1. Citizen Kane: Whoopie. Movie about a rich geezer missing his inner child is the best-rated movie of all time?
2. Annie Hall: About 200 consecutive jokes, most worth a chuckle; no pacing, no story, no realistic characters, and, most offensively, no real hard laughs. About as funny as reading 20 straight “Top Ten” lists... but it takes 2 hours.
3. The English Patient: Never met a person who actually liked it.
And, one I disagree with so many of my personal friends over, let alone critics: The Shawshank Redemption. As unrealistic as any childish fantasy, and what’s the “redemption”: that he learned how to play the same game as all the cynics and guilty people? If it had been called, “the Shawshank Corruption,” it would be more accurate, and would have grossed about $30 bucks.
Haven’t seen Million-Dollar Baby or Crash, but I hear they certainly belong.
Re the Shawshank Redemption. It’s an excellent movie in terms of riveting and entertaining. I loved it when I first saw it.
And then when you actually think about it, you become disgusted with how you were so easily manipulated.
But on the scale of entertaining while you watch it the first time, not a bad movie.
The reason Citizen Kane is considered great is that it was written, directed and starred in by Orson Wells.
Agree with you on “Citizen Kane.” Never liked it.
I liked Shawshank but you’ll like this anecdote: I am an inventor and in 1998 Disney World invited me to show something I made at an anniversary show going in Fla. I had a booth and Tim Robbins was in my booth looking at my product and I sincerely asked him who the actor was that he looked like. He replied that he was Tim Robbins. ...and then he left. (and I do mean ‘left’)