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

[Ronin46]

Great "at the time" but just has not quite held up unlike Pulp Fiction and Shawshank from the same year.

[That One Girl]

Cast Away is so much better it's not even funny

[The Panda]

im gonna fly now.

 

Number 86

 

 

"You're gonna eat lightnin' and you're gonna crap thunder!"

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"When world heavyweight boxing champion, Apollo Creed wants to give an unknown fighter a shot at the title as a publicity stunt, his handlers choose palooka Rocky Balboa, an uneducated collector for a Philadelphia loan shark. Rocky teams up with trainer Mickey Goldmill to make the most of this once in a lifetime break."

 

 

Its Legacy

 

"Rocky manifested the lofty ideals of an America that offered any dream-seeking, hard-working resident a piece of the pie, an ideal that has powerful emotional resonance. Al Bernstein, the lead commentator for Showtime Championship Boxing and a member of the International Boxing Hall of Fame, agrees. 

 

"The original Rocky remains one of the most entertaining boxing films ever made," Bernstein says. "It is not meant to be a gritty portrait of an edgy sport, like Requiem for a Heavyweight or Fat City. It is a glossy, sweeping movie that speaks to the courage and hopefulness that boxers possess. I remember leaving the theater after seeing it and feeling uplifted. The idea of dreaming big, overcoming odds to succeed—even in losing—and finding self-respect are universal and timeless."

 

Rocky dramatizes the hope that success is possible despite obstacles and the fear that circumstances, self-doubt and bad luck are bricks in the insurmountable wall of failure. It's in the gap between what Rocky Balboa craves as a man and as a fighter, and what the insular world he lives in tells him is possible, that audiences are pulled into the journey. Balboa symbolizes dreams deferred or never chased, and by projecting humility and a quiet dignity despite his lowly stature, he wins over even the most cynical moviegoer with simple human decency."

- Sid Quashie, Bleacher Report

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"It inhabits a curiously deserted Philadelphia: There aren't any cars parked on the slum street where Rocky lives or the slightest sign that anyone else lives there. His world is a small one. By day, he works as an enforcer for a small-time juice man, offering to break a man's thumbs over a matter of $70 ("I'll bandage it!" cries the guy. "It'll look broke"). In his spare time, he works out at Mickey's gym. He coulda been good, but he smokes and drinks beer and screws around. And yet there's a secret life behind his facade. He is awkwardly in love with a painfully shy girl (Talia Shire) who works in the corner pet shop. He has a couple of turtles at home, named Cuff and Link, and a goldfish named Moby Dick. After he wins forty bucks one night for taking a terrible battering in the ring, he comes home and tells the turtles: "If you guys could sing and dance, I wouldn't have to go through this crap." When the girl asks him why he boxes, he explains: "Because I can't sing and dance."

 

The movie ventures into fantasy when the world heavyweight champion (Carl Weathers, as a character with a certain similarity to Muhammad Ali) decides to schedule a New Year's Eve bout with a total unknown -- to prove that America is still a land of opportunity. Rocky gets picked because of his nickname, the Italian Stallion; the champ likes the racial contrast. And even here the movie looks like a genre fight picture from the 1940s, right down to the plucky little gymnasium manager (Burgess Meredith) who puts Rocky through training, and right down to the lonely morning ritual of rising at four, drinking six raw eggs, and going out to do roadwork. What makes the movie extraordinary is that it doesn't try to surprise us with an original plot, with twists and complications; it wants to involve us on an elemental, a sometimes savage, level. It's about heroism and realizing your potential, about taking your best shot and sticking by your girl. It sounds not only clichéd but corny -- and yet it's not, not a bit, because it really does work on those levels. It involves us emotionally, it makes us commit ourselves: We find, maybe to our surprise after remaining detached during so many movies, that this time we care." - Roger Ebert

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"I am not American.

I really dislike boxing.

I generally speaking loathe melo-drama.

I respect Stallone, but when he 'acts' he looks like a St. Bernard's dog trying to convey emotions.

I am not a fan of sports films.

I have every reason to hate this film. But I don't. I absolutely love it.

Sometimes simplicity is key to telling the best stories and this film understands that like no other. It is almost impossible to not be swept away and taken along for the ride." 

- DirkH, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

rocky

"mountain peak
A rocky mountain peak
stands high and proud
against the sky"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

#67 (2020), #54 (2018), #69 (2016), UNRANKED (2014, 2013), #88 2012

 

Director Count

 

Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), James Cameron (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Clint Eastwood (1), William Friedkin (1), Spike Lee (1), Katia Lund (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), The Russos (1), Ridley Scott (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (1), 1940s (1), 1970s (2), 1980s (2), 1990s (3), 2000s (4), 2010s (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Avatar (1), Blade Runner (1), The Exorcist (1), The MCU (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

#88 Fanboy Ranking, #88 Cinema Ranking

#89 Old Farts Ranking, #89 Damn Kids Ranking

#147 Ambassador Ranking, #78 All-American Ranking

#167 Cartoon Ranking, #78 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[Jake Gittes]

When is Rocky IV going to make this list tho.

[The Panda]

Here are 10 more from the 'misses'!

 

Number 220

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011, David Yates)

 

Number 219

The LEGO Movie (2014, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller)

 

Number 218

Gravity (2013, Alfonso Cuaron)

 

Number 217

Cruel Intentions (1999, Roger Kumble)

 

Number 216

Wild Strawberries (1957, Ingmar Bergman)

 

Number 215

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, F. W. Murnau)

 

Number 214

JFK (1991, Oliver Stone)

 

Number 213

The Iron Giant (1999, Brad Bird)

 

Number 212

District 9 (2009, Neill Blomkamp)

 

Number 211

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, Wes Craven)

[WrathOfHan]

This is probably the first year I didn't have Gump on my list; I controlled the drop

 

No Country continues to be a movie with wildly unpredictable rankings every year.

[IronJimbo]

I regret only putting the first Pirates movie on my list

[Potiki]

Y'all can blame me for Dead Man's Chest 😂

 

7. Pirates: Dead Man’s Chest (40 points, 280 total)

[cannastop]

1 hour ago, The Panda said:

Number 215

Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, F. W. Murnau)

woah

[The Panda]

i've never seen one of these movies, but there yah go. This movie and the next one are also brand new to the countdown!

 

 

Number 85

 

 

"No, please don't kill me, Mr. Ghostface, I wanna be in the sequel!"

 

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"A killer known as Ghostface begins killing off teenagers, and as the body count begins rising, one girl and her friends find themselves contemplating the ‘rules’ of horror films as they find themselves living in a real-life one."

 

Its Legacy

 

"When Wes Craven’s Scream appeared on the scene in 1996, horror was stuck in a rut. The fun, philosophical innovations that characterized the genre in the ’80s had been reduced to derivative, repetitive slasher flicks: stab, wipe, repeat. The cultural ascendence of 1991’s Silence of the Lambs kicked off an era in which stylish cat-and-mouse thrillers with horror elements had dominated mainstream cinema, while more traditional teen slasher fare languished. That all changed when Scream debuted five days before Christmas in 1996. In one single, terrifying opening scene, and with one now-immortal line — “Do you like scary movies?” — Scream transformed ’90s horror and paved the way for generations of smart, genre-savvy filmmaking to come.

 

This might sound like a bland observation from the vantage point of 2021, but in 1996, Scream’s use of other horror movies to navigate its own plot was unique. There’s a well-known idea that horror movies don’t exist in horror movies — that the characters often act as though they’ve never seen one. While the genre is usually extremely self-aware, that self-awareness typically exists offscreen, as a relationship between the filmmaker and the audience. The characters themselves don’t have a clue, and therefore make choices that viewers find to be extremely unwise or naive, because the characters don’t understand the concept of a horror movie. “Scream mainstreamed metatextual storytelling and made that analytical understanding of the genre mainstream in a lot of ways,” says Sam Zimmerman, a curator at the horror streaming service Shudder and former managing editor of Fangoria magazine.

 

 

Prior to Scream, horror movie characters usually didn’t know what story they were in until it was too late — and when they did manage to wake up and seek agency against the narrative, à la Rosemary’s Baby or The Omen, their efforts usually ended badly for them. The notable exceptions to this pattern were the scream queens. These were female characters who fronted long-running franchises: Jamie Lee Curtis’s Laurie in Halloween, Ashley Laurence’s Kirsty in Hellraiser, and Langenkamp’s Nancy in Nightmare on Elm Street, for example. Nearly all of these characters started out vulnerable and helpless but over the course of their franchises, they steadily gained the power to manipulate their stories.

 

Sidney, however, starts her narrative arc at the end of another horror story entirely — she’s been a witness to the murder of her mother. She’s not only self-aware because she’s aware of horror movies; she’s primed to survive this killer because she’s already survived her mother’s killer. Over the course of the Scream franchise’s four films (a fifth film is now slated to arrive in 2022), Sidney’s survival skills ramp up, as does her ability to fight back against the genre she’s in, and by the fourth film, she’s effortlessly turning horror tropes against her would-be killers. And the killings are all inspired by a litany of famous horror villains."  - Aja Romano, Vox

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"The movie was Scream. When it was released in December 1996, the Wes Craven-directed slasher shocked audiences with its graphic violence and delighted horror film fanatics with its witty, trivia-infused dialogue. The story follows high school student Sidney Prescott as she’s stalked and taunted by a movie-obsessed killer in a cheap Halloween mask. Williamson’s smart, layered satire and chilling scares revived American horror movies during a time when most went straight to VHS—and launched a franchise that maintained the original film’s tricky balance of fear and fun. “‘Scream’ was fantastic precisely because it was boldly upfront about its love for and emulation of slasher classics while concurrently discussing and poking fun at them,” wrote critic David Walber in a review praising Scream 4.

 

 

Scream arrived just as a national debate about on-screen violence was boiling over. In February 1996, the New York Times published a dispatch from a Yonkers movie theater where middle schoolers freely bought tickets to R-rated movies. Though MPA ratings had been used since 1968, it was up to individual movie theater employees to enforce them—and Americans were increasingly worried that graphic on-screen sex and violence would lead to a drastic rise in antisocial behavior. “It is an assumption endorsed by a majority of Americans in polls and a theme beloved by politicians from conservative Republicans to President Clinton,” the article noted. 

 

Most members of Scream’s young cast were relatively unknown when filming began in 1996—with the notable exception of Drew Barrymore, who found the script so thrilling that she requested the part of Casey Becker. Barrymore’s onscreen death during the opening scene was both unprecedented and a well-kept secret that shocked audiences. “We didn’t even know if audiences would even forgive us for that,” Craven said. “It was a very risky film, in many ways.” Though Scream had a limited budget of just $14 million, Barrymore and Craven’s involvement drew interest. The cast included Courtney Cox (then Monica Geller on Friends) and David Arquette, who appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair in April 1996 alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey and Will Smith (as well as fellow Scream star Skeet Ulrich). Neve Campbell, who played the lead as Sidney Prescott, was unsure of whether she wanted to do another scary movie after The Craft—but ultimately the prospect of working with Craven won her over for the physically and emotionally demanding role." - Michelle Delgado, Smithsonian Magazine

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"It’s been quite a few years since I first saw Scream but recounted it being quite a great horror film but 13 year old me preferred the spoof Scary Movie. Now having giving in some years, I’ve feel more in love with Scream. Craven has delivered a wickedly smart, never-boring slasher chock-full of delightful kills, satisfying thrills and a mystery that never fails to slack. Truly one of the best horror films." - @YM!

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

scream

"A scream so loud
It pierces through the air
Echoing off the walls"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

UNRANKED (2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2013, 2012)

 

Director Count

 

Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), James Cameron (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), William Friedkin (1), Spike Lee (1), Katia Lund (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), The Russos (1), Ridley Scott (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (1), 1940s (1), 1970s (2), 1980s (2), 1990s (4), 2000s (4), 2010s (1)

 

Franchise Count

 

Avatar (1), Blade Runner (1), The Exorcist (1), The MCU (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#87 Fanboy Ranking, #86 Cinema Ranking

#292 Old Farts Ranking, #61 Damn Kids Ranking

#322 Ambassador Ranking, #73 All-American Ranking

#240 Cartoon Ranking, #76 Damn Boomers Ranking

 

 

[The Panda]

RAGE

 

RAGE

 

against the dying of the light

 

Number 84

 

 

"Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here."

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"The adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage."

 

Its Legacy

 

 

"Who says Hollywood trivializes science? The 2014 blockbuster movie Interstellar has spawned its own academic paper, published online today in Classical and Quantum Gravity. Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who came up with the original idea for the movie, worked closely with the London-based special effects company Double Negative to ensure that the wormhole and black hole shown were as realistic as possible. Using physics equations provided by Thorne, the company's computers mapped the paths of millions of rays of light through the warped spacetime caused by a fictional black hole. As well as producing Oscar-nominated visual effects for the movie, Thorne and the effects team also unearthed some unexpected physics, such as that an observer close to a rapidly spinning black hole would see more than a dozen images of individual stars just outside one edge of the black hole's "shadow." These multiple images are caused by the spinning mass dragging spacetime into a whirlpool that bends the light rays around itself many times. The team, once their film work was done, carried out a number of research simulations with Thorne, studying how the swirling spacetime distorted star fields behind the black hole (above). As a virtual observer moves around the black hole, it could see the swirling spacetime constantly creating and annihilating images of individual stars. The multiple-image effect was observed only on the side of the black hole where spacetime is being dragged toward the observer, which the team concluded was because some light was being "flung" outward." - Daniel Clery, Science

 

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Nolan is also a consummate conjuror. Memento, his amnesiac movie, ran its scenes in reverse order. In The Prestige, magicians devised killer tricks for each other and the audience. Inception played its mind games inside a sleeper’s head, and the Dark Knight trilogy raised comic-book fantasy to Mensa level. But those were the merest études for Nolan’s biggest, boldest project. Interstellar contemplates nothing less than our planet’s place and fate in the vast cosmos. Trying to reconcile the infinite and the intimate, it channels matters of theoretical physics — the universe’s ever-expanding story as science fact or fiction — through a daddy-daughter love story. Double-domed and defiantly serious, Interstellar is a must-take ride with a few narrative bumps.

 

With Interstellar, Nolan’s reach occasionally exceeds his grasp. That’s fine: These days, few other filmmakers dare reach so high to stretch our minds so wide. And our senses, all of them. At times, dispensing with Hans Zimmer’s pounding organ score, Nolan shows a panorama of the spacecraft in the heavens — to the music of utter silence. At these moments, viewers can hear their hearts beating to the sound of awe." - Richard Corliss, TIME

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"A poem to light and gravity." - @DAR

 

"I can't believe Nolan's dick made a cameo in the film." - @Water Bottle

 

"masturbation scene was a bit off-colour." - @luna

 

"It was OK but I still prefer Cannibal Holocaust." - @Jake Gittes

 

"I think my favorite part was when Topher Grace went to church and prayed for God to kill Matthew McConaughey" - @MrPink

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

interstellar

"The stars are so bright
I feel like I could travel to
any one of them"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

UNRANKED (2020, 2018, 2016), NA (2014, 2013, 2012)

 

Director Count

 

Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), James Cameron (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), William Friedkin (1), Spike Lee (1), Katia Lund (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Christopher Nolan (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), The Russos (1), Ridley Scott (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (1), 1940s (1), 1970s (2), 1980s (2), 1990s (4), 2000s (4), 2010s (2)

 

 

Franchise Count

 

Avatar (1), Blade Runner (1), The Exorcist (1), The MCU (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#96 Fanboy Ranking, #105 Cinema Ranking

#180 Old Farts Ranking, #73 Damn Kids Ranking

#243 Ambassador Ranking, #75 All-American Ranking

#144 Cartoon Ranking, #77 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

[Ozymandias]

Interstellar is a good but ridiculous film and its the last Nolan movie I've really quite enjoyed.  Of the 2013-2015 Gravity/Interstellar/Martian Hollywood space travel trilogy, I think I gotta go with Martain.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Ozymandias

[That One Girl]

took until this year for the best Nolan film to rank on the list

[Cap]

Me at scream:

 

[The Panda]

before i depart

 

Number 83

 

 

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe fuck yourself."

 

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"To take down South Boston’s Irish Mafia, the police send in one of their own to infiltrate the underworld, not realizing the syndicate has done likewise. While an undercover cop curries favor with the mob kingpin, a career criminal rises through the police ranks. But both sides soon discover there’s a mole among them."

 

Its Legacy

 

"Martin Scorsese has made many voyages into the world of gangsters, but none of them have been as lucrative, either financially or in terms of award season success, as The Departed. Released in September 2006, The Departed chronicled the exploits of two cops working for crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). One, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), is a mole working for the Massachusetts State Police. Meanwhile, Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) is working the opposite game as an inside man in the Massachusetts State Police for Costello. It's a movie packed with double-crosses, suspenseful sequences that leave you breathless and a stacked cast (Mark Wahlberg and Ray Winstone are just two notable supporting players) delivering resoundingly memorable work. No matter what you like in your crime movies, The Departed is bound to deliver the goods.

 

 

The horrors of the September 11, 2001 attacks left such a massive impact on American culture that it was inevitable that the country's filmmakers would respond to the new status quo through their work. For instance, Steven Spielberg's post-9/11 movies have been widely interpreted as offering commentary on the new world America was navigating. Similarly, fellow iconic filmmaker Martin Scorsese offered his own perspective on a post-9/11 world with The Departed. Writing for RogerEbert.com, Niles Schwartz observed that The Departed's "mid-film blue sky rooftop murder...with its flabbergasted police radio babble, echoes the horror and confusion of 9/11." Meanwhile, Andrew Sarris of The Observer saw the influence of 9/11 in The Departed in more than just one scene. To Sarris, The Departed carries "an atmosphere of perpetual paranoia so characteristic of our post-9/11 world. No one can completely trust anyone else."

 

Scorsese himself has opined on how The Departed reflects a post-9/11 world, particularly in regards to that final famous shot of a rat scurrying across the screen. "[The rat] also represents that for me as the film developed a sense of paranoia and betrayal and one person never knowing who the other person is," Scorsese explained to CanMag. "It kind of reflects the world now, the America that we know now, post-September 11th." Navigating that new world can be difficult, but films like The Departed help us to process it." - Douglas Laman, Looper

 

From the Filmmaker

 

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"The Departed is nothing if not tragic. The film follows William Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), who infiltrates the local mob as an undercover police officer, and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), who infiltrates the police department for that same mob. The two race to discover the identity of the other but, in doing so, have to confront the cost of trying to become someone else. It is a tale that is fundamentally rooted in the exploration of two men’s identities and how the societal institutions that govern them have shaped their values.

 

From the outset, The Departed was crafted around the idea of identity. In an interview with Emanuel Levy, William Monahan, the film’s screenwriter, explains how he penned the film’s script as an outlet for his self-reflection, mired in thoughts about his own identity and the people he had lost. Monahan was tasked with adapting Infernal Affairs (2002), a Hong Kong crime drama that, naturally, shares many story beats with The Departed. While both films are uniform in their central conflict, the change in setting — from Infernal Affairs’ Hong Kong to The Departed’s Boston, Massachusetts — completely transforms the social context within which this conflict unfolds. Both societies have rich histories that the characters are shaped by, suggesting that there is an integral connection between both films’ characters and not only their geographical locations, but their social locations as well.

 

Again, the environments that these films unfold in are instrumental to the message that they are trying to convey. Both are inspired by times of turmoil, demonstrating how drastic changes in the social paradigm can leave individuals feeling lost or discontent with their place in the world. However, while a national identity can auto-correct itself to a degree, personal identities only have so long to cement themselves before the bodies that they are attached to reach their expiration date. This leaves individuals clinging to social institutions and leads them to adopt those institutions’ ideologies as a means of forming an identity, even when these institutions are oblivious to the needs of the people." - Ryan Nachnani, Fanfare

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"me: i only appreciate original innovative filmmaking
martin scorsese: *uses the same rolling stones song he has used in every one of his soundtracks except in this movie he uses it TWICE*
me: talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, showstopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique" - hayley, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

the departed

"The departed leave a hole in our hearts
We loved them and now they're gone
It hurts so much"

- dA vInci

 

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

UNRANKED (2020), #81 (2018), UNRANKED (2016, 2014, 2013, 2012)

 

Director Count

 

Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), James Cameron (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), William Friedkin (1), Spike Lee (1), Katia Lund (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Christopher Nolan (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), The Russos (1), Martin Scorsese (1), Ridley Scott (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (1), 1940s (1), 1970s (2), 1980s (2), 1990s (4), 2000s (5), 2010s (2)

 

Franchise Count

 

Avatar (1), Blade Runner (1), The Exorcist (1), The MCU (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#114 Fanboy Ranking, #77 Cinema Ranking

#141 Old Farts Ranking, #79 Damn Kids Ranking

#292 Ambassador Ranking, #70 All-American Ranking

#247 Cartoon Ranking, #75 Damn Boomers Ranking

 

 

Edited July 31, 2022 by The Panda

[Potiki]

Infernal Affairs > The Departed 

 

I also think The Departed is one of the weaker Scorsese films. 

[Plain Old Tele]

45 minutes ago, The Panda said:

#180 Old Farts Ranking, #73 Damn Kids Ranking

#243 Ambassador Ranking, #75 All-American Ranking

Yes

[Plain Old Tele]

20 minutes ago, Potiki said:

 

I also think The Departed is one of the weaker Scorsese films. 

It’s kinda like his version of Fincher’s Dragon Tattoo. A remake of a foreign film so squarely in his pre-existing wheelhouse it doesn’t feel like it really brings anything new or fresh. Not that it’s bad, just… there are better alternatives. 

[The Panda]

another mcu film, wow.

 

Number 82

 

 

"Say, Lou, didya hear the one about the guy who couldn't afford personalized plates, so he went and changed his name to J3L2404?"

 

About the Film

 

Synopsis

 

"Jerry, a small-town Minnesota car salesman is bursting at the seams with debt… but he’s got a plan. He’s going to hire two thugs to kidnap his wife in a scheme to collect a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law. It’s going to be a snap and nobody’s going to get hurt… until people start dying. Enter Police Chief Marge, a coffee-drinking, parka-wearing - and extremely pregnant - investigator who’ll stop at nothing to get her man. And if you think her small-time investigative skills will give the crooks a run for their ransom… you betcha!"

 

Its Legacy

 

" It’s no surprise that their associate William Preston Robertson, as he acknowledged in his book ‘The Big Lebowski: The Making of a Coen Brothers Film,’ panicked when he read the screenplay for Fargo, the film Joel and Ethan wanted to do next. “It’s the weirdest, most bizarre, most inaccessible of all of the things you’ve written,” he commented, advising strongly against what he saw as the definite career suicide. But Fargo, the humorous dark comedy we have all gotten to love in the years since, turned out to be a huge commercial and critical success, opening the doors of mainstream America for the two brothers whose unique authorial voice had been perceived too unapproachable for the average film lover. It’s easy to see what made the audience fall in love with this movie: Fargo features a very, very dark story set in the cold and dark Minnesota, the authors’ homeland. It’s a story of murder, blackmail, kidnapping; a bloody account of deceit, lying, cheating and amorality. But it’s also a narrative filled with humor and warmth, channeled for the most part through the unforgettable character of Marge Gunderson and, to a lesser degree, her benign husband Norm. Ms. Gunderson, the police officer who tries to decipher the monstrous events unfolding around her, is the emotional and moral center of the story, the anchor in the overwhelming storm of wrongdoings that engulfs the small town unused to big-city-corruption and abomination. Played by the marvelous Frances McDormand, Marge rightfully entered the pantheon of the most distinguished film characters of all time, but Fargo doesn’t stand on her shoulders alone. Written by Ethan and Joel, this is a very entertaining, funny, stylish movie further enhanced by the great Roger Deakins’ cinematography, where the general bleakness of landscape and morality are effectively penetrated by lively splashes of ominous red, and Carter Burwell’s beautiful score. What should also be noted is that Fargo is a typical Coen film in both the thematical and stylistic aspects, and as such served as the stepping stone of the general audience in their entry into the world of one of the most distinguishable filmmaking forces of contemporary cinema.

 

 

Characteristically playing with the boundaries of the chosen genre and toying with the audience’s expectations, the Coen brothers created a refreshing and highly enjoyable hybrid of dark comedy and thriller, a neo-noir 98-minute roller-coaster ride through the desolate, snow-covered landscapes of Minnesota and the peculiar people that inhabit them, exploring and illuminating the dark corners of the human psyche and juxtaposing them against the humanity, humor and kindness stumbled upon in the mundane and ordinary. Brutally violent but charmingly idiosyncratic, dominantly murky but simultaneously hopeful and upbeat, Fargo is one of those special films that deserve to be revisited every once in a while, and as one of the best works of the Coen brothers, it’s at the same time among the best films America has presented to the world in the past couple of decades." - Cinephilia and Beyond

 

From the Filmmaker

 

"We usually storyboard most of the shots. But when we get on the set in the morning, we start by rehearsing with the actors. We walk around the set with them a lot, and usually they sort of figure out the best blocking among themselves, depending on what is most comfortable or most interesting. After that, we go to the director of photography and decide, from what we’ve seen of the acting, how much we want to stick to the storyboard or not. And most of the time, we’ll ignore it because the blocking of the scene makes the storyboard academic.Ethan: We know pretty much exactly how we want to shoot each scene. Sometimes exactly, and usually at least roughly. How much we actually cover depends on a lot of things. We frequently shoot scenes—especially in our most recent movies, and particularly in Fargo—that have no coverage at all because they’re done in one shot. And in other scenes we do so much coverage that we look at each other at the end of the day like we’re a couple of morons who’ve never made movies! I guess we tend to cover more at the beginning of the film, because it’s usually been a long time and we’re a little nervous and afraid. And then, as we get back into the rhythm, we become more confident.

 

The two films we probably experimented the most on were Blood Simple and Barton Fink. Blood Simple, because it was the first one and so everything had the virtue of novelty. And to tell the truth, we weren’t quite sure what we were doing. Barton Fink, because it is the most stylized film we’ve made and also because it faced us with the question, How do you make a film about a guy in a room, pretty much, and still make it interesting and compelling? It was a real challenge. But The Hudsucker Proxy was also an experiment in extreme artificiality, and Fargo was an experiment in a sort of extreme reality—which was a fake reality, because it was as stylized as the other ones. Compared to all that, the films we’re making today are not real adventures. Not that we don’t like the way they look, but they’re all stuff we’ve done before, pretty much.

 

 

Neither of us has any acting background; we sort of came to filmmaking from the technical end or the writing end, as opposed to someone who comes from the theater and has experience working with actors. So we hadn’t worked with professional actors when we made our first film, and I remember that we had very specific notions of what a line should sound like, or how a reading should be done. But as you get a little more experienced and start having a little more fun with it, you realize that you have one idea and it may not be the best idea. And that’s what you hire the actors to do, to improve on your conception—not just to mimic it but to expand it, to create something of their own which you couldn’t have imagined yourself." - Joel Coen

 

Why It's Great

 

Critic Opinion

 

"Fargo is a film which reminds us, continually, of how easy and even likely it is for human beings to remain disconnected from each other, to squander the majority of chances they have to make the time they spend together count—count as time present, because of what is sensed or shared or made known. Marge and Norm's quiet, "small change" encounter may do no more than remind us what genuine human connection looks like, but that is perhaps not a negligible feat, if connection is so hard to come by in the world "out there." They provide a measure of solace, animal warmth, and tangible attentiveness to each other late at night; they are guiding each other to rest, and though neither is complaining about the strains of the day they've been through, they are mutually alleviating strain by talk that fits and suits them. Against the immense power of emptiness that Fargo often makes us feel is placed the low-level, heartbeat power of effective companionship. And though, as Thomas Browne argued in The Garden ofCyrus, "the night of time far surpasseth the day," before daylight sense goes under we might reasonably consider this pair's unequivocal satisfaction at being together "for now" as improbable and miraculous as anything larger that could be revealed to us.

 

In one of his recent stories, "The Womanizer," Richard Ford has a character worry at considerable length whether now is the time to "take a true reading" of his life: "when the tide was out and everything exposed—including himself—as it really, truly was. There was the real life, and he wasn't deluded about it." Ford has alerted us to be on our guard about this character's ability to arrive at a true reading, or recognize the moment (if there ever is one) when a true reading can be taken. He is, in short, ironic about his character's sense of himself within the situation, without using irony to secure a writerly vantage point that is morally outside the fray, in a better position to see what's what. A bit later the character gets closer to his own truth as he relinquishes the notion of a definitive true reading. In its place he posits the "crucial linkages of a good life," which "he knew were small and subtle and in many ways just lucky things that you hardly ever noticed" (my emphasis). Marge's "naiveté," which Fargo, surprisingly, does not overturn or complicate, comes from a just appreciation of obvious, daily linkages, and from the good fortune, unaffected by the prevailing winds of irony, to notice them." - George Toles, Michigan Quarterly Review

 

 

Public Opinion

 

"Oh, yah. What a great and funny film.
Oh, you betcha. Yeah." 

- julia, Letterboxd

 

The AI's Poetic Opinion

 

fargo

"In North Dakota,
Cities are small and few.
Fargo is one of them."

- dA vInci

 

Factoids

 

Previous Rankings

 

UNRANKED (2020), #72 (2018), #46 (2016), #74 (2014), #53 (2013), #55 (2012)

 

Director Count

 

Paul Thomas Anderson (1), John G. Avildsen (1), James Cameron (1), Charlie Chaplin (1), Joel and Ethan Coen (1), Wes Craven (1), Clint Eastwood (1), William Friedkin (1), Spike Lee (1), Katia Lund (1), Fernando Meirelles (1), Christopher Nolan (1), Katsuhiro Otomo (1), The Russos (1), Martin Scorsese (1), Ridley Scott (1), Vittorio de Sica (1), Gore Verbinski (1), Peter Weir (1), Robert Zemeckis (1)

 

Decade Count

 

1930s (1), 1940s (1), 1970s (2), 1980s (2), 1990s (5), 2000s (5), 2010s (2)

 

Franchise Count

 

Avatar (1), Blade Runner (1), The Exorcist (1), The MCU (1), Pirates of the Caribbean (1), Rocky (1), Scream (1)

 

Re-Weighted Placements

 

#120 Fanboy Ranking, #73 Cinema Ranking

#80 Old Farts Ranking, #95 Damn Kids Ranking

#83 Ambassador Ranking, #85 All-American Ranking

#87 Cartoon Ranking, #82 Damn Boomer Ranking

 

 

 

[Ozymandias]

27 minutes ago, Potiki said:

Infernal Affairs > The Departed 

 

I also think The Departed is one of the weaker Scorsese films. 

 

Jack Nicholson is a fucking riot in it though