The Top 5 List Thread

[rms]

It's been awhile and my memory is fading. Maybe I'll watch it before I check out the latest.

 

[Einherjar86]

It's one aspect of how the novel and film portray what we might call inhuman characters as the most human--not only the androids, but also Isidore/Sebastian (in the film, Sebastian suffers from premature aging; in the book, Isidore is a "chickenhead"). It's no accident that two of the most significant androids in the novel are also female (Rachel and Luba Luft); and these two androids also happen to offer the most compelling reflections on their status as nonhuman.

The novel also racially codes the androids, a detail that the film almost entirely elides.

 

[rms]

Even just the animals and Deckard would be interesting and his wife. Just strange he couldn't get the studio to do that / wanted to do that way

 

[CiG]

I partly think it's a product of '80s star power (i.e. who could possibly resist Harrison Ford's rough and persistent "charm"?).

Eh that's a crap interpretation of one of the more interesting and morally ambiguous scenes in the film. Certainly it has the overtones of a rape scene, but I highly doubt that has much if anything to do with the purpose of the scene.

 

[Einherjar86]

Eh that's a crap interpretation of one of the more interesting and morally ambiguous scenes in the film. Certainly it has the overtones of a rape scene, but I highly doubt that has much if anything to do with the purpose of the scene.

I did say "partly," and I presented what I take to be the full intellectual value of the scene.

That said, I think you give Hollywood producers too much credit. I mean, come on, it's Harrison Ford--we need him to kiss somebody! It's the only "love scene" (yuck) in the film, and it's basically sexual assault. I think we can say that the film is both problematic and intellectually productive. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that its problematic qualities increase its intellectual value. We can read the scene as both a commentary on, and as a symptom of, misogyny. It doesn't have to be either/or.

I don't know the story behind the scene, but if Scott was compelled to include a romance scene between a human and an android, perhaps he purposefully presented it as a rape scene in order to underscore the built-in power dynamic between humans and androids.

It's also worth noting that in the novel, the sex between Rachel and Deckard is consensual (insofar as a nonhuman entity can consent to sex--another interesting question).

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Top 5 films from 1991:

1. Terminator II: Judgement Day
2. Riki-Oh
3. Out for Justice
4. Barton Fink
5. Showdown in Little Tokyo

You forgot Silence of the Lambs as #1

Also Empire Strikes Back >>>> Blues Brothers

 

[zerostatic]

Top 5 Halloween Treats:
1)Reese's Peanut Butter Pumpkins
2)Reese's Peanut Butter Bats
3) Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
4) 3 Musketeers - Muskefears
5) Hershey's Tombstones

 

[CiG]

Also Empire Strikes Back >>>> Blues Brothers

Blues Brothers holds a very special place in my heart and my childhood. I love Star Wars but essentially it's just a cool fantasy-in-space film.

Blues Brothers tapped into black American culture and spread it across the planet, it's infinitely more important to me.

You forgot Silence of the Lambs as #1

Awesome movie but better than Terminator II? Worst. Opinion. Ever.

That said, I think you give Hollywood producers too much credit.

I mean, come on, it's Harrison Ford--we need him to kiss somebody! It's the only "love scene" (yuck) in the film, and it's basically sexual assault. I think we can say that the film is both problematic and intellectually productive. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that its problematic qualities increase its intellectual value. We can read the scene as both a commentary on, and as a symptom of, misogyny. It doesn't have to be either/or.

I don't agree with that last part at all, by which I mean I don't think it's a commentary on or a symptom of misogyny.

But to the first part, I think you're being overly cynical. To achieve a moment of affirming Harrison Ford's manly desirability they didn't need to include a very morally ambiguous "love scene" and as you already stated yourself, that scene perfectly fits in with his character. It's not out of place with anything else he does in the film and it doesn't come across as some hamfisted insertion of a scene to showcase his hunk status.

I don't know the story behind the scene, but if Scott was compelled to include a romance scene between a human and an android, perhaps he purposefully presented it as a rape scene in order to underscore the built-in power dynamic between humans and androids.

It's also worth noting that in the novel, the sex between Rachel and Deckard is consensual (insofar as a nonhuman entity can consent to sex--another interesting question).

I think this is a much more accurate explanation for the scene. I know I'm not some learned neo-aristocrat like yourself () but I always viewed that scene as Deckard, who previously destroyed her sense of her own humanity, attempting to re-humanize her. It's right there in the dialogue when she says she can no longer trust her emotions (I think that's what she says).

What do you think of the angle that Deckard is himself a replicant?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Awesome movie but better than Terminator II? Worst. Opinion. Ever.

It's been forever since I've seen T2, but I thought the Connors were annoying characters, and the kid's friendship with the terminator a cheesy kind of Disneyesque feel-good story. It wasn't as scary or concise as T1. Anyway, Silence of the Lambs is fucking brilliant and perfect.

 

[CiG]

Top 5 films from 2000:

1. Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV
2. Gladiator
3. Snatch
4. Requiem for a Dream
5. The Way of the Gun

Top 5 films from 2001:

1. The Man Who Wasn't There
2. Black Hawk Down
3. Donnie Darko
4. The Fellowship of the Ring
5. Training Day

Top 5 films from 2002:

1. We Were Soldiers
2. Infernal Affairs
3. The Two Towers
4. City of God
5. Gangs of New York

Top 5 films from 2003:

1. Open Range
2. The Return of the King
3. Old Boy
4. Kill Bill
5. Ong-Bak

Top 5 films from 2004:

1. Kill Bill II
2. House of Flying Daggers
3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4. Hellboy
5. The Punisher

Top 5 films from 2005:

1. A History of Violence
2. A Bittersweet Life
3. Sin City
4. Batman Begins
5. SPL

Top 5 films from 2006:

1. The Foot Fist Way
2. The Departed
3. Ten Canoes
4. Pan's Labyrinth
5. Slither

Top 5 films from 2007:

1. The Sasquatch Gang
2. The Darjeeling Limited
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Eastern Promises
5. Zodiac

Top 5 films from 2008:

1. Gran Torino
2. The Dark Knight
3. Rambo
4. Changeling
5. Taken

Top 5 films from 2009:

1. Watchmen
2. The Road
3. Inglorious Basterds
4. A Serious Man
5. Zombieland

 

[CiG]

It's been forever since I've seen T2, but I thought the Connors were annoying characters, and the kid's friendship with the terminator a cheesy kind of Disneyesque feel-good story. It wasn't as scary or concise as T1. Anyway, Silence of the Lambs is fucking brilliant and perfect.

Watch it again perhaps? Maybe you'll feel differently.

 

[rms]

t2 is cool but silence is definitely better

 

[CiG]

Fucks no.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

Silence is good but T2 is definitely better

 

[no country for old wainds]

i feel like i have too many classic blind spots for the other decades atm but i'll do the '00s/'10s

Spoiler

2000

1) George Washington (D. G. Green)
2) In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai)
3) The House of Mirth (Davies)
4) Vinyl (Zweig)
5) Dancer in the Dark (Von Trier)

2001

1) Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
2) The Man Who Wasn't There (Coen Bros.)
3) The Royal Tenenbaums (W. Anderson)
4) Millennium Actress (Kon)
5) The Pledge (Penn)

2002

1) The Son (Dardenne Bros.)
2) Punch Drunk Love (P. T. Anderson)
3) Adaptation (Jonze)
4) Talk To Her (Almodovar)
5) The Twilight Samurai (Yamada)

2003

1) Memories of Murder (Bong Joon-Ho)
2) Dogville (Von Trier)
3) All the Real Girls (D. G. Green)
4) Finding Nemo (Stanton, Unkrich)
5) The Living World (E. Green)

2004

1) Keane (Kerrigan)
2) Mysterious Skin (Araki)
3) Before Sunset (Linklater)
4) The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (W. Anderson)
5) Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban (Cuarón)

2005

1) The New World (Malick)
2) L'Enfant (Dardenne Bros.)
3) A History of Violence (Cronenberg)
4) Cigarette Burns (Carpenter)
5) Tideland (Gilliam)

2006

1) Miami Vice (Mann)
2) Inland Empire (Lynch)
3) Children of Men (Cuarón)
4) Superman Returns (Singer)
5) Still Life (Zhang Ke Jia)

2007

1) There Will Be Blood (P. T. Anderson)
2) The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominik)
3) Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix (Yates)
4) My Winnipeg (Maddin)
5) No Country for Old Men (Coen Bros.)

2008

1) Synecdoche New York (Kaufman)
2) Love Exposure (Sono)
3) Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou)
4) The Dark Knight (Nolan)
5) Melancholia (Von Trier)

2009

1) Where the Wild Things Are (Jonze)
2) Two Lovers (Gray)
3) Antichrist (Von Trier)
4) Observe & Report (Hill)
5) Julia (Zonca)

2010

1) Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows I (Yates)
2) Into Eternity (Madsen)
3) Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichpatong)
4) Certified Copy (Kiarostami)
5) Toy Story 3 (Unkrich)

2011

1) Margaret (Lonergan)
2) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Alfredson)
3) Twixt (F. F. Coppola)
4) Wuthering Heights (Arnold)
5) The Color Wheel (Perry)

2012

1) Tabu (Gomes)
2) Romancing in Thin Air (To)
3) Cosmopolis (Cronenberg)
4) The Master (P. T. Anderson)
5) The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer)

2013

1) A Field in England (Wheatley)
2) Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen Bros.)
3) Before Midnight (Linklater)
4) The Wind Rises (Miyazaki)
5) Blind Detective (To)

2014

1) Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 (To)
2) Inherent Vice (P. T. Anderson)
3) The Grand Budapest Hotel (W. Anderson)
4) Hill of Freedom (Hong)
5) The Homesman (Tommy Lee Jones)

2015

1) Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong)
2) Blackhat (Mann)
3) Aaaaaaaah! (Oram)
4) Anomalisa (Kaufman)
5) Mad Max: Fury Road (Miller)

2016

1) The Witch (Eggers)
2) The Handmaiden (Park)
3) Certain Women (Reichardt)
4) The Alchemist Cookbook (Potrykus)
5) The Wailing (Na)

 

[CiG]

Your lists overwhelm me because everything I haven't heard of always looks really good and always a bit weird, tonally or thematically.

My autism kicks in and I start writing shit down. Excited to look through this once I have a good 30 minutes.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men are the two best movies to be released in my lifetime.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

There Will Be Blood was pretty damn boring.

 

[CiG]

Top 5 films from 1960:

1. Spartacus
2. The Magnificent Seven
3. Psycho
4. Eyes Without a Face
5. The Bad Sleep Well

Top 5 films from 1961:

1. Yojimbo
2. El Cid
3. King of Kings
4. The Misfits
5. The Hustler

Top 5 films from 1962:

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. The Tale of Zatoichi
3. Sanjuro
4. Lolita
5. The Tale of Zatoichi Continues

Top 5 films from 1963:

1. Jason and the Argonauts
2. Lord of the Flies
3. New Tale of Zatoichi
4. Zatoichi the Fugitive
5. High and Low

Top 5 films from 1964:

1. Dr. Strangelove
2. A Fistful of Dollars
3. Woman in the Dunes
4. Zulu
5. The Masque of the Red Death

Top 5 films from 1965:

1. Doctor Zhivago
2. For a Few Dollars More
3. The Greatest Story Ever Told
4. Battle of the Bulge
5. Red Beard

Top 5 films from 1966:

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
2. The Bible: In the Begnning
3. Tokyo Drifter
4. Django
5. Fahrenheit 451

Top 5 films from 1967:

1. Cool Hand Luke
2. Le Samouraï
   
3. In Cold Blood
4. The Dirty Dozen
5. In the Heat of the Night

Top 5 films from 1968:

1. Planet of the Apes
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Once Upon a Time in the West
4. Night of the Living Dead
5. Will Penny

Top 5 films from 1969:

1. The Italian Job
2. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
3. The Wild Bunch
4. Midnight Cowboy
5. Shinsengumi

 

[no country for old wainds]

There Will Be Blood was pretty damn boring.

boring seems like a weird way to describe a movie so intense and off-kilter but ok

NO COUNTRY was my favourite film when i was 19 or so and back then i got pissy at anyone who preferred THERE WILL BE BLOOD, but the latter has only grown for me and i've cooled a little on the former. it's a perfect adaptation though, the coens are geniuses, i just think mccarthy's done better elsewhere where his subtext has been more buried. that book is very on-the-nose about its themes (which rarely works for me in fairness - i guess COSMOPOLIS is an exception but the themes there are so fucking difficult to parse that it matters less), and i think i worshipped the film's worldview more than i worshipped the actual film in retrospect. i do still like it a lot though.