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

[The Panda]

Kyrie Irving got in touch with and told me he is withdrawing Uncle Drew from consideration because he didn't want his favorite movie Titanic missing the top 250.

 

 

Number 10b

 

 

"I'll never let go, Jack. I'll never let go. I promise."

*Proceeds to let him go*

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

The legacy of a boat that hits an iceberg and sinks.

 

Its Legacy

 

 

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"There is a debate that has raged for decades. One that cleaves whole families in two. A conundrum so fundamental to what it is that makes us human that it divides not only nations, but the populace of an entire planet. That planet is Earth – this planet – and the question in question is this question: did Jack really have to die to save Rose at the end of Titanic? Or is Rose a despicable, door-hogging monster? These are murky waters, dear reader.

 

 

This isn’t the first time that someone has sought answers. In 2013, pop-science show MythBusters attempted to nix it once and for all, concluding that, yes, Rose could have scooched over a bit, and Jack would have lived dishily ever after. But only if Rose had removed her lifejacket and given it to Jack to tie it beneath the portion of door he would then be occupying. Otherwise, they would have faced the single biggest threat to makeshift, flotsam-based lifeboats: wobbliness. Nevertheless, MythBusters heralded that particular myth Busted, and Rose’s good name was henceforth for ever tarnished. So … Solved?

 

Not exactly. There’s more to life on driftwood in the north Atlantic than simple wobbliness. Firstly, the debris wasn’t actually a door at all, but a chunk of oak door frame, according to comparisons made to actual wreckage recovered from the ship. And it was certainly big enough in terms of surface area to accommodate both bodies: Leo’s height is 183cm, Kate’s is 169cm; the shoulder width of the average man is 39.6cm and a woman’s is 36.7cm, forming a body warmth-sharing total of 76.3cm. According to a deep dive done by Physics Central, Rose’s raft was 183cm x 91cm. Room to spare, then. But what this doesn’t take into account is buoyancy.

 

 

The boating boffins at Physics Central discovered that a piece of oak of that size and thickness has a weight (volume x density x gravity) of 1,920 newtons. The couple’s weights at the time – which are apparently discoverable if you look hard enough – are 715N for Leo and 549N for Kate. That’s a combined bulk of 3,184N. In ice-cold salt water, oak in those dimensions would give an upward buoyant force of 2,490N. You don’t need a white coat and bushy eyebrows to know that 3,184 is bigger than 2,490, and Jack, Rose and one quite intricately carved piece of wood are therefore sinkier than Armitage Shanks.

 

What about the lifejacket theory, though? What if Rose did the honourable thing and gave hers up? In water that cold (around -2.2 celsius at the time of the boat’s sinking), Jack would be unconscious within 15 minutes of first going in – and he’d already been in there for a fair old while before even getting round to trying to affix a lifejacket to a bobbing piece of wood. More importantly, even modern lifejackets top out at a buoyancy of 275N, which still leaves our pair a full 419N over. In other words, after all that faffing about, they’d sink anyway. So there you have it: for Jack, it was either push Rose in or sacrifice himself. Whether he made the right call there is up to you."

- Luke Holland, The Guardian

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"This is my favorite movie. I give up my spot on this list so Titanic can take its place. I am pretty much Jesus."

-

 

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#8 (2020), #8 (2018), #28 (2016), #59 (2014), #26 (2013), #5 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

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

 

Decade Count

 

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

 

Country Count

 

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

 

 

Franchise Count

 

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

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#6 Fanboy Ranking, #14 Cinema Ranking

#46 Old Farts Ranking, #4 Damn Kids Ranking

#7 Ambassador Ranking, #12 All-American Ranking

#9 Cartoon Ranking, #10 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 9, 2022 by The Panda

[Ethan Hunt]

1 hour ago, Plain Old Tele said:

The first half of FELLOWSHIP is kinda janky in sections. 

 

 

Huh. Weird opinion. I think the film is all downhill after they leave the shire

[Cap]

Jack and Rose won our “69 Greatest Ships of All Time” List back in February!!

 

And I think this is a good time to alert folks that we just created a Sub Forum for Archive lists. I’m slowly putting all of the list we’ve done over the years into that forum! So hopefully it will make it easier to find stuff later on.

 

 

[DAR]

18 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

Huh. Weird opinion. I think the film is all downhill after they leave the shire

 

This is definitely a take I expected from you.

[Eric Loves Rey]

20 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

Huh. Weird opinion. I think the film is all downhill after they leave the shire

You're all downhill after you leave the shire

[The Panda]

 

Number 9

 

 

"As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"The true story of Henry Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian Brooklyn kid who is adopted by neighbourhood gangsters at an early age and climbs the ranks of a Mafia family under the guidance of Jimmy Conway."

 

Its Legacy

 

"The world, as Fredo Corleone knew it, has never been an easy place for middle children. Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas opened 30 years ago this week, on September 19, 1990. It came out between The Godfather, which opened in March 1972, and The Sopranos, which premiered in January 1999. And if you imagine Goodfellas as the second installment in the great informal American mob trilogy made up of these works, then it’s clear that Scorsese’s madcap gangster epic is the hardest to talk about on its own, even as it might be the greatest artistic achievement of the three. It’s possible to talk about The Godfather and The Sopranos without mentioning Goodfellas, but any conversation about Goodfellas inevitably involves a lot of discussion of one or both of the other two works. Even if the upshot is to argue that Goodfellas is better than The Godfather, as Roger Ebert thought it was, or that it inspired The Sopranos, as David Chase acknowledges it did, its counterparts seem to keep it under a kind of reverential shadow.

 

 

In part, this is because its importance is harder to quantify. The Godfather revolutionized the movies. The Sopranos revolutionized TV. Scorsese’s film, the sprawling story of Henry Hill, a mid-shelf, midcentury mobster played by Ray Liotta, and his cronies in the not-quite-big-time Brooklyn underworld, didn’t revolutionize anything. The movie didn’t launch an array of imitators (at least, not imitators that weren’t already imitating The Godfather) or transform an industry. It contained its share of iconic moments—“Now go home and get your fuckin’ shinebox”; “You think I’m funny?”—but none on the “May the Force Be With You” god-tier rung of half a dozen moments from The Godfather, or on the slow-burn cultural-obsession level of the gradually unfolding plots of The Sopranos. (The ending of Goodfellas, for instance, didn’t provoke a national nervous breakdown.) Goodfellas didn’t do any of that stuff. It was only a perfect movie.

 

The partially eclipsed condition of what might be Scorsese’s best film isn’t really fair. In one sense, though, it’s understandable. Goodfellas is far more than a transitional film, but it does link the past and the future in some important ways. If it’s true that every great work of art ends one genre and founds another, then Goodfellas could be seen as the culmination of the tradition represented by The Godfather and as the vital link between the New Hollywood cinema of the ’70s and what we now think of as the golden age of TV. It took the central tension of the old mob-movie genre—the tension between our emotional identification with the characters and our moral judgment of their actions—to a giddy new place that looked ahead not just to Tony Soprano but to Walter White, Don Draper, and the other prestige antiheroes of 21st-century TV.

 

Why does a person become a gangster, and how do we, the audience, feel about the choice? This has been a driving question for mob movies since Scarface meant James Cagney, not Al Pacino: How, filmmakers ask, can we be made to invest emotionally in characters who behave in ways (murdering, lying, cheating, stealing) we would find terrifying, even evil, in real life? This is not a new tension in art—Don Giovanni was not exactly a Presbyterian—but in a genre obsessed with the codes and customs of people who reject the usual norms of society, it can be a powerful line of inquiry into the moral status of art itself.

 

If I can enjoy watching someone doing evil deeds on screen, the gangster movie asks, if I can root for that person despite knowing on another level that what he’s doing is wrong, then what kind of moral judgment falls on me? What kind of moral judgment falls on the artistic medium that coaxed me into this position? (That this is a problem not just for crime movies but for more or less the whole gamut of film genres ranging from war movies to superhero epics—“Why do I like watching someone shoot/stab/rob/lightsaber/retractable-hand-claw someone?”—is maybe one reason the mob movie, as a major venue for exploring the question, seems to have such lasting importance for film.)"

- Brian Phillips, The Ringer

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

" GoodFellas is arguably the apex of Scor sese's most openly ethnic production. Wishing to make a "good commercial picture," Scorsese re turned to the Italian/American setting which had already inspired his best films (except Taxi Driver).' Scorsese's first feature, Who's That Knocking At My Door? (1969), portrayed and examined sexism and masculinity in the character of J. R. (Harvey Keitel), a young Italian/American in crisis over his Catholic faith. This promising debut revealed Scor sese's inspirational sources (the American cinema of Ford and Hawks, and the French New Wave) and it also contained the seeds of a cinematic style capable of both accepting and bending narrative conventions. Scorsese again returned to ethic con cerns with Mean Streets (1973), a film which artfully y blended documentary reality with subjective fiction in the portrayal of four young men on the fringes of society in New York's Little Italy. In 1975, Scorsese turned to documentary with Italian american, in which he interviewed his own family. Italianamerican also confirmed Scorsese's tendency to use his personal environment for his cinema. This tendency to personalize the set and make it into a family emerges clearly in his long-standing collaboration with such actors as Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.2 In 1980, Scorsese and De Niro returned to the Italian/American milieu with the highly acclaimed Raging Bull, a film in which vio lence and masculinity are at once celebrated and ruthlessly exposed.3

 

 

Even at a cursory glance Scorsese's ethnic films appear to share a common attitude, an intensely contradictory ambivalence. It is a love/hate rela tionship which is best summarized in the song at the end of GoodFellas, Sid Vicious's version of Si natra's My Way. Scorsese is drawn to tradition but he also questions it with the brutal aplomb of a punk. This transgressive celebration results in cog nitive fury. Italian/American culture is the reality of his personal as well as cinematic formative years, and it remains the reality he can best recreate vis cerally. It is no accident that the most blatantly documentary qualities of his films (voice-overs, in tertitles, Super-8 snippets inserted in the narrative) all appear in his ethnic films. In fact, it is mainly to re-create the truth of ethnic situations and con cerns that Scorsese has perfected his own brand of expressionistic realism. GoodFellas contributes to, enhances, and explains that realism.

 

The adaptation of the book is extremely faith ful, and if the book is a piece of documentary jour nalism, GoodFellas is a piece of documentary film fiction, a docudrama of sorts. It provides on-screen factual information (dates and places; what hap pened to the characters in real life) as well as histor ical allusions making the viewer feel that, by the end of the film, s/he has gained knowledge about the world depicted. Henry's voice-over provides contextual and narrative connections for us, so that most scenes require no beginning and no ending but merely a few illustrative, emblematic shots. This documentary adherence to the facts is at once com plemented and countered by Scorsese's ebullient style. At first his restless camera and jump-cuts seem to recreate the improvisational style typical of documentaries. On a couple of occasions, Scorsese  even utilizes the nonfictional device of having char acters address the camera-a long tracking shot in a dimly lit bar room, with Henry's voice identify ing the wiseguys who say hello to the camera. As the film proceeds, however, the camerawork in creasingly defeats the supposed objectivity of a documentary style. The close-ups of such details as food and shoes, the freeze-frames, the rhythmic editing are constant reminders of authorial expres sion. However short the shots, the camera is in cessantly zooming or tracking, signaling a strong subjectivity behind the lens. The seamless, smooth editing does not efface the director's production of meaning. On the contrary, one is always aware of Scorsese behind the camera."

- Maurizio Viano, Film Quarterly

 

Public Opinion

 

"Do you like movies?"

- @DAR

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

wise guy

"I know you are wise
So you reached skies
Only problem is
You cannot stop lies

 

Brothers and sisters
You start your speech
Sweet promises made
But beyond our reach

 

Cash in every account
Ahead good days
Sorry Nirav took it
Will give if he pays

 

Would give vast fortune
If Mallya didn't run away
People need to wait now
There's no other way

 

Your position is big
We indeed respect
Stop telling lies sir
Time to introspect"

- Richie John Pais

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#9 (2020), #16 (2018), #20 (2016), #21 (2014), #7 (2013), #20 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

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

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (9), 1980s (11), 1990s (21), 2000s (20), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

 

Franchise Count

 

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

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#17 Fanboy Ranking, #7 Cinema Ranking

#13 Old Farts Ranking, #13 Damn Kids Ranking

#12 Ambassador Ranking, #10 All-American Ranking

#28 Cartoon Ranking, #8 Damn Boomers Ranking

 

 

[The Panda]

 

Number 8

 

 

"You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth."

 

Its Legacy

 

Did you know Christian Evangelicals took the Matrix and repurposed it to discuss Christian themes to young people they thought would be bored with traditional messages? They literally did that in my youth group growing up, so I am going to provide a quote from that perspective. Obviously the film's larger legacy rests in the stylization and VFX work, but I figured this might be an interesting tidbit some might not be aware of.

 

""The Matrix 1 was a firepowerfueled film that spinkicked filmmaking and popular culture. Its impact came from such components as its striking visual style (from black leather to "bullet time”) as well as its many syncretistic visual and textual references to various religions ( Buddhism 2 to Gnosticism 3 ), science fiction literature and action films, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Platonic to postmodern philosophies, Campbell. 5 4 and the mythic hero's journey as described by Joseph Although various other allusions exist, a major mythological motif in the film and its two sequels consists of blatant and vital references to Christ. How the Christ figure is portrayed in the trilogy and some of the implications will be examined here. 6 To truly be considered a Christ fig ure in a film, the character's resemblance to Jesus, as Peter Malone suggests, "needs to be significant and substantial, otherwise it is trivial.” 7 Also, the symbolism "needs to be understood from the text and texture of the work of art, be it classical or into the text with Christian presuppositions.”

 

 

Many films have used Christ figures to enrich their stories through references in actions, dialogue, or visual symbols. Although the messianic metaphors add meaning to the story, they a re not usually an essential part of the plot. In most cases, the metaphors theoretically could be stripped out of the film, and the plot, although diminished, would still function on some level. In The Matrix trilogy, however, the Christ figure motif goes beyond superficial plot enhancements. It forms the fundamental core of the story. messianic growth (in self9 Neo's awareness and power) and his eventual bringing of peace and salvation to humanity form the essential plot of the trilogy. The three acts of t he trilogy even roughly parallel the New Testament collection. Without the messianic imagery, there could still be a story about the human struggle in the Matrix, of course, but it would be a radically different story than presented on the screen.

 

Media and cultural critic Read Mercer Schuchardt writes: t is not without coincidence that The Matrix was released on the last Easter weekend of the dying twentieth century. It is a parable of the original Judeo Christian worldview of entrapment in a world gone wrong, with no hope of survival or salvation s hort of something miraculous. The Matrix is 27 a new testament for a new millennium, a religious parable of the second coming of mankind's messiah in an age that needs salvation as desperately as any ever has The film's cult following can be explained with many reasons, but the followers also included a surprisingly large number of devout Christians. A reviewer for Christianity Today calls The Matrix one of the best movies of 1999. 30 The Christian following especially may find that this "film is surprisingly true to Biblical theology - despite its unorthodox appearance.”31 To the diverse audience of the films, a generation that would never sit through turgid traditional Bible epics, Christian theology becomes more accessible and attractive because of Neo's presentation as a postmodern messiah."

- Mark D. Stucky, Journal of Religion and Film

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Action heroes speak volumes about the couch-potato audiences that they thrill. So it's understandable that ''The Matrix,'' a furious special-effects tornado directed by the imaginative brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski (''Bound''), couldn't care less about the spies, cowboys and Rambos of times gone by. Aiming their film squarely at a generation bred on comics and computers, the Wachowskis stylishly envision the ultimate in cyberescapism, creating a movie that captures the duality of life a la laptop. Though the wildest exploits befall this film's sleek hero, most of its reality is so virtual that characters spend long spells of time lying stock still with their eyes closed.

 

In a film that's as likely to transfix fans of computer gamesmanship as to baffle anyone with quaintly humanistic notions of life on earth, the Wachowskis have synthesized a savvy visual vocabulary (thanks especially to Bill Pope's inspired techno-cinematography), a wild hodgepodge of classical references (from the biblical to Lewis Carroll) and a situation that calls for a lot of explaining.

 

 

The most salient things any prospective viewer need know is that Keanu Reeves makes a strikingly chic Prada model of an action hero, that the martial arts dynamics are phenomenal (thanks to Peter Pan-type wires for flying and inventive slow-motion tricks), and that anyone bored with the notably pretentious plotting can keep busy toting up this film's debts to other futuristic science fiction. Neat tricks here echo ''Terminator'' and ''Alien'' films, ''The X-Files,'' ''Men in Black'' and ''Strange Days,'' with a strong whiff of ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' in the battle royale being waged between man and computer. Nonetheless whatever recycling the brothers do here is canny enough to give ''The Matrix'' a strong identity of its own."

- Janet Muslin, The New York Times (1999)

 

Public Opinion

 

"Haha

 

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

I forgot how joyful and glorious that third act is. Bless that new Dolby Atmos mix" - @WrathOfHan

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#23 (2020), #11 (2018), #16 (2016), #17 (2014), #9 (2013), #10 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

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

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (9), 1980s (11), 1990s (21), 2000s (20), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

Franchise Count

 

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

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#9 Fanboy Ranking, #11 Cinema Ranking

#25 Old Farts Ranking, #5 Damn Kids Ranking

#8 Ambassador Ranking, #8 All-American Ranking

#16 Cartoon Ranking, #7 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[Ozymandias]

10 minutes ago, The Panda said:

 

Number 8

 

 

"You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Set in the 22nd century, The Matrix tells the story of a computer hacker who joins a group of underground insurgents fighting the vast and powerful computers who now rule the earth."

 

Its Legacy

 

Did you know Christian Evangelicals took the Matrix and repurposed it to discuss Christian themes to young people they thought would be bored with traditional messages? They literally did that in my youth group growing up, so I am going to provide a quote from that perspective. Obviously the film's larger legacy rests in the stylization and VFX work, but I figured this might be an interesting tidbit some might not be aware of.

 

""The Matrix 1 was a firepowerfueled film that spinkicked filmmaking and popular culture. Its impact came from such components as its striking visual style (from black leather to "bullet time”) as well as its many syncretistic visual and textual references to various religions ( Buddhism 2 to Gnosticism 3 ), science fiction literature and action films, Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, Platonic to postmodern philosophies, Campbell. 5 4 and the mythic hero's journey as described by Joseph Although various other allusions exist, a major mythological motif in the film and its two sequels consists of blatant and vital references to Christ. How the Christ figure is portrayed in the trilogy and some of the implications will be examined here. 6 To truly be considered a Christ fig ure in a film, the character's resemblance to Jesus, as Peter Malone suggests, "needs to be significant and substantial, otherwise it is trivial.” 7 Also, the symbolism "needs to be understood from the text and texture of the work of art, be it classical or into the text with Christian presuppositions.”

 

 

Many films have used Christ figures to enrich their stories through references in actions, dialogue, or visual symbols. Although the messianic metaphors add meaning to the story, they a re not usually an essential part of the plot. In most cases, the metaphors theoretically could be stripped out of the film, and the plot, although diminished, would still function on some level. In The Matrix trilogy, however, the Christ figure motif goes beyond superficial plot enhancements. It forms the fundamental core of the story. messianic growth (in self9 Neo's awareness and power) and his eventual bringing of peace and salvation to humanity form the essential plot of the trilogy. The three acts of t he trilogy even roughly parallel the New Testament collection. Without the messianic imagery, there could still be a story about the human struggle in the Matrix, of course, but it would be a radically different story than presented on the screen.

 

Media and cultural critic Read Mercer Schuchardt writes: t is not without coincidence that The Matrix was released on the last Easter weekend of the dying twentieth century. It is a parable of the original Judeo Christian worldview of entrapment in a world gone wrong, with no hope of survival or salvation s hort of something miraculous. The Matrix is 27 a new testament for a new millennium, a religious parable of the second coming of mankind's messiah in an age that needs salvation as desperately as any ever has The film's cult following can be explained with many reasons, but the followers also included a surprisingly large number of devout Christians. A reviewer for Christianity Today calls The Matrix one of the best movies of 1999. 30 The Christian following especially may find that this "film is surprisingly true to Biblical theology - despite its unorthodox appearance.”31 To the diverse audience of the films, a generation that would never sit through turgid traditional Bible epics, Christian theology becomes more accessible and attractive because of Neo's presentation as a postmodern messiah."

- Mark D. Stucky, Journal of Religion and Film

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Action heroes speak volumes about the couch-potato audiences that they thrill. So it's understandable that ''The Matrix,'' a furious special-effects tornado directed by the imaginative brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski (''Bound''), couldn't care less about the spies, cowboys and Rambos of times gone by. Aiming their film squarely at a generation bred on comics and computers, the Wachowskis stylishly envision the ultimate in cyberescapism, creating a movie that captures the duality of life a la laptop. Though the wildest exploits befall this film's sleek hero, most of its reality is so virtual that characters spend long spells of time lying stock still with their eyes closed.

 

In a film that's as likely to transfix fans of computer gamesmanship as to baffle anyone with quaintly humanistic notions of life on earth, the Wachowskis have synthesized a savvy visual vocabulary (thanks especially to Bill Pope's inspired techno-cinematography), a wild hodgepodge of classical references (from the biblical to Lewis Carroll) and a situation that calls for a lot of explaining.

 

 

The most salient things any prospective viewer need know is that Keanu Reeves makes a strikingly chic Prada model of an action hero, that the martial arts dynamics are phenomenal (thanks to Peter Pan-type wires for flying and inventive slow-motion tricks), and that anyone bored with the notably pretentious plotting can keep busy toting up this film's debts to other futuristic science fiction. Neat tricks here echo ''Terminator'' and ''Alien'' films, ''The X-Files,'' ''Men in Black'' and ''Strange Days,'' with a strong whiff of ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' in the battle royale being waged between man and computer. Nonetheless whatever recycling the brothers do here is canny enough to give ''The Matrix'' a strong identity of its own."

- Janet Muslin, The New York Times (1999)

 

Public Opinion

 

"Haha

 

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

I forgot how joyful and glorious that third act is. Bless that new Dolby Atmos mix" - @WrathOfHan

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#23 (2020), #11 (2018), #16 (2016), #17 (2014), #9 (2013), #10 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

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

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (9), 1980s (11), 1990s (21), 2000s (20), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

Franchise Count

 

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

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#9 Fanboy Ranking, #11 Cinema Ranking

#25 Old Farts Ranking, #5 Damn Kids Ranking

#8 Ambassador Ranking, #8 All-American Ranking

#16 Cartoon Ranking, #7 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

 

I don't think there is any other great film thats had its reputation tarnished by sequels as much as this one.  Its still by itself a perfect film, and younglings today who never saw this in a full theater on opening weekend back in 99 can totally appreciate how genius it was.

[The Panda]

 

Number 7

 

 

"You're gonna need a bigger boat."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"When an insatiable great white shark terrorizes the townspeople of Amity Island, the police chief, an oceanographer and a grizzled shark hunter seek to destroy the blood-thirsty beast."

 

Its Legacy

 

"The original trailer for Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” hardly hinted at the industry-changing blockbuster it was ultimately selling, instead playing up some serious melodrama (“it is as if God created the Devil and gave him jaws” is easily the best line of a highly quotable bit of marketing) and leaning into the best-selling bonafides of the book it was based on. The trailer boasted some of the film’s iconic shots and lines (you better believe “you’re gonna need a bigger boat” is in there), but mainly seemed interested in imparting the high stakes drama and horror of the story to audiences seeking a scary summer distraction.

 

That “Jaws” would become a mega-hit that would push Spielberg’s burgeoning career into the stratosphere was a surprise, but nobody could have predicted that it would also establish the blueprint for modern-day blockbusters. Now celebrating its 42nd birthday, right in the middle of yet another summer movie-going season, it’s worth acknowledging just how much every big movie released this time of the year owes to Spielberg and his shark. And at a time when audiences are positively swimming in big, loud franchise movies, it’s productive to recall just how much this one represented a true filmmaking talent.

 

 

Made for less than $9 million, “Jaws” went on to make over $470 million in global returns, including a $260 million domestic take that earned it the top spot at the box office in 1975. The film toppled other high-powered hits like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Dog Day Afternoon,” all huge moneymakers that were decidedly non-blockbuster in nature (at least, as we currently know the term). “Jaws” was the first feature film to break $235 million in domestic returns (in 1973, “The Exorcist” became the first film to break $230, and it too spawned a unique path for future horror offerings). Nearly half a century after its release, it still ranks in the all-time top 100; adjusted for inflation, it ranks at number 7. Spielberg’s big hit — his first and obviously not his last — paved the way for the massive tentpole features that now dominate the summer season, huge earners that capture both the zeitgeist and hefty audiences.

 

Moreover, the film was bolstered by a modern, forward-thinking marketing campaign that still influences the way movies are sold today. Universal spent nearly $2 million to market the movie, plenty of which went to utilizing television marketing in its earliest stages, using a slew of prime-time network spots that introduced the film to a huge audience in nifty 30-second blocks. Ads played up the John Williams score and the now-iconic imagery of Jaws emerging from the water. There were talk show tours (including appearances that dated more than eight months before the film hit theaters) and marketing tie-ins, a big push towards the readership of the original novel (including a brand new cover art that reflected the poster and other stills) and a number of exceedingly well-received test screenings.

 

“Jaws” hit theaters with not just a ton of hype, but actual recognition of the property. Audiences were excited about things they already knew about, plots they could read about in Peter Benchley’s book, and characters they were already familiar with — just like today’s movies that now arrive in theaters after massive marketing blitzes that show off huge bits of material before films even open.

 

But while “Jaws” helped kickstart a wave of high-earning features with studio power behind them, it didn’t do it at the expense of quality, a lesson that many modern blockbusters still need to learn. The film debuted to mostly positive reviews, many of which rightly hailed Spielberg as the next big thing in major moviemaking. “Jaws” was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and went on to win three of them. The film showed that movies could make money and appeal broadly and still be of high quality and craft; those things didn’t have to be mutually exclusive."

- Kate Erlbland, IndieWire

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Our perceived reality is often a metamorphosis of images, where the real and the fictional renditions of the real blend together seamlessly, loosening up the distinction between reality and simulation of reality. One such image and global marketable commodity in the last three or four decades have been the image of the poster boy of all sharks, the Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias). In the 21st century, the world was ready for a monster, a monster that was close enough to reality to exist but resembled all the worst fears we could conjure up—cue 1975—and the movie Jaws (Spielberg, 1975). The story with certain elements of Hitchcock-like horror treatment of the film (Schwanebeck, 2017), and the music-initiated creation of this monster (Biancorosso, 2010; Nosal et al., 2016), and the myth of the Great White Shark was manufactured. Before seeing them face to face in my ethnographic investigation of human-white shark encounter in New Zealand, I had often wondered will they be the same entities I had seen in my mind and on media for all these years?

 

What I found is a matter of discussion for another day (Aich, in Press), here I introduce the conceptual foundations of this image from the theoretical perspective of hyperreality. I would argue, that the present image of the Great White Shark that the public is most acquainted with, may be best expressed as a hyperreal or para-real avatar of the white shark, the real fish (Aich, In press). In the early 80s, Baudrillard coined the term ‘hyperreality’ to describe places and things that feel more real than the real world by blending an existing environment with simulated sensations (Baudrillard, 1988, 1994; Bonanni, 2006, p. 135; Smith &Clarke, 2015). In hyperreality, the original version of the objects, ideas, or signs have no significance to the general consumers, because ‘it belongs to a different realm and therefore loses its referential value… Reality, in this sense, dies out’ (Wolny, 2017, p. 76). Reality is reduplicated, and the context and environment, and settings are built around it to create the illusion of reality. In this reality, meaning is created through systems of signs, and images interacting and working against and with each other. Hyperreality is composed of two significant components, simulation, and simulacrum. A simulacrum is an image that is simulated to resemble something else without constituting the inherent property of it and is merely an imitation. Simulation is the process or practice of simulating or imitating, through the process of simulation a simulacrum takes on its function (Wolny, 2017). But in hyperreality, the simulacrum has no more association with reality whatsoever and while offering images of the real, allow reality to evaporate into hyperreality as copies proliferate’ (Bougen & Young, 2012; Macintosh et al., 2000). The image or sign bears no relation to any reality whatsoever, in effect, it is its own simulacrum- that is hyperreality. Almost everything we perceive around us in this industrialized ‘connected’ world is no longer ‘real’, but an exaggerated representation of the real, often created by a concoction of different elements of different ideas, and more than real. Simulation absorbs representation as a simulacrum, to the point where, the understanding and experience of identities- of not just of people, but also fields such as outdoor learning, images, models, are determine by it (Leather & Gibson, 2019).

 

 

Philosopher Rick Roderick mentioned in a lecture that different animals, rather images of animals like dinosaurs and even the shark in Jaws were hyperreal concepts (The Partially Examined Life, 2012). I propose, If Jaws was a simulacrum of the real shark, almost everything that has been presented by the media in the last 30–40 years after that is a simulacrum of that simulacrum of Jaws, hence the contemporary image (rather than the shark in Jaws) is a hyperreal concept. That is, can we think of any significant source of global image before Jaws, which had created the widespread irrational negative image of the sharks that the global society recognizes them from? The hyperreal or para-real are not ‘non-real’, but either more than (hyper) or beside/alongside (para) the real, and the produced images by mass media (circulated through a multitude of printed and virtual outlets) of the shark are grander than the reality, or they exist parallel to the reality. There are different images to different people, to some fishers and ocean-going communities, they are often just another fish or fin in the water, sometimes competitors in fishing, and even prey and trophies themselves. For biologists, they are often a symbol of a healthy ecosystem. For people who associate with them, they are a symbol of beauty, strength, and vitality. But for a large section of the global society, since Jaws, they may have been a symbol of terror. Furthermore, often the borders between these varied avatars of the same fish are permeable, and the identities morph and transmit among the different groups."

- Raj Sekhar Aich, Academia

 

Public Opinion

 

"ust when I thought I couldn't love a movie any more than I do....I bought the BR last night and OH MY GOD! what a film. The job they did restoring this is nothing short of remarkable. For the first time in my life (I'm still a BR neophyte) I can understand why BR is so revered. I've seen JAWS more than 1000X, honestly, and I saw things last night I have never seen before. I could see a clock in Brody's kitchen, it read 7:45AM, that's when he got the call about the Watkins shark attack. I could see signs on the street much more clearly, the opening beach scene with the bonfire looks like it was filmed in 2012, not 1974. I could almost read the labels on Hoopers wine bottles that he brought to dinner. I have never experienced JAWS like this before and I can say I feel like this is perhaps the best $20.00 I have ever spend on a HV purchase. I love this movie already, this just elevates it to something new."

- @baumer

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

baby shark

"Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Baby shark!

Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Mommy shark!

Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Daddy shark!

Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandma shark!

Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandpa shark!

Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Let's go hunt!

Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Run away!

Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Safe at last!

It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

It's the end!"

- A Children's Folksong

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#11 (2020), #18 (2018), #17 (2016), #18 (2014), #11 (2013), #36 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (6), James Cameron (4), Christopher Nolan (4), Martin Scorsese (4), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Michael Curtiz (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Peter Jackson (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), George Lucas (1) Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (10), 1980s (11), 1990s (21), 2000s (20), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

Franchise Count

 

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

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#15 Fanboy Ranking, #5 Cinema Ranking

#9 Old Farts Ranking, #10 Damn Kids Ranking

#25 Ambassador Ranking, #5 All-American Ranking

#38 Cartoon Ranking, #5 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

Edited August 9, 2022 by The Panda

[Ozymandias]

7 minutes ago, The Panda said:

 

Number 7

 

 

"You're gonna need a bigger boat."

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"When an insatiable great white shark terrorizes the townspeople of Amity Island, the police chief, an oceanographer and a grizzled shark hunter seek to destroy the blood-thirsty beast."

 

Its Legacy

 

"The original trailer for Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” hardly hinted at the industry-changing blockbuster it was ultimately selling, instead playing up some serious melodrama (“it is as if God created the Devil and gave him jaws” is easily the best line of a highly quotable bit of marketing) and leaning into the best-selling bonafides of the book it was based on. The trailer boasted some of the film’s iconic shots and lines (you better believe “you’re gonna need a bigger boat” is in there), but mainly seemed interested in imparting the high stakes drama and horror of the story to audiences seeking a scary summer distraction.

 

That “Jaws” would become a mega-hit that would push Spielberg’s burgeoning career into the stratosphere was a surprise, but nobody could have predicted that it would also establish the blueprint for modern-day blockbusters. Now celebrating its 42nd birthday, right in the middle of yet another summer movie-going season, it’s worth acknowledging just how much every big movie released this time of the year owes to Spielberg and his shark. And at a time when audiences are positively swimming in big, loud franchise movies, it’s productive to recall just how much this one represented a true filmmaking talent.

 

 

Made for less than $9 million, “Jaws” went on to make over $470 million in global returns, including a $260 million domestic take that earned it the top spot at the box office in 1975. The film toppled other high-powered hits like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Dog Day Afternoon,” all huge moneymakers that were decidedly non-blockbuster in nature (at least, as we currently know the term). “Jaws” was the first feature film to break $235 million in domestic returns (in 1973, “The Exorcist” became the first film to break $230, and it too spawned a unique path for future horror offerings). Nearly half a century after its release, it still ranks in the all-time top 100; adjusted for inflation, it ranks at number 7. Spielberg’s big hit — his first and obviously not his last — paved the way for the massive tentpole features that now dominate the summer season, huge earners that capture both the zeitgeist and hefty audiences.

 

Moreover, the film was bolstered by a modern, forward-thinking marketing campaign that still influences the way movies are sold today. Universal spent nearly $2 million to market the movie, plenty of which went to utilizing television marketing in its earliest stages, using a slew of prime-time network spots that introduced the film to a huge audience in nifty 30-second blocks. Ads played up the John Williams score and the now-iconic imagery of Jaws emerging from the water. There were talk show tours (including appearances that dated more than eight months before the film hit theaters) and marketing tie-ins, a big push towards the readership of the original novel (including a brand new cover art that reflected the poster and other stills) and a number of exceedingly well-received test screenings.

 

“Jaws” hit theaters with not just a ton of hype, but actual recognition of the property. Audiences were excited about things they already knew about, plots they could read about in Peter Benchley’s book, and characters they were already familiar with — just like today’s movies that now arrive in theaters after massive marketing blitzes that show off huge bits of material before films even open.

 

But while “Jaws” helped kickstart a wave of high-earning features with studio power behind them, it didn’t do it at the expense of quality, a lesson that many modern blockbusters still need to learn. The film debuted to mostly positive reviews, many of which rightly hailed Spielberg as the next big thing in major moviemaking. “Jaws” was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and went on to win three of them. The film showed that movies could make money and appeal broadly and still be of high quality and craft; those things didn’t have to be mutually exclusive."

- Kate Erlbland, IndieWire

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Our perceived reality is often a metamorphosis of images, where the real and the fictional renditions of the real blend together seamlessly, loosening up the distinction between reality and simulation of reality. One such image and global marketable commodity in the last three or four decades have been the image of the poster boy of all sharks, the Great White Shark (Carcharodon carcharias). In the 21st century, the world was ready for a monster, a monster that was close enough to reality to exist but resembled all the worst fears we could conjure up—cue 1975—and the movie Jaws (Spielberg, 1975). The story with certain elements of Hitchcock-like horror treatment of the film (Schwanebeck, 2017), and the music-initiated creation of this monster (Biancorosso, 2010; Nosal et al., 2016), and the myth of the Great White Shark was manufactured. Before seeing them face to face in my ethnographic investigation of human-white shark encounter in New Zealand, I had often wondered will they be the same entities I had seen in my mind and on media for all these years?

 

What I found is a matter of discussion for another day (Aich, in Press), here I introduce the conceptual foundations of this image from the theoretical perspective of hyperreality. I would argue, that the present image of the Great White Shark that the public is most acquainted with, may be best expressed as a hyperreal or para-real avatar of the white shark, the real fish (Aich, In press). In the early 80s, Baudrillard coined the term ‘hyperreality’ to describe places and things that feel more real than the real world by blending an existing environment with simulated sensations (Baudrillard, 1988, 1994; Bonanni, 2006, p. 135; Smith &Clarke, 2015). In hyperreality, the original version of the objects, ideas, or signs have no significance to the general consumers, because ‘it belongs to a different realm and therefore loses its referential value… Reality, in this sense, dies out’ (Wolny, 2017, p. 76). Reality is reduplicated, and the context and environment, and settings are built around it to create the illusion of reality. In this reality, meaning is created through systems of signs, and images interacting and working against and with each other. Hyperreality is composed of two significant components, simulation, and simulacrum. A simulacrum is an image that is simulated to resemble something else without constituting the inherent property of it and is merely an imitation. Simulation is the process or practice of simulating or imitating, through the process of simulation a simulacrum takes on its function (Wolny, 2017). But in hyperreality, the simulacrum has no more association with reality whatsoever and while offering images of the real, allow reality to evaporate into hyperreality as copies proliferate’ (Bougen & Young, 2012; Macintosh et al., 2000). The image or sign bears no relation to any reality whatsoever, in effect, it is its own simulacrum- that is hyperreality. Almost everything we perceive around us in this industrialized ‘connected’ world is no longer ‘real’, but an exaggerated representation of the real, often created by a concoction of different elements of different ideas, and more than real. Simulation absorbs representation as a simulacrum, to the point where, the understanding and experience of identities- of not just of people, but also fields such as outdoor learning, images, models, are determine by it (Leather & Gibson, 2019).

 

 

Philosopher Rick Roderick mentioned in a lecture that different animals, rather images of animals like dinosaurs and even the shark in Jaws were hyperreal concepts (The Partially Examined Life, 2012). I propose, If Jaws was a simulacrum of the real shark, almost everything that has been presented by the media in the last 30–40 years after that is a simulacrum of that simulacrum of Jaws, hence the contemporary image (rather than the shark in Jaws) is a hyperreal concept. That is, can we think of any significant source of global image before Jaws, which had created the widespread irrational negative image of the sharks that the global society recognizes them from? The hyperreal or para-real are not ‘non-real’, but either more than (hyper) or beside/alongside (para) the real, and the produced images by mass media (circulated through a multitude of printed and virtual outlets) of the shark are grander than the reality, or they exist parallel to the reality. There are different images to different people, to some fishers and ocean-going communities, they are often just another fish or fin in the water, sometimes competitors in fishing, and even prey and trophies themselves. For biologists, they are often a symbol of a healthy ecosystem. For people who associate with them, they are a symbol of beauty, strength, and vitality. But for a large section of the global society, since Jaws, they may have been a symbol of terror. Furthermore, often the borders between these varied avatars of the same fish are permeable, and the identities morph and transmit among the different groups."

- Raj Sekhar Aich, Academia

 

Public Opinion

 

"ust when I thought I couldn't love a movie any more than I do....I bought the BR last night and OH MY GOD! what a film. The job they did restoring this is nothing short of remarkable. For the first time in my life (I'm still a BR neophyte) I can understand why BR is so revered. I've seen JAWS more than 1000X, honestly, and I saw things last night I have never seen before. I could see a clock in Brody's kitchen, it read 7:45AM, that's when he got the call about the Watkins shark attack. I could see signs on the street much more clearly, the opening beach scene with the bonfire looks like it was filmed in 2012, not 1974. I could almost read the labels on Hoopers wine bottles that he brought to dinner. I have never experienced JAWS like this before and I can say I feel like this is perhaps the best $20.00 I have ever spend on a HV purchase. I love this movie already, this just elevates it to something new."

- @baumer

 

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

baby shark

"Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Baby shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Baby shark!

Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Mommy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Mommy shark!

Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Daddy shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Daddy shark!

Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandma shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandma shark!

Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandpa shark, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Grandpa shark!

Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Let's go hunt, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Let's go hunt!

Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Run away, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Run away!

Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Safe at last, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

Safe at last!

It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

It's the end, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo.

It's the end!"

- A Children's Folksong

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#11 (2020), #18 (2018), #17 (2016), #18 (2014), #11 (2013), #36 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (6), James Cameron (4), Christopher Nolan (4), Martin Scorsese (4), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3),  Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (2), Hayao Miyazaki (2), The Russos (2), Robert Zemeckis (2), Andrew Stanton (2), Peter Weir (2), Billy Wilder (2), Roger Allers (1), Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), Frank Capra (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Brenda Chapman (1), Joel Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Michael Curtiz (1), Frank Darabont (1), Jonathan Demme (1), Pete Doctor (1), Stanley Donan (1), Clint Eastwood (1), Victor Fleming (1), William Friedkin (1), Terry Gillam (1), Michel Gondry (1), Steve Hickner (1), Peter Jackson (1), Rian Johnson (1), Terry Jones (1), Bong Joon Ho (1), Gene Kelly (1), Akira Kurosawa (1), John Lasseter (1), David Lean (1), Richard Linklater (1), George Lucas (1) Sydney Lumet (1), Katia Lund (1), David Lynch (1), Michael Mann (1), Richard Marquand (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), George Miller (1), Rob Minkoff (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), Jan Pinkava (1), Makoto Shinkai (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Isao Takahata (1), Quentin Tarantino (1), Guillermo Del Torro (1), Gary Trousdale (1), Lee Unkrich (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Orson Welles (1), Simon Wells (1), Kirk Wise (1), Kar-Wai Wong (1)

 

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (2), 1940s (4), 1950s (6), 1960s (7), 1970s (10), 1980s (11), 1990s (21), 2000s (20), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

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

 

Franchise Count

 

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

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#15 Fanboy Ranking, #5 Cinema Ranking

#9 Old Farts Ranking, #10 Damn Kids Ranking

#25 Ambassador Ranking, #5 All-American Ranking

#38 Cartoon Ranking, #5 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

 

 

 

imo

[Cap]

14 minutes ago, Ozymandias said:

 

I don't think there is any other great film thats had its reputation tarnished by sequels as much as this one.  Its still by itself a perfect film, and younglings today who never saw this in a full theater on opening weekend back in 99 can totally appreciate how genius it was.

I thought the entire fourth movie recontextualized Trinity‘s importance in the first three films, and gave her more agency and more weight. So while it might not have been the lightning in the bottle of the first movie, I think the fourth one is a solid addition to the series. And it’s not exactly like part two and part three are as perfect as the first one

[interiorgatordecorator]

seems like we're almost done so I might as well ask

this year, under this new system,  how many #1 spots (40 points) would a movie need to make the top 250 and the top 100?

I wanna know how many burner accounts im gonna need to have ready for next year (?)

 

Pandaman, if you dont mind, could you tell me where Love Exposure (2008) ended up?

Edited August 9, 2022 by interiorgatordecorator

[SchumacherFTW]

How on earth did we never get Jaws in to the top 10 before now?! Bout bloody time! 

[Jason]

4 hours ago, Plain Old Tele said:

The first half of FELLOWSHIP is kinda janky in sections. 

Two not cools for this? Good thing I keep my mouth shut here about Two Towers.

[Cap]

29 minutes ago, Jason said:

Two not cools for this? Good thing I keep my mouth shut here about Two Towers.

oh I’m shameless I’ll go. My experience with two towers is that I remember my friend and I went to see it on opening weekend. Or maybe we went like during the week. All I know is that she worked at the movie theater so I think we got in for like a discount. And I remember thinking to myself this is actually really good. The pace is much better than the first one. I’m very excited.
 

This is really great. So I leaned over to her, And I was like hey how much longer do we

have? And she just blinked at me about two times, before saying: Cap, It’s only been 45 minutes.

 

And I think I sulked for the rest of the movie. 
 

Moral of the story, the Lord of the rings are fine, but god they’re so fucking long. 

 

 

[charlie Jatinder]

11 hours ago, The Panda said:

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

 

Number 110

Aladdin (1992, Rob Clemens and John Musker)

 

Number 109

Die Hard (1988, John McTiernan)

 

Number 108

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

 

Number 107

Spider-Man 2 (2004, Sam Raimi)

 

Number 106

The Sixth Sense (1999, M. Night Shyamalan)

 

Number 105

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

 

Number 104

Coco (2017, Adrian Molina and Lee Unkrich)

 

Number 103

Avengers: Infinity War (2018, The Russos)

 

Number 102

The Prestige (2006, Christopher Nolan)

 

Number 101

Toy Story 2 (1999, John Lasseter)

Wow Toy Story 2 #1. Prestige #2. Infinity War #3.

 

What a great list.

[Juby]

Easily the worst list in BOT forum history. Film at 250-101 are far better than those in the Top100. Awful drops for all my favorites. Don't even care for the rest of this list. I'm out.

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

No Bergman is pretty insane

 

No Ford or Hawks?

 

And no female Director for a live action film? That's not good

Edited August 9, 2022 by BestPicturePlutoNash

[IronJimbo]

5 hours ago, Borobudur said:

Is this a joke? Never heard of a this movie?

this is what I was thinking when I heard 'The Apartment', literally never heard of that film and I've watched over 20 black and white films

[IronJimbo]

6 minutes ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

No Bergman is pretty insane

 

No Ford or Hawks?

 

And no female Director for a live action film? That's not good

I watched the 7th seal, it was alright...

It's not like the gender of a director was taken into account, people just voted for the films they like simple as