The Lists Project

[flambeur]

If your considering Godfather I & II as separate titles, I think the same relationship holds true for The Emigrants & The New Land.

Sweden is releasing both films as a single set which in my way of seeing means that they belong together much like the Kill Bill ones.

Off topic but Criterion where are U??

[Michael]

Looking at the submissions that I've received so far, one of them lists only The New Land and the other one lists only The Emigants. Some list both titles. There are people like Annie Mall and myself who have seen The Emigants and never gotten the chance to see The New Land. IMDb shows that those films were released separately by one year. Treating The Emigants and The New Land as separate films would make it a lot less confusing. I think.

[Michael]

up to 16 now: myself, kieslowski_67, lord_clyde, jorencain, yoshimori, kambei, Dylan, Annie Mall, flambeur, Langlois68, zedz, clutch44, Arcadean, Brian Oblivion, ola t, souvenir,

[kieslowski_67]

up to 16 now: myself, kieslowski_67, lord_clyde, jorencain, yoshimori, kambei, Dylan, Annie Mall, flambeur, Langlois68, zedz, clutch44, Arcadean, Brian Oblivion, ola t, souvenir,

When can we have the list, Michael?

[Michael]

When can we have the list, Michael?

Most likely tomorrow night. If not, Tuesday for sure.

[Michael]

The finalized & corrected '70s list is posted on the next page.

[Michael]

Your 80s lists will be due on Halloween.

[kieslowski_67]

Still not any significant surprise on the 70s list. Thanks Michael, for the hard work. =D>

[denti alligator]

I find it somewhat surprising. You're telling me each of these films got at least two votes? Greenaway's A Walk Through H? (Great film, but still...) The top 20 is predictable, though I would have guessed Eraserhead would have made it. Looking forward to the 80s.

[yoshimori]

I was happy to see someone else voted for Rosi's The Mattei Case. His Uomini contro (my number 3) made the list too. I'd also recommend, also from the early 70s, Illustrious Cadavers, the last available on a fine r2it dvd (no subs, alas). These early 70s Rosi films are gripping and intelligently made.

Apparently I was the only one to vote for any Bruce Conner found-footage shorts; "Valse triste" and "Take the 5:10 to Dreamland" made my list. Ditto Kuchar's "Wild Night at Reno".

Though I had it only at number 30, I was shocked not to see Vengeance Is Mine on the list. And so many faffy Criterions (the 70s Bergmans, e.g., and Ali) but no Man Who Fell to Earth?

[backstreetsbackalright]

Actually, I'm very surprised to see Annie Hall at No. 1, although in the last 48hrs. before my list was due, I watched it rise in my estimation thirteen positions. Kinda glad it did, because I really don't care for Nashville. I really expected to see The Conformist top the list.

I knew something by Tarkovsky would make the Top 10. I had a funny feeling it might be Mirror, which caused me to re-watch it this weekend. After reevaluation I must say that, despite many astonishingly good passages, I find it considerably less strong than either Solaris or Stalker.

And did I miss Phantom of Liberty, or did it not make the list? Is this because fewer people have seen it than the films that bookend it? Or do people significantly prefer Discreet Charm and Obscure Object?

[zedz]

Thanks Michael, for your speedy and efficient collation

This list does start to get interesting around the mid-forties, I suppose, but I find the dominance of American filmmakers pretty depressing. On this list, nearly two thirds of the top 100 are English-language.

On the other hand, there were a couple of genuine surprises this time. I'm amazed that there were other supporters for A Walk through H and Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (both in my top 10 - when will some brave company release the latter on DVD?), which somewhat offset my expected dismay that a lot of people still mistook Star Wars for a great movie. Another moral of this story is that Celine and Julie needs an English-subtitled DVD urgently, before it falls off the edge of the world.

In the nitpicky corner, if this was a list of the top 100 films, it should stop around number 81, by my reckoning, with the rest falling into the traditional supplementary list (which I generally find more interesting anyway).

Don't forget to defend your darlings. I've got a shitload this time.

[Dylan]

Michael,

Very nice job on the list. I am also surprised, and delighted, that "Annie Hall" deservedly took the top spot. Not only is it likely my favorite love story, but it is truly a damn great film on top of that (it is #10 on my personal 70s list). And I'm also pleasantly surprised that "The Conformist" made it in the top ten, you guys rule!

There were some surprising omissions (Woody Allen's "Interiors," Truffaut's "The Green Room" and "Two English Girls," Bertolucci's "The Spider's Stratagem," all of which in hindsight I should've put much higher up on my list, particularly "Two English Girls").

Dylan

[jorencain]

And did I miss Phantom of Liberty, or did it not make the list? Is this because fewer people have seen it than the films that bookend it? Or do people significantly prefer Discreet Charm and Obscure Object?

I know I prefer the others. I think that was the general consensus in some Bunuel-related thread.

[Michael]

Good news, Dylan. Two English Girls is #64. I knew there was one title missing from the list and that was it. I went over the list 20 times last night, 20 times today. I had two separate lists mixed up once and Two English Girls was the only title that somehow got lost in that mix up. My fault.

The Green Room and The Spider' Stratagem each received two votes but did not score enough to make it on the list. Interiors received only one vote and that was yours, Dylan.

[kieslowski_67]

In the nitpicky corner, if this was a list of the top 100 films, it should stop around number 81, by my reckoning, with the rest falling into the traditional supplementary list (which I generally find more interesting anyway).

Don't forget to defend your darlings. I've got a shitload this time.

I beg to differ. In an ideal world, if all the movies had been available on R1 DVD, I am pretty certain that both "The Travelling Players" (Angelopoulos, 1975) and "Shinobugawa" (Kei Kumai, 1972) would have been way higher on the list. And I am very surprised that those voted for Bresson's "Balthazar" did not even bother to vote for Rostotsky's "white Bim black ears" (1977) (available on RUSCICO DVD, a superior movie on so many levels), and his masterpiece "the dawns here are quiet" (1972) (available from both RUSCICO and Image DVD).

BTW, I would be very surprised if 'the conformist' had not made the top 10 list. The movie is highly regarded on this board. Actually I am a little surprised that it did not go top 3, and was placed below Altman's "Nashville". #-o

[Michael]

Here's the list of the films that received at least two votes but didn't make it on the final list:

Alice in the Cities (Wenders, 1974)
American Graffiti (Lucas, 1973)
Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah, 1974)
Cabaret (Fosse, 1972)
The Brood (Cronenberg, 1979)
Camera Buff (Kieslowski, 1979)
The China Syndrome (Bridges, 1979)
Christ Stopped at Eboli (Rosi, 1979)
The Clowns (Fellini, 1971)
Coffy (Hill, 1973)
Day for Night (Truffaut, 1973)
The Day of the Jackal (Zinnemann, 1973)
Deliverance (Boorman, 1972)
Dersu Uzala (Kurosawa, 1975)
Family Life (Loach, 1971)
Duck, You Sucker!/Fistful of Dynamite (Leone, 1971)
Fata Morgana (Herzog, 1971)
Flesh for Frankenstein (Morrissey, 1973)
Four Nights of a Dreamer (Bresson, 1971)
The Go-Between (Losey, 1970)
The Green Room (Truffaut, 1978)
Harold and Maude (Ashby, 1971)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978)
Je, Tu, Il, Elle (Akerman, 1974)
Jeanne Dielman (Akerman, 1976)
Killer of the Sheep (Burnett, 1977)
Kings of the Road (Wenders, 1976)
Land of Silence and Darkness (Herzog, 1971)
The Last Detail (Ashby, 1973)
The Last Waltz (Scorsese, 1978)
Le Boucher (Chabrol, 1970)
Lenny (Fosse, 1974)
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Shlondorff, 1975)
Ludwig (Visconti, 1972)
Martha (Fassbinder, 1974)
The Mattei Affair (Rosi, 1972)
Mongoloid (Connor, 1978)
Monsieur Klein (Losey, 1976
Network (Lumet, 1976)
The New Land (Troell, 1972)
New York, New York (Scorsese, 1977)
Obsession (DePalma, 1976)
The Parallax View (Pakula, 1974)
The Phantom of Liberty (Bunuel, 1974)
Pink Narcissus (Bidgood, 1971)
Pink Flamingos (Waters, 1972)
Providence (Resnais, 1977)
The Ruling Class (Medak, 1972)
State of Siege (Costa-Gavras, 1973)
A Swedish Love Story (Andersson, 1970)
Taking Off (Forman, 1971)
Tess (Polanski, 1979)
The Spider's Stratagem (Bertolucci, 1970)
THX 1138 (Lucas, 1971)
Tout va Bien (Godard, 1972)
The Tragedy of Macbeth (Polanski, 1971)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Olmi, 1978)
Tristana (Bunuel, 1970)
Un Flic (Melville, 1972)
The Wicker Man (Hardy, 1973)

[Dylan]

Michael, very good that "Two English Girls" made it, though I still think I ranked it too low on my list (I only saw it last week and it's taken a while for it to sink through).

I haven't seen "Nashville," but the two who have spoken of it both seem to dislike it. A lot of people must have put it in their top ten if it got that many points.

I'm actually very surprised that I'm the only one who voted for "Interiors." I actually thought that "Annie Mall" was a fan of it as well, though I guess not enough to put it on the list. It was fairly highly ranked by myself, clocking in at about #16, and it is the only film in my first twenty, along with "The Green Room," that didn't make the list (but then again, the consensus have a curious distain for this film, while I continue to hail it as one of Allen's masterpieces).

There are still a ton of 70s films I want to see that I'm sure would've made my list, such as "The Mother and the Whore," "Zabriskie Point," "The Emigrants," and "The Passenger."

With that said, I'm very curious as to how the 80s list will look.

Dylan

[kieslowski_67]

Actually I had "Nashville" around #20. It's a very good movie for sure. I just cannot see it as #2 movie of the 70s.

I had "two English girls" at #6. In lots of aspects, this is Truffaut's answer to his own masterpiece "Jules and Jim". A great story about love and sacrifice. Nestor Almendros's cinematography is spectacular.

[zedz]

I beg to differ. In an ideal world, if all the movies had been available on R1 DVD, I am pretty certain that both "The Travelling Players" (Angelopoulos, 1975) and "Shinobugawa" (Kei Kumai, 1972) would have been way higher on the list.

Beg to differ about what? (Or did you extract the wrong quote?) I was just pointing out that Michael's '100 best' collation runs to over 150 films. The 100th film on the list was actually Four Nights of a Dreamer (now, with the recovery of Two English Girls, I guess it would be Small Change), so everything from Network on is officially an also ran (though I'm far more interested in that group than in the Allens, Kubricks and Coppolas that dominate the official list).

Anyway, I'd love to hear more about Shinobugawa in the aforementioned thread.

[lord_clyde]

Actually I had "Nashville" around #30. It's a very good movie for sure. I just cannot see it as #2 movie of the 70s.

I was pleasantly surprised by this, although it was ranked #14 on my own list.

[backstreetsbackalright]

Regarding the Truffauts matter, there were three films - Adele H, Two English Girls, Bed and Board - that didn't quite make my Top 50, but which all landed in my Top 75. Very glad to see that they got the nod from others, as they're certainly very worthy.

[Michael]

The 1970s have been called the last golden age of American cinema so I'm not surprised by the dominance of American filmmakers. Don't be surprised if the 2000-2005 list comes out with a monstrous chunk of Asian titles.

We also see a great number of German titles on the list here due to the German New Wave that emerged in the 1970s. Personally as a hardcore Fassbinder fan, I'm thrilled by this forum's general love for this incredible filmmaker...two of his films found their way into the top 20! How fabulous.

I'm surprised that The Exorcist and Eraserhead didn't land in the top 20. Oh well. John Waters' Desperate Living did well with six votes. Female Trouble received only one vote and that one came from me. Guess no one likes Divine's epic performance.

While you're working on your 1980s list, please don't forget Errol Morris' Gates of Heaven.

[Michael]

Damn! I made a mistake. #-o While adding up the points, I didn't think of the rule #2:

To make the final list, a film must be mentioned on two different lists.

So very sorry about that. The final list is now revised and finalized.

[GringoTex]

Having Mongoloid sneak in at #100 almost makes up for Annie Hall topping the list. I don't understand the adoration of Woody Allen. Yes, he writes smart, funny dialogue, but I think ultimately his cinema is very limited.