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interesting looking on the dozen or so films I've seen for these lists since april, I've mostly focused on the bottom and the top of the BP winners. rather than the muddled middle where there could actually be revisits that may change the list. I think that's because I'm most interested in the fun of revisiting some of the top films (like Casablanca), and I am most curious about what I think of the bottom films now. I wasn't really planning on that approach, thinking I'd rewatch a lot in the 20-40 range, but as I've picked and chosen what to watch any given night, those have been the two categories that have tended to win out.

movielocke wrote: Tue May 14, 2019 11:20 pmOf course I also always assume everyone in this board has seen a lot more films than I have, so maybe my assumption that everyone participating has seen all 92 is wrong. :-p

Speaking for myself, by a quick count I believe I've see 60 of them, many not for many, many years. But then again, I'm not participating except in a passive manner.

I went through all the winners back in 2012-13 and did rank them at the time, though I don't know how passionately I can stand by those judgments now.

I also apologize for not participating more in discussions here, especially since the synergy was unusually great with my own personal projects, but I've just been insanely busy trying to catch up on some new films and getting reacquainted with the library on the Criterion Channel. I will definitely submit a list.

In retrospect, given that we have two threads that have been around for a decade already devoted to these films, perhaps it’s not so strange people have less to say than usual. Still, props to our participants and remember that you can submit a list/lists even if you haven’t seen all or even most of the eligible films

After the moderately positive noises in this thread about Broadway Melody I decided to give it one more go.

It is terrible. The acting is atrocious, and the attempts by most of the actors to talk is just horrid, the line readings are often bad, full of awkward pauses. Makes the child actors in Skippy look like prodigies. It actually gets a bit better in the last ten minutes of the film, suggesting just how fast things were changing, that even within the few weeks of shooting they were figuring out and improving things (assuming they shot all the dialogue portions in rough continuity). the script has the occasional zinger and pre-code innuendo, twice making me actually laugh, but the delivery is so bad that it makes the script look bad but the script is merely mostly mediocre.

The titular song is of course great, the other songs are mediocre, the singers are meh, and the dancing and numbers are tepid as directed/edited/presented here.

The best part of the film is the opening ninety seconds, which is a fascinating dense and busy cacophony of sound that gets pulled down gradually as people gather to hear "The Broadway Melody".

But it is fascinating as a launching point for many musicals. I would still say Hollywood Revue is slightly better, even with some of the godawful parts, and having just seen King of Jazz last year, I think I was pretty unfair to it, as it is world's better than this, but I still rated it fairly low.

Absolutely in the bottom two of the winners list for me.

The Grand Hotel on the other hand, was slightly better than I remember. I love the opening with the phone conversations and the energy and pace of the film.

Right up until we come to a screeching halt when Garbo and Barrymore's romance takes center stage. Both actors are fine, the script is fine, the romance is fine. But the rest of the film is fun and energetic and their romance is not. So that dichotomy pulls the film down for me as I think it really doesn't work very well. But it is overall a quite good film.

Bridge on the River Kwai is such a pleasure to revisit, like Amadeus, I was also introduced to this film in middle school--in science class--it was the teacher's favorite film, and he had a whole multiweek project where we watched the film and then all had to learn about structural engineering by designing and gluing together little balsa wood pieces (like chopsticks) into a bridge. I learned triangles are strong in bridge structures.

In any event, after the project, I watched the film again on my own, and then several times in high school, but the last time being a couple viewings in college. Since unlike Lawrence of Arabia this never plays repertory, I've never got a chance to see it on the big screen, having missed the last two screenings in LA in 2002 (didn't know how to get to the theatre and had no car) and 2003 (bus driver strike).

I bought the bluray on the day it came out, and then never watched it. What's interesting is how struck I was this time by the film's cynicism, and how tightly paralleled the Saito and Nicholson are but that parallel is wrapped up in a critique of the structures of the military and military leadership. It's amazing that the film is as sympathetic to Saito as it is, and able to walk a tightrope of pretend "celebrating" Nicholson while constructing a narrative built out of criticizing the entire blasted system that creates and perpetuates him. what's impressive is that even William Holden's story is wrapped up in this theme. As a kid, I never quite registered the unfairness and levels of manipulation involved in sending him back with the commando team, so it was striking to see just how explicit the film is about all of this, particularly in some of Holden's dialogue still complaining about the stupidity of sending him back once they're in the jungle.

As the film faded for me over the years, I had kind of thought it wasn't as richly complex thematically and character wise as Lawrence of Arabia, more of a romp is what I remembered. but looking at it now, while it doesn't totally measure up to Lawrence, it is completely in the same vein and much richer than my teenage self grasped.

And I should really mention the pacing. I think this film and The Great Escape are two of the finest paced Hollywood "epics" ever done, neither feel like three hours, both fly by beautifully, all without being action dominant. Interesting that both are prison films, where the action is necessarily confined to a tightened set of spaces, maybe that means the dialogue and character development takes on characteristics of zippier dramas and comedies that are confined to a handful of sets as well, typically...

Gigi Okay, the film is more than a little gross, but I still like several parts and numbers somewhat in spite of its content, the film's coyness about Gigi's age leaves me somewhat confused, you have an actress in her mid twenties, but costumed and discussed as though she were thirteen or fourteen, but perhaps she's supposed to be sixteen? Nineteen? Twelve? hard to say, and I think deliberately so. Minelli's direction and production design of this film are incredibly, outlandishly dense and opulent. Not a favorite for me, but not the worst either, probably lands somewhere in the 60s.

domino harvey wrote: Wed May 15, 2019 7:27 pm

hah!
well, how about this, I had Hollywood revue rated a 3 out of ten (roundabouts 535 overall out of all nominees in the list I made myself a few years ago), broadway melody was rated a 2 of ten (at 547 overall out of all nominees), but I have upped Broadway Melody to a 3 (still ranks as second worst winner!), so perhaps if I ever torture myself to rewatch Hollywood revue (ugh, I would have to suffer through that godawful romeo juliet scene), I would rate it lower than broadway melody?

I’m pretty sure screening the Romeo and Juliet skit for anyone unawares constitutes a war crime under the Geneva Convention

Just that scene?

I mean, imagine getting punched over and over but then one of the stray punches hits your windpipe and you almost choke to death. That’s the blow you remember

I liked the skit about Lon Chaney in Hollywood Revue... or at least I think I did. It's just about the only thing I remember about it now. I'm not a massive Broadway Melody booster either, but I did find it fun and somewhat memorable; the performances do creak a bit, but only in that distinct early-talkie way that I find oddly fascinating (I think because in an era of American cinema that broadly seems so distant and dreamlike, the awkwardness of acting in those very early sound films seems like a rude and frayed invasion of "real life"). I've only seen two of the three other surviving nominees that year but I wouldn't really advocate for either of them as a stronger choice, despite my soft spot for In Old Arizona.

Random Harvest
The plot and premise to this film is so incredibly absurd that the fact it does not die under its own weight is miracle enough. That somehow it manages to skim greatness cements it as a pleasant shocker. I honestly don't know how the film convinced me in its first act which is something so bizarre it might be best to go into it blind. If I had to gander a guess I'd say it rests on the two lead who somehow manage to make the absurd mundane and the mundane extraordinary. I've dunked on Colman a lot over the years, but his tendency towards enigma works well here as a man who is never really sure of his own life. He feeds well to the shadows of the film making this seem like a noir variation of the typical soap opera romance.

Garson gives a great performance as well, but she's barely in the film much to my surprise so there's not much to say beyond it's up there with her best.

Bad Girl
The various pieces that make this work aren't terrible unique for the period. It's the doomed romance of the industrial age that would be worked and reworked up through Penny Serenade. What makes this unusually successful though is a real dedication to simplicity. There's no big act of melodrama popping up. The crying Cary Grant is no centerpiece nor is there a terrified Janet Gaynor. Instead we have ordinary problems played with an open psychology. In a way this is the movie that the few Griffith sound films were aiming.

Kings Row
This is a confusing film. It's obviously a necessary step toward Peyton Place, but its defining struggle in content also keeps it from quite working. Everyone admirably tries to make this work and in a decade they would have probably succeeded, but instead the film stops short of success and is content to be very interesting.

Reminder that lists are due by end of day Friday, which is really going to mean like no later than 2PM EST on Saturday FYI

Rocky

I grew up watching Rocky IV extremely often and occasionally Rocky V and Rocky II . Rocky III I didn't like as a child since Rocky loses, and Rocky I have no childhood memory of, probably because I found it so boring I wandered away from the TV if my dad was watching it.

But in any event, kids are stupid (though I stand by the childish opinion that Rocky IV is glorious, dumb fun and the training sequence is absolutely amazing), and I've long thought (since high school at least, that the first film was definitely the finest. This first revisit since Rocky Balboa came out was a tremendous pleasure, it's amazing how embedded in poverty Rocky and his friends and family are, how dead end all their lives are, how much they hate it. And how they can do nothing about it. I love that the film's final fight is a metaphor for how they deal with poverty and life. Rocky doesn't want to win, he simply wants to take every ounce of punishment and last to the end of the fight. It's how his entire life has always been for him and everyone he knows, metaphorically being brutally beaten to a pulp by people stronger and better than you, but insisting on the shred of humanity of not being broken by the brutal reality of life. That's the core inspirational element--and of course is the core lie of the dream--taking everything life can dish out and not breaking. Never winning (something that implausible can never happen), but simply having the dignity of taking the punishment and being proud of how you took the punishment. Sad, amazing, and troubling on a thematic level, the whole film is quite stunning. It's easy to forget given the 1980s capture and commodification of Rocky and Rambo how both films are quite radical in their critique of society and class.

Annie HallI always oscillate so much with Annie Hall, every time I watch it. This, my fourth or fifth time, I think I liked it more than I have in the past, because you know, I need the eggs, but I felt like I keyed in on what my problem has always been: I identify with Annie so much more than Alvie and that makes it hard to like the film, because I always wind up in the same place as Annie at the end of the film, rejecting Alvie, which always causes me to think back on the film I just watched and dislike it a little more than I did when I just watching it. And that's kind of brilliant if that's the intent. But regardless of how I never quite adore this film, it is quite amazing and enjoyable, frequently wonderful in its visual and playful inventiveness, there's an undeniable charm to the whole thing.

Patton Oh this is so interesting and muddled and a weird movie. George C Scott is phenomenal in the role, but it's also glorifying the military but criticizing Patton's character while being unable to resist celebrating it. The film seems to have all the bones of a really incisive critique, but it holds back just enough that you can watch it oblivious to any critique, and could easily take Patton's side instead of the soldier's. All that embedded potential critique of military leadership enabling an insane man is fairly undercut by the post-intermission section of the film, which ultimately descends into an event checking series of triumphal conquests. Tacking on that celebration exculpates the entirety of what came before and when it suddenly rears its head again in the ominous Anti-russian sequence (and the wacky horseback press conference), it doesn't seem to fit with what the film chose to become in the second half. Kind of a mess, kind of amazing, I had to rewatch the opening speech after the film ended (since the speech takes place after he's a four star general), and it complicates everything further, the more you keep that insanity in context of the rest of the film, in all it's very good, but lacks conviction.

All Quiet on the Western Front What the fuck. This is incredible. Stunning such a screed of an anti-war film was made, much less was an international smash hit, particularly one whose existence demands you also acknowledge the humanity of the enemy (by being from the point of view of the Germans). Other than the occasional mediocre line reading, this film is pretty flawless. First film I've revisited that will make the final list that I didn't have on my preliminary list.

How Green was my Valley Yup. Still the best, best picture winner.

put in my lists, the nominees for 69-2018 could have used twenty-thirty revisits by itself, so very many canonical films I've only watched once (mostly fifteen years ago) that may well have wormed their way onto the list if I revisted. I wound up swapping out the Godfather sequel for Sunrise to make room for the Unique and Artistic production in the BP winners only list, I nearly submitted while forgetting all about Sunrise. Not sure how I'll feel about that omission over the next few days, a revision may be in order.

A Man for All Seasons

When I watched it ages ago, I was struck by More's nobility, now much older, I'm struck by More's selfishness, and I love the complexity of the dialogue and plot that allows all these critiques of More to coexist within the film. More rebuts some of what I now dislike about him in the phenomenal final scene with his family, and I'm amazed I never realized how complex the film is regarding the finer points of his self-inflicted tragedy.

It's interesting how that one clip of "yes I give the devil benefit of law for my own safety's sake" has become so frequently linked in the last few years, when the rest of the film shows the weak limitations of this now popular democrat laissez faire philosophy, as capture of the law by bad faith actors makes it into an easy weapon to wield against those like More who failed to protect or immunize the law from capture in the first place.

Reminder that lists are due “tonite” ie by 2PM EST tomorrow. We do not have close to ten lists yet, and everyone can submit because I know y’all have seen enough of these to make a ballot. So, in the words of the poet, Vote or Die

I choose death. Oh wait, I mean vote.

Submissions closed. 16 winners lists and 15X2 nominees lists. Since this is like tabulating three different lists at the same time, results will take a minute. For those curious, I can already tell you that no winner appeared on every list

I realized after I submitted that I completely forgot Sunrise was eligible, and it would have been in my top five, but oh well. I don’t suppose it needs my help!!

THE BEST PICTURE NOMINEES 1927-1968 LIST

01 Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick 1964) 10 (1)
02 the Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger 1948) 11 (3)
03 La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir 1937) 9 (1)
04 Citizen Kane (Orson Welles 1941) 8 (2)
05 I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang! (Mervyn LeRoy 1932) 9

06 Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger 1959) 8 (1)
07 the Quiet Man (John Ford 1952) 7
07 Stagecoach (John Ford 1939) 7 (2)
09 the Crowd (King Vidor 1928) 5 (2)
10 the Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston 1948) 6

11 Sunset Blvd (Billy Wilder 1950) 6
12 Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder 1944) 4 (1)
13 the Maltese Falcon (John Huston 1941) 5
14 the Grapes of Wrath (John Ford 1940) 4
15 the Philadelphia Story (George Cukor 1940) 5

16 Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch 1943) 3 (1)
16 Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg 1932) 4
18 Bad Girl (Frank Borzage 1931) 3
19 the Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming 1939) 4
20 the Thin Man (WS Van Dyke 1934) 4

21 the Awful Truth (Leo McCarey 1937) 5
22 Stage Door (Gregory La Cava 1937) 4
23 the Graduate (Mike Nichols 1967) 4
23 the Hustler (Robert Rossen 1961) 4
23 It’s A Wonderful Life (Frank Capra 1946) 3 (1)
23 7th Heaven (Frank Borzage 1927) 4

ALSO RANS
the Magnificent Ambersons, Bonnie and Clyde, A Place in the Sun, the More the Merrier, Rachel, Rachel, Ninotchka, Elmer Gantry, Moulin Rouge (1952), Foreign Correspondent, the Song of Bernadette, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, the Great Dictator, the Adventures of Robin Hood, Suspicion, Shane, the Ox Bow Incident, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Spellbound, Ruggles of Red Gap, Mary Poppins, 12 Angry Men, Picnic, Mildred Pierce, the Gay Divorcee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Pygmalion, Top Hat, 42nd Street, the Heiress, Sgt York, the Love Parade, Libeled Lady, the Smiling Lieutenant, Henry V

ORPHANS
A Streetcar Named Desire, America America, the Bishop’s Wife, Captains Courageous, Darling, Dodsworth, Father of the Bride, Friendly Persuasion, Gaslight, Here Comes Mr Jordan, High Noon, In Which We Serve, Jezebel, the Letter, the Lion in Winter, the Long Voyage Home, Madame Curie, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Of Mice and Men, Our Town, Peyton Place, the Pride of the Yankees, the Private Life of Henry VIII, the Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Wuthering Heights, Yankee Doodle Dandy




THE BEST PICTURE NOMINEES 1969-2018 LIST

01 Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese 1976) 11 (2)
02 Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick 1975) 8 (3)
03 Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola 1979) 8
04 All the President’s Men (Alan J Pakula 1976) 10
05 the Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola 1974) 8 (1)

06 Chinatown (Roman Polanski 1974) 8 (1)
07 There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson 2007) 9
08 the Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick 1998) 6 (1)
09 Nashville (Robert Altman 1975) 6
10 Broadcast News (James L Brooks 1987) 5
10 Jaws (Steven Spielberg 1975) 5 (1)

12 the Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich 1971) 4 (1)
13 Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg 1981) 4
14 the Tree of Life (Terrence Malick 2011) 5 (1)
15 Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson 2017) 4 (1)

16 Star Wars (George Lucas 1977) 3 (1)
17 Deliverance (John Boorman 1972) 4
17 the Right Stuff (Phillip Kaufman 1983) 4
19 the Exorcist (William Friedkin 1973) 3
19 Fargo (Joel Coen 1996) 5

21 Z (Costas-Gavras 1969) 4
22 Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman 1973) 3 (1)
23 Her (Spike Jonze 2013) 4
24 Inception (Christopher Nolan 2010) 4
24 Network (Sidney Lumet 1976) 5

ALSO RANS
Traffic, M*A*S*H, Goodfellas, Cabaret (1), the Elephant Man, Raging Bull, Hannah and Her Sisters, ET, Beauty and the Beast, the Wolf of Wall Street, Inglourious Basterds, Pulp Fiction, Dog Day Afternoon, American Hustle, A Soldier’s Story, the Crying Game, True Grit, JFK, Lincoln, the Piano, Secrets & Lies, Five Easy Pieces, Saving Private Ryan, Gravity, Manchester by the Sea, La La Land, Coming Home, Dunkirk, Sideways, the Social Network, the Killing Fields, Arrival, Up in the Air, Lost in Translation

ORPHANS
A Clockwork Orange, A Passage to India, A Room With a View, A Serious Man, A Star is Born (2018), All That Jazz, Apollo 13, Babe, the Big Chill, Black Swan, BlacKkKlansman, Born on the Fourth of July, Boyhood, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Call Me By Your Name, Dangerous Liaisons, Django Unchained, Elizabeth, the Favourite, Field of Dreams, the Fugitive, the Grand Budapest Hotel, In the Bedroom, the Insider, Jerry Maguire, LA Confidential, Lady Bird, the Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring, the Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers, Mad Max: Fury Road, Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World, Michael Clayton, Moulin Rouge! (2001), Munich, Nebraska, Norma Rae, the Pianist, Reds, the Remains of the Day, Roma, Sense and Sensibility, the Shawshank Redemption, Tender Mercies, Toy Story 3, Up, Winter’s Bone, Zero Dark Thirty




THE BEST PICTURE WINNERS (ALL YEARS) LIST

01 the Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler 1946) 11 (2)
02 the Apartment (Billy Wilder 1960) 11 (5)
03 Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock 1940) 13
04 Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (FW Murnau 1927) 12 (2)
05 the Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola 1972) 10 (3)

06 All About Eve (Joseph L Mankiewicz 1950) 10 (1)
07 Casablanca (Michael Curtiz 1943) 9 (1)
08 Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean 1962) 8
09 No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen 2007) 8
10 It Happened One Night (Frank Capra 1934) 8

11 Annie Hall (Woody Allen 1977) 7
12 the French Connection (William Friedkin 1971) 7
13 Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean 1957) 8
14 the Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme 1991) 9
15 How Green Was My Valley (John Ford 1941) 7 (2)

16 All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone 1930) 9
17 Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood 1992) 6
18 All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen 1949) 5
19 Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming 1939) 5
20 the Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola 1974) 4
20 Mrs Miniver (William Wyler 1942) 5

22 Amadeus (Milos Foreman 1984) 4
23 Moonlight (Barry Jenkins 2016) 4
23 Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg 1993) 4
25 Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu 2014) 4
25 the Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino 1978) 4

ALSO RANS
West Side Story, Midnight Cowboy, Patton, Platoon, On the Waterfront, Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Chicago, Wings, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Gandhi, 12 Years a Slave, Forrest Gump, Spotlight, the Hurt Locker, the English Patient, the Artist, Terms of Endearment, Grand Hotel, the Sting, A Man For All Seasons

ORPHANS
An American in Paris, Dances With Wolves, From Here to Eternity, Gladiator, Hamlet, In the Heat of the Night, Kramer vs Kramer, the Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King, Million Dollar Baby, Rocky, Shakespeare in Love, the Sound of Music, Titanic

The Best Years of Our Lives won by a single point, by the way. The other two winners were not surprising (and they'd already topped other mini list projects), but I was excited for Wyler's film pulling off an upset in the big round (even though I voted for the Apartment in the top slot)

In the modern era nominees category, 1975-76 were especially fruitful.

That third picture had me verbally guffaw. Also collating this list made me realize I basically don't care for the '60s and '70s which were just boring decades. More thoughts in the morning maybe, but mostly thanks for a fun list.

Thanks domino, I think you just fixed racism!

Great work domino. I have exactly the same reaction to the Best Years upset; it almost compensates for my beloved Dodsworth getting orphaned...