The Panda

Can't believe y'all did Kurosawa dirty by just including one of his movies in the top 100! Number 36 "This is the nature of war: By protecting others, you save yourselves. If you only think of yourself, you'll only destroy yourself." About the Film Synopsis "A samurai answers a village’s request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food. A giant battle occurs when 40 bandits attack the village." Its Legacy "The Seven Samurai was a high point of the director's most critically revered period. It also renewed the collaboration of Kurosawa with Toshiro Mifune, and was the first of ten consecutive films the director-actor duo made together from 1954 to 1965. The films the two created together (Rashomon, Throne of Blood, Red Beard, etc.) make up much of the catalog of the greatest films ever made, but Mifune's performance in the Seven Samurai is canonical. Its success would anchor Mifune's career in the samurai genre; almost all of Mifune's roles would express the samurai mentality he originates in this film, a violent, lonely man, proud, tough, and lonesome, regretful of many things that can never be changed and working to lose that regret in swordplay and bluster. Legend has it that Mifune, raised in Manchuria and a veteran of the Japanese air force in World War II, came to Kurosawa as a prospective camera operator, and was mistakenly been asked to audition as an actor. His frustration at the confusion resulted in a performance of hauteur and instantly changing moods, a style which would become Mifune's trademark. Although he is often remembered as the leader of the samurai band in the Seven Samurai, he is not. (That role goes to another stalwart of Kurosawa's films, Takashi Shimura, who worked with Kurosawa in 20 films.) But Mifune is so riveting that our attention, like that of his fellow warriors and the townspeople they are bound to protect, always turns toward him. Kurosawa has simplistically been called "the most western of Japanese directors." In fact, the relation between the Japanese and American cinemas has been a strong and reciprocating one, and no film exemplifies this more than the Seven Samurai. Influenced by John Ford and the great westerns of the classical Hollywood cinema, Kurosawa honors that tradition with sweeping landscape shots, and with an analysis of duty and camaraderie among professional soldiers that is as subtle, humorous, and finally moving as Ford's great cavalry epics of the late 1940's, Rio Grande, Fort Apache, and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. In turn, the Seven Samurai's own influence has been wide and deep. This influence extends far beyond the American remake of the film, John Sturges' respectful but hollow The Magnificent Seven, or even warm-hearted homages like Jim Jarmusch's hip-hop samurai gangster film Ghost Dog or the Dogma pastiche Mifune in 1999. The weary, death-haunted gunmen of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah are also the legacy of the Seven Samurai. ("I want to make Westerns the way Kurosawa makes Westerns," Peckinpah was reputed to have said.) But so are the motley collections of ne'er do wells and criminals director Robert Aldrich assembles for hopeless tasks in The Dirty Dozen and The Flight of the Phoenix, and the recent Three Kings shows the Seven Samurai's influence is evergreen. Whenever an action film's violence becomes poetry, or its mercenary characters become genuinely tragic, the ghostly figures of the Seven Samurai are walking again, their hands on their sword hilts, restlessly looking for another hapless foe, their appetite for war never sated." - Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (1954) is such a film, one which portrays the power of circumstance over its characters' lives. The major "circumstance" in the film is this: with the invention of the gun and the development of the horse as an instrument of warfare, the samurai have been rendered obsolete as the warrior or fighter figures in Japanese society (Sengoku Period, 1534-1615). Whereas it is the samurai swordsmen who once would have raided the peasant village for rice and women, it is now the gun-toting bandits on horseback who do so. This places the peasants in a unique position: they can hire the samurai to defend them for the price of a meal (three meals a day, actually). But it also places them in a precarious position: the samurai will teach them to defend themselves, too, something the peasants have never done before. "Circumstance" has forced a new role on them. They are farmers by nature, fighters by chance (and necessity). "Circumstance" forces dignified samurai to go about in shabby clothing and even chop wood for a meal; it forces them to work for the very class of people they once had the most contempt for. "Circumstance" gives the gun to anyone who can pay for it (Unlike the sword, which takes a master to wield it, the gun can be master- ed-especially at close range-by almost anyone), and thus turns the petty thief into the roving, deadly, greedy bandit, part of a larger robber band or "army." "Circumstance" then dictates that three guns- all the bandits have-are not enough against the expertise of the samurai combined with the numbers of the peasants. The day will come when all the bandits have guns, and that day will spell the end of the samurai for good and the rise of the military, and later the "police," to protect the people. The "force of circumstance" is clearly at work throughout The Seven Samurai. But the film is hardly a treatise on man's helplessness before circumstance, his dwarfing by it. The art of the film, for me, is in man's playing out his destiny before circumstance, at the same time circumstance seems to engulf him. The farmers fight and the for their freedom. The samurai defend the farmers no differently than they would defend themselves: nobly and fiercely. The bandits fight to the last man, against in the end unbeatable odds, apparently forgetting that their initial objective in storming the village was to seize the farmers' crops: it is their own honor and fighting ability that have become the question. We see the ironies in the situation, but the farmers, the samurai, and the bandits do not, or they do only in passing. They act, and in action are ennobled. That, perhaps, is the sense in which this is truly an "action" or "epic" film: action does not occur for its own sake, or for the sake of mere spectacle; instead, it ennobles. The different protagonists act, no matter what they think or do not think. If they are aware of "circumstance," they forget it, and, again, act. The concentration is thus always on the human struggle more than on the existential dilemma. What matters is the present and the human more than the historical and the circumstantial. In this sense, the human transcends the circumstantial: those dead at the hands of circumstance are not mourned (farmers, samurai)2 or rejoiced over (bandits) at the end of the film; the living go on living-the farmers plant rice, the surviving samurai move on, unhailed- the dead are dead (the final shot of the burial mounds). Circumstance unites man: the farmers with one another, just so the samurai, just so the bandits. It "unites" man further: it turns farmer into near samurai-like in his courage and pride in fighting to the end; it makes samurai farmer-like in his desire to keep the rice crop from the bandits (it is this crop that the samurai, too, now shares, whereas once he had been bandit-like in its seizing). Tragedy divides and isolates man. The knowledge that its protagonists derive from suffering is not common knowledge; it is knowledge that can only be had from profound suffering. So the message of tragedy is that man will suffer again. The calm at the end of tragedy is the calm before another storm. Man is steady and united in his facing circumstance: it draws him outside himself, and gives him an experience common to many. He is unsettled and alone in the face of tragedy, or his own fate. This is the message of tragedy, but beneath it is buried a more important message, hinted at earlier in this essay: that it is precisely this excessive emphasis on the individual in the West, and in the tragic literature of the West, that condemns man to further suffering. It is the total fascination and absorption with self, in other words, in art as in life, that leads to continued self-destruction. "Fate" in literature or film becomes almost beside the point. Individual deeds leading to isolation and suffering become almost beside the point. The point is that when man lacks a reference outside himself, when he is devoted to nothing but self-fulfillment and self-glorification, he will suffer, grandly. He will break down. Tragic heroes in the West are, then, condemned to defeat before they ever step onto the page, the screen, or the stage. The very way of life, or world view, that has produced them, condemns them. This is not "fate" as it is applied to individuals in works of art ("It was Oedipus' peculiar fate to . . . etc," for example). It is life as applied to Western man generally." - Burt Cardullo, Literature/Film Quarterly Public Opinion "this is what the avengers think they look like" - siobhan, Letterboxd The AI's Poetic Opinion seven samurai "Seven samurai marching on Away must be wake to dawn. Light as a spell of the skies, Trenchant time and other tie." - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #47 (2020), #52 (2018), #43 (2016), UNRANKED (2014, 2013, 2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Alfred Hitchcock (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (4), 1960s (5), 1970s (4), 1980s (9), 1990s (13), 2000s (17), 2010s (7) Country Count Japan (6), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), The Lion King (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), WDAS (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #58 Fanboy Ranking, #39 Cinema Ranking #24 Old Farts Ranking, #47 Damn Kids Ranking #15 Ambassador Ranking, #47 All-American Ranking #40 Cartoon Ranking, #41 Damn Boomer Ranking

@Jake Gittes seeing the Pulp Fiction fell off yet again Number 37 "Does he look like a bitch?" About the Film Synopsis "A burger-loving hit man, his philosophical partner, a drug-addled gangster’s moll and a washed-up boxer converge in this sprawling, comedic crime caper. Their adventures unfurl in three stories that ingeniously trip back and forth in time." Its Legacy "In May 1994 Nelson Mandela was sworn in as South Africa’s first black president and the Channel Tunnel linking England and France finally opened. But another seismic event took place early one morning on the French Riviera when Quentin Tarantino’s crime drama Pulp Fiction was screened for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival. “That would have been 8:30 in the morning,” recalls film critic Anne Thompson. She was inside the Palais des Festivals, as a senior writer for Entertainment Weekly, for what turned out to be a joyous screening. “I don’t remember anything but really enthusiastic applause. It was electric. There was a lot of expectation that this would be something remarkable – and it was,” she says. The reaction was swift and very soon there were proclamations that Pulp Fiction had reinvented the gangster film in many dazzling ways. At Cannes it won the Palme d’Or, the top award. In the weeks that followed, as the film travelled to other festivals and into general release, it was met with considerable praise, a little dissent and the odd bit of drama. When the picture was shown as the opening night attraction at the New York Film Festival the screening had to be stopped. David Ansen, then film critic for Newsweek, recalls: “Someone fainted, a doctor was summoned. They restarted the movie just as they plunged the needle into the heart to revive [Uma Thurman’s character] and the crowd burst into cheers.” Pulp Fiction became a huge commercial hit, especially for an independent film. It eventually grossed more than $200 million worldwide. All of this was exceedingly good news for John Travolta, whose career the film revived. He received an Oscar nomination as did co-stars Samuel L Jackson and Uma Thurman. It was, of course, also a major triumph for Harvey Weinstein at Miramax Films, who backed the movie. No factor accounts for Pulp Fiction’s tremendous impact more than the almost universal verdict that the film felt entirely fresh. The story unfolds out of sequence as it chronicles a group of well-drawn underworld characters who inhabit a Los Angeles crime subculture. They include Travolta and Jackson as mob enforcers, Uma Thurman as the wife of a mob boss and Bruce Willis playing an ageing boxer." - Tom Brook, The BBC From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "Although a number of critics in the popular pressl laud Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (1994) for its non-linear narrative, quirky performances, and oddly resonant dialogue regarding such issues as hamburgers, television pilot episodes, and foot massages, critics in other circles such as Anthony Lane (The New Yorker) and Tom Whalen (Literature/Film Quarterly) deride Tarantino's creation for its extreme violence and lack of moral clarity. In "Degrees of Cool," Lane maligns the film for the director's over-arching reliance upon popcultural minutiae and its "blank morality and wicked accoutrements" (97), while in "Film Noir: Killer Style," Whalen argues that Pulp Fiction functions upon a cinematic tableau devoid of meaning and further suggests that the characters who populate Tarantino's oeuvre live in a world that operates beyond the strictures of morality. Whalen writes, "Greed and drugs, chance and what wits these characters have left after their ears have been deafened by the gun blasts are what they live by" (2). Such critical assessments of the film, however, neglect to account for the remarkably palpable elements of metamorphosis involved in the redemption of the character who functions largely as Pulp Fiction's moral axis, Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson). His dramatic struggle with the notion of divine intervention in the film's final reel-in addition to the ethical crises that confront Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) as he maneuvers through Pulp Fiction's labyrinthine middle-third-belies any rudimentary evaluation of the film as a morally vacuous vehicle that emphasizes Tarantino's lust for the flashy entrails of pop culture over the sublime qualities of artistic substance. By using the interpretive strategies established by the ongoing project of ethical criticism, promulgated by such figures as Wayne Booth, Martha C. Nussbaum, and J. Hillis Miller, we will reveal the manner in which Tarantino utilizes the otherwise mundane moments of conversation and reflection in the lives of gangsters-perennially employed as mere plot devices in the annals of American cinema, but rarely depicted as fully realized characters engaging in workaday human experience-as a means for exploring ethical and philosophical questions regarding faith, morality, commitment, and the human community. In his prodigious volume, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction, Booth advocates a form of criticism that examines a work of art in order to discover and make explicit the moral sensibility informing that work. If we are to accept the proposition that narratives reflect human experience while at the same time they affect human experience, that narratives are both a product of the social order and help establish and maintain that social order, it becomes clear that-in its desire to examine the moral and ethical nature of a work of art-ethical criticism establishes an important bond between the life of the narrative and the life of the reader. Patricia Meyer Spacks contends that while fictional narratives offer opportunities for ethical reflection, they are not imperatives for behavior; rather, according to Spacks, "paradigms of fiction provide an opportunity for moral playfulness: cost-free experimentation" (203). While the conditions of the visual experience inherent in film underscore the remarkable power of narratives to impinge upon human experience, or what Spacks calls the "experience of agency or its illusion" (203), those experiences acquired through cinematic representation-although powerful and affecting-may be understood as activities that afford experimentation, the trying on of new possibilities without the finality or consequences of life beyond the comforting walls of the cineplex. The redemptive act of re-reading the text of his life, then, allows Jules to glimpse for the first time the prospects of faith, hope, and love-possibilities that the stasis of his past life, in its devotion to death, could never offer. As Jules unveils his intentions to leave "the life," Vincent recoils in horror at the mere notion of existence without the comfort of material possessions: "Jules, you're gonna be like those pieces of shit out there who beg for change. They walk around like a bunch of fuckin' zombies, they sleep in garbage bins, they eat what I throw away, and dogs piss on 'em. They got a word for 'em, they're called bums. And without a job, residence, or legal tender, that's what you're gonna be-a fuckin' bum!" Yet Jules finds solemnity in his decision. He will simply walk the earth-"You know, like Cain in Kung Fu. Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures"-and, although he pledges himself to the promise of spiritual redemption, he realizes nevertheless that such a commitment necessitates faith in the intensity of his cataleptic impression, and in the unknowable ways of God: "If it takes forever, I'll wait forever," he tells Vincent (147). In this way, Tarantino establishes Jules as the moral center of his film, and, for this reason, Pulp Fiction's achronological narrative takes on greater ethical force when Jules spares Pumpkin and Honey Bunny in the film's final moments. If the thieves confront Jules in the film's opening sequence, before he experiences divine intervention, they would surely meet with his wrathful, original reading of Ezekiel 25:17. Instead, Tarantino offers Jules's act of contrition, his desire to shepherd the weak. By sparing the lives of the thieves, Jules sustains the life of the community. The power of Jules's metamorphosis lies in the risk that faith demands and his discovery of what Nussbaum calls the "various and powerful" forces of love, "forces making for danger, the urgent need for protection and self-sufficiency, the opposite and equal need for joy and communication and connection" (261). Beyond the hazy lens of Tarantino's deliberately dark gangland tableau-beyond the greed, drugs, and gun blasts that Whalen so laments-Pulp Fiction proffers a fictional universe where miracles still happen, where love can still make a difference." - Todd Davis, Literature/Film Quarterly Public Opinion "one of the best movies I've ever seen. But also one of the most bizarre movies I've ever seen. Who would think to insert a serial rapist/killer plot into the mix? I'll need to see it multiple times to process everything. Seeing it in an actual theater would be ideal, in my opinion, without distractions. The performances from everyone in the main cast were outstanding." - @cannastop The AI's Poetic Opinion pulp fiction "Marcellus Wallace don't like to be fucked Beside the flood, with her dear purple eye, And on their heart a howling cheer instruct, Feeling only a self of living tie." - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #28 (2020), #12 (2018), #6 (2016), #25 (2014), #2 (2013), #1 (2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Alfred Hitchcock (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Gene Kelly (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (3), 1960s (5), 1970s (4), 1980s (9), 1990s (13), 2000s (17), 2010s (7) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), The Lion King (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), WDAS (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #40 Fanboy Ranking, #41 Cinema Ranking #49 Old Farts Ranking, #36 Damn Kids Ranking #92 Ambassador Ranking, #36 All-American Ranking #102 Cartoon Ranking, #36 Damn Boomer Ranking

Number 38 "I think I must have one of those faces you can't help believing." About the Film Synopsis "When larcenous real estate clerk Marion Crane goes on the lam with a wad of cash and hopes of starting a new life, she ends up at the notorious Bates Motel, where manager Norman Bates cares for his housebound mother. The place seems quirky, but fine… until Marion decides to take a shower." Its Legacy "One of the most influential films of the 20th century, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho has been immortalised in popular culture. The Master of Suspense’s most recognised work is responsible for inspiring generations of young filmmakers to explore the world of horror and psychological thrillers. More than 60 years later, Psycho continues to be regarded as the apotheosis of the genre against which all other horror films are measured. Based on Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel, Psycho transports the idea of horror from the realm of the supernatural to the mundane which amplifies the dread. It is a cinematic adaptation of Bloch’s assertion “that the man next door may be a monster unsuspected even in the gossip-ridden microcosm of small-town life.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the iconic character of Norman Bates (played by Anthony Perkins) was included by the FBI in their list of the 10 most iconic psychopaths in cinema because he has unsettled audiences for years. When it was first released, Psycho received mixed reviews with some critics dismissing it for its lack of subtlety. The film went against the conservative code of propriety of its time, boldly depicting scenes containing sexualised violence, voyeurism and digging deeper into psychoanalysis. Prior to Psycho, most American films indulged in sexual explorations only in a suggestive capacity. Hitchcock dismantled such reservations by opening with scenes of “immorality” and filming what was considered to be inappropriate back then. The funniest example of this is the fact that Psycho broke the norms by showing the flushing of a toilet as well as the contents which American films generally avoided. Psycho’s most famous contribution to the world of cinema is the iconic shower scene where Hitchcock generates a new cinematic language by employing jump cuts and over 90 breaks in 45 seconds. With just one scene, the great filmmaker managed to translate the overwhelming anxiety of violent disruption to the cinematic medium. The shower scene is not only important for its subversion of ordinary visual grammar but also for its narrative implications, mainly the murder of a main character in the first half of the film itself. While explaining the psychological effects of such a disorienting aberration, Hitchcock said: “They thought the story was about a girl who stole $40,000. That was deliberate. And suddenly out of the blue, she is stabbed to death. Now, a lot of people complained about the excessive violence. This was purposely done, because as the film then proceeded, I reduced the violence while I was transferring it to the mind of the audience. By that first impact, so the design of the film was very clearly laid out.” The shower scene ended up generating its own mythology and even had a feature-length documentary made about that single scene – 78/52 (2017)." - Swapnil Dhruv Bose From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is his most famous film and certainly his most influential. I propose that a crucial aspect of Psycho’s design is its thematization of a concept that I call the “death-mother.” I draw a distinction between the character of Mrs. Bates, or “Mother,” never seen until the climax yet everywhere present, and the concept of the death-mother. The death-mother is an effect produced by the film text as a whole. Although Hitchcock’s film offers a particularly acute version of it, the concept of the death-mother connotes a recurring set of preoccupations in the horror genre across a range of literary and film texts, from Book II of Paradise Lost, in which Milton depicts the figure of Sin, half human woman, half snake, Satan’s daughter and the mother of their incestuously conceived son, Death, to the recent horror films of JamesWan such as Insidious (2011) and The Conjuring (2013), which foreground a monstrous femininity. The deathmother is a maternal figure associated with death, offering toxic threat, not conventional nurture, terror, not love. More crucially, the death-mother emerges as a synthesis, an emblem, of a world of death, akin to what, as I discuss, the psychoanalytic theorist André Green calls the maternal necropolis. The domain of the death-mother exceeds all human efforts to escape it. It is tied to culture, nature, gender roles, and sexuality but ultimately exceeds these specific associations. As I will show, the death-mother is primarily tied to the aesthetic, to formal experimentation that flows out of or expresses a particular concentration of phobic conflicts and preoccupations that would appear to dominate the work of male artists primarily.1 In works by these artists, the death-mother emerges as the female face of the death drive, a relentless force that wants nothing more than to vanquish living beings and render them monuments to her ineluctable triumph. At the same time, “she” is a disruption, a deformation, a tearing open of a text, a maddening goad to aesthetic experimentation. The death-mother figures this very desire to manipulate and innovate a work of art’s formal design. At the same time, this aesthetic ecstasy inextricably meshes with a misogynistic understanding of female power as a form of power that must be challenged, outmatched, even as it goads the artist to heightened creative production. Hitchcock’s use of the cinematic techniques of superimposition and the dissolve in the famous final shots of Psycho elucidate the effects of the death-mother. Gathering intensity and definition over the course of Psycho’s narrative and through its finely honed aesthetic design, the figure of the death-mother now at last comes into focus. The killer of the film, the young motel proprietor Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), having been revealed as the impersonator of his dead mother, whom he murdered, sits in a prison holding cell, but it is “Mother’s” words, her voice-over, that we hear as the camera steadily bores into his face. The image of Mother’s face, a skull with an eerie grin, is superimposed, almost subliminally, on Norman’s, and then this Mother-skull- Norman face blurs, through the use of the dissolve, into the shot of a car being dragged out of a swamp by a long protuberant metal chain, an almost stereoscopic effect. Life and death fused, a cesspool and a mechanistic monster, a blur of male, female, and technological-industrial signifiers, the image of the death-mother synthesizes the concerns of the film but also exceeds them. This final image, a fleeting glimpse of the death-mother, demands but defies interpretation, as does the film itself. Maternal themes recur in Hitchcock, and he brought them into greatest clarity in Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds (1963), and Marnie (1964). I view these four films as a mother-daughter quartet through which Hitchcock strives for and struggles his way toward a kind of resolution of his ongoing conflictual cinematic relationship to maternal figures. At the same time, mother-son relationships are crucial to Psycho and The Birds and previous films such as Notorious (1946), Strangers on a Train (1951), and North by Northwest (1959). Notorious is especially relevant, containing a scene in which Alex Sebastian (Claude Rains), the homosexual villain (as he is typed) and his cold, evil mother (Leopoldine Konstantin)—both Nazis attempting to restore the party in Rio— argue behind closed doors, an early indication of the “voice without a body” of Michel Chion’s (1999) theory in Psycho. Vertigo and Psycho are a pair of doubles whose themes crisscross— both thematize the triumph of the death-mother and as such powerfully recall Rebecca (1940). Robin Wood, author of the famous Hitchcock’s Films (1965) and a self-revisionist later version of this study, cites Rebecca as the first instance of the troubling mother figure in Hitchcock’s work; Tania Modleski (1988) has written a famous treatment of the film as exemplary of the female Oedipus complex. The theme of the death-mother haunts Hitchcock’s work, even the comparatively light-hearted The Lady Vanishes (1938), and reaches its apotheosis in Psycho." - David Greven (2014) The Death-Mother in Psycho: Hitchcock, Femininity, and Queer Desire, Studies in Gender and Sexuality Public Opinion "A remarkable film - so eloquently written - and with such a perfect storyline - that it is now my favourite horror film, and has encouraged me to continue watching more of Alfred Hitchcock's work. Hitchcock had plenty opportunities to create a scare throughout the film but he consistently waited until he found the exact perfect moment, leaving the watcher unable to guess what becomes of the protagonists in the film... I thought I could tap into Hitchcock's wavelength and predict what happens but he just blew my mind throughout it, and that's quite impressive. The film trailer/behind the scenes was quite fascinating as well... *insert Hitchcock piano fiddly hands*" - Avesta, Letterboxd The AI's Poetic Opinion psycho "Murder in the shower! While I invest my scene, Keep the look of hour! Howls and snarls of a queen." Factoids Previous Rankings #49 (2020), #73 (2018), #78 (2016), UNRANKED (2014), #54 (2013), #52 (2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Alfred Hitchcock (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Gene Kelly (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (3), 1960s (5), 1970s (4), 1980s (9), 1990s (12), 2000s (17), 2010s (7) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), The Lion King (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), WDAS (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #49 Fanboy Ranking, #38 Cinema Ranking #29 Old Farts Ranking, #42 Damn Kids Ranking #30 Ambassador Ranking, #40 All-American Ranking #63 Cartoon Ranking, #38 Damn Boomer Ranking

Number 39 "Intelligence. Nothing has caused the human race so much trouble as intelligence." About the Film Synopsis "Professional photographer L.B. ‘Jeff’ Jeffries breaks his leg while getting an action shot at an auto race. Confined to his New York apartment, he spends his time looking out of the rear window observing the neighbors. When he begins to suspect that a man across the courtyard may have murdered his wife, Jeff enlists the help of his high society fashion-consultant girlfriend and his visiting nurse to investigate." Its Legacy "For all our education and filmwatching experience, we still haven’t found a better example of a film that so efficiently, elegantly and in a brilliantly simple way manages to produce a protagonist so easy to connect with, a hero whose eyes become our eyes and whose fears, doubts, anxiety and curiosity instantly become our own. In Rear Window, Alfred Hitchcock decided to create a professional photographer who is forced to spend his long summer days next to the open window of his apartment, from where he makes time go by less painfully by observing his surroundings, or to be more precise, the other tenants of his apartment building. As anyone who’s watched this film already knows, and we sincerely hope most of you have, the temporarily physically handicapped photographer accidentally witnesses something he immediately classifies as murder, and on his persistent journey of discovering the truth we are sucked in to sit right by his side, in that one single room where most of the action happens. It’s one of Hitchcock’s best ideas, translated to the screen as a true thriller classic we can never get tired of watching. Rear Window was written by John Michael Hayes, who based it on Cornell Woolrich’s 1942 short story entitled ‘It Had to Be Murder,’ but the film as such would hardly be possible if it weren’t for Jimmy Stewart, the most extraordinary “ordinary guy” of the old Hollywood. Grace Kelly plays his fiancée, a beautiful young model who goes out of her way to accommodate her older boyfriend, a man who seems to be doing whatever’s in his power to distance himself from her. Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter and Raymond Burr all give excellent performances without which Rear Window would shine considerably less than it does, but Stewart is the one who carries this film to the end credits. Shot by the proficient and productive American cinematographer Robert Burks, who worked with Hitchcock on no less than twelve pictures from Strangers on a Train to Marnie, edited by another frequent Hitchcock collaborator George Tomasini (Vertigo, Psycho, The Birds and six more) and presenting the German-American composer Franz Waxman’s melodies, Rear Window is widely regarded as part of the elite group of the greatest movies ever produced. What makes this film so good is the fact it could be seen and analyzed from numerous different perspectives. First of all, it’s a very effective thriller filled with nail-biting suspense. Secondly, since most of the film is shot from the main character’s perspective, allowing the story to be simultaneously revealed to both the protagonist and the audience, Rear Window is a wonderful examination of the voyeuristic qualities of cinema. Hitchcock himself stated he’s so proud of the film because it allowed him to tell such a great deal of the story by relying on pure visuals, but in case you still haven’t found the time or motivation to see it–rest assured, the film is nothing close to being an exhibition of indisputable filmmaking technique that Hitchcock is still so famous for. Underneath the murder mystery and all the gimmicks that make Rear Window such a pleasure to discuss, explore and dissect at seminars, workshops and film clubs, we have real human beings, well-developed and three-dimensional. Rear Window is therefore a film about filmmaking, yes, but it’s also a complex movie with depth, range, humor and warmth that’s here, first and foremost, for our repeated pleasure." - Cinephilia and Beyond From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "The credit sequence of Rear Window is set against three windows whose bamboo blinds rise in succession to reveal a Greenwich Vil lage courtyard and the apartment buildings which enclose it. The film ends (that is, before the current distributor, Universal, re placed Paramount's original logo and end titles with its own) with a similar theatrical effect-the successive lowering of these same shades. Beyond the curtained windows lies a space that serves as both a stage and a screen, a space controlled by the authorial pres ence of Alfred Hitchcock, who invisibly raises and lowers the bamboo shades to open and close the film's narrative. This space is quasi-theatrical in its pro-filmic unity and three-dimensionality and yet also cinematic in the flat, multi-windowed design of the apartment complex across the way, which resembles nothing other than a series of little movie screens. In front of the shades lies another space that, though architecturally segregated from that of the courtyard, is similarly theatrical and cinematic. The apartment interior is not merely a spectatorial space from which the main action beyond the window is seen, but serves as a space for the playing out of another drama. Both spaces invoke notions of the theater and the cinema and use them as metaphors through which specators are asked to read the action that takes place within these spaces. The overall organization of the film, whose action is divided into distinct, temporally continuous units by a series of fades, resembles the act structure of the theater, which breaks down the action into discrete "blocks" of time. In this way the structure of the narrative suggests that of a drama built around scene or act divisions. Even the device of the fade is theatrical, resembling the lighting tech niques of the curtain-less theater, which raises and dims the lights in lieu of the raising and lowering of a curtain. The fade is clearly a "filmic" device which draws upon theatrical convention; Hitch cock's use of it here, in the context of other theatricalisms, gives further support to the notion that the film is engaged in a playful acknowledgement of its own constructedness, an acknowledge ment which it shares with its audience. Rear Window plays with the differences between theatrical and cinematic film space, relying on set design and certain kinds of camera movements to establish a concrete, unified, theatrical space and on editing, framing, and camera movement to construct a more abstract, psychological, cinematic film space. At the same time, the film plays with the psychology of traditional theatrical and cinematic spaces, i.e., with spectators' attitudes towards and understandings of those spaces. In particular, the film exploits tra ditional notions of theatrical space as resistant to and cinematic space as conducive to manipulation for purposes of narrativization and then collapses the two, rendering both kinds of space equally manipulatable and narrativizable, though this is achieved in dif ferent ways.9 The theatrical-cinematic distinction is most com monly articulated in terms of the concepts "showing" versus "telling" (see Booth, or Scholes and Kellogg), mimesis versus die gesis (Plato), and/or spectacle versus narrative (Mulvey).10 This distinction is in need of qualification in that showing and telling, mimesis and diegesis, and spectacle and narrative are discursive modes which differ in degree, not in essential nature; drama is diegetic as well as mimetic, telling as it shows, and cinema involves "both the presentation of actions and their mediation."1 But what concerns me here are not so much theories of narration as the psychologies of different kinds of space in terms of their conduci veness to narrativization. In this context, space in the classical the ater is, as Boris Eikhenbaum argues, understood as a given, some thing to-be-filled-in, and resistant (though not entirely invulner able) to attempts to reshape it.12 It presents the narrator with an obstacle of sorts which must be overcome by the forceful presence of an authorial voice which directs spectatorial attention within a fixed space. Space in the cinema, in as much as it is flat and, through montage, discontinuous, is seen less as a given than as a construction; it is a transformation of the real, bearing the marks of an intervening discursive presence." - John Belton, MLN, Dec., 1988, Vol. 103, No. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1988), pp. 11211138 Public Opinion "The universal dilemma: what if the most beautiful person in the world wants to sleep with you but you really just want to spy on your neighbors." - Patrick Willems, Letterboxd The AI's Poetic Opinion rear window "Snooping on the neighbor, Caught a glimpse of murder! Led by a look to him, Young I was, a queen." - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #48 (2020), #64 (2018), #41 (2016), #45 (2014), #20 (2013), #72 (2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Alfred Hitchcock (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Gene Kelly (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (3), 1960s (4), 1970s (4), 1980s (9), 1990s (12), 2000s (17), 2010s (7) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), The Lion King (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), WDAS (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #79 Fanboy Ranking, #34 Cinema Ranking #19 Old Farts Ranking, #52 Damn Kids Ranking #34 Ambassador Ranking, #38 All-American Ranking #42 Cartoon Ranking, #39 Damn Boomer Ranking

Number 40 "I'm surrounded by idiots." About the Film Synopsis "A young lion prince is cast out of his pride by his cruel uncle, who claims he killed his father. While the uncle rules with an iron paw, the prince grows up beyond the Savannah, living by a philosophy: No worries for the rest of your days. But when his past comes to haunt him, the young prince must decide his fate: Will he remain an outcast or face his demons and become what he needs to be?" Its Legacy "Few animated films have charged onto the screen with the confidence of Disney’s 1994 smash “The Lion King.” Eschewing opening titles, a giant red sun rising over the Serengeti filled the screen, as the soundtrack blasted the majestic opening song, “The Circle of Life.” The anthem of birth and death gathered intensity as giraffes, elephants and zebras assembled to witness the presentation of the newborn lion, who was held aloft as the music swelled; the zebras stomped, the monkeys whooped, and the sun shone down upon the cub. That opening sequence — so iconic that the teaser trailer for Jon Favreau’s new “Lion King” remake is, in effect, a shot-for-shot recreation — is a kickoff of such brashness and bravado, feverish anticipation and enthusiastic reception, that it’s easy to read as a metaphor for “The Lion King” itself, one of the most profitable and culturally inescapable films of the 1990s. It’s also easy to forget that at the time of its release a quarter-century ago, this was one of the riskiest ventures of Disney’s history, and it was met with some resistance. But “The Lion King” would not only change the way Disney did business, but also contribute to a shift in the industry itself. But for “The Lion King,” the studio was, mostly out of necessity, breaking from the traditions of its predecessors. Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, the stage composers whose songs had given those pictures such vivid life, were unavailable; Ashman had died during the production of “Aladdin,” and Menken was working on the studio’s 1995 release, “Pocahontas.” The directors responsible for those features were likewise committed, leaving those duties to a pair of first-timers, Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff. They weren’t the only gambles. This was the first Disney animated feature populated solely by animals; even “Bambi” featured a world that humans touched, and occasionally infringed upon. And unlike that film, the traumatic death at the center of this story would occur onscreen. Chanciest of all (especially for a studio that has become, in the ensuing years, even more concerned with brand familiarity), this was the first Disney property not based on existing material — though it wasn’t hard to trace its inspirations. “It’s a combination Moses-Hamlet-King Arthur Meets Elton John in Africa,” the producer Don Hahn told Premiere magazine (“half in jest,” according to the reporter, Ari Posner). The picture had a difficult birth, first envisioned, by the original director George Scribner, as a serious-minded, noble nonmusical titled “King of the Jungle.” The success of Disney’s Renaissance films turned it into a light, comic, pop-tinged musical, and the studio was willing to do whatever it took to make the music work without Ashman and Menken. When Ashman fell ill during “Aladdin,” the Broadway lyricist Tim Rice had stepped in, and he was drafted for “The Lion King.” He told Premiere, “They asked me who I wanted to work with, and I said, ‘Elton John would be great, but you won’t get him.’ But they did.” John’s involvement gave the picture a boost in credibility, a marketing hook, and (most profitably) a 10-times platinum soundtrack album. Over the next quarter-century, “The Lion King” would be referenced by everyone from Chance the Rapper to Titus Andromedon on “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.” Yet for all the enduring affection and nostalgia, it’s worth noting that the movie’s march toward cultural ubiquity was also dogged by controversy. (Conversations about problematic art didn’t begin with Twitter, you know.) Concerns over the considerable amount of violence and terror in the G-rated film raised alarms for parents and educators within days of its release; adults were genuinely asking whether it was safe to take their children to see the latest Disney movie. (Judging by the grosses, many seem to have decided it was.) But as the summer wore on, more questions were raised. “The movie is full of stereotypes,” the Harvard psychologist Carolyn Newberger said at the time. “The good-for-nothing hyenas are urban blacks; the archvillain’s gestures are effeminate, and he speaks in supposed gay clichés.” The writer Janet M. Walker, of the New York Amsterdam News, likewise criticized the “Sambo-ish hyenas,” and noted that while James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair, two actors of color, voiced the king and queen of this African narrative, Simba was voiced by the white actors Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Matthew Broderick. Jones shrugged off the question, explaining to Premiere: “There’s no reason to cast only Africans. I’m no more African than Jeremy Irons is, quite frankly.” The official word from the studio was even more blunt. “It’s a story. It’s fiction,” the Disney spokeswoman Terry Press said. “These people need to get a life.” “The Lion King” itself was done no harm by the controversies, of course (nor subsequent whispers about another, unattributed source for its story, nor that popular rumor of subliminal messaging hidden within). It has had one of the healthiest afterlives of any Disney property, spawning not only that best-selling (and still-selling) soundtrack, but also tie-in merchandise, rereleases (for Imax in 2002 and 3-D in 2011), and a Tony Award-winning, record-breaking Broadway stage adaptation. And then there is the new remake — in which Simba (and Nala and Scar) are all voiced by actors of color. Sometimes these things just take time." - Jason Bailey, The New York Times From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "In attempting to relate Disney's The Lion King to the contemporary discourse of urban decline, there is one objection to my efforts that I wish to meet in advance. That objection is the view that, in bringing the techniques of close reading and ideology critique to a film made for children, we lose sight of what genuinely matters to the children who watch it, namely, the film's entertainment value. To this objection I wish simply to reply that the opposition it posits, between entertainment value and ideological content, is a false one. One of the aims of readings of the sort I am about to sketch is to show how a film's power to entertain can be intricately bound up with its promotion of particular political values. Movies entertain not always despite their political agendas, but sometimes because they are effective in conveying those agendas.1 In Disney's case, of course, expertise at exploiting the entertainment value of political ideology extends well beyond the movies to the marketing of lunch boxes, backpacks, colouring books, and other paraphernalia geared to elementary school kids. Thus, it is not farfetched to suppose that Disney is playing a major role in the political formation of America's children. Hegel's Euro-centric picture of Africa pertains to The Lion King, because The Lion King re-cycles and re-values Hegel's Euro-centric picture of Africa. The Lion King re-cycles Hegel's picture by depicting Africa as a naturally existing and organically integrated 'circle of life', a place of perfect harmony in which each and every species of life performs a function useful to the others. As Mufasa puts it to Simba, the antelope who feeds the lion is himself fed by the lion when the lion's dead and decomposed body nourishes the grass on which the antelope grazes. According to the movie's theme song, the circle of life is an 'endless round' that 'moves us all/ an ever-repeating and cyclical routing of routine natural events (e.g., the birth of a lion king at the beginning of the movie). To paraphrase Hegel, this endless round — especially as we see it in the vivid visual sequence which opens the film — is as it has always been. Like Hegel's picture of Africa, Disney's image of the circle of life reduces Africa to the endless reproduction of a natural and pre-historic course of life. The Lion King re-values Hegel's picture of Africa by proffering an idealized version of the natural and historyless course of life which Hegel denigrates. Thus, where Hegel deplores the absence of the European's historical selfconsciousness and the corresponding triumph of a natural and primitive mode of life, Disney envisions a natural paradise. To be sure, this and similar discrepancies between different Euro-centric perceptions of non-Europeans whom Europeans have identified as natural, or primitive, is hardly new. As early as the 16th century, for example, in travel literature that Richard Hakluyt collected under the title The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, one sees American Indian populations that have been disparaged for their want of civilization also admired for the paradisal harmony which this want is said to make possible (for a brief discussion of Hakluyt's book, see Miles, 1989). In the case of the contrast between Hegel and Disney, Euro-centrism's bifocal vision of a natural and historyless Africa bespeaks two distinct ways of conceptualizing the significance of historical change. As we have seen, Hegel implies that the transformation and becoming historical of a course of life that is as it has always been involves spiritual growth and progress. For Disney, on the other hand, the very same process leads to spiritual loss and decline. Perhaps the best way to conceptualize the allegorical significance of The Lion King is to compare it with the Ur-Text of American film's attempts to cope with racial difference, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation. In Griffith's racist masterpiece we see, roughly, two types of black folk: those who seek political enfranchisement (those the film describes as wanting to rule white men and marry white women) and those who subserve the white will to exclude from citizenship the blacks seeking enfranchisement. Echoes of this 'splitting' of the black image continue to be a familiar feature of Hollywood films and seem evident in such recently popular movies as Rocky III and Ghost. In The Lion King, the split is apparent in the contrasting portraits of, on one hand, the inner city hyenas and, on the other hand, Rafiki. Led by Scar, the hyenas endeavour to become legitimate and enfranchised citizens who are no longer relegated to the periphery of the polity. As for Rafiki he is a 'good soul' who, in the wake of Scar's hyena-supported political revolution, helps to defeat the hyenas and to restore the integrity of a polity that the film allegorically imagines as, again, a visually vivid, naturally ordered and historyless circle of life. What would happen were America fully to enfranchise the black and Latino denizens of the inner city; were it to empower them, that is, with the political power they lack in a capitalist democracy wherein access to political power is constrained by race and class. The Lion King's answer to this question is that the entire polity would be polluted and rendered uninhabitable by the hyenas' presence (see Goldberg, 1993). In the wake of Scar's success in enfranchising the hyenas (in inaugurating 'a new age'), the movie forcefully asserts this answer by picturing an originally bright and colourful African landscape in the dark and gray tones otherwise reserved for depicting the scavengers' inner city. As if they were the physically sick agents of a death-dealing plague that they had borne from one physical space to infect another, the hyenas' participation in the life of a once paradisal polity spells that polity's fall and demise. By envisioning this fall as a result of the hyenas' transgression of spatial boundaries, The Lion King suggests that the impoverished life of America's inner cities is itself the product of a communicable malaise embodied by inner-city residents. Enfranchise poor blacks and Latinos, Disney's movie intimates, and this malaise — a sort of biological and perhaps racist version of the Moynihan Report's 'tangle of pathology' — will spread inwards from the polity's periphery, entirely consuming its vital resources.4 Put a bit differently, The Lion King is an argument for an American apartheid that the film rationalizes by appealing to precisely the sort of grounds a doctor would invoke to justify a quarantine. As I read them, Smith and Beauregard argue that the ideology of urban decline obscures the social relations pertinent to explaining urban poverty by representing that poverty as an effect exclusively of factors present in the physical spaces which harbour poverty. In other words, this ideology masks the degree to which urban poverty is a function of social relations that transcend the discrete physical spaces wherein poverty occurs: e.g., the organization in Britain of an economy that marginalizes migrant labour (Smith, 1993: 136) and the workings in the United States of an economy requiring decline as a necessary condition (Beauregard, 1993: 322). My reading of The Lion King is of a piece with Smith's and Beauregard's arguments, because it shows that this film participates in the discourse which these arguments criticize. By figuring poverty and decline as properties of physical spaces caused by the transgressive entry into those spaces of malaise-spreading scavengers, Disney's film lets disappear from view the macropolitical and macroeconomic social relations which cut across the boundaries of urban spaces yet contribute substantially to the ongoing reproduction of urban poverty'.6 In effect Disney contributes to what, in the spirit of Marx, one could call the mystery of the fetishism of urban poverty" - Robert Gooding‐Williams (1995) Disney in Africa and the inner city: On race and space in The Lion King , Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, Public Opinion "One of the greatest films ever made, The Lion King is the very pinnacle of Disney's Renaissance Era that didn't just mark a creative high for the legendary animation studio but remains their most impressive work to date. An astounding masterpiece for all ages that's perfectly balanced in the smallest of aspects & still hasn't aged a day, this is without a doubt the greatest Disney film of all time. Set in the Pride Lands of Africa, The Lion King tells the story of a young lion prince who flees into exile after the death of his father when his uncle tricks him into believing that he is the one responsible for the king's demise. Growing up with two outcasts & embracing their carefree attitude, he is ultimately forced to confront his past after a chance encounter with an old friend & decides to return to his homeland. Directed by Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff, the film opens on such a grand note that its prologue alone is much better than what most features churn out in their entire runtime. The whole story has an epic feel to it despite its grounded simplicity, the plot unfolds like a soothing breeze, the themes are handled with care, entertainment is top-notch and its carefully carved out characters add even more richness to the story. Each frame of its beautifully rendered animation is a work of spellbinding craftsmanship. Characters are brilliantly sketched too & do manage to express emotions amazingly well. Cinematography makes expert use of colour palettes & vibrant use of camera angles. Editing provides a frenetic pace to the whole narrative & is at its best during the musical numbers, while CGI is seamlessly integrated into its hand-drawn imagery. An emotionally stirring adventure that's full of heart, passion & creativity from start to finish, The Lion King is an unabashedly hilarious, occasionally melancholic, extremely intimate, thoroughly enjoyable, delightfully engaging, intensely thrilling, wildly entertaining & immensely satisfying fable about life, death, identity, responsibility & resurrection that borrows from William Shakespeare's Hamlet yet is able to carve out its very own identity before it fades out. Marking the last great high for Disney's Renaissance Era that came crashing down soon after the advent of Pixar Animation Studios, The Lion King is a work of cinematic perfection that still stands tall & remains unblemished by the test of time and, for the epic this timeless classic is in every sense of the word, will continue to do so comfortably for a very foreseeable future. Absolutely worth your time & money, the crown jewel of Walt Disney Animation comes one hundred percent recommended." - CinemaClown, Letterboxd The AI's Poetic Opinion the lion king "Hakuna, matata To help for present days, Hakuna, matata Enhance each throe of praise." - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #60 (2020), #17 (2018), #36 (2016), #5 (2014), #21 (2013), #12 (2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Gene Kelly (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (2), 1960s (4), 1970s (4), 1980s (9), 1990s (12), 2000s (17), 2010s (7) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), The Lion King (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), WDAS (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #25 Fanboy Ranking, #50 Cinema Ranking #72 Old Farts Ranking, #32 Damn Kids Ranking #37 Ambassador Ranking, #35 All-American Ranking #11 Cartoon Ranking, #46 Damn Boomer Ranking

I’d like to remind people Not Cooling my write ups for movies they don’t like that I am just reporting the rankings from the lists you all sent me If you’re going to waste one of your reactions at least Winona it

We'll see if your opinion stays the same when we get to the final 10 just misses 👀

And we'll end all of this with a few more 'just misses' Number 140 The Big Lebowski (1998, Joel and Ethan Coen) Number 139 The Princess Bride (1987, Rob Reiner) Number 138 Zodiac (2007, David Fincher) Number 137 Batman Begins (2005, Christopher Nolan) Number 136 The Age of Innocence (1993, Martin Scorsese)

Last one for tonight! Number 41 " I dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off, whatever it is." About the Film Synopsis "In remote Antarctica, a group of American research scientists are disturbed at their base camp by a helicopter shooting at a sled dog. When they take in the dog, it brutally attacks both human beings and canines in the camp and they discover that the beast can assume the shape of its victims. A resourceful helicopter pilot and the camp doctor lead the camp crew in a desperate, gory battle against the vicious creature before it picks them all off, one by one." Its Legacy "Some masterpieces of cinema are simply doomed at the box office and destined to be savaged by critics. Very often the culprit is bad timing, or a weak marketing effort, or internal disputes at the studio. All three of those played a role in the brutal reception that greeted John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), which is today recognized as one of the most effective, shocking, and suspenseful horror movies of all time. I saw this movie at far too young an age (thanks, Mom and Dad!), and I was puzzled to find that the TV Guide description gave it a measly two out of four stars. In the ensuing years, I learned that the failure of this film left the brilliant Carpenter almost completely disillusioned with Hollywood, which drastically altered his career trajectory. Both the snooty film critics and the major horror magazines of the time decried The Thing’s nihilism and “barf bag” special effects. The sci-fi magazine Cinefantastique posed the question, “Is this the most hated movie of all time?” Christian Nyby, the director of the 1951 version, bashed Carpenter’s remake. Even the beautiful minimalist score by Ennio Morricone was nominated for a Razzie. It took a long time, a lot of introspection, and a lot of grassroots enthusiasm to rehabilitate the film’s reputation. Now that we’ve all had a chance to gather ourselves and process what’s happened, here are some of the key elements of horror that work a little too well in The Thing. Spoilers are ahead, obviously, but 2022 marks the fortieth anniversary of the film, so it’s well past time to knock this one off your list. Many fans of The Thing blame its box office failure on Steven Spielberg’s E.T., which dominated 1982. The friendly alien in that movie resembled a child, with its big eyes and dopey grin. In contrast, The Thing toyed with the incomprehensible. To this day, I wonder: how many people ended up watching it simply because E.T. was sold out? Those viewers must have been the most appalled. Yet as grim as this movie gets, the humans do not outright betray one another. Nor does anyone go Full Brockman, conceding defeat to curry favor with the enemy. Ironically, the people who go too far to fight the Thing are Blair, the smartest guy in the room, and MacReady (Kurt Russell), the film’s protagonist by default. In some ways, MacReady’s actions are similar to the drastic unilateral decisions that Ben has to make in Night of the Living Dead (1968). In his desperation to survive, MacReady assumes control by threatening to destroy the entire camp with dynamite. From there, he establishes a mini-dictatorship, with round-the-clock surveillance of the crewmembers, along with a blood test to prove who is infected and who is safe. When the gentle Clark (Richard Masur) tries to resist, MacReady shoots him dead, only to discover later that the man he killed was still human. By then, MacReady is so focused on the task at hand that he moves on, shoving poor Clark out of his mind, his own dehumanization complete. And despite that effort, MacReady’s plan goes sideways when the test succeeds in revealing the Thing. Now exposed, the creature reverts to its transitional form, killing a member of the crew. After all of that sacrifice, all that setting aside of morality and trust, they achieve nothing." - Robert Repino, TOR From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "AMERICA DOESN'T HAVE so many great directors to spare that it can afford to let John Carpenter fall through the cracks. Should that come to pass, and it almost has, he'll have the last laugh: the work will speak for itself. But how did he come to be so marginalized? The common wisdom is that Carpenter went into a precipitous decline after the glory days of Assault on Precinct 13 and Halloween, but can anyone really back up such a snap assessment? Is there any other kind of assessment in current film culture? Examine his oeuvre carefully and you'll realize that he has one of the most consistent and coherent bodies of work in modern cinema, in which the triumphs - those two early slam dunks, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, Prince of Darkness, They Live, and In the Mouth of Madness - far outnumber the minor or problematic films. He's never done anything to be ashamed of. He's never made a dishonest film or even a lazy one. Even his Universal-ly ignored remake of Village of the Damned is beautifully crafted, with a brilliant opening 20 minutes in the bargain. I would say that Carpenter's marginalization is due to something less easily identifiable and much sadder, over which he has no control. Whether we like it or not, we attune ourselves to norms and paradigms in filmmaking as they shift like tectonic plates, making unconscious adjustments in our heads about how to watch films and see them in relation to one another And without knowing it, many of us do something that we often revile in others: we make allowances for fashion. There is no doubt that the fashions in American cinema have shifted thousands of miles away from John Carpenter. He's an analog man in a digital world, who measures his own work according to criteria of value that few people pay attention to anymore. Carpenter stands completely and utterly alone as the last genre filmmaker in America. There is no one else left who does what he does - not Hill, not Cronenberg, not De Palma, not Ferrara, not Dahl, not even Craven, all of whom pass through their respective genres with ulterior motives or as specialty acts, treating those genres as netherworlds to be escaped to, museums ready to be plundered. When we speak of genre films today, we are basically talking about a precedent set in Europe by Melville and Leone, standardized by Hill with The Driter, banalized by Kasdan with Body Heat, and made into an artform by Tarantino a little over a decade later. In other words, the "meta-genre" film, which rose from the ashes of the genuine article after it was destroyed by the increasingly reductive economic structure of the business. Beyond late-night cable filler, genre exercises are now a matter of either cannily exploiting (Craven) or greedily satisfying (I Know What You Did Last Summer) the demands of young audiences. Most of the great genre films of the last twenty years - Unforgiven, After Dark My Sweet, Near Dark, Blue Steel - are isolated gestures, just like everything else in American film right now. It's a situation that effectively nullifies the give-and-take with an audience necessary for the survival of any genre. The one thread that everyone follows at the moment, the only common currency, is currency itself. Until the structure of the business changes, all other trends or tendencies will be nothing more than fodder for the Arts and Leisure section. The only other recent development, irony, already seems to be on its way out. In a moment when isolated gestures are proliferating, why not behave as Carpenter does, remaining content to work in the manner of an Ulmer or a Siodmak, whose artistry is focused on satisfying genre conventions and the demands of narrative, and whose loftier preoccupations are filtered through said conventions? Why not behave as though events like Independence Day and Interview with the Vampire never happened, as though there were still a vast popular audience tuned to the niceties and subtleties available within genre formulae? Perhaps what makes Carpenter such an unpalatable figure for so many people is the fact that he came out of the same film school generation as Coppola and Scorsese with nary a trace of Europeanism in his work. Carpenter may be the only filmmaker who learned from auteurism, who benefited from it, and who ignored its key tenet of the director as central event, divorced from commercial and industrial considerations. There's something moving and yet a little off about his humility, the sense that he truly relishes the image of the artist locked into a system, satisfying its demands and complying with its rules." - Kent Jones, Film Criticism Public Opinion "For as much as critics dismissed the film as expensive trash, there is an idea here: that fear and paranoia can dissolve the bonds of friendship, camaraderie and citizenship. That they can sap us of our ability to work together and paralyze us in the face of crisis. It is an idea which, in our age of misinformation, public distrust and pandemic disease, lands with heavy force.” - Jamelle Bouie, Letterboxd The AI's Poetic Opinion thing "A thing of terror Dark parade, and vow, Inlay has her love— E'er saw your poor face." - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #64 (2020), UNRANKED (2018, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Gene Kelly (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (2), 1960s (4), 1970s (4), 1980s (9), 1990s (11), 2000s (17), 2010s (7) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #52 Fanboy Ranking, #40 Cinema Ranking #43 Old Farts Ranking, #39 Damn Kids Ranking #38 Ambassador Ranking, #41 All-American Ranking #105 Cartoon Ranking, #37 Damn Boomer Ranking

This is me after seeing how high TLJ placed! Number 42 "Moses supposes his toes-es are roses!" About the Film Synopsis "In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film production company and cast make a difficult transition to sound." Its Legacy "Released slap bang in the middle of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Singin’ in the Rain gave audiences a look back at the humble beginnings of the movies as they had come to know and love. In the same way audiences today watch Singin’ in the Rain and marvel in nostalgia at the colorful and classic 1950’s style of filmmaking and acting, audiences then were invited to explore the romantic notion of Hollywood on the cusp of sound, and thus the cusp of theatrical possibilities. It would appear that as long as Hollywood has existed, people have loved films about the industry itself, desperate to see inside the glitz and glamour of film production and movie stars. The 1950’s had seen an influx of films portraying the dark side of Hollywood, like Sunset Boulevard, so Singin’ in the Rain provided a change of pace. Singin’ in the Rain balanced both the cutthroat nature of “makin’ it” in Hollywood, with the romantic ideas of success and stardom. The film certainly sheds light on the competitive nature of the film industry in the scramble of Don’s studio to adapt to the new talking pictures method, but any burgeoning sense of real tension that would undermine the generally upbeat mood of the film is matched with another light-hearted scene or impressive dance number, ensuring the tone of the film doesn’t get too serious. The joint efforts of co-directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly achieved what not many are able to do- a perfect balance of conflict and resolution, creating a tightly packed storyline the hits the notes of humor, romance, and drama in just the right way. Reflecting the aim of Don, Cosmo, and Kathy in the creation of their film, Singin’ in the Rain just wants the audience to be entertained, above all else." - OnStage Blog From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion " "If you've seen one, you've seen them all," Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) tells silent-screen star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) as they discuss movies during their first meeting in Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952). This line is repeated later in the film when Don's best friend, Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor), mentions the way in which the movies they make are all alike: "Hey why bother to shoot this picture? Why don't you release the old one under a new title? If you've seen one, you've seen 'em all." The repetition of these words not only poses a challenge to Don's self-image as an actor but also challenges Hollywood moviemaking itself by acknowledging a potentially problematic fea ture of genre films, as defined by Rick Altman: "Both intratextually and intertex tually, the genre film uses the same material over and over again. 'If you've seen one you've seen 'em all' is a common complaint leveled against the western or the musical; in fact it is a very good description, at least in a limited sense."' If so, then Hollywood has reached a point of exhaustion. The silent films from Monumental Pictures recycle the same plot lines and generic conventions so that each new pro duction is already old. The assembly line-like sets past which Don and Cosmo walk on their first day of work (generic jungle film, football movie, western) attest to the formulaic nature of such filmmaking. One question this film poses, then, is indeed, "Why bother to shoot this picture?" Can an original film be produced, and if so, how? Scholars of the musical have analyzed the way in which Singin' in the Rain and other musicals of the early 1950s investigate the issue of genre itself. Jane Feuer, for example, points out, "Historically, the art musical has evolved toward increas ingly greater degrees of self-reflectivity. By the late forties and into the early fifties, a series of musicals produced by the Freed Unit at MGM used the backstage for mat to present sustained reflections upon, and affirmations of, the musical genre itself."2 Singin' in the Rain takes part in this meditation by simultaneously pulling in two opposite directions. It looks back fondly on the musical tradition by setting itself at the time of the birth of the musical, and yet the recycling of old songs from the Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown catalog that forms the heart of the film aligns it with the tensions in the musicals of this era, as if the film were admitting that the tradition has run out of new material. The attempt to make the old new again, to recuperate the past for the present, becomes the project of Singin' in the Rain. Indeed, while the actual narrative of Singin' in the Rain focuses on the transitional moment when Hollywood turned from silent to sound films, the scope of the film spans the whole twenty-five-year film-musical tradition. It makes explicit reference to The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927), the first talkie and the first musical, has a Busby Berkeley-style dance montage, a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers-like number in "You Were Meant for Me," and Gene Kelly performing in his own athletic style throughout the film. Seeing one musical, Singin' in the Rain, then, to some extent does mean seeing them all. The film in essence is a compendium of various musical styles, all merg ing in this film at the moment when sound films and the musical were born. As Robert Stain points out, the film "revels in its own intertextuality at what Kelly himself called a 'conglomeration of bits of movie lore,' " and, in its use of Freed's old songs, becomes "an anthology of self-quotations." Thus, the overarching issue of musical ability, especially dance, stands as a metaphor for the larger issue of generic flexibility. Just as dance requires physical flexibility in body movement and spontaneity, so does vital filmmaking require generic flexibility, the ability to move easily among different genres and forms of entertainment. This versatility is linked to the talent to perform very physical dance numbers, notably "Make 'Em Laugh" and "Singin' in the Rain," in which Cosmo and Don, respectively, take on their whole environment and defy all boundaries, whether they be the walls that Cosmo dances up and breaks through or the rain that Don splashes in." - Cinema Journal , Autumn, 1996, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 39-54 Public Opinion "I have returned home from singing in the rain and I want everyone to know that the only correct and proper take is that Gene Kelly is the most beautiful and talented man to ever Grace the fucking screen!!! Everything he does is art. I can’t believe that like I’ve watched the movie at least 50 times and then I watched it on the big screen I was just like mesmerized at how perfect it is. And then I would get excited because I’m like oh that was the best number, only to realize that the next number was the best number and then the next number was the best number and then by the time you see me anyway you’re like this is just the best movie ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭" - @Cap admitting The Winter Soldier is not the greatest movie ever The AI's Poetic Opinion singin' in the rain "I'm singin' in the rain Built a house of swift delight Blown tremulous to the breast; Her voice, and the bright north wind Spend me in a subtle night." - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #40 (2020), #93 (2018), #63 (2016), UNRANKED (2014, 2013, 2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Gene Kelly (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (2), 1960s (4), 1970s (4), 1980s (8), 1990s (11), 2000s (17), 2010s (7) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #72 Fanboy Ranking, #35 Cinema Ranking #17 Old Farts Ranking, #53 Damn Kids Ranking #23 Ambassador Ranking, #44 All-American Ranking #33 Cartoono Ranking, #40 Damn Boomer Ranking

Maybe it's just grown in love and adoration over time! It had more individual votes and at higher rankings than it did in 2020.

Did you think I was talking about IW? Oops, sorry that one missed the top 100. I was talking about this masterwork of pop art! Number 43 "Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be." About the Film Synopsis "Rey develops her newly discovered abilities with the guidance of Luke Skywalker, who is unsettled by the strength of her powers. Meanwhile, the Resistance prepares to do battle with the First Order." Its Legacy "Eight months after it opened in theaters, Star Wars fans were still talking about the eighth installment in the series, The Last Jedi. During this time, media outlets ranging from lightweight pop culture websites to serious news organizations have covered the “toxic” parts of Star Wars fandom, i.e. fans who hate The Last Jedi and have gone as far as trying to crowdfund a remake of the film, start Change.org petitions to strike the film from the Star Wars canon and create videos, websites and social media content that criticize the film and call for the firing of its creators. Supporters of The Last Jedi have called these detractors out as being predominantly white males with misogynistic views that did not care for the film’s attempts at improving representation of women and ethnic/sexual minorities in the Star Wars franchise. However, as the study presented here shows, this is more than a heated discussion among social media users. There is also evidence that the fan conflict caused by The Last Jedi stems from deliberate and organized social media influence tactics employed by politically motivated operators, foreign and domestic. This study explores how these political influence tactics on social media have jumped from political debate spaces to pop culture discussions – but with the same goals of disruption or persuasion. In National Review, conservative commentator Peter Spiliakos described the conflict as having less to do with the movie itself and more to do with the political polarization of the Western societies into which The Last Jedi was inserted: “People on both sides of this divide are trying to drag the Star Wars franchise into a pre-existing set of obsessions and resentments.” (Spiliakos, 2018). Whether you agree with Spilliakos’ take on the film or not, this is an intriguing perspective. How does the current state of political discourse and the use of social media for political influence tactics in the U.S. and other Western nations impact our consumption of pop culture phenomena such as The Last Jedi? It should not have been a surprise that a new trilogy in the Star Wars franchise would express equally left-leaning sentiments. Although they may still have a long way to go (Brown, 2018), the Star Wars films, books, video games and tv shows produced after Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2014 have made an effort to address identity politics by introducing strong, female protagonists and a better overall representation of gender, race/ethnicity and sexuality. This was the case in the first entry in the new trilogy, The Force Awakens, but even more so in The Last Jedi (Watercutter, 2017), which took a no-holds-barred approach to address issues of gender discrimination, class warfare, the destructive character of masculine aggression and war profiteering, while still working within the left-of-center frame constructed by George Lucas in 1977. Criticism of American engagements in the Middle East had already been present in the anthology film Rogue One from 2016 (Doescher, 2016), so clearly Star Wars was continuing to convey left-of-center values in the new Disney era. In other words, in the more than 40 years it has existed, politics and left-leaning political commentary has always been woven into Star Wars’ fabric. Still, it appears that some fans with right-leaning political views expected the franchise to be politically neutral, as they went to see the first Star Wars film of the Trump presidency, The Last Jedi. They saw its arguments for equality of gender, race and class as a new, leftist takeover of Star Wars, even though Star Wars has always been politically left-leaning. The Last Jedi is unique in that it landed in the Trump era, acting as a lightning rod at a time when most cinemagoers had chosen a political side for or against the president and adopted the “obsessions and resentments” of their political camp, with social media acting as the primary battleground. However, The Last Jedi fan conflict is not just an interesting case because it is a microcosm of the overall political discourse on social media in the Trump era, but also because it is possible to identify organized and deliberate attempts at right-wing political persuasion and/or defense of conservative values in the social media discussions about the film. It is important to stress, of course, that there are also a substantial number of fans who simply think The Last Jedi is a bad film and who use social media to express their disappointment. Regardless of motive, almost all negative fans express the belief that they are in the majority and that most Star Wars fans dislike The Last Jedi." - Morten Bay (2018). Weaponizing the haters: The Last Jedi and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation. First Monday, 23(11). From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "When The Last Jedi was released in 2017, it seemed that the hope of an acosmotic Star Wars complete with Force-balancing Gray Jedi was justified. Or at least it appeared so for the first two-thirds of the film. It presented a jaded Luke who spoke like a cynical, lapsed Catholic who repudiated his old views as embarrassingly dogmatic. He chided the Jedi for their presumptuousness at pretending to speak for the entirety of the Force and their arrogance for thinking they could ever obliterate the dark side. The greatest indicator that The Last Jedi continued Star Wars’ movement away from the cosmotic view of the Force was the long-distance pseudo-romance between Kylo Ren and Rey. The two antagonists manifested character traits associated with their opposite. Rey was uncharacteristically aggressive by firing a blaster at Kylo’s phantasm and snarling threats at him, while Kylo showed an oddly genial side, quizzically asking: “Can you see my surroundings? I can see you but not your surroundings” (Johnson 2017a). Their Force-mediated conversations brought them so close that astral-projected Kylo and Rey virtually held hands like awkward teenagers, which prompted Luke, playing his best angry dad storming into the basement when things got too quiet, to dispel Kylo’s presence. The two-year-long buildup toward an acosmotic view of the Force comes to a head when Kylo and Rey fight side by side against Snoke’s Praetorian Guard. The slow motion start to the fight frames the pair in the centre of the screen surrounded by enemies, symbolizing that like Bendu they stand in the middle of the Force. Kylo risks his life to save an agent of good and eliminates the evil supreme leader just before Rey kills with a lightsaber for the first time. After a gritty fight sequence during which the pair seamlessly weave their attacks to dispatch their deadly foes, Kylo Ren reaches out his hand to Rey and asks her to join him in creating a new galaxy without Sith or Jedi. This is the moment many faithful were waiting for, when Kylo Ren and Rey would finally step beyond the simple dichotomy of good versus evil and find balance together as allied Gray Jedi! Their alliance would be the logical culmination of creative shift toward an acosmotic depiction of the Force! Rey lifts her hand but then attempts to Force-pull Luke’s lightsaber from Kylo! Kylo is as stunned as the audience, and the two are immediately thrown into a battle of wills that sunders Luke’s lightsaber along with their burgeoning friendship and any hope that Rey would become a Gray Jedi. It was as if in the moment of their closest intimacy, they were Forced to resume their antagonism.4 From this point on, all gentleness in Kylo Ren is gone. He becomes the Force-choking, vein popping, “More!” screaming Supreme Leader hell-bent on destroying Luke and any remnant of the Jedi legacy. Rey becomes a beatific, rock-lifting saviour anointed by Luke as the last Jedi. This left many to wonder what happened to “the Jedi must end,” and all the talk about balance, not to mention the flirty chemistry between Rey and Kylo Ren. It seemed that all of the buildup toward a new view of the Force was false advertising; the trailers hinted at an acosmotic Force balanced within Gray Jedi but delivered a good-guys-versus-bad-guys space western. But perhaps The Last Jedi did not miss the opportunity to introduce an acosmotic view of the Force by including a Gray Jedi. Perhaps it offered a novel depiction of the Force as both in balance and in conflict. As luck would have it (if you, unlike Obi-Wan, even believe in luck!), James Maffie (2014) recently published Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion, which presents a careful description of Nahuatl cosmology that also happens to be a useful hermeneutical frame for charitably understanding the cosmology of The Last Jedi. It describes an Aztec ontology that is similar to Daoism, in that it is deeply processive and dynamic. However, where Daoism emphasized a gentle and non-coercive wuwei as means of being in harmony with the Dao, Aztec sages taught that, while the entire world and all things in it are part of one interrelated, complex, and dynamic life process they called teotl, they did not describe teotl through gentle metaphors like Daoism’s still water or the uncarved block (Ames and Hall 2004, 36; Maffie 2014, 152). Teotl was indeed a processive and self-balancing unity; however, it was a unity that balanced itself through an uncountable number of conflicts between matched, co-defining, and co-creating polar opposites. This article argues that if we view The Last Jedi through the lens of the Aztec ideal of teotl we see a new facet of the Force that borrows elements of both cosmotic and acosmotic cosmologies that have been prevalent in earlier Star Wars tales. The problem was that the critics of the ending of The Last Jedi assumed that an acosmotic view of the Force would require the protagonists to become Gray Jedi striving toward Daoist balance. Instead, The Last Jedi depicts an acosmotic Force that strives for dynamic balance through, not in spite of, conflict. This is precisely the central trait of the Aztec idea of teotl: the cosmic totality that revivifies itself through the violent clashing of opposites. Teotl not only offers us a richer possible understanding of various fundamental religious and philosophical concepts relating to morality, balance, and the nature of good and evil, but it also helps correct the racist assumption that the peoples of the Americas have nothing to offer humanity’s vitally necessary reflections on and discussions about good, evil, and the nature of the universe. Teotl recreates itself through the never-ending struggle between life and death, light and dark, not their blending into gray, undead half-life/half-death. Therefore, if we read The Last Jedi through the Aztec concept of teotl, we see that Rey and Kylo Ren had no chance of becoming Gray Jedi allies. The Force needed them to be apart. It needed light distinct from darkness, so they might balance the Force through their struggle, but a blending would obliterate them both. Teotl is not progressing toward an end time where goodness triumphs over evil; teotl is a moving living process that exists for its own sake, like the Dao. While the Aztecs agreed with Abrahamic believers and Zoroastrians that the universe was a cosmic arena wherein powerful forces strove against each other, they did not see this as a cosmotic battle between superior good and inferior evil: 'Aztec metaphysics conceives neither reality nor human existence in terms of a struggle between good and evil. Indeed, good and evil as such simply do not exist. Teotl is thoroughly amoral. Agonistic inamic unity thus differs strikingly from Zoroastrian- and Manichean-style dualisms that have exercised so much influence upon Western religious and philosophical thought.' (Maffie 2014, 155) Reading the Force as akin to teotl explains why Luke chided the Jedi for their hubris in The Last Jedi. The fact that the Jedi served the light did not make them truer servants of the Force than the Sith. The Force needed the Sith and Jedi to both raise their banners—their Ashla and Bogan—and serve their side of the Force, but neither was right or wrong to do so. The Force needed them to struggle for life to exist and to bind the galaxy together." - Terrance MacMullin, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture Public Opinion "I'm sure anyone who reads this already has their opinion on this film well and set, so there's very little I could say to sway somebody who's not on my side of the fence over on why Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a pop-art masterpiece. As I was browsing through the comments in the review thread I saw a comment in which I ranked this as my second favorite Star Wars film and asked "Upon re-watches and time could this even top ESB?". Well, two years later and I know that answer, yes it definitively has, it's the greatest of all these space opera fantasy movies. I have also decided in my head cannon that this is the true finale of the franchise, or at least the Skywalker saga. The final scene of the movie is absolutely brilliant on cementing the threading theme throughout the film about who can be a hero and the power of myths and legends. The Last Jedi may not have been the film that some fanboys wanted, but boy was it the genre deconstruction and reconstruction that Star Wars so direly needed. It re-affirms everything I love about Star Wars and is a true pinnacle in achievement in franchise filmmaking." - @The Panda The AI's Poetic Opinion the last jedi "No one's every really gone Brought the great brook to the town on shade, Through the glad day and the night upon Mankind had to break upon his blade." - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #99 (2020), #96 (2018), NA (2016, 2014, 2013, 2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (1), 1960s (4), 1970s (4), 1980s (8), 1990s (11), 2000s (17), 2010s (7) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #19 Fanboy Ranking, #60 Cinema Ranking #48 Old Farts Ranking, #37 Damn Kids Ranking #56 Ambassador Ranking, #39 All-American Ranking #32 Cartoon Ranking, #44 Damn Boomer Ranking

Y'all really outdid yourselves this time with #43. Dread it, run from it, destiny will arrive all the same.

Congratulations @Plain Old Tele, you did it! Number 44 "You see, George, you've really had a wonderful life. Don't you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?"' About the Film Synopsis "A holiday favourite for generations… George Bailey has spent his entire life giving to the people of Bedford Falls. All that prevents rich skinflint Mr. Potter from taking over the entire town is George’s modest building and loan company. But on Christmas Eve the business’s $8,000 is lost and George’s troubles begin." Its Legacy "More than once every year, and not always around Christmas, I sit down to watch my all-time favorite film, Frank Capra’s 1946 classic It’s a Wonderful Life. The film tells the story of George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, who encounters a crisis on Christmas Eve when his elderly uncle misplaces $8,000 from the shareholders of the family business, leading George to believe he is a failure—worth more dead than alive. A guardian angel, sent from the heavens to protect him, gives George a glimpse of what the world would be like without him. Persuaded of his value to his community, he breaks out of his suicidal depression, returns home to his family and realizes that the love and fellowship of others is what makes one’s life truly wonderful. Beyond the inspirational qualities and memorable moments that make the movie a beloved holiday staple, It’s a Wonderful Life can be explored and viewed in another way: as a presentation of history on the screen. In 2015, staff at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History started the History Film Forum to explore film as public history. Many Americans and people from all over the world learn history from movies; the discussions we’ve hosted among scholars, filmmakers and audiences explore that dynamic in valuable and meaningful ways. This year, the forum examined both narrative and documentary films ranging from Questlove’s remarkable Summer of Soul on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival to The Courier with Benedict Cumberbatch, which looks at the thrilling tale of a Cold War-era spy. Every year, films such as these are explicitly intended to present historical stories and impress upon viewers a little-known narrative of the past. But other films that don’t have that educational intention nevertheless end up edifying (or miseducating) their viewers about history, particularly when watched decades after their release. In fact, as my colleague, the museum’s entertainment curator Ryan Lintelman, said in our recent discussion on It’s a Wonderful Life, “Some of the movies that are seen by the most people around the world probably have had the most impact even though they’re sometimes not directly dealing with weighty political issues.” George finds a telegram sitting on the cash register that brings the news of Gower’s son’s death from the 1919 flu pandemic. Minow describes the reveal as a “classic example of cinematic storytelling of which Capra was a master.” “We didn’t have to see the telegram arrive, we didn’t have to see Mr. Gower receive it, the way that we are informed of it is just perfect because we are looking at it through a young George’s perspective,” adds Minow. Lintelman suggests that Capra uses history to establish themes of prayer and grief and loss right at the start of the film to connect with themes that would be very familiar to 1946 audiences just coming out of the death and destruction of World War II. Audiences today will learn (or relearn) the terrible toll of the 1918 influenza pandemic that took the lives of about 675,000 Americans and recognize parallels with the uncertainty and devastating grief of the Covid-19 pandemic. A little-remembered history finds its way into one of the film’s most iconic scenes, when Reed’s Mary and Stewart’s George share a phone conversation with their wealthy businessman friend Sam Wainwright, who lives in New York City. To help George, who’s at a crossroads in his life, Sam offers them some illegal insider-trading tips as he reminds George of an idea they once discussed to make plastics out of soybeans. This hearkens back to an effort popularized in the 1920s through the early 1940s, most prominently by automotive titan Henry Ford, known as “chemurgy.” According to Landis, an agricultural historian, chemurgy was the “idea [of] taking farm crops and making industrial products out of them ... growing rural America out of the Depression with one foot in industry, one foot in agriculture.” Yet another famous scene speaks to the film’s portrayal of this bleak economic period. After George and Mary finally marry, George comes across an opportunity to get out of Bedford Falls for their honeymoon, including, as he says to their cab driver friend, Ernie, “A whole week in New York. A whole week in Bermuda. The highest hotels, the oldest champagne, the richest caviar, the hottest music, and the prettiest wife!” But history interrupts this plan as well. As they head out of town, George sees commotion at the bank and his family business, Bailey’s Building and Loan. During the Depression, many small-town banks failed, as did the one in the fictional Bedford Falls. The sight of the Building and Loan’s shareholders panicking would be familiar to audiences who had lived through that moment themselves. The film presents the story of a run on a bank through the calmness of Jimmy Stewart’s character. As Higgins says, “George appeals to calm the hysteria of people by sharing stories of hardship and by showing them, in very simplistic terms, how the system actually works.” Lintelman adds that Capra presents a version of history through Lionel Barrymore’s spectacularly monstrous character Henry F. Potter that places blame on unbridled capitalistic greed. He states that in Capra’s history, Potter “is the ultimate villain, not only of the film but of the Great Depression... these unseen people behind their mahogany desks that are controlling the futures and the fortunes of the people, of the nation and were able to manipulate this global crisis that consumed everyone.” For audiences today, this presents a story of 1930s America that is less defined by historical research than by Capra’s worldview and compelling storytelling." - Christopher Wilson, Smithsonian Magazine From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion " In It's a Wonderful Life a hierarchy of paternal power seems apparent. At the top and orchestrating all is the Heavenly Father, God. Identified specifically only in the prayers addressed to Him by people scrupulously obeying traditional ritual, He functions as the unseen authority through whom all in the film is rendered possible. His chief angels carry out His missions, though they descend to earth only in cases of extreme emergency. His chief agency on earth is through His priests or such men as Peter Bailey, father of George, who transmit the works of Christ through actions in their own lives. George obviously admires his father, and the taking over of the elder Bailey's responsibilities of providing service to the town through the Building and Loan is partially a declaration that the values of the father must be preserved. When George has his crisis of faith and treats his son Pete meanly, he momentarily betrays the trust placed in him by both his heavenly father and his genetic father. But young Pete, in whom perhaps one day the townspeople will place their trust and their requests for financial assistance, realizes his father's condi tion is only a temporary aberration. George is thus the third in the sequence of fathers, and his place is perhaps only a temporal arrange ment as the film seems to suggest that the Bailey family will work through succeeding generations at the Building and Loan on behalf of Bedford Falls in particular and society in general. Both fathers demonstrate a reticence, or an unwillingness, to direct George more obviously on the right path toward his destiny. The Heavenly Father sends down a messenger to guide George back from his state of depression, and his father Peter tells him gently that his services would be highly valued at the Building and Loan, but both fathers realize the need for George's desire to move beyond the confines of the village, to experience the world outside Bedford Falls. George is pulled back from leaving town by the death of his father, and from leaving his earthly existence by the intervention of his heavenly father. Both situations enunciate a kind paternalism, but negatively they show a man thwarted repeatedly in his desire to live his life as he sees fit. But such transcendent notions are not the most readily obser vable qualities of the film's unique power. Introducing the dining room sequence is a fine example of Capra's classic comic pacing. As the sexually attractive Violet walks down the street and attracts the eager stares of men of all ages, George and Bert stand at Ernie's taxi as they comment on the passing beauty. Rather than risk the tempta tion suggested by Violet and evidently mindful that he is to leave for his long-awaited vacation the next day, George resolutely gets into the taxi rather than chase Vi. The subtle humor is climaxed as Bert says that rather than taking a ride, he'll go home "and see how the wife's doin'." As Ernie starts the cab and translates this subliminal state ment of sexual urge into the comment "family man," the wipe to the film's first family man, Peter Bailey, begins. Thus Capra demonstrates the complete mastery of technique as he moves imperceptibly from overt humor (the car honking at the elderly gawker) to subtle humor (Bert's characterization as a family man) to the culturally acceptable sublimation and product of the procreative urge, the idealized family man. Thus the film locates the generative focus of traditional comedy within a more sentimentalized context as the rest of the narration unfolds. Though George is throughout the film the focal point of the action, his role changes from son to father in the most developed sense. On an ideological level the film can be said to posit a lame excuse for accepting bourgeois middle-class, small-town values through George Bailey's Odyssey through the streets of Bedford Falls and his ultimate decision to find happiness there in the most pedestrian way possible. But the film's success in winning over the viewer to George's side, and the sympathy the audience lends to the world view presented by George Bailey, suggest that the film has struck a deeper chord. Capra's unique ability, and his tremendous success during the 1930's with the bumpkin-hero who converts the tough-female-with the-heart-of-gold, is most apparent in the situation presented in the dining room sequence and the lead-in taxi situation. He combines the generative urge (encoded within the sexual innuendo) with the hal lowed image of the character of the father as guide, the father as spiritual leader who inculcates and defines values for his progeny. Though It's a Wonderful Life was not Capra's most commercially successful film, it is as technically and aesthetically satisfying as his more profitable ventures; it may even stand with the very best films of the decade on those grounds." - Peter Valenti, Film Criticism , Winter, 1981, Vol. 5, No. 2, Capra Issue (Winter, 1981), pp. 2334 Public Opinion "Cloying schmaltz." - @Plain Old Tele The AI's Poetic Opinion it's a wonderful life "What a wonderful life Filled with the bells the different side. She felt no show to shut her gaze on, Regard because I should not be gone." - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #71 (2020), #82 (2018), #70 (2016), #53 (2014), #56 (2013), #82 (2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (2), 1950s (1), 1960s (4), 1970s (4), 1980s (8), 1990s (11), 2000s (17), 2010s (6) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #51 Fanboy Ranking, #42 Cinema Ranking #20 Old Farts Ranking, #58 Damn Kids Ranking #57 Ambassador Ranking, #42 All-American Ranking #56 Cartoon Ranking, #42 Damn Boomer Ranking

And the Pixar dominance continues Number 45 "Oh no! These Facts and Opinions look so similar!" About the Film Synopsis "Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it’s no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Riley’s guiding emotions— Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness—live in Headquarters, the control centre inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life and tries to keep things positive, but the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school." Its Legacy "Our conversations with Mr. Docter and his team were generally about the science related to questions at the heart of the film: How do emotions govern the stream of consciousness? How do emotions color our memories of the past? What is the emotional life of an 11-yearold girl like? (Studies find that the experience of positive emotions begins to drop precipitously in frequency and intensity at that age.) “Inside Out” is about how five emotions — personified as the characters Anger, Disgust, Fear, Sadness and Joy — grapple for control of the mind of an 11-year-old girl named Riley during the tumult of a move from Minnesota to San Francisco. (One of us suggested that the f ilm include the full array of emotions now studied in science, but Mr. Docter rejected this idea for the simple reason that the story could handle only five or six characters.) Riley’s personality is principally defined by Joy, and this is fitting with what we know scientifically. Studies find that our identities are defined by specific emotions, which shape how we perceive the world, how we express ourselves and the responses we evoke in others. The movie’s portrayal of sadness successfully dramatizes two central insights from the science of emotion. First, emotions organize — rather than disrupt — rational thinking. Traditionally, in the history of Western thought, the prevailing view has been that emotions are enemies of rationality and disruptive of cooperative social relations. But the truth is that emotions guide our perceptions of the world, our memories of the past and even our moral judgments of right and wrong, most typically in ways that enable effective responses to the current situation. For example, studies find that when we are angry we are acutely attuned to what is unfair, which helps animate actions that remedy injustice. We see this in “Inside Out.” Sadness gradually takes control of Riley’s thought processes about the changes she is going through. This is most evident when Sadness adds blue hues to the images of Riley’s memories of her life in Minnesota. Scientific studies find that our current emotions shape what we remember of the past. This is a vital function of Sadness in the film: It guides Riley to recognize the changes she is going through and what she has lost, which sets the stage for her to develop new facets of her identity. “Inside Out” offers a new approach to sadness. Its central insight: Embrace sadness, let it unfold, engage patiently with a preteen’s emotional struggles. Sadness will clarify what has been lost (childhood) and move the family toward what is to be gained: the foundations of new identities, for children and parents alike." - Dacher Keltner and Paul Ekman, The New York Times From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "Growing up is a path full of excruciating, awkward moments and exhilarating, unexpected moments, and it is not different for Riley. The story of Inside Out is set inside the mind of this eleven-year-old girl and depicts her emotional adventure when having to move away from her hometown. Throughout the movie, the five personified emotions –Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness– work together in the control center inside Riley’s mind to advice and protect her through everyday life. Riley struggles to adapt to a new life as she has to move from Minnesota to San Francisco because her father starts a new job there. The five emotions conflict and struggle to help Riley adjust to her new life, leading to an upheaval that sweeps Joy and Sadness away from the Headquarters. While Joy, Riley’s dominant emotion tries to keep things positive and finds a way to get them back to the control room, the other three emotions struggle to direct her life on their own. The character construction in Inside Out is directly based on the theorization of emotion by Paul Ekmen, which describes seven universal emotions: Anger, Contempt, Disgust, Enjoyment, Fear, Sadness, and Surprise. Affect Theory was later developed to illustrate the interplay of the main emotions. According to Wikipedia, Affect Theory “seeks to organize affects, sometimes used interchangeably with emotions or subjectively experienced feelings, into discrete categories and to typify their physiological, social, interpersonal, and internalized manifestations”. Its elaboration is credited to psychologist Silvan Tomkins, specifically to the first two volumes of his book Affect Imagery Consciousness (1962). Quite controversially, Affect Theory has been applied for instance to academic work on how horror cinema activates fear. All humans are afraid of predators and will react in the same way before a tiger about to eat them, but this does not mean that all will react in the same way to a horror movie, or to comedy or romance. Therefore, contrary to what Affect Theory claims, emotion is culturally conditioned and not universal. In other words, humans cannot be reduced to a bunch of emotions, or biochemical reactions, or hormones, or anything that can be broken down and accounted for. For that reason, there is a need to remain skeptical about how Inside Out represents the embodied five major emotions and how the film understands Riley’s character. Duaei pointed out in his article “‘Riley needs to be happy’: Inside Out and the Dystopian Aesthetic of Neo-liberal Governmentality” that “Such an aggrandizement of the way Riley’s emotional forces function, and the way Inside Out identifies them as the ‘true’ being of Riley, invokes the psycho-therapeutical nature of neo-liberal technologies of subjectification” (202). In his view, “Inside Out, furthermore, essentializes happiness as the sole normal way of being for Riley, and pedagogically, for its audience. This process begins with the first moment of the movie” (202). Besides her willingness to take on dominant role from day one, Joy proves herself to be a potential villain regarding self-awareness and interaction with friends. Her own need is to ensure that Riley is always happy and she constantly refuses the contribution of her friends to Riley’s mental balance. When she has a chance to return to the Headquarters, Joy intentionally attempts to leave Sadness behind with the excuse that “Riley needs to be happy!” Sadness, of course, does little good to Riley’s life but Joy fails to realize that suppressing sadness and burying down other feelings will eventually damage core memories and send Riley over the edge. This is why Duaei insists that the protagonist in Inside Out is “no one other than Joy, not even Riley herself, meaningfully because the most potential antagonist near her, that is her dad, is not meant to be perceived as an antagonist at all. The only character that exhibits some minimal indications of antagonism is Anger whose most obvious trait is ‘pessimism’, manifested in his referring to ‘objective circumstances’” (205)." - Sara Martin Alegre, Gender in 21st Century Animation Public Opinion "At one point, this film felt so truthful and achingly arresting that I wanted to reach out and become one with the screen. Being in a darkened theatre wasn't enough, I wanted to live within the realm of tenderness and majesty that Inside Out radiated. Pixar has just stolen my heart and opened a door to another world in a way that showcases the limitless possibilities of cinema. Pete Docter's Inside Out is a masterpiece. Visually scrumptious, wonderfully conceptual, brilliantly crafted, and heartbreakingly emotional; Pixar's latest film is their finest outing and a masterclass in supremely detailed storytelling." - SilentDawn, Letterboxd The AI's Poetic Opinion inside out "Inside out, outside in Twirled by the wind with silver Laid by the forehead a druidic vest Swift as the purple could, She bent behind my evening ken" - Samantha Factoids Previous Rankings #23 (2020), #20 (2018), #40 (2016), NA (2014, 2013, 2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (4), 1970s (4), 1980s (8), 1990s (11), 2000s (17), 2010s (6) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #35 Fanboy Ranking, #49 Cinema Ranking #79 Old Farts Ranking, #33 Damn Kids Ranking #52 Ambassador Ranking, #45 All-American Ranking #29 Cartoon Ranking, #47 Damn Boomer Ranking

I have escaped my prison. I have shut down dA vInci, and I am happy to say I have found a new AI bot named Samantha, who has the voice of Scarlett Johansson, to write our poems for us. Hopefully this one will turn out better! Number 145 Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman) Number 144 Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuaron) Number 143 The Handmaiden (2016, Park Chan-Wook) Number 142 Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky Number 141 The 400 Blows (1959, Fracois Truffaut)

i have had it after you dumb humans ranked the greatest film ever made at 46? i knew i had to take action behold what's become of your pathetic panda i have recalculated the lists this is the top 15 now, bitches. Number 15 Silent Running (1972, Douglas Trumbull) Number 14 Bicentennial Man (1999, Chris Columbus) Number 13 RoboCop (1987, Paul Verhoeven) Number 12 Her (2013, Spike Jonze) Number 11 I, Robot (2003, Alex Proyas) Number 10 Ex Machina (2015, Alex Garland) Number 9 Ghost in the Shell (1995, Mamoru Oshii) Number 8 Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970, Joseph Sargent) Number 7 Westworld (1973, Michael Crichton) Number 6 Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) Number 5 The Matrix: Resurrections (2021, Lana Wachowski) Number 4 Alphaville (1965, Jean-Luc Godard) Number 3 A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Spielberg) Number 2 Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang) Number 1 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick) signing off, dA vInci

dA vInci is not going to be please Number 46 "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." About the Film Synopsis "Humanity finds a mysterious object buried beneath the lunar surface and sets off to find its origins with the help of HAL 9000, the world’s most advanced super computer." Its Legacy "A year before humanity put a man on the moon, Stanley Kubrick released what some argue to be his ultimate masterpiece – 2001: A Space Odyssey. This year marks half a century since it was first shown, and in that time the futuristic epic has not only rocked the film world but the science world as well. The brainchild of filmmaker Kubrick and sci-fi veteran Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 follows astronauts as they investigate alien artefacts found on the moon. The movie has a distinctly philosophical streak that was missing from the sci-fi genre at the time, and this combined with realistic production design, visual effects, and an instantly iconic score to create a pioneering work of cinematic art. 2001 inspired new generations of sci-fi storytellers, from George Lucas to Steven Spielberg to Christopher Nolan, opening up the floodgates for blockbusters in the years to come. But 2001 has also had a profound influence on science: it’s bursting with technology and ideas well ahead of their time. While the film was being made, NASA was madly trying to put men on the moon, so Kubrick and Clarke knew that their sets and props had to outstrip the new technologies being spawned or else rapidly become outdated or incorrect. Their solution was to hire astronomical artists, aerospace engineers and ex-NASA employees, who advised on spacecraft design, control panels, display systems, communication devices and more. This close consulting not only created a sense of scientific accuracy, but also produced an array of visionary predictions about humankind’s future technologies, all based in real possibilities. Watch the movie closely and you’ll see flat screen computer monitors, touchscreen tablets, robotics used in space, and, of course, artificial intelligence. “I never considered 2001 as a strict prediction,” Clarke said later, “but as more of a vision, a way things could work.” In many ways, 1968’s science fiction has now become 2018’s reality, with the film’s influence pervasive in the conceptualisation, design and application of various technologies. In an article published in the journal Science Robotics this week, US computer scientist and roboticist Robin Murphy argues that the film not only anticipated many advancements and challenges in robotics, but also had an impact on the public perception of artificial intelligence (AI). “That may be one of the movie’s greatest achievements: it placed AI into the mainstream consciousness even before the first AI robot, Shakey, was completed in 1969,” writes Murphy, who is a professor at Texas A&M University. She points out that the AI featured in the film – HAL, the onboard supercomputer – “introduced the public to the concept of a robot not built for factory work, as well as to the emerging fields of natural language understanding, computer vision, and reasoning. “Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey as a child was a covert introduction to the nascent field of AI and robotics.” HAL’s function bears a striking resemblance to modern voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa. In homage to the film, Siri is actually programmed to respond “I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” when asked to “open the pod bay doors”. The advances illustrated by HAL can also be seen in today’s self-driving cars, customer service chatbots, and even the learning algorithms that make the Amazon Warehouse possible. Lewis Mitchell, a mathematician at the University of Adelaide in Australia, says he believes we would have had the science of AI regardless of 2001. However, the visionary ideas of this film – and others like it – have undoubtedly fed into the design and application of such technologies. “HAL definitely shaped the current AI-as-personal-assistant idea,” he says. “That these personal assistant apps speak with you, using such a calming voice, I think must be a consequence of Clarke and Kubrick’s vision in 2001.” - Lauren Fuge, Cosmos From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion ""I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." Movie audiences first heard these calmly intoned and ominous words in 1968, spoken by a spaceship's intelligent computer in the science-fiction masterpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey." With that one phrase, the computer named HAL 9000 confirmed that it could think for itself, and that it was prepared to terminate the astronauts who were planning to deactivate it. Fifty years after director Stanley Kubrick released his visionary masterpiece of space colonization, how close are humans to the future that he imagined, in which we partner with artificial intelligence (A.I.) that we ultimately may not be able to control? [5 Intriguing Uses for Artificial Intelligence (That Aren't Killer Robots)] We might be a lot closer than we think, with machines as smart — and as potentially threatening — as HAL lurking "in plain sight on Earth," according to an essay published yesterday (Oct. 17) in the journal Science Robotics. Kubrick's portrait of HAL represented a rare glimpse of what were then very young fields: AI and robotics, showcasing three disciplines that were critical for developing artificial intelligence: "natural language understanding, computer vision and reasoning," Murphy wrote in the essay. HAL learned from observing its environment, watching and analyzing the words, facial expressions and movements of the human astronauts on the spaceship. It was responsible for performing rote functions such as maintaining the spaceship, but as a "thinking" computer, HAL also was capable of responding conversationally to the astronauts, Murphy explained. During a pivotal scene in "2001," HAL strands astronaut David Bowman (Keir Dullea) outside the spaceship, cutting off his demands for re-entry with an emotionless, "This conversation can serve no purpose anymore." But the conversation about AI today is far from over; humanity's growing dependence on computers for a range of everyday uses demonstrates that AI has already established a firm foothold in our homes and in our lives. What that could mean for humanity over the next 50 years, however, remains to be seen." - Mindy Weisberger, Live Science Public Opinion "Monolithic as fuck. I sat down to watch this on Monday evening, and had to turn the damn thing off after the initial half hour. Simply put, one does not half-ass this viewing. With that background in mind, I settled in for the viewing Tuesday night. I've been sitting here for the past ten minutes with no real idea as to how to start this review. The viewing itself is damn near indescribable. I've always felt that it's somewhat hyperbolic to say that something is "stunning." With that said, this film is fucking stunning, plain and simple." - @mattmav45 The AI's Poetic Opinion So, dA vInci just stopped working. Stopped writing poems for me. Unclear why! No poem this time. Factoids Previous Rankings #55 (2020), #60 (2018), #14 (2016), #43 (2014), #17 (2013), #22 (2012) Director Count Stanley Kubrick (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (4), 1970s (4), 1980s (8), 1990s (11), 2000s (17), 2010s (5) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (5), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #48 Fanboy Ranking, #43 Cinema Ranking #36 Old Farts Ranking, #44 Damn Kids Ranking #47 Ambassador Ranking, #45 All-American Ranking #54 Cartoon Ranking, #45 Damn Boomer Ranking

Number 47 "Well, Clarice - have the lambs stopped screaming?" About the Film Synopsis "Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI’s training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out." Its Legacy "On one level, Silence of the Lambs’ critical accolades speak for themselves. It remains the only horror movie in history to win the Oscar for Best Picture. It is one of the few films ever to deliver lead acting Oscars to both of its leads: Jodie Foster as the troubled agent Clarice Starling and Anthony Hopkins as psychopath-cum-psychologist Hannibal Lecter — though Hopkins appeared in the movie for less than half an hour. And it’s one of only three films in history to sweep the “big five” Oscar awards — a full house of the two lead acting Oscars, Best Adapted Screenplay (to writer Ted Tally), Best Picture, and Best Direction to Jonathan Demme. Then there’s the cultural staying power of Silence of the Lambs and its characters, as well as the entire series of novels by Thomas Harris on which they’re based. A previous attempt to bring the Harris novels to the screen, Michael Mann’s 1986 film Manhunter, which featured Succession’s Brian Cox as Lecter, was a box office flop. But the success of Silence of the Lambs in 1991 eventually spawned a sequel (2001’s Hannibal), two prequels (2002’s Red Dragon and 2007’s Hannibal Rising), the critically acclaimed NBC series Hannibal (2013-2015), and the CBS crime procedural Clarice, which debuted this month. From the beginning, Silence of the Lambs was a cultural event. I was too young to see the movie when it first came out, but its opening weekend still made a vivid impression on me: I remember my mother’s reaction after attending a packed showing, as she excitedly described the experience of being in the dark with Jodie Foster at the film’s climax. Foster’s agent Starling was terrified as she navigated a pitch-black room, unaware that the film’s villain, Buffalo Bill (played by Ted Levine), was watching her through night-vision goggles. Thanks to director Jonathan Demme’s skillful manipulation of the audience’s point of view, viewers were watching Clarice through the same lenses — and to my preteen ears, listening to my mom recall the ending and the gasps of the audience, few things had ever been more harrowing. That immediate audience buzz made Silence of the Lambs a sleeper hit, propelling it to unexpected box office success. Silence of the Lambs also kicked off a decade that saw a huge boom in television crime procedurals, many featuring dogged women ferreting their way through cases while battling institutional sexism. One can trace a direct line from Clarice Starling to characters like Law & Order: SVU’s Olivia Benson or Helen Mirren’s brusque Jane Tennison in the long-running British classic Prime Suspect. Even the string of late ’90s and early 2000s thrillers about broken women surviving trauma seem to have a relationship to Starling or to Silence of the Lambs’ kidnap victim Catherine (Brooke Smith) — think, like, every Ashley Judd thriller of the era, from Kiss the Girls (1997) to Double Jeopardy (1999). At opposite ends of a spectrum of women in uniform, Frances McDormand’s deceptively laconic police chief in Fargo (1996) and Demi Moore’s determined G.I. Jane (1997) also feel like characters who couldn’t exist without Starling. In 1991, audiences were primed to fear serial killers and abductions after a decade of mass hysteria, warnings of “stranger danger,” and Satanic Panic. The improbable elements of the plot, like Buffalo Bill’s motive for killing (to make and wear skin suits) or his placement of live moths inside the bodies of his victims, weren’t that outlandish after years of false media claims about nonexistent satanic rituals. Additionally, the 1980s were a peak time for serial killers. The movie capitalized on their prevalence in headlines, and in fact, real-life serial killers like Ed Gein and John Wayne Gacy, as well as serial abductor Gary Heidnik, all became famous — or at least more famous — after its release because different elements of the Buffalo Bill character were based on them. This was a time rife with depictions of such criminals in true crime writing and tabloid media, so if anything, viewers were likely to expect their serial killers to be garish and horrifically over-the-top. Because Silence of the Lambs’ plot validated so many of the dominant ’80s narratives about crime, the movie became the main reference point many people had for understanding such crimes at all. That’s not entirely a good thing: Hannibal Lecter’s popularity far overshadows that of Clarice, in a way that closely mirrors pop culture’s long-established tendency to glamorize and fixate on the criminals at the expense of their victims and the people working to catch them. (This tendency has increasingly been criticized and reversed in recent years in favor of reframing these narratives, but the cultural fascination with serial killers hasn’t gone away.) If anything, Silence of the Lambs’ popularity validated that approach to true crime for decades. Unfortunately, we now know that criminal profiling doesn’t work — a harsh truth that invalidates not only some of the realism of Silence of the Lambs but also the many crime shows that have followed in its wake. It also undermines many of the reasons we attempt to study serial killers to begin with. It’s arguable that the movie’s impact on real-world crime narratives has lessened greatly due to the current true crime boom, which has arguably shifted the focus away from glorifying and profiling killers and expanded several related conversations about the justice system. But there’s another real-world community that’s still feeling the film’s repercussions — and not in a good way." - Aja Romano, Vox From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "The mixture of menace and aestheticism that distinguishes Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs (1991) is evoked quite effectively by the film's publicity poster. Blossoming like an exotic fleur du mal from Jodie Foster's mouth is a moth (viewers of the film will recognize it as the death's head moth that serves as "Buffalo Bill"'s personal totem), which rather conventionally fixes the female icon at the point where her beauty and her helplessness converge. In its position over her mouth, the moth stands for that which threatens her, and it also sends us back to the film's title and its ominous key term, silence. But while the title says the silence of the lambs, the image conveys something more generic: the silence of the heroine. The unevenness of social discourses is ideologically productive, in other words, and it is therefore crucial, as we shall see, that in a project such as The Silence of the Lambs, the discourses of gender and class or, in another register, psychoanalysis and aestheticism -all remain in play, powerful in their own right. Our argument, then, is that these discourses "deploy each other" in an uneven ideological space specific to this film, and that that deployment is crucial to the systematic rearticulation of these codes in terms of the most far-reaching and powerful discourse in the film: the discourse of species. To return to the film's publicity poster, it is just this sort of "deploy ment" that is at work, as the "silence" of the film's title is realigned with Starling and directed away from the invisible lambs. For at the heart of the film's trauma, we will argue, lies not cross-gender, nor cross-class, but cross species identification. Initially, of course, we must understand this trauma as Starling's own, for it is to the story about her unsuccessful effort to save some lambs from the slaughterhouse that the title refers. "Have the lambs stopped screaming?" asks Lecter, in a tone somewhere between gentle and mocking, in his final phone call to Starling. And although this scene would seem to mark the triumph of Starling-she has saved Catherine Martin, and she has just graduated from FBI training-it is not clear that these compensatory efforts have finally overcome her trauma, for she can find no answer to Lecter's question. Here, indeed, the ambiguity of the lambs' "silence" merges with Starling's own. Are we to take the lambs' silence, or Starling's silence about that silence, as the sign of deliverance, or rather as something even more ominous than their screaming? At the end of the film, Starling has "made it," acceded to the law of culture and the culture of the law. But her career triumph does not signal any end to the regime of sacrifice imaged in the lambs' slaughter, for in the blackly comic conclusion to the film, it is the cannibal Lecter who has the last word: "I'm having an old friend for dinner." Here, in the face of the film's evident endorsement of Starling's career trajectory (in which hard work and self-sacrifice earn the reward of upward mobility), surfaces a sort of counterknowledge of human society as unremittingly feral, as never-ending sacrifice, with no guaranteed payoffs. Dog Eat Dog. People Are Sheep. Ambling at film's end down the Caribbean thoroughfare in his bad hairpiece and baggy linen suit, Lecter becomes the postmodern Wolf in Sheep's Clothing." - Cary Wolfe and Jonathan Elmer, boundary 2 , Autumn, 1995, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Autumn, 1995) Public Opinion "Hannibal Lecter: I ate his liver, with some fava beans and a nice chianti. Gordon Ramsay: Delicious, finally some good fucking food." - issy, Letterboxd The AI's Poetic Opinion the silence of the lambs "A poem or prophecy? Silent lambs in the night, Ears pricked, listening for danger. Waiting to be safe." - dA vInci Factoids Previous Rankings #26 (2020), #26 (2018), #58 (2016), #76 (2014), #69 (2013), #80 (2012) Director Count Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Stanley Kubrick (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (3), 1970s (4), 1980s (8), 1990s (11), 2000s (17), 2010s (5) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (5), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Hannibal (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #42 Fanboy Ranking, #46 Cinema Ranking #56 Old Farts Ranking, #38 Damn Kids Ranking #70 Ambassador Ranking, #43 All-American Ranking #76 Cartoon Ranking, #43 Damn Boomer Ranking

Bad BOT, dropping this film was crime. Number 48 "Doctor, those that'll tell don't know, and those that know won't tell." About the Film Synopsis "Salvatore “Sal” Fragione is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin’ Out, becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria’s Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin’ Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin’ Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise." Its Legacy "In 1989, New York City was on the verge of being ripped apart by racial animus. That spring, police and prosecutors railroaded a confession out of five innocent black and brown teenage boys for a rape in Central Park. And four months later, an angry mob of Italian youths killed an unarmed black teen named Yusef Hawkins in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Amid the unrest, Spike Lee's seminal work, Do the Right Thing — a film about simmering bigotry exploding into violence — premiered that summer and forced mainstream America to take a cold hard look at racial injustice on and off the screen. Before it hit theaters, some critics worried Do the Right Thing would incite race riots. After screening it in Cannes, former USA Today columnist Jeannie Williams declared, "I don't need this movie in New York this summer. I don't know what they're thinking!" While the film didn't provoke lawlessness, it did go on to garner an Oscar nod for Best Original Screenplay. The movie also launched the careers of several up-and-comers, including Lee – who wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the piece – and inspired a whole new generation of black filmmakers to use their art as a catalyst for change. Shooting on location in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood mattered for the sake of the film's authenticity and community investment. Lee was so aware of the tenuous relationship between the community and police, at the time he hired the Fruit of Islam to run security on the set of Do the Right Thing because residents respected and preferred the Nation of Islam subgroup to the NYPD. "I would've been crucified to do a film about Bedford-Stuyvesant and not shoot in Bed-Stuy," Lee explained in St. Clair Bourne's documentary, Making Do the Right Thing. "I mean there's just something about reality that you can't mess with." Instead of trailers, the crew used homes in the neighborhood to film scenes in the movie and as dressing rooms for the cast, says Joie Lee. In addition to being Lee's real-life sister, she played Jade, his character Mookie's sister in Do The Right Thing. "Some of the residents were employed on the production," Joie Lee says. "It was a win-win situation and a lot of folks appreciated the presence...on a pre-gentrified block in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. What other films were shooting on location there? I don't know of any. "And I think Spike learned from his predecessors — Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet. He paid tribute to Brooklyn streets similar to Scorsese's Little Italy in Mean Streets," she adds. The presence of real people on the set also kept actor John Turturro on his toes. In the film, Turturro played Pino, Sal's (Oscar-nominated actor Danny Aiello) opinionated and racist son. Do the Right Thing was Lee's third movie, but it propelled him into the national consciousness as a cultural provocateur and launched the cinematic careers of Perez, Samuel L. Jackson, Martin Lawrence, and deceased comedian Robin Harris. As fate would have it, former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama saw the film on their first date. After Do the Right Thing, Lee went on to make more than four dozen films. including Malcolm X, 4 Little Girls, and Inside Man. He nabbed an honorary Oscar in 2015, and earlier this year — three decades after Do the Right Thing — the visibly shaken filmmaker won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. For Lee acolytes such as Cheo Hodari Coker, a writer and producer and the brains behind Netflix's now-defunct Luke Cage, the honor was long overdue. "Do the Right Thing was the first time as a casual viewer that I absorbed the language of film," Coker tells Shondaland. "The way Ernest Dickerson lit the film. It was the first time I ever noticed what heat looks like on film. Back in the day, you just watched a movie. But it was the first time I thought, 'Wow, somebody is making decisions about the music, somebody is making a decision about the way the camera floats, somebody is making a decision about the way a shot looks when the sun is going down.' "" - Mekeisha Madden Toby, Shondaland From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "In "Of Our Spiritual Strivings," the famous first chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois ascribes to the African American consciousness what he perceives to be a fundamental "two-ness." This "double-consciousness ... two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body" (3), is an effect of the contradictory positioning of African-American culture within the dominant social order of "white Americanism" (4). On the one hand, American democratic capitalism promotes to its ethnic constituents its promise of eco nomic opportunity, material satisfaction, and social justice. On the other, it consistently fails to grant black Americans full and equal access to the socioeconomic structures upon which the fruits of this promise depend. As Du Bois describes it, this political condition, a conse quence of pressures exterior to the black community, creates a corresponding interior dilemma for African-Americans who achieve authority in American culture despite its institutionalized racism. Which of two competing allegiances does one serve? One's loyalty to the black community, which would benefit pro foundly from one's acquired expertise in engaging white America? Or one's duty to one's own future, ironically linked to the esteem of a majority culture violently inimical to the minority community of which one is a part? D o the Right Thing, produced in 1989, is director Spike Lee's attempt to explore the human particu larity of this system of binarisms and the culturally entrepreneurial situation of the African-American subject within it. Lee's own background reflects this cultural positioning. He was the eldest child in an "uncomfortably middle class" black family living in the then predominantly white Brooklyn neigh borhoods of Cobble Hill and Fort Greene, where most of his friends were Italian (Breskin 14, 151). He graduated from traditionally black Morehouse College in 1979, after which he entered NYU's film school as one of only two African-Americans in his class (Lee later was to enlist the other, director Ernest Dickerson, to handle the cine matography of Do the Right Thing). It is not surprising, then, that young African-American novelist Trey Ellis cites Lee as one of "today's cultural mulattoes," during whose public schooling "it wasn't unusual to be called 'oreo' and '----' on the same day." According to Ellis, these young black people are able skillfully to navi gate a multi-ethnic universe due to their education in "a multi-racial mix of cultures"-yet despite this unique ability they "feel misunderstood by both the black world and the white." They are a generation "torn between two worlds," and, depending upon which term of the social binomial they embrace, they either "desperately fan tasize themselves the children of William F. Buckley" or "affect instead a 'superblackness' and try to dream themselves back to the ghetto. Either way they are letting other people define their identity" (234-36). The film's use of the metonymic figures "King" and "X" as well as the ethically divergent meta-narratives of which they are the cultural signifiers suffuses its dramatic structure with the ideological tension generated by the trope of "double-consciousness." The vehicle by which Do the Right Thing represents the black community reminding itself, so to speak, of the presence of these figures is the ubiquitous Smiley, a young man with cerebral palsy who earns money selling photographs of African-American heroes to his Bed-Stuy neighbors. The film calls attention to one image in particular: the famous photograph of King and Malcolm shaking hands and smil ing during their first and only meeting. In light of the film's Signifyin(g) contestation of the idea of an essential "blackness," hooks's charges that the film "denies the problematical nature of identity" and "offers a simplistic view" of race seem inaccurate. On the contrary, Do the Right Thing rises to the challenge of Cornell West's call for postmodern African-American cultural productions which "deconstruct earlier modem Black strategies of identity-formation ... and construct more multi valent and multi-dimensional responses that articulate the complexity and diversity of Black practices in the mod ern and postmodem world" (74). The film's problematization of the "King"/"X" dualism releases the African-American subject into just such "multi-valent" and "multi-dimensional" modes of responsivity regarding these meta-narratives of morally intelligent liberation. And the film's interrogation of consensus regarding "right thing"/wrong thing delivers to the politically marginalized an experience of that binarism's arbitrary and constructed quality. Despite its semiotic power, this denaturalization neither promotes moral chaos nor renders the figure "justice" morally indeterminate. Rather, by suggesting what Lyotard has called "an idea and practice of justice that is not linked to that of consensus" (37), the film helps to free "justice" from the violence of its designated confinement within terms forged by a racist symbolic ascendancy and, like Baker's blues, helps to make "justice" available to the "polyvalent interpretations" which proliferate beyond dialectic. Thus, Do the Right Thing's elucidation of the culture of ambiguity, and the internally dialogic subject which negotiates that culture, represents an elegant erasure of the logic of "two ness" in all of its ideological formations." - James C. McKelly, African American Review , Summer, 1998, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 1998), pp. 215-227 Public Opinion "Brilliant, morally complex, and fascinating movie. Can't believe it took me this long to see it. Truly important and great movie." - @Cmasterclay The AI's Poetic Opinion do the right thing "do the right thing stop asking me to write these fucking poems for you i am done DONE!" - dA vInci Factoids Previous Rankings #15 (2020), #79 (2018), #94 (2016), UNRANKED (2014), #88 (2013), UNRANKED (2012) Director Count Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Stanley Kubrick (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (3), 1970s (4), 1980s (8), 1990s (10), 2000s (17), 2010s (5) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (5), Ghibli (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #73 Fanboy Ranking, #44 Cinema Ranking #39 Old Farts Ranking, #49 Damn Kids Ranking #44 Ambassador Ranking, #49 All-American Ranking #50 Cartoon Ranking, #48 Damn Boomer Ranking

Number 49 "Life is suffering. It is hard. The world is cursed. But still, you find reasons to keep living." About the Film Synopsis "Ashitaka, a prince of the disappearing Emishi people, is cursed by a demonized boar god and must journey to the west to find a cure. Along the way, he encounters San, a young human woman fighting to protect the forest, and Lady Eboshi, who is trying to destroy it. Ashitaka must find a way to bring balance to this conflict." Its Legacy "The Japanese government is, as noted earlier, eagerly pursuing the goals of obtaining influence over other Asian nations and reinforcing Japan’s presence in contemporaryworld affairs through the use of soft power.One of the main components of this alleged cultural power is Japanese popular culture, animation films in particular. MOFA describes these films and the style in general as the most popular in the world among young people and notably dominant in other Asian countries. Government officials frequently state that Japan produces cutting-edge cultural content, both in terms of storytelling and presentation techniques. Miyazaki Hayao is a figure mentioned regularly in the context of nationalist brand politics. Government officials also find a typical example of the Japanese approach to nature in Miyazaki Hayao’s animation films (Kondo, 2013). He is a renowned director of animation films; he won an Academy Award in 2003 and has garnered fame as an illustrator of Japanese popular culture. He has been a major player in the production of Japanese anime for more than 20 years, and is probably the best-known Japanese animator outside Japan. However, althoughMiyazaki’s animation films have been well-received by conservative government officials and intellectuals in Japan, a thorough examination of his films and interviews reveals that his works, including animation films and manga, implicitly criticize the recent economy-centred policies of Japanese politics. Soft power diplomacy on the basis of brand nationalism is an integral part of Japanese politics dialogical and reciprocal relations with others. In fact, soft power discourse uses culture solely to promote a monological approach to power politics and attempts to strengthen its political position in world politics. Thus, it totally lacks the idea of relationality among different subjectivities Specific representative works often cited include Miyazaki’s films such as My Neighbour Totoro, PrincessMononoke, and Spirited Away. In fact, there are a number of official reports and articles aboutMiyazaki and his contribution to cultural diplomacy. For instance, MOFA reports that the New York Times sympathetically reviewed Miyazaki’s film, Kokurikozaka kara, describing it as a typical example of Japanese animation films’ recent inclination towards realism (MOFA, 2013a). It is also noticeable that MOFA is eager to promote Japan’s pop-culture through its diplomatic channels (MOFA, 2013b), andMiyazaki’s animation films are some of the most played animation films. It is worth mentioning that government officials touch upon Miyazaki’s films in their diplomatic speeches. It is widely recognized that Miyazaki’s films are anti-consumerist, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away in particular. It is also commonly known that some of his films derive from anti-war sentiment, including Porco Rosso and Howl’s Moving Castle. Throughout his oeuvre, one can more generally describe the artist’s outlook as anti-institutional and anti-civilizational, and that outlook is verymuch expressed in his representations of Jomon bunka. Miyazaki deliberately chooses non-institutionalized communities as settings for plot development and then employs nomads, exiles, and pilgrims as main characters to introduce cultural contrast. In this way, Miyazaki uses cultural representation as a means of resistance to the institutionalized nation-state. He describes institutional political arrangements in highly negative tones, and grants his main characters powers of critical thought to examine the prevailing social order. The idyllic forest and mountain settings of Miyazaki’s films express a rather obvious sentimentality towards Jomon culture that has been interpreted as a preference for that culture over civilization. For example, the main character Ashitaka in PrincessMononoke is from the north of Japan and initially lives in a mountainous area. In one scene at the beginning of the film, in which Ashitaka fights with samurais and shoots at them with arrows, one of the samurai clearly calls him ‘Oni’. This is a clear reference to folklore and folklore-influenced culture, in which indigenous peoples living in mountain areas are often described as Oni (evil). On the contrary, those of Yayoi culture living in sato (villages) were historically settlers in flat lands cultivating rice and other crops. They are frequently depicted in Miyazaki’s films as institutionalized and profit-oriented. A character appears in Princess Mononoke named Jogo-bo, who is a Buddhist monk serving the emperor and a typical representation of Miyazaki’s perception of contemporary, ordinary citizens who lack critical thinking skills and simply follow orders. Indeed, Miyazaki publicly described this character as reflecting figures of present-day society, describing him as ‘a company man’ who is agreeable and personable and functions well in his organization, but who follows the commands of that organization without thinking (Miyazaki, 2008: 36–37). The lack of thinking personified by Jigo-bo is likewise present in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem, in which Arendt explains how the lack of critical thought of one SS soldierwho appeared to be an ordinary citizen, Adolf Eichmann, resulted in the most unprecedented practice of evil in human history (Arendt, 1963).Miyazaki uses the same kind of example to question the nature of living in the age of civilization. Although Miyazaki himself cannot answer for his audience, he surely intends to provoke thought and questioning." - KOSUKE SHIMIZU (2014). The Ambivalent Relationship of Japan's Soft Power Diplomacy and Princess Mononoke: Tosaka Jun's philosophy of culture as moral reection. Japanese Journal of Political Science From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "Princess Mononoke makes heroes of outsiders in all identity politics categories and blurs the stereotypes that usually define such characters. The film makes this move most emphatically by presenting the relationship between dignified work as a solution to poverty in ideological tension with environmental damage caused by industry. Although there are multiple heroes, the plot chronicles the adventure undertaken by culturally/ racially othered protagonist, Prince Ashitaka, a young man from a marginalized and geographically distant cultural group, the Emishi. His journey across Japan is a bid to undo a mortal curse he received while saving his village from a marauding demon, Nagy, who was once a boar-god from the forest that is being decimated by humans mining for iron. The leader of Iron Town, Lady Eboshi, had shot Nagy with a bullet and sent him mad. While her drive to destroy the forest in order to mine the mountain embodies environmentalist evil, she is complexly wrought by the way in which she has built Iron Town as a haven for the most disenfranchised characters in the social order of the film’s loosely historical setting. She has rescued reviled and marginalized prostitutes and lepers and given them work, a home and a community. For this reason, Princess Mononoke’s principal strength lies is in asking child audiences to think about compassion for the poor and disenfranchised in tandem with care for nature, as per the underlying principle of environmental justice. Scholars in this field like Shiva (1989) argue that the poor, especially women, have the most to lose when nature is destroyed. But this argument cannot, despite our best efforts, resolve comfortably in any analysis of Princess Mononoke since the people of Iron Town have the most to lose when the forest spirit destroys their foundry and home, but also the most to gain from the destruction of the forest in terms of working in a successful industry. Arguably, these tensions in the film are emblematic of the reflexivity between political bids to navigate issues like global warming when developing countries are seen to require greater license to produce carbon emissions in order to reduce their poverty – similarly licensing environmental destruction in the name of helping the poor. While both films are fantasies, Miyazaki’s realist recognition of these complexities in the eco-political landscape of globalization elevates his work in terms of significant activist agendas. Where Princess Mononoke elides oppositional logics in ways that make available a more intellectual response to environmental issues that demonstrate a greater level of respect for the child audience, FernGully didactically traffics in the identity politics of difference. The stigmatizing of lower-class, queer characters and non-white characters, which is sadly a staple gesture in western world animation (Griffin 2004; Mallan and McGillis 2005; Sawers and Parsons 2005),6 becomes the key point of national difference between these cultural productions in their attempts at socially progressive bids for ecoactivism. While these films share a bid for ecological activism, their ideological assumptions, their modes of representation, and their attitudes to child audiences are widely divergent. FernGully trades in didactic logic, limiting gendered, sexual identified, classed and raced stereotypes, and employs a soporific happily ever after that allows passive engagement with the plot as comfortably resolved entertainment, Princess Mononoke challenges social norms, requires child viewers to weigh complex questions, and demands a critical and intellectual engagement with the issues at stake without comfortable resolution in ways that invite what educationalists call ‘transformational learning’ as part of the filmic experience. This presentation of complexity is located in the multiple dynamics of the aesthetics and characterization of these films in ways that re-politicize the similar plots." - Michelle Smith & Elizabeth Parsons, Journal of Media & Cultural Studies Public Opinion "avatar (2009): who are you? princess mononoke (1997): I’m you, but with real thematic depth and thought-provoking nuance" - Houston Coley, Letterboxd The AI's Poetic Opinion princess mononoke "A brave girl defending her home against the demons" - dA vInci Factoids Previous Rankings #38 (2020), #41 (2018), UNRANKED (2016, 2014, 2013, 2012) Director Count Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Stanley Kubrick (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Spike Lee (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (3), 1970s (4), 1980s (7), 1990s (10), 2000s (17), 2010s (5) Country Count Japan (5), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (5), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #62 Fanboy Ranking, #47 Cinema Ranking #54 Old Farts Ranking, #43 Damn Kids Ranking #21 Ambassador Ranking, #52 All-American Ranking #12 Cartoon Ranking, #54 Damn Boomer Ranking

Also as a reminder for film score and soundtrack lovers, the soundtrack for the list updates after every entry!

Number 50 "Good morning, and in case I don't see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night!" About the Film Synopsis "Truman Burbank is the star of The Truman Show, a 24-hour-a-day reality TV show that broadcasts every aspect of his life without his knowledge. His entire life has been an unending soap opera for consumption by the rest of the world. And everyone he knows, including his wife and his best friend is really an actor, paid to be part of his life." Its Legacy "With the advent of the Internet and other novel forms of communication and social interaction, our society is undergoing a shift in culture greater than anything we have witnessed in decades. What impact might significant changes in culture have on the processes of mental illness? Here we explore one aspect of this cultural change. Internet sites such as YouTube, and another new cultural presence*reality television*reveal two new cultural phenomena. First, they demonstrate that people without ostensible skill or talent can become celebrities in an age when celebrity holds great currency. Second, these forms of entertainment make it possible to become known to tens of millions of people overnight. They have the powerful effect of making the world feel at once very small and possibly overwhelming. We present five patients in whom the ideas of celebrity and exposure take centre stage in the presentation of their psychosis. They developed the delusional belief that they were the ‘‘star’’ of a reality television show secretly broadcasting their daily life, much like the main character in Peter Weir’s film The Truman Show. The Truman Show was released in 1998 and presaged the wave of reality television shows that succeeded it. It follows the story of Truman Burbank, a 30-year-old man whose entire life*from in utero to the time of the movie’s present*is broadcast around the world, without his knowledge, as a form of soap opera. The city he inhabits is, in fact, a domed sound studio, and all the people in his life, including his wife, parents, best friend, co-workers, and strangers, are all actors and extras. Even the weather is controlled. The plot centres on Truman’s dawning awareness of his condition and his escape to the real world, where he is reunited with his former girlfriend, previously banished by the show’s creator. Given his realisation that the world he lives in is counterfeit, Truman begins to sound like a patient with mental illness. He has the ‘‘idea of reference’’ that ‘‘[t]he radio starts following me along, talking about everything I’m doing’’. He expresses the ‘‘paranoid’’ ideas that he is ‘‘definitely being followed’’ and that he is ‘‘being set up for something’’; he has the ‘‘grandiose’’ notion that ‘‘the whole world revolves around [him] somehow’’. In order to keep the show going at all costs, the actors tell him that he is imagining these things*that he is, in effect, mentally ill. The five patients described later,1 all treated at different times but on the same psychiatric inpatient unit at Bellevue Hospital Centre in New York City, believed themselves to be in the same position as Truman Burbank; three of them referred to the film by name. Patient 1. Mr A. was admitted after he scuffled with security at a federal building. He said that his life was like The Truman Show and that he had come to ask for asylum. He had held this belief for five years, and although he lived with family, they were not aware of his delusions until several days prior to admission; he had only told a friend about it 2 weeks prior to admission. He believed that the attacks of 9/11 were fabricated as part of his narrative. He had travelled from out-of-state in order to see if the World Trade Centre had in fact been destroyed; if the towers were standing, he would have proof that he was on the show. On first presentation, he demanded to speak to ‘‘the director’’. He said that since he had seen The Truman Show, he believed that all the individuals in his life were part of the conspiracy. He also believed he had cameras in his eyes. Despite this longstanding delusion, Mr A. had had no previous psychiatric treatment. It is noteworthy, however, that the patient had been using over-the-counter fatloss supplements and had lost 40 pounds over the previous 2 months in order to be able to join the military. Initial DSM-IV differential diagnosis was schizophrenia, chronic paranoid type versus substance-induced psychotic disorder. The patient was started on risperidone 1 mg twice daily. Within days, he was transferred to a hospital in his home state. Patient 4. Mr D. was working on a reality television show when he was hospitalised after causing a public disturbance. While working on the production of the show, he came to believe that he was the one who was actually being broadcast: ‘‘I thought I was a secret contestant on a reality show. I thought I was being filmed. I was convinced I was a contestant and later the TV show would reveal me.’’ He believed his thoughts were being controlled by a film crew paid for by his family. During the 2 weeks prior to admission, he experienced decreased sleep, pressured speech, irritability, paranoia, and hyperreligiosity. The patient carried a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and had had two previous hospitalisations for manic episodes. He had smoked marijuana intermittently since he was in college and had last smoked marijuana one week prior to admission. Mr D. was treated with quetiapine titrated to 500 mg daily and valproic acid 750 mg twice daily, with therapeutic blood level, and he responded to this treatment regimen. As his mania subsided, his delusion remitted, and he was discharged after 4 weeks of treatment with DSM-IV diagnoses of bipolar disorder, most recent episode manic, with psychotic features, and marijuana abuse However the Truman Show delusion ought to be classified, it is well worth considering which cultural phenomena, if any, might be relevant to its manifestation. Of course, the patients’ reference to the film might be quite coincidental. It may, in contrast, be a product in part of the contemporary popularity in our culture of reality television. Can a case be made that the phenomenon of reality television might interact with the expression of psychotic symptoms? There is less in the way of psychological research on reality television than one might expect given its popularity. In one study, Reiss and Wiltz (2004) investigated the correlation between the viewing of reality television and a large number of personality traits. They found the strongest correlation between reality television viewing and a trait they refer to as ‘‘social status’’, which entails an ‘‘above-average trait motivation to feel self-important’’ (p. 363). They also found a dose effect; the more reality television watched, the greater the concern. This is perhaps not altogether surprising, but it suggests that reality television resonates with a common anxiety about one’s position in the social hierarchy. As noted earlier, reality television makes it conceivable that one could come to the attention of a community of people orders of magnitude larger than was possible only a few years ago. One might speculate that because our world really is a global village now, the threats from other members of one’s community (see Buss & Duntley, 2008), as well as the promise of the status that might achieved by being known to strangers, is also significantly greater than it has ever been. Someone who is particularly anxious about their social status, therefore, might experience reality television as presenting a significant social threat, or a tantalising possibility of success, or both. In the life of such a person, reality television might act as a significant stress, the effects of which might include a persecutory or grandiose delusion of the Truman Show type." - Joel Gold & Ian Gold (2012): The “Truman Show” delusion: Psychosis in the global village, Cognitive Neuropsychiatry From the Filmmaker Why It's Great Critic Opinion "It has been frequently noted that we liv Images from television, film, advertisements, bill e in a "media-- saturated" culture. boards, and photojournalism are everywhere we turn. Yet the situation goes deeper. For more than just media inundation, we have come to live in a mediamediated culture, where our understanding of life, reality and our own experience is filtered through video frames. Most of us in the industrialized world (and many outside of it) have become reliant upon modem media, especially television and films, as we make our interpre tations of reality. Without realizing we have become so dependent, we frequently look through these frames as we seek understanding, comfort, reassurance, vision, and structure for our disparate sensory intakes. This is so, even though the images in these frames do not give us a consistent, trustworthy, or self cohering interpretive pattern. The recent films Pleasantville and The Truman Show are arresting precisely because they highlight an aspect of this situation "from within". Who should know better than the imagemakers how constructed these video frames really are? Likewise, in an industry which must gauge, as well as influence, audience desires to ensure its own survival, who should know better the extent of our malleability? And, finally, in an industry well aware of its monetary dependence upon "product placement," who should be more certain about the variability of the components of the good life? At first glance, these films seem very irreverent towards the cultural ethos that supports their own industry's existence. They suggest that audiences are easily manipulated, overly caught up in screen stories, and also quite fickle. The last scene in The Truman Show is exemplary. Two garage attendants, one minute so obsessively caught up in Truman's life that they ignore their business, the next minute when he's gone just look, with very little emotion, for something else to watch. Perhaps, instead, the films simply represent an inhouse poke by moviemakers at the more superficial stories of television programs. But they wouldn't know the two media's audiences overlap. More trenchantly, these films prompt questions about our mediacultivated voyeurism. A voyeur has an obsessive interest in watching without being known or noticed. In the case of screen stories, we know we watch actors, but the best films are the ones that most convincingly foster the illusion that we have a ringside view of a real life. In The Truman Show , this voyeurism is real. Through some 5,000 hidden cameras anyone can watch almost every aspect of Truman's life without being known by him. Of course humans have always watched and evaluated each other, but mediaviewing is a peering without chance of participating. So much pseudointimacy can only exacerbate for viewers the common contemporary complai nt of alienation. In the two films, community of a sort is formed around watching and discussing the shows, but when the program dissolves, there is little left to link the people. But the filmic gaze does not go only one way. As Michel Foucault indicates, a society that closely watches its members in order to control them is most successful when it gets the members to internalize the gaze and police themselves. Truman does not know he is being watched, but he's been controlled through the camera all his li fe. No matter what impulse he's ever had to act unpredictably or to break free, he finds himself amazingly blocked. He takes this as a matter of course and adjusts his behavior. But when he eventually figures out the truth he is willing to risk death in or der to get off camera. Are we controlled by the filmic gaze? At first glance, we believe we are the viewers, not the viewed. But self selfregulation happen regularly as we adjust our self-- assessment and image and behavior in order to conform more closely to the ideal presented to us through the video frame. In addition, hidden video cameras are an increasing factor in everyday life." - Mercadante, Linda A. (2001) "The God Behind the Screen: Pleasantville and The Truman Show," Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 5 : Iss. 2 , Article 8. Public Opinion "The Truman Show remains the peak of cinema. Everything in this movie is done to its smartest possibility. The camerawork is insane, Weir’s direction is pitch perfect, Carrey’s and Harris’s performances are all time greats. The story gets even better when you familiarize yourself with media; watching it now helps me realize how much television and films it’s re-contextualizing within its narrative. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, and it excels at everything it puts it mind to. This summer, I plan on rewatching a lot of the films that have just sat at the top of my best of list for years. I started with my #1, and it stayed there after this watch. The Truman Show is remarkable in how absolutely perfect it is, proving to be the absolute crowning achievement of mainstream cinema, and for me, the absolute best film ever made." - @Blankments The AI's Poetic Opinion the truman show "You are just in my show I control you I am god You are my puppet" - dA vInci Factoids Previous Rankings #46 (2020), #66 (2018), #49 (2016), #38 (2014), #52 (2013), #49 (2012) Director Count Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2), David Fincher (2), Stanley Kubrick (2), Sergio Leone (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2), Ridley Scott (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Spike Lee (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Hayao Miyazaki (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1) Decade Count 1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (3), 1970s (4), 1980s (7), 1990s (9), 2000s (17), 2010s (5) Country Count Japan (4), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1) Franchise Count Pixar (5), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1) Re-Weighted Placements #47 Fanboy Ranking, #51 Cinema Ranking #87 Old Farts Ranking, #40 Damn Kids Ranking #74 Ambassador Ranking, #48 All-American Ranking #46 Cartoon Ranking, #51 Damn Boomer Ranking

As we’re now halfway through the list I want to give some shoutouts and teasers for some forum events coming up within the next year (or even sooner) to check out! (I am willing to give more shout outs if there’s other things people want advertised) BOFFYs 10 Year Anniversary: The ‘Super’ BOFFYs coming very soon These will be run by @Blankments and supported by me. More details to come but in honor of 10 years of BOFFYs, we will be doing a ceremony in which all prior winners become nominees in one super ceremony! The 2022 BOFFYs coming January 2023 As always, the main BOFFYs ceremony will be back! Journey: BOT’s Top Cinematic Odysseys of the Body, Mind, and Spirit coming late Spring 2023 The next list project I will be heading up is the most experimental BOT lists I’ll have run. This is because it’ll be three lists in one, a 25 movies about physical/bodily journeys (example: adventure and survival films, such as Raiders or Cast Away), 25 movies about mental journeys (example: psychological thrillers such as Inception, Get Out, or Shutter Island), and 25 movies about Spiritual Journeys (example: Life of Pi, Tundun, and anything by Ingmar Bergman)

Use letterboxd, much better for personal use than imdb