Baumer's 50 most important films of all time (JFK 3, Earthlings 2.....FREE YOUR MIND! THE MATRIX NUMBER 1)

[baumer]

BTW if anyone is trying to get in touch with in what's app I am down with no communication  till about 2pm

[baumer]

Very kind of you to say @RandomJC

[baumer]

Will continue in abut 4 hours

[ttr]

 

Don't get me wrong...I liked Chocolate and Ringu but in terms of the 50 most important films of all time....and their influence/impact on me......sorry, no room for those movies.

Yep, I understand.

[RandomCat]

Okay...I lied. I think I'm just trying to hijack this thread sometimes.  Sorry Baumer, I just like hearing myself talk I guess.

 

34. Terminator 2: This is perhaps the quintessential movies that show that sequels can be good, but can be better than the original. Terminator 2 works far better than Terminator, for me at the very least.

33. Blair Witch Project: A movie that is just as impressive thanks to behind the scenes making of as in front of the camera scary. The no budget just wander the woods and scare the actors works here, and so few Found Footage movies ever seem to meet.

32. The Breakfast Club: Count me out. I think this movie, along with Christmas Story never hit home with me is because it wasn’t my youth, which was when I watched both films. As a child of the 90s, the 80s always seemed off to me, so, this movie never worked.

Scream, The Birth of a Nation, Rebel Without a Cause: Haven’t seen, no comment.

28. The Exorcist: I need to watch this again. I was too young the first time.

27. Toy Story: I disagree with your assessment of this film.

26. The Godfather: Personally, at this time in my life, of movies I’ve seen, I’d be hard pressed to find a better made film from top to bottom than The Godfather. But I haven’t seen all the classics, as I’m about to prove.

Metropolis, Titanic, Casablanca, Steam Boat Willie, All Quiet on the Western Front: All films I haven’t seen, most I really want to.

20. Singin' in the Rain: Saw this when I was real young. Really need to again.

19. Nightmare on Elm Street: I’ve said Halloween is perhaps the best slasher ever made, but Nightmare is easily my favorite. I love this movie, and I watched all its sequels as a kid. I always watched these right before bed, and would be too afraid to fall asleep afterwards.

18. Easy Rider: Have not seen.

17. Dark Knight: I’m a fan of Nolan. And I remember really liking this movie. I haven’t had a desire to watch it a second time, sadly.

16. Wizard of Oz: of all the films on this list, I have the least to say about it. I like it.

15. Night of the Living Dead: Two horror films that are a staple in my life for as long as I can remember. Night of the Living Dead and Tremors. One of those definitely belong on this list. Night of the Living dead is a fascinating movie both in front of and behind the camera, from it’s social commentary, that the crew and actors deny being there, but just permeates the film with a great leading role by Duane Jones. Romero at his best in this world. I will only say one las thing: “They’re coming to get you Barbara.”

14. Schindler's List: I saw this film twice in Highschool, and was genuinely disappointed when I couldn’t finish it the second time. It’s a beautiful film, and it’s probably the reason I give Liam Neeson, and Ben Kingsley a pass in most of their films.

13. Rocky: It’s on my gods damned shelf. I need to watch this!

12. Pulp Fiction: I liked it. Tarantino at his best.

11. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: I think I wasted all I can say about this movie when talking about the remake.

[baumer]

Number 8

Psycho (1960)

Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh

Directed By Alfred Hitchcock

Tag line:  The picture you MUST see from the beginning... Or not at all!... For no one will be seated after the start of... Alfred Hitchcock's

 

greatest shocker Psycho.

 

 

Box office:  32 million

Quick:  The start of the slasher in a way. More influential than any other horror movie.

Imdb summary:  Stressed and under pressure because of stealing a large amount of money from her employer and running away, a partly poor office worker who's committed theft in order to be able to marry the man she loves, gets lost and decides to stay at a motel for the night, regretting what she's done. But on her single night at the motel, she finds out it was a mistake to choose this motel; as she finds its young depressed manager's mother an unrelenting psycho.

Why it's important:  From entertainment Weekly:

 

If you’re reading this, it’s a fair bet that you, like me, are too young to have seen Psycho when it first came out, in 1960. And for anyone whodidn’t see it then, it’s probably safe to say that none of us can ever fully know what it felt like to experience the shock – the sheer bloody jaw-dropping terror – of Alfred Hitchcock’s game-changing masterpiece of horror. Imagine the shivery jolt of the opening shark attack in Jaws, magnified 500 times. Because in Jaws, of course, everyone knows, on some level, what’s coming. Hitchcock, by contrast, used Psycho to play the ultimate dirty trick. He killed off his lead actress, Janet Leigh, halfway through the movie, and he did it with such unspeakable out-of-nowhere savagery that he seemed to be pulling the rug, the floor, and the earth right out from under the audience. He opened an abyss, exposing moviegoers to a dark side that few, at the time, could ever have dared to imagine.  

Psycho was adapted from a novel that was based on the case of Ed Gein, the demented murderer and graverobber from rural Wisconsin who became the first – and still most legendary – of all modern serial killers. (Twenty-four years later, he inspired The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well; he was the sick puppy who kept on giving.) But it’s doubtful, in the early ‘60s, that almost any American had ever even heard the term “serial killer.” We were still a long way from Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, or chianti jokes.

In the famous shower scene, when that big, fat kitchen knife, wielded by a mysterious Victorian shrew named Mrs. Bates, came slashing down, over and over again (Skree! Skree! Skree!), into the body of Marion Crane, it was also slicing through years – decades, centuries – of audience expectation that the hero or heroine of a fictional work would be shielded and protected, or would at least die (usually at the end) in a way that made some sort of moral-dramatic sense. In Psycho, murder made no sense at all; the suddenness – and viciousness – of it tore at the fabric of our certainty. What it suggested is that none of us, in the end, are ever truly protected.

You could easily claim that Psycho, more than any other film, is the movie that changed movies – that it broke down, and reconfigured, popular storytelling by shifting it from a form in which lives were orderly and cohesive, bound by the symmetrical conflicts associated with classic Hollywood, to one in which lives were loose, random, unpredictable, and violent, subject to the messiness we associate with the Hollywood films of the ‘70s after the collapse of the studio system.  

But the most measurable and seismic effect that Psycho had was on the horror genre itself. Before Psycho, horror movies were “monster” movies. They were fantasies in which men battled supernatural creatures – or turned into them. The monsters could be big (Godzilla) or small (The Fly), sexy (Dracula) or ugly (Frankenstein); they could be spectral and profound (I Walked With a Zombie) or literal and rubbery (The Creature From the Black Lagoon); they could come from outer space (Invasion of the Body Snatchers) or they could be the beast within (Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde). But they were all, one way or another, not quite of this earth.

Psycho revolutionized all that. Here was a horror film in which the “monster” lived inside the head of one man – poor, schmucky Norman Bates, the mamma’s boy with a black secret. In truth, there was no monster at all, no shrieking outsize “mother.” There was just Norman and his rage. Yet Hitchcock’s genius is how deftly he created theillusion of a monster. The Bates house, that looming Victorian mansion full of cryptlike rooms and stuffed birds, was, in effect, a symbol of old-fashioned 19th-century terror. It was a Hollywood funhouse with a secret trap door.

Once inside that house, Hitchcock, drawing his camera back and up, up, up high, teased the audience with a great Freudian metaphor. Though he never, right up until the end, let us get close enough to see Mrs. Bates, what we did see was Norman carrying her around – which, of course, is exactly what the real monsters of our time do. They carry their private demons around, becoming slaves to them instead of mastering them. They become souls in demon drag.

By making the audacious claim that the darkest monsters – brutal, homicidal, and unknowable – live directly inside us, Alfred Hitchcock, in the grandest stunt of movie history, did more than kill off his heroine. He made a show of killing God; he expressed the horror of a world that had seen enough real horror (World War I, the Holocaust, the dropping of the A-bomb) not to need any more monsters. And that’s why the horror films of today are forever in his debt, and in his shadow. Every time you see a slasher movie with Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers, or whatever new name they come up with for some hulk in a mask with a big blade, you’re watching a remake of Psycho – an attempt to recapture its fear and insanity. But, of course, that can never happen again. Because now we know what’s coming. The movies, it turned out, could only kill God once.

 

Why it's important to me:   I love horror films. I love the good ones, the bad ones, the Grade Z ones and the ones that looked like it was filmed in their parent's basement and cost $3.50. I don't think Psycho is on par with some of the best horror films ever to grace our screens, you have to give credit where credit is due. Psycho is a pioneer for horror films and it is because of Psycho that we have films like Halloween and Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre and directors like Hooper and Carpenter and Craven. I was born 12 years after Psycho was made and I really didn't get into film until at least another 10 years after that, but I can tell you that Psycho must have shocked and revolutionized film. Could you imagine a film maker so bold as to tell theater owners that they are not to permit anyone into the theater after it starts? Can you imagine a film so bold as to kill the main character half way through the film? Can you imagine a film so bold as to kill someone so graphically in the shower? Sure you can imagine all that. It's 2016. This film is almost 60 years old. But imagine what it did to audiences in 1960. It must have shocked the hell out of everyone back then. Psycho is a film like no other.

There have been films that have done it better than Psycho but none of them can say they were the first. Psycho is a great film and it is enjoyable, unlike other older films like Citizen Kane that are only listed as great because they were the first to do something but has nothing redeemable about it. Psycho is a creepy film and it gave birth to a genre and I am thankful for it because my favourite horror film has Psycho to thank for it's inspiration. Halloween uses the camera the same way Psycho did and Carpenter is a carbon copy of Hitchcock for this one film. The two films even share a common name and character, Sam Loomis. 

There really isn't anything else that I want to say about the film, there are more than 100 reviews in here and many of them are by people that know a hell a lot more about the film than I do, but I just wanted to say how thankful I am that a movie like Psycho came along and paved the way for future films like The Evil Dead and Last House On The Left and such. This may be the first twisted horror film of it's kind and that is worth mentioning.

If you want to know how horror has revolutionized and evolved to the way it is today, you can look no further than Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant masterpiece, PSYCHO.

[baumer]

Number 7

Instinct (1999)

Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Donald Sutherland

Directed by John Turtletaub

We have only one thing to give up. Our dominion. We don't own the world. We're not kings yet. Not gods. Can we give that up? Too precious, all that control? Too tempting, being a god?

 

 

Box office:  34 million

Quick:  Perhaps the best film about animal rights I've ever seen.

Imdb summary:  Dr. Ethan Powell, an anthropologist, is in Africa studying apes when he is lost for two years. When he is found, he kills 3 men and puts 2 in the hospital. Cuba Gooding's character is a psychiatrist who wants to take up the task of trying to get Dr. Powell to speak again and maybe even stand judgment at a trial for his release from prison of mental cases. Along the way, Cuba has to deal with also helping the mental patients that are being abused and neglected. In this process Cuba learns a few things about himself and life, and so does Anthony Hopkins character, Dr. Powell.

Why it's important:  It's not.  It was overlooked and the message was lost because no one takes this stuff serious enough.

Why it's important to me:  

When this film came out, it was ridiculed by regular people and many by so called esteemed critics and the general opinion is that this film sinks under its own weight. People say that it is contrived and it contains stories already done a thousand times over. They say that this is a bleeding heart type film that depicts humans as the bad guy and shows how wonderful nature is and how that this theme is all rubbish. Reviewers go on to say that this is a terrible film and one that should be avoided and that we don't need this crap in our cinemas. I have a different opinion and it is not a nice one when I look at the people that don't like this film or understand it. But it goes something like this.

Animals rights is always a topic that many people sneer at. It is a topic that many ignorant and selfish people don't give a damn about. After all, we are the dominant species and we use them for food so why shouldn't we abuse them if we feel like it? Why should we care if a whale doesn't deserve to be in captivity, why should we care if a monkey doesn't give its consent to perform experiments on it, why should we care if the way that pigs are slaughtered is something reminiscent of medieval times like in Braveheart, why should we care if a lobster feels an excrutiating amount of pain as it is being boiled live, why should we care what Bob down the street does to his German Sheppard, why should we care that sharks are being over fished just for their fins and that they are cut off and then dumped back into the ocean, still alive and left to die, why should we care that bears are caught in traps and left there for days writhing in pain before they are killed, why should we care? When we have films that are made like Orca and Free Willy and now Instinct, they are dismissed as laughable propaganda for a cause that is beneath most human beings. I read a review in the IMDb by some ignorant fool that said the reason he didn't like Orca is because the film went too far to say that whales are actually capable of revenge. Let's see, if you saw your mate strung up on a fishing boat and then your unborn baby was aborted, I'd say that no matter what species you were, you would be capable of revenge. You ever see a cat in a new home after it has been abused? Watch how it takes years before it will trust again. Animals have long memories and they will remember who did something bad to them. So when a film like Instinct gets made and people dismiss it as being silly garbage, not only are they silly themselves, but they are downright ignorant. Stupidity isn't something that you are born with, you have to learn to be stupid, and the general population is stupid if they believe that animals don't have or shouldn't have the same rights that we as humans do. I think Instinct is ahead of its time and perhaps 20 or 50 or even 100 years down the line when there are stricter laws against cruelty to animals, people can look back on a film like this and say, " You know what? Instinct was way ahead of its time. " Just like they say that Laura Secord and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and even someone like Oskar Schindler were ahead of their time. Remember when it was okay to call a black person a ----? Remember when it was okay to hit your wife? Remember when it was okay to tease Jews? Remember when it was more acceptable to ostracize gays and lebians? Remember when blacks picked cotton for idiot slave owners? Remember what times were like before the Geneva Convention or The U.N. There were no laws for prisoners of war. You could treat them like you could a slave, but now there are laws against that. And if we can have laws during a war then why can we not have tighter laws governing the protection of animals. Laws have improved for so many but they haven't advanced one iota for animals in years.

Instinct gives us a grueling look into our sick and sad presumption that we are allowed, that we have to right to dominate, abuse, kill, experiment on and eliminate to the point of extinction, all animals. Only when a certian species of animal begins to dwindle in numbers do we put limits on hunting of that animal. And that is sad.

Instinct has a lot to say and not many people are willing to listen. It is easier to look the other way and laugh at what you see before you. The power of denial should never be underestimated. We are great at that.

Instinct is the type of film that should be taken much more seriously than it is. And when people say that the title should be Silence of the Gorillas in the Shawshank Over the Cuckoo's Nest, that is ridiculous. All movies are recycled from older ideas. There are only so many stories you can tell over again. It doesn't matter that this theme has been attempted before. No one has paid attention so this theme should be recycled over and over again until someone does take it seriously enough. After all, you are talking about a life here. And our lives should not be considered any more important or precious than that of an animal.

Perhaps one day this film will be looked at as a step in the right direction. It may take a century before that happens, but one day there will enough of us "bleeding hearts" out there to make a difference. Until then, I'm glad that someone has the intelligence and the balls and the passion to make this type of movie.   

 

Give this movie a chance. It really is a gem and hopefully it will open just one person's eyes and ask them to change. If it can do that, then it has done it's job. I applaud everyone associated with this movie. I just wish more studios and directors and actors would have the guts to do this. I just hope some people can see this movie for what it is and not for what we critisize it for trying to be. And as melo-dramatic as this review may sound to some people and as melo-dramatic as this is also going to sound, it has to be said.

Thank you John Turtletaub for making this movie. You moved me and made me think about a great many things. I hope I'm not alone.

 

[baumer]

Number 6

Star Wars:  A New Hope (1977)

Mark Hamill, Alec Guiness

Directed by George Lucas

May the Force be with you

 

 

 

Box office:  307 million (first run) 460 domestic 775 WW

Quick:  One of the most popular and influential films ever made

Imdb summary:  Luke Skywalker stays with his foster aunt and uncle on a farm on Tatooine. He is desperate to get off this planet and get to the Academy like his friends, but his uncle needs him for the next harvest. Meanwhile, an evil emperor has taken over the galaxy, and has constructed a formidable "Death Star" capable of destroying whole planets. Princess Leia, a leader in the resistance movement, acquires plans of the Death Star, places them in R2-D2, a droid, and sends him off to find Obi-Wan Kenobi. Before he finds him, R2-D2 ends up on the Skywalkers' farm with his friend C-3PO. R2-D2 then wanders into the desert, and when Luke follows, they eventually come across Obi-Wan. Will Luke, Obi-Wan and the two droids be able to destroy the Death Star, or will the Emperor rule forever?

Why it's important:  

George Lucas' iconic space opera is one of the most popular films ever made, as movie fans of all ages flocked to see Star Wars and have continued to do so in the thirty years since. It was expansive and dazzling, opening the world to a new type of movie, breaking the record for the highest-grossing film, set just two years prior with Jaws. Lucas revolutionised special effects as he continued to do so throughout his career. Star Wars looked like nothing ever made before - taking the sci-fi genre in an entirely new direction.

Star Wars made James Cameron want to make movies, it influenced countless others such as Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Ridley Scott and Kevin Smith. With Jaws, it turned movies into a bigger spectacle with an increased focus on the younger market. The film sounded like no other as Lucas revolutionised sound, making the bombastic noise of the film reverberate around the cinema - it was loud, but in a good way. Harrison Ford became a superstar with the success of the film as he went on to play Indiana Jones and become a screen icon. Lucas' ambitious vision opened our eyes to a new type of film and he seduces us into the masterpiece and movies have never been the same.

Why it's important to me:  

Like "The Birth of a Nation'' and "Citizen Kane,'' "Star Wars'' was a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after. These films have little in common, except for the way they came along at a crucial moment in cinema history, when new methods were ripe for synthesis. "Birth of a Nation'' brought together the developing language of shots and editing. "Citizen Kane'' married special effects, advanced sound, a new photographic style and a freedom from linear storytelling. "Star Wars'' melded a new generation of special effects with the high-energy action picture; it linked space opera and soap opera, fairy tales and legend, and packaged them as a wild visual ride.

"Star Wars'' effectively brought to an end the golden era of early-1970s personal filmmaking and focused the industry on big-budget special-effects blockbusters, blasting off a trend we are still living through. But you can't blame it for what it did, you can only observe how well it did it. In one way or another all the big studios have been trying to make another "Star Wars'' ever since (pictures like "Raiders of the Lost Ark,'' "Jurassic Park'' and "Independence Day'' are its heirs). It located Hollywood's center of gravity at the intellectual and emotional level of a bright teenager.

It's possible, however, that as we grow older we retain within the tastes of our earlier selves. How else to explain how much fun "Star Wars'' is, even for those who think they don't care for science fiction? It's a good-hearted film in every single frame, and shining through is the gift of a man who knew how to link state of the art technology with a deceptively simple, really very powerful, story. It was not by accident that George Lucas worked with Joseph Campbell, an expert on the world's basic myths, in fashioning a screenplay that owes much to man's oldest stories.  Funny enough Star Wars a New Hope isn't even my favourite Star Wars film, that would be Empire and Awakens.  But there is simply no denying the impact this film has had on my life.  It's the quintessential moment in so many of my friends lives and now that a lot of them have kids, they are being introduced to the stories at a young age....and loving them...just like we did.

[baumer]

Top 5 later today.

 

Here are some quotes from the remaining films:

 

"Oh you are so naive...operation Mongoose."

"Mom I got bit by a vampire"

"He tricked us......."

"You're the genius in the family, you have absolute power, remember?!"

[RandomCat]

I promise not to get on a Hitchcock thing. Psycho is a great movie, and just a great example of Hitchcock's sense of humor. his tease of the audience with one story, only for it to swerve into different territory. I could spend all day writing about this movie and just about anything Hitchcock has done. But I won't.

 

Star Wars? Never heard of it.

[IronJimbo]

Avatar top 5? I don't recognise those quotes from Baumer tho

Edited June 6, 2016 by IronJimbo

[misafeco]

Avatar will be #1 @IronJimbo. The single most influental film of all time. Changed cinema forever.

[langer]

6 minutes ago, misafeco said:

Avatar will be #1 @IronJimbo. The single most influental film of all time. Changed cinema forever.

 

It changed the movie industry.  3D was a big part of the last 7 years.  Storywise, it's a standard good vs evil and self discovery journey. 

[baumer]

Number 5

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

Henry Thomas, Drew Barrymore, Dee Wallace

Directed by Steven Spielberg

"I'm right here"

 

   

 

 

Box office:  435 million and 792 WW

Quick: The film that made me love Spielberg

Imdb summary:  A group of aliens visit earth and one of them is lost and left behind stranded on this planet. The alien is found by a 10 year old boy, Elliot. Soon the two begin to communicate, and start a different kind of friendship in which E.T learns about life on earth and Elliot learns about some new values for the true meaning of friendship. E.T. wants to go home, but if Elliot helps him, he'll lose a friend.

Why it's important:  

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American epic science fiction family film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Melissa Mathison, featuring special effects by Carlo Rambaldi and Dennis Muren, and starring Henry Thomas, Dee Wallace, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore and Peter Coyote. It tells the story of Elliott (Thomas), a lonely boy who befriends an extraterrestrial, dubbed "E.T.", who is stranded on Earth. He and his siblings help it return home while attempting to keep it hidden from their mother and the government.

The concept for the film was based on an imaginary friend Spielberg created after his parents' divorce in 1960. In 1980, Spielberg met Mathison and developed a new story from the stalled science fiction/horror film project Night Skies. It was shot from September to December 1981 in California on a budget of US $10.5 million. Unlike most motion pictures, it was shot in rough chronological order, to facilitate convincing emotional performances from the young cast.

Released on June 11, 1982 by Universal Pictures, E.T was a blockbuster, surpassing Star Wars to become the highest-grossing film of all time—a record it held for eleven years until Jurassic Park, another Spielberg-directed film, surpassed it in 1993. It is the highest-grossing film of the 1980s. Widely regarded as one of the greatest films of all time, critics acclaimed it as a timeless story of friendship, and it ranks as the greatest science fiction film ever made in a Rotten Tomatoes survey. In 1994, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was re-released in 1985, and then again in 2002 to celebrate its 20th anniversary, with altered shots and additional scenes.

Why it's important to me:  E.T. is incredibly personal to me.  In essence, it's a story about a kid who misses his dad as his parents were recently divorced.  He meets ET, who is alone and misses his family.  When I first saw ET, my parents were on the verge of divorce.  I instantly related to both characters and this is something that instantly resonated with me.  We all need friends, we all need someone in our desperate times to tell us everything is going to be ok.  Elliott finds that in ET.  They bond and they have a connection, literally and spiritually.  For a young boy my age (10) to be going through the traumatic experience of your parents talking divorce every day, and to find some kind of synergy in this film, it was priceless.  Spielberg nails the isolation and hurt one feels as a young kid going through this.  ET might be about an alien that needs to go home but deep down it's about loneliness and acceptance and friendship.  In 1982, this was the Titanic of the time.  Theaters were filled with blurred eyes and blown noses, sobbing women, children and grown men.  Funny enough, I was unable to cry during this movie.  I was perhaps the only one.  I'm not sure why, maybe my insides were so hardened from everything I was going through.  It's the complete opposite today.  I can't even hear John William's theme for E.T. without getting weepy.  This movie, more than Raiders and even more than Jaws, made me fall in love with Spielberg.  For the longest time, it was my favourite movie.  Jaws eventually surpassed it but it still remains in my top three.

 

Here's my review from the 20th anniversary release:  

 

 

Everyone gets lost in nostalgia from time to time. Many of us vividly recall the days when the most important thing you had to do that afternoon was find a place to stay cool or to make sure that all of your friends were willing to go on whatever adventure you wanted to embark on. For me, those days were the years between 1980 and 1987. At this time I was between the ages of 8 and 15. This was a time when some of the greatest movies were ever made for a teenaged boy. The genesis of film was started in my life with films like First Blood, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, The Goonies, Back To The Future and of course E.T.

Being that movies were such an intricate part of my young life and these experiences shaped me into the man that I am today, it is easy to recall with reverence the entire experience that went with those films. E.T. is a rare film however, because it is an experience that just gets better with age.

There was a theater in Windsor Ontario, where I spent my youth called the Vanity, located on Oullette Street, right near Wyandotte. This one theater was the place to be when the blockbsuters arrived. It was a one celled theater that managed to flourish in a time which pre-dated multi plexes with arcades and Pizza Hut's.

When the sequel to Star Wars arrived, the Vanity proudly played it. Same with Raiders and it's sequels and of course E.T. E.T. was a film that me and my best friend Gary had to see because it was Spielberg. Even though we were ten years old, we knew that Spielberg had given us great films like Jaws, Close Encounters and Raiders of the Lost Ark. I am not sure if it is normal at the age of ten but we rushed out to see E.T. because we knew who directed it. What a phenom this tiny film turned out to be and what a life changing experience the whole film was.

When you are ten and you see a movie with your best friend who watches the A-Team and Conan the Barbarian with you, you expect a certain reaction from him. After all, this same friend enjoys playing football at lunch and enjoys inflicting pain in a barbaric pasttime called the "The Tripping Game", therefore you don't expect a film to affect you and your macho friend the way E.T. did. When you are ten, you go to the movies to see things like lightsabre duels and heroes with bullwhips being lowered into the Well of the Souls and maybe the occasional breast shot. What you don't expect is a film to manipulate your emotional realm thh way E.T. did and still does. Most of my friends who saw E.T. bawled their eyes out at the age of ten. I, for some unexplainable reason did not. I loved the film but it wouldn't be for another six years that I cried in my first film. That was She's Having A Baby when Kate Bush sang Woman's Work and made me sob uncontrollably as I watched Kevin Bacon lose his unborn child. Some things can't be explained.

E.T. became one of my favourite films and I saw it again on its re-release in 1985, bought the poster, purchased the movie on VHS and told everyone who would listen that E.T. got robbed at the 82 Oscars when it lost every major category to (snicker snicker) Gandhi. There have been some Oscar travesties but this ( along with Annie Hall defeating Star Wars and Cuckoo's Nest beating Jaws ) had to be up there as one of the most ridiculous snubs ever. I was peeved. What a joke. But all of the cranky and derelict academy members seethed with contempt and jealousy because they couldn't accept the fact that a man this young could really be this much of a genius. In fact he made the rest of the folks in Hollywood look young compared to himself.

As the years passed I became a film lover, a movie buff and I tried to see any and every film out there. And I did. It's not that E.T. became an after-thought, it's just that it became one of those films that just sat it my collection and wasn't utilized often enough. When I made my revised top 25 list, E.T. would always hover around number 20. That is not an indictment of the quality of E.T., it's just that my tastes became more garnered to horror films and the sheer brilliance of E.T. was stored in the catacombs of my mind. That all changed on March 24th, 2002. This is ironic because my wife and I had the whole day planned. We were going to see E.T. at the theater and then come home and watch the 24 hour Oscar-a-thon. And in a year when an inferior film like A Beautiful Mind takes top honours from the much more ambitious and deserving Lord of the Rings, it reminded me of 20 years ago. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Seeing E.T. after a 17 year hiatus was nothing short of uplifting. My excitement was gushing and when John Williams' ever recognizable score reverberated over the sound system, I was hooked and it felt like I was ten all over again. I also noticed that the audience was an eclectic mix of young kids, 30 somethings like myself and the elderly. All of us were there because we either wanted to experience it for the first time or because we wanted to feel what it was like that first time we saw it 20 years ago.

I think I liked E.T. when I was ten but this time around I developed a deep level of respect for it. E.T. is simply one of the finest films ever made and if you have not seen the film in the theater then you have no idea what you are missing. Everything about this film is perfect, and there really aren't many films around I can say that about. Even some of my personal favourites have moments of weakness but not E.T. There has never really been another movie that has offered the experience that E.T. does. And when I said that I didn't shed a tear while watching E.T., that has all changed. I think there were about five moments in E.T. that had me holding back the tears. You can analyze the film, psychologically deconstruct it and tell me that the reason the film works so well is because of the feeling of loneliness and comradery and I will agree with you. But I don't really care about that. What it comes down to is that E.T. is a film that will touch you in a way that no other film before could do and no other film after it can. 1982 was a different time for film and it was a different time as a civilization. And E.T. encompassed all of that. If I had to make my revised top 25 list, E.T. would be number 2, right behind Jaws and ahead of JFK, Halloween, American Beauty and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

If you have not seen E.T. at the theaters since 1985, please I urge you, go see it again. It is a film experience that is indefeasible. It is also a film that should be looked upon as a paradigm for which all movies should try to emulate. There is a reason that films like E.T. and Star Wars and Raiders make the money they do. And there is also a reason they stay firmly planted in our memories. That is because they mean something and they stand for something. Those are the qualities in film that transcend time and they transcend the generations.

10 out of 10----What more can be said?

[IronJimbo]

18 minutes ago, langer said:

 

It changed the movie industry.  3D was a big part of the last 7 years.  Storywise, it's a standard good vs evil and self discovery journey. 

 

Exactly.

 

Technology is a massive part of cinema, Avatar was an INCREDIBLE push in technology.

New Cameras for 3D, cutting edge CGI. First application of 3D used perfectly. Amazing, Fantastic, simply incredible. We were all on Pandora.

 

Afterall guys,

 

If it wasn't for technology we would still be watching flip book animation.

Edited June 6, 2016 by IronJimbo

[baumer]

I agree Avatar is important historically speaking.  

[Jake Gittes]

7 hours ago, RandomJC said:

But I'll do Citizen Kane. I tried watching it once when I was in my teens, and didn't stick. I think I still have the DVD, may try again some day. But my biggest problem with the movie is it's "Best Movie Ever" kind of placement. The idea that the best film ever made, was made 70 years ago and that nothing can be made better bothers me to no end. The blind loyalty some film people have to Citizen Kane also bothers me.

 

Yeah, I said this a while back in another topic but that kind of reputation is more of a curse than a blessing for any movie. It's not entirely possible at this point but you gotta try watching it without the "Best Movie Ever" thing in mind. And I'd assume it would play better when you're older, since it's largely about a longing for the idealized past and that kind of thing doesn't really hit you until you've gained some perspective on life. Though I guess Welles himself is an exception since he made it when he was all of 25. Still seems crazy to me.

[IronJimbo]

27 minutes ago, Baumer said:

I agree Avatar is incredibly historically speaking.  

 

I really thought it was going to be on this list ;o

 

Perhaps it's too recent of a film to be on it.

[JohnnyGossamer]

10 minutes ago, Jake Gittes said:

 

Yeah, I said this a while back in another topic but that kind of reputation is more of a curse than a blessing for any movie. It's not entirely possible at this point but you gotta try watching it without the "Best Movie Ever" thing in mind. And I'd assume it would play better when you're older, since it's largely about a longing for the idealized past and that kind of thing doesn't really hit you until you've gained some perspective on life. Though I guess Welles himself is an exception since he made it when he was all of 25. Still seems crazy to me.

It's why it's tough to tell anyone your personal favorite too. Because, sometimes folks that aren't movie nuts will be pretty dismissive if your favorite few don't resonate with their taste. Someone asks me my favorites, I tell 'em mine. I certainly don't tell that they have to be their favorites though.

[JohnnyGossamer]

By the way, Baumer. Good stuff. While I don't love Instinct, I've always liked it. I didn't realize, until reading your list now, just how easily folks dismissed it.

Edited June 6, 2016 by JohnnyGossamer