In Contention

Tag: lists

  • Things of beauty: Guy’s best of 2009

    Julianne Moore and Colin Firth in A Single ManThe year of the woman. The year of animation. The year of science-fiction. Depending on who you read (and believe), the final year of the decade has been an awful lot of things.

    If you’re with Kris, it’s also the best cinematic year of the last ten. If you’re with an awful lot of others, it’s quite the opposite. I’ll stop short of rewriting the first page of “A Tale of Two Cities,” but suffice to say it’s been different things to different people.

    What kind of year has it been for me? I think I’ll need another year to figure that out in detail. But as I compiled the list you’re about to read, I happily concluded that it’s been, at the very least, a good one: the 25 titles gathered here were jotted down with minimal brain-racking, with still more fighting from the sidelines.

    None of them are grudging inclusions, either: I sincerely liked most of these titles too much to allow room for popular or critical phenomena that are worthy of respect, but nonetheless didn’t connect with me personally. There was a sufficient range of quality work in 2009 (following a lean 2008) that any film lover could afford to construct his own playlist of future treasures without resorting to consensus.

    Before we begin, a note on the construction of the list. In addition to my Top 10, there are 15 honorable mentions here, five of them singled out for extra consideration. Some of you will quibble that I opt to include international or festival releases that have yet to surface in the U.S.

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  • Listomania

    Assorted technical problems at my rustic holiday base in Ireland have put me a whole day behind schedule — so my Best of 2009 list will land tomorrow, in lieu of a Long Shot column. With any luck, a best-of-decade collective will follow sometime before the year is out.

    In the meantime, you have Kris’s own rather brilliant 2000s retrospective to keep you entertained. À bientôt.

  • WEEKLY WRAP: Precursor avalanche, best of 2009

    Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker• Kris wrapped up 2009 with his take on the year’s best films, also offering his own preferred nominees and winners in a range of categories. (I’ll chime in next week.)

    • “Up in the Air” led this year’s pack of Golden Globe nominees.

    • It also joined “Precious” and “Inglourious Basterds” at the head of the pack in the SAG nominations — while missing out in their top race.

    • “The Hurt Locker” emerged as this year’s critics’ favorite, earning top honors from a host of groups, including the two biggest: the NYFCC and the LAFCA.

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  • Lists, lists, lists

    Ben Whishaw and Abbie Cornish in Bright StarI don’t feel anywhere near ready to present my Best of 2009 list, much less my Best of the 2000s one, yet — too many movies to watch, re-watch and contemplate before the brutal culling and shuffling of titles can begin. Still, a lot of critics and bloggers are clearly more organized than me — as each day brings a new pile of Top 10s.

    Our friend Anne Thompson has one of the more individual lists out there: I won’t steal her thunder by replicating her entire collective, but here’s her top 5, which I rather like. (She adds the caveat that she had not seen “Avatar” at the time of posting.)

    1. “Bright Star”
    2. “A Serious Man”
     3. “A Prophet”
     4. “Up”
    5. “Red Cliff”

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  • When one decade isn’t enough

    Apocalypse NowAmid the plethora of “best of the 2000s” lists doing the rounds, the London Film Critics’ Circle has decided to go one (or two, rather) better.

    Since the end of this decade coincides with the organization’s 30th anniversary, they’ve rather oddly elected five standout films of the last three decades.

    Take note that it’s not a comprehensive “best films” study. The five titles have been selected from the list of previous top-category winners at their own annual awards ceremony. (“The Wrestler” was their choice this year.)

    Anyway, they made the most of their time span, going all the way back to 1979 for their #1 choice: Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.” I find it hard to argue with that, personally. Anyway, for all you list junkies out there, their top five is after the cut.

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  • And the lists just keep on coming

    Russell Crowe in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the WorldBetween now and December 31, we’re probably going to read more “best ____ of the 2000s” lists than we know what to do with. But we like lists, don’t we? And this only happens once every 10 years. Let’s not get blasé already.

    So with the floodgates already open on “films of the decade” talk, there’s plenty more to fuel the discussion. Paste Magazine has a nicely balanced Top 50 that puts “City of God” in pole position, and wins extra cinephile points for putting Claire Denis alongside Peter Jackson in the top 10.

    Meanwhile, The Times supplements their own collective with a (impossibly formatted) selection of Top Tens from assorted British industry figures, including Julian Fellowes and Richard Eyre. “An Education” scribe Nick Hornby wins top marks from me for a list that includes “Lantana,” “The Beat That My Heart Skipped” and “I’m Not There.”

    But for my money, no list I’ve seen so far is as rich and well thought-out as Telegraph critic Tim Robey’s personal Top 100 — a corrective of sorts to the “films that defined the decade” list he compiled with his Telegraph colleagues, which took some flak on the web, these pages included.

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  • A bit of context

    Christine Baranski and Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!

    From the moment it was commissioned, this was intended STRICTLY as a “defined the decade” list, regardless of qualitative considerations. Go back and re-read it in that light, recover from the horror of “Saw” and “Mamma Mia!”’s inclusion (Guy’s right to single these out, but they aren’t the only ones: I personally loathe “Slumdog”, for instance) and I hope it then makes a little more sense.

    Though I’d much rather have been allowed to submit a list of personal favourites (and will probably follow up with one, on my blog, which will include all of about ten films from the current list), this Telegraph one was put together purely with an emphasis on importance/cultural impact, not critical preference.

    Regular reader and Telegraph critic Tim Robey clarifies the intent of that surprising ‘Top 100 films of the decade’ list that got some of you fired up earlier this week.

  • Your ranked list of the 10 most influential films of all time

    Citizen KaneAnd with that, our poll series comes to a screeching halt.  I’ve already offered some thoughts on how all of this turned out.  I hope readers unfamiliar with some of the films I’ve been harping on will take that to heart and at least seek them out.  You owe it to yourself as a film lover, believe you me.

    Here is your ranked list.  For background on all of these shenanigans, click here.  I want to thank everyone who participated in the polls and made this a real community effort.

    1. “Citizen Kane” (Orson Welles, 1941)
    2. “Star Wars” (George Lucas, 1977)
    3. “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
    4. “The Godfather” (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
    5. “The Wizard of Oz” (Victor Fleming, 1939)
    6. “Psycho” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
    7. “Jaws” (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
    8. “Pulp Fiction” (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
    9. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (David Hand, 1937)
    10. “Toy Story” (John Lasseter, 1995)

    Honorable mention: “Annie Hall,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Battleship Potemkin,” “The Birth of a Nation,” “Casablanca,” “The Godfather Part II,” “Gone with the Wind,” “The Matrix,” “Metropolis” and “Rashomon”

    One of these days I’ll cook up my own list.  Until then, once again, thanks for participating.

  • Top 100 movie lines in 200 seconds

    A healthy selection.  Perhaps not exactly the “best” throughout, but a pretty sweet trip down movie memory lane.

    (Courtesy: Liquid Generation, via /Film)

  • 40 movie moments that galvanized and shaped me

    Judy Garland and Bert Lahr in The Wizard of OzOn the weekend here I thought I’d offer a vast list of movie moments and particulars that have forged the guy who hammers out these columns week to week.  Lists such as these are bound to differ from person to person, but I’m sure we all share plenty of them as well.

    1. The Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz”
    At six-years-old that witch was terrifying as my family watched this in black and white for the first time (that I recall) — nightmares ensued.

    2. John Wayne in “True Grit”
    With a twirl of the rifle he marches boldly ahead to do battle outnumbered four to one by men half his age. Putting the reins between his teeth, he draws a weapon in each hand and charges…true grit indeed.

    3. That searing ending of “Planet of the Apes”
    I still get shivers watching Heston find Lady Liberty up to her armpit in the sand, his world gone forever.

    4. The parting of the Red Sea in “The Ten Commandments”
    THE moment that forever addicted me to movies. And I expected so little of the film. The sheer scope and spectacle took my breath away and when Moses parted the water? Hooked like a junkie to his junk1

    5. “The Godfather”
    In its entirety.  Such beauty and brilliance…family…murder…wow.

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  • Finally getting excited about 2008…

    Sean Penn in MilkNot a whole lot has piqued my cinematic interest this year. “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” are the happy pre-festival-season exceptions. But even with Toronto not yielding a whole lot in terms of Oscar frontrunners, I am finding more and more to be excited about in the coming months and expect an intense race for that little golden guy. Here are the six (well, seven…you’ll see) most anticipated of the year for me, at this stage…

    “The Road” (John Hollcoat)
    Is anyone else as pumped for this as I am? After reading the book in three days, imagining Viggo Mortensen in a number of the scenes and Robert Duvall as the old man, I can’t wait. If Mortensen does justice to the character (and I think he will), he is in for an Oscar nod, the second in a row for the actor.  And the film itself could be a dark horse contender for Best Picture and Best Director. The Academy has shown some courage these last few years embracing dark subjects, and this one is certainly dark.  Though the book ends with a ray of hope for humanity. Here’s hoping they capture the intensity and raw realism of the novel.

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  • Top 10 Downey perfs?

    Robert Downy Jr. in Natural Born KillersOur friend John Campea over at The Movie Blog recently posted a list of the top 10 performances Robert Downey Jr. has given us over his roller-coaster career.  A nice idea for a post given the career resurgence Downy is enjoying this year, and perhaps one more portrayal will be taken into consideration in a few months when “The Soloist” drops.

    Anyway, John’s list got my wheels turning to say the least.  I object with plenty of it, from choice of performances to the ranking order, but a few of the omissions really sting.

    So I figured I’d just toss up my own list (keeping in mind I haven’t yet seen “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints”):

    1. “Natural Born Killers”
    2. “Chaplin”
    3. “Less Than Zero”
    4. “Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus”
    5. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”
    6. “Two Girls and a Guy”
    7. “Iron Man”
    8. “Zodiac”
    9. “Tropic Thunder”
    10. “Restoration”

    What say you?

  • Greatest movie sequels of all time?

    Elsa Lanchester in Bride of FrankensteinTwo friends of IC, Rope of Silicon and The Movie Blog, have decided this week to chart the greatest movie sequels of all time. Obviously it’s a subjective endeavor, but I thought I’d crank out my list. Pick it apart, praise it and/or add your choices in the comments below!

    Before getting to the list, however, I want to note the criteria. For me, I don’t think this is one of those lists where #1 is necessarily a better film than #2, etc. I think judging a list of sequels should entail what a sequel does for the film or films that preceded it and how it fits into that overall landscape.

    A fantastic sequel to a terrible film might deserve more credence than a fantastic sequel to a fantastic film, but if the latter happens to add considerably to the overall palette rather than continue down already trailblazing territory, then it should be taken into serious account as well.

    The 10 greatest movie sequels of all time:

    10. “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” (Steven Spielberg, 1989)
    Before Steven Spielberg and George Lucas raped my childhood earlier this year, they were separately responsible for the greatest trilogy in movie history. While my personal favorite of the set is “Temple of Doom” (a minority opinion I cherish), this late-80s denouement (well, we thought it was a denouement) had all the right ingredients for sending our valiant hero of the decade off into the sunset.

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  • The top 15 greatest foreign language films ever

    Nosferatu the VampyreI thought I’d respond to some harking in a recent post about my tendency to lean toward domestic cinema.  The assumption seems to be that I don’t care for foreign language cinema, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

    One of the great joys of attending a film festival is to seek out films from other countries, to learn what one can about their cultures through their brand of cinema and to understand that art, in any form is really not so different around the globe.

    I discovered foreign language film at a very young age thanks to a local rep cinema that constantly played movies like “Breathless,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Wild Child” and “Rules of the Game.” The first time I went to see “Breathless” I was 13 and was thrilled by this “new” experience of reading subtitles and watching something that seemed so different to me. Of course as I matured I realized that what seemed new was the artistic vision of a different culture.

    The old theater ran some films directed by the great Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray: The Apu Trilogy. For the first time I saw what extraordinary realism could be created on the screen. I remember when “The Tin Drum” was banned in Ontario (stupid, stupid, stupid). I headed down to Buffalo to see it…loved it.

    I remember the first time I saw a film directed and written by Lina Wertmuller, who was huge in the 1970s for a short time, as well as my discovery of Ingmar Bergman and Bernardo Bertolucci as well, Akira Kurosawa and Federico Fellini, their films forever seared into my mind.

    Now back to the reason for posting this entry: Do I prefer North American cinema? Shoot me, but yes I do, because it is what I was raised on, what I am used to.

    Random asides on some of the greats…I believe Ingmar Bergman is overrated, and though I have enjoyed a few of his films, I certainly do not believe everything he makes is a masterpiece. His work, the two exceptions on this list below, strikes me as pretentious and over-intellectualized.

    Though Jean-Luc Godard did something rather extraordinary with “Breathless,” I have not liked much of anything else he has directed, some of it nothing more than artistic masturbation.

    I think it is somewhat sad that so few foreign language films actually make it to these shores, however.  But on with the list…

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  • Speaking of comic book lists…

    …this one is pretty lame.  Though #8 is a big “YES” in my book.  Who has the rights anyway?  Paramount?  Can’t remember.

  • Empire’s 50 greatest comic book characters

    For the most part, this list is refreshing.  Lots of balls putting certain characters as high as they are (John Constantine at #3?), but I like the originality.

    That said, I’ve had it up to HERE with my boy coming in silver all the time.  Come on…

  • Greatest film? Ever changing, ever evolving…

    Lawrence of ArabiaI just finished teaching a class of senior film students and we entered into a terrific debate about their choices for the greatest film ever made. These were not regular students of mine.  Another instructor had taught them film history, but being aware of my work as a historian and writer, they were excited for the chance to debate.

    It was shocking to me that not a single film they mentioned was made before 1980. Not one. My God…not even “Raging Bull.” Now in fairness it could be a fluke and this is a class not willing to challenge themselves by studying in depth the films of the past.  I have taught classes that dove right in and came away loving the work of Chaplin, or Renoir, for instance, without being exposed to it in the past.

    I challenged them in the next week to go and view some of the films on my personal 10 best list in the hopes their eyes would be opened to the great works of the past. Every film unseen is a new release, right?

    Though home entertainment, video and DVD has allowed for entire new generations to become better educated cinematically, I now wonder if that is actually happening? These students have been hammered with film history and film theory, they have screened “Citizen Kane,” “On the Waterfront” and “Lawrence of Arabia,” so they are certainly aware of them.  Yet the film most often chosen as the greatest was “Pulp Fiction.”

    I do not personally share the opinion that “Citizen Kane” is the greatest film ever made. There was a time when perhaps it was, and while it remains the most innovative film of its time, other endeavors have now surpassed it in my opinion, and at least one made before it was always better.

    Is film history being preserved? Are the great films from years gone by being remembered for the sublime works of art that they were? Are young people aware that many films of today are homages to the films of the past? It is among my greatest fears that the generations to come will lose touch with the great films of yesteryear.

    As a critic, I see my job to celebrate the great films and render an opinion of the pictures I see, but as an educator it goes much deeper than that. Film students should live, breathe sleep and eat cinema. I did. I am stunned when a student puts up his or her hand when I ask who hasn’t seen “The Godfather.” It is a fact I cannot simply not fathom that students making the decision to create films for the rest of their life come to a college and are not aware of the classics.

    I do my best to instill that love.  My office is a regular hang out for kids wanting to talk film, wanting an opinion, or hoping for a recommendation. I would not have it any other way. If one or two students per term leaves having seen the films I asked them to see, understood them, understand further why they are historically significant…I am confident I have done my job and my part to keep film history alive. Nothing pleases me more than turning today’s students onto something like the Universal monster legacy and having them come back amazed at the films…it is a thrill.

    For the record, my ten greatest North American films are in order of preference:

    1. “The Godfather Part II”
    2. “The Godfather”
    3. “Lawrence of Arabia”
    4. “The Wizard of Oz”
    5. “Schindler’s List”
    6. “Raging Bull”
    7. “The Searchers”
    8. “On the Waterfront”
    9. “Apocalypse Now”
    10. “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”

    What about you?  What are your top 10 films of all time — the age-old question.

  • What are the greatest taglines ever?

    In the “Appaloosa” post below, I mention how striking the tagline for the film was: “Feelings get you killed.”  So cold, so direct, so perfect in so many ways.

    It has me wondering, what are the greatest movie taglines of all time?  “Look closer” from “American Beauty” comes to mind.  I also always loved “The man with the barbed-wire soul” from “Hud.”  “Don’t go in the water?”  “In space, no one can hear you scream?”  “An adventure 65 million years in the making?”  “There’s something about your first piece?”

    I don’t know, you guys tell me…what’s the greatest film tagline of all time?