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

[YM!]

5 hours ago, That One Guy said:

#4 slot

I think it was 28 for me.

[Ethan Hunt]

7 hours ago, WorkingonaName said:

who put the Matrix reloaded on their list

I had it at #3

[Ethan Hunt]

Never really expected Reloaded to make it. Solid performance for it. But man thought Nashville was gonna be able to breakout and place a bit higher. My favorite movie

[WrathOfHan]

On 8/4/2022 at 10:30 PM, Cap said:

The big Lebowski always missing feels like tradition at this point. 
 

Princess bride though? Inconceivable. 

Remember when it was 101 one year  

[WrathOfHan]

Catching up on the last couple days:

 

After the horror countdown results, I am fairly surprised The Shining only ended up fourth in the genre here, especially below The Thing.

Sad that Lambs dropped over 20 spots but it could've been worse.

Vertigo is finally the top Hitchcock (again?)

Of the 2017 releases, this is the first time Get Out missed while Last Jedi keeps rising.

 

[CaptNathanBrittles]

Good to see CITIZEN KANE achieve its highest ranking ever and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST reign supreme over THE LION KING.

[The Panda]

Turns out the Samantha AI just packed up and left without a trace. I have decided to now take poems from real people instead. Turns out real people still write poems better than robots anyways.

 

Number 30

 

 

"You're only as healthy as you feel."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"A mentally unstable Vietnam War veteran works as a night-time taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feed his urge for violent action, attempting to save a preadolescent prostitute in the process."

 

Its Legacy

 

"In the USA of the 1970's, a new generation of film directors emerges, generally designated New Hollywood Cinema, The American New Wave, or The Brat Pack.1 A common trait shared by these directors - Robert Altman, Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur Penn, Martin Scorsese, and others - is that they all achieve an extension and vitalization of the language of film by making personal and modernistic films. As opposed to the American filmmakers of earlier times, they have university degrees and possess knowledge of film theory and the film traditions of other countries. They are particularly inspired by the French New Wave2 and the films made by this movement in the sixties, with their modernist qualities.

 

Modernism is a paradigm which by now carries a lot of different connotations, within the sphere of literature as well as film. Thus, in film history, both the German expressionist films (Murnau, Wiene, and others), the Russian montage films (Eisenstein, Vertov, and others), and the surrealist films, for instance Buñuel, are comprised under the designation modernistic. But most often, however, the expression is used in connection with the experimentalist European films of the 60's and 70's, such as Jean-Luc Godard's A Bout de Souffle (Breathless), 1960, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up, 1966, and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, 1960. These films care less about a progressing continuity and are often experimental and fragmented in form. In contrast to Hollywood's traditional focus on outer tension, the European films dare to take as their starting point the psychological and existential problems of the individual in a modern world.

 

 

Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, which won the 1976 Palme d 'Or at Cannes, is one of the finest examples of this subdued modernism which we find in the American movies of the 70s. The film was written by Paul Schrader4 and stars Robert de Niro – an actor Scorsese has worked with often – in the all-important lead role as the taxi driver Travis Bickle. Taxi Driver is a city film. It is about the city and human existence in the city – about how the city and the culture influence human life. The cityscape of Taxi Driver is not idyllic; it is a city dominated by unrest, noise, dirt and suffering, by a disintegrating culture. A city in which man is lonely and alienated. A city where nature is absent. A city modeled on Babylon rather than heavenly Jerusalem. The city as an inferno.

 

The city is the birthplace of modernity. By modernity I understand the historical upheavals that via industrialization and urbanization have taken place since the mid-18th century. Modernity belongs to an epoch. But at the same time modernity is a standard. Baudelaire5 defines modernity as the transitory and fleeting, which is opposed to the eternal and constant. Terms that could just as well be applied to the city. Modernity can be viewed as a process which breaks forth and shows itself in urban environments. For the city is before anything else the environment of the modern, and as such a consequence of modernity. Urbanity and modernity are intertwined notions. But modernity is also bound up with the break-down of values in general, with Nietzsche's negation of God. The city is transitory, the place of the ever-changing. And in an unstable world stability is absent. The individual has to create a meaning himself. God is dead, and the only certainty is uncertainty. Taxi Driver is part of modernity. It is about experiences of modernity, about the existence of the human subject in the modern city.

 

In the editing of Taxi Driver a lot of attention is given to P.O.V. The editing is mainly orchestrated through P.O.V. shots with the protagonist Travis as starting point, but a surprising number of P.O.V. shots from the viewpoint of other characters of the film are in evidence. In this film, perception and psyche are bound up with the multitude of the city, connected to modernity's emphasis on the individual's perception and the individual's severance from former social taxonomy. The changing P.O.V.s confuse and enhance the feeling of fragmentation, of paranoia. An example of the changing viewpoint takes place outside the cafeteria, when Travis is about to talk to Wizard. A black man comes walking down the street and stares at Travis, who stares back. In this scene, Scorsese cuts between two different subjective cameras, and the whole thing is in slow motion. After this "evil stare" exchange, it is easy to understand Travis' hatred of "the scum". Bernard Herrmann's13 music underscores the feeling of the city as fragmented and threatening. The music abruptly changes from beautiful, lyrical passages, and deep, ominous tones that keep reappearing. It is difficult to explain with words, but the music perfectly models the different themes and sequences of the film. It supports the action and creates a frightening atmosphere of something threatening about to break through to the surface."

- M. Weinreich, A Danish Journal of Film Studies

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Only a New Yorker like Scorsese could do justice to TAXI DRIVER's governing conceit - that the guy behind the wheel of the yellow cab that is bearing you through the streets of New York has a lot more on his mind than beating the lights and watching the meter go up, that he has it in him, in fact, to become a killer. In Schrader's scenario, the nature of New York - as well as that of the cabbie makes the realization of that potential inevitable. He is a young man, in his twenties perhaps, with the square, memorable but untraceable name of Travis Bickle. (Arthur Bremer at least had a German ring to it.) More to the point, he is a Vietnam veteran (Marine), who fulfills the current front-page definition of a 'loner": lives all by himself in a dingy one-room apartment; watches a lot of TV; talks to himself in a diary; can't mix easily with his fellowcabbies; can't sleep easily; pops a lot of pills. New York is a jungle of sexual avarice. The only citizens on the sidewalks at night are pimps, muggers, and whores; his passengers are bleary businessmen who order him to drive faster while whores unzip their flies in the back seat. For afterhours diversion there are only 42nd-Street skin flicks. Plant a vision in Travis's path of shining, uncorrupted beauty in the person of a beautiful, self-assured blonde who is idealistically campaigning for a clean-up Presidential candidate; have Travis attract her, then be spurned by her; introduce the candidate himself as an Arrow shirt mannequin with a gift for populist hot air; and the recipe is complete - for a bloody stew of violence. Travis buys himself the most up-to-date arsenal of guns on the black market, takes to the streets, and vengeance is his.

 

 

Reduced to its baldest terms, this is topical pulp, compounded not simply of the Bremer saga, Vietnam fallout, junior psychology of sexual frustration, and lurid confirmation of Johnny Carson jokes about Fun City, but other recent movies: DEATH WISH and NASHVILLE. But like the best popular artists, Scorsese has a way of converting pulp into something more. The conventional Hollywood way with pulp - Michael Winner's death wish - is to pump up clichés into political and moral archetypes. Mavericks like Altman (and before him Preston Sturges) have squeezed new life into pulp by means of satire and irony. Scorsese's concerns are neither political nor, precisely, moral; and he's no ironist. He is a fantasist who supercharges the clichés of TAXI DRIVER into the surreal figments of a nightmare that is at once comic, romantic, and terrifying. As in all nightmares, there is nothing in this one that we don't already bioiu - either about New York or fellow-citizens like Travis Bickle - but the feeling of a nightmare is never stale, and TAXI DRIVER, at its best, makes us feel New York and the Travis Bickles in it as no other movie has ever done before.

 

As long as Scorsese stays within the confines of the nightmare, taxi driver projects a febrile, enveloping immediacy that is almost intoxicating. Scorsese obviously agrees with Ingmar Bergman's remark that "the camera is erotic," and he exhausts the arsenal of cinematic tricks with terrific panache, letting the images accumulate as a series of implosions-in preparation for the final explosive bloodbath. He has cast and directed his actors with an eye and feeling for their immediacy on screen, and in most cases obtained it. (Two exceptions are Harvey Keitel's enormously engaging pimp, which smacks of a virtuoso riff, and Scorsese's own cameo as the psychotic wife-watcher, which smacks aishtick.) As the super-clean, unattainable blonde, Cybill Shepherd is perfect: allowed to be Cybill Shepherd, she gives her most alertly relaxed performance since the last picture show. Albert Brooks, the TV comedian, registers neatly as a rather desperately plugged-in rival for her affections, a foil for the desperately unplugged Travis. Peter Boyle supplies thick-headed warmth as one of the boys at the Belmore. And Robert DeNiro, in his most film-sustaining performance to date, is so right in the title role that cab riders will look twice at their driver to make sure if s not Travis up there behind the wheel. DeNiro is probably the most engaged disengaged figure on the American screen today - and you can't take your eyes off him."

- Charles Michener, Film Comment

 

Public Opinion

 

"I find it strange that this movie is so popular. I see 'bros' quoting it and they always have this next to Goodfellas and The Sopranos and Entourage in their collection of movies(as do I). I think a lot of people like it for the wrong reasons. They like the violence and the guns and DENIRO. But for me this is the quintessential art house film: ambiguous in it's meaning, a meandering story with no plot in sight, a protagonist that has more psychological disorders than Edward Norton in Fight Club and every character except the Presidential campaign’s employees are completely fucked up. But I'm not giving these 'bros' enough credit, maybe they feel just as lonely as Travis Bickle and this movie offers some sort of escape into a fantasy world where they can take their frustrations out in. 

 

The simple but exceptionally challenging mission Taxi Driver accomplishes is making Travis Bickle a fully formed, unique, polarizing and all together fascinating character. Characters like Travis Bickle aren’t written very often and when they do pop up(ie Christian Bale in American Psycho, Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler) the film that surrounds them is usually less interesting than the character. With Taxi Driver the movie itself is an amalgam of Travis, they are fully intertwined and illuminate each other in ways that only great films can do. 

 

The most impressive aspect for me and all the other humans that love this movie is we can all relate to Mr. Bickle. It's a slippery slope that we're on when we feel that sense of isolation and loneliness that Travis tumbles into. Paul Schrader, Bobby D and Scorsese obviously connected with these emotions, opening up their inner demons in a vulnerable but also creative way. I just respect them so much for making it with such conviction in their vision. To collaborate on this filmmaking level over emotions and ideas that are so complex and personal seems damn near impossible. It's the fiercest movie Scorsese has ever made, and that's saying something. It's easy to talk about and easy to admire. I mean my god the cinematography in this movie is breathtaking. The music is soul searing. The editing and camera techniques are still being analyzed. It's just so god damn glorious in what it's trying to do.

 

These guys were born to make this movie."

- Andrew Boley, Letterboxd

 

 

Poetic Opinion

 

a taxi driver on his death

"When with prophetic eye I peer into the future
I see that I shall perish upon this road
Driving men that I do not know.
This metallic monster that now I dictate,
This docile elaborate horse,
That in silence seems to simmer and strain,
Shall surely revolt some tempting day.

 

Thus I shall die; not that I care
For any man’s journey,
Nor for proprietor’s gain,
Nor yet for love of my own.
Not for these do I attempt the forbidden limits,
For these defy the traffic-man and the cold cell,
Risking everything for the little, little more.

 

They shall say, I know, who pick up my bones,
“Poor chap, another victim to the ruthless machine”—
Concealing my blood under the metal."

- Timothy Wangusa

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#33 (2020), #63 (2018), #27 (2016), #64 (2014), #39 (2013), #26 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Stanley Kubrick (3), Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), David Fincher (2), Alfred Hitchcock (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), Christopher Nolan (2), The Russos (2),  Steven Spielberg (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (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), 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), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (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), Billy Wilder (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (3), 1950s (4), 1960s (5), 1970s (7), 1980s (9), 1990s (15), 2000s (17), 2010s (7)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), The Lion King (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#33 Fanboy Ranking, #28 Cinema Ranking

#33 Old Farts Ranking, #31 Damn Kids Ranking

#11 Ambassador Ranking, #34 All-American Ranking

#27 Cartoon Ranking, #32 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by The Panda

[The Panda]

blasting time.

 

Number 29

 

 

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Cobb, a skilled thief who commits corporate espionage by infiltrating the subconscious of his targets is offered a chance to regain his old life as payment for a task considered to be impossible: “inception”, the implantation of another person’s idea into a target’s subconscious."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Inception was not your typical type of blockbuster. The film found itself surrounded by a lineup of sequels, remakes and adaptations, all of which relied on the stereotypical expectancies of the modern tent-pole. But here it stood regardless, a brilliantly unique and complexly layered film that relied more on its unravelling story than it did explosions and special effects.

 

Taking in over $800 million at the box office worldwide, Inception clearly resonated with its audiences. It proved to the world that a film could be a success while telling an unattached story that made you think rather than mindlessly stare as you shovel another handful of popcorn into your mouth. Yet, all the same, there were no immediate copycats, nor was there a flurry of brave bolstering originals. In fact, Hollywood has struggled to conjure up much comparable work since, outside of a small handful and Nolan’s own filmography. However, while Inception failed to ignite the passion for filmmaking in the Tinseltown high-ups, it did mark the turning of the tide – planting the idea of the more intelligent blockbuster.

 

 

Impressing audiences since his directorial debut in 1998, Nolan has always been known for trying to push the envelope. From his memory-loss thriller Memento to the Victorian-era-based The Prestige, the director has long been a spokesperson for original and off-kilter stories. However, it wasn’t until the release of his 2008 comic book movie sequel The Dark Knight that the director finally and definitively put his name on the map. For a period, the film became one of the highest grossing of all time, and as a result Nolan was effectively given free reign for his next feature – which just so happened to be something he had been sitting on for a decade.

 

Approaching Inception with an incredulous cast and whopping $160 million budget, Nolan worked away on a film that would categorically stand out from the crowd – even bagging DiCaprio in an uncharacteristically mainstream role. From its extended runtime to slower paced nature, Inception defied, in any form, the urge to be the loud, crass and blisteringly dumb summer film that so has often instigated success. It managed to take the familiar concept of a heist movie and blend it with an excellent dose of sci-fi, leaving its viewers as invested in the gang pulling off the job as they were waiting to see if a spinning top finally toppled.

 

Inception is not by any means a difficult film to follow. Yet where many films would spoon feed their audience, Inception trusts that you’ll be able to keep up. There is, naturally, exposition – something completely unavoidable with a premise such as this – but it gets to the point and gives its viewers just enough of what they need in order to understand. The film even warrants repeated viewings as new details and plot intricacies reveal themselves."

- Guest, The Film Magazine

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Nolan’s films are preoccupied with, to paraphrase Memen to’s Teddy, the lies that we tell ourselves to stay happy. Yet the situation is worse even than that. It’s one thing to lie to oneself; it’s another to not even know whether one is lying to oneself or not. This might be the case with Cobb in Inception, and it’s notable that, in the Wired interview, Nolan says: “The most important emotional thing about the top spinning at the end is that Cobb is not looking at it. He doesn’t care.” Not caring whether we’re lying to ourselves may be the price for happiness—or at least the price one pays for release from excruciating mental anguish. In this respect, Will Dormer (Al Pacino) in Insomnia (2002) could be thought of as the antiCobb. His inability to sleep—which naturally also means an inability to dream—correlates with the breakdown of his capacity to tell himself a comforting story about who he is. After the shooting of his partner, Dormer’s identity collapses into a terrifying epistemological void, a black box that can’t be opened. He simply doesn’t know whether or not he intended to kill his partner, just as Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) in The Prestige (2006, adapted from a novel by Christopher Priest) can’t remember for sure which knot he tied on the night of a fatally bungled escapology act. In Nolan’s worlds, it’s not only that we deceive ourselves; it’s also that we’re deceived about even having an authentic self. There’s no separating identity from fiction. In Memento, Lenny literally writes (on) himself, but the very fact that he can write a script for future versions of himself to read is a horrifying demonstration of his lack of any coherent identity—a revelation that his Sisyphian quest both exemplifies and is in flight from. Inception leaves us with the possibility that Cobb’s quest and apparent rediscovery of his children could be a version of the same kind of loop: a purgatory to Memento’s inferno.

 

 

It’s not at all surprising that Nolan has adapted Priest, since there are striking parallels between the two men’s methods and interests. “The urge to rewrite ourselves as real- seeming fictions is present in us all,” writes Priest in The Glamour (1984). Priest’s novels are also puzzles that can’t be solved, in which writing, biography, and psychosis slide into one another, posing troubling ontological questions about memory, identity, and fiction. The idea explored in Inception of minds as datascapes which can be infiltrated inevitably recalls the “consensual hallucination” of William Gibson’s cyber space, but the dream-sharing concept can be traced back to Priest’s A Dream of Wessex. In that extraordinary 1977 novel, a group of researcher volunteers use a “dream projector” to enter into a shared dream of a (then) future England. Like the dream-sharing addicts we briefly glimpse in one of Inception’s most disturbing scenes, some of the characters in A Dream of Wessex inevitably prefer the simulated environment to the real world, and, unlike Cobb, they choose to stay there. The differences in the way that the concept of shared dreaming is handled in 1977 and 2010 tell us a great deal about politics then and now—the contrasts, in short, between social democracy and neoliberalism. While Inception’s dreamsharing technology is—like the Internet—a military invention turned into a commercial application, Priest’s shared

dream project is government-run. The Wessex dream world is lyrical and languid, still part of the hazy afterglow of 1960s psychedelia. It’s all a far cry from Inception’s noise and fury, the mind as a militarized zone.

 

Inception synthesizes the intellectual and metaphysical puzzles of Memento and The Prestige with the big-budget ballistics of Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). The synthesis isn’t always satisfactory, the problem being the prolonged action sequences, which come off as perfunctory at best. At points, it’s as if Inception’s achievement is merely to have provided a baroquely sophisticated motivation for the oddly half-hearted chasing and shooting. An unsympathetic viewer might think that the entirety of Inception’s complex ontological structure had been built to justify clichés of action cinema—such as the ludicrous amount of things that characters can do in the time that it takes for a van to fall from a bridge into a river. Blogger Carl Neville complains that Inception amounts to “three uninvolving action movies playing out simultaneously” (theimpostume.blogspot.com/ 2010/07/inception-takes-long-time-get-going-and.html). “What could have been a fascinatingly vertiginous trip into successively fantastic, impossible worlds, not to mention the limbo of the raw unconscious into which a couple of the central characters plunge,” Neville argues, “ends up looking wholly like a series of action movies, one within the other: ‘reality’ looks and feels like a ‘globalization’ movie, jumping from Tokyo to Paris to Mombasa to Sydney with a team of basically decent technical geniuses who are forced to live outside the law, making sure there are lots of helicopter shots of cityscapes and exotic local colour. "

- Mark Fisher, Film Quarterly

 

Public Opinion

 

"Seriously, the first thing I noticed was the wobble at the end, so I was like, yep, probably real. And I prefer it that way. I'd like to think Cobb got his happy ending so to speak. The wedding ring evidence (which seems a little more than intentional) I think would support that.

 

First viewing is a pretty intense and gripping experience, but the over-reliance on expository dialogue makes this one more of a chore to get through with repeat viewings. Some great performances from Leo and Tom Hardy, and JGL was fine as well. The 2nd half is still very entertaining for me to watch. Middle of the pack Nolan film.

 

Fuck you Jake" - @MrPink

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

inception

"Forget every single thing that you were told
Power through inception; for only you – behold

 

Your pathways through time
You’re sure to grow old

 

The magic, the fortune of love
The gift, the spirit of your soul
The power, through inception
Never to be replaced or forgotten

 

Through the Rayne & through Shine
You should know that you’re mine
If you think otherwise
Know that it’s LIES

 

Forget every single thing that you were told
Power through inception; only for you – behold

 

The magic, the gift, the feeling of up-
Lifting the weight of the world in just your hands
You don’t know the pain
But I still can tell that you understand"

- Eric Scott Melton

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#29 (2020), #24 (2018), #22 (2016), #10 (2014), #24 (2013), #14 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3), Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), David Fincher (2), Alfred Hitchcock (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2),  Steven Spielberg (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (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), 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), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (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), Billy Wilder (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (3), 1950s (4), 1960s (5), 1970s (7), 1980s (9), 1990s (15), 2000s (17), 2010s (8)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (4), Alien (2),  The MCU (2), Star Wars (2), WDAS (2), Avatar (1), Before (1), Blade Runner (1), Dollars (1), The Exorcist (1), Finding Nemo (1), Hannibal (1), Halloween (1), Incredibles (1), The Lion King (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1), The Shining (1), Thing (1), Toy Story (1), The Wizard of Oz (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#21 Fanboy Ranking, #30 Cinema Ranking

#51 Old Farts Ranking, #19 Damn Kids Ranking

#60 Ambassador Ranking, #27 All-American Ranking

#41 Cartoon Ranking, #29 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by The Panda

[Plain Old Tele]

lmao

[IronJimbo]

inceptions a little high...

[The Panda]

I'll take movies that have brainwashed people into liking them for $500 please.

 

Number 28

 

 

"E.T. phone home!"

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"After a gentle alien becomes stranded on Earth, the being is discovered and befriended by a young boy named Elliott. Bringing the extraterrestrial into his suburban California house, Elliott introduces E.T., as the alien is dubbed, to his brother and his little sister, Gertie, and the children decide to keep its existence a secret. Soon, however, E.T. falls ill, resulting in government intervention and a dire situation for both Elliott and the alien."

 

Its Legacy

 

"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was one of Spielberg’s greatest achievements; according to Box Office Mojo, when adjusted for inflation, the film has made the fourth highest gross of all time (boxofficemojo.com). E.T. was his most successful in terms of revenue. Spielberg’s combination of alien supernatural occurances and suburban reality created an incredibly loved film. The use of a mysterious film elements created such an interesting atmosphere of uncertainty and possibility, which when in contact with Elliott, was able to provide answers for the concerns he was dealing with. The authentic human characters and normal day to day situations made the film seem relatable, in many ways, to a large audience. As Andrew Gordon, in his article “E.T. as Fairy Tale” puts it, “For children, E.T. is a voyage of emotional discovery, for adults, a rediscovery of feeling we thought we had lost or outgrown”(Gordon, 303). With the target audience being kids, each of the three siblings could appeal to a different age a children viewing the movie. With the film appealing to such a wide audience, it became the highest grossing movie of it’s time, beating the current records of another film that Spielberg made, Jaws; both films were made early in the modern blockbuster process that Spielberg played a huge role in. E.T. had an incredible heart warming impact with a happy ending, and would pave the way for future science fiction films to come that would involve children and their experiences with the extraterrestrial.

 

 

The link between reality and the supernatural in this film as a means of displaying childhood conflicts and their solutions played a large role in the success of the movie. Gordon argues that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial depicts a fairy tale environment that is suitable for all children, while the characters experience meaningful conflicts throughout the film. His argument goes along with mine, in that this film depicts childhood conflict, and because of this, it adds to the films greatness and the film is successful. Spielberg was able to create a masterpiece by combining realistic problems with a non-realistic environment; attracting people who either wanted to see a cool sci-fi film or a family friendly film, or both.

 

While E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial wasn’t the first film to put aliens in a realistic environment, it was definitely one of the most iconic films to do so, and it used the lurking factor of childhood conflict within its reality. This film paved the way for other films and shows that have used children in a realistic setting being affected by supernatural sources, and the film continues to be used today. Two great examples of film being that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had an influence on are Super 8 and Stranger Things. The film, Super 8, has direct ties with E.T. because Steven Spielberg was a producer for the film. The film stars children in a realistic environment dealing with alien activity, just like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The Netflix original series Stranger Things, a currently running, popular show, also depicts kids in the same kind of setting, once again, dealing with aliens. The show goes so far as to copy E.T. with scenes of the characters on their bikes, levitation special effects, and much more. These shows and movies that copy aspects of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, do so because the films was an incredible depiction of the conflicts mixed with extra-terrestrial elements that are discussed in this exhibit. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial has influenced films since its creation, and will continue to do so, because of its incredibly accurate depiction childhood conflict in a sci-fi genre."

- Digital Exhibits

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Rather than rehash old shibboleths about the right-wing political "messages" and "sunny, peculiarly Reagan-era attitude of happiness bought with ignorance, magical wish-fulfillment, and historical mutability" (Bick, 25) of the era's movies, this article will investigate the reincorporation of religious values, motifs, and iconography into 1980s American cinema, specifically in the work of the Hollywood icon of the epoch, Steven Spielberg. In particular, the director's blockbuster hit E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Universal, 1982) marks a site for investigating the role of the Moral Majority's New Right rhetoric in the context of a hugely popular and ostensibly apolitical "feel-good" entertainment movie, despite the bittersweet "up-cry" at the film's conclusion (Brode, 82). That the film amassed more than $228 million in net rentals in the U.S. and Canada alone {Variety Annual, 30) by i986 and over $400 million by 1994, when combined with the knowledge that the E.T. videotape had the highest sales volume ever (over 14 million copies sold), suggests that the movie struck a responsive chord with an American and international audience {Entertainment Tonight). Indeed, the film still ranks as the second-highest-grossing film of all time (next to Titanic [1997]), with $720 million in worldwide revenue (Royal, 133). What explains this cultural and financial phenomenon?

 

 

Just as Spielberg's previous film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, established a mythoreligious substratum for Moral Majority and New Right political messages (Tomasulo, 1982), so the director's next film, E.T., created an even more overt representation of Christian iconography and ideology. As a latter-day American Rudyard Kipling, Spielberg combined sentimental religiosity and patriotic colonialism within the context of the jingoistic juvenilia and imperialistic imperatives of the Age of Reagan. In fact, Spielberg used Christianity just as President Reagan did: as a referent for political rhetoric (i.e., the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire), thus providing a moral base for governmental legitimization while simultaneously clothing the state in religious robes to achieve popular acceptance. This political use of sectarian myth, the sublation of America-First chauvinism and theology, amounts to the creation of a "civil religion."

 

Although the father is restored at closure, the spectator is left as a child. Furthermore, as Robin Wood points out, this subject construction produces a particular kind of child: a male child. The heartwarming ending of E.T. shows the rubbery alien transmitting his power to young Elliott while dismissing his little sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) with an injunction to "Be good" (Wood, 5). Throughout the film, low-angle point-of-view shots also inscribe a child's eye view of the proceedings, including several subjective shots through the eyes of the diminutive space man and his immature doppelganger, Elliott. This inscription of childhood refers us back to the mythic figure of the puer aeternus, the eternal child. According to Marie-Louise von Franz, "Puer aeternus is the divine youth who is born in the night, a god of vegetation and resurrection" (1). And, indeed, E.T. is a botanist by profession who returns from the dead. Examples of the puer aeternus would be Adonis, Hyacinthus, and Narcissus—whose deaths produced blooming flowers, just as E.T.'s demise and rebirth are related to his emblematic geranium plant. There is even a subset of the puer aeternus myth dealing with "ascensionism": a fascination with flying.

 

This subgenre would include Icarus, who flew too close to the sun on wax wings, Bellerophon, who tried to ride to the top of Mount Olympus on the winged horse Pegasus, Jesus Christ, who ascended to Heaven after the crucifixion, and, of course, E.T. on a bicycle flying across the harvest moon. The primary trait of the eternal child is the refusal to grow up, the refusal to resolve one's Oedipal crisis by remaining in—or regressing to—the pre-Oedipal attachment to the idealized mother. The most famous case of puer aeternus (of the flying variety) is no doubt Peter Pan, which Mother Mary actually reads to Gertie in Spielberg's E.T. James M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, was preoccupied with the Christian meaning of death and immortality. Hence, Tinker Bell's sacrifice to save Peter Pan has obvious Christian overtones, not to mention her eventual return from the dead. Instead of Peter Pan, the little boy who teaches children how to fly, we have E.T., the mini-creature who introduces a group of children to flying on bicycles and wants to "go home." Thomas Wolfe said that, caught in the inexorability of time, "You can't go home again," yet E.T. suggests that you can go home again and even reach Never-Never Land—if you believe strongly enough in the myths and religious of the past."

- Frank P. Tomasulo, Quarterly Review of Film and Video

 

Public Opinion

 

"A top 50 movie of all time. Pretty much perfect. Just next level of filmmaking 
92.5
A-"

- @Kvikk Lunsj

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

the atari poem series no. 2: e.t. the extra-terrestrial

"I gave you a quarter
You should have called someone who cared
Instead, you just wandered
As though you were drunk
Falling down into black hole
After black hole
After black hole
One depression after another
You couldn’t get out of

 

And to think it only took
Five weeks
To make you this way

 

It’s official:
You are simply a catastrophic failure
Unwilling to be controlled
Unwilling to be counted upon
Unwilling to be a contributing factor
Toward easing the burden rate

 

There are garbage dumps out in New Mexico
We will bury you in

And encase you in cement

You had the quarter

Don’t you wish you had just phoned home?"

- Zachary House

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#24 (2020), #35 (2018), #34 (2016), #69 (2014) #25 (2013) , #45 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Steven Spielberg (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), David Fincher (2), Alfred Hitchcock (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2),  Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (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), 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), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (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), Billy Wilder (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (3), 1950s (4), 1960s (5), 1970s (7), 1980s (10), 1990s (15), 2000s (17), 2010s (8)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

 

Franchise Count

 

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

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#29 Fanboy Ranking, #24 Cinema Ranking

#32 Old Farts Ranking, #27 Damn Kids Ranking

#36 Ambassador Ranking, #29 All-American Ranking

#45 Cartoon Ranking, #28 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[Plain Old Tele]

4 minutes ago, The Panda said:

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#29 Fanboy Ranking, #24 Cinema Ranking

#32 Old Farts Ranking, #27 Damn Kids Ranking

#36 Ambassador Ranking, #29 All-American Ranking

#45 Cartoon Ranking, #28 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

He's very popular. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.

[SLAM!]

30 minutes ago, The Panda said:

I'll take movies that have brainwashed people into liking them for $500 please.

 

Number 28

 

 

"E.T. phone home!"

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"After a gentle alien becomes stranded on Earth, the being is discovered and befriended by a young boy named Elliott. Bringing the extraterrestrial into his suburban California house, Elliott introduces E.T., as the alien is dubbed, to his brother and his little sister, Gertie, and the children decide to keep its existence a secret. Soon, however, E.T. falls ill, resulting in government intervention and a dire situation for both Elliott and the alien."

 

Its Legacy

 

"E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was one of Spielberg’s greatest achievements; according to Box Office Mojo, when adjusted for inflation, the film has made the fourth highest gross of all time (boxofficemojo.com). E.T. was his most successful in terms of revenue. Spielberg’s combination of alien supernatural occurances and suburban reality created an incredibly loved film. The use of a mysterious film elements created such an interesting atmosphere of uncertainty and possibility, which when in contact with Elliott, was able to provide answers for the concerns he was dealing with. The authentic human characters and normal day to day situations made the film seem relatable, in many ways, to a large audience. As Andrew Gordon, in his article “E.T. as Fairy Tale” puts it, “For children, E.T. is a voyage of emotional discovery, for adults, a rediscovery of feeling we thought we had lost or outgrown”(Gordon, 303). With the target audience being kids, each of the three siblings could appeal to a different age a children viewing the movie. With the film appealing to such a wide audience, it became the highest grossing movie of it’s time, beating the current records of another film that Spielberg made, Jaws; both films were made early in the modern blockbuster process that Spielberg played a huge role in. E.T. had an incredible heart warming impact with a happy ending, and would pave the way for future science fiction films to come that would involve children and their experiences with the extraterrestrial.

 

 

The link between reality and the supernatural in this film as a means of displaying childhood conflicts and their solutions played a large role in the success of the movie. Gordon argues that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial depicts a fairy tale environment that is suitable for all children, while the characters experience meaningful conflicts throughout the film. His argument goes along with mine, in that this film depicts childhood conflict, and because of this, it adds to the films greatness and the film is successful. Spielberg was able to create a masterpiece by combining realistic problems with a non-realistic environment; attracting people who either wanted to see a cool sci-fi film or a family friendly film, or both.

 

While E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial wasn’t the first film to put aliens in a realistic environment, it was definitely one of the most iconic films to do so, and it used the lurking factor of childhood conflict within its reality. This film paved the way for other films and shows that have used children in a realistic setting being affected by supernatural sources, and the film continues to be used today. Two great examples of film being that E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial had an influence on are Super 8 and Stranger Things. The film, Super 8, has direct ties with E.T. because Steven Spielberg was a producer for the film. The film stars children in a realistic environment dealing with alien activity, just like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The Netflix original series Stranger Things, a currently running, popular show, also depicts kids in the same kind of setting, once again, dealing with aliens. The show goes so far as to copy E.T. with scenes of the characters on their bikes, levitation special effects, and much more. These shows and movies that copy aspects of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, do so because the films was an incredible depiction of the conflicts mixed with extra-terrestrial elements that are discussed in this exhibit. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial has influenced films since its creation, and will continue to do so, because of its incredibly accurate depiction childhood conflict in a sci-fi genre."

- Digital Exhibits

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Rather than rehash old shibboleths about the right-wing political "messages" and "sunny, peculiarly Reagan-era attitude of happiness bought with ignorance, magical wish-fulfillment, and historical mutability" (Bick, 25) of the era's movies, this article will investigate the reincorporation of religious values, motifs, and iconography into 1980s American cinema, specifically in the work of the Hollywood icon of the epoch, Steven Spielberg. In particular, the director's blockbuster hit E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Universal, 1982) marks a site for investigating the role of the Moral Majority's New Right rhetoric in the context of a hugely popular and ostensibly apolitical "feel-good" entertainment movie, despite the bittersweet "up-cry" at the film's conclusion (Brode, 82). That the film amassed more than $228 million in net rentals in the U.S. and Canada alone {Variety Annual, 30) by i986 and over $400 million by 1994, when combined with the knowledge that the E.T. videotape had the highest sales volume ever (over 14 million copies sold), suggests that the movie struck a responsive chord with an American and international audience {Entertainment Tonight). Indeed, the film still ranks as the second-highest-grossing film of all time (next to Titanic [1997]), with $720 million in worldwide revenue (Royal, 133). What explains this cultural and financial phenomenon?

 

 

Just as Spielberg's previous film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, established a mythoreligious substratum for Moral Majority and New Right political messages (Tomasulo, 1982), so the director's next film, E.T., created an even more overt representation of Christian iconography and ideology. As a latter-day American Rudyard Kipling, Spielberg combined sentimental religiosity and patriotic colonialism within the context of the jingoistic juvenilia and imperialistic imperatives of the Age of Reagan. In fact, Spielberg used Christianity just as President Reagan did: as a referent for political rhetoric (i.e., the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire), thus providing a moral base for governmental legitimization while simultaneously clothing the state in religious robes to achieve popular acceptance. This political use of sectarian myth, the sublation of America-First chauvinism and theology, amounts to the creation of a "civil religion."

 

Although the father is restored at closure, the spectator is left as a child. Furthermore, as Robin Wood points out, this subject construction produces a particular kind of child: a male child. The heartwarming ending of E.T. shows the rubbery alien transmitting his power to young Elliott while dismissing his little sister Gertie (Drew Barrymore) with an injunction to "Be good" (Wood, 5). Throughout the film, low-angle point-of-view shots also inscribe a child's eye view of the proceedings, including several subjective shots through the eyes of the diminutive space man and his immature doppelganger, Elliott. This inscription of childhood refers us back to the mythic figure of the puer aeternus, the eternal child. According to Marie-Louise von Franz, "Puer aeternus is the divine youth who is born in the night, a god of vegetation and resurrection" (1). And, indeed, E.T. is a botanist by profession who returns from the dead. Examples of the puer aeternus would be Adonis, Hyacinthus, and Narcissus—whose deaths produced blooming flowers, just as E.T.'s demise and rebirth are related to his emblematic geranium plant. There is even a subset of the puer aeternus myth dealing with "ascensionism": a fascination with flying.

 

This subgenre would include Icarus, who flew too close to the sun on wax wings, Bellerophon, who tried to ride to the top of Mount Olympus on the winged horse Pegasus, Jesus Christ, who ascended to Heaven after the crucifixion, and, of course, E.T. on a bicycle flying across the harvest moon. The primary trait of the eternal child is the refusal to grow up, the refusal to resolve one's Oedipal crisis by remaining in—or regressing to—the pre-Oedipal attachment to the idealized mother. The most famous case of puer aeternus (of the flying variety) is no doubt Peter Pan, which Mother Mary actually reads to Gertie in Spielberg's E.T. James M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, was preoccupied with the Christian meaning of death and immortality. Hence, Tinker Bell's sacrifice to save Peter Pan has obvious Christian overtones, not to mention her eventual return from the dead. Instead of Peter Pan, the little boy who teaches children how to fly, we have E.T., the mini-creature who introduces a group of children to flying on bicycles and wants to "go home." Thomas Wolfe said that, caught in the inexorability of time, "You can't go home again," yet E.T. suggests that you can go home again and even reach Never-Never Land—if you believe strongly enough in the myths and religious of the past."

- Frank P. Tomasulo, Quarterly Review of Film and Video

 

Public Opinion

 

"A top 50 movie of all time. Pretty much perfect. Just next level of filmmaking 
92.5
A-"

- @Kvikk Lunsj

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

the atari poem series no. 2: e.t. the extra-terrestrial

"I gave you a quarter
You should have called someone who cared
Instead, you just wandered
As though you were drunk
Falling down into black hole
After black hole
After black hole
One depression after another
You couldn’t get out of

 

And to think it only took
Five weeks
To make you this way

 

It’s official:
You are simply a catastrophic failure
Unwilling to be controlled
Unwilling to be counted upon
Unwilling to be a contributing factor
Toward easing the burden rate

 

There are garbage dumps out in New Mexico
We will bury you in

And encase you in cement

You had the quarter

Don’t you wish you had just phoned home?"

- Zachary House

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#24 (2020), #35 (2018), #34 (2016), #69 (2014) #25 (2013) , #45 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Stanley Kubrick (3), Christopher Nolan (3),  Martin Scorsese (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Steven Spielberg (3), Brad Bird (2), James Cameron (2), John Carpenter (2), David Fincher (2), Alfred Hitchcock (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2),  Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (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), 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), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), Richard Linklater (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (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), Billy Wilder (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (3), 1950s (4), 1960s (5), 1970s (7), 1980s (10), 1990s (15), 2000s (17), 2010s (8)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

 

Franchise Count

 

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

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#29 Fanboy Ranking, #24 Cinema Ranking

#32 Old Farts Ranking, #27 Damn Kids Ranking

#36 Ambassador Ranking, #29 All-American Ranking

#45 Cartoon Ranking, #28 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial will be released in IMAX next week in the states (August 12th through August 18th). I somehow got away without ever seen this so I might catch it…

[Jake Gittes]

I'm an E.T. convert. Saw it for the first time as an edgy teen, was bored by it. Finally revisited a few weeks ago, bawled like a baby the last 10 minutes. E.T. is a real one.

[Eric the IF]

1 minute ago, Jake Gittes said:

I'm an E.T. convert. Saw it for the first time as an edgy teen, was bored by it. Finally revisited a few weeks ago, bawled like a baby the last 10 minutes. E.T. is a real one.

The best Spielberg. Only beautiful people (like me!) share this opinion.

 

[Ozymandias]

Online film discourse in 2010 after Nolan's back-to-back TDK/Inception was so annoying.  Every filmbro and nerd were more than happy to tell you over and over again how they thought Nolan and those films were the second coming.  Not surprised to see Inception that high.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Ozymandias

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

Inception that high and we still haven't had TDK yet? 

 

As much as 90s Kool Kidz and Bloggistas were giddy-silly with Tarantino Red Bull, it was topped so fully by 2000 and early 2010 Kool Kidz and Bloggistas with Nolan Monster.

 

ET isn't my thing but I got over it long ago. It's still beautiful, universal, a defining moment of an important filmmaker and defined an entire year at the cinema.

Edited August 6, 2022 by Ipickthiswhiterose

[Eric the IF]

33 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

As much as 90s Kool Kidz and Bloggistas were giddy-silly with Tarantino Red Bull, it was topped so fully by 2000 and early 2010 Kool Kidz and Bloggistas with Nolan Monster.

 

 

[Rorschach]

2 hours ago, Jake Gittes said:

I'm an E.T. convert. Saw it for the first time as an edgy teen, was bored by it. Finally revisited a few weeks ago, bawled like a baby the last 10 minutes. E.T. is a real one.

You’re a real one yourself, Jake.

[lorddemaxus]

Watching ET again this weekend for the IMAX re-release. Probably will end up placing higher on rewatch.