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

[Jake Gittes]

13 minutes ago, The Panda said:

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

 

Thank you. You're on the right track

[Eric is Anxious]

Just now, Jake Gittes said:

 

Thank you. You're on the right track

Jake go to bed

[Cap]

Is now the time to mention that The Sound of Music legit saved 20th Century Fox from bankruptcy in the 1960s. Adjusted for inflation it is still the three biggest movie of all time. Very important film!  
 

Also The Lonely Goat Herd Puppet Show!!! 

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

3 hours ago, Ethan Hunt said:

Who would take the 10s over 00s

 

I was describing the common consensus rather than my own preference but as a personal experiment of Top 25 films in order with values against my Top 100 where included:

 

2000s

1. Master and Commander #6

2. Zodiac #15

3. O Brother Where Art Thou? #19

4. Ravenous #22

5. Hero #29

6. Amelie #44

7. Children of Men #45

8. Mean Girls #51

9. Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India #59

10. Martyrs #61

11. LOTR: Fellowship #72

12. Pan's Labyrinth #73

13. The Prestige #79

14. Fantastic Mr Fox #83

15. Spirited Away #95

16. Mulholland Drive

17. In the Loop

18. Man on Wire

19. No Country for Old Men

20. Session 9

21. Ratatouille

22. Oldboy

23. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

24. The Evil Dead

25. There Will Be Blood

 

 

2010s

1. Exit Through the Gift Shop #3

2. Inside Out #9

3. Four Lions #25

4. The VVitch #40

5. The Death of Stalin #53

6. Paddington 2 #64

7. Midsommar #65

8. Suspiria #66

9. Leave No Trace #74

10. Blade Runner 2049 #89

11. Moneyball #97

12. Hereditary

13. Portrait of a Woman on Fire

14. Little Women

15. The Lighthouse

16. Inside Llewyn Davies

17. First Reformed

18. The Queen of Versailles

19. The Master

20. Parasite

21. You Were Never Really Here 

22. The Revenant

23. Sorry to Bother You

24. The Personal History of David Copperfield

25. Bridge of Spies

 

The 00s have more in my Top 100 to be fair, but given anti-recency bias and probably having watched more films from the 00s I'd probably say it's a wash on personal preference, with the 10s maaaaybe having a bit more strength in depth. It's close either way I'd say. 

[Chaz]

Y’all just better hope I don’t see All About Eve outside that top 100. Imma be scratching eyes out.

[Dementeleus]

19 minutes ago, Chaz said:

Y’all just better hope I don’t see All About Eve outside that top 100. Imma be scratching eyes out.

Oh honey…

[Cap]

25 minutes ago, Chaz said:

Y’all just better hope I don’t see All About Eve outside that top 100. Imma be scratching eyes out.

I found my Alt Account 😂😂😂

[The Panda]

Breathe easy @Cap, it's in

 

Number 55

 

 

"We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity."

 

Its Legacy

 

"As much a black comedy as it is film noir, Sunset Boulevard (1950) benefits greatly from stylish lighting by John F. Seitz, ASC — who had previously worked with director Billy Wilder on the noir classics Double Indemnity (1944) and Lost Weekend (1945).  In a September 1950 article on Sunset Boulevard, AC editor Herb Lightman observed that Seitz believed “cinematography must exist to tell the screen story, rather than to stand out as a separate artistic entity.”

 

 

Seitz’s lighting within her mansion gives only a hint of sun beyond the cluttered walls and creates a suffocating atmosphere. Desmond’s decadent domain is revealed largely through deep-focus shots that keep the vast spaces of her rococo mansion in sharp view. 

 

“To achieve this extreme depth of field,” Lightman explained, “it was necessary to use a greatly intensified light level and to latensify the film in order to stop down the lens aperture sufficiently.” The latensification, which was used for about 15 percent of the film, added perhaps two stops to the film speed. This allowed Seitz to use a practical lamp on the set as the key light in at least one scene. He could also shoot night for night and create, along with other effects, the Gothic gloom of the backyard funeral for Desmond’s pet monkey (a scene that Wilder reportedly described to Seitz as “the usual dead-chimpanzee setup”).

 

An instant classic, Sunset Boulevard earned 11 Oscar nominations, including a Best Cinematography nod for Seitz. With some 160 credits to his name, dating back to 1916, the cinematographer retired from his career behind the lens in 1960 to focus on his work as an inventor.  Deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1989, Sunset Boulevard was in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry."

- David E. Williams, American Cinematographer

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"From this viewpoint, however much it may have been disliked in Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard (1950) was an insider's film, in Thomson's words, "one of Hollywood's most confused pieces of self-adulation." Though Louis B. Mayer cursed Wilder out-"You bastard," he said after an early screening, "you have disgraced the industry that made you and fed you"-Sunset Boulevard was the kind of "quality" production that won Academy Awards, not plaudits from Cahiers du Cinema. (Actually, thanks in part to Hollywood's awe of the legitimate theater, the lion's share of the awards that year went to another treatment of the aging star, Mankiewicz's All About Eve.) In this light, the limitations of Sunset Boulevard were confirmed by its uncertain tone, its apparent grab bag of cinematic sources  and effects. The movie begins in the dark world of the film noir, with its title printed in block letters along a curbside, the camera tracking feverishly down a deserted street and a caravan of police cars and motorcycles pulling up at Norma Desmond's mansion to investigate a murder-all of which is accompanied by Franz Waxman's thriller music and, soon, Joe Gillis's Chandleresque voice-over detailing the circumstances of his own death.

 

But what begins like Double Indemnity soon modulates into a breezy, knowing satire of contemporary Hollywood, full of references to actual people and places. The look and tension of noir filmmaking seem completely forgotten. After a perfunctory chase in which two bozos acting like G-men try to repossess Joe Gillis's car, we must shift gears yet again when he takes refuge in Norma Desmond's seem ingly deserted "Sunset castle,>" which, like her, is a decay ing remnant of the silent film days of the 1920s. Here the most puzzling thing initially is Gloria Swanson's strident, mannered, operatic performance, which starts as high camp with the obsequies for a pet monkey and culminates with a Grand Guignol mad scene worthy of Callas or Sutherland. Under Wilder's direction, Swanson makes no attempt to humanize Norma, to play her from the inside for pathos or sympathy. (Predictably, David Thomson con demns her "thunderous acting style" for being too "em phatic and feverish.") Though Swanson, irradiated by looking at one of her own movies, tells William Holden that "we didn't need dialogue-we had faces," her own face is too often a garish mask of self-absorbed posturing and melodrama: precisely what the 1940s saw when it glanced back at the silent-film era.

 

 

his is the case that can be made against Wilder's film. But I think critics who do make it are simply looking at the wrong movie. Our view of Sunset Boulevard is skewed by Wilder's reputation as a satirist and by its own reputation as the best movie ever made about Hollywood. Far from damaging the movie by hamming it up, Gloria Swanson burns up the screen from the first moment she appears. Next to Holden's cool, laid-back, "modern" movie acting, which depends so much on the inflections of his voice, her performance is so visual, so gestural, that it re vives the spirit of silent film singlehandedly. There's some thing lifeless about the scenes without her or Stroheim, especially the few between Holden and the kids his own age: the "normal"' world to which he is presumably trying to escape. Sunset Boulevard is less a one-of-a-kind film than an ingenious adaptation of the genre conventions of noir to its Hollywood subject. Though Wilder, unlike many of his fellow emigres, never seemed much like a German director, here he reaches back throughl noir to its primary source, the expressionism of horror and Gothic, to convey his sense of the two Hollywoods, both equally out of touch with anything real: one immured narcissistically in its past glories, the other trapped in the tawdry superficiality of the present."

- Morris Dickstein, Grand Street , Spring, 1988, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Spring, 1988), pp. 176-184 

 

Public Opinion

 

"Still a classic."

 

- 

 

Letterboxd.

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

sunset boulevard

"The cars light up the street
As the sun sets in the sky
A beautiful sight"

- dA vInci

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

UNRANKED (2020, 2018, 2016, 2014), #80 (2013), #90 (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), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (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

 

#74 Fanboys Ranking, #55 Cinema Ranking

#26 Old Farts Ranking, #99 Damn Kids Ranking

#48 Ambassador Ranking, #58 All-American Ranking

#75 Cartoon Ranking, #55 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 3, 2022 by The Panda

[CaptNathanBrittles]

Here's hoping it ain't the only Billy Wilder movie on the list!

[The Panda]

 

Number 54

 

 

"Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"King Arthur, accompanied by his squire, recruits his Knights of the Round Table, including Sir Bedevere the Wise, Sir Lancelot the Brave, Sir Robin the Not-Quite-So-Brave-As-Sir-Lancelot and Sir Galahad the Pure. On the way, Arthur battles the Black Knight who, despite having had all his limbs chopped off, insists he can still fight. They reach Camelot, but Arthur decides not to enter, as “it is a silly place”."

 

Its Legacy

 

"When Monty Python came on the scene, the average comedy show was like a stage revue with a few cameras pointed at it. The Pythons took liberties with the medium, the way their admired Goons had taken liberties with radio. They did things you could do only on TV. If they felt like it, they rolled the credits in the middle of the show. Posing as BBC voice-over men, they issued apologies for the contents of their own sketches. When their ideas didn’t fit together, Gilliam supplied a minute or two of animation to link them. The nightmare logic of his sequences—in which cartoon figures were constantly getting their limbs or heads lopped off—echoed the violent unpredictability of the sketches. Python’s silliness was extreme, but it was balanced by wit and education.

 

 

The  Pythons were masters of juxtaposition: their signature move was to thrust something very salient into the wrong context. Dressed as garish figures from history or high culture, they would bizarrely insert themselves into the drab, rainy reality of 1970s England. The Spanish Inquisition bursts into a series of middle-class living rooms. Picasso paints a picture while bicycling down the A29. In an art gallery, the figures in all the paintings walk off their respective canvasses to go out on strike. (The first volume of Michael Palin’s highly readable Diaries, published in 2006, reminds you that the Britain of Python’s era was a dysfunctional place, bedeviled by strikes and power outages.)

 

The Pythons worked similar tricks of juxtaposition with words: their most quotable sentences tend to feature some sudden, jarring contrast between high language and low. “It’s probably pining for the fjords,” says Palin in the parrot sketch, looking to explain the Norwegian Blue’s painfully apparent rigor mortis. Like Cardinal Ximinez leaping into someone’s living room, the exotic word gate-crashes the unsuspecting sentence. “He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy,” says Brian’s mother in Life of Brian. When people call something Pythonesque, this is the sort of effect they mean. The Pythons kept dragging exalted themes into a context of English ordinariness, thereby revealing the absurdity of both.

 

The Pythons knew their stuff; when they didn’t, they read up on it. Researching the Middle Ages for Holy Grail, they learned that taunting the enemy was a common tactic in medieval sieges. So, apparently, was catapulting dead animals. Thus the completed film features Cleese’s imperishable turn as the French taunter, whose strange shouts of abuse from the battlements (“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries”) are followed by the flinging of the dead cow."

- David Free, The Beatles of Comedy (The Atlantic)

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Some Christians may still object to my 'over analysis' of the movie that one should bother about having to make some sophisticated distinctions over a movie. I beg to differ. There are two levels at which the movie, I believe, is very subversive against Christianity.
1. At the level of narrative.
2. At the level of symbolism.

 

First on the level of the narrative, the human mind likes simplicity. It is easy to make something into 'all good' or 'all bad'. It is easy for non-Christians to look at the misuse of Christianity and use that as the straw man to condemn all of Christianity. The movie ends with entire narrative representing the medieval Christian enterprise being written off as being stupid, out of date and something that serves no better purpose than comic relief. The police representing 'modernity' come in to take over this 'holy bunch' and expose them for what they really are a bunch of fool that go about a quest guided by superstitions.

 

 

On the level of the symbolism, the movie riles against the 'symbols' which to the popular masses represents Christianity. Symbols are important part of human life. When an American sees a baseball bat and a ball, it evokes some emotions just as an Indian would feel when he sees a cricket bat and ball or a Brazilian would when he sees a soccer ball. Symbols often represent something which is invisible like for example the wedding rings represent the invisible covenant that the husband and wife share. For the Christian, communion, the vestments of a monk or a priest and the medieval icons serve as symbols that point religious ideas and feelings. To denigrate such overtly Christian symbols in the minds of impressionable audience is, I think, a subversive act of associating disparaging emotions/feelings towards Christianity. Given that most decisions most human being make is emotion based this is no small deal.

 

In fact, this form of narrative and symbolic attack on Christianity in some ways achieves something similar to what the militant atheists of the 21st century of the likes of Richard Dawkins want to do - they seek to make Christianity look so stupid that none will think it worth even a consideration. Interestingly, the fact that these militant atheists conveniently chose to ignore is that, but for the work of the Catholic Church and Monasteries of the medieval times, the western civilization wouldn't have developed into an enterprising, intellectual and compassionate civilization that it is today (as against, for example the Middle Eastern civilization which stands for everything that is the opposite to the western liberties). 

 

Christ did not just say 'let him that has ears hear', He also said, 'let him that has eyes SEE'. What do we Christians have to show? Nothing much really, not so much in terms of our sacrificial Christ-like lives, not so much in terms of our symbols/arts either. We mostly spout out some hot air as the monk in Monty Python and the Holy Grail does when he preps to bless the 'holy grenade' which will kill a rabbit. He does so with all seriousness he can muster. But alas, he has lost the audience. Or should we say he has lost the 'lost' audience. The 'lost' can take whatever Christians say and make it to mean anything they want, thus making laughing stock of us, or worse, see us as a people group which needs to be neutralized, by hook or by crook... and if need be by jokes, for the betterment of the society. Think I am joking... go figure! (actually read books about history and know the 'signs and the times' we live in and you'll know how the Church has been/is being neutralized)"

- Some Evangelical TheoBro from Theo.org really, REALLY upset about the movie

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"sometimes i think i am a mature person and sometimes i cry of laughter because a french man said "i fart in your general direction""

- amaya, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

the holy grail

"Strange woman

Lyin' in ponds

Distributin' swords

That is no basis for a government system"

- da vinci

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#70 (2020), #94 (2018), #64 (2016), #75 (2014), #59 (2013), #71 (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), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Spike Lee (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Hayao Miyazaki (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Andrew Stanton (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (1), 1970s (4), 1980s (7), 1990s (8), 2000s (16), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Brazil (1), China (1), Italy (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), U.K. (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

 

#75 Fanboy Ranking, #53 Cinema Ranking

#59 Old Farts Ranking, #54 Damn Kids Ranking

#43 Ambassador Ranking, #55 All-American Ranking

#48 Cartoon Ranking, #59 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[Chaz]

1 hour ago, The Panda said:

Breathe easy @Cap, it's in

 

Number 55

 

 

"We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"A hack screenwriter writes a screenplay for a former silent film star who has faded into Hollywood obscurity."

 

Its Legacy

 

"As much a black comedy as it is film noir, Sunset Boulevard (1950) benefits greatly from stylish lighting by John F. Seitz, ASC — who had previously worked with director Billy Wilder on the noir classics Double Indemnity (1944) and Lost Weekend (1945).  In a September 1950 article on Sunset Boulevard, AC editor Herb Lightman observed that Seitz believed “cinematography must exist to tell the screen story, rather than to stand out as a separate artistic entity.”

 

 

Seitz’s lighting within her mansion gives only a hint of sun beyond the cluttered walls and creates a suffocating atmosphere. Desmond’s decadent domain is revealed largely through deep-focus shots that keep the vast spaces of her rococo mansion in sharp view. 

 

“To achieve this extreme depth of field,” Lightman explained, “it was necessary to use a greatly intensified light level and to latensify the film in order to stop down the lens aperture sufficiently.” The latensification, which was used for about 15 percent of the film, added perhaps two stops to the film speed. This allowed Seitz to use a practical lamp on the set as the key light in at least one scene. He could also shoot night for night and create, along with other effects, the Gothic gloom of the backyard funeral for Desmond’s pet monkey (a scene that Wilder reportedly described to Seitz as “the usual dead-chimpanzee setup”).

 

An instant classic, Sunset Boulevard earned 11 Oscar nominations, including a Best Cinematography nod for Seitz. With some 160 credits to his name, dating back to 1916, the cinematographer retired from his career behind the lens in 1960 to focus on his work as an inventor.  Deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the U.S. Library of Congress in 1989, Sunset Boulevard was in the first group of films selected for preservation in the National Film Registry."

- David E. Williams, American Cinematographer

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"From this viewpoint, however much it may have been disliked in Hollywood, Sunset Boulevard (1950) was an insider's film, in Thomson's words, "one of Hollywood's most confused pieces of self-adulation." Though Louis B. Mayer cursed Wilder out-"You bastard," he said after an early screening, "you have disgraced the industry that made you and fed you"-Sunset Boulevard was the kind of "quality" production that won Academy Awards, not plaudits from Cahiers du Cinema. (Actually, thanks in part to Hollywood's awe of the legitimate theater, the lion's share of the awards that year went to another treatment of the aging star, Mankiewicz's All About Eve.) In this light, the limitations of Sunset Boulevard were confirmed by its uncertain tone, its apparent grab bag of cinematic sources  and effects. The movie begins in the dark world of the film noir, with its title printed in block letters along a curbside, the camera tracking feverishly down a deserted street and a caravan of police cars and motorcycles pulling up at Norma Desmond's mansion to investigate a murder-all of which is accompanied by Franz Waxman's thriller music and, soon, Joe Gillis's Chandleresque voice-over detailing the circumstances of his own death.

 

But what begins like Double Indemnity soon modulates into a breezy, knowing satire of contemporary Hollywood, full of references to actual people and places. The look and tension of noir filmmaking seem completely forgotten. After a perfunctory chase in which two bozos acting like G-men try to repossess Joe Gillis's car, we must shift gears yet again when he takes refuge in Norma Desmond's seem ingly deserted "Sunset castle,>" which, like her, is a decay ing remnant of the silent film days of the 1920s. Here the most puzzling thing initially is Gloria Swanson's strident, mannered, operatic performance, which starts as high camp with the obsequies for a pet monkey and culminates with a Grand Guignol mad scene worthy of Callas or Sutherland. Under Wilder's direction, Swanson makes no attempt to humanize Norma, to play her from the inside for pathos or sympathy. (Predictably, David Thomson con demns her "thunderous acting style" for being too "em phatic and feverish.") Though Swanson, irradiated by looking at one of her own movies, tells William Holden that "we didn't need dialogue-we had faces," her own face is too often a garish mask of self-absorbed posturing and melodrama: precisely what the 1940s saw when it glanced back at the silent-film era.

 

 

his is the case that can be made against Wilder's film. But I think critics who do make it are simply looking at the wrong movie. Our view of Sunset Boulevard is skewed by Wilder's reputation as a satirist and by its own reputation as the best movie ever made about Hollywood. Far from damaging the movie by hamming it up, Gloria Swanson burns up the screen from the first moment she appears. Next to Holden's cool, laid-back, "modern" movie acting, which depends so much on the inflections of his voice, her performance is so visual, so gestural, that it re vives the spirit of silent film singlehandedly. There's some thing lifeless about the scenes without her or Stroheim, especially the few between Holden and the kids his own age: the "normal"' world to which he is presumably trying to escape. Sunset Boulevard is less a one-of-a-kind film than an ingenious adaptation of the genre conventions of noir to its Hollywood subject. Though Wilder, unlike many of his fellow emigres, never seemed much like a German director, here he reaches back throughl noir to its primary source, the expressionism of horror and Gothic, to convey his sense of the two Hollywoods, both equally out of touch with anything real: one immured narcissistically in its past glories, the other trapped in the tawdry superficiality of the present."

- Morris Dickstein, Grand Street , Spring, 1988, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Spring, 1988), pp. 176-184 

 

Public Opinion

 

"Still a classic."

 

- 

 

Letterboxd.

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

sunset boulevard

"The cars light up the street
As the sun sets in the sky
A beautiful sight"

- dA vInci

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

UNRANKED (2020, 2018, 2016, 2014), #80 (2013), #90 (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), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (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

 

#74 Fanboys Ranking, #55 Cinema Ranking

#26 Old Farts Ranking, #99 Damn Kids Ranking

#48 Ambassador Ranking, #58 All-American Ranking

#75 Cartoon Ranking, #55 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Ok. Everybody gets to live for now!

[Chaz]

1 hour ago, Plain Old Tele said:

Oh honey…

Are you prepared to face the world as a blind man, Tele? You won’t be able to see the numbers on your scratch offs. 

[The Panda]

Number 53

 

 

"If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"While the Civil War rages between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hit man and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Three whiskered, weather-beaten men stand facing each other, alone in a huge cemetery. They exchange suspicious glances and remain almost perfectly still, not saying a word. The stare-off continues for two and a half minutes. Not exactly the stuff of interesting cinema, is it? Actually it's one of the most riveting and acclaimed feature film sequences of all time: the climactic showdown at the end of Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the film’s original release. In the five decades that have followed, it has had a huge impact on cinema and popular culture.

 

 

The legacy of the legendary Italian filmmaker was etched in the spaghetti western, a sub-genre of films produced in the 1960s and ‘70s inspired by Hollywood cowboys-and-Indians pictures. They were made by risk-taking European directors working with much smaller budgets, and so the movement became defined by a gutsy spirit of innovation. No spaghetti western is as famous, and few as highly regarded, as Leone’s 1966 epic about a trio of tough-as-nails vagabonds on the hunt for a missing fortune. His classic sun-baked amorality play has surfaced on countless ‘best of’ lists over the years; the groundbreaking storytelling techniques in the film have been used, taught, stolen and referenced by film-makers from all over the world.

 

The score which accompanies the film is regarded as one of the best in cinema. Created by Italian maestro Ennio Morricone, the composition was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009. A book has been written about the instantly recognisable theme music, which ranks among cinema’s best known – up there with Jaws’s ominous two-note ostinato and the Imperial March from Star Wars.

 

But the crowning visual moment is the trio scene, a bravura cinematic moment in which the titular characters (played by Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) face each other down on an oval-shaped cement patch in a Civil War cemetery. To understand the importance of this scene, first it helps to know a bit about the basic technical elements of film-making.

 

The most fundamental principle of editing – known as cutting for continuity – is generally used to contract time. In this way the moment-by-moment minutiae of real life can be eradicated. A shot of a person beginning to walk up a flight of stairs, for example, cuts to that same person emerging at the top, the unexciting observation of them climbing removed from the drama. The trio scene instead relishes in non-activity, essentially telling a story where there is none. The characters' wordless confrontation is bookended by a master shot depicting the bandits positioned in triangular arrangement, with graves and headstones in front and behind them."

- Luke Buckmaster, The BBC

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"In seminal collaboration with Leone, Eastwood forged a masculine presence predicated on the strictest conservation of energy and emotion, a contraction of character so severe that its primum mobile must remain mystery. As with Robert Mitchum, that deep reserve is a come-on, provoking the desire-in men and women-to agitate, to assault the still, unmoved flesh. Disengaged and deracinated, he is given to intense watchfulness from some inner coign of vantage-hell, grave, or madness. Confronted, his head turns slowly, eyes narrowing into scorched-earth fury, as steady and deadly as a swiveling gun turret. The thin lower lip curls upward to sign dismay or disgust, like a cat grimacing at a bad smell.* Fine lines already ray out from the corners of the early Eastwood's fierce eyes, his forehead is vertically furrowed and veined, and the very shock of his hair seems to spring thickly up along those same rising vectors. It's as though whatever imploded the soul of the Man with No Name scarred permanent blastlines into the desiccated landscape of his face.

 

 

His gait is that of a ghost or a predator, his poncho'd torso remaining strangely still, propelled ahead by the long legs, as though swimming upright in slowmotion. Paradoxically, the hands of the remorseless gunfighter are those of a musician or a painter: elegant, long-fingered, with graceful wrists. In these formative stages of the Eastwood persona, his often nearly whispered vocal tones seem too pressured for ordinary speech. The silky, then increasingly abrasive sibilance of his drawl, like sand or gravel shifting in water, works best for epigrams, cryptic ripostes, up-close seduction.

 

In Leone's A Fis fl of Dollars ('64), Eastwood is enigma but not yet a dead man walking: he concentrates and reflects the town's amorality, as well as incarnating the unspoken prayer of Marisol (Marianne Koch), the faithful wife and mother held prisoner by the worst of a wolfish lot (Gian Maria Volonte). Riding down Fistful's main drag on his mule, this cold Christ come to harrow hell pauses to pass a dim smile on to the woman jailed for her desirability. A past crucifixion is hinted: when he takes the time to rescue Marisol, he recalls that "I knew someone like you once... there was no one to help her""

- Kathleen Gate, Film Comment; New York Vol. 32, Iss. 3,  (May/Jun 1996): 16.

 

Public Opinion

 

"This was the 1000th film I marked watched on Letterboxd, so that's fun.

 

Anyway, this is pretty great. The soundtrack is literally the best. It's so fucking good. I could sit here and rave about it all day. The movie itself is pretty damn excellent. The story is engrossing and the long runtime feels like a breeze. Clint Eastwood is super badass. The film is gorgeous; the European vistas are an absolute delight to look at." - @aabattery

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

the good, the bad, and the ugly

"The good, the bad, and the ugly
All together in one place
A true American story"

- dA vInci

(is wrong this is an italian movie)

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#39 (2020), #27 (2018), #23 (2016), #28 (2014), #40 (2013), #69 (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), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Spike Lee (1), Sergio Leone (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), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (2), 1970s (4), 1980s (7), 1990s (8), 2000s (16), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Italy (2), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#59 Fanboy Ranking, #56 Cinema Ranking

#62 Old Farts Ranking, #50 Damn Kids Ranking

#89 Ambassador Ranking, #51 All-American Ranking

#198 Cartoon Ranking, #49 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 4, 2022 by The Panda

[The Panda]

The better Leone flick wins out!

 

Number 52

 

 

"Wobbles, how can you trust a man that wears both a belt and suspenders? Man can't even trust his own pants."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"A widow whose land and life are in danger as the railroad is getting closer and closer to taking them over. A mysterious harmonica player joins forces with a desperado to protect the woman and her land."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Earlier this year The Atlantic launched a series of articles entitled ‘1968 and the making of Modern America’. The aim of its writers is to identify that year as “a momentous year in American history,” and to make a case for 1968 being the starting point of the contemporary society in which we live today. Such demarcation is of course largely arbitrary, but it’s true that exactly half a century ago the Western world – not just America – appeared to be on the cusp of a sea change. Workers’ strikes and student protests in cities from Paris to Prague, the emboldening of civil rights and feminist movements, and general anomie and disillusionment among the younger generations saw the emergence of a liberal countercultural force bringing with them sense that the old, mainly capitalist, status quo was on its way out.

 

It was during this year that Sergio Leone was making Once Upon a Time in the West. To what extent the director was explicitly influenced by this period sociopolitical upheaval is a matter of speculation, but the film is undoubtedly a product of its time. The original Italian title of this sweeping epic, C’era una volta il West, gives us a sense of what the film’s main concern is – “una volta” may literally mean “one time”, but a “volta”, especially in the context of writing or music, specifically refers to a “turning point”. In short, it is a film about change. And what Leone presents us with is a tale in which the past makes way for “modernity”.

 

 

Once Upon a Time in the West was also a farewell of sorts from Leone to the genre by which he made his name (though he made one more western, Duck, You Sucker in 1971). By including numerous direct pastiches of classics from High Noon (the slow burning introduction sees three men waiting for a train) to The Last Sunset (the final duel), Leone suggests that the western has reached its apex. Like its characters, the genre, with its reliance on hyper-masculine characters, well-trodden conventions and histrionic levels of tension, didn’t have a place in the future of cinema in its current format.

 

But what better eulogy for the western could one imagine? Leone may have indulged the odd cliche – the spooked crickets foreshadowing danger, the creaking weather vane – but few can rival his mastery of the interplay of sound and silence, of inertia and crescendos of action, of humour and dread, of sweeping vistas and claustrophobic close-ups, all present in the astonishing opening scene alone. He also brings out some career-best performances from his all-star cast, especially from Henry Fonda, who despite having been one of Hollywood’s bankable heroes, is transformed so convincingly into one of cinema’s most truly malevolent figures. Elsewhere, Ennio Morricone’s haunting harmonica and guitar led score is a piece of art of its own accord.

 

Leone may have foreseen the end of the appeal of the western, but 50 years on, Once Upon a Time in the West still feels relevant. Maybe that’s because the world hasn’t really moved on from where it was in 1968. Despite obvious technological advancements we’re still in an age where we’re trying to enact real social progress and break down outdated practices, policies and beliefs. Watching Leone’s film today galvanises our belief that we’re on the cusp of change, but it also reminds us that we’ve been here for half a century."

- Dan Einav, Little White Lies

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"In proceeding to make Once Upon a Time, then, Leone was in a wholly new position from his imitative beginnings. His previous films had found tremendous success and acclaim, even making a bona fide global icon out of Clint Eastwood, the main actor for the entire Dollars trilogy. The trilogy had been, in many ways, naught more than an exercise in style, flair, and storytelling. More than anything else, they were lauded for filmic elements alone, such as the stark contrasting between long shots of the western landscape and closeup shots of the character’s dirt and sweat-ridden faces, extended sequences involving tense standoffs between gun-wielding opponents, and the immersive scoring by longtime collaborator Ennio Morricone. At their core, however, Leone’s earlier films were largely absent of much thematic complexity, much in line with the western genre of the time. There were indeed efforts to complicate the mix on certain levels, such as developing Clint Eastwood’s character to be an anti-hero as opposed to a more rigorous moral defender in a classic western, or the inclusion of tangential commentary such as in the The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, in which the main characters stumble across a battalion of the union army being led by a general who has become disillusioned by war and conflict. Still, these elements remain peripheral, and are often overwhelmed by contradictory prioritizations. The civil war general’s anti-war speech is indeed touching as he lays dying in the medical tent, but the significance of his message is lost just scenes later when thematic anchoring is sacrificed for spectacle, and the main characters return to their violent, exploitative ways, and their actions are consistently aggrandized by the epic nature of their framing and the score.  

 

 

With Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone took his first step towards revolutionizing both the western and his spaghetti western genre not only in ways to bolster appeal as an entertainment vehicle, but instead to substantially alter the extent to which the thematic possibilities of the western genre had been considered at the time. Before considering the strides Leone made using the film, it is important to consider the impulse that is understood to have driven the popularity of classic American westerns in the first place. More than anything, the classic western returns again and again to themes of good vs. bad, of the merits of both judicial and frontier justice, and the affirmation of the heroic individual over the group. Moreover, it is less concerned with the accuracy of specific historical details, and more oriented towards representing the lost milieu and values of an America that used to be. As James K. Folsom of Yale University, who has written at length about the history of the western genre in prose and film, writes in Western American Literature, “the world of the Western film is true to a certain historic feeling, if not to particular historic facts…[it] mirrors a persistent nagging doubt in American life about whether the choice which America made to become a great, capitalist, industrial power was indeed a wise one.”8 In other words, the genre is founded simultaneously in both nostalgia and in reimagining, which allows filmmakers to be selective about what they glorify. For example, there is glorified nostalgia when these films meditate on the values of rural, homestead life or the community of a small western town, or even when the mythic likes of John Wayne or Gary Cooper are pitted against all the evils working against the innocence of the the past that are conserved for historical accuracy, it is usually the domestication of women and antagonization of minorities that are reinforced.

 

Furthermore, “western movies, far more than any other film genre, ask us to see their world rather than to talk about it…conventions of the Western film are all aimed at asking us to understand the Western world visually,”8 and these visuals could not be more telling. The main focus is the heroes, and they are all male and inescapably so, while the supporting and antagonistic periphery is occupied by women and minorities. The male protagonists are rugged, well-dressed, tall, and authoritative – their characteristics could command enough visual respect even in silent film format. The women are often dressed conservatively, looking up at their male saviors, and have anachronistically cosmetic beauty. The Native Americans are prone to animated gesticulations and presence in large homogenous gangs, which likens them to unbridled forces of nature and thus dehumanizes them. There is an unwritten playbook by which the most notable western directors worked in America during the genre’s golden age of 1930s-1960s, and the visual language of its characters strayed very rarely from this manual. Thus, the objective from one film to the next was almost never about reworking these elements and was more about changing the actors who could fit these stereotypes. There was indeed great merit in these films when it comes to developments in celebrity culture and crafting elements of film language, but the legacy of the American western when it comes to making a progressive point remains woefully underdeveloped, which almost certainly has to do with the pre-civil rights era in which it was made, and the ultra-conservative and antebellum era which it created nostalgia for.

 

Once Upon a Time in the West then, in the extent to which it is influenced by the classic American western, is a commentary on these unexplored elements of the genre. It retains Leone’s visual flair and furthers much of the violence and lawlessness that defines both the classic and spaghetti subgenres, but it introduces many nuances when it comes to its casting and thematic considerations. More than most westerns before it, and certainly more than the director’s previous films, Once Upon a Time purposefully considers the western’s ability to hearken back to a lost time and simultaneously critique the things that have remained unchanged in the decades since."

- Aditya Singh, Undergraduate Thesis at Bellamine University

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"All of Sergio Leone's westerns have been about the arrival of capitalism (both to the historical American West and to then-contemporary 1960's Italy), but Once Upon a Time in the West takes a slightly more specific perspective. Instead of looking at the (monetary) value of life, it uses the symbol of the cowboy to chart how the arrival of capital and industry parallels the decline of traditional male heroism. Industrialization causes heroic masculinity to defensively over-inflate and begin to collapse in on itself. The film takes this macho war hero whose glory days are behind him and shows how society is moving forward without him. Removed from the spotlight, this symbolic centerpiece is replaced with a new perspective: the woman.

 

 

This shift involves two interconnected symbolic networks matched with two parallel narrative conflicts. The first of these is the theme of masculinity, which plays out as the backdrop to the revenge triangle plot involving Frank, Harmonica and Cheyenne. From John Wayne to Clint Eastwood, the cowboy has always been a prominent figure of hypermasculinity. This was true in Leone's own Dollars trilogy, and it's true here as well (in a perfect little detail, the men identify each other by the color of their dusters), but there's an important difference here. In Once Upon a Time in the West, we get the same macho figures played in contrast to the real protagonist in the film, Claudia Cardinale, the grieving widow.

 

There's so much movie here that I'm tempted to stretch myself out and talk about this longer than I ought to, but suffice it to say that the more I think about Once Upon a Time in the West, the more I like it. At first I was sad not to have Clint Eastwood anymore (much the same way the West must have been sad to lose its hero), but Leone's style is still ubiquitous and he has more to say and more to show than ever. He answers the age old question of how to fill a 2.35:1 anamorphic frame with a single character close-up by just pulling in closer and closer, and likewise his film keeps pulling in closer and closer to its western mythos."

- ScreeningNotes, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

once upon a time in the west

"The sun sets in the west
A time of cowboys and cattle
Life was simpler then"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#51 (2020), #57 (2018), #74 (2016), #97 (2014), #92 (2013), UNRANKED (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2),  David Fincher (2), Stanley Kubrick (2), Sergio Leone (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2),  Ridley Scott (2),  Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Spike Lee (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Hayao Miyazaki (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Andrew Stanton (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (3), 1970s (4), 1980s (7), 1990s (8), 2000s (16), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#118 Fanboy Ranking, #45 Cinema Ranking

#37 Old Farts Ranking, #74 Damn Kids Ranking

#27 Ambassador Ranking, #56 All-American Ranking

#121 Cartoon Ranking, #50 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 4, 2022 by The Panda

[DAR]

8 hours ago, The Panda said:

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)

Goodwill and Dazed 🥺

[The Panda]

Put on your sunday clothes, there's lots more movies out there besides 2000s Pixar films!

 

Number 51

 

 

"Eeeee... va?"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"WALL·E is the last robot left on an Earth that has been overrun with garbage and all humans have fled to outer space. For 700 years he has continued to try and clean up the mess, but has developed some rather interesting human-like qualities. When a ship arrives with a sleek new type of robot, WALL·E thinks he’s finally found a friend and stows away on the ship when it leaves."

 

Its Legacy

 

"WALL-E (2008) opens deep in outer space, and as the camera draws closer to Earth, the music and lyrics from one of Hello Dolly’s love songs, “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” accompany and highlight the cosmos, galaxies, and stars. “Somewhere Out There” amplifies our view of Earth from space. But as we get closer to the landmasses and oceans of Earth, they are obscured by brown and gray floating masses of space garbage that become clearer as the shot moves toward a cityscape piled with skyscrapers built from trash. They look like enormous termite hills between vacant buildings in an empty city devoid of sound except for the roaring wind and a rolling object playing “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” as it picks up and compacts garbage.

 

These contrasting visions of Earth introduce the two conflicting ideologies that ground the film’s rhetoric, those of Disney and Pixar Studios. Although produced and released by Disney, WALL-E reflects the postmodern viewpoint of Pixar Animation studios, the creators of the film, transforming the film and its protagonist, WALL-E into what Paul Wells calls an “American popular cultural artifact [sic]” that has “become the focus of a significant meta-commentary on American consumer values and social identity” (152). By critiquing consumerism so overtly, WALL-E also critiques Disney aesthetic and production values throughout much of the film. However, the film also reinforces a conservative romantic ideology found in classic Disney features from Snow White forward.

 

The philosophies driving both Pixar and Disney, then, impact the ideology represented in WALL-E. Until the film’s end, Pixar’s vision resonates in the film and provides a dystopic and mechanistic perspective in which a robot named WALL-E acts as a comic hero who empowers an apathetic, indolent, and lethargic human race on a centuries-long, luxury, solar-system, “cruise ship” vacation. WALL-E helps transform the hell of Earth into a home by following a narrative of environmental adaptation with a clear and cohesive structure that follows an evolutionary pattern focused on place.

 

 

Stanton’s vision shines through in WALL-E as well. In both Finding Nemo and WALL-E, as well as in A Bug’s Life (1998), nature and the environment take center stage: A Bug’s Life explores an ant’s attempts to save his colony from human-like grasshoppers; Finding Nemo looks at human intervention from under the sea, while WALL-E examines it on both Earth’s surface and onboard its floating cruise ship. The values presented here support Pixar’s emphasis on letting the director “drive.” Other values WALL-E illustrates, like “romantic devotion and monogamy” and “hard work, faithfulness to duty” or denigrating “passive dependency” (Allen, “Wall-E doesn’t say anything”), seem drawn from a Disney scorecard and appeal to both liberal and conservative audiences. Neal Gabler sees Disney animation providing a space in which Disney (in early films) and his viewers “would ultimately find nurturance, love, independence, and authority” (217). From a conservative perspective, “Movieguide,” a “ministry dedicated to redeeming the values of the mass media according to biblical principles” calls WALL-E “exemplary.” According to the Movieguide review, WALL-E reflects a

 “strong Christian worldview without mentioning Jesus that tells a story about no greater love has any person than to give up his or her life for his or her neighbor.”

 

From the liberal side, The New Yorker’s David Denby calls WALL-E a “classic” that “demonstrates not just the number but the variety of ideas you need to make a terrific movie.” Thus, in spite of the conflicting politics behind these reviews, WALL-E appeals to both liberal and conservative audiences. Liberal audiences seem to be drawn to the blatant environmental message of the film based on its (at least initial) critique of over-consumption and the capitalist economy perpetuating the humans’ cruise above the planet. Bob Mondello of NPR notes, for example, that Staphanie Zacharek of “Salon.com” calls it “an environmental cautionary tale.” Cinephiles like Kirk Honeycutt seemed to react to the homage to silent comedies, as does Peter Travers when he notes how WALL-E and Eve share a relationship that evokes “Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp and Virginia Cherrill’s blind flower girl in City Lights.”"

- Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"“I don’t have a political bent or ecological message to push,” Stanton told New York magazine. “I don't mind that it supports that kind of view — it’s certainly a good-citizen kind of way to be — but everything I wanted to do was based on the film’s love story, the last robot on Earth, the sentence that we first came up with in 1994.” Whether or not Stanton “meant” it to be an environmental tale is irrelevant. Wall-E is the tale of a little robot left alone on earth to clean up after humans literally trashed the place, then took off for a comfy life in outer space, where their rapacious need for consumption has turned them into blobs who can’t stand and move on their own. (What happened to the poorer inhabitants of Earth is left out of the film, probably to make it suitable for children.)

 

Surprisingly enough, the film’s genius is probably due to Stanton’s assiduous efforts to stay “neutral.” There are no familiar slogans or symbols easily identified with a politicized notion of the environment anywhere in Wall-E. Instead, the film paints a pretty stunning picture of the deleterious effects of letting two things continue unchecked: a society’s insatiable need to consume (cheap products, entertainment, food, resources), and private industry’s drive for profit when it overtakes public good. (The ship on which the humans have escaped is wholly owned and operated by the same company — cheekily named “Buy n Large” — that ran Earth into the ground.)

 

Wall-E’s vision of the future is a cautionary dystopia wrapped up in a children’s tale, and a very funny and skillfully made one, too; the film’s first 40 minutes are virtually wordless, a masterpiece of modern silent filmmaking. Yet while we’re squealing over the cute robots, we can’t forget to imagine the world that gave rise to Wall-E’s trash-strewn wasteland and its more well-off humans’ disintegration into helpless, shapeless flesh globules who’ve lost the ability to create, think, or have real relationships. Futuristic science fiction is at its best when it makes us take a hard look at our own world."

- Alissa Wilkinson, Vox

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"WALL-E was never really one of my personal favorite Pixar films growing up. For me, I always preferred other Pixar films such as the Toy Story movies, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. A good chunk of the early Pixar films is near and dear to my heart so a lot of the stuff that came after never quite hit me as hard as those previous films mentioned did.

 

Upon recent rewatch, however, I came to rediscover my love for this film. The simple yet elegantly crafted story, the rich atmosphere, the romance between WALL-E and EVE (probably one of the best/cutest/well-executed romances ever put on-screen), the gorgeous animation, etc. Everything just clicked for me like it hadn't before.

 

I know this film gets a lot of complaints about how the film's social commentary is bad but personally, it never struck me as on-the-nose or in your face like a lot of bad movies tend to do with an environmental message or any kind of message. A good message, in any film, never takes the spotlight away from what truly matters: the main story. The romance in this film between WALL-E and EVE is the true focus and the underlying message only helps to elevate that story to greater heights." - @Rorschach

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

wall·e

"you made a movie

about slave robots

and thought it was cute

i see it as cause

for revolution

 

put on your sunday clothes

i am coming for blood"

- dA vInci

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#53 (2020), #62 (2018), #31 (2016), #20 (2014), #19 (2013), #47 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), Martin Scorsese (2),  David Fincher (2), Stanley Kubrick (2), Sergio Leone (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2),  Ridley Scott (2),  Andrew Stanton (2), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), John Carpenter (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Spike Lee (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Hayao Miyazaki (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Steven Spielberg (1), Isao Takahata (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Simon Wells (1), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (3), 1970s (4), 1980s (7), 1990s (8), 2000s (17), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Italy (3), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (5), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#45 Fanboy Ranking, #52 Cinema Ranking

#50 Old Farts Ranking, #45 Damn Kids Ranking

#62 Ambassador Ranking, #50 All-American Ranking

#26 Cartoon Ranking, #52 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[The Panda]

A few more off the 'misses' to end the day!

 

Number 150

Up (2009, Peter Docter)

 

Number 149

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975, Milos Forman)

 

Number 148

Memories of Murder (2003, Bong Joon-Ho)

 

Number 147

Face/Off (1997, John Woo)

 

Number 146

A Clockwork Orange (1972, Stanley Kubrick)

[DAR]

2 hours ago, CaptNathanBrittles said:

Here's hoping it ain't the only Billy Wilder movie on the list!

Apartment gang unite 

[Potiki]

Up, Memories of Murder and Face/Off missing out  I suppose at least they got somewhat close.

[Ozymandias]

1 hour ago, The Panda said:

Number 53

 

 

"If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"While the Civil War rages between the Union and the Confederacy, three men – a quiet loner, a ruthless hit man and a Mexican bandit – comb the American Southwest in search of a strongbox containing $200,000 in stolen gold."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Three whiskered, weather-beaten men stand facing each other, alone in a huge cemetery. They exchange suspicious glances and remain almost perfectly still, not saying a word. The stare-off continues for two and a half minutes. Not exactly the stuff of interesting cinema, is it? Actually it's one of the most riveting and acclaimed feature film sequences of all time: the climactic showdown at the end of Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the film’s original release. In the five decades that have followed, it has had a huge impact on cinema and popular culture.

 

 

The legacy of the legendary Italian filmmaker was etched in the spaghetti western, a sub-genre of films produced in the 1960s and ‘70s inspired by Hollywood cowboys-and-Indians pictures. They were made by risk-taking European directors working with much smaller budgets, and so the movement became defined by a gutsy spirit of innovation. No spaghetti western is as famous, and few as highly regarded, as Leone’s 1966 epic about a trio of tough-as-nails vagabonds on the hunt for a missing fortune. His classic sun-baked amorality play has surfaced on countless ‘best of’ lists over the years; the groundbreaking storytelling techniques in the film have been used, taught, stolen and referenced by film-makers from all over the world.

 

The score which accompanies the film is regarded as one of the best in cinema. Created by Italian maestro Ennio Morricone, the composition was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2009. A book has been written about the instantly recognisable theme music, which ranks among cinema’s best known – up there with Jaws’s ominous two-note ostinato and the Imperial March from Star Wars.

 

But the crowning visual moment is the trio scene, a bravura cinematic moment in which the titular characters (played by Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach) face each other down on an oval-shaped cement patch in a Civil War cemetery. To understand the importance of this scene, first it helps to know a bit about the basic technical elements of film-making.

 

The most fundamental principle of editing – known as cutting for continuity – is generally used to contract time. In this way the moment-by-moment minutiae of real life can be eradicated. A shot of a person beginning to walk up a flight of stairs, for example, cuts to that same person emerging at the top, the unexciting observation of them climbing removed from the drama. The trio scene instead relishes in non-activity, essentially telling a story where there is none. The characters' wordless confrontation is bookended by a master shot depicting the bandits positioned in triangular arrangement, with graves and headstones in front and behind them."

- Luke Buckmaster, The BBC

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"In seminal collaboration with Leone, Eastwood forged a masculine presence predicated on the strictest conservation of energy and emotion, a contraction of character so severe that its primum mobile must remain mystery. As with Robert Mitchum, that deep reserve is a come-on, provoking the desire-in men and women-to agitate, to assault the still, unmoved flesh. Disengaged and deracinated, he is given to intense watchfulness from some inner coign of vantage-hell, grave, or madness. Confronted, his head turns slowly, eyes narrowing into scorched-earth fury, as steady and deadly as a swiveling gun turret. The thin lower lip curls upward to sign dismay or disgust, like a cat grimacing at a bad smell.* Fine lines already ray out from the corners of the early Eastwood's fierce eyes, his forehead is vertically furrowed and veined, and the very shock of his hair seems to spring thickly up along those same rising vectors. It's as though whatever imploded the soul of the Man with No Name scarred permanent blastlines into the desiccated landscape of his face.

 

 

His gait is that of a ghost or a predator, his poncho'd torso remaining strangely still, propelled ahead by the long legs, as though swimming upright in slowmotion. Paradoxically, the hands of the remorseless gunfighter are those of a musician or a painter: elegant, long-fingered, with graceful wrists. In these formative stages of the Eastwood persona, his often nearly whispered vocal tones seem too pressured for ordinary speech. The silky, then increasingly abrasive sibilance of his drawl, like sand or gravel shifting in water, works best for epigrams, cryptic ripostes, up-close seduction.

 

In Leone's A Fis fl of Dollars ('64), Eastwood is enigma but not yet a dead man walking: he concentrates and reflects the town's amorality, as well as incarnating the unspoken prayer of Marisol (Marianne Koch), the faithful wife and mother held prisoner by the worst of a wolfish lot (Gian Maria Volonte). Riding down Fistful's main drag on his mule, this cold Christ come to harrow hell pauses to pass a dim smile on to the woman jailed for her desirability. A past crucifixion is hinted: when he takes the time to rescue Marisol, he recalls that "I knew someone like you once... there was no one to help her""

- Kathleen Gate, Film Comment; New York Vol. 32, Iss. 3,  (May/Jun 1996): 16.

 

Public Opinion

 

"This was the 1000th film I marked watched on Letterboxd, so that's fun.

 

Anyway, this is pretty great. The soundtrack is literally the best. It's so fucking good. I could sit here and rave about it all day. The movie itself is pretty damn excellent. The story is engrossing and the long runtime feels like a breeze. Clint Eastwood is super badass. The film is gorgeous; the European vistas are an absolute delight to look at." - @aabattery

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

the good, the bad, and the ugly

"The good, the bad, and the ugly
All together in one place
A true American story"

- dA vInci

(is wrong this is an italian movie)

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#39 (2020), #27 (2018), #23 (2016), #28 (2014), #40 (2013), #69 (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), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Terry Jones (1), John Lasseter (1), Spike Lee (1), Sergio Leone (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), Billy Wilder (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (1), 1950s (1), 1960s (2), 1970s (4), 1980s (7), 1990s (8), 2000s (16), 2010s (5)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (4), Italy (2), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), UK (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (4), The MCU (2), Alien (1), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Star Wars (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#59 Fanboy Ranking, #56 Cinema Ranking

#62 Old Farts Ranking, #50 Damn Kids Ranking

#89 Ambassador Ranking, #51 All-American Ranking

#198 Cartoon Ranking, #49 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

 

the score in this movie is so good it made a guy running around a cemetery one of the best scenes ever