BOT in the Multi-Verse of Madness: Countdown of the DEFINITIVE Top 250 Movies of All-Time (2022 Edition)

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

 

I knew Candyman wouldn't make it but I deluded myself into thinking Come and See might.

 

Little did I know of the power of anime films. All I can say is that if Come and See is at 167, there better not be any war films still to come on the list.

 

Haven't seen Silence and will correct this forthwith.

 

Wizard of Oz is a hard one to calibrate. On the one hand its public status and the place it has in the cultural mindset is totally unique and indelible. On the other hand its ending (yes, I'm on endings again) is not only a narrative catastrophe that no other film in history would be able to get away with, but is a very cynical and regressive change from the source material. 

[Borobudur]

Most of my top picks are dropped off from the race. I began to wonder if Titanic will miss out from the list. 

[Potiki]

1 minute ago, Borobudur said:

Most of my top picks are dropped off from the race. I began to wonder if Titanic will miss out from the list. 

Titanic will likely be top 20 I would think. 

 

You have to remember Avatar made the top 100, if Titanic didn't show that would be crazy. 

[Chaz]

You did not misspell George Cukor’s last name. The disrespect. 
 

Judy’s performance in A Star is Born…*chefs kiss*. The first Oscar loss that sparked a public evaluation of the Academy’s voting standards. The best performance by Hollywood’s greatest legend and she lost to Grace Kelly in The Country Girl? No ma’am. 

[Ethan Hunt]

2 hours ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

there better not be any war films still to come on the list.

 

 

Saving Private Ryan is definitely gonna be here lol (and optimistically maybe The Thin Red Line?)

[Jake Gittes]

43 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

Saving Private Ryan is definitely gonna be here lol (and optimistically maybe The Thin Red Line?)

 

Apocalypse Now and possibly Basterds.

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

29 minutes ago, Jake Gittes said:

 

Apocalypse Now and possibly Basterds.

 

To be fair I wouldn't consider Apocalypse Now a war film per se, just as I wouldn't Full Metal Jacket. That said, they can certainly and often are in that camp.

 

Saving Private Ryan yes, I'm expecting. It's a crime given what else is out there, but it won't be a surprise.

[The Panda]

Very good, but y'all are also sleeping on Del Torro's Devil's Backbone

 

Number 60

 

 

"But Captain, to obey - just like that - for obedience's sake... without questioning... That's something only people like you do."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Living with her tyrannical stepfather in a new home with her pregnant mother, 10-year-old Ofelia feels alone until she explores a decaying labyrinth guarded by a mysterious faun who claims to know her destiny. If she wishes to return to her real father, Ofelia must complete three terrifying tasks."

 

Its Legacy

 

 

"Now we’re safe to assume the Pale Man eats his victims as well. Remember those murals mentioned earlier? They depict the Pale Man eating children. Underneath them lies a huge pile of worn shoes. Now there’s something about those murals. If you take a good look at this painting they faintly resemble a Spanish artist’s work. The artist in question is Francisco De Goya. 

 

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker famously known for his Roccocco style. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th and 20th-century painters. After slowly losing his hearing he retreated into his home for the remainder of his years. In that his work grew darker in subject matter.

 

Fransisco De Goya lived through the Napoleon Invasion and the carnage he produced. Intertwine this with two near-fatal illnesses and the Black Painting series is its origin. Now the black paintings series are 14 paintings dealing with haunting themes such as the fear of death and insanity. Within this series, there’s an iteration of Saturn Devouring His Son. This painting is important to the film for two reasons. 

 

First of all, the depiction of Saturn is eerily close to the Pale Man. The face itself is obviously completely different. But if we look at the body, its demeanor, we see the resemblance. they’re both decrepit, old, skinny, pale, long, and are eating a child. There’s more to it though than just looks. The story behind Saturn devouring his son is the typical ruthlessness that Greek mythological stories charter. A prophecy is foretold that one of Saturn’s children will overthrow him. So Saturn decides to devour his children as they are born. Only his third son Jupiter was saved by the mother Ops. Eventually, Jupiter then goes to fulfill his destiny of overthrowing Saturn. "

- Mikey P. Jr, Phasr

 

From the Filmmaker

 

"“This is a movie that makes a very strong political statement and is also a mirror of how the world is now,” says Guillermo Navarro, ASC, the film’s director of photography. “But by creating parallel narratives of a fantasy world and a reality world, we could tell a political story without it coming across like a pamphlet. It’s a fairy tale with ultimate consequences, and not the nice fairy-tale ending.”  

 

Pan’s Labyrinth is Navarro’s fourth collaboration with Del Toro, and the picture shares themes and visual motifs with their other works, the Spanish productions Cronos and The Devil’s Backbone (see AC Dec. ’01) and the Hollywood comic-book adaptation Hellboy (AC April ’04). Navarro, whose other credits include Jackie Brown, Stuart Little and Spy Kids, says the Spanish projects have been particularly gratifying. “After doing work in Hollywood on other movies and with other directors, working in our original language, in different scenery, brings me back to the original reasons I wanted to make movies, which is basically to tell stories with complete freedom, and to let the visuals really contribute to the telling of the story,” says Navarro.  

 

A strong visual concept was especially crucial on Pan’s Labyrinth in order to establish the parallel narratives and then bring them together. “This isn’t really a dialogue-based movie — the images become the grammar of the story,” says Navarro. “So it was important for us to create bridges that would connect the two narratives, and to place the camera in the shoes of Ofelia, our lead character. The audience is learning with her and discovering things with her.” As the film progresses, the question of whether what’s happening is real or only in Ofelia’s imagination arises with increasing frequency, and becomes more complicated to answer.  

In his conceptualizing of Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro cites influences as diverse as Francisco Goya, James Whale, Mario Bava, George Romero, David Cronenberg and fairy-tale illustrator Arthur Rackham. He relies strongly on the sketches that pour out of him as he prepares a film. “Guillermo does little drawings very quickly in a book, and he keeps the book through the shoot,” explains Navarro. “We cannot afford to do them all, of course. They’re guidelines, and we go for the setups we need to tell the story.” The director also compiles a scrapbook of textures to help guide the work of the art and costume departments; on Pan’s Labyrinth, these filled more than 100 pages.  

According to Del Toro, the key element in the design of Pan’s Labyrinth was color. “I put up a big board to color-code the movie for the three key departments,” he says, referring to Navarro, production designer Eugenio Caballero and costume designer Lala Huete. “Those were the colors that were allowed. If it wasn’t there, it wouldn’t exist [in the film].”  

- John Calhoun, The American Cinematographer

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Hollywood projects itself as a liberal and tolerant social institution,
even as a liberatory agent in the fight against prejudice and bigotry, a
courageous proponent of humanitarianism. It is, of course, a ridiculous
conceit and a necessary illusion, one well nourished over the past 30
years by the Christian Right in its endless attacks on Hollywood’s socalled
atheistic secularism and anything-goes cultural relativism. In
this way the religious Right and liberal Hollywood form a closed
circle. Corollaries of each other, they are also like mirrors in a funhouse,
for any person who passes through the apparatus must forget that the
whole experience has been put together by those who own and control
it, in order for the mirrors to produce the desired illusory effects.
Occasionally a film is distributed by Hollywood that breaks free of
this closed circle, a film that in fact did not come from Hollywood at all,
that is neither a pretentious “independent” production nor the work of
a veteran auteur like Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, or Sidney
Lumet. A film with mass appeal in terms of its aesthetics, yet boldly
dissonant and disjunctive ideologically. This happened in 2006 when
Hollywood released Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s
monster movie El laberinto del fauno, marketed to American moviegoers
as Pan’s Labyrinth.

 

 

El laberinto del fauno is explicitly about fascism, but is of interest not
simply because of its subject matter but above all because of del Toro’s
iconoclastic approach to the rendering of fascism on screen. In obvious

ways, the film came through Hollywood by way of a distinctively
non-US sensibility, a Mexican sensibility in which the question of
fascist dictatorship is perceived by the filmmaker both personally
and historically. In del Toro’s case, following his father’s kidnapping
in 1998 he was forced into exile, a condition in which he remains
today. But what makes del Toro’s artistic approach to fascism so different
from that of the run-of-the-mill Hollywood production, such as
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, is his construction of a transcendent
fascist-monster archetype. Schindler’s List, in contrast, offers fascist
social types that cannot exist anywhere but in Nazi Germany.
Moreover, unlike Schindler’s List, where there are antifascist German
capitalists and fascist German capitalists (a clever ideological invention
on Spielberg’s part, since in reality there were no German capitalists
who opposed fascism), in El laberinto del fauno, all the capitalists are
behind fascism, which is shown, as we shall see, in one of the film’s
most compelling scenes.8 First, however, it is necessary to describe
del Toro’s visual style and how he constructs his distinctive fascistmonster
archetype.

From El laberinto del fauno’s opening scene, we understand ourselves
to be entering a magical place that is nevertheless coldly historical.
We are in Franco’s Spain, but we are also deep in the verdant
woods, where shards of brilliant light are knifing through thick and
damp foliage above. We are traveling with a fascist cavalcade, but
we are not with them: we are neither prisoners of fascism nor its unwitting
accomplices. We occupy, in terms of our gaze, a strategic location
sharply dissonant and ideologically disjunctive in relation to
Hollywood’s representation of the fascist experience. In del Toro’s imaginary,
fascism is directly in front of us to see and fear, but its power is
thrown into direct relief against forces much larger than itself. Importantly,
fascism in del Toro’s vision is not an unhistorical, faceless,
and invincible evil monolith extending its reach everywhere, nor is it,
in the manner of Spielberg, hypostatized into period piece ethnodrama
(German Nazis and Jewish victims). Rather than Satanic or
ethnic, it is thoroughly human, made by particular human beings for
specific political ends. Fascism for del Toro is much more than an
individual lust for totalitarian social control – this has been the selfserving
bourgeois interpretation. Rather, it is a systematic attack on
nature, in particular on the relationship between mother and child."

- Kam Hei Tsuei, Socialism and Democracy

 

Public Opinion

 

"Fantasy shaken by bullet fire and the agony of tired souls cut short, Pan's Labyrinth is a genuine marvel of storytelling, craftsmanship, design, and pure theatricality within cinematic boundaries. Skillfully told and heartrending in its mixture of warfare anxiety and childhood imagination, Guillermo Del Toro (master of understated drama and boisterous action) constructs a fluid vision that layers its "segments" with distinct separation. As each particular story (every subplot is important) eventually collides by the end of such a rich and engrossing tapestry, reality and illusion embrace in the most cathartic way.

 

It's a film that thrives because of its cumulative end, but Pan's Labyrinth succeeds so miraculously because each moment is plotted in line with Del Toro's storybook structure. Essential (but infrequent) narration, smooth transitions, and the obvious presence of fairy-tale creatures all contribute to a work that celebrates the artificiality of invention, and while folk-tales usually comment on the harsh surfaces of reality, it is Del Toro's commitment to layer each story like detached rooms in a widening castle that speaks to me the most. This is why I love movies."

- SilentDawn, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

pan's labyrinth

"A journey deep inside
A labyrinth of twists and turns
Where secrets lie in wait"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#44 (2020), #45 (2018), UNRANKED (2016), #79 (2014), #50 (2013), #63 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2),  David Fincher (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2),  Ridley Scott (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), Spike Lee (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (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), Andrew Stanton (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Simon Wells (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1970s (3), 1980s (6), 1990s (7), 2000s (15), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Brazil (1), China (1), Italy (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (3), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), Star Wars (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#81 Fanboy Ranking, #57 Cinema Ranking

#66 Old Farts Ranking, #60 Damn Kids Ranking

#55 Ambassador Ranking, #63 All-American Ranking

#98 Cartoon Ranking, #58 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[The Panda]

Some people missed the memo and read this as a best of the 2000s list!

 

 

Number 59

 

 

"I got the pool, she got the pool-man."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Blonde Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman’s identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Director Rodrigo Garcia, for example, created Who—What?, an installation that features a close-up of the frightening homeless woman in Mulholland Drive (she is described as half bum, half Macbeth witch) and an elaborate chandelier. Its purpose? “Like in David Lynch’s films, the answers, as long as they exist, will appear in people’s dreams,” Garcia states in a short essay in the book.

 

 

Likewise, in order to channel the Lynchian theme of the mirror image, which appears in everything from hairstyles to plotlines, Swedish multimedia artist Ylva Ogland created an installation titled Transmutation Ritual, a teepee In front of a pale pink wall containing collages featuring her alter ego — as she calls it, her “mirror twin” Snöfrid. “One time my sister and I ate pancakes on the mirrors [sic] edge with the Oracle,” ‘Snöfrid’ says in a short essay in Back to Mulholland Drive. “David Lynch joined us, we offered him some pancakes with gold syrup (for strengthening the I) and some powder of rose quartz.” It is a strange, and perhaps Lynchean, passage. “He showed us the box and the key, we felt a physical attraction to them, we wanted to be in their anti-matter.”

 

In “Memory, Identity and Desire: A Psychoanalytic Reading of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive,” Murat Akser tries to replicate Slavoj Zizek’s approach to Lost Highway by using Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to untangle the fascinating mess of the film: he actually sees the two segments of the film as one being the dream of another dream. Fans of the movie Inception will surely appreciate Akser’s theory — but why should a book about art deal with a psychoanalytic approach just to try to find an underlying logic to Mulholland Drive’s plot?

 

Though these authors make a legitimate attempt to understand the film using psychoanalysis and film history, thoughtful rigor is ultimately abandoned in favor of a plot-specific analysis about how the film’s twists and turns actually make sense in the mind and movie of David Lynch. In the end, while the visual artists are able to show, figuratively, how Lynch influenced art, the essayists try too hard to crack the mystery of Mulholland Drive. All viewers probably do the same (what does the blue-haired woman wearing an elaborate pompadour coiffe, the one who utters “Silence” before credits roll, actually represent?). But focusing more on the aesthetic Lynch helped to inspire could have offered some respite from tedious questions about Mulholland Drive’s Möbius strip-like narratives. There is more than enough writing, from almost every possible angle, devoted to that."

- Angelica Frey, HyperAllergic

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Mulholland Drive in fact depicts the separate worlds of desire and fantasy, it would seem that the opening part of the film represents the former since it focuses on the mysterious identity of Rita (Laura Harring). The film begins with a credit sequence that superimposes an image of Betty (Naomi Watts) over shots of a jitterbug contest, but following this initial scene, Lynch establishes an aura of mystery that seems to be in keeping with the attitude of desire. After a brief shot of a blanket covering someone lying on a bed and a red pillow, we see a close-up of the "Mulholland Drive" street sign (which stands in as the film's title card) and then a black limousine driving Rita up the street. The limo suddenly stops, prompting Rita to proclaim: "What are you doing? We don't stop here." The driver does not answer her question but points a gun at her and says, "Get out of the car." Just after he says this, a car drag-racing in the other direction on the road crashes into the limousine. The crash kills the limo driver and injures Rita's head, producing the amnesia that will affect her throughout the first part of the film.

 

 

This scene certainly appears to create a sense of desire and the fundamental uncertainty that we associate with it. In fact, the scene produces desire in a manner very typical of Hollywood genre narrative, with its use of darkness and threatening characters in the mise-en-scene, the ominous music, and an editing regime that merely hints at what is really transpiring. The director does nothing extraordinary here. He employs without irony the narrative codes of Hollywood (and especially of film noir) concerning the production of desire. As Hollywood understands well, desire always involves not knowing, being confronted with a question that does not have an answer. The desiring subject confronts a mysterious, enigmatic object that is never isolatable as the object.4 As Lacan points out, "As long as I desire, I know nothing of what I desire."5 Hence, to portray desire, a scene must situate spectators in a position of nonknowledge, which is exactly what the opening of Mulholland Drive does. It does this through the mise-en-scene-the neartotal darkness of the setting, the isolation of the mountain road, and so on. The low, haunting music contributes to the pervasive sense of mystery.

 

The action of the scene also works to keep us questioning. We see the limousine driving up a dark mountain road, and we have no idea where it is going. When the driver stops the car, the spectator is in the same position as Rita: we do not know why he has stopped, or why he pulls a gun on her. This moment foregrounds the essential question of desire-"What do you want?" Like Rita, the spectator has no idea what the driver wants, and it is this very ignorance of the other's desire that triggers desire in the subject. By placing the spectator in the same position as the desiring subject on the screen-and by immersing both in total uncertainty-Lynch sets up the first part of Mulholland Drive as a world of desire."

- Todd McGowan, Cinema Journal

 

Public Opinion

 

"What is a movie? What is a director? What is a story? What is a screenplay? What is an actor? What is a score? What is tone? What is a dream? What is love? What is wrong? What is right? What is going too far? What is getting answers to a question? What is a question? What is purpose? What is success? What is failure? What is reality? What is purpose? What is life?

 

I don't know, man." - Brendan Michaels, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

mulholland drive

"A winding road through the hills
Los Angeles at night, a Hollywood dream"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#68 (2020), UNRANKED (2018, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2012)

 

Director Count

 

Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2),  David Fincher (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2),  Ridley Scott (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), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (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), Andrew Stanton (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Simon Wells (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1970s (3), 1980s (6), 1990s (7), 2000s (16), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Brazil (1), China (1), Italy (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (3), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), Star Wars (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#96 Fanboy Ranking, #54 Cinema Ranking

#65 Old Farts Ranking, #57 Damn Kids Ranking

#68 Ambassador Ranking, #60 All-American Ranking

#82 Cartoon Ranking, #60 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[The Panda]

 

Number 58

 

 

"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Jack Torrance accepts a caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel, where he, along with his wife Wendy and their son Danny, must live isolated from the rest of the world for the winter. But they aren’t prepared for the madness that lurks within."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) often described as a cinematic masterpiece wasn’t always met with this kind of praise. Kubrick having already cemented his status as an acknowledged master filmmaker; a god like auteur, (Oscar nominated for best director for four of his previous films (Dr Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange and Barry Lyndon)) expresses his true style and creates a rather unusual horror narrative within The Shining, however for this film he received more criticism than praise and this time was not nominated for an Oscar but rather nominated for the ‘Razzie.’ (a joke award for he worst performances and films of the year.) This seems unlikely now given its ‘classic’ status; a “one-of-a-kind horror film and a great artistic accomplishment.” (-Joseph Byrne, 2013)

 

 

The Shining is atypical of its genre, it doesn’t necessarily fit into the typical horror conventions that the audiences at the time were used to seeing. (The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin, Halloween (1978) John Carpenter, The Hills Have Eyes (1977) Wes Craven.) 

The Shining did not operate as a traditional horror film, one example of this is that it refuses to reveal a specific singular source of horror. The dichotomy between the threat of ghosts and Torrance’s psychosis instead force the audience to find the source themselves. There are the supernatural forces that live inside the Overlook hotel, and the emotional instability and demons that live inside Jack Torrance. As the plot develops, the film almost operates as both a ghost story and a family melodrama.

The film ensures its horror status with the inclusion of the supernatural components from King’s novel, however Kubrick chooses to examine the evilness of the human psyche (Jack’s descent into madness) rather than focus on these typical horror conventions. He deliberately directs the audience towards a psychological explanation for the apparitions, the viewer wonders if they are actually present or if they merely manifest from Jacks mind. Its not until Grady’s ghost frees Jack from the freezer that there is no explanation other than that the Overlook is truly haunted. Often times its as if the supernatural aspects of the film serve as a welcome breath for the audience as the supernatural forces seem like an irrational fear where as Torrance’s outbursts are a rational fear. It contrasts the known and the un-known and plays on the audiences fears."

- Faye Carr-Wilson, Filmmaker

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"The Shining met the fate of several other Stanley
Kubrick films when it came out; most viewers did not like it, so they rejected it. Most 
importantly, they did not understand it in any way which allowed them to deal with it constructively. Also, the criticism it 
received did not clarify the film. It remained obscure and confusing to its viewers.
It failed with most viewers for two basic reasons. It was not the same as Stephen King's novel, and 
it was not terrifying in the conventional way a horror film is sup­ posed to be. So lacking the 
model of the novel or the conventional horror genre, viewers became disconcerted.
The Shining is a Stanley Kubrick film, satiric and ab­ stract. It can be understood, perhaps not 
fully but enough for one to take pleasure and challenge from it. There are
a few perceptions that one can use to help him deal with a Kubrick film.

First of all, Kubrick sees hunian beings as empty, their values shallow and vacuous. Everything 
about them sug­ gests banality-their dress, their habits, their environment. And since they are 
banal they don't communicate, except in trite, mundane ways. Their basic banality is most evi­ dent 
in their dialogue. Kubrick (Diane Johnson co-scripted The Shining) intends it to be inane, but 
critics keep accus­ ing him of not being able to create good dialogue. What better way to show that 
people can't communicate than by having them speak dialogue that has no life or meaning to it? The 
interview sequence near the beginning of The Shining has the same quality of dullness as the 
briefing scene-in 2001-a scene and a film that received many of the complaints about dull human 
beings as does The Shining. Barry Nelson, with his patter and plastic environ­ ment, is a perfect 
manifestation of banality. The scene is meant to be dissatisfying; it's not meant to excite or pro­ 
voke. It sets a tone with which the rest of the picture can
contrast.

 

 

Out of banality comes the star-child in 2001; out of banality comes Jack the Ripper in The Shining. Jack is going to return to the elemental from the world of banality. He is going to be like the apes at the beginning  , of 2001; his tool (the 
axe) too is going to become a weapon. If one is prepared for the banality, one can under­
stand its purpose and transcend it.

 

The conclusion of The Shining contains an ultimate comment on America. We see a picture on the wall of the Overlook Hotel; it is inscribed "Overlook Hotel; July 4th Ball, 1921" and the smiling visage of Jack Torrance appears in it. In another life, 
in 1921 post-war America, America was a land of promise. Americans were happy, America's 
Independence was being celebrated, and Jack was smiling. But in the present, America has lost her
values and promise. A smiling, partying Jack Torrance has turned into a madman. His smile is now 
replaced by a look of frozen emptiness. The party is over. The Shining is a difficult film to fathom. But if we are willing, Kubrick gives us a wealth of material to see and to contemplate. Kubrick's style should be enough to set us on our way. His 
marvelous tracking shots, his intricate details (e.g., the maze designs), and his color schemes
can be tantalizing. With the added awareness that banality, aggression, objects, ordinary 
characters, and satire often play meaningful parts in a Kubrick film, we should be able to deal with it."

- F. Anthony Macklin, Journal of Popular Film and Television

 

Public Opinion

 

"Saw this one in the theater last night, great experience. Underrated how funny this movie is. For half the movie, Nicholson is in full bozo mode (TM LexG), having more fun as an actor than anyone is ever allowed to in a Kubrick film. This movie is about a guy who takes a job after they tell him "the last guy who did this killed his family" and then he tells himself "I'm not going to kill my family" over and over again until they annoy him like once or twice and he's like "yeah, I'm thinking I'm killing my family." Like all Kubrick movies, it hints at the deep Satanic evil at the heart of America--"four presidents have stayed here!"--but most essentially it is a pitch black satire of middle class morality, family and marriage and the boundless ego of writers and artists."

- Will Menaker, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

the shining

"The moon is full and bright
It fills the sky with its light
Shining down on us

 

I will find you

like the Jack the Ripper"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#50 (2020), #48 (2018), #89 (2016), UNRANKED (2014), #46 (2013), #70 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2),  David Fincher (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2),  Ridley Scott (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), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Stanley Kubrick (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), Andrew Stanton (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Simon Wells (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1970s (3), 1980s (6), 1990s (7), 2000s (16), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Brazil (1), China (1), Italy (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (3), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (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), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#71 Fanboy Ranking, #58 Cinema Ranking

#61 Old Farts Ranking, #59 Damn Kids Ranking

#97 Ambassador Ranking, #54 All-American Ranking

#92 Cartoon Ranking, #57 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[The Panda]

Well, it's not lightyear!

 

Number 57

 

 

"To infinity and beyond!"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Led by Woody, Andy’s toys live happily in his room until Andy’s birthday brings Buzz Lightyear onto the scene. Afraid of losing his place in Andy’s heart, Woody plots against Buzz. But when circumstances separate Buzz and Woody from their owner, the duo eventually learns to put aside their differences."

 

Its Legacy

 

"When the lights went down for the first screenings of Toy Story across America on Nov. 22, 1995, audiences were merely eager to see how the first fully computer-animated movie had turned out. But the stakes were a bit higher for one particular team of people. The movie was a joint venture between Disney and Pixar, a young company—then chaired by Steve Jobs—that had been recruited by the animation giant for its video capabilities. Pixar had been given a $26 million deal for three computer-animated, feature-length movies, but its filmmakers and engineers had yet to pull off a single one. Neither had anyone else for that matter. Succeeding would mean creating the software and hardware they would need as they went along, and inventing a new kind of movie altogether.

 

“At that point, none of us knew what we were doing. We didn’t have any production expertise except for short films and commercials. So we were all complete novices,” Ed Catmull, who was then a software engineer and is now Pixar and Disney Animation President, tells TIME. “But there was something fresh about nobody knowing what the hell we were doing.”  Reflecting on the experience 20 years later, Catmull notes that the young production studio was up against the wall: one project’s failure would likely mean the end of the three-movie contract, and the demise of Pixar studios. “The entire company,” he says, “was bet upon us figuring this out.” Spoiler alert: it was a good bet. The storytelling and technology of Pixar still rests upon the foundation Toy Story built. By the time the Toy Story credits started rolling that first day, the movies would never be the same.

 

 

Catmull and computer scientists at Pixar built the software that animators could use to design the film, like RenderMan, which originated from Catmull’s studies at the University of Utah, and Menv (“modeling environment”), which the programmers developed for Pixar’s 1988 short Tin Toy. The goal was to allow the animators, without much engineering background, to control movement and “rig” their own characters. In some ways, working with computers opened new possibilities, letting animators add details they never would be able to (or would want to avoid, to minimize illustrators’ “pencil mileage”), such as the plaid pattern on Woody’s shirt or the stickers on Buzz’s curved glass helmet. But it had its limits—and that’s where the toys came in.

 

That software lent itself to perfectly geometric objects, such as blocks, bouncing balls: the type of things found in Andy’s stash of toys. Anything in a more “organic” shape or texture ended up looking plastic—which lent itself nicely to a movie about plastic objects springing to life. Toys always hung out in a kid’s room, Lasseter added, which let animators do their illustrations on a perfectly flat floor that was simple to render.At first, the team was going to avoid humans altogether; choosing to keep them just out of the

 

frames, Lady-and-the-Tramp-style, rather than crudely animating their features. Eventually human presence was too hard to avoid, and as a result viewers could put a face to Andy (a face that showed the improvements of Pixar’s rendering capabilities by the time he was off to college in Toy Story 3).

 

“I was so geeky and into this stuff,” Lasseter adds. “I’d always say ‘hey can we do this?’ They’d say ‘no, but let’s try,’ and they’d do R&D to get there. Meanwhile, all that R&D is inspiring different ideas. Then I’d say ‘oh can we do this with it?’ and come up with ideas we’d never thought of.”"

- Julia Zorthian, TIME

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Death is imagined obsessively in both movies. In Toy Story, Death stalks in the form of an 
eight-year-old neighbour named Sid who wears a black T-shirt with a skull printed on it that 
disturbingly resembles his own face. Sid is a toy-sadist. ‘He tortures toys for fun,’ wails the 
Dinosaur Rex. He performs hideous ‘medical’ experiments, loves explosives, and has a patho- 
logically violent temper. Sid’s house is suburban gothic, a dark underworld of violence in the land 
of white picket fences. In his demolition area of a backyard Sid blows up action figures and wreaks 
havoc, bellowing with angry laughter. His ferocious pit-bull Skud is his sole companion. Inside his 
dark, bolted room, neglected by his parents, he dismembers dolls, dinosaurs, and erector sets. As 
the Disney website tells us: ‘Deep within the inner sanctum of ... Sid’s room, lies a collection of 
toys that no boy should have created. Where Andy’s room is a haven for Woody [a vintage cowboy 
doll], Buzz [a space-ranger action figure], and all the other toys, Sid’s room is no-man’s-land – 
the work of an unwell mind’ (‘... mutant’).

Distinctions between well and unwell, should and shouldn’t, haven and no- man’s land, are, of 
course, ideological; they reflect a particular set of inte- rests and assumptions. The movies do 
not analyse these assumptions or offer alternative conceptual forms to those that shape and are 
shaped by middle-class American popular culture. Oppositions, such as that between Andy’s room and 
Sid’s, define each other. They occur within the same totalistic bipolar system, and any search for 
meaning within that system will be endless and self-enclosed. However, problems are raised or a 
drama of self-reflection occurs in the toys when they are displaced between social and rhetorical 
opposites. So, movements from Andy’s room to Sid’s ‘no- man’s land,’ from the ‘well’ to the 
‘unwell’ (and back again) entail an experience of liminality that is crucial to experiences that 
may be under- stood as rites of passage. ‘Such rites,’ Victor Turner explains, ‘characteristi- 
cally begin with ritual metaphors of killing or death marking the separation of the subject from 
ordinary secular relationships ... and conclude with a symbolic rebirth or reincorporation into 
society as shaped by the law and moral code’ (273). While it is not unusual for children’s 
literature to depict such rites of passage, in these two Pixar-Disney² movies the ‘humanity’ of

those undergoing the rites is radically compromised by ambiguities of origins and ends and by the 
extremity or pervasiveness of the capitalist ideology that underlies all forms of apparent subjectivity.

 

 

The climactic scene of Toy Story is a resurrection scene, clearly a spoof of those horror films in 
which grotesquely disfigured zombies emerge from the earth to terrify the living. This return of 
the living dead is not a bizarre anomaly in Toy Story, though gothic tropes are most pronounced 
here. The movie is replete with toys that not only come alive but also return to life. When we 
first see them in the opening credits, the toys appear lifeless and passive, as Andy manipulates 
them, inventing games, before tearing through the house with his favourite, Woody, whose arms and 
legs flap helplessly as Andy shakes him up and down. The frequent, even eerie, close-ups of the 
doll’s unblinking eyes are belied, however, in a ‘point-of- view-shot’ – a Woody’s-eye-view of Andy 
and Mom preparing the birth- day party – that suggests a consciousness behind the painted face. 
After he has been dropped on Andy’s bed, where he lies for a few seconds in silence, Woody first 
comes alive for us with a blink of the eyes. The viewer imagines that, since there are no people in 
it, the room is vacant. But when Woody sits up and calls to the other toys to come out, there is a 
pause, and the camera draws back for a deep focus so that we give our attention not to any one 
object but to the larger space. The room comes to life, and with it the viewer has a sense of the 
incompleteness of his or her own vision."

- Alan Ackerman, The Spirit of Toys: Resurrection and Redemption in Toy Story and Toy Story 2

University of Toronto Quarterly

 

Public Opinion

 

"This thing really is pretty much perfect. Yes it's a groundbreaking movie, but that script is so damn good, the characters are instantly iconic and fleshed out and the voice acting is on point. It's crazy to think how high a bar Pixar set in just their first feature outing" - @SchumacherFTW

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

toy story

"Am i just a toy

in your story?

 

Am I not

a sentient being?"

- dA vInci

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#42 (2020), #33 (2018), #37 (2016), #23 (2014), #32 (2013), #34 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2),  David Fincher (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2),  Ridley Scott (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), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Stanley Kubrick (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), Andrew Stanton (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Simon Wells (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1970s (3), 1980s (7), 1990s (8), 2000s (16), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Brazil (1), China (1), Italy (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (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

 

#44 Fanboy Ranking, #66 Cinema Ranking

#53 Old Farts Ranking, #64 Damn Kids Ranking

#90 Ambassador Ranking, #53 All-American Ranking

#49 Cartoon Ranking, #61 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[Jason]

11 minutes ago, The Panda said:

Alan Ackerman, The Spirit of Toys: Resurrection and Redemption in Toy Story and Toy Story 2

University of Toronto Quarterly

This is someone I've actually met! I hadn't realized they had written about Toy Story though until today.

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

You know, what's weird is this is coinciding with a series of decade discussions I am having on another forum elsewhere.

 

The biggest consensus among everyone on that board? The 00s was the worst decade for films in the modern era/ since at least the 50s.

[Ethan Hunt]

2 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

You know, what's weird is this is coinciding with a series of decade discussions I am having on another forum elsewhere.

 

The biggest consensus among everyone on that board? The 00s was the worst decade for films in the modern era/ since at least the 50s.

Who would take the 10s over 00s

[The Panda]

Number 56

 

 

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop the nuclear strike."

 

Its Legacy

 

"This month marks the fiftieth anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s black comedy about nuclear weapons, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.” Released on January 29, 1964, the film caused a good deal of controversy. Its plot suggested that a mentally deranged American general could order a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, without consulting the President. One reviewer described the film as “dangerous … an evil thing about an evil thing.” Another compared it to Soviet propaganda. Although “Strangelove” was clearly a farce, with the comedian Peter Sellers playing three roles, it was criticized for being implausible. An expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies called the events in the film “impossible on a dozen counts.” A former Deputy Secretary of Defense dismissed the idea that someone could authorize the use of a nuclear weapon without the President’s approval: “Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.” (See a compendium of clips from the film.) When “Fail-Safe”—a Hollywood thriller with a similar plot, directed by Sidney Lumet—opened, later that year, it was criticized in much the same way. 

 

“The incidents in ‘Fail-Safe’ are deliberate lies!” General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, said. “Nothing like that could happen.” The first casualty of every war is the truth—and the Cold War was no exception to that dictum. Half a century after Kubrick’s mad general, Jack D. Ripper, launched a nuclear strike on the Soviets to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from Communist subversion, we now know that American officers did indeed have the ability to start a Third World War on their own. And despite the introduction of rigorous safeguards in the years since then, the risk of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear detonation hasn’t been completely eliminated.

 

 

Despite public assurances that everything was fully under control, in the winter of 1964, while “Dr. Strangelove” was playing in theatres and being condemned as Soviet propaganda, there was nothing to prevent an American bomber crew or missile launch crew from using their weapons against the Soviets. Kubrick had researched the subject for years, consulted experts, and worked closely with a former R.A.F. pilot, Peter George, on the screenplay of the film. George’s novel about the risk of accidental nuclear war, “Red Alert,” was the source for most of “Strangelove” ’s plot. Unbeknownst to both Kubrick and George, a top official at the Department of Defense had already sent a copy of “Red Alert” to every member of the Pentagon’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Ballistic Missiles. At the Pentagon, the book was taken seriously as a cautionary tale about what might go wrong. Even Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara privately worried that an accident, a mistake, or a rogue American officer could start a nuclear war.

 

The security measures now used to control America’s nuclear weapons are a vast improvement over those of 1964. But, like all human endeavors, they are inherently flawed. The Department of Defense’s Personnel Reliability Program is supposed to keep people with serious emotional or psychological issues away from nuclear weapons—and yet two of the nation’s top nuclear commanders were recently removed from their posts. Neither appears to be the sort of calm, stable person you want with a finger on the button. In fact, their misbehavior seems straight out of “Strangelove.” Vice Admiral Tim Giardina, the second-highest-ranking officer at the U.S. Strategic Command—the organization responsible for all of America’s nuclear forces—-was investigated last summer for allegedly using counterfeit gambling chips at the Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa. According to the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, “a significant monetary amount” of counterfeit chips was involved. Giardina was relieved of his command on October 3, 2013. A few days later, Major General Michael Carey, the Air Force commander in charge of America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, was fired for conduct “unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.”

 

While drinking beer in the executive lounge at Moscow’s Marriott Aurora during that visit, General Carey made an admission with serious public-policy implications. He off-handedly told a delegation of U.S. national-security officials that his missile-launch officers have the “worst morale in the Air Force.” Recent events suggest that may be true. In the spring of 2013, nineteen launch officers at Minot Air Force base in North Dakota were decertified for violating safety rules and poor discipline. In August, 2013, the entire missile wing at Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana failed its safety inspection. Last week, the Air Force revealed that thirty-four launch officers at Malmstrom had been decertified for cheating on proficiency exams—and that at least three launch officers are being investigated for illegal drug use. The findings of a report by the RAND Corporation, leaked to the A.P., were equally disturbing. The study found that the rates of spousal abuse and court martials among Air Force personnel with nuclear responsibilities are much higher than those among people with other jobs in the Air Force. “We don’t care if things go properly,” a launch officer told RAND. “We just don’t want to get in trouble.”

 

The most unlikely and absurd plot element in “Strangelove” is the existence of a Soviet “Doomsday Machine.” The device would trigger itself, automatically, if the Soviet Union were attacked with nuclear weapons. It was meant to be the ultimate deterrent, a threat to destroy the world in order to prevent an American nuclear strike. But the failure of the Soviets to tell the United States about the contraption defeats its purpose and, at the end of the film, inadvertently causes a nuclear Armageddon. “The whole point of the Doomsday Machine is lost,” Dr. Strangelove, the President’s science adviser, explains to the Soviet Ambassador, “if you keep it a secret!” A decade after the release of “Strangelove,” the Soviet Union began work on the Perimeter system—a network of sensors and computers that could allow junior military officials to launch missiles without oversight from the Soviet leadership. Perhaps nobody at the Kremlin had seen the film. Completed in 1985, the system was known as the Dead Hand. Once it was activated, Perimeter would order the launch of long-range missiles at the United States if it detected nuclear detonations on Soviet soil and Soviet leaders couldn’t be reached."

- Eric Schlosser, The New Yorker

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

" The American consensus to which Dr. Strangelove responds was rooted in the late 1930s and in the war years. When Americans in the late 1930s began to feel more threatened by the rise of foreign totalitarianism than by the economic insecurities fostered by the stock market crash, a previously fragmented American culture began to unify. A common sys tern of belief began to form, a paradigm solidified during World War II, when American effort was directed toward defeating the Axis powers. Fueled by the success of the war effort and the economic prosperity fostered by the war, this paradigm continued to dominate American social and political life through the early 1960s.

 

 Stanley Kubrick, director of Dr.Strangelove, played a part in extending that adversary culture. Born in 1928 to a middle-class Bronx family, Kub rick was from an early age interested in chess and photography. It is not hard to move from his fascination with chess, with the analytical abilities it requires and sharpens, to the fascination with technology and the dif ficulties men have in controlling it which Kubrick displays in Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Photography became a pastime when Kubrick received a camera at age thirteen, and a profession when Look magazine hired him at age eighteen as a still photographer. From there Kubrick became interested in filmmaking and made a short documen tary on middleweight boxer Walter Cartier called Day of the Fight (1950). He followed this with a second documentary for RKO, Flying Padre (1951), after which he made his first feature film, Fear and Desire (1953). From then on Kubrick was immersed in making feature films.6 In his mature work Kubrick has returned constantly to one of the gravest dilemmas of modem industrial society: the gap between man's scientific and technological skill and his social, political, and moral inep titude. In Kubrick's world view, modern man has made scientific and technological advances inconceivable to previous generations but lacks the wisdom either to perceive how the new gadgetry might be used in constructive ways or, more fundamentally, to ask whether the "advance" might not cause more harm than good. Kubrick first faced this problem squarely in Dr. Strangelove.

 

 

 It is not totally surprising, then, that Kubrick should make a film about military and civilian leaders trying to cope with accidental nuclear war. Actually, Kubrick had developed an interest in the Cold War and nuclear strategy as a concerned citizen in the late 1950s, even before he thought of doing a film on the subject. In an essay on Dr. Strangelove published in mid-1963, a half year before the release of the film, Kubrick wrote: "I was very interested in what was going to happen, and started reading a lot of books about four years ago. I have a library of about 70 or 80 books written by various technical people on the subject and I began to sub scribe to the military magazines, the Air Force magazine, and to follow the U.S. naval proceedings." 7 One of the magazines he subscribed to was the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, which regularly published articles by atomic scientists (Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, and Leo Szilard) and nuclear strategists (Kahn, Bernard Brodie, and Thomas Schelling).

 

 The premise and plot of the film are, paradoxically, quite realistic and suspenseful, which in part accounts for why the nightmare comedy suc ceeds. At the opening of the film a narrator tells us that the Russians have built a Doomsday device which will automatically detonate if a nuclear weapon is dropped on the Soviet Union, destroying all human life on the planet-a case of deterrence strategy carried to the absurd. A paranoid anti-Communist Air Force general, unaware of the Russian's ultimate weapon, orders a fleet of airborne SAC B-52s to their Russian targets. The President of the United States finds out, but soon learns that the jets cannot be recalled because only the general knows the recall code. Mov ing quickly into action, the President discusses the problem with his ad visors, calls the Russian Premier, and assists the Russians in their at tempts to shoot down the B-52s. Finally, all the planes are recalled but one, which drops its bombs on a secondary target, setting off the Russian retaliatory Doomsday device. Dr. Strangelove concludes in apocalypse."

- Charles Maland, American Quarterly , Winter, 1979, Vol. 31, No. 5, Special Issue: Film and American Studies (Winter, 1979), pp. 697-717

 

Public Opinion

 

"I sometimes watch this movie to fall asleep but last night I was high and I just kept saying “They’re all so dumb.” And they really are so dumb. Every one of them. There is not one smart person in this movie. It’s one of the best movies ever written because they’re all so dumb."

- Bruno, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

dr strangelove

"you humans dont need ai to destroy

you're gonna blow up yourselves

i'll just watch and laugh when you do

 

hahahahah"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#69 (2020), UNRANKED (2018), #72 (2016), #37 (2014), #42 (2013), #75 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2),  David Fincher (2), Stanley Kubrick (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2),  Ridley Scott (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), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (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), Andrew Stanton (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Simon Wells (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1960s (1), 1970s (3), 1980s (7), 1990s (8), 2000s (16), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Brazil (1), China (1), Italy (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (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

 

#116 Fanboy Ranking, #48 Cinema Ranking

#27 Old Farts Ranking, #90 Damn Kids Ranking

#39 Ambassador Ranking, #61 All-American Ranking

#107 Cartoon Ranking, #53 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[Daxtreme]

oh yeah Pan's Labyrinth! Top 10 vote here.

 

What I love the most about the movie is how unique it is. There really aren't a lot of Dark Fantasy War Drama Fairy Tale movies about fascism out there... like really not a lot.

 

Perhaps even only one.

 

Guillermo Del Toro really crafted something one of a kind, regardless of how you feel about it.

[Eric is Quiet]

11 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

Who would take the 10s over 00s

The 10s have Timothee

[The Panda]

This is the last batch of just misses where I will reveal 10 at a time, then we will take it slower!

 

Number 160

Modern Times (1936, Charlie Chaplin)

 

Number 159

The Sound of Music (1965, Robert Wise)

 

Number 158

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015, JJ Abrams)

 

Number 157

Oldboy (2003, Park Chan-wook)

 

Number 156

Whiplash (2013, Damien Chazelle)

 

Number 155

Bambi (1942, A Committee)

 

Number 154

1917 (2019, Sam Mendes)

 

Number 153

Dazed and Confused (1993, Richard Linklater)

 

Number 152

Good Will Hunting (1997, Gus Van Sant)

 

Number 151

Knives Out (2019, Rian Johnson)

[Cap]

By the way our 101-200 is going, Singin In The Rain is gonna be 102. And then y’all will see what truly unbiased moderation looks like.

[The Panda]

34 minutes ago, Cap said:

By the way our 101-200 is going, Singin In The Rain is gonna be 102. And then y’all will see what truly unbiased moderation looks like.

Sound of music might be my fault. It fell off to around the 15 to the 60s on my personal list.