GMD Social Poll: Top Ten Films of 1968

Which decade would you prefer next?

  • 1950's

  • 1960's

  • 1970's

  • 1980's

  • 1990's

  • 2000's

  • 2010's

Results are only viewable after voting.
challenge_everything said:
I don't have an issue with someone not liking something highly regarded, but it's pretty lame to be prejudging a legendary movie with such a wide appeal on the basis that it looks "boring" and "it's a western" particularly when I gather you've never seen another Leone movie.
Click to expand...
Everyone has to find reasons to watch particular movies, otherwise they wouldn't watch any ...at least not purposely. Me not finding a reason to watch something is an unanswered question, hardly a judgement. By the time I get around to watching a movie, sometimes I've forgotten why it appealed enough to go on my watchlist in the first place. I don't normally watch trailers beforehand either. I try to go in at least somewhat unbiased.
 
the-west-2.jpg

1. Once Upon a Time in the West
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Night of the Living Dead
4. Rosemary's Baby
5. The Boston Strangler
6. Planet of the Apes
7. Where Eagles Dare
8. Hang 'Em High
9. Bullitt
10. Witchfinder General

HM: Coogan's Bluff, Psych-Out, Destroy All Monsters.

*What a great trilogy representing their respective genres beautifully. Each one high quality in their own way, but also massively influential and responsible for helping to popularize their genres in ways that previous films hadn't really achieved.

*Gotta be one of the earliest gritty police procedural films I've ever seen, very degenerate and trashy in a way too. Seemed like it paved the way for a lot of serial killer/detective dramas to come, especially the ones that took a less sensationalized/more authentic angle, even though this story is itself based on a heavily sensationalized series of murders.
 
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Wow, just realised I had completely forgotten to post in this. This is a prelim list, there's a couple more I need to rewatch.

1. Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone)
2. Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski)
3. Night of the Living Dead (George Romero)
4. La Mariee etait en Noir [The Bride Wore Black] (Francois Truffaut)
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
6. Vargtimmen [Hour of the Wolf] (Ingmar Bergman)
7. Diabolik (Mario Bava)
8. Yellow Submarine (George Dunning)
9. Whistle and I'll Come to You (Jonathan Miller)
10. Planet of the Apes (Franklin Schaffner)
 
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Kind of embarrassing to admit, but outside of Kubrick, Polanski, Leone, and Romero, not really. I guess, if five is the minimum, I'd do:

1. 2001 (by light years--to Jupiter and beyond the fucking infinite)
.
.
.
.
.
2. Rosemary's Baby
3. Once Upon a Time in the West
4. Night of the Living Dead
5. Planet of the Apes
 
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not doing this one properly but i'll throw out an unordered and boringly obvious top 5 with mostly old reviews:

Night of the Living Dead
candidate for most ahead-of-its-time movie ever.

2001: A Space Odyssey
i still get goosebumps when the jogging starts, and they pretty much stick around until HAL's demise. the opening few minutes stand as the benchmark for landscape cinematography, and the glacial pacing is hypnotic to a fault. obviously the film is about transcendence, about instilling in the audience a sense of the vast possibility in our species' future (analogising it with our progression from ape form), but this is tempered by the fact that such possibilities are inevitably incomprehensible. that doesn't faze kubrick however, so intent is he on forcing a confrontation with The Unknown; the specifics of that concept are ours to project, but kubrick is there to provide the space upon which we may project them, and the impetus to do so. it's clear, in turn, that the monolith is kubrick's stand-in, intending to inspire a kind of awakening within us, trigger the next evolutionary leap.

perhaps he in some way succeeded, and we have begun the process of transcending the humankind that first encountered 2001 45 years ago; the film's ability to evoke wonder and awe is waning a little precisely because we're approaching the kind of information-overloaded, technocratic society kubrick once predicted. in the film, humanity's attempt to transcend via technology is botched, and perhaps the same is happening now; but it is that failure which sparks bowman's final transformation into the Star Child. the future remains ahead of us, but either way, 2001 is a stubbornly audiovisual film which insists upon the capacity of cinema at its purest to encapsulate--and in doing so, perhaps even influence--the direction of our entire species. there exists no greater affirmation of the power of this artistic medium.

Once Upon a Time in the West
civilisation's railroad is creeping up over the hills, and the old west totters on the brink of extinction. once upon a time... is the dream of one final, glorious swansong, where mythical anti-heroes fight it out across a sweeping backdrop, in a world where those who think with their heads are about to stop losing. left alive is a lady of civilisation, basking in the benefits of progress, and a hero of the old school, purpose extinguished, about to fade into obscurity forever.

Faces
a film that can be accused of inconsistency, of hysterical melodrama, of failing to be as real as it might seem to be trying to be -- particularly when anyone aside from marlin, forst and the inimitable, spellbinding gena rowlands are having to do the work -- but i don't think any of these characteristics are hugely problematic to cassavetes' vision. yes, this is a movie which revels in the mess of real life, riotously exaggerated, as opposed to both your schematic hollywood fictions and neo-realism's brand of deromanticised restraint. but simultaneously, it's also examining precisely what constitutes "real life" and real human connections; it's a film about "mechanical men" and women which reveals flashes of real, naked vulnerability beneath layers of artifice, and so for the film itself to tonally mirror this chaotic swaying between different levels of said artifice is entirely fitting. these characters are always "performing", and not always well, so the actors and their lines don't necessarily need to convince either. cassavetes pioneered and perfected the shakycam close-up long before it became an easy shorthand for "realism", and used it to much more complex effect; his camerawork isn't a mere indicator of immediacy but a search, a quest for the real, mushing up into his characters' faces and careering around the clutter of their homes as though desperate not to miss any rare glimpse of their souls. and even at this early stage of his career, even using this technique, he still stumbles onto sudden shots of striking compositional import without it ever seeming contrived.

Rosemary's Baby
i don't remember it too well now but probably polanski's best, which is to say it's a top tier horror classic. a fucking tough watch in the best way.
 
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no country for old wainds said:
not doing this one properly but i'll throw out an unordered and boringly obvious top 5 with mostly old reviews:

Night of the Living Dead
candidate for most ahead-of-its-time movie ever.

2001: A Space Odyssey
i still get goosebumps when the jogging starts, and they pretty much stick around until HAL's demise. the opening few minutes stand as the benchmark for landscape cinematography, and the glacial pacing is hypnotic to a fault. obviously the film is about transcendence, about instilling in the audience a sense of the vast possibility in our species' future (analogising it with our progression from ape form), but this is tempered by the fact that such possibilities are inevitably incomprehensible. that doesn't faze kubrick however, so intent is he on forcing a confrontation with The Unknown; the specifics of that concept are ours to project, but kubrick is there to provide the space upon which we may project them, and the impetus to do so. it's clear, in turn, that the monolith is kubrick's stand-in, intending to inspire a kind of awakening within us, trigger the next evolutionary leap.

perhaps he in some way succeeded, and we have begun the process of transcending the humankind that first encountered 2001 45 years ago; the film's ability to evoke wonder and awe is waning a little precisely because we're approaching the kind of information-overloaded, technocratic society kubrick once predicted. in the film, humanity's attempt to transcend via technology is botched, and perhaps the same is happening now; but it is that failure which sparks bowman's final transformation into the Star Child. the future remains ahead of us, but either way, 2001 is a stubbornly audiovisual film which insists upon the capacity of cinema at its purest to encapsulate--and in doing so, perhaps even influence--the direction of our entire species. there exists no greater affirmation of the power of this artistic medium.

Once Upon a Time in the West
civilisation's railroad is creeping up over the hills, and the old west totters on the brink of extinction. once upon a time... is the dream of one final, glorious swansong, where mythical anti-heroes fight it out across a sweeping backdrop, in a world where those who think with their heads are about to stop losing. left alive is a lady of civilisation, basking in the benefits of progress, and a hero of the old school, purpose extinguished, about to fade into obscurity forever.

Faces
a film that can be accused of inconsistency, of hysterical melodrama, of failing to be as real as it might seem to be trying to be -- particularly when anyone aside from marlin, forst and the inimitable, spellbinding gena rowlands are having to do the work -- but i don't think any of these characteristics are hugely problematic to cassavetes' vision. yes, this is a movie which revels in the mess of real life, riotously exaggerated, as opposed to both your schematic hollywood fictions and neo-realism's brand of deromanticised restraint. but simultaneously, it's also examining precisely what constitutes "real life" and real human connections; it's a film about "mechanical men" and women which reveals flashes of real, naked vulnerability beneath layers of artifice, and so for the film itself to tonally mirror this chaotic swaying between different levels of said artifice is entirely fitting. these characters are always "performing", and not always well, so the actors and their lines don't necessarily need to convince either. cassavetes pioneered and perfected the shakycam close-up long before it became an easy shorthand for "realism", and used it to much more complex effect; his camerawork isn't a mere indicator of immediacy but a search, a quest for the real, mushing up into his characters' faces and careering around the clutter of their homes as though desperate not to miss any rare glimpse of their souls. and even at this early stage of his career, even using this technique, he still stumbles onto sudden shots of striking compositional import without it ever seeming contrived.

Rosemary's Baby
i don't remember it too well now but probably polanski's best, which is to say it's a top tier horror classic. a fucking tough watch in the best way.
Click to expand...

Literally RYM's top 5, just ordered differently unordered lol.
 
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