Posted on 03/24/2009 1:12:46 AM PDT by iowamark
Many movies are good, some are great, but only a select few can be called truly "essential." After heated discussions, long negotiations, and a shouting match or two, the staff at Yahoo! Movies has put together this list of the 100 films you must see before you die.
To choose the titles for the list, we considered factors like historical importance and cultural impact. But we also selected films that we believe are the most thrilling, most dramatic, scariest, and funniest movies of all time. Some of these films you've seen, and some you may not have heard of, but we believe that each one is a timeless classic that you absolutely have to see.
12 Angry Men (1957) Directed By: Sidney Lumet Starring: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, E. G. Marshall
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Directed By: Stanley Kubrick Starring: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester
The 400 Blows (1959)Directed By: Francois Truffaut Starring: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Patrick Auffay Why You Should See It
8 ½ (1963) Directed By: Federico Fellini Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee
The African Queen (1952) Directed By: John Huston Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley
Alien (1979) Directed By: Ridley Scott Starring: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright
All About Eve (1950) Directed By: Joseph L. Mankiewicz Starring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders
(Excerpt) Read more at movies.yahoo.com ...
I liked two of those but not Soylent Green.
Toooo contrived and toooooo heavy on manipulative message or some such.
INDEED.
Well, Chinatown isn’t “classic” noir from the late 40s, but it’s definitely noir, and one of my all time faves. I also like “LA Confidential” as a neo-noir pic.
Don’t recall ever seeing that one.
Kathryn was definitely a character and I suspect one either liked her or hated her.
And she probably didn’t give a rip.
I understand she always took bracingly cold showers.
Crazy woman.
LOL.
Apology accepted. Sorry if I came over too negative at first. It wasnt actually scornful, I just didnt understand how you got to point b from point a in one athletic leap. My quickness in talking about your madhouse confirms only a negative reaction to your initial response. If you are going to persuade folk to your viewpoint, you can’t be that quick on the trigger!
I certainly consider different viewpoints. The problem is that once you accept a conspiracy type theory, it is all too easy to make evidence “fit” that theory. For example, you quoted Colin Powell giving a speech in which he endorsed the UN’s mission. Well, at the time he was accepting an award from them - he’s hardly going to be hyper critical is he?
I’ll tell you what I do think. I dont claim to be totally authorative or even right, but I do have personal experience in the creative arts. I dont believe in some overiding grand conspiracy to destroy America, the family and apple pie. What I think IS true is that the people who work in the media and entertainment and hollywood all come from the same kind of liberal background, all went to the same kinds of colleges and did the same kind of courses in media studies and journalism under the same professors. They all protested at the same rallies about the same “injustices”. They all have much the same kind of opinions, they all mingle socially and often they are married into each others families. Its a cosy little club, and it does NOT welcome opinions that do not fit its view of the world. In fact it ruthlessly suppresses that kind of dissent - often unconsciously but all the more efficiently for that.
It's a fine line between bad and BAD. "Omega Man" is another silly 70s sci fi featuring my man Heston, but that one is a little harder to take. But I can watch Soylent Green over and over again. I guess it's a bit of a fetish.
Or The Shining.
You’re the one who started it.
Sounds about right. I did enjoy "Desk Set." They cast her well in that one. She was supposed to be annoying and snobby, so it worked. That's the trick with annoying actors. Cast them in annoying roles.
I wish it were that benign.
I knew Colin was a globalist before he ever made that speech.
It was obvious at some point. I forget what that point was.
How many of those quotes have you read?
I read the globalists in their own house organ publications and some primary source materials in 1965-1969 when I was responsible for preparing such materials for use by univ library patrons.
Alex Jones is right.
Have you seen his
OBAMA DECEPTION? It’s worth seeing the whole thing. He’s quite accurate . . . often with chapter and verse.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7886780711843120756
Actually, I think Alex Jones . . . as . . . exaggerated as many people think he is . . . will turn out to have been very conservative in his descriptions of what’s really going on.
I can understand your points with the film . . . just not my perspective, I guess.
Omega man . . . I think I’m more of a similar mind with you on that one.
I was juror number three in my high school’s production of 12 Angry Men.
This is silly . . .
Wasn’t my perspective . . . my original statement is on my home page and is a reasonable one.
You came across as pretty cheeky & derisive about my personhood, more or less, because of the statement on my home page! LOL.
Good points.
I think I always liked her spunk.
However, she could also be quite uncomfortably like my mother. My mother was beyond annoying.
Fat Man & Little Boy is definitely hugely underrated, I loved it when I saw it way back in high school.
I like plenty of films that are simply films of a certain type too, and thats fine. Like anyone else I have my likes and dislikes. A film doesn’t have to transcend its genre, but it helps sales if it does.
In the first place I want to be able to try new things too. I never want to get to the point where I think “oh that’s just a chick flick, I wont like that, so I won’t bother with it”. Sometimes films really surprise you. I dont like horror movies at all, but I really enjoyed Alien (which is a sci-fi horror movie).
In the second place the mechanics of film making - the acting, the direction, the production, the costumes etc - are common to all films. Sure certain genres emphasise some more than others - sci-fi/fantasy films almost ALWAYS win the special effects awards categories - but they are more similar than they are different.
Its not a question of making a burger something different. The point is that John Wayne is an actor portraying a tired old lawman who knows he is still relevant in “True Grit” and Marlon Brando is an actor portraying a gangster boss who really wants something else for his youngest son in “Godfather”. Which performance convinces you the most? It can be a bit like comparing chalk and cheese, but the point is that they are still acting performances. You can still appreciate what is being done.
You have no use for Wizard of Oz. That’s fine. That ultimately is the only test of a film, or a book, or a poem, or anything else. Do people like it? But even if you dont like musicals, you can still appreciate that this particular musical has been put together well. It has great use of color, it has fantastic costumes, it has good dialogue and a very clever message, or messages.
I think you are being too harsh on people saying they like “The good, the bad and the ugly” just because it is the thing they are “supposed” to say. In a way, that conveys a kind of reverse snobbery on your part, im sorry to say. Usually if a lot of people really like a film it probably means that said film has got something going for it.
Like someone else suggested, Firefly/Serenity are pretty good in that they have an anti-socialist, anti-big-government kind of theme - you can find all of Firefly, and I believe Serenity, in good quality on Hulu.com. However, because this is occasionally confusing to people who watch them online, ‘Serenity’ is the name of the pilot episode of Firefly as well as the movie.
In addition, I think Dark City, Sunshine, and Alien/Aliens were pretty free of propaganda or political overtones, and I never got around to watching any of the Terminator movies straight through but they seemed pretty politic-free too. Oh, and Iron Man is very non-politically-correct, and Transformers has no political overtones at all (possibly because it has no plot at all, either) cause it’s purely a ‘fun’ movie about giant robots fighting other giant robots and creating spectacular explosions in the process, and gratuitous shots of Megan Fox in close proximity to sports cars.
Its reasonable to you, of that im sure.
But come on, we are discussing the relative merits of various films, and out of the blue you come out with a statement that essentially boils down to “all sci-fi films have a hidden globalist agenda”. That is quite a statement to make straight off the cuff, without any backing evidence. How did you expect people to react? And when its queried, you say “Im not your research assistant, work it out for yourself”. Well, sorry, but surely if you have a theory the onus is on you to put the case forward. My time is valuable too. If someone was to write on these boards “the earth is flat”, and then treat everyone who said “no of course its not” as a gullible neanderthal who hadn’t bothered to check his facts, no doubt they’d get short shrift too.
I agree. What was that chick flick where Mel Gibson can hear women's thoughts? I enjoyed that one a lot, and found it very funny. Hell, I even liked "Two Weeks Notice" with Hugh Grant and Sandra Bullock. Good chick flicks/romantic comedies.
In the second place the mechanics of film making - the acting, the direction, the production, the costumes etc - are common to all films. Sure certain genres emphasise some more than others - sci-fi/fantasy films almost ALWAYS win the special effects awards categories - but they are more similar than they are different.
I agree with that too. I can appreciate the craftsmenship within a film. Scorcese with his long shots and use of music in "Goodfellas." I've watched all those Scorcese film discussions to broaden my appreciation of that side of film, especially within the context of the time they came out.
Its not a question of making a burger something different. The point is that John Wayne is an actor portraying a tired old lawman who knows he is still relevant in “True Grit” and Marlon Brando is an actor portraying a gangster boss who really wants something else for his youngest son in “Godfather”. Which performance convinces you the most? It can be a bit like comparing chalk and cheese, but the point is that they are still acting performances. You can still appreciate what is being done.
Definitely. They were both very convincing, classic performances. I'm not saying that just because a pic is a certain genre, it doesn't contain direction, photography, script or acting. All of that exists in all films.
You have no use for Wizard of Oz. That’s fine. That ultimately is the only test of a film, or a book, or a poem, or anything else. Do people like it? But even if you dont like musicals, you can still appreciate that this particular musical has been put together well. It has great use of color, it has fantastic costumes, it has good dialogue and a very clever message, or messages.
I liked it when I was a little kid. It's a memorable story. But then, that comes from the book. The movie? Too Broadway-esque for me. And whatsherhead, Liza's mom, makes me wanna barf.
I think you are being too harsh on people saying they like “The good, the bad and the ugly” just because it is the thing they are “supposed” to say. In a way, that conveys a kind of reverse snobbery on your part, im sorry to say. Usually if a lot of people really like a film it probably means that said film has got something going for it.
Maybe, but I don't think so. I think if you polled actual Clint Eastwood fans, GBU wouldn't be top 5, and probably wouldn't even be top 3 in the western category. I think critics put a Clint western on the list as a token, and they pick GBU as the default token choice.
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