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

[titanic2187]

22 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

One made the top 10??????

I thought she was still a male when matrix release? 

[Ethan Hunt]

7 minutes ago, titanic2187 said:

I thought she was still a male when matrix release? 

doesn't really work like that 

[SchumacherFTW]

23 minutes ago, chasmmi said:

because it is terrible. 

[krla]

42 minutes ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

So then you're saying nobody liked movies made by women

We live in a patriarchal society which has molded us to value things produced by men. Men and women have different preferences at the group level. As this forum is presumably more testosterone packed, I'd imagine the films that appeal to the group would be the product of other men. 

 

Also, since most films are directed by men, and older films even moreso, it means that there will be an inevitable skew towards male directors.

 

Anyways, I had a couple films directed by women on my list, so I'm Doing My Part. (though I did put a 2022 film on my list, so maybe it went straight into the trash, lol) 

[titanic2187]

7 minutes ago, Ethan Hunt said:

doesn't really work like that 

But we are talking about a film made by a woman. I am pretty sure  lily was not hailed as woman director when matrix first released, no matter how much trans metaphor was in the movie. 

[Cap]

6 hours ago, IronJimbo said:

I would say thats about the year I start getting skeptical about if I'll enjoy the movie, if it's from the early 50s, 40s, 30s etc I will need some convincing that it's actually a good movie to watch today

It’s actually interesting timing that you just said that. Because I was talking with @Plain Old Tele about the lack of older films making the list, and how once Chas finishes his Best Foreign Film list (and If not one else is in the list queue), I should run a:

 

Top 50 Pre-Star Wars Movies BOT Wants You To Watch NOW. 
 

So instead of “ranking” these are the best movies, it’d be framing it as a community recommendation list.

Maybe you think people should watch it because it is influential/culturally significant?

 

Maybe it has the best acting performance of all time?

 

Maybe Do you wanna rec an international film that isn’t directed by Kurosawa?

 

Hell, maybe it’s Plan 9 From Outer Space and you should watch the “worse film of all time”?

 

Maybe it’s just cause Gene Kelly’s ass was amazing and you should stare at it for two hours? (That was my thought on Sunday night as I was watching an American in Paris and thinking to myself this is just not my favorite of his, but got look at him moooooove.)

And pre-Star Wars do you ask, Because that was really a monumental shift between classic/studio system moviemaking, and modern filmmaking of what we have today. Plus the movies from the 1980s and 1990s tend to always have a good representation on any of the list that we tend do.

 

[YM!]

9 minutes ago, titanic2187 said:

But we are talking about a film made by a woman. I am pretty sure  lily was not hailed as woman director when matrix first released, no matter how much trans metaphor was in the movie. 

Dude stop.

[Ethan Hunt]

10 minutes ago, titanic2187 said:

But we are talking about a film made by a woman. I am pretty sure  lily was not hailed as woman director when matrix first released, no matter how much trans metaphor was in the movie. 

Lily and Lana have always been women. Doesn't matter how the public perceived them at the time

[Cap]

@titanic2187 The Matrix series is directed by two women (with Lana just back for the forth). Full stop. Discussion over. Thank you. 
 

And if you continue this discussion, I’m going to give you two warning points for derailing the thread.

[titanic2187]

7 minutes ago, Cap said:

@titanic2187 The Matrix series is directed by two women (with Lana just back for the forth). Full stop. Discussion over. Thank you. 
 

And if you continue this discussion, I’m going to give you two warning points for derailing the thread.

The sisters came out as trans in 2010s. That is a fact and wasn’t even a discussion. 
 

by the way, thanks for the warning points in advanced. 

[krla]

53 minutes ago, titanic2187 said:

The sisters came out as trans in 2010s. That is a fact and wasn’t even a discussion. 
 

by the way, thanks for the warning points in advanced. 

Came out publicly. If they came out as gay, would we say their prior films were made by straight people? Is the song Rocket Man by a gay singer, bisexual, or a straight one?

 

CAP MODERATION ETA:

 

Good points. Correct points. No one responded back. Please move on. 

[Cap]

I am locking this for like an hour for everyone to cool off. 
 

 

ETA:

 

And we are back 

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

2 hours ago, Ethan Hunt said:

Lily and Lana have always been women. Doesn't matter how the public perceived them at the time

 

At the risk of this thread being waylaid again as I know this is a sensitive issue. I do find this to be a deeply problematic statement when it comes to the evaluation of women making movies, and especially women in the industry.

 

Lily and Lana went through their education, went to film school, had their first films commissioned, and had the Matrix commissioned during a time when they were perceived as men. That is not insignificant as any woman who has tried to go along the same path would attest. Especially in the 90s.

 

To this day, there is not a single instance of (a) inexperienced female director(s) being given the opportunity to make an ORIGINAL action film with anything even approaching the budget and scale of the Matrix. Not one. There are only a handful even vaguely comparable even outside of that caveat and they are with very experienced directors being given very estalished franchises.

 

As such, to be cautious when using The Matrix as an example of women filmmakers when talking *in terms of women's achievement in film and women's opportunities in filmmaking* is very reasonable.

[Cap]

49 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

As such, to be cautious when using The Matrix as an example of women filmmakers when talking *in terms of women's achievement in film and women's opportunities in filmmaking* is very reasonable.

 

I *almost* agreed with you in the first part of your statement (when talking about women not having the opportunity to direct big budget action movies), but this sentence still gives off a wiff of not acting like trans woman are woman.  They are.  They have very different experiences than cis women, but they are women, and we should talk about their achievements while discussing women's filmmaking.

 

I have been VERY patient with this discussion, but we are really at risk of going completely off the track here.  We have like five films left.  Can we at least wait until AFTER Panda reveals them all before we embark on a fifty page back and forth, only to once again say: trans woman are woman and should be included in the history of women's filmmaking.  

 

Also, since sometimes folks need the "MODERATION" post, I am speaking As Forum Admin here.  This discussion is tabled until AFTER the list is complete.  Full stop.

[Cap]

Also, since we're talking about women and action movies, friendly reminder that EVERYONE SHOULD WATCH, AND THE VOTE FOR NEXT TIME:

 

 

 

[baumer]

I happen to agree that Kathyrn Bigelow is an outstanding action director and if anyone should be given a massive budget to do a huge action movie it should be her. Point break hits all the right beats and yet it really wasn't made with a massive budget....24 million according to IMDb. 

[The Panda]

Well... In other news y'all snubbed the greatest film of all-time from repeating its crown!

 

 

Number 6

 

 

"Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?"

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"When Dr. Indiana Jones – the tweed-suited professor who just happens to be a celebrated archaeologist – is hired by the government to locate the legendary Ark of the Covenant, he finds himself up against the entire Nazi regime."

 

Its Legacy

 

"“That belongs in a museum!” Indiana Jones shouts at the man in the Panama hat, instantly creating the most memorable archaeological catch phrase of all time, though perhaps the competition isn’t all that fierce.

 

Forty years after Raiders of the Lost Ark premiered to the public on June 12, 1981, the outsized shadow of Indy still looms large over the field he ostensibly represented. Over three movies in the 1980s, plus a prequel television series and a fourth film that came out in 2008, Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr., became indelibly tied to American archaeology. Despite it being set in the 1930s, an homage to the popcorn serials of the 1940s, and a cinematic blockbuster of the 1980s, Raiders of the Lost Ark is still influential to aspiring and veteran archaeologists alike. Even in the 21st century, several outdated myths about archaeological practice have endured thanks to the “Indiana Jones effect.” And contemporary archaeologists, many of whom harbor a love/hate relationship with the films, would like to set the record straight.

 

 

Raiders was set in the 1930s, “a time when 99 percent of archaeologists were white men,” says Bill White of University of California, Berkeley. Casting Ford was true to the time, as was the portrayal of Indy’s “treatment of cultural materials, because that’s how archaeologists treated sites, women, and non-white people back then,” according to White, who partners with African American communities to do public archaeology on St. Croix, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands. In the fictional Raiders world, White adds, Jones ignored safety precautions, did not listen to the wishes of Indigenous people, and broke every sort of ethical guideline about archaeological remains, such as destroying sites rather than preserving them.

 

In the movies, Indiana Jones teaches archaeology at fictional Marshall College, and his close collaborator, Marcus Brody, is a museum curator who helps arrange and fund Indy’s treasure-hunting adventures. These job titles are reflective of the early 20th-century enterprise of archaeology, but today, up to 90 percent of American archaeologists work in a broad field known as cultural resource management (CRM). Also known as heritage management, CRM deals with the relationship between archaeology and everyday life. On its most bureaucratic level, CRM covers the broad and the specific regulations that govern historical, architectural, and archaeological interests and preservation in the U.S. Driven by legislation passed in the 1970s, particularly the Archaeological and Historical Preservation Act, CRM work may be done by private companies, federal agencies such as the National Park Service, or preservation officers working with Indigenous communities. Rather than following treasure maps, trawling for clues in ancient texts, or digging where no one wants them to, CRM archaeologists often work wherever others are already digging. According to Adrian Whittaker, an archaeologist with the CRM firm Far Western Anthropological Research Group, “Often our research is driven by the sites we happen to find rather than a targeted location or site type.”

 

 

Showing Indiana Jones’s travels on a map is one of Steven Spielberg’s enduring visuals from Raiders. This colonialist cinematic trope harkens back to the adventurers he watched as a kid, keeping the Raiders watcher ensconced in Indy’s journey to exotic locales. “The [movie’s] map route fade as we travel to sites would look a lot less impressive today,” Whittaker jokes, “since we usually work much closer to home.” Community-based archaeology is on the rise in the U.S., as people recognize that understanding of the human past starts in our own backyards. This type of archaeology emphasizes personal connections that collapse time and space and contribute to a more well-rounded type of archaeological practice. Terry P. Brock, an archaeologist with the Montpelier Foundation, uses his research to shake up the historical record of life at President James Madison’s plantation in Virginia. Working in the local community “immediately brings relevance and importance to the work,” he says, “because the objects we are excavating together belonged to the community’s ancestors and are a direct link for the community to the people who came before them.”

 

By far, the most enduring and problematic myth to come from the Indiana Jones movies is the idea that all ancient and historic objects belong in a museum. While he’s correct that private collectors contribute to looting and other heritage crimes, “there isn’t a single object that belongs in a museum,” says Heppner. “Objects belong with their communities.”Heppner is one of many anthropologists and museum professionals engaged in ongoing discussions about decolonization, repatriation and presentation of museum collections. “Most museums don’t do enough to help visitors examine their pop-culture influences,” she says. “When you walk into a gallery or exhibition space and you see an object all lit up in a pedestal case—it looks like Indy picking up the crystal skull.” Even using the term “artifact” to refer to objects in museum collections is fraught, according to Rippee. The word “creates a false narrative that the object is only valuable for its scientific value or because it looks cool,” she says. Rather, these materials are “belongings,” a term that centers the relationship between the object and its community."

- Kristina Killgrove, Smithsonian Magazine

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Myth is a people's cultural story, an attempt to
express in narrative a people's own self-under­ standi ng. In contemporary society, where those 
"everlasting patterns" may be moribund, myth and religion often disguise, naturalize, or reify 
certain  historically  specific,  crassly  political ideas. Just as myth served to order the 
chaotic experience of life for our primitive forbears, so modern cultural objects like films can be 
seen to function as social acts, both concealing and revealing their production of social meaning 
and ideological rhetoric at the same time.

 

Raiders of the lost Ark (1981), for example, can be shown to follow the epic mode of clas­ sical 
myth, the oedipal trajectory of primitive initiatory rites and rituals, and the  religious
quests of legend and holy writ-however, the

social end (as noted by Levi-Strauss) is directed toward the political sphere: the justification 
and reflection of the damaged social fabric of an American society at a loss for real life super­ 
heroes in the advent of the humiliating loss of the Vietnam War, Marxist uprisings in Nicara­ gua 
and El Salvador, Middle East oil embargos, the year-long Iranian hostage situation, and, of course, 
the Watergate experience. It is per­ haps no accident, then, that the film's principal locations 
are Southeast Asia, South America, the  Middle East ...   and  Washington, D.C. Indeed, the film's 
concerns with domination and exploitation  (especially of  Third World nations and nationals, 
women, and technol­ ogy), the  appropriation of  religious artifacts (the quest is, after all, for 
the Lost Ark of the Covenant), and the adventures of  the  self­ positing  individualistic 
conqueror  Indiana Jones put the film in the ideological position of spokesperson for the new 
Reagan administra­ tion's policies in the Middle East, Central and South America, as well as the  new regime's
positions on women's rights, laissez-faire capi­ talism, CIA covert operations, the Moral Major­ 
ity,  and  America's  renewed  stature  in  the world of  nations. Like its British counterpart 
Chariots of Fire (also 1981), Raiders of the lost Ark must harken back to a past era of national 
greatness  and  achievement  in  the  interna­ tional arena in order to restore and dynamize a 
cultural renewal in a nation beset with prob­ lems foreign and domestic, political and eco­ nomic. 
Karl Marx's principle of "conjuring up the spirits of the  past to their service" appears to be at 
work in both these films; they both borrow earlier, more heroic images of national life in order to 
"present the new scene in time­ honored disguise."2 So, rather than reflecting the  culture it 
comes out of, Raiders all  but rewrites the  history of its epoch in order to create  what  
Frederic  Jameson  calls  a  new "national allegory."3

 

The film can be shown to use its mythoreli­ gious structuration to mask and efface its con­ 
temporary  ramifications. Indiana Jones, the putative hero of Raiders, follows the classical 
narrative trajectory of the  mythological hero as outlined  by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero 
with a Thousand Faces. Campbell's notion of the "Monomyth" involves a tripar­ tite journey 
characterized by Separation, Trials and  Victories of  Initiation, and  Return  and Reintegration  
with Society. This structure is further broken down into a total of seventeen discrete narrative 
units.4 Raiders of the lost Ark can be plotted, point by point, along the
graph of this universal schema.

 

 

Joseph Campbell has noted that the return
of the  hero to the world of common day con­ tains a certain baffling inconsistency between the 
wisdom brought back from the spiritual world  and  the  reality  principles  needed  to function in 
the day-to-day world. As Campbell points out, "good people are at a loss to com­ prehend" (p. 216). 
Thus, Jones says of  the government bureaucrats: "They don't know what they've got there." The 
bureaucrats store the Ark in an anonymous warehouse, where it will  no  doubt  be ready for  the  
anticipated Raiders sequel. Nonetheless, the cut between the two worlds makes the  point that God's 
Word is in Washington, D.C., that it is linked to male domination and phallic power, and that the 
political bureaucrats have taken it out  of American life and put it in cold storage. This is 
precisely the 1980 campaign  rhetoric of the New Right and the Moral Majority, who saw in the  
candidacy of Ronald Reagan a return to basic religious principles and ideals.
It is interesting to note that while earlier bourgeois classes rejected religion as a moral fetter 
to the cutthroat competition necessary for the accumulation of capital, in the Reagan era the 
ideology of the  dominant classes has taken on a religious form in order to stem the legitimation  
crisis  endemic  to  the  current social  order.  Nietzsche's  Zarathustra  pro­ claimed the death 
of all the  gods; Raiders of the  Lost Ark  proclaims their rebirth. God is alive and well, the 
film seems to be saying; He divides his time between living in Washington
. . . and Hollywood.
In conclusion, Georg Lukacs (not George Lucas) should be quoted: "Every work, through the  style  
of  its  language,  its  groupings  of images and ideas, feelings and moods, evokes events and 
thoughts capable of mobilizing us for or against something."6 Contemporary film theory  and  
criticism  now  allow  us  to  see behind the instant gratifications and Skinner-
ian response mechanisms built into a film's
form.

 

We can see that a film like Raiders of the Lost Ark  affirms the existing norms of cine­ 
matic intelligibility and therefore that its repe­ titions reinforce recognition, a process which 
is desublimating and destructive to the imagina­ tive processes on which art traditionally relies. 
Raiders aspires to the political status of Muzak, yet it provides, in so doing, the background hum 
for corporate power. Through what Adorno and Horkh imer called "the predominance of the effect," 
thrill-a-minute films like this turn everything-love, war, religion, myth, exploita­ tion, and  
death-into  disposable  spectacle. Frederic Jameson's recent chapter title is appro­ priate to this 
sort of spectacle: "The Epic as Cliche, the Cliche as Epic."7

Furthermore, by relying on a structure bor­ rowed from our mythological past, a transhis­ torical 
ideology is put  into place which masks and denies the actual problems of an age by transporting 
them  into a timeless unreality, where  the  socially  conditioned  real  world becomes a cosmic, 
unconditioned  one. Al­ though it has always been the function of myth and religion to supply the 
symbols and icons which carry the  human spirit forward, films like Raiders of the Lost Ark attempt 
the reverse; they enhance and cement the status quo."

- Frank P. Tomasulo, Quarterly Review of Film Studies

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"Raiders of the Lost Ark is a masterful popcorn film from Steven Spielberg. There's not a single flaw in this movie, and it's constantly thrilling. Indiana Jones is the ideal hero, and Harrison Ford plays him to perfection. Karen Allen as Marion is excellent too, and the two have great rapport. From the opening sequence to the truck chase, the action never ceases to be excellent, and the score by John Williams might be his best ever. There's not much to say about Raiders of the Lost Ark that hasn't already been said, but it's still the pinnacle of blockbuster filmmaking." - @Blankments

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

"He walks the shadows,

                        and I walk the light.

In gazing upon this archaeological

                              find, the miniaturized city of Tanis,    

I reflect upon the headpiece to the Staff of Ra,  

              sought after by my greatest adversary, Indiana Jones;

the tattered cloth of his fedora, as persistently vigilant as

                                         its wearer, the one who hearkens to   

the rhythm of even the deadliest—of antiquities. 

Ever weary, I simply revel in my

           life's—wildest pursuits, almost as if the

                                                  Sahara itself—had inadvertently

                           foreshadowed my quest for that which 

had successfully eluded my reach, the Well of Souls, 

            as transcribed in the Book of Exodus, as the final resting

place for—the lost Ark of the Covenant."

- Belloq's Quest for the Well of Souls

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#1 (2020), #4 (2018), #2 (2016), #12 (2014), #6 (2013), #13 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (7), 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 (12), 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), Indiana Jones (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

 

#12 Fanboy Ranking, #8 Cinema Ranking

#8 Old Farts Ranking, #11 Damn Kids Ranking

#13 Ambassador Ranking, #6 All-American Ranking

#20 Cartoon Ranking, #6 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

Oooooh *surprise face*.

 

Was expecting it to repeat watching the open lists.

 

Tension fills the room.

[The Panda]

This is the highest any non-English, non-Hollywood, or animated movie has ever finished on our list!

 

Number 5

 

 

"Oh, what a pretty name! Be sure to take good care of it, dear!"

 

 

 About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"A young girl, Chihiro, becomes trapped in a strange new world of spirits. When her parents undergo a mysterious transformation, she must call upon the courage she never knew she had to free her family."

 

Its Legacy

 

"On September 20, 2002, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away was released to North American audiences. Like many of his films that had been translated and dubbed over to English, it had little marketing — only 151 theaters across the United States premiered the movie. Yet, limited viewing wasn’t considered an issue. With an expected target audience comprised overwhelmingly of children, and adults already familiar with Miyazaki’s work, Disney producers understood that a film deeply rooted in Japanese culture might not be the biggest Blockbuster hit of the year. Yeah, Spirited Away was expected to be a good movie — a decent movie, at worst. Miyazaki’s track record at this point had been impeccable. Coming off hugely successful films such as Kiki’s Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke, it wasn’t wrong to assume that Miyazaki would deliver something meaningful and worthwhile — he usually always did. And deliver he did.

 

Spirited Away went on to become to most successful film in Japanese history. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 75th Academy Awards, the first of its kind as a non-English animated movie. Acclaimed by critics and audiences worldwide, its service as a gateway into Japanese animation does not go unnoticed.

 

 

Nearly two decades after its conception, the legacy of Spirited Away endures. Year after year, it tops lists titled ‘Best Animated Movies of All Time’ or ‘Films You Need to Watch Before You Die’. In my hometown, people flood my local theater for its annual re-showing of the movie. I see tattoos of Haku and Chihiro’s reunion frequently inked on arms and the iconic still-frame of Chihiro sitting on the train next to No-Face set as the background of many computer screens. The love that people nurture for this movie is unmeasurable and unparalleled. People love Spirited Away.

 

It should not go unmentioned that Spirited Away is hand drawn. Each frame has been individually drawn and painted by artists. This traditional style of animation is hardly ever seen in the West, where computer animated graphics have become the norm. As the realization that every frame has been labored over sets in, the beauty of Spirited Away’s animation only strengthens. Human hands have touched every scene, every last detail, from the light reflecting off of hair to the water currents lapping against the building. To know that every frame has been created with overwhelming amount of care and generosity only emphasizes that Spirited Away is indeed, a very special movie.

 

Although generally considered to be a children’s movie, Spirited Away can and is enjoyed by people of all ages. While the movie maintains all the childhood wonder of discovering a fantastical world of spirits and gods, it also never groups its characters as good or bad — a characteristic of many childhood movies. Each character has their own motivation at heart, each with their own idea of good intentions. There is never a scene that feels like it was made only for children. The dialogue, the humor, and the characters all display a unique sense of realism and maturity that normally isn’t present in animated movies, especially those made by Disney. At the core of it, you don’t need to be a child for this film to capture your imagination."

- Michelle Kim, Medium

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Miyazaki's work ranges across both the kokusaika (albeit as part of a dis tinctively Miyazaki-esque treatment of the "international") and the furusato categories (although again embodying Miyazaki's specific vision of the fu rusato). His 2001 fantasy Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi), however, occupies a more ambiguous position. Although at first glance seem ing to celebrate various aspects of "Japanesness," embodied in the film's pri mary mise-en-sc?ne, a magical bathhouse of the gods, Spirited Away's narra tive trajectory revolves around the tension between Japanese cultural identity and otherness and at least implicitly calls into question the viability of "Japa neseness" in a changing world. Whether the director is fully conscious of the extent to which the film shows the vulnerability of Japanese identity is open to question. As Miyazaki makes clear in a number of interviews and writings on the film, his primary agenda in Spirited Away was to show the maturation of a contemporary young girl in the face of an array of frightening and fantastic encounters. In this re gard he is certainly successful. The story of a ten year old venturing into a fan tasy world when her parents are transformed into pigs, the film mixes humor, sentiment, and horror with dazzling imagery to provide an effective coming of-age story with an arguably upbeat ending. This combination of elements clearly struck a chord with the Japanese audience and, as of this writing, Spir ited Away remains the highest grossing film in Japanese history. To the film's many admirers, Chihiro, the young protagonist, serves as a potential role model for today's generation of apathetic Japanese youth.

 

 

Other, less conscious notions and themes may also have come to the sur face in the creation of Spirited Away. When asked by an interviewer whether the film includes unclean things along with fantasy, Miyazaki explained that "in the act of creating a fantasy, you open up the lid to parts of your brain that don't usually open."2 These more subversive elements found when the director "lifted the lid" of his unconscious make the film one of Miyazaki's most powerful and protean works. Spirited Away offers disturbing visions of excess, liberating moments of carnival, and a sharp critique of the material ism and toxicity of contemporary Japanese society through its complex vi sion of a quasi-nostalgic fantastic realm threatened by pollution from within and without. Although it should be acknowledged that the film contains many celebratory moments, its powerful depictions of cultural pollution, alienation, and fragmented or lost subjectivities imply a more pessimistic subtext.

 

Embodying in certain ways the tension between kokusaika and the furusato, Spirited Away may also be seen as participating in a significant cur rent debate concerning globalization. This is the issue of the rise of local culture or boundedness in relation to what many theorists until recently have seen as an all-encompassing tidal wave of hegemonic and homogenizing uberculture (usually identified with American popular culture). This tidal wave was viewed as creating what Paul David Grange in a commentary on Arjun Appadurai calls a "deterritorialized community," resulting from the "substantial weakening of national communities and the creation of a de centered transnational global system."3 One of the casualties of globaliza tion, in this view, is the nature of "authenticity," producing what Appadurai calls the possibility of "nostalgia without memory" in which "the past be comes a synchronie warehouse of cultural scenarios."4 More recently, however, an alternative view of globalization has begun to take form in which local culture is seen as reconstructing and reaffirming itself in the face of globalization. In his article "Cultural Boundaries," Simon Harrison notes that "the increasing transnational flows of culture seem to be producing not global homogenization but growing assertions of het erogeneity and local distinctiveness." In fact, as he points out, the very per meability of boundaries in the contemporary world may be an inducement to the creation of what he calls "representations of boundedness" (his italics), i.e., "bodies of symbolic practices which ... collectivities attribute to them selves, in seeking to differentiate themselves from each other."5

 

 

At the same time, however, Spirited Away's diegesis suggests a more un easy cultural trajectory in which disparate or alien elements are no longer included but instead problematized or even expelled from the film's major visual trope, the gigantic, richly detailed bathhouse of the gods where most of the action takes place. These elements?including odor, vomitus, blood, and (arguably) excrement?all come from outside the bathhouse and are clearly marked as polluting. They are "matter out of place," as Mary Douglas describes dirt, obviously positioned to contrast with the world of the bath house which, in its very function, serves to emblemize cleansing and purity of a quintessential^ Japanese kind.6 The basic action of the film revolves around a series of polluting invasions of the bathhouse, which are repulsed by its denizens with the significant help of Chihiro, the human protagonist. Chihiro herself is initially signified as a polluting alien marked by her hu man stench, but gradually she becomes incorporated into the bathhouse collectivity where she grows in agency and maturity. Ultimately, the var ious rites of passage she undergoes lead to her accession of powers of per ception that allow her to free her parents from the magic spell that has trans formed them. While Spirited Away draws from an immense array of sources, includ ing Greek myth and Western fantasy such as Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard ofOz, the content and themes of the film suggest that Miyazaki may be performing a distinctive version of "Nihon e no kaiki," a shift from the West and a turn toward Japanese culture that many Japanese writers and artists took throughout the twentieth century.7 In Miyazaki's case, this "re turn to Japan" was presaged in Princess Mononoke's vision of fourteenth century Japan, one that drew on major issues in Japanese history but treated them in an original and often critical manner.

 

 In the more carnivalesque world o? Spirited Away, the repressed past re turns in the form of a fantastic array of spirits who occupy the bathhouse, an institution that has largely disappeared, except for the occasional hot spring visit, from the lives of most contemporary Japanese. These creatures are clearly uncanny in Sigmund Freud's sense of the term as describing some thing that is familiar yet at the same time out of place. The bathhouse spir its and their environs are no longer part of the "real world" in which the young protagonist Chihiro initially appears but, to the Japanese viewer, their visual manifestations and functions evoke images from Japanese folklore and, according to the critic Shimizu Masahi, a sense of "having seen them  somewhere before."14 Overall, to its enormous Japanese audience, the movie's special allure may be found in its ability to satisfy what Ivy calls the two "horizons of desire" on the part of contemporary Japanese: the desire to "encounter the unexpected, the peripheral unknown, even the frightening ... a desire that reveals itself under the controlled and predictable conditions of everyday life under consumer capitalism," and "an opposite longing to re turn to a stable point of origin, to discover an authentically Japanese Japan that is disappearing yet still present."

- Susan J. Napier, The Journal of Japanese Studies

 

 

Public Opinion

 

“A masterpiece. One of my favorite films ever, not only animated. Probably in my top 10 or top 15. Pure magic.” - @peludo

 

The Poetic Opinion

 

https://pblovesswriting.files.wordpress.com/2020/06/img_-gotb1x.jpg?w=1024

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#16 (2020), #28 (2018), #62 (2016), #68 (2014), #38 (2013), #64 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Steven Spielberg (7), James Cameron (4), Christopher Nolan (4), Martin Scorsese (4), Alfred Hitchcock (3), Stanley Kubrick (3),  Hayao Miyazaki (3), Ridley Scott (3), Brad Bird (2), John Carpenter (2), Francis Ford Coppola (2), David Fincher (2), Spike Lee (2), Sergio Leone (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 (12), 1990s (21), 2000s (21), 2010s (10)

 

Country Count

 

Japan (7), Italy (3), UK (2), Australia (1), Brazil (1), China (1), Mexico (1), Spain (1), South Korea (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Pixar (6), Ghibli (5), 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), Indiana Jones (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

 

#13 Fanboy Ranking, #6 Cinema Ranking

#11 Old Farts Ranking, #9 Damn Kids Ranking

#1 Ambassador Ranking, #13 All-American Ranking

#1 Cartoon Ranking, #12 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[CaptNathanBrittles]

Certainly beats having THE DARK KNIGHT or PULP FICTION or FIGHT CLUB in there.