BOT's Top 100 Movies of All Time - Hindsight is 2020 Edition

[MrPink]

Heat.

 

[MrGamer]

[The Panda]

7 minutes ago, The Panda said:

 

 

 

 

Vote count is a typo it should say 13 votes

Edited July 21, 2020 by The Panda

[cannastop]

7 minutes ago, MrPink said:

Heat.

 

Heat

[Ethan Hunt]

Heat

[MrGamer]

6 minutes ago, The Panda said:

Vote count is a typo it should say 13 votes

Also there’s a 3 in front of that 5 in the top header. Making a lot of mistakes.

[Daxtreme]

Those near misses are hard-hitting

[The Panda]

 

 

"WHERE IS MY SUPER SUIT?"

 

About the Movie

 

Synopsis

 

"Bob Parr (A.K.A. Mr. Incredible), and his wife Helen (A.K.A. Elastigirl), are the world's greatest famous crime-fighting superheroes in Metroville. Always saving lives and battling evil on a daily basis. But fifteen years later, they have been forced to adopt civilian identities and retreat to the suburbs where they have no choice but to retire as superheroes to live a "normal life" with their three children Violet, Dash and Jack-Jack (who were secretly born with superpowers). Itching to get back into action, Bob gets his chance when a mysterious communication summons him to a remote island for a top secret assignment. He soon discovers that it will take a super family effort to rescue the world from total destruction." - IMDb

 

Its Legacy

 

"There’s a selfishness to superheroism. And in The Incredibles, that selfishness is conflated with the complex era that is 1960’s America. At first glance, circa 1960s America is a kind of glistening, gilded Golden Age. Riding on the economic boom of the second World War, successfully suppressing the soon-to-burst frustrations of black Americans and the various social minorities that would follow black mobilization and outrage during the exciting, exhausting, frustrating struggle of the Civil Rights movement in the following decade. The '60s can be looked back on “fondly” as a perfect ideal of white heteronormative social power and control, an actual manifestation of what America could be if the various social groups that contributed – mostly unwillingly and forcibly – to the establishment and maintenance of the world’s youngest Super Power were successfully kept constrained while the white men and women retained social advantage of America’s prosperity.

 

Even if director Brad Bird insists that The Incredibles isn’t a 1:1 representation of Objectivism – the selfish, individualistic, anti-altruistic, hyper-capitalistic pseudo-philosophy formulated by Ayn Rand, whose worldview was in part an extreme response to growing up in Russia’s totalitarian Communist society – it’s hard to ignore that the Parr family is the kind of idyllic White Nuclear Family that the conflation of Objectivism and modern conservatism seeks to capitalistically support and maintain. A white guy named Bob, married to a beautiful wife with three children, all of whom have the same advantage their parents have: superpowers. His black best friend, the ice shooter Frozone, has powers too, suggesting an adjacency to the Parr family that Frozone’s wife Honey – a strong-willed black woman, without powers, who exists in the world of The Incredibles as a disembodied voice – doesn’t have. Plus, Frozone’s blackness comes more from his mannerisms than his racial identity and potential struggle. Because the Parr’s are a white family in 1960s America, the focus is still on them. Outside problems are periphery, and the threats they deal with as superheroes are mostly eccentric, foreign thieves and bank robbers – threats to American wealth and safety – while the threats of racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism and etc. still remain under the surface of the mainstream cultural conscience and, by extension, unnoticed by the watchful eyes of the Supers.

 

What’s interesting about Bird’s depiction of this setting is how those social problems lightly manifest themselves. Supers are banned by the government after Mr. Incredible is sued for injuring a man while he was saving that man from killing himself. The case begets a snowball effect of citizens suing Supers for collateral damage, resulting in a series of lawsuits too expensive for the government to maintain. They solve this by making super heroics illegal, and force Supers to go into hiding. Through an Objectivist lens, this could read that the strong individualists, Supers, are being limited from their abilities and potential by the meddling Federal government trying to protect the weak. The scary thing about that particular reading is that Objectivism, in its insistence on a competitive leveling-ground no matter the setting, stubbornly views social inequality as weakness on the part of the oppressed. According to Rand, the black girl who grew up in a project is already on the same playing field as the white boy who grew up with two Harvard professors as parents. Because they were both born in a capitalistic society, where the illusion is that hard work is all that’s needed to succeed. The various social leverages and opportunities the white boy has that the black girl doesn’t don’t actually matter. So when the government levels things out – which only ever happened after black people campaigned and lobbied and demonstrated and appealed until the courts would gradually, but reluctantly, grant them their due rights as citizens – the white people with power suddenly feel oppressed."

- Mustafar Yasar II

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

 

 

Why It's the Greatest

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Like any good movie about work The Incredibles starts out showing Bob and Helen Parr’s potential to do great things- to be super.  But through a brilliant opening montage we learn they must hide their abilities and attempt to live a normal life.  For Helen this means be a housewife to her 3 children which she can tolerate enough. However, for Bob it means working in what I call ‘cubicle hell’ in a job selling insurance policies.  This is not who Bob is.  Other people could be perfectly happy selling insurance but he is miserable because he was made for better things. I know how that feels.  I’ve been in that cubicle knowing I could do more, be more, and it is the worst feeling ever.  Sure bad things happen all the time but it is a different kind of awful to be stuck permanently with an unhappy mediocre life

 

Syndrome might be a little scary for small children (I’m so bad at gauging that).  Some of the work and marriage drama might be a bit over their heads but it is surrounded by the kids who I think children will really relate too. They will enjoy the action and the story is simple enough for them to understand.  The Incredibles is a movie you can watch with your entire family because it is about a family.   They are dysfunctional at times and quarrel but so does every family.  In the end they all want what is best for each other . They all want their family to be safe and happy.  the movie is the journey that gets them a little closer to that goal.  I love it.  And like I said if you piece it apart it is one of the best movies about work I’ve seen."

- Rachel Wagner, Rachel's Reviews

 

User Opinion

 

"The best supehero animated film outside Warners Animation right here.   Where/When will we get more of this? It's a shame, heck a crime, we haven't had another installment of The Incredibles." - @Captain Craig

 

The Panda's Haiku

 

For some weird reason

 

Pixar prioritized what?

 

Cars and planes movies?

 

 

Factoids

 

Placement on Prior Lists

 

2012 - 89, 2013 - 47, 2014 - 29, 2016 - 32, 2018 - 36

 

Director Count

 

Alfred Hitchock - 4, Stanley Kubrick - 4, Richard Linklater - 3, The Russo Brothers - 3, Lee Unkrich - 3, Brad Bird - 2, Alfonso Cuaron - 2,  David Fincher - 2, Akira Kurosawa - 2, John Lasseter - 2,  Sergio Leone - 2, John McTiernan - 2, Hayao Miyazaki - 2, Steven Spielberg - 2, Andrew Stanton - 2, Roger Allers - 1, John G. Avildsen - 1, Ash Brannon - 1, Mel Brooks - 1, Frank Capra - 1, James Cameron - 1, John Carpenter - 1, Damien Chazelle - 1, Ron Clements - 1, Francis Ford Coppola - 1, Stanley Donen - 1, Clint Eastwood - 1,Terry Gilliam - 1, Michel Gondry - 1, Peter Jackson - 1, Rian Johnson - 1, Terry Jones - 1, Gene Kelly - 1, David Lean - 1, David Lynch - 1, Katia Lund - 1, Michael Mann - 1, Fernando Meirelles - 1, Rob Minkoff - 1, Adrian Molina - 1, John Musker - 1, Christopher Nolan - 1, Bob Persichetti - 1, Jan Pinkava - 1, Sam Raimi - 1, Peter Ramsey - 1, Rodney Rotham - 1,   Martin Scorsese - 1, Quentin Tarantino - 1, Guillermo del Toro - 1, Gary Trousdale - 1, Orson Welles - 1, Peter Weir - 1, Billy Wilder - 1, Kirk Wise - 1, Kar-Wai Wong - 1, Robert Zemeckis - 1

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar - 8, Marvel Cinematic Universe - 3, Toy Story - 3, WDAS - 3, Before Trilogy - 2, Spider-Man - 2,  Studio Ghibli - 2, Cameron - 1, Die Hard - 1, Incredibles - 1, Indiana Jones - 1, The Lord of the Rings - 1, Monty Python - 1, Nolan - 1, Predator - 1, Rocky - 1, Scorsese -1, Star Wars - 1, Terminator - 1

 

Decade Count

 

1940s - 2, 1950s - 6, 1960s - 6, 1970s - 5, 1980s - 8, 1990s - 12, 2000s - 15, 2010s - 12

 

 

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by The Panda

[Madhuvan]

Incredibles is ❤️

[The Panda]

 

 

"I realize now how much she's just like the others, cold and distant, and many people are like that, women for sure, they're like a union."

 

About the Movie

 

Synopsis

 

"Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner who has strong opinions about what is right and wrong with mankind. For him, the one bright spot in New York humanity is Betsy, a worker on the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Charles Palantine. He becomes obsessed with her. After an incident with her, he believes he has to do whatever he needs to make the world a better place in his opinion. One of his priorities is to be the savior for Iris, a twelve-year-old runaway and prostitute who he believes wants out of the profession and under the thumb of her pimp and lover Matthew." - IMDb

 

Its Legacy

 

" It's been 40 years since "Taxi Driver" first hit theaters, grabbing us by the throat and dragging us into Travis Bickle's dark, twisted world.  The film, which starred Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster and Harvey Keitel, was an instant classic, the 12th top-grossing movie of 1976, and earned four Academy Award nominations and Cannes' prestigious Palme d’Or. It also established the careers of director Martin Scorsese and star De Niro and cemented their on-screen partnership.  "Taxi Driver" not only changed the movies, it changed history. Here are five ways:

 

1. "Taxi Driver" established director Scorsese, then 33, as Hollywood's premier auteur, whose influence would be later felt by a new generation of New Wave filmmakers, including Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino.

 

2. Coming off his Oscar win for "The Godfather: Part II," De Niro turned down half-million dollar offers to star in "Taxi Driver," his second collaboration with Scorsese. It sealed his reputation as one of Hollywood's greatest actors, while the character he embodied, Travis Bickle, became a classic, alongside other iconic characters such as Dirty Harry and Norman Bates.

 

3. Bickle's iconic line, "You talkin’ to me?" became one of film's most recognized and is included in the top 10 most famous movie lines by the American Film Institute. Screenwriter, Paul Schrader later said, "It’s the best thing in the movie, and I didn’t write it." De Niro, who improvised the entire monologue which included that famous line, borrowed it from Bruce Springsteen, whom he’d seen perform in Greenwich Village just days earlier.

 

4. Scorsese’s portrait of New York City in 1976 was dark, cramped and filled with garbage -- the latter of which, it turns out, was real. In the summer of 1975, when he shot the film, a sanitation workers’ strike left garbage piled on the streets and sidewalks. The film, Scorsese’s farewell to his hometown, also signaled the end of an era in New York. The Checker cabs, grimy neighborhoods and Times Square of the movie no longer exist.

 

5. Schrader's script was inspired in part by the failed political assassination of presidential hopeful George Wallace in 1972. In the film, Bickle plots to assassinate presidential candidate Senator Palantine after he is rebuffed by Palantine's campaign volunteer, Betsy, played by Cybill Shepherd. Five years later, John Hinckley, Jr., who was fixated on the film and its star Jodie Foster, mimicked Bickle's mohawked appearance from the film and attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. White House Press Secretary James Brady was paralyzed after the shooting and Hinckley, who was found not guilty by reason of insanity, remains under institutional psychiatric care."

- Luchina Fiscer, ABC

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

 

 

Why It's the Greatest

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Some motion pictures produce the uncanny sensation of returning the spectator’s gaze. Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver—a movie in which the most celebrated line asks the audience, “Are you talkin’ to me?”—is one such film. It came, it saw, it zapped the body politic right between the eyes.  The 12th top-grossing movie of 1976, Taxi Driver was not just a hit but, like Psycho or Bonnie and Clyde, an event in American popular culture—perhaps even an intervention. Inspired by one failed political assassination (the 1972 shooting of presidential hopeful George Wallace), it inadvertently motivated another (the 1981 attempt on President Ronald Reagan). The movie further established its 33-year-old director as both Hollywood’s designated artist and, after Taxi Driver was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes, an international sensation—the decisive influence on neo–New Wave filmmakers as varied as Spike Lee, Wong Kar-wai, and Quentin Tarantino.

 

Scorsese didn’t direct Taxi Driver so much as orchestrate its elements. Lasting nearly 20 minutes and fueled by Bernard Herrmann’s rhapsodic score, the de facto overture is a densely edited salmagundi of effects—slow motion, fragmenting close-ups, voluptuous camera moves, and trick camera placement—that may be the showiest pure filmmaking in any Hollywood movie since Touch of Evil. Certainly no American since Welles had so confidently presented himself as a star director. And yet Taxi Driver was essentially collaborative. It was the most cinephilic movie ever made in Hollywood, openly acknowledging Bresson, Hitchcock, Godard, avant-gardists Michael Snow and Kenneth Anger, and the John Ford of The Searchers. Moreover, the movie’s antihero, Travis Bickle—a homicidal combination of Dirty Harry and Norman Bates who describes himself as God’s Lonely Man—sprang from the brain of former film critic Paul Schrader and, as embodied for all eternity by the young Robert De Niro, all but instantly became a classic character in the American narrative alongside Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield.

 

It was while Taxi Driver was in post-production that the Daily News ran the headline “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” The movie is Scorsese’s hometown farewell (a love letter quite different from Woody Allen’s). Like Nero, he torches the joint and picks up his lyre. Taxi Driver is a vision of a world that already knows it is lost. A third of a century later, the Checker cabs are gone, as are the taxi garages at the end of 57th Street and the all-night Belmore cafeteria. Times Square has been sanitized, the pestilent combat zone at Third Avenue and 13th Street where Iris peddles her underage charms has long since been gentrified. New York is no longer the planet’s designated Hell on Earth. (Six years after Taxi Driver , Blade Runner would dramatize a new urban space.)  No nostalgia, though: In other aspects, the world of Taxi Driver is recognizably ours. Libidinal politics, celebrity worship, sexual exploitation, the fetishization of guns and violence, racial stereotyping, the fear of foreigners—not to mention the promise of apocalyptic religion—all remain. Taxi Driver lives. See it again. And try to have a nice day."

- J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

 

User Opinion

 

"the best performance of all time is in this movie..." - @CoolioD1

 

The Panda's Haiku

 

Driving the dark streets

 

About ready to let go

 

A society

 

 

Factoids

 

Placement on Prior Lists

 

2012 - 26, 2013 - 39, 2014 - 64, 2016 - 27, 2018 - 63

 

Director Count

 

Alfred Hitchock - 4, Stanley Kubrick - 4, Richard Linklater - 3, The Russo Brothers - 3, Lee Unkrich - 3, Brad Bird - 2, Alfonso Cuaron - 2,  David Fincher - 2, Akira Kurosawa - 2, John Lasseter - 2,  Sergio Leone - 2, John McTiernan - 2, Hayao Miyazaki - 2, Martin Scorsese - 2, Steven Spielberg - 2, Andrew Stanton - 2, Roger Allers - 1, John G. Avildsen - 1, Ash Brannon - 1, Mel Brooks - 1, Frank Capra - 1, James Cameron - 1, John Carpenter - 1, Damien Chazelle - 1, Ron Clements - 1, Francis Ford Coppola - 1, Stanley Donen - 1, Clint Eastwood - 1,Terry Gilliam - 1, Michel Gondry - 1, Peter Jackson - 1, Rian Johnson - 1, Terry Jones - 1, Gene Kelly - 1, David Lean - 1, David Lynch - 1, Katia Lund - 1, Michael Mann - 1, Fernando Meirelles - 1, Rob Minkoff - 1, Adrian Molina - 1, John Musker - 1, Christopher Nolan - 1, Bob Persichetti - 1, Jan Pinkava - 1, Sam Raimi - 1, Peter Ramsey - 1, Rodney Rotham - 1,  Quentin Tarantino - 1, Guillermo del Toro - 1, Gary Trousdale - 1, Orson Welles - 1, Peter Weir - 1, Billy Wilder - 1, Kirk Wise - 1, Kar-Wai Wong - 1, Robert Zemeckis - 1

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar - 8, Marvel Cinematic Universe - 3, Toy Story - 3, WDAS - 3, Before Trilogy - 2, Scorsese -2, Spider-Man - 2,  Studio Ghibli - 2, Cameron - 1, Die Hard - 1, Incredibles - 1, Indiana Jones - 1, The Lord of the Rings - 1, Monty Python - 1, Nolan - 1, Predator - 1, Rocky - 1, Star Wars - 1, Terminator - 1

 

Decade Count

 

1940s - 2, 1950s - 6, 1960s - 6, 1970s - 6, 1980s - 8, 1990s - 12, 2000s - 15, 2010s - 12

 

 

 

[Jake Gittes]

Don't let yourself get attached to any movie you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat if you see Heat ranking below #1 on the all-time list, BOT.

[The Panda]

 

 

"How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!"

 

 

About the Movie

 

Synopsis

 

"57 years after Ellen Ripley had a close encounter with the reptilian alien creature from the first movie, she is called back, this time, to help a group of highly trained colonial marines fight off against the sinister extraterrestrials. But this time, the aliens have taken over a space colony on the moon LV-426. When the colonial marines are called upon to search the deserted space colony, they later find out that they are up against more than what they bargained for. Using specially modified machine guns and enough firepower, it's either fight or die as the space marines battle against the aliens. As the Marines do their best to defend themselves, Ripley must attempt to protect a young girl who is the sole survivor of the decimated space colony."

 

Its Legacy

 

"In 1986, “Aliens” changed action movies forever, because it asked one question: “How do you depict a female lead in a male-dominated genre?” These are the words of Fandor Keyframe (via No Film School) in their latest video essay, “Why Aliens is the Mother of All Action Movies,” which demonstrates how Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, went from an “independent, resilient and resourceful” final girl in the tradition of other horror films before Ridley Scott’s “Alien” to the badass gamechanger in James Cameron’s sequel. It was accomplished with two simple changes: the genre switched from sci-fi horror to sci-fi action, and the thematic focus shifted to motherhood.  

 

Contrasting with the hyper-masculinity found in action flicks starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, “Aliens” served as a template for modern action heroines and made Ripley the mother to those strong female characters, the ones eventually seen in “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (also directed by James Cameron), “Kill Bill” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” to name a handful. Through the mother-daughter relationship she shares with Newt, as well as her trauma and grief found from her own deceased daughter, Ripley is defined by her complex emotions as much as she is her take charge attitude and cool professionalism. That’s the ultimate key to her impact on film history, particularly blockbuster filmmaking. It helped to prove herself as one of the most complex, emotionally driven and layered movie protagonists ever."

- Will Ashton, The Playlist

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

 

 

Why It's the Greatest

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Every time I watch the 1986 action-horror classic “Aliens,” a film I’ve watched so many times I’ve lost count, it takes on new meaning. I’ve long argued its merits as a metaphor for a woman enduring sexism in the workplace, due to the many trials Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley faces over the three films.  In 1979’s “Alien,” Ripley’s an officer on the Nostromo who survives the infiltration of an alien that turns out to be quite the killing machine — it wipes out her entire crew — only by getting into an escape pod, setting the cargo ship she’s co-commanded to self-destruct and eventually blowing the intruder out of an airlock.

 

 I was the most junior member and one of three women on a team of arts writers and critics, eager to rack up bylines and work hard and please a manager who would never be happy with me.    My boss — also a woman, might I add — made sport of saying negative things about me in front of the rest of the staff during our stand-ups. One of her favorite past times was to performatively read mail disparaging something I’d wrote, laughing and occasionally offering, “This is really good!”  I developed migraines. One of them temporarily blinded me in one eye while I was typing. Blowing a deadline was not an option, so I said nothing and finished my story. After it was filed a co-worker who had noticed my silent distress, quietly reached in his drawer and handed me a low-dose prescription sedative.  On days like that, the worst days, I’d head home and shove my battered VHS tape of “Aliens” into my VCR, which was always left cued up to the climactic scene where Ripley flies back to the collapsing heart of the colony on a moon called LV-426, straight to the alien hive to save Rebecca “Newt” Jorden, the little girl who is the terraformed outpost’s last survivor.

 

Time is short on two fronts: First, the colony’s nuclear-powered energy source is about to explode, blowing the entire moon to dust.  Second, at any time an alien “facehugger,” the smaller, arachnid-like versions of the beast, could attach itself to Newt, forcing its embryo down her throat and dooming her.  Weaver’s performance in this movie earned her an Academy Award nomination, and those moments prove how deserving that nod is — those silent, subtle emotional shifts. As she ventures deeper into the hive, she has no lines, only the determination and anxiety on her face. When she retrieves Newt and stumbles into the heart of the alien lair, a place carpeted with eggs and ruled over by a gigantic, hissing alien queen, her jaw slackens, and her eyes widen with fear.

 

In the years since “Aliens” first came out people have debated Ripley’s merits as a feminist action hero, for reasons beyond the fact that she was created by men — screenwriters Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett brought the character into existence, but her mettle and fury is pure James Cameron, who wrote the script for “Aliens.”  Beyond dispute is the film's timeless worth as a cathartic work, especially in terms of its accidental commentary on the sexism of the corporate structure.  During the mission the inexperienced lieutenant in charge ignores her warnings to pull back the team, freezing up when the aliens overrun them and slaughter all but three. It’s Ripley who has to drive the tank in to save them, and Ripley who has to construct the plan to keep them safe once they find shelter. Even then, after Burke attempts to enable a facehugger to “impregnate” Ripley and Newt to get an alien back to his employers and past quarantine, Ripley has to state her side to the remaining Marines who don’t quite buy the basis of her accusation. That is, until she informs them that in order for Burke’s plan to work, he’d have to kill any witnesses — as in, the grunts.  His reply to this? “This is so nuts. I mean, listen. . . listen to what you’re saying! It’s paranoid delusion. It’s really sad! It’s pathetic.” It’s all so familiar. All that’s missing is some tears.

 

Most fans, men and women, may not take that into account when they laud her unyielding spirit and nerve. Purely by surviving one of the universe’s fiercest predatory species not once, not twice, but many times, Ripley has justified her place in the Pop Culture Badass Hall of Fame.  But some of us love Ripley because we feel a version of what Weaver poured into her, we’ve always felt it.  And there are times that place us under siege, like now, when we feel it in our skin. When we witness the timeless, cold honesty these films show in action, in our own world — that as horrifying as these insect-like aliens are, “you don’t see them f**king each other over for a goddamn percentage.”  Ripley always manages to survive even if, ultimately, she’s never able to overcome. There’s a message there too.  The larger one is that Ripley’s spirit is always available to shore us up, roaring loudly that no, we're not wrong, that our rage is a perfectly reasonable reaction, even when she doesn’t say a word. Just skip to that perfect spot – the one hour, 49 minute mark of “Aliens.” By then the movie is almost over. But the fight in Ripley will never be done."

- Melanie MacFarland, The Salon

 

User Opinion

 

"I thought this was a sequel to E.T.

 

Not enough cuddling.
D+" - @Plain Old Tele

 

"Cameron just has a way to make movies entertaining no matter how long they are. Aliens has some great action, but the focus is on Ripley and her evolution from survivor to heroine - now thats how you make a fantastic female protagonist! Weaver was already great in the first one, but nearly all of her most memorable moments are from this movie. The only small downside is that even tough i have a very good Blu-Ray version of this film, the effects show some age and some of the sets are reminiscent of the Star Trek TV Show in the 60s which is actually not really a negative, it adds to the charme. All in all, this is one of the best movies of teh 80s and for me the second best sequel of all time after T2." - @Brainbug

 

The Panda's Haiku

 

Weaver as Ripley

 

An inspiration to all

 

Blast those aliens

 

 

Factoids

 

Placement on Prior Lists

 

2012 - 54, 2013 - 36, 2014 - 72, 2016 - 79, 2018 - 37

 

Director Count

 

Alfred Hitchock - 4, Stanley Kubrick - 4, Richard Linklater - 3, The Russo Brothers - 3, Lee Unkrich - 3, Brad Bird - 2, James Cameron - 2, Alfonso Cuaron - 2,  David Fincher - 2, Akira Kurosawa - 2, John Lasseter - 2,  Sergio Leone - 2, John McTiernan - 2, Hayao Miyazaki - 2, Martin Scorsese - 2, Steven Spielberg - 2, Andrew Stanton - 2, Roger Allers - 1, John G. Avildsen - 1, Ash Brannon - 1, Mel Brooks - 1, Frank Capra - 1, John Carpenter - 1, Damien Chazelle - 1, Ron Clements - 1, Francis Ford Coppola - 1, Stanley Donen - 1, Clint Eastwood - 1,Terry Gilliam - 1, Michel Gondry - 1, Peter Jackson - 1, Rian Johnson - 1, Terry Jones - 1, Gene Kelly - 1, David Lean - 1, David Lynch - 1, Katia Lund - 1, Michael Mann - 1, Fernando Meirelles - 1, Rob Minkoff - 1, Adrian Molina - 1, John Musker - 1, Christopher Nolan - 1, Bob Persichetti - 1, Jan Pinkava - 1, Sam Raimi - 1, Peter Ramsey - 1, Rodney Rotham - 1,  Quentin Tarantino - 1, Guillermo del Toro - 1, Gary Trousdale - 1, Orson Welles - 1, Peter Weir - 1, Billy Wilder - 1, Kirk Wise - 1, Kar-Wai Wong - 1, Robert Zemeckis - 1

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar - 8, Marvel Cinematic Universe - 3, Toy Story - 3, WDAS - 3, Before Trilogy - 2, Scorsese -2, Spider-Man - 2,  Studio Ghibli - 2, Alien - 1, Cameron - 1, Die Hard - 1, Incredibles - 1, Indiana Jones - 1, The Lord of the Rings - 1, Monty Python - 1, Nolan - 1, Predator - 1, Rocky - 1, Star Wars - 1, Terminator - 1

 

Decade Count

 

1940s - 2, 1950s - 6, 1960s - 6, 1970s - 6, 1980s - 9, 1990s - 12, 2000s - 15, 2010s - 12

 

 

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by The Panda

[titanic2187]

I have always regard Taxi Driver as Scorsese' best movie, with the Colour of Money and Goodfellas tied in 2nd. It is almost like a accidental success to even Scorsese he himself. 

 

 

[The Panda]

 

 

"Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."

 

About the Movie

 

Synopsis

 

"When a tornado rips through Kansas, Dorothy and her dog, Toto, are whisked away in their house to the magical land of Oz. They follow the Yellow Brick Road toward the Emerald City to meet the Wizard, and en route they meet a Scarecrow that needs a brain, a Tin Man missing a heart, and a Cowardly Lion who wants courage. The wizard asks the group to bring him the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West to earn his help."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Film director Joel Coen – one half of the famed Coen Brothers – once quipped that “every movie ever made is an attempt to remake The Wizard of Oz” – and while, strictly speaking, there’s a bit of artistic licence in this statement, it seems that the tale of Dorothy’s adventure on the Yellow Brick Road can reasonably lay clam to being the most influential movie of all time.  At least, that’s the finding of researchers in Turin, Italy, who took a database of 47,000 films and cross-referenced them to determine which film has had the greatest influence on the industry, based on the number of times it has been referenced in other films. The winner was the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz.

 

Some members of the popular press seem surprised by this fact; but they really shouldn’t be. Indeed, the research – which was published in Applied Network Science – only seems to have looked for direct references to the film. But if you also took account of films that were influenced by The Wizard of Oz without directly referencing it, there would hundreds, if not thousands more titles to add to the list.  The Coen Brothers are not the only big names to pay homage to the Wizard of Oz (their films are full of sly references). Derek Jarman, who is about as far away from the Hollywood archetype as you can get, also called it his favourite film. For Joel Coen, the film’s brilliance probably lies in its elegant narrative structure – whereas for Jarman it has a lot to do with its design. But this is a testament to how good the film really is. Film is a highly collaborative art form and the contributions made by every department to this film – photography, set, costume, music, editing and cast – is immaculate. Indeed, to watch The Wizard of Oz is to watch the Hollywood studio machine working at the very peak of its efficiency.

 

As far as I am concerned, The Wizard of Oz has exerted the most profound influence on filmmakers around the world who refuse to see the cinema as a realist medium, but rather view it as the art form that comes closest to our dreams. In The Wizard of Oz, reality – as represented by Kansas – is literally colourless. What’s worse, it’s not the beautiful black and white one might expect from a Hollywood film of the period. Instead it’s doubly drab sepia.  But once we enter the Land of Oz we are plunged into a world of vivid Technicolor and extraordinary painted sets that make no attempt to hide their artifice. Even the cloyingly sentimental return to Kansas in the final few minutes cannot hide the true message: the imagination is far more interesting that reality can ever be.  In this celebration of the dream life, The Wizard of Oz is a truly surrealist work.

 

Perhaps the most extraordinary nod to The Wizard of Oz comes from closer to home. A Matter of Life and Death was a fantasy film written, produced and directed by the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in 1946. Commissioned during the final months of World War II to help mend the strained relationship between the British and their American allies, the film is set in two realms: Earth and heaven (which may or may not be a figment of a the imagination of a bomber pilot with brain trauma).  Following the lead of The Wizard of Oz, Powell and Pressburger decided to distinguish between these two realms by shooting one in Technicolor and the other in monochrome (essentially black and white produced by undyed Technicolor film). The real stroke of genius, however, was to invert the early film’s pattern and to present the real world in colour and the imaginary one in monochrome.

 

Filmmakers, audiences and critics alike have generally accepted the paradox that the real world may be in colour, but on film black and white is more realistic – so by showing heaven in monochrome, Powell and Pressburger seem to be telling us that our imagination is more real than the real world.  Such a bold and subversive gesture would have been unthinkable, however, had the The Wizard of Oz not come before and showed filmmakers the imaginative possibilities of the medium."

- Brian Hoyle, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Dundee

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

 

 

Why It's the Greatest

 

Critic Opinion

 

"It was an enthusiastic and friendly throng for whom Judy and Mickey sang and danced with all the verve and rhythmic bounce of youth. The audience was enthusiastic about the picture, which is a delightful fantasy of the "Snow White and Seven Dwarfs" type. Real people, of course, represent the leading characters of the L. Frank Baum stories, on which the film is based, and which gave pleasure to children for several generations. These stories were used as the basis of the musical comedy, "The Wizard of Oz," which served the starring team of Montgomery and Stone during many theatrical seasons.  The first part of the film, showing Dorothy Gale's home on the Kansas farm, is photographed in sepia, which merges into the bright tints of the Technicolor process when the story moves into the dream fantasy that is the land of Oz.  The background of Munchkin land, the forest and the Emerald City of Oz are imaginatively realized on the screen. The little people of Munchkin land, where Dorothy finds herself after being blown away from her Kansas home in the funnel of a cyclone, are delightfully represented by a group of Singer midgets. Billie Burke is charming as the good fairy, Glinda, and Margaret Hamilton, in a poison green makeup, is the wicked West Witch, who is terrible enough to frighten little children.

 

The satire of the fable is not as cleverly pointed as it was in Disney's cartoon of "Snow White," but the broad comedy of Bert Lahr's Cowardly Lion, Ray Bolger's Strawman, Jack Haley's Tin Woodman and Frank Morgan's Wizard, make up for those side-tickling subtle touches that made the Disney comedy a classic of the screen.  Judy Garland is perfectly cast as Dorothy. She is as clever a little actress as she is a singer and her special style of vocalizing is ideally adapted to the music of the picture." - Kate Cameron, New York Daily News

 

User Opinion

 

"ludicrously dated, a lot more than other films." - @luna

 

"Would you like it better if the monkeys were CGI and the wizard used a computer?

 

Come on guys, it's almost 80 years years old.  How can it not be dated?" - @baumer 

 

" Maybe if Lars Von Trier directed it, The Tin Man spoke in only polish existential quotes, the Cowardly Lion spends 10 minutes looking at his brother's organs, The Scarecrow is a drug dealer, and the Wizard is a registered sex offender." - @Spaghetti 

 

"When i think classic...the wizard of oz and the sound of music pop into my head" - @Omario

 

The Panda's Haiku

 

Down the yellow bricks

 

A Gilded Age fever dream

 

Getting stir crazy, here

 

 

Factoids

 

Placement on Prior Lists

 

2012 - 49, 2013 - 63, 2014 - 54, 2016 - 51, 2018 - 49

 

Director Count

 

Alfred Hitchock - 4, Stanley Kubrick - 4, Richard Linklater - 3, The Russo Brothers - 3, Lee Unkrich - 3, Brad Bird - 2, James Cameron - 2, Alfonso Cuaron - 2,  David Fincher - 2, Akira Kurosawa - 2, John Lasseter - 2,  Sergio Leone - 2, John McTiernan - 2, Hayao Miyazaki - 2, Martin Scorsese - 2, Steven Spielberg - 2, Andrew Stanton - 2, Roger Allers - 1, John G. Avildsen - 1, Ash Brannon - 1, Mel Brooks - 1, Frank Capra - 1, John Carpenter - 1, Damien Chazelle - 1, Ron Clements - 1, Francis Ford Coppola - 1, Stanley Donen - 1, Clint Eastwood - 1, Victor Fleming - 1, Terry Gilliam - 1, Michel Gondry - 1, Peter Jackson - 1, Rian Johnson - 1, Terry Jones - 1, Gene Kelly - 1, David Lean - 1, David Lynch - 1, Katia Lund - 1, Michael Mann - 1, Fernando Meirelles - 1, Rob Minkoff - 1, Adrian Molina - 1, John Musker - 1, Christopher Nolan - 1, Bob Persichetti - 1, Jan Pinkava - 1, Sam Raimi - 1, Peter Ramsey - 1, Rodney Rotham - 1,  Quentin Tarantino - 1, Guillermo del Toro - 1, Gary Trousdale - 1, Orson Welles - 1, Peter Weir - 1, Billy Wilder - 1, Kirk Wise - 1, Kar-Wai Wong - 1, Robert Zemeckis - 1

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar - 8, Marvel Cinematic Universe - 3, Toy Story - 3, WDAS - 3, Before Trilogy - 2, Scorsese -2, Spider-Man - 2,  Studio Ghibli - 2, Alien - 1, Cameron - 1, Die Hard - 1, Incredibles - 1, Indiana Jones - 1, The Lord of the Rings - 1, Monty Python - 1, Nolan - 1, Oz - 1, Predator - 1, Rocky - 1, Star Wars - 1, Terminator - 1

 

Decade Count

 

1930s - 1, 1940s - 2, 1950s - 6, 1960s - 6, 1970s - 6, 1980s - 9, 1990s - 12, 2000s - 15, 2010s - 12

 

 

 

Edited July 21, 2020 by The Panda

[The Stingray]

Some good ass movies on the last couple of pages. BOT's taste is aging like fine wine it seems.

A shame Seven didn't make it, tho.
 

[The Stingray]

26 minutes ago, The Stingray said:

Some good ass movies on the last couple of pages. BOT's taste is aging like fine wine it seems.

A shame Seven didn't make it, tho.
 

 

On second thought, maybe I'll need to retract my statement.

I mean, I was joking earlier about the Russo brothers being better than the Coens, then I see that the Russos have 3 movies on the list and the Coens none...
 

[Daxtreme]

ALIENS highest placement ever, that's my BOT!

[Cap]

47 minutes ago, The Stingray said:

 

On second thought, maybe I'll need to retract my statement.

I mean, I was joking earlier about the Russo brothers being better than the Coens, then I see that the Russos have 3 movies on the list and the Coens none...
 

 

[baumer]

I had no idea that aliens was lower than this on the other list. I really am surprised that it's this low. I thought pretty much everyone here had aliens as Cameron's best film. I'm glad it's on the list obviously but it's criminally underrated if it's only finishing in the 30s.

[Ethan Hunt]

1 hour ago, baumer said:

I had no idea that aliens was lower than this on the other list. I really am surprised that it's this low. I thought pretty much everyone here had aliens as Cameron's best film. I'm glad it's on the list obviously but it's criminally underrated if it's only finishing in the 30s.

Aliens is too dude bro-y for me