Tweet Sight & Sound list 2012

My top twenty-five of the moment; films not necessarily masterpieces or important, but definitely absolute favorites. Some will be subject to change on any given day, but the asterisked titles will always be there.

In no particular order:

EASTER PARADE (1948)*
STEAMBOAT BILL, JR. (1928)*
SEVEN CHANCES (1925)
GIRL SHY (1924)*
SAFETY LAST! (1923)
THE GOLD RUSH (1925)*
"IT" (1927)*
METROPOLIS (1927)*
HORROR EXPRESS (1972)
THE DEVILS (1971)*
HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994)
CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (1968)*
WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971)*
A BETTER TOMORROW (1986)
MARY POPPINS (1964)*
DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
POLICE STORY (1985)
PEDICAB DRIVER (1989)
LIFEFORCE (1985)
RODAN (1956)
CASH ON DEMAND (1961)
PSYCHO (1960)
RE-ANIMATOR (1985)
WHOEVER SLEW AUNTIE ROO? (1971)
THREE STRANGERS (1946)
FIVE ELEMENT NINJAS (1982)

Sorry, edited to include METROPOLIS. It'll have to stand at 26.

See how meaningless these lists are - suddenly everyone is compiling one.

See how meaningless theses lists are - suddenly everyone is compiling one.

Eggs, butter, milk...

[Mike Gebert]

Okay, amend that to half of the thread will be people making their own lists, and the other half will be people making sure to point out that lists are meaningless.

Okay, amend that to half of the thread will be people making their own lists, and the other half will be people making sure to point out that lists are meaningless.

Or both. I love lists - especially the one on theyshootpictures.com - but you can't really take them too seriously if you want to stay relatively sane, since they're all just opinions, and one man's greatest film is another man's piece of sh*t.

You can't really say what the greatest movie of all time is, because A: there are lots of movies yet to be made, and B: even if you were to say "the greatest movies that have yet been made" you would have to have seen every movie ever made, which is impossible. You really can only pick the best movies out of a small group of movies, and even then, it's just opinion.

All that said, as the insatiable list lover I am, I just gotta weigh in with my own favorites. These aren't even the "greatest" movies I've seen - they're just films I get a kick out of.

In no real order:

The Big Sleep (1946)
Casablanca (1942)
Hatari! (1963)
Super 8 (2011)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Star Wars (1977)
The Masked Rider (1919)
Le Grand Blond Avec Une Chasseure Noire (1974)
Star Trek (2009)
The Big Clock (1948)
Die Spinnen (1919)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Rebecca (1940)
The Lodger (1927)
The Artist (2011)
A Hard Day's Night (1964)
It's A Wonderful Life (1946)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
Holes (2003)
Up (2009)
Les Quai Des Brumes (1938)
The Searchers (1956)
Animal Crackers (1930)
Singin' in the Rain (1952)
Groundhog Day (1993)

Okay, amend that to half of the thread will be people making their own lists, and the other half will be people making sure to point out that lists are meaningless.

I agree and that's one of the points I was trying to make with my previous post. I just get annoyed with the whole "lists are meaningless" thing because it seems like people go out of their way to point it out. Yes, I get it, lists are meaningless but they're also fun and inspire talk like this so why rain on everyone's parade?

And now that we've upped the ante to 25 I'll definitely be chiming in tomorrow, lol; too many great films I wanted to list but didn't have room with just ten.

It's not that it's pointless to tell us what great movies are, but to offer us a list of "great movies" without explaining why is pointless. I could put The Naughty Nineties on my list of greatest movies of all times and you would stare. However, if I were to explain that Abbott & Costello do "Who's On First" in it, is it so irrational? Howard Hawks was once asked what made a great movie. He said "Three great scenes and no bad ones."

If you insist on inflicting your lists on us, try telling us why without using the word "exquisite". Otherwise it's just watching Warhol's Empire stoned out of your mind.

Bob

Could someone post the orginal Sight and Sound poll? Was it in the late 40's or early 50's?
Directors who in those days evoked reverence, e.g. Chaplin, Pudovkin, Eisenstein seem to have almost entirely disappeared.

I just get annoyed with the whole "lists are meaningless" thing because it seems like people go out of their way to point it out.

It annoys me that you went out of your way to point this out.

They're meaningless I tell you. Meaningless!

I just get annoyed with the whole "lists are meaningless" thing because it seems like people go out of their way to point it out.

It annoys me that you went out of your way to point this out.

They're meaningless I tell you. Meaningless!

That ain't rain, Michael.

Bob

Could someone post the orginal Sight and Sound poll? Was it in the late 40's or early 50's?
Directors who in those days evoked reverence, e.g. Chaplin, Pudovkin, Eisenstein seem to have almost entirely disappeared.

Here's the wiki, rough but convenient: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:S ... Sound_Poll

[Mike Gebert]

1. The Palm Beach Story-- Cinema's Die Zauberflöte
2. Notorious-- A list that does not contain Cary Grant is not a list of cinema.
3. It's a Gift-- The best comedies make you want to slit your throat.
4. The Earrings of Madame de...-- The real Rules of the Game.
5. Dr. Strangelove-- On there for my 13-year-old self.
6. The Searchers-- The great movie about race, the great movie about the American landscape, the great movie about Technicolor and VistaVision.
7. Our Hospitality-- The sublimity of the most beautiful young face ever in movies, with a universe all to himself.
8. Seventh Heaven-- I used to love the sublime perfection of Sunrise. Now I love the sublime over-the-topness of Borzage more.
9. I Know Where I'm Going-- Who does not want to go this island and find love? Who does not think it's far better with the craggy, not-so-young cast they had to settle for than the gorgeous movie people (James Mason and Deborah Kerr, if I recall correctly) they wanted?
10. The Godfather I & II-- The great movie about family, the great movie about the American city, the great movie about how ethnics replaced blonde people in movies in the late 60s and early 70s.

I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) stars Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesey.

Jim Gettys

[Mike Gebert]

Yeah, I know. They wanted Mason and Kerr. One of them couldn't do it because of a play. Even then, a lot of the exteriors use doubles for Livesey and Hiller.

The question as to why some films make the list over the others is one that we could debate for years. The same question can be asked as to why some films win, or are nominated for, Oscars when others are not. A certain type of film makes a list, a certain type of film wins an Oscar. Occasionally we can even be baffled as to how film is categories as one type and not the other - Lord of the Rings and Titanic both score heavily at the Oscars, but the Harry Potter series gets barely a mention!

The selfless point of these lists (and awards) is to bring attention to good films that deserve it. Like most personal opinions however, the waters are muddied by politics.

I blogged my 'top 50' and 'the 50 which missed out' earlier this week. I couldn't rank numerically so listed broken down into decades. Probably worth mentioning here that my 'classics' list (pre-1960?) included Now Voyager, Bambi, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Ninotchka, Fury, Odd Man Out, Mildred Pierce, Gold Diggers of 1933, as well as Sunrise, The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Breathless.

My most recent choices included The Godfather, Being John Malkovich, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Network, The Devils, Chariots of Fire, and Educating Rita.

I don't think any female director made the top 50, but a couple made the second 50 (notably Randa Haines with Wrestling Ernest Hemingway), and that's without Campion (The Piano) and Potter (Orlando) who should have been there if I'd been thinking about them.