNSERE AFRIKAREISE (Kubelka)
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (Hooper)
A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Yang)
TASTE OF CHERRY (Kiarostami)
OUTER SPACE (Tscherkassky) https://t.co/lIm9irYjty

— Eric Henderson (@ephender) June 14, 2019

I didn't look at what I voted for the prior year, and am surprised there are 4 repeaters.

Can I vote in this poll if I haven't used my twitter account?

i'm tempted to do this but tbh i use ilx to talk about movies more than i use twitter

the Twitter generation *is* going to ruin Lynch for me with their smothering obsession

Yeah, this.

https://www.cinematary.com/writing/2019/7/29/the-2019-shmight-and-shmound-poll

predictably, lotta lynch, lotta pta

Given there were, I understand, more than 1,000 ballots this year, these results aren't anywhere near the disaster I was anticipating.

I know it’s something that frustrates a lot of people who used to get excited about the list, which grows less idiosyncratic as more people vote. I really hope you still find some value in this year’s list. At the very least, even if the top 50 to 100 look like what you’d expect, there are surprises as you go deeper down the list. It’s very exciting to me every year to see new films find an audience: this year, for example, the recently-restored Japanese queer classic Funeral Parade of Roses did extremely well. Yes, your Dark Knights and Shawshanks are here, but so is Speed Racer, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, and Raul Ruiz.

end of eva at 56 - you love to see it

Ha, I don't mind that.

For a couple days last month it was the best film ever.

but so is Speed Racer, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II

wow, i feel represented!

I'm OK with there only being one Lynch in the top 10 this time around, instead of ... was it three last year?

surprised the lords of salem isn't on the alternate 300, it def will be next year given the continual rise in zombie's stock ime

My favourite film dropped from 14 to 154 in the last two years. -_-

don't blame me, i voted for it

About half of the films in the top 50 that I like a lot (and even love) don't belong anywhere near the top 50 films of all-time.

where i ask you is the work of Roscoe Arbuckle?

Who cares?

boomer twitter has its own poll iirc

Is fatty arbuckle a boomer icon?

has better name recog than Brian De Palma i bleeve

https://static-media.fxx.com/img/FX_Networks_-_FXX/262/763/Simpsons_06_04_P5_640x360_312577091667.jpg

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSimpsons/comments/4ii311/what_has_fatty_arbuckle_done_that_i_havent_done/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

https://media0.giphy.com/media/3o6MbbUlUubgilaI8w/source.gif

can't argue with the top 3 films in this, they are among my favorites

I'm happy that The Passion of Joan of Arc was loved so much

would have rated Mirror over Stalker

In the Mood For Love and Jeanne Dielman in the top 10 is great imo

haven't seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre yet, and still haven't found a way to watch Rohmer's Le Rayon Vert

If you can follow the French, Le Rayon Vert is on Youtube legally right now on the channel ARTE Cinema. Unfortunately without English subs. It is the greatest movie.