The Best 500 Films of All-Time

I love days of the future past. I used to watch it every day. I don’t think it is near the same visual experience as kubrick or hitchcock. But it is personal for myself, and has great acting.

Ok I always change up my top 10 list because I just love so many films so I decided I’ll do it this way, put films together that I feel tie with each other, are equal, for example raging bull and taxi driver, i have a bunch of films in these ties and im still missing films i love like fistful of dollars and sixth sense. and of course the whole first six star wars films would be up there.

1. The Wizard Of Oz- Fleming/ Breaking Bad (television series)- Gilligan
2. Raging Bull/ Taxi Driver- Scorsese
3. Searchers- Ford/ Star Wars (1977)- Lucas/ Annie Hall- Allen/ Revenge Of The Sith- Lucas
4. Once Upon A Time In America- Leone/ Schindler’s List- Spielberg/ The Kid- Chaplin/ Where To Invade Next- Moore/ Citizen Kane- Welles/Godfather- Coppola/ Gone With The Wind-Fleming
5. Pulp Fiction- Tarantino/ Raiders Of The Lost Ark- Spielberg/ Grave Of The Fireflies- Takahata/ Joker- Phillips/ Terminator- Cameron
6. Vanilla Sky- Crowe/ O Brother Where Art Thou- Coen Brothers/ Do The Right Thing- Lee/ Apocylypse Now- Coppola
7. Cloud Atlas- Wachowski/ Return Of The King- Jackson/ Carrie- DePalma/ The Stand- Garris (TV Miniseries)
8. Clockwork Orange- Kubrick/ Blue Velvet-Lynch/ Chinatown- Polanski/ 2001- Kubrick/ Ad Astra- Grey/ Up- Docter/ Dr. Strangelove- Kubrick/ metropolis-lang
9. Meyerowitz Adventures- Baumbach/ Punch-Drunk Love/ Passion Of Joan Of Arc- Dreyer/ Roma- Cuaron/ Silence Of The Lambs
10.Broken Blossoms- Griffith/ Steve Jobs- Boyle/ Logan- Mangold/ 8 Mile- Hanson/ Days Of The Future Past- Singer/ Halloween- Carpenter/ Purple Rose Of Cairo/ Yellow Submarine- dunning/ 81/2- fellini/ vertigo- hitchcock

My Top Ten Of All Time as of right now is
1.Taxi Driver
2.Pulp Fiction
3.Magnolia
4.Spiderman 2
5.The Master/Manhattan
6.Chinatown
7.LA Confidential
8.Mean Girls (I love this film to death and I don’t care what anyone says)
9.Jackie Brown
10.Inception
HM: Agent Cody Banks( A guilty pleasure lol I watched this all the time as a kid), The Lion King, Fargo, Rush Hour 1 And 2, Alice doesn’t live here anymore, Blue Jasmine, There Will Be Blood, The Shawshank Redemption,And Home Alone 2 among others

Here’s a Topic Idea What are the biggest Oscar Snubs Of The 21st Century ? Some big ones include
Inside Llewelyn Davis for best picture
Before Sunset and Midnight for Best Picture
Jim Carrey for Best Actor for eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind for Best Picture
Zodiac for Best Picture
Paul Dano for Best Supporting Actor for There Will Be blood
The Master for best picture
Oscar Isaac for Best Actor for Inside Llewelyn Davis
The Dark Knight for Best Picture
The 25th Hour for Best Picture
Adam Driver for Best Actor for Paterson
Uma Thurman for Kill Bill 1 and 2 for best Actress
Kill Bill 1 and 2 for Best Picture
A History Of Violence for Best Picture
The Royal Tenebaums for Best Picture
Memento for Best Picture
Mulholland Drive for Best Picture
Naomi Watts for Best Actress for Mulholland Drive
Children of Men for Best Picture
I could go on and on it’s crazy how many great films are snubbed each year

Why are you on aboard with Deniro not getting a nomination?

It’s weird… I really, really loved Bad Times At The El Royale – I’d probably have it as a low MP on your scale, honestly. I get why a lot of people don’t love it. But it is a genre film, through and through. And it’s probably the most fun I had watching a movie in a cinema in 2018. I’m probably slightly bias as I would rank Jeff Bridges as being, definitely, one of the best actors of all-time – his performances in Fearless, Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, Crazy Heart and Hell Or High Water are mind-blowing to me – and this is without mentioning other great performances of his, which I haven’t the time to go through lol.* I, also, thought Cynthia Erivo gave a terrific performance. Lewis Pullman was great in his role. And Chris Hemsworth gave a came for the ages. The cinematography was engaging, as was the script. I, also, have to give credit for the use of music in the film – the use of Bernadette by The Four Tops was particularly striking to me. Granted, I can understand why you might not like him.

*If I was gonna do a Top Actors of all-time, it’d probably be DiCaprio as No. 1, followed by Bridges, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert De Niro, Cary Grant, Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood, in no particular order – in years to come, it would be possible that Bradley Cooper, Ryan Gosling, Jake Gyllenhaal, Mahershala Ali and Oscar Isaac would find a place on my list, but it depends on what their future output is like.

Well, I think the thing for me with Brando is that I don’t really love his performance in Apocalypse Now (I haven’t seen any of his work on the Godfather or prior – the only supposedly great performance of his I’ve is Apocalypse Now), so I’m not a big fan, so far. (I’ve only seen a certain amount of movies – I am only 18, at the moment and am only recently emerging as a cinephile, so it’ll probably be a long while before I end up as well-read as you). The thing about the to-come actors I’ve listed is that I’ve loved, at least, two of their performances. So with Oscar Isaac, for example, I have 3 – Inside Llewyn Davis, A Most Violent Year and Ex Machina. Mahershala Ali, I have 2 – Moonlight (he makes this movie a great one, in my opinion, in spite of Barry Jenkins’ superb direction) and Green Book (Movie is HR, at best, but his performance is mesmerising in a way that I haven’t seen an actor be since Hoffman in The Master). Ryan Gosling was one I was tempted to put on the main list. His body of work in this decade is astounding – Blue Valentine, Drive and La La Land are the three highlights, but he is immensely charismatic and funny in The Nice Guys and Crazy, Stupid, Love. His performance in The Place Beyond The Pines is underrated and is one of the best parts of one of my favourite movies of all time (this one really connected with me, for some reason). However, his work in First Man is offputting a little to me – I thought the movie was visually stunning, but his acting was too dry this time. And I wasn’t as big a fan of 2049 as everyone else. To be fair to Gosling, though, I thought his performance was good, albeit not great.
Anyway, to answer your question, which is what I was gonna do before I went on a tangent (sorry lol), the issue with Kaluuya and Driver for me is that- actually, there’s two issues – but the main one for me is that they only have one truly masterful performance each. Kaluuya – Get Out. Driver – Marriage Story. Although, in all fairness, they are very good in Widows and BlacKKKlansman – but not masterful. The other problem with them both is is that, in a weird way, in spite of them both being fairly engaging, they do not have the charisma of the others, which is, usually, what makes an actor stand out for me. For example, in Ex Machina, it’s hard to look away from Oscar Isaac, just because of his phenomenal screen presence in it. The same goes for most of the roles of the actors on that list. They dominate the movies they’re in, but, also, have a way of bringing up the other actors around them. This is a a key asset I find in many of the great actors. I.e. Bridges in The Big Lebowski gets tons and tons of laughs and is one of the great performances of cinema, but the entirety of that ensemble, also, shines.
I don’t know. I feel like I’ve gone on a mega-tangent. Haha sorry.

Most apparitions in the « Best Performances of the Year » category, of all time (at least 2):

Robert DeNiro (9) :
} 2# en 1973.
} 2# en 1974.
} 1# en 1976.
} 1# en 1978.
} 1# en 1980.
} 5# en 1982.
} 3# en 1984.
} 3# en 1990.
} 1# en 1995.

Jack Nicholson (9) :
} 5# en 1969.
} 1# en 1970.
} 4# en 1971.
} 3# en 1973.
} 4# en 1974.
} 2# en 1975.
} 3# en 1980.
} 6# en 1989.
} 6# en 1992.

Al Pacino (8) :
} 1# en 1972.
} 6# en 1973.
} 7# en 1973.
} 1# en 1974.
} 1# en 1975.
} 4# en 1983.
} 5# en 1990.
} 4# en 1999.

James Stewart (8) :
} 2# en 1939.
} 3# en 1940.
} 1# en 1946.
} 5# en 1950.
} 5# en 1953.
} 5# en 1954.
} 1# en 1958.
} 2# en 1959.

Humphrey Bogart (7) :
} 1# en 1941.
} 3# en 1941.
} 1# en 1942.
} 2# en 1944.
} 2# en 1946.
} 2# en 1948.
} 6# en 1950.

Leonardo DiCaprio (6) :
} 1# en 2004.
} 2# en 2006.
} 1# en 2010.
} 3# en 2013.
} 1# en 2015.
} 3# en 2019.

Daniel Day-Lewis (6) :
} 5# en 1989.
} 4# en 1992.
} 4# en 1993.
} 1# en 2002.
} 1# en 2007.
} 1# en 2017.

Marlon Brando (5) :
} 1# en 1951.
} 1# en 1954.
} 1# en 1972.
} 1# en 1972.
} 2# en 1979.

William Holden (5) :
} 1# en 1950.
} 4# en 1953.
} 3# en 1957.
} 1# en 1969.
} 2# en 1976.

Dustin Hoffman (5) :
} 1# en 1967.
} 1# en 1969.
} 4# en 1970.
} 6# en 1974.
} 5# en 1979.

Paul Newman (5) :
} 1# en 1961.
} 5# en 1963.
} 2# en 1967.
} 3# en 1969.
} 4# en 1982.

Gene Hackman (5) :
} 2# en 1971.
} 5# en 1973.
} 5# en 1974.
} 4# en 1992.
} 1# en 2001.

Brad Pitt (5) :
} 3# en 1995.
} 2# en 1999.
} 3# en 2007.
} 2# en 2011.
} 2# en 2019.

Kirk Douglas (5) :
} 2# en 1947.
} 4# en 1951.
} 5# en 1951.
} 4# en 1956.
} 5# en 1957.

Cary Grant (4) :
} 1# en 1937.
} 1# en 1938.
} 2# en 1940.
} 1# en 1959.

Tom Cruise (4) :
} 2# en 1983.
} 6# en 1988.
} 1# en 1996.
} 1# en 1999.

Ryan Gosling (4) :
} 2# en 2010.
} 3# en 2011.
} 1# en 2016.
} 2# en 2017.

Bill Murray (4) :
} 3# en 1993.
} 3# en 1998.
} 1# en 2003.
} 3# en 2005.

Joaquin Phœnix (4) :
} 1# en 2012.
} 4# en 2013.
} 5# en 2019.
} 4# en 2008.

Laurence Olivier (4) :
} 4# en 1939.
} 1# en 1944.
} 6# en 1948.
} 6# en 1960.

Toshiro Mifune (4) :
} 2# en 1950.
} 2# en 1954.
} 6# en 1957.
} 2# en 1961.

Edward Norton (4) :
} 6# en 1998.
} 3# en 1999.
} 3# en 2002.
} 3# en 2014.

Johnny Depp (4) :
} 4# en 1990.
} 5# en 1994.
} 2# en 1995.
} 4# en 1998.

Gary Copper (4) :
} 3# en 1929.
} 3# en 1936.
} 3# en 1943.
} 4# en 1952.

Charlie Chaplin (3) :
} 1# en 1925.
} 3# en 1931.
} 1# en 1936.

John Wayne (3) :
} 3# en 1939.
} 1# en 1948.
} 1# en 1956.

Henry Fonda (3) :
} 1# en 1940.
} 3# en 1946.
} 1# en 1968.

James Cagney (3) :
} 2# en 1931.
} 2# en 1942.
} 1# en 1949.

Marcelo Mastroianni (3) :
} 2# en 1960.
} 4# en 1961.
} 1# en 1963.

Emil Jannings (3) :
} 1# en 1924.
} 2# en 1925.
} 3# en 1930.

Robert Mitchum (3) :
} 1# en 1947.
} 3# en 1955.
} 3# en 1962.

Montgomery Clift (3) :
} 4# en 1948.
} 2# en 1951.
} 1# en 1953.

Joe Pesci (3) :
} 2# en 1980.
} 1# en 1990.
} 4# en 2019.

Christian Bale (3) :
} 1# en 2000.
} 4# en 2010.
} 2# en 2013.

Harrison Ford (3) :
} 4# en 1977.
} 1# en 1981.
} 4# en 2017.

Ralph Fiennes (3) :
} 2# en 1993.
} 2# en 1996.
} 2# en 2014.

Sean Connery (3) :
} 3# en 1964.
} 2# en 1965.
} 3# en 1987.

Clint Eastwood (3) :
} 4# en 1964.
} 2# en 1966.
} 3# en 1992.

Orson Welles (3) :
} 2# en 1941.
} 4# en 1949.
} 3# en 1958.

Burt Lancaster (3) :
} 3# en 1947.
} 3# en 1953.
} 4# en 1957.

Warren Beatty (3) :
} 3# en 1967.
} 3# en 1971.
} 5# en 1981.

Ewan McGregor (3) :
} 4# en 1996.
} 3# en 2001.
} 5# en 2010.

Tom Hanks (3) :
} 3# en 1988.
} 5# en 1993.
} 4# en 2013.

Russell Crowe (3) :
} 4# en 1997.
} 4# en 1999.
} 4# en 2003.

John Garfield (3) :
} 4# en 1946.
} 4# en 1947.
} 5# en 1948.

Clark Gable (2) :
} 1# en 1934.
} 1# en 1939.

Jean-Paul Belmondo (2) :
} 1# en 1960.
} 1# en 1965.

Heath Ledger (2) :
} 1# en 2005.
} 1# en 2008.

Buster Keaton (2) :
} 2# en 1924.
} 1# en 1926.

Edward G. Robinson (2) :
} 2# en 1930.
} 1# en 1945.

Frank Sinatra (2) :
} 2# en 1953.
} 1# en 1955.

Klaus Kinski (2) :
} 2# en 1972.
} 1# en 1982.

Harvey Keitel (2) :
} 1# en 1973.
} 2# en 1992.

Adam Driver (2) :
} 2# en 2016.
} 1# en 2019.

Phillip Seymour Hoffman (2) :
} 2# en 2005.
} 2# en 2012.

Christoph Waltz (2) :
} 1# en 2009.
} 3# en 2012.

Peter O’Toole (2) :
} 1# en 1962.
} 4# en 1968.

Max Von Sydow (2) :
} 1# en 1957.
} 4# en 1988.

Denzel Washington (2) :
} 4# en 1989.
} 1# en 1992.

Jeff Bridges (2) :
} 1# en 1998.
} 5# en 1991.

Michael B. Jordan (2) :
} 5# en 2015.
} 1# en 2018.

Maurice Chevalier (2)
} 2# en 1929.
} 2# en 1932.

James Dean (2) :
} 2# en 1955.
} 2# en 1956.

George C. Scott (2) :
} 2# en 1964.
} 2# en 1970.

Ethan Hawke (2) :
} 2# en 2004.
} 2# en 2013.

Ray Liotta (2) :
} 2# en 1986.
} 2# en 1990.

Joseph Cotton (2) :
} 2# en 1943.
} 3# en 1949.

Errol Flynn (2) :
} 2# en 1935.
} 3# en 1942.

Takashi Shimura (2) :
} 2# en 1952.
} 3# en 1954.

Christopher Walken (2) :
} 2# en 1978.
} 3# en 1983.

Daniel Kaluuya (2) :
} 3# en 2017.
} 2# en 2018.

Casey Affleck (2) :
} 2# en 2007.
} 3# en 2016.

John Goodman (2) :
} 4# en 1991.
} 2# en 1998.

Bruce Willis (2) :
} 2# en 1988.
} 4# en 1994.

Mickey Rourke (2) :
} 5# en 1987.
} 2# en 2008.

Sean Penn (2) :
} 5# en 1995.
} 2# en 2003.

Jack Gyllenhaal (2) :
} 2# en 2001.
} 5# en 2014.

Adam Sandler (2) :
} 2# en 2002.
} 6# en 2019.

Jean Gabin (2) :
} 3# en 1937.
} 3# en 1952.

Jean-Louis Trintignant (2) :
} 4# en 1969.
} 3# en 1970.

Rod Steiger (2) :
} 5# en 1964.
} 3# en 1965.

Bruno Ganz (2) :
} 3# en 1977.
} 5# en 2004.

Matt Damon (2) :
} 3# en 1997.
} 5# en 1999.

Robert Shaw (2) :
} 4# en 1966.
} 4# en 1975.

John Hurt (2)
} 4# en 1978.
} 4# en 1980.

Tony Curtis (2) :
} 4# en 1957.
} 6# en 1959.

Michael Fassbender (2) :
} 4# en 2011.
} 5# en 2013.

Kevin Spacey (2) :
} 4# en 1995.
} 7# en 1999.

John Turturro (2) :
} 6# en 1990.
} 3# en 1991.

Jim Broadbant (2) :
} 6# en 1999.
} 3# en 2001.

Jack Lemmon (2) :
} 5# en 1959.
} 4# en 1960.

Bruce Dern (2) :
} 5# en 1978.
} 4# en 2013.

Viggo Mortensen (2) :
} 4# en 2005.
} 5# en 2003.

Benicio Del Toro (2) :
} 4# en 2000.
} 6# en 2015.

Alain Delon (2) :
} 5# en 1960.
} 5# en 1967.

Robert Downey Jr. (2) :
} 5# en 2007.
} 5# en 2008.

Hey Drake.
Ranking movies is becoming very challenging for me. I’ve thought of a new way of ranking movies. So basically there are 5 levels, the top level being perfect movies like Chinatown and the bottom not so good. Kinda like your ranking system but more like Roger Ebert’s. I will still think of a top 10 maybe like most critics for sight and sound. Do you think this is a decent way to rank movies?

Hello:

I’ve certainly lurked but have never commented here yet. Anyhow, your top 20 films are hard to argue with, even if it wouldn’t necessarily be my list, although I’m not sure I’d have Bicycle Thieves so high. I’m glad you have Jules and Jim and La Dolce Vita as high as you do. They’re among the most taken for granted films in cinema history I think. The Searchers would be a no-brainer top ten film. Likewise 2001, even if I probably personally prefer Barry Lyndon. I’ve often wrestled between L’Avventura and Rules of the Game as the Greatest Film of All Time, but I could certainly argue Vertigo as well. Lola Montes would also be up there for me. Likewise PlayTime. Granted, I’m not a very list-minded person, so I probably think in somewhat different terms. There are other films I personally love that are maybe not top 20 of all time material, such as The Long Goodbye and Maurice Pialat’s We Won’t Grow Old Together. However, I’d go to the mat insisting In A Lonely Place, Love Streams, and Two-Lane Blacktop all belong in a top 100, but I respect they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. I’d probably throw PTA’s The Master into a top 25, and you seem to rate that film pretty highly.

As for the greatest all around director of all time, it would be a toss up for me between Hitchcock and Ozu, since Antonioni doesn’t quite have the body of work as a whole to compete with those two. On the directors’ side of things I’d probably have Bresson, Cassavetes, and even Bunuel a bit higher than you do, but that’s just me. At any rate, you have an excellent blog.

What’s your top 10 of every decade (1920s + 1910s counted together ) ? Of course this question is not directed towards Drake (since we can know his top films through the lists on the blog) but towards each of the readers of the blog.

This is going to be a lot of fun haha
Okay, here go

1910-1929
1. Sunrise-Murnau
2. The passion of Joan of Arc- Dreyer
3. Battleship Potemkin- Eisenstein
4. Intolerance-Griffith
5. Metropolis- Lang
6. Nosferatu- Murnau
7. The The Birth of a Nation- Griffith
8. The General- Keaton
9. The Gold Rush- Chaplin
10. Greed-Von Stroheim

1930
1. The Rules of the Game- Renoir
2. M- Lang
3. City Lights-Chaplin
4. Gone With the Wind- Fleming
5. The Blue Angel- von Sternberg
6. The Wizard of Oz- Fleming
7. Stagecoach- Ford
8. The Grand Illusion- Renoir
9. Modern Times- Chaplin
10. Bringing Up Baby- Hawks

1940
1. Citizen Kane- Welles
2. Bicycle Thieves- De Sica
3. The Third Man- Reed
4. Casablanca- Curtiz
5. The Magnificent Ambersons-Welles
6. It’s a Wonderful Life- Capra
7. The Big Sleep- Hawks
8. Late Spring- Ozu
9. Red River- Hawks
10. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre- Huston

1950
1.Vertigo- Hitchcock
2. Tokyo Story- Ozu
3. Seven Samurai- Kurosawa
4. The searchers-Ford
5. Rashoman- Kurosawa
6. Touch of Evil- Welles
7. The 400 Blows- Truffaut
8. Rear window-Hitchcock
9. The Seventh Seal- Bergman
10. La strada-Fellini

1960
1. 8 1/2 – Fellini
2. 2001 A Space Odyssey- Kubrick
3. Lawrence of Arabia- Lean
4. Breathless- Godard
5. Jules and Jim- Truffaut
6. Psycho-Hitchcock
7. La Dolce Vita- Fellini
8. Persona-Bergman
9. Once Upton a Time in the West – Leone
10. Shoot the Piano Player – Truffaut

1970
1. Apocalypse Now-Coppola
2. The Godfather –Coppola
3. The Godfather Part II-Coppola
4. Taxi Driver- Scorsese
5. A Clockwork Orange- Kubrick
6. Stalker-Tarkovsky
7. Nasville-Altman
8. Days of Heaven – Malick
9. Aguirre, the Wrath of God – Herzog
10. The conformist-Bertolucci

1980
1. Raging Bull- Scorsese
2. Blade Runner –Scott
3. Nostalgia – Tarkovsky
4. Blue Velvet – Lynch
5. Do the Right Thing – Spike Lee
6. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover – Greenaway
7.The Shining – Kubrick
8. Fitzcarraldo – Herzog
9. Fanny and Alexander- Bergman
10. Brazil- Gilliam

1990
1. Pulp Fiction – Tarantino
2. Magnolia – P.T. Anderson
3. Breaking the Waves – Von Trier
4. Goodfellas – Scorsese
5. The Thin Red Line- Malick
6. Heat- Mann
7. Boogie Nights – P.T. Anderson
8. JFK- Stone
9. Fargo – Coen
10. Schindler’s List – Spielberg

2000
1. There Will Be Blood – P.T. Anderson
2. In the Mood for Love – Kar-Wai Wong 
3. Children of Men – Cuaron
4. Mulholland Drive – Lynch
5. Lost in Translation – Coppola
6. Punch-Drunk Love – P.T. Anderson
7. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – Dominik
8. The Royal Tenenbaums – Wes Anderson
9. Werckmeister Harmonies – Tarr
10. Dancer in the Dark – Von Trier 

2010
1. The Tree of Life – Malick
2. The Master – P.T. Anderson
3. Roma – Cuaron
4. Dunkirk – Nolan
5. Mad Max Fury Road-Miller
6. Birdman – Iñárritu
7. La La Land – Chazelle
8. The Revenant – Iñárritu
9. The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson
10. The Favourite – Lanthimos

@Cinephile and @Drake – to be honest this subject has been bugging me for quite a long time. I think that art is very subjective. In that, I believe that if someone is biased that clearly takes away from the validity of their views (if they say that Hollywood cinema is devoid of “substance” or whatever that means, that is a very one sided assumption). There are objective criteria of course and if you stick to those I think you usually form a great perspective. But again, it depends on what affects each viewer and naturally some things will appeal more to some people and less to others. So I generally support the idea of appreciating cinema as a craft, because it is a more consistent and open minded way of studying film. But I also have great admiration for what a film or filmmaker is trying to say, and sometimes that can elevate the worth of a movie in my eyes, personally speaking. I will primarily appreciate Haneke’s shots, narrative and the sharp coldness of his approach, but the way that he provokes its audience will also resonate with me. I love The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover for all its visual treats, but it becomes much more important to me in the context of its critique (which is sometimes inseparable from the narrative, so it kind of touches the territory of objective criteria, as well). 2013’s the Great Gatsby is full of visual delights, but it lacks the depth that made the book so brilliant, and eventually its style is not enough to save it. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that I recognise Dunkirk as the better film, but the thought provoking nature of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia stayed with me, and renders the latter my favourite of the two movies. Still, I wouldn’t name it one of the best films of the decade, were I to be asked.

To respond to the discussion regarding Dunkirk and Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, I think for some people appreciating films is riddled with moral dilemmas that are less present in say literary appreciation, given the money involved and the often duplicitous nature of the ‘movie industry’, so perhaps the easy way out is to take refuge in ‘festival cinema’ (I.e. Ceylan, Tarr, Akerman, Costa, Kiarostami, etc.). I suppose there’s an inability to surrender to the aesthetic achievements of something they perceive as being too ‘commercial’. At the same time, aesthetic awareness I don’t think is strictly a question of admiring craftsmanship. Emotional involvement is part of the equation as well. It’s understandable to be unimpressed by a technically flawless film that does nothing for you emotionally, and being able to engage others emotionally can be an artistic skill in and of itself. The 400 Blows and Pather Panchali may not be Citizen Kane or Dreyer-level masterclasses in film technique, but that’s irrelevant to why they’re so heavily praised. Lastly, I suspect some cinephiles may find ‘film buffery’ to be juvenile, so for them there’s a sense of outgrowing Kubrick and growing into Kiarostami or Bresson. For the record, I’m just trying to make sense of the biases that exist among cinephiles. I’m not necessarily taking a side here. With that said, how do we define formal/aesthetic innovation in filmmaking? The low-fi documentary-like aesthetic of Pedro Costa while not everyone’s cup of tea certainly brings something new to cinema I think. And there’s an immediacy and simplicity to Kiarostami’s aesthetic that he makes seem easy but that I reckon is hard to imitate. Ceylan I don’t think fully manages to transcend his primary influences like Tarkovsky and Bresson. But the aesthetic achievements one appreciates in a Kubrick, Malick, or even PTA film aren’t he generally achievable on a low budget, say well under $10 million, so one has to be willing to place films within certain budgetary contexts before fairly certain assessing them I think. Just my two cents

Shane (George Stevens, dir.)

What are some movies that arent brilliant objectively/artistically but you still greatly admire them? (Movies that are very emotional/personal. Almost like guilty pleasure movies).

This question is to all readers of the blog.

@Azman I was actually referring to the IMDB position, since it appears there as # 1.
As for Come and see, i will have to see it to comment, but TSPDT has it at # 150

What are some films you consider great that you’d call inaccessible?

I recently had a conversation with a well known of mine who is a passionate cinephile. He said that for him, cinema is to make the viewer transformed or have a powerful mostly spiritual experience. Of course he supports subjectivity since the “transformed” and “spiritual experience” thing is different to everyone and that feeling one might find in one film another may find in the other. When I mentioned my view of cinema, that it’s about the craft, mostly formal and technical, he said something interesting that stayed in my mind, he mentioned Amour especially and added that Haneke maybe doesn’t use transcendent film style but the way he provokes the audience, the way he makes the viewer feel and the experience he offers, all need high craftmanship to achieve. His point is basically that when we talk about craft, it’s not just form or visual style, there’s more to it and a film can be a masterpiece for those other reasons. What do you think ? (Interested in the other readers opinions)

movies i’ve seen recently include seventh seal, raising cain, mean streets, dressed to kill, the other side of the wind (welles) and i now pronounce you chuck and larry. i was starting blowup yesterday but my tv was having issues will hopefully watch it in its entirety tonight. i like all those films very much, probably not raising cain as much but it was still very good. most films i watch i like because i usually turn them off when i don’t like them. for example i was watching the netflix movie called the laundromat by two hacks, steven soderbergh and meryl streep and i turned it off after 10 minutes.

What are in your opinion the grandest films you’ve seen in terms of scope?

@Drake has it pretty much covered here. From my side, i’ll add The Tree of Life, Heat, Once Upon a Time in America and Dunkirk @ Cinephile

Ok. But here’s the problem that I observe. Having this as a list of movies which you consider the best is a lesser problem (I would still have some little issues), but having this list as your favorite movies shows me a deep bias towards the things that you enjoy and don’t enjoy. I say this because your list is almost completely made of a very specific type of film. The “high art”, praised by big name conventional critics, type of films. The ones that make the traditional canon. And while I do think that art can be categorized, and dissected, I also think that that is a process which happens after you absorb and have the experience. Its then, and only then, that you can look for the elements that justify that experience. That make it incredibly unlikely that your personal taste is EXACTLY the same as the big canon consensus on what makes a good film. Do you not have any favorite films that the canon hates? Do you not hate any films that the canon loves? No controversies whatsoever? Guilty pleasures?

It seems to me that you have a profound bias (I’m not accusing you by the way. This is all unconscious) towards what the canon says its “good”. Not only you praise and like the movies that the canon likes, you also consider that the elements that make good art are only the ones that the canon determines. What about other elements that the canon ignores? What about other styles of films? Other cultural aesthetics? Other elements that we don’t even know they are good and important to good art, but they are there, just waiting to be found? You do realize that a big portion of the movies in your list were rejected and disliked when they came out. Because the canon at the time was different. And it was only after accepting that those films were good, and had something in them that we were able to explore them and find the elements that made them great.

I’m speaking to you about this because I used to have the same ideas that you have right now. I used to analyze movies (and art in general) following some sort of “rulebook” on what constitutes good art. But that is INCREDIBLY limited. It blinds you to a vast world of other elements that also constitutes good art that we reject simply because of ignorance. At the end of the day is just like Thomas Mann said: we either feel sympathetic towards a work of art or we don’t, and after that we search for a million reasons to justify our opinion. And is exactly that process that teaches us what are good or bad elements of art.

So don’t feel ashamed to put American Psycho (or something like that, lol) in your favorite movies list. Be bold and proud and then find why you like it, and justify your opinion. That would be a much more experience to you in my humble opinion.

Diclaimer: everything I say here is just my personal view. Not trying to attack you in any way, just trying to have a nice conversation and give (and receive) some advice. Thanks.

@Johan

I’ve given @Drake plenty of crap over the years when I think he’s been too dogmatic and narrow with the sorts of films he values and which he does not. He subscribes to a rigorous cognitivist/formalist set of criteria that serve as a necessary heuristic for the type of project he’s committed to. If he’s going to independantly and without the benefit of any assistants, spend years sifting through 10000+ films in order to construct an exhaustive several thousand film archive, he needs a reliable method by which to efficiently seperate the wheat from the chaff. And he has developed just such a method.

Now that’s not my project. I float along the surface of the ocean of film that Drake exhaustively navigates, often guided by the cinematic cartography he has provided, and then at my leisure or as my interests or research dictate I’ll dive in, and plumb the depths of this or that little pocket of the ocean making discoveries and having revelations that aren’t initially accessible to Drake’s more comprehensive approach.

Insofar as I might be inclined to accept the notion that Drake misses a few things in the margins, I would attribute it to his heursitic approach. However, I’ve usually found him open minded about revisiting those things he may have missed.

The problem I have with your critique of his method, is that your order of operations is perplexingly reversed. You seem to be employing a teleological approach whereby you flail from experience to experience and then attempt a post-hoc rationalization of your responses. This is not the sort of approach that can withstand even the slightest amount of scrutiny. The reason Drake appears to read your perspective as lacking in experience is perhaps best encapsulated in your saying, “Its the experience that justifies the elements, and not the other way around. The elements in Vertigo are good because Vertigo is good.” Experientially, this may be true. A bright individual of moderately good taste, has a positive experience and then if they have the intellectual curiosity to do so, investigates the work to determine what elements contributed to that experience. This is a great place to be early in one’s evolution as an admirer/critic of an artform. However, as you learn and develop, you come to realize and appreciate the fact that the elements precede the experience and that indeed it is by that nature of what these elements are and how, why, when, and where they are combined, that the experience is generated in the first place. This is the form of the work, this is film style, this is narrative structure, this is performance… and all of these things are generative of experience. Inasmuch as canons form, it is because cogntively humans share enough in kind that many of these experiences will be shared, and certain consensuses arrived upon. Personally, I have suspicion of the person too committed to the canon, but if the alternative is the person too skeptical of it, then I’ll take the former just about every time.

Hey. Does anybody on the blog watch TV shows?

I remeber Matt Harris said he think TV shows are comparable to the best of cinema. I don’t remember the page.

This question is to Matt. I started watching a TV show called Modern Family. It’s very well written and acted. Have you seen it? What do you think of it?

jc I can’t answer for everyone but here are some critics I admire. Armond white, pauline kael, vincent canby, john simon, amy nicholson, rex reed. I like that they all have different unique voices and certain principles and beliefs that factor into their reviews, and are all humanists who appreciate aesthetic. Also there is a website called combustible celluloid by a critic named jeffrey m anderson, and I admire his tastes even if I sometimes disagree (he does not like seventh seal, searchers, or metropolis). His website is also cool because he has a compilation of great directors and many archived lists and seems to know the history really well. I hope this all helps

I wonder if you have considered a ranking or deep dive of which countries have the best films? Obviously the US would be at the top, but I would be interested in seeing your thoughts on the place other countries hold in cinema history. Sometimes making those distinctions can be difficult though. I’ve lived in Australia my whole life and it’s only recently I’ve started exploring more films from our past.

The Social Network, Back to the Future, Pulp Fiction. Raging Bull.

Thank you @aldo. I explained my thoughts on it under the natalie portman page and I know some cinephiles who appreciate the prequels as well, including my brother. I would like to see your decade or all time list if you have one as well

I know that you do not put documentaries in the archives, Drake, but if you were forced to choose, what is the best documentary ever? I cannot speak for myself as I have not really seen many the ones that are often placed highly on lists, such as Man with a Movie Camera, Hoop Dreams, and Shoah. There is also documentary work from major auteurs such as Godard, Varda, and Herzog. Which documentary is the single greatest?

Hey drake I have a question.

How long after you’ve seen a movie do you feel comfortable commenting on it? Like after how long do you not give a grade to a film in the archives?

Sometimes I don’t see a film for too long so I can’t give it a grade or remember a lot about it? How long is too long(to not give a grade) in your opinion?

Having recently re-watched both, I’m wondering about “In the Mood for Love” and “Children of Men.” What do they have going for them other than nice mise-en-scene and cinematography? The first is dreadfully dull and the second is a heavy-handed near farce. I can’t see how they are ranked higher than masterpieces from the 2000s like “There Will Be Blood” and “Mulholland Dr.” Maybe I’m missing something, but they both seem massively overrated. Thanks.

Hey, Drake. Just wanted to say I love this page and always come back to it when I’m developing my own thoughts on a movie. Your understanding of cinema unparalleled and completely beyond me. I do have one question, though: how can you differentiate between “favorite” and “best”? To me, although in some cases I can easily see which movie is “better”, this distinction is very hard at times. For example, I like Magnolia more than Blue Velvet, but which is the better movie? I could never know. How do you do it? Thanks!