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

[The Panda]

Number 17

 

 

"The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts."

( @Plain Old Tele seeing every entry on this list that isn't Black Stallion, Lawrence of Arabia, or a black and white silent french commentary on the Communist state told through the perspective of the children in Disney's Lab Rats)

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"The story of British officer T.E. Lawrence’s mission to aid the Arab tribes in their revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Lawrence becomes a flamboyant, messianic figure in the cause of Arab unity but his psychological instability threatens to undermine his achievements."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Thomas Edward Lawrence was born in Tremadog, Wales on 16 August 1888. From a young age he exhibited an active interest in architecture, monuments and antiquities. At the age of 15, he and a friend completed a survey of parish churches in Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Buckinghamshire, and monitored building sites in Oxford to ensure that any antiquities found were properly catalogued and presented to the Ashmolean Museum.

 

Between 1907 and 1910, Lawrence studied History at Jesus College, Oxford. During this time, he toured France by bicycle, collecting photographs, drawings, and measurements of medieval castles. This would form the basis of his dissertation. In 1909, he completed a remarkable solo 1,000-mile trek through Ottoman Syria visiting Crusader castles.

 

Following his studies, Lawrence became an archaeologist. He worked in Egypt, Palestine and Syria, at that time all part of the Ottoman Empire. This first-hand knowledge and experience earned him a posting  to Cairo after he enlisted in the British Army in October 1914. He served in the intelligence staff of the British Middle East Command in the First World War campaign against the Turks.

 

In 1916, Lawrence was posted to Hejaz, in modern Saudi Arabia, to work with the Hashemite forces. The campaign would secure him lasting fame in British popular legend.  His role was to act as a liaison officer between the British Government and the Arab tribes. The British were attempting to rally the Arabs against the ruling Ottoman Empire. They hoped that an internal revolt could help break the deadlock in the war in the Middle East. Lawrence was not the only British officer engaged in this work, but he is undoubtedly the most famous. His role required diplomatic as well as military skills, and he was able to build an effective relationship with Emir Feisal, a son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca and an important commander.

 

As impressive as his military feats were, it was the image that Lawrence created for himself, of the European adopting Arab dress and customs, that furthered his reputation and sealed his legend in popular culture. In August 1919, the American journalist Lowell Thomas launched a multimedia show in London called ‘With Allenby in Palestine’, which included a lecture, dancing, and Arabic music. Lawrence had initially featured in a supporting role. But it soon became clear to Thomas that images shot of Lawrence on campaign had captured the public imagination.

 

 

Thomas arranged to photograph Lawrence again, this time wearing white robes and carrying the jambiya Sherif Nasir had given him. With these new photos he relaunched his show as ‘With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia’ in early 1920. It was extremely popular. It was seen by more than 3 million people between 1920 and 1924, and made Lawrence a star. In 1962, the legend of Lawrence was renewed again with David Lean’s epic feature film Lawrence of Arabia. Its star, Peter O’Toole, was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. Once again, it was Lawrence’s appearance in Arab dress that was central to the film’s marketing.

 

Lawrence's robes and dagger play major roles in the film. When Sherif Ali, the character played by Omar Sharif, burns Lawrence’s British kit before giving him his Arab robes, it is a moment of enormous dramatic and narrative significance. It marks Lawrence’s cultural transition from British officer to a member of the tribe and helps complete his cultural assimilation, making his mission more successful. The attack on Aqaba, for which Lawrence was awarded the jambiya dagger, was no doubt overly dramatised in the film. But the dagger and the robes are the iconic items at the heart of the movie. They have shaped and dictated the prism through which we in modern Britain and elsewhere in the world - including the Middle East - think of Lawrence of Arabia, and Britain's role in shaping the region."

- U.K. National Propaganda Army Museum

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Why, in the midst oř the activities oř Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, and the French New Wave, would so much money be squandered in 1962 on a realist epic? Terry Eagleton contends, in another context, that "empire was a response to modernism" (5). Stylistically, Lean went against the current oř his time, which in the cinema was modernist. In privileging realism to serve the narrative oř an imperial protagonist, Lean was retarding a cinema struggling to emerge řrom Hollywood's own hegemony- classical, realist, narrative cinema. This "camel opera," as Bosley Crowther dismissed it in his 1962 review in the New York Times, was, above all, a deřense oř a menopausal empire and oř "Englishness" against the mounting assaults řrom the margins and centers oř Europe by sympathizers oř the cause oř world liberation movements and, more parochially, a European modernist cinema. It is relevant to note, in passing, that the Lawrence of the film never uttered a word which was not in English, although the real-life counterpart wrote (and bragged) prořusely about his knowledge oř Arab dialects and took the trouble to speak them. From water-boys to Prince Faisal, řrom the Howeitat Auda to his little son, the imperial hegemony oř English in the film was rampant, total. To be human was to be English, one could not escape řearing.

 

Clearly, the vision oř universal "Englishness" repulsed the eřřort oř the narrative to be liberal. There is no doubt that Lawrence of Arabia meant to promote liberal humanism, the only banner an empire sympathizer could raise while mustering justifications řor approving the domination oř other people. Lean, the řuture adapter oř E. M. Forster's A Passage to India ( 1988), pleaded already in Lawrence of Arabia řor a dialogue between East and West while at the same time advancing the notion that the more Westernized the colonial Other got, the easier the dialogue became. Witness the romance between Ali and Lawrence, growing with Alfs indoctrination into Western ideology to which he acceded by reading about parliamentary democracy -a reading he undertook stung by Lawrence's charge that the "Arabs are a little people" and would not become great until they put their diřřerences aside, as Europeans presumably do, in their parliaments. Witness, by contrast, the alienation between Lawrence and Auda, portrayed as an un-reclaimable residue oř Arab tribalism, a naturally good man (even řatherly) but habituated to the Bedouin's love oř plunder and to allegedly "amusing" and childish notions oř honor. Lean's portrayal oř Auda as brave but simple-minded is the more damning as Auda, not Lawrence, seems to have been, according to Aldington's account, the real  strategist, with British approval, behind the Akaba plan and its true leader. The condescending or outright hypocritical liberal postures go on: Lean celebrated Forstels famous cliche "only connect" with Lawrence's passion for Arabia, a passion regrettably, the film qualified, thwarted by English habits of repression so that Lawrence gave it expression through battle; similarly, the disinterested, passionate hero was undermined, bogged down, and finally compromised by a bureaucratic order which he despised. As a liberal film, therfore, Lawrence of Arabia was racked with contradictions, bleating two cheers for the Empire, in Forster 's witty tradition of cheering democracy with which Lean equated the British venture of conquest.

 

 

 Both Suleiman Musa and Richard Aldington insist that Lawrence's campaigns in Arabia, as sanctioned by the "legend," were largely fantastical. Musa advances a case for the Arabs being far more prepared to fight and aware of their perils vis-a-vis the Turkish occupation than Lawrence, the condottiere. First, he describes Lawrence as having a "low, apologetic voice, a silly giggle, a schoolboy grin, a habit of playing stupid practical jokes, and above all, a perpetual kidding" (34). Second, Aldington argues, "he was determined," like his father, "not to work," aping the medieval custom that a knight overlord "never work in order that no peaceful means of gain should mitigate his military ferocity" (40). Third, he attacks Lawrence's prose: "Something like six thousand words of fine writing are devoted to a two-day camel ride from the coast to Feisal's camp, which shows a singular contempt for his reader's patience" (328). Fourth, he sneers at the myth of Lawrence's the Medieval scholar, which had it that he read "strange" books, chief among them, The Song of Roland , a classic that, in Aldington's words, "every schoolgirl" of his generation read (40). Fifth he tackles Lawrence's military prowess: he was not, as he promoted himself, the lone saboteur of the Hejaz railroad but worked with a task force of French officers (140); Akaba was Auda's initiative, ordered by the London War committee on 16 July 1916 (183); Lawrence did not like Feisal (whom he considered a weak military leader) nor Feisal him ( 140); as for his "heroic" actions at the taking oř Akaba, Aldington reports that "in fact, Lawrence accidentally shot his own camel in the back of the head and was thrown from it, remained stunned, and woke up when the action was over over and Turkish soldiers were being massacred [by Auda's tribe]" (184-185).

 

 In other words, a professional orientalist had to deliver a vision of the Orient in a consonant narrative that might justify the West's will-to-power. One thinks, by way of an analogy, of those Ingres "Odalisques" in the Turkish baths, naked, fleshy, perpetually poised between the waters they have bathed in and the towels they cannot reach to dry themselves, trapped by their poses into immobility and blamed by the hypocritical spectator for their nakedness. Likewise, the hero of Lawrence of Arabia is constrained by the propaganda he is a vehicle for from emerging as a meaningful rather than a foolish contradicton."

- Luciana Bohne, Film Criticism

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"Possibly the most majestic movie ever made. Every shot and cut is carefully considered; the film is jaw-dropping in a theater. Obviously, the brownface is not good to say the least, and the second half somehow feels as long as the first due to it not being as compelling, but this movie is more than the sum of its parts. O’Toole and Sharif elevate their characters to feeling immense, and Jarre’s score sweeps you away just as much as that perfect cinematography. Absolutely a transcendent experience; see this epic in 70mm at any opportunity you get."

- @Blankments

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

lab rat or scientist

"Cops are the Justice
Self Defense is jail time
Humans are the causes of crime
Government is cause of crime
Blood is for the cops
Money is for the government
Glory is got the military
Capitalism dominates the citizens
School is our gateway to lifetime jobs
College isn't free
College is the government way of getting money in their pockets"

- Aeric Johnson

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#22 (2020), #87 (2018), #21 (2016), #47 (2014), #31 (2013), #66 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (4), James Cameron (3), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1),  Wes Craven (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (3), 1950s (6), 1960s (6), 1970s (7), 1980s (11), 1990s (19), 2000s (17), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (6), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Back to the Future (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), E.T. (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Jurassic Park (1), The Lion King (1), Mad Max (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Terminator (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#34 Fanboy Ranking, #9 Cinema Ranking

#4 Old Farts Ranking, #28 Damn Kids Ranking

#2 Ambassador Ranking, #19 All-American Ranking

#15 Cartoon Ranking, #17 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[The Panda]

Fucking heathens, this is a top 5 all-time movie and you ranked it this low? There's only one movie ranked above this that is arguably better!

 

Number 16

 

 

"Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don't."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II."

 

Its Legacy

 

"The magnitude of the vision presented in "Schindler’s List" and its global impact marked a turning point to those of us in the field of Holocaust education and remembrance. It ushered a sea change of understanding and created a window of opportunity for ongoing learning — on a subject matter that is impossible to comprehend — as never had been seen before.

 

"Schindler’s List" opened the floodgates for survivors and other witness to come forward to share their stories with the world, for the world was now ready to listen. The film also had an impact on the filmmaker himself before, during and after the production. Spielberg was moved by his experiences directing the film to take action and launch what is today known as USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education (USC Shoah Foundation). In establishing this organization, Steven made two promises to survivors of the Shoah: one, that he would preserve their stories in perpetuity, and two, that their stories would be shared for educational purposes around the globe.

 

Now, as the film comes to theaters again, the world is at a critical crossroads similar to what the generation in the film faced: Globally, authoritarian governments are in ascendance — with fascist parties gaining traction in many European nations. Further, a stark rise in violence targeting Jewish communities has reflected rising antisemitism as not seen since the Second World War.   Domestically, there has been a 57 percent spike in anti-Semitic incidents as reported by the ADL — the largest year-over-year jump, ever. Today’s headlines are flooded with news reports of swastika graffiti, public Nazi salutes, and many other incidents, including violent attacks and mass murders.

 

 

This rise of anti-Semitism — coupled with a waning consciousness of the Holocaust and other genocides among millennials and younger Americans — has created a new urgency.  As "Schindler’s List" approaches the quarter-century mark, USC Shoah Foundation is redoubling its efforts to ensure that as many young people as possible see this important film and are challenged to think critically about the consequences of their actions upon other human beings, and also the consequences of inaction.

 

In the 25 years that have transpired since the film’s release, USC Shoah Foundation’s work to fulfill the two promises made to the witnesses has grown in size and scope: USC Shoah Foundation currently houses more than 115,000 hours of testimony from more than 55,000 eyewitnesses, and has expanded its efforts beyond collecting and sharing the stories of the survivors of the Holocaust to include testimony from more than 100 years of history, from the genocide in Armenia to most recently the genocide of Rohingya in Myanmar. USC Shoah Foundation's interactive programming, research, and testimony-based materials are accessed in museums and universities, cited by government leaders and NGOs, and taught in classrooms around the world.

 

"Schindler’s List" delivers a universal message: The actions of one person can make a difference in the lives of others. Even in the face of the worst of humanity, we all have within us the power to take action — and to be stronger than hate. Our hope is that this is a message the next generation is ready to hear, because our survival depends on our evolution into a more cohesive and inclusive world."

- Stephen D. Smith, Detroit News

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

" Adapted faithfully by Steven Zaillian from Thomas Keneally's fact-based novel, Schindlers List tells the remarkable and uplifting tale of Oskar Schindler, a German Catholic industrialist who courageously and uncharacteristically rescued some 1200 Pol ish Jews from extermination at Auschwitz. The film arrives with the visible and tempo ral signs of high seriousness on the Holly wood screen: black and white cinematogra phy and three-hour-plus running time. Forsaking the visual pleasure and contem porary perspective of color stock, the mono chromatic film grain resonates with the documentary memo ry of the Holocaust, the stark newsreels of liberated concentra tion camps taken by American, British, and Soviet forces, later supplemented by captured footage from the Nazis themselves, always inveterate record keepers. Likewise, the prolonged run ning time is com mensurate with the gravitas of the mate rial and the esthetics of immersion in an extended, complex, and emotionally wrenching narrative.

 

 Little is said of Schindler's spiritual transformation from narcissist to altruist, war profiteer to angel of mercy. Just as well - even in the Kenneally novel, the man's motives remain obscure, his heroism understood more as a personal gesture than a political stance or moral imperative. Spiel berg's strategy is to show the action rather than probe the impulse. Save for the infor mational titles that signpost time and place, the weave and texture of the film is a sud den, unbidden immersion in a nightmare world. Rousted from their homes, families knead diamonds in clumps of bread to swal low them, like communion, for retrieval later. To pass medical inspection, women prick their fingers and rub the blood into their cheeks for color. Like the most com pelling Holocaust literature, the tone is flat, mute, and dispassionate; death is presented matter of factly, in all its clinical, biological apathy, without shocked reaction shots or musical cues (for once, John Williams's score is an unobtrusive guide, not a thun dering imperative). Since the disclosure of desperate mea sures and concentra tion camp ethnog raphy unfolds wordlessly, the spec tator must invest the narrative with the moral sense unspo ken from the screen. The payoff in sympa thetic participation can be heartstop ping, as when a sprightly singalong tune blares out from the camp speakers and the next shot frames a huge chorus of children, hun dreds of them, filling the screen and walk ing forward, happy lemmings ignorant of the fate awaiting them.

 

 Of course, this gem of rare price in an auteur's canon serves as more than the ulti mate leverage on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. No less than the opening of the Holocaust Museum on the Washington Mall, a site heretofore pre served for memorials to the American past, Schindlers List is a capstone event in a process that has been called "the American ization of the Holocaust." Edward Lutvak recently observed how, with the passage of time, the Holocaust has come to seem more and more the central event of World War II. More and more, too, Hollywood has come to seem the prism through which all history, genocidal or otherwise, is witnessed and felt. The medium that in 1945 indelibly con firmed the rumors of war now passes the information on to a new generation - with filmmakers like Spielberg the custodians of an awful legacy. No wonder then that Spielberg's act of historical reclamation in an age in which Holocaust denial advertises itself in the pages of college newspapers has shielded the director from the usual critical qualifica tions. Schindlers List is overlong, lachry mose, and preachy in its final act; Neesom is a weak centerpiece, soft focus matinee idol photography notwithstanding; the sec ondary characters are a faceless chorus; and, though this is a story of endurance and sur vival, a Holocaust movie in which none of the sympathetic characters dies seems to miss the point of its subject (even in a box car on the way to Auschwitz, Ben Kingsley's character is blessed by providential Hollywood intervention, never truly a risk).

 

 Schindlers List closes with a frame-break ing coda in which the survivors of 1945 transmute cinematically into their present day selves and descendants. In the real pre sent now, in color, in Israel, a procession of Schindler's Jews and Spielberg's actors march by to lay a pebble on the grave of Oskar Schindler. The last mourner, standing alone at the foot of the grave in a long shot, is Liam Neesom, head bowed in reverence. One wonders why it is not the director him self at the graveside - a gesture rejected as too Hitchcockian and self- aggrandizing?  until one realizes that Spielberg's homage this time is to history, not film."

- Thomas Doherty, Cineaste

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"It’s no doubt that Schindler’s List is still one of the greatest films ever made. It’s almost 29 years old and it’s been shown to people all over the world. Whether they found the film by accident, if they had to watch it for any research or if they were curious because it was a film by Steven Spielberg. Back in 1993, he shook the world with the emotional weight and the affected sorrow for millions and millions of lives lost in the Holocaust. Listening to Spielberg’s experience of making this film was so heartbreaking for him. If I was a director making a powerful story with a gruesome depiction, it would shake me up and made me needed a moment. He rightfully earned that Best Director Oscar for bravely making a historical film that would shake you, stun you, and leave you speechless. It was good of Martin Scorsese stepping down to let Steven Spielberg direct Schindler’s List for his family, their history and the Jewish culture.

 

I’ve already talked about this film a few years ago when it was put back into theaters for it’s 25th anniversary, but I don’t think I’ve talked about it that much. So I guess I can talk about it again. I was about 15 or 16 watching Schindler’s List for the first time, my grandmother had is on VHS and I liked learning about history growing up, so I decided to watch it. I know it was about the Holocaust and I heard a lot of unanimous reviews. I’ve also already learned about the horrific atrocities happening to millions and millions of Jews in school. But this? This was like nothing I’ve prepared for. It was like it was happening in front of me! I didn’t cry about it as much as I do now when I watch it. But my first reaction to the film’s nature was filled with disgust, anger, and I was left speechless. Until it got to being a powerful and beautifully made film. I applaud Spielberg for making an incredible film!"

- Stanley Scorsese, Letterboxd

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

schindler's list

"I see the aching words of Elie Wiesel

born in black and white: the metal eyes
of Nazi Germany on Israel,
the numbered numberless, the animalized
who once were men — whose children will not know
the innocence of childhood again —

and still, the falling ash, the burning snow,
the deep, remorseless appetite of sin.
And there am I, entirely, one of them,
lost in the heavy silence of the room
without the power to conquer or condemn

the tyranny, the terror, or their doom.
Too many think of hell and live in fear
of death, and never know that hell was here."

- Corey Harvard

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#4 (2020), #15 (2018), #10 (2016), #15 (2014), #10 (2013), #21 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (5), James Cameron (3), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Francis Ford Coppola (1),  Wes Craven (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (3), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (7), 1980s (11), 1990s (20), 2000s (17), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (6), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Back to the Future (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), E.T. (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Jurassic Park (1), The Lion King (1), Mad Max (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Terminator (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#22 Fanboy Ranking, #13 Cinema Ranking

#16 Old Farts Ranking, #16 Damn Kids Ranking

#16 Ambassador Ranking, #16 All-American Ranking

#25 Cartoon Ranking, #16 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

(AKA the greatest scene ever shot, so heart breaking and powerful)

[The Panda]

Here are five more of the misses!

 

Number 115

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, Steven Spielberg)

 

Number 114

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003, Gore Verbinski)

 

Number 113

Before Sunrise (1995, Richard Linklater)

 

Number 112

Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)

 

Number 111

Some Like it Hot (1959, Billy Wilder)

[CaptNathanBrittles]

At least it's above JURASSIC PARK.

[THUNDER BIRD]

16 minutes ago, The Panda said:

Here are five more of the misses!

 

Number 115

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, Steven Spielberg)

 

Number 114

Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (2003, Gore Verbinski)

 

Number 113

Before Sunrise (1995, Richard Linklater)

 

Number 112

Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)

 

Number 111

Some Like it Hot (1959, Billy Wilder)

Curse of Black Pearl below Dead Man's Chest..... Hmm

[THUNDER BIRD]

1 minute ago, CaptNathanBrittles said:

At least it's above JURASSIC PARK.

Yeah, what a travesty, there are 17 movies above it.

[The Panda]

Let the franchise onslaught begin!

Number 15

 

 

"I make him an offer he don' refuse. Don' worry."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"In the continuing saga of the Corleone crime family, a young Vito Corleone grows up in Sicily and in 1910s New York. In the 1950s, Michael Corleone attempts to expand the family business into Las Vegas, Hollywood and Cuba."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 movie, which acts as both a sequel and a prequel his 1972 original, continues to be one of a handful of films widely considered to be the gold standard of follow-up films. However, getting it there wasn’t easy.

 

“We didn’t think it was a classic sequel. It was a very difficult film in many ways, and it took a lot of time to shoot,” explained Fred Roos, one of the film’s co-producers. “We shot all over the world from Hollywood and Miami to the Dominican Republic and Sicily, Rome, and China, to name just a few of the places. The structure of the movie was very unusual too, having it take place in two different times and so many different places, we tried lots of things to make it work. We experimented with it, trying different things.”

 

“We did a lot of test screenings too until we finally hit one screening, I remember it was in San Diego, where we got the right balance, and it finally worked. But it was touch and go. We had some bad screenings where the cutting back and forth between the two stories bothered people, but we eventually found the right formula.”

 

Although it’s considered a classic now, when it initially hit theaters, critical reaction was decidedly mixed. However, that didn’t affect it come awards season where The Godfather Part II secured 11 nominations, walked away with six wins, and became the first sequel to win Best Picture. It’s a time Roos remembers well. He explained: “At the time, people would say, ‘Oh, it’s no The Godfather.’ On the night of the Oscars, when we won Best Picture, Paramount Pictures had three films nominated in that category including The Conversation, which I also co-produced, and Chinatown. Everyone thought Chinatown, which is a great movie, had it in the bag.” 

 

“When they announced that The Godfather Part II was the winner, we were not expecting it. After that, the movie’s reputation just grew and grew and rightfully so. I still believe it is one of the 20 best movies ever made, not just one of the best sequels.”

 

 

“What The Godfather Part II did was show, not that there have been many since, that a sequel could be as good as, if not better than, the original,” Roos recalled. “By the way, the ‘Part II’ in the title was controversial. The studio said, ‘You can’t call it The Godfather Part II. Nobody’s ever done that. You have to think of another title.’ But, Francis stuck with that. Now we have hundreds of films that are Part II or Part III or whatever. It made that OK.”

 

“There’s a lot I miss about those days. Back then, you could let a film build and add theaters gradually. You can rarely do that anymore. You have to come out in all your theaters at once, and you live or die in that first week. There’s almost no chance now of building an audience little by little. However, there are good things about today. The streamers allow all kinds of movies to get made that might not get made any other way can be made any other way in this climate, but because of the way they are shown, they might not stick with you like a theatrical release.”

 

Made for $13 million, The Godfather Part II grossed $88 million worldwide, considerably less than the first film in what became a trilogy. That came as little surprise to Roos, even then. He explained: “A sequel rarely sits as well as the original if the original is a big hit. The fact that it hung in there and remains seen by so many so often is amazing. Plus, it was a long film, a very long film, which the studio was not happy about but they went with it. Because of the length, it meant theaters could have fewer screenings a day, which can affect the box office.”"

- Simon Thompson, Forbes

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Film critics normally view sequels as exploitative products that cash in on the popularity of earlier blockbusters, invariably inferior to the original films. However, most critics today consider the 1974 sequel to The Godfather not only better than the first movie but one of the best movies of the decade. This fact seems even more surprising when one considers that the first Godfather is one of the most beloved films of all time and was, for a brief period, the greatest blockbuster in film history. When The Godfather debuted in 1972, it shattered all the major box office records. It made $8 mil lion in its opening week in national release. It brought in a million dollars a day for twenty six days and $2 million a week for 23 con secutive weeks. In less than six months, it surpassed Gone with the Wind to become the biggest box-office grosser in history, earning $86,275,000 in rentals by the end of its first year in release. The critics loved it too, on the whole, except that many though

 

Scholarship has hardly addressed the phe nomenon of film sequelization, and the few critical treatments that exist focus almost exclusively on the horror film series that began inundating theaters in the late seven ties and haven't tapered off since.2 One full length book has been devoted to literary and film sequels, Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel, a chronologically organized collec tion of essays, mostly by period specialists, which begins by examining epic sequels of the Greek Bronze Age and ends by looking at Hollywood sequels of the 1980s and '90s. It will come as no surprise that the theme common to the essays is that sequels consistently let their audiences down. The essayists normally treat audience disap pointment as an unavoidable consequence of publishers' and movie studios' attempts to profit quickly on the successes of earlier hits by churning out invariably inferior products (although several of the essays look at some notable exceptions to this  rule).3 Paul Budra and Betty Schellenberg, in the introduction to Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel, also note "the inevitably changed [historical] conditions which make it impossible to achieve a precise repetition of the experience" of the original work (5). In their treatments of the sequel, however, the essayists deal only in passing with per haps the most pertinent historical fact when considering audiences' common dissatis faction with sequels: the prior experience of the original popular work. Even if the sequel were every bit as good as the origi nal, and experienced by an otherwise iden tical culture in equivalent historical circum stances, it would nonetheless disappoint audiences because nothing can equal

 

Lianne McLarty suggests that, from one perspective, the sequel "marks the end of originality and results in the triumph of sur face over depth, spectacle over meaning and history" (201).5 A movie sequel not only banks on the spectacular profitability of its predecessor; it often takes spectacle for its subject matter, hence the tendency of sequels to overdo the most spectacular ele ments of the original movie, such as vio lence, special effects, and stars. In fact, a movie sequel is almost invariably a version of the original movie as spectacle, a lavish display of the mere surface of the prior work. Even plots and characters turn into spectacles in a sequel. When C-3PO and R2-D2 make narratively gratuitous reap pearances in George Lucas's prequels to the initial Star Wars trilogy, the prequels attempt not only to reinspire the audience's affection for the characters but to call up the spectacle of C-3PO and R2-D2 by superfi cially reiterating their connection to the prior films we loved. Or consider Coppola's extraordinary efforts to include in The Godfather Part III as many of the actors from the first two movies as he could work in. It is understandable why audiences would want to see Al Pacino again, but why should we care about seeing Al Martino as Johnny Fontane or Richard Bright as Al Neri? The sequel makes these characters spectacles for us, banking on their associa tion with the original Godfather movies and on our excitement for their bare presence here. The familiar faces also help maintain continuity with the first film; their reap pearance eases us into the new movie, rein forces the existence of a world we remem ber, and strengthens our sense that we have reentered a milieu that continues to function according to consistent and recognizable patterns.

 

 

 After the unprecedented success of the orig inal film, the sequel was bound to disap point, and, on its release in December 1974, it did. As with most sequels, it made a prof it, but its success came nowhere near that of its predecessor. Part II took almost a year to gross as much as the original had in its first month of release, ultimately grossing in its first run only one-third of the profits of the first movie ($30.1 million in rentals as com pared to $86.3 million for the first movie), "considerably less than the conventional two third Paramount expected"

 

rom Edwin Porter's Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show (1902) to Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), both of which depict the confusion of film's two realities, filmmakers have played on cinema's potential for self-reflexivity. But the effect needn't be so heavy-handed. More subtle correlations between realities can have a much richer effect because the reso nances work below the level of our con scious understanding and because the con nections we make are not as logical and straightforward as in Porter's and Allen's movies. Special effects, for example, feel appropriate to the science-fiction genre not only because they allow the genre to create futuristic visual imagery but also because special effects are themselves scientific and futuristic. One need only recognize the incongruity of the digital visual effects in such films as Gladiator (2000) and Young herlock Holmes (1985) to see the point; for reasons that don't exactly make sense, the special effects in those films come across as anachronistic. In a more sophisticated com mingling of realities, as John Wayne aged in the 1960s and 1970s and as the genre grew passe, westerns-such as The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962), True Grit (1969), The Wild Bunch (1969) and The Cowboys (1972)-often dealt with the death of old heroes or the death of the West itself. The resonance between the outmoded west ern genre and the fading western frontier gives these late westerns a feeling of right ness, because the two logically unrelated phenomena seem naturally to belong togeth er. The correlation between realities is, moreover, intellectually exciting as we make passing connections between fundamentally different, in fact mutually exclusive, uni verses: the real universe in which we are sit ting in a movie theater watching a movie and the fictional universe depicted on the screen.

 

The Godfather Part II does something sim ilar and even less conspicuous. Part II caus es us to make casual connections between two incompatible, but genuinely analogous, realities without letting us know we are making them. We view the sequel with dis appointment (in our real world), and we see our judgments reflected thematically (in the fictional world of the movie), yet we do not consciously consider the parallel. The paral lel remains substantively irrelevant to the film (just as the parallel between the dying west and the dying western is substantively irrelevant), yet it feels felicitous because dis appointment is as natural to a sequel as the dying west is to a late western or special effects are to a science-fiction film. I suspect Part II's seductive subtlety led early review ers to mistake their opinion of what happens in the sequel for their opinion of the sequel itself. They accused the movie of being what it is about: the disappointing aftermath to the loss of the godfather."

- Todd Berliner, Journal of Film and Video

 

Public Opinion

 

"Ehh, this was also alright. 5/5" - @Eric the Extra-Terrestrial

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

godfather of giggles

"To the man who made me who I am

Being with you was like learning without a textbook
I just watched and copied and made it my own
From gardening to maths
You made me my own genius

I didn't have to speak for you to know what was wrong
You didn't judge me for the silly things I said
Or how I never learnt at school
You taught me to teach my self

You were my Mr Miyagi
With less riddles more jokes
I learnt that laughter can flood rooms like tidal waves
And we were leaves to float in it

And now you're gone I wont mourn
You would tell me to stop crying and cut my hair
I will use laughter to put a smile on raggedy dolls
And the stories to keep the dark days down

Thank you for being the Godfather of giggles
Making Sunday dinners not the day to fear Mondays
Having gardening not be a chore but a way to think
Rest well Granddad."

- Callum Hutching

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#20 (2020), #29 (2018), #11 (2016), #34 (2014), #8 (2013), #8 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (5), James Cameron (3), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (3), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (8), 1980s (11), 1990s (20), 2000s (17), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (6), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Back to the Future (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), E.T. (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), The Godfather (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Jurassic Park (1), The Lion King (1), Mad Max (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Terminator (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#20 Fanboy Ranking, #12 Cinema Ranking

#7 Old Farts Ranking, #23 Damn Kids Ranking

#19 Ambassador Ranking, #15 All-American Ranking

#33 Cartoon Ranking, #14 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by The Panda

[Eric Furiosa]

Just now, The Panda said:

"Ehh, this was also alright. 5/5" - @Eric the Extra-Terrestrial

 

Now this review I'm okay with you sharing!

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

In among some of the greatest movies ever made.....

 

The Dark Knight Rises at 124

Dunkirk at 117

 

And the Dark Knight at the very least above Schindler's list, Jurassic Park, Lawrence of Arabia and Godfather Part 2.

 

I mean I don't want to make fun. But lordy, it's hard not to.

 

FrootShoots all round.

[Ozymandias]

Wheres Boyhood?

 

IT TOOK 12 YEARS TO MAKE

[THUNDER BIRD]

1 hour ago, The Panda said:

but in terms of plot and character, it's about as well developed as "Godzilla

What the absolute..... 

[MrPink]

11 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

In among some of the greatest movies ever made.....

 

The Dark Knight Rises at 124

Dunkirk at 117

 

And the Dark Knight at the very least above Schindler's list, Jurassic Park, Lawrence of Arabia and Godfather Part 2.

 

I mean I don't want to make fun. But lordy, it's hard not to.

 

FrootShoots all round.

 

Tenet is about to hit the top 15 baby

[The Panda]

Of the 5 critic consensus "greatest of all-time movies" (Vertigo, Citizen Kane, Casablanca, Tokyo Story, and the Passion of Joan of Arc) it seems our choice is Casablanca!

 

Number 14

 

 

"Frankly, daring. I don't give a damn."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications."

 

Its Legacy

 

"On November 26, 1942, in the midst of World War II, a film called "Casablanca" premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City. Warner Brothers actually rushed the release of the film, as the Allies, led by General Dwight Eisenhower, secured their hold on North Africa and invaded Casablanca that month. 

 

The film became an American icon, ranking third on the American Film Institute's 100 best movies of the last 100 years. "Casablanca" launched Ingrid Bergman's career and established Humphrey Bogart as a romantic lead. It is one of the most referenced films of all time, from Woody Allen's "Play it Again, Sam" to the Muppets. 

 

 

Jeanine Basinger, professor of film studies at Wesleyan University and author of "The Star Machine," curates the Ingrid Bergman archives. She says that the "Casablanca" team had no idea their film would become such a major part of American film history.

 

Basinger attributes the movie's durability to it's technique, rather than it's content. "The plot really isn't the point of it, it's the way it's done that's made it last," she says.  

 

"It's about the myth of Americans as being heroic, as going out into fights that aren't necessarily their own to fight, for people who are being treated unjustly," she says. "The romantic hero of Rick represents that." 

 

"There's a kind of melancholy quality to it," she says. "The reluctance to fight unless you have to. It's romanticizing a definition of our personal American hero." Bogart has the face for this part, she says — he isn't a pretty boy. He looks weathered, rugged, and tough. Though the movie may have been quite timely in its spirit of wartime patriotism, it has held up for 70 years. And while Bergman and Bogart will always have Paris, we will always have Casablanca."

- New York Public Radio

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

""Was it the cannon fire or is my heart pounding?" Whenever Casablanca is shown, at this point the audience reacts with an enthusiasm usually reserved for football. Sometimes a single word is enough: fans cry every time Bogey says "kid." Frequently the spectators quote the best lines before they are uttered. According to the traditional standards in aesthetics, Casablanca is not a work of art-if such an expression still means anything. In any case, if the films of Dreyer, Eisenstein, or Antonioni are works of art, Casablanca represents a very modest aesthetic achievement. It is a hodgepodge of sensational scenes strung together implausibly; its characters are psychologically incredible, its actors act in a manneristic way. Nevertheless, it is a great example of cine matic discourse, a palimpsest for the future students of twentieth-century religiosity, a paramount laboratory for semiotic research in textual strategies. Moreover, it has become a cult movie. What are the requirements for transforming a book or a movie into a cult object? The work must be loved, obviously, but this is not enough. It must provide a completely furnished world, so that its fans can quote characters and episodes as if they were part of the beliefs of a sect, a private world of their own, a world about which one can play puzzle games and trivia contests, and whose adepts recognize each other through a common competence. Of course all these elements (characters and episodes) must have some archetypal appeal, as we shall see. One can ask and answer questions about the various stations of the subway in New York or Paris only if these spots have become or have been taken as mythical areas, and such names as "Canarsy Line" or "Vincennes Neuilly" do not only stand for physical places, but become the catalyzers of collective memories.

 

 

 Which are the elements of a movie that can be dislocated from the whole and adored for themselves? In order to go on with this analysis of Casablanca, I should use some important semiotic categories, such as the ones (provided by the Russian Formalists) of theme and motif. I confess that I find very diffi cult to ascertain what the various Russian Formalists meant by motif. If according to Veselovskij-a motif is the simplest narrative unit, then one wonders why "fire from heaven" should belong to the same category as "the persecuted maid" (since the former can be represented by an image, while the latter requires a certain narrative development). It would be interesting to follow Tomacevskij and to look, in Casablanca, for free and tied motifs or for dynamic and static motifs. We should distinguish between more or less universal narra tive functions a la Propp, visual stereotypes like the Cynic Adventurer, and more complex archetypal situations like the Unhappy Love. I hope that someone will do such a job, but let me today assume, more prudently (and borrowing the concept from the research in artificial intelligence), the more flexible notion of "frame."

 

 We are interested, moreover, in finding out those frames which not only are recognizable by the audience as belonging to a sort of ancestral intertex tual tradition, but which also display a particular fascination. "A suspect who escapes a pass control and is shot by the police" is undoubtedly an intertextual frame, but it does not have a "magic" flavor. Let us take intuitively the idea of "magic" frame. Let us define as "magic" those frames which, when appear ing in a movie, and when then separated from the whole, transform this movie into a cult movie. In Casablanca we can find more intertextual frames than "magic" intertextual frames. Let us call these latter intertextual archetypes. The term "archetype" here does not pretend to have any particular psycho analytic or mythic connotation, but serves only to indicate a pre-established and frequently re-appearing narrative situation that is cited or in some way recycled by innumerable other texts, and provokes in the addressee a sort of intense emotion accompanied by the vague feeling of a deja vu that everybody yearns to see again. I would not say that an intertextual archetype is neces sarily "universal." It can belong to a rather recent textual tradition, as it happens with certain "topoi" of slapstick comedy. It is sufficient to consider it as a topos or standard situation that comes to be particularly appealing to a given cul tural area or historical period."

- Umberto Eco, SubStance

 

Public Opinion

 

"Movie hands out classic lines like candy." 

-

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

casabianca

"The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle’s wreck,
Shone round him o’er the dead.

 

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.

 

The flames rolled on – he would not go,
Without his father’s word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

 

He called aloud – ‘Say, father, say
If yet my task is done?’
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son."

- Felicia Hemmons

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#19 (2020), #23 (2018), #15 (2016), #22 (2014), #14 (2013), #33 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (5), James Cameron (3), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Michael Curtiz (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (8), 1980s (11), 1990s (20), 2000s (17), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (6), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Back to the Future (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), E.T. (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), The Godfather (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Jurassic Park (1), The Lion King (1), Mad Max (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Terminator (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#18 Fanboy Ranking, #10 Cinema Ranking

#5 Old Farts Ranking, #20 Damn Kids Ranking

#10 Ambassador Ranking, #14 All-American Ranking

#21 Cartoon Ranking, #13 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by The Panda

[The Panda]

 

 

Number 13

 

 

"May the force be with you."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

It's Star Wars.

 

 

Its Legacy

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Star Wars, George Lucas' lavish space opera, is truly a fantasy for our times, this generation's Wizard of Oz. Nevertheless, whereas Lucas' film has been almost universally praised for its costuming, sets, technical perfection, and wondrous special effects, its plot has been largely dismissed as corny or hokey, strictly kids' stuff. "The film's story is bad pulp, and so are the characters of hero Luke and heroine Leia," says Richard Corliss.1 "I kept looking for an 'edge,' to peer around the corny, solemn comic-book strophes," writes Stanley Kauffmann.2 And Molly Haskell sums up the critics' objections: "Star Wars is childish, even for a cartoon. "3

 

 

Well, if Star Wars is childish, then so are The Wizard of Oz and The Lord of the Rings. Like Tolkien's Middle Earth series, Star Wars is a modern fairy tale, a pastiche which reworks a multitude of old stories, and yet creates a complete and self-sufficient world of its own, one populated with intentionally flat, archetypal characters: reluctant young hero, warrior-wizard, brave and beautiful princess, and monstrous black villain. I would argue that the movie's fundamental appeal to both young and old lies precisely in its deliberately old-fashioned plot, which has its roots deep in American popular fantasy, and, deeper yet, in the epic structure of what Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces calls "the monomyth."

 

 

In an era in which Americans have lost heroes in whom to believe, Lucas has created a myth for our times, fashioned out of bits and pieces of twentieth-century American popular mythologyold movies, science fiction, television, and comic books- but held together at its most basic level by the standard pattern of the adventures of a mythic hero. Star Wars is a masterpiece of synthesis, a triumph of American ingenuity and resourcefulness, demonstrating how the old may be made new again: Lucas has raided the junkyards of our popular culture and rigged a working myth out of scrap. Like the hotrods in his previous film, American Graffiti, Star Wars is an amalgam of pieces of mass culture customized and supercharged and run flat out. This essay will therefore have two parts: first, a look at the elements Lucas has lifed openly and lovingly from various popular culture genres; and second, an analysis of how this pastiche is unified by the underlying structure of the "monomyth."

 

George Lucas, who both wrote and directed, admits that his original models were the Flash Gordon movie serials and Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars series of books. "I wanted to make an action movie- a movie in outer space like Flash Gordon used to be. ... I wanted to make a movie about an old man and a kid. . . . I also wanted the old man to be like a warrior. I wanted a princess, too, but I didn't want her to be a passive damsel in distress."5 In other words, he wanted to return to the sense of wonder and adventure that movies had given him as a child, but to update it for modern tastes and to take advantage of all the technological and cinematic innovations of the past thirty years since Flash Gordon.

 

 

Thus, just like American Graffiti, Star Wars is simultaneously innovative and conservative, backward-glancing and nostalgic. Graffiti takes a worn-out genre (the teenage beach party movies) and reanimates it; Star Wars gives new life to the space fantasy. "I didn't want to make a 2001, " says Lucas. "I wanted to make a space fantasy that was more in the genre of Edgar Rice Burroughs; that whole other end of space fantasy that was there before science took it over in the Fifties. Once the atomic bomb came. . . . they forgot the fairy tales and the dragons and Tolkien and all the real heroes."6 Both Graffiti and Star Wars express a yearning for prelapsarian eras: the former for the pre-Vietnam era and the latter for innocence of the time before the Bomb.

 

 

While lamenting the dearth of classic adventure films and the consequent lack of a healthy fantasy life for contemporary youth, Lucas told an interviewer, "I had also done a study on . . . the fairy tale or myth. It is a children's story in history and you go back to the Odyssey or the stories that are told for the kid in all of us."7 "You just don't get them any more, and that's the best stuff in the world -adventures in far-off lands. ... I wanted to do a modern fairy tale, a myth. ""

- Andrew Gordon, Literature/Quarterly

 

Public Opinion

 

"would be cooler if there was a giant fucking worm"

- Cartsen, Letterboxd and also probably @Plain Old Tele

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#12 (2020), #7 (2018), #5 (2016), #3 (2014), #4 (2013), #6 (2012)

 

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (5), James Cameron (3), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Michael Curtiz (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), George Lucas (1) Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (9), 1980s (11), 1990s (20), 2000s (17), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (6), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Star Wars (3), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Back to the Future (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), E.T. (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), The Godfather (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Jurassic Park (1), The Lion King (1), Mad Max (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Terminator (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#5 Fanboy Ranking, #21 Cinema Ranking

#10 Old Farts Ranking, #15 Damn Kids Ranking

#32 Ambassador Ranking, #11 All-American Ranking

#23 Cartoon Ranking, #11 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by The Panda

[Cap]

47 minutes ago, Eric the Extra-Terrestrial said:

Now this review I'm okay with you sharing!

 

If it makes you feel any better he cut the first half of my BATB review about how "this movie has nothing to do with Stockholm Syndrome" after posting a critics review about how "this movie is Stockholm Syndrome" 

 

 

Panda gonna Panda.

 

 

[Eric Furiosa]

2 minutes ago, Cap said:

 

If it makes you feel any better he cut the first half of my BATB review about how "this movie has nothing to do with Stockholm Syndrome" after posting a critics review about how "this movie is Stockholm Syndrome" 

 

 

Panda gonna Panda.

 

 

You dunking on those fools complaining about "Stockholm Syndrome" was the best part of your review. What the h*ck @The Panda???????

[The Panda]

 

Number 12

 

 

"Po-TAY-toes! Boil em' mash em' stick em' in a stew!"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

Imagine if the Battle of Winterfell from Game of Thrones didn't suck.

 

Its Legacy

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"The battle of Helm’s Deep is the first major battle in the War of the Ring and serves as the climax for the second part of the quintessential fantasy trilogy: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It ends in victory for Mankind, but that victory was far from assured. As the heroes slog through rain and mud against an otherworldly foe, so did the cast and crew slog through months of difficult night shoots to finish this cinematic masterpiece. The result of their effort is one of the greatest battles in cinematic history.

 

After the burning of the Westfold, Théoden King (Bernard Hill) takes his people to the stronghold of Helm’s Deep. It is nested within a steep canyon, meaning that the enemy can only attack them head-on. Théoden seems confident that this will be enough to protect his people and he boasts that the Deeping Wall has never been breached. But when Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) brings news that 10,000 of Saruman’s Uruk-hai are en route to eradicate Rohan’s people, the King begins to despair. Throughout the battle, the defenders must fight against that hopelessness as they are forced to retreat again and again in the face of overwhelming odds.

 

 

Taking place almost entirely at night and in the rain, the sheer scale of this battle sequence was unheard of in film at the time. Filming it was entirely another kind of struggle. It took three and a half months of freezing night shoots to finish the sequence. On nights when there was no precipitation, gallons of water was rained down upon the cast. To keep the scene intelligible, a misty blueish backlight was used, ostensibly emulating the light of the moon. As a result, the action and actors expressions remained remarkably clear in the dark (looking at YOU, Game of Thrones).

 

Seventeen years later, the effects of this battle hold up surprisingly well. This is partly due to the sheer number of practical effects used. The Uruk-hai were created from makeup and prosthetics rather than mocap and CGI. As a result, they look as good now as they did at the turn of the millennium. Multiple sets were used to film this battle: a scale fortress built in a disused quarry and two smaller scale models (1/4 scale and 1/85 scale) for distance shots. The Two Towers swept the first annual awards from the Visual Effects Society, claiming two-thirds of the awards it qualified for.

 

 

MASSIVE (Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment) is a software that was developed specifically for the Lord of the Rings trilogy to handle the massive crowds needed for these battle scenes. It has been used ever since in a variety of films and television including 300, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in the finale episode, “Chosen”), and the Hobbit films. This software used a kind of AI to determine how each member of the crowds needed to move. “When these characters are in groups they need to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ what’s around them,” said visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel, “MASSIVE has both artificial sight and hearing to aid in that process.”

 

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, the Battle of the Hornburg (called the Battle of Helm’s Deep in the film) is not nearly as large in scale as Peter Jackson’s adaptation. It serves as one of several battles that lead up to the final climax at the Battle of Pelennor Fields. However, Jackson made a choice to beef it up as the climax of The Two Towers, which helps the film exist as a standalone storyline. This battle has a full narrative arc within itself indicative of the themes of the overall series narrative. Clocking in at 39 minutes long, it is almost a movie within a movie."

- Samantha Olthof, Film School Rejects

 

Public Opinion

 

"anyway Two Towers is a good, even great film in practically every respect

 

but I still hate it"

- @Jason

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#36 (2020), #10 (2018), #12 (2016), #19 (2014), #29 (2013), #11 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (5), James Cameron (3), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Michael Curtiz (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Peter Jackson (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), George Lucas (1) Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (9), 1980s (11), 1990s (20), 2000s (18), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (6), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Star Wars (3), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Back to the Future (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), E.T. (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), The Godfather (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Jurassic Park (1), The Lion King (1), Mad Max (1), Middle Earth (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Terminator (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#4 Fanboy Ranking, #25 Cinema Ranking

#45 Old Farts Ranking, #6 Damn Kids Ranking

#49 Ambassador Ranking, #9 All-American Ranking

#8 Cartoon Ranking, #15 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 8, 2022 by The Panda

[Ozymandias]

11 minutes ago, The Panda said:

 

Number 12

 

 

"Po-TAY-toes! Boil em' mash em' stick em' in a stew!"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

Imagine if the Battle of Winterfell from Game of Thrones didn't suck.

 

Its Legacy

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"The battle of Helm’s Deep is the first major battle in the War of the Ring and serves as the climax for the second part of the quintessential fantasy trilogy: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It ends in victory for Mankind, but that victory was far from assured. As the heroes slog through rain and mud against an otherworldly foe, so did the cast and crew slog through months of difficult night shoots to finish this cinematic masterpiece. The result of their effort is one of the greatest battles in cinematic history.

 

After the burning of the Westfold, Théoden King (Bernard Hill) takes his people to the stronghold of Helm’s Deep. It is nested within a steep canyon, meaning that the enemy can only attack them head-on. Théoden seems confident that this will be enough to protect his people and he boasts that the Deeping Wall has never been breached. But when Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) brings news that 10,000 of Saruman’s Uruk-hai are en route to eradicate Rohan’s people, the King begins to despair. Throughout the battle, the defenders must fight against that hopelessness as they are forced to retreat again and again in the face of overwhelming odds.

 

 

Taking place almost entirely at night and in the rain, the sheer scale of this battle sequence was unheard of in film at the time. Filming it was entirely another kind of struggle. It took three and a half months of freezing night shoots to finish the sequence. On nights when there was no precipitation, gallons of water was rained down upon the cast. To keep the scene intelligible, a misty blueish backlight was used, ostensibly emulating the light of the moon. As a result, the action and actors expressions remained remarkably clear in the dark (looking at YOU, Game of Thrones).

 

Seventeen years later, the effects of this battle hold up surprisingly well. This is partly due to the sheer number of practical effects used. The Uruk-hai were created from makeup and prosthetics rather than mocap and CGI. As a result, they look as good now as they did at the turn of the millennium. Multiple sets were used to film this battle: a scale fortress built in a disused quarry and two smaller scale models (1/4 scale and 1/85 scale) for distance shots. The Two Towers swept the first annual awards from the Visual Effects Society, claiming two-thirds of the awards it qualified for.

 

 

MASSIVE (Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment) is a software that was developed specifically for the Lord of the Rings trilogy to handle the massive crowds needed for these battle scenes. It has been used ever since in a variety of films and television including 300, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (in the finale episode, “Chosen”), and the Hobbit films. This software used a kind of AI to determine how each member of the crowds needed to move. “When these characters are in groups they need to ‘see’ and ‘hear’ what’s around them,” said visual effects supervisor Jim Rygiel, “MASSIVE has both artificial sight and hearing to aid in that process.”

 

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, the Battle of the Hornburg (called the Battle of Helm’s Deep in the film) is not nearly as large in scale as Peter Jackson’s adaptation. It serves as one of several battles that lead up to the final climax at the Battle of Pelennor Fields. However, Jackson made a choice to beef it up as the climax of The Two Towers, which helps the film exist as a standalone storyline. This battle has a full narrative arc within itself indicative of the themes of the overall series narrative. Clocking in at 39 minutes long, it is almost a movie within a movie."

- Samantha Olthof, Film School Rejects

 

Public Opinion

 

"anyway Two Towers is a good, even great film in practically every respect

 

but I still hate it"

- @Jason

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#36 (2020), #10 (2018), #12 (2016), #19 (2014), #29 (2013), #11 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (5), James Cameron (3), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Michael Curtiz (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Peter Jackson (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), George Lucas (1) Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (9), 1980s (11), 1990s (20), 2000s (18), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (6), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Star Wars (3), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Back to the Future (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), E.T. (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), The Godfather (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Jurassic Park (1), The Lion King (1), Mad Max (1), Middle Earth (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Terminator (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#4 Fanboy Ranking, #25 Cinema Ranking

#45 Old Farts Ranking, #6 Damn Kids Ranking

#49 Ambassador Ranking, #9 All-American Ranking

#8 Cartoon Ranking, #15 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

 

I recently finished the 4k extended editions of LOTR on HBOMax in preparation for the show thats probably gonna suck.  I actually think I prefer the theatrical version of ROTK to the extended edition, though my ideal cut would've included all the added stuff with Frodo/Sam between Cirith Ungol and Mount Doom.  Plus, I just fucking love the orcs in those movies.  PJ's horror roots really shine through with pretty much anything to do with the orcs.

I think the definitive way to watch the trilogy is: FOTR: Extended --> TTT: Extended --> ROTK: Theatrical.

Edited August 8, 2022 by Ozymandias

[The Panda]

And Nolan misses the top 10 for the first time in forum history.

 

 

Number 11

 

 

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker."

 

Its Legacy

 

"“You’ve changed things. Forever,” the Joker says, leering at a caped crusader on the verge of defeat. It’s been 10 years since The Dark Knight carved a crooked smile into the world of pop culture. The film made Christopher Nolan a household name, redefined blockbuster movies, necessitated recognition of the artistry of big-budget filmmakers and transformed how the public viewed the mythos of Batman and the Joker. Simply put, The Dark Knight changed things. Forever. Ten years on, and with pages of comic panels spilling onto the screen on an almost monthly basis, The Dark Knight, which opened July 18, 2008, remains the high point of comic book adaptations.

 

Yet, despite the recognition of the film’s unequivocal greatness, much of the reason behind its greatness has become dislodged in the explosion of superhero movies, and the so-called dark, gritty, and grounded reboots that followed in its wake. Nolan delivered unto us what was arguably the first prestige superhero movie, but what did The Dark Knight cost?

 

 

It’s easy to misremember The Dark Knight as a superhero movie. And why shouldn’t we see it as such? Batman is a superhero, after all. He is, along with Superman, the most recognizable character to carry that title. And that’s in part what makes Nolan’s treatise on the character so interesting and risky. Even more so than its predecessor Batman Begins (2005), The Dark Knight detaches itself from many of the tropes associated with superhero movies and instead operates along the lines of a crime thriller-drama devoid of world-ending stakes or shared universe connections. Nolan’s Batman operates as a public servant rather than a superhero. There’s very little action in The Dark Knight, at least when compared to the superhero films that had set a precedent before its release, Spider-Man (2002) and its sequels, X-Men (2000) and its proto-grounded franchise, or going even further back, the Batman films shaped by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher from 1989 to 1997. And now, looking at the films that followed The Dark Knight, the DC universe, the recalibrated X-Men franchise, and most notably, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Dark Knight is a far cry from cinematic superheroics before or after.

 

Yes, The Dark Knight is ultimately a film about a rich man-child dressed up like a bat facing off against a terrorist in clown makeup — the ethos of so many great Batman stories. But there’s also the fact that so much of the film comprises talk of finances, politics, extradition laws and exposition of complicated story beats — all things that we don’t associate with the most popular superhero movies of today, which opt for splashier if less narratively complex thrills.

 

It was this sure-handedness in which Nolan approached Batman, as a character not simply for kids or cartoonish urban fantasies, that awakened the voice that cried for genre films to be contenders during awards season. While many would stake The Dark Knight’s award season reputation on the late Heath Ledger’s magnetic, transcendent performance as the Joker, for which he posthumously won best supporting actor at the 2009 Academy Awards Ceremony, the film’s prestige caliber goes beyond that. It wasn’t simply that The Dark Knight took itself seriously in a way that a superhero based film hadn’t done before, or that it boasted emotionally complex portrayals of Bruce Wayne, James Gordon and Harvey Dent from award-friendly actors like Christian Bale, Gary Oldman and Aaron Eckhart. The Dark Knight’s prestige came largely because of the particular way it captured the American zeitgeist.

 

It’s a film built on rules, and the breaking of them — order and chaos. With the Patriot Act still a hot button issue with President George. W. Bush in the White House, and Barack Obama making moves in Washington months before he would be elected President, The Dark Knight felt connected to who we were as a people. The Joker’s brand of disorder, his call for anarchy became a rallying point, particularly for young adults who would vote in their first college election that fall. The Joker became more than a popular Halloween costume, but a political slogan, one that saw Jokerized variations of Shepard Fairey’s famous Barack Obama “Hope” poster tacked to phone polls and graphited in alleyways. Batman was the hero of the film, but in the unjust world of 2008, the Joker held more answers. “They’re only as civilized as the world allows them to be. When the chips are down, these civilized people…they’ll eat each other,” the Joker says. His words rang true, and now 10 years after the film’s release they carry even more weight.

 

It was the prophetic voice of the Joker that captured hearts and minds, particularly for a generation that was just beginning to know what it was like to have a little power. And that power had to extend beyond just political spheres, to the people who recognized the best that film had to offer. The call for The Dark Knight’s best pictures nomination, and subsequent backlash that followed when it wasn’t, was a call for movies to be recognized beyond their ability to hold meaning for aging white men."

- Richard Newby, The Hollywood Reporter

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Using Batman, not Superman, as the protagonist, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) takes this problem posed by the hero and the hero’s exceptional status in relation to the law as its overriding concern. The title for the film (though not the plot) derives from Frank Miller’s 1986 graphic novel series Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and it provides a less idealizing portrait of Batman than those developed previously. The film is not simply, however, a critique of heroic exceptionality. The film's universe makes clear the need for an exception to the law. Without Batman (Christian Bale) providing extra-legal assistance to Police Lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman), the crime lords that menace Gotham would render the city uninhabitable. Even with Batman’s help, the film’s ominous and brooding mise-en-scène reveals the extent to which criminality sets the tone for life there. Unlike Nolan’s earlier film Batman Begins (2005), in which Gotham appears as a futuristic city despite its crime problem, here crime shapes the look and feel of the city as grim. Buildings stand in disrepair; people’s dress is generally disheveled; and even daytime scenes occur under dark skies.

 

 

Given the film’s appreciation of the need for heroic exception to the legal order, it is easy to understand why a right-wing political commentator, after viewing the film, might regard it as a tribute to George W. Bush and his prosecution of the Iraq War. In his Wall Street Journal article, “What Bush and Batman Have in Common,” Andrew Klavan contends in this vein,

 

“There seems to me no question that the Batman film The Dark Knight, currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.”[6]

 

The similarity between Bush and Batman consists in their joint recognition that an exceptional threat to the legal order requires an extra-legal exception in order to quell the threat. Though Klavan has to read the film creatively in order to arrive at the thesis that it constitutes “a conservative movie about the war on terror,” he does rightly grasp the film’s fundamental contention that we need a figure of exception.[7]

 

 

The problem with accepting and celebrating the hero’s exceptionality is not simply that such acceptance produces conservative misreadings but that this exceptionality has an inherent tendency to multiply itself exponentially. In Dark Knight, this kind of proliferation occurs early in the film when copycat vigilantes place both themselves and others at risk. In the United States during the War on Terror, exceptionality takes the form of an ever-increasing extension of surveillance and security. Once we grant the necessity of the position of the exception, the law can no longer define those who will occupy this position nor restrain their activity. Once we violate rights of non-citizens, we will soon be violating the rights of citizens as well, and finally we will end up with a society in which rights as such cease to exist. The exception necessarily exists beyond the limits of the law, and if the law could contain its magnitude, it would cease to be exceptional. This is the dilemma that shapes The Dark Knight. The film’s incredible popularity attests not simply to Nolan’s skill as a filmmaker or to a successful marketing campaign by Warner Brothers but also to the contemporary urgency of the question it addresses."

- Todd McGowan, Jump Cut

 

Public Opinion

 

"It's perfect, because Nolan." - @MrPink

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

the joker

"Some people call me the space cowboy, yeah
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
'Cause I speak of the pompatus of love a
People talk about me baby
Say I'm doin' you wrong, doin' you wrong
Well, don't you worry, baby, don't worry
'Cause I'm right here, right here, right here, right here at home
'Cause I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun
I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I sure don't want to hurt no one
I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun
I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I get my lovin' on the run
Ooh, whoo, ooh, whoo
You're the cutest thing that I ever did see
I really love your peaches
Wanna shake your tree
Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time
Ooh wee baby, I'll sure show you a good time
'Cause I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun
I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I get my lovin' on the run
I'm a picker
I'm a grinner
I'm a lover
And I'm a sinner
I play my music in the sun
I'm a joker
I'm a smoker
I'm a midnight toker
I sure don't want to hurt no one
Ooh, whoo, ooh, whoo
People keep talkin' about me baby
Say I'm doin' you wrong
Well don't you worry, don't worry, no don't worry mama
'Cause I'm right here at home
You're the cutest thing I ever did see
I really love your peaches
Wanna shake your tree
Lovey dovey, lovey dovey, lovey dovey all the time
Come on baby now, I'll show you a good time"

- The Steve Miller Band

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#3 (2020), #2 (2018), #9 (2016), #2 (2014), #3 (2013), #7 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (5), Christopher Nolan (4), James Cameron (3), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3), Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Michael Curtiz (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Peter Jackson (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), George Lucas (1) Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (9), 1980s (11), 1990s (20), 2000s (19), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (6), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Star Wars (3), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Back to the Future (1), Batman (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), E.T. (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), The Godfather (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Jurassic Park (1), The Lion King (1), Mad Max (1), Middle Earth (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Terminator (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#8 Fanboy Ranking, #15 Cinema Ranking

#31 Old Farts Ranking, #8 Damn Kids Ranking

#31 Ambassador Ranking, #7 All-American Ranking

#13 Cartoon Ranking, #9 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[The Panda]

And here are the final movies that just missed the list!

 

Number 110

Aladdin (1992, Rob Clemens and John Musker)

 

Number 109

Die Hard (1988, John McTiernan)

 

Number 108

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001, Chris Columbus)

 

Number 107

Spider-Man 2 (2004, Sam Raimi)

 

Number 106

The Sixth Sense (1999, M. Night Shyamalan)

 

Number 105

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, Ramsey, Persichetti, and Rothhman)

 

Number 104

Coco (2017, Adrian Molina and Lee Unkrich)

 

Number 103

Avengers: Infinity War (2018, The Russos)

 

Number 102

The Prestige (2006, Christopher Nolan)

 

Number 101

Toy Story 2 (1999, John Lasseter)