Signs of Bad Movie Times

National Review ^ | 7/30/25 | Armond White

[Blueflag]

I just KNEW #96 would be listed...

[rlmorel]

I just watched “No Country For Old Men” again the other night.

OMG. What a. creepy, creepy performance from that guy. And Tommy Lee Jones was great.

Good movie, though I wished it had ended differently.

[rlmorel]

Out of that list, these were the only ones I thought that belonged in the top 100 of the 21st Century, certainly not in that order-but...movie quality has so dropped off that I suppose many of those in the list would be included.

02. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
03. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
06. No Country For Old Men (Joel & Ethan Coen)
07. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
20. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
31. The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
41. Amalie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
44. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
45. Moneyball (Bennett Miller)
48. The Lives of Others (Florian Donnersmarck)
0. Up! (Pete Docter)
62. Memento (Christopher Nolan)
71. Ocean’s Eleven (Steven Soderbergh)
73. Ratatouille (Brad Bird)
87. The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
92. Gladiator (Ridley Scott)
94. Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)

I included Memento only for the sheer and incomparable uniqueness of the movie. I fully get why people don’t get it. Also, I included The Fellowship of the Ring, simply because it is so popular and it has never even approached the quality people have always wanted. It was close in many respects.

But including “Brokeback Mountain” at #17????

Ugh.

But, as they say, art is in the eye of the beholder!

[rlmorel]

For that list not to have included Gran Torino or Black Hawk Down is revealing.

And I did like Ex Machina...I would have included it over the majority of the films in that list.

[BradyLS]

I agree. It was hard to watch the first time. Hard to return to it. But powerful. And you can take lessons from it. I sometimes wonder if it the automobile was just tacked on, not having read the novel.

Funny how in his role as Stilgar from the DUNE movies he’s not nearly as unsettling. But I’m convinced he was selected for that role in part because of his role in No Country’.

[Political Junkie Too]

When I read the headline, my first thought was 4:30pm.

-PJ

[Salamander]

John Wick 5 is happening and Boondock Saints 3 is in production.

Now I have something to live for.

[BradyLS]

Of the ‘Rings movies, I thought Fellowship by far the best and truest to the spirit of the books. It was indeed great. I should have the objectivity to distinguish between it and the other films.

[Bullish]

What a dumb list.

[Fiji Hill]

I was amazed that “The Darkest Hour” had no sex scenes, nude scenes or profanity—and it even had a cat!

[central_va]

I haven’t seen a movie this century.

[Political Junkie Too]

I'm amazed that movies with sex scenes, nude scenes or profanity include viewer warnings about smoking in the film.

-PJ

[metmom]

Probably the one film folks need to see is Sound of Freedom

ABSOLUTELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr mm and I went to see it and it was very powerful. It really brought to life albeit to a very limited degree, no doubt, the heartbreak and horrors of child sex trafficking.

[metmom]

The books were good enough and had more than enough material to make the LOTR movies follow the books MUCH more closely.

I’ve been reading them since 10th grade, (1971) and the deviation from the books pretty much ruined it for me.

However, they did portray gollum just like I imagined.

[x]

I am generally a pessimist about Hollywood, but look a bit beneath the surface. In spite of the plague of comic book movies and reboots, the entertainment industry still does manage to turn out (or churn out) content. The surprise or miracle isn’t that so many movies are repetitive junk, but that the well hasn’t completely dried up yet.

[Organic Panic]

They included Black Panther?

That movie was trash.

[Organic Panic]

Done Brothers, Guy Ritchie, Timur Bekmembetov, and Danny Boyle are some of my go to movie makers that are on the edge of mainstream.

[Joe 6-pack]

Rating "Best Movie" is like rating the, "best tool," in a woodshop. If I need to saw a board, the hammer will be near the bottom of the list; if I need to pound a nail, it will quickly jump to the top.

If you're going to generate a list of, "best movies," it would be meaningful to define what makes a movie, "great." The other problem is that films are made for very different reasons and intents: to entertain, to edify, to indoctrinate, to persuade, to generate revenue, etc.

For example, Leni Reifenstahl's, "Triumph of the Will," was nothing but a pure nazi propaganda piece, and yet it was highly innovative at the time in technical terms, was, and continues to be studied in film schools and certainly achieved the filmmaker's objectives with overwhelming success. Does that make it a, "great film"? In some ways, I suppose it does, but not one I would care to sit back and watch with a tub of popcorn.

Some films have tremendously gorgeous cinematography, and crappy scripts. Some have great scripts and crappy acting. Without any objective criteria, any "greatest," list is simply the subjective opinion of it's maker. If it's voted on by poll, it's little more than a popularity contest.

[Stosh]

“The Death of Stalin” - at least as good as the satirical stuff from Christopher Guest, and he made the list easily.

[Texas_Guy]

Godzilla minus 1 was amazing!