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BBC announces the top 100 American films of all time according to critics

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R

Ridley327

Member
BobbyRoberts said:
edit: It's weird that everyone - everyone seems to recognize that Empire Strikes Back is a better movie than Star Wars, and it never shows up on these lists. It's always just Star Wars.
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As it often is with these lists, it's the films that have the biggest impact that get considered higher than those that are actually better. Faraci's point about The Dark Knight making the list but nothing from the ouvre of the guy it borrowed most from plays into that a bit, I think.

See the inclusion of Night of the Living Dead as further proof.
 
T

timetokill

Banned
No Blade Runner. No Alien. No Aliens. No Terminator. No Terminator 2.

Guess Brits don't like sci-fi much outside of 2001.

Also, Groundhog Day is way too low on the list.
 
Y

Your Entertainer

Member
I've never seen Citizen Kane.

Would a 20-something year old who appreciates good movies in general (favorites are The Good/Bad/Ugly and American Beauty) like it? I haven't seen many movies made before the 50s. I suspect its age will show and I won't really like it that much.
 
B

Bobby Roberts

Banned
American Eskimo said:
I've never met anyone who's watched citizen kane, myself included
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It's actually pretty fun. I mean, it's landmark because it was a leap in cinematic vocabulary, but it's also a pretty basic potboiler, at heart. Maybe not "Basic" I guess. But it IS soap opera. I think a lot of people approach that flick thinking something super-serious and weighty is going to kick them in the chest, or that it SHOULD kick them in the chest. And if you keep in mind the era it came out in, it might, but even if you don't know shit about filmmaking, it'll work on that soap opera level just fine.

Honestly, Godfather is the same way.
 
B

Bam

Banned
They put The Lion King over Beauty and the Beast? What? I would've even taken Fantasia or Sleeping Beauty. There just seems to be a distinct lack of animated films in general

Not having Alien listed seems like a crime
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
Citizen Kane wasn't on my list mostly out of sheer fuckin' contrarianism but its a very entertaining Hollywood movie. I don't where it got the reputation that it was like eating your vegetables and doing your homework or something. I guess cuz its old and they teach it in film school.
 
T

Timeaisis

Member
This is like the safest list ever.

ViewtifulJC said:
Welp, guess all you can do is make your own list in comparison. I just made up a top 100 American films, with the main purpose is spreading the wealth. My main pet peeve with this list is how 10 directors own 41 spots. That's crazy. I mean fuckin' Marnie and Eyes Wide Shut, FOH. At MOST, I have guys like Scorsese and Allen with 3 each, and even then was pushing it.

0. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (WITNESS ME HOPE IS A MISTAKE THATS MY JACKET REDEMPTION)
1. Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
2. Casablanca (Curtiz, 1942)
3. Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)
4. Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
5. The General (Keaton, 1926)
6. Sunset Blvd (Wilder, 1950)
7. Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
8. Do the Right Thing (S. Lee, 1989)
9. Singin’ in the Rain (Kelly & Donen, 1952)
10. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)
11. The Conversation (Coppola, 1974)
12. All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)
13. The Lady Eve (P. Sturges, 1941)
14. Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)
15. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (Ford, 1962)
16. Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
17. Blade Runner (Scott, 1982)
18. Short Cuts (Altman, 1993)
19. His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940)
20. Unforigiven (Eastwood, 1992)
21. Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen, 1986)
22. City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
23. Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)
24. Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951)
25. Heat (Mann, 1995)
26. All That Jazz (Fosse, 1979)
27. The Thing (Carpenter, 1982)
28. The Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick, 1957)
29. Miller’s Crossing (Coens, 1990)
30. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)
31. The Thin Red Line (Malick, 1998)
32. The Adventures of Robin Hood (Curtiz, 1938)
33. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)
34. King Kong (Cooper & Schoedsack, 1933)
35. Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)
36. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
37. Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
38. Rio Bravo (Hawks, 1959)
39. Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1984)
40. Dawn of the Dead(Romero, 1977)
41. The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)
42. Before Sunset (Linklater, 2004)
43. Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (Scorsese, 1974)
44. The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941)
45. Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995)
46. Boogie Nights (PTA, 1997)
47. The Big Lebowski (Coens, 1998)
48. Alien (1979, Scott)
49. Pinocchio (Luske & Sharpsteen, 1940)
50. Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
51. Three Days of the Condor (Pollack, 1975)
52. The Iron Giant (Bird, 1999)
53. The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973)
54. The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
55. Schlinder’s List (Spielberg, 1993)
56. My Dinner with Andre (Malle, 1981)
57. Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985)
58. Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988)
59. Zodiac (Fincher, 2007)
60. Toy Story 2 (Lasseter, 1999)
61. The Right Stuff (Kaufman, 1983)
62. Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946)
63. Brokeback Mountain (A. Lee, 2005)
64. The Last of the Mohicans (Mann, 1992)
65. The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)
66. The Road Warrior (Miller, 1981)
67. Winchester ’73 (A. Mann, 1950)
68. The Graduate (Nichols, 1967)
69. Aliens (Cameron, 1986)
70. The Social Network (Fincher, 2010)
71. Out of the Past (Tourneur, 1947)
72. Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
73. The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940)
74. Imitation of Life (Sirk, 1959)
75. Out of Sight (Soderbergh, 1998)
76. You Can Count on Me (Lonergan, 2000)
77. The Terminator (Cameron, 1983)
78. Paper Moon (Bogdanovich, 1973)
79. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
80. Blow Out (DePalma, 1981)
81. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah, 1974)
82. 12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)
83. Kill Bill (Tarantino, 2004-2005)
84. Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954)
85. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988)
86. Ed Wood (Burton, 1995)
87. My Own Private Idaho (Van Sant, 1991)
88. Dangerous Liaisons (Frears, 1988)
89. The Shining (Kubrick, 1980)
90. The Lion King (Allers & Minkoff, 1994)
91. Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski, 1968)
92. 12 Years a Slave (McQueen, 2013)
93. Young Frankenstein (M. Brooks, 1974)
94. Point Blank (Boorman, 1967)
95. Top Hat (Sandrich, 1935)
96. L.A. Confidential (Hanson, 1997)
97. Groundhog Day (Landis, 1993)
98. Amadeus (Forman, 1984)
99. All the President’s Men (Pakula, 1976)
100. Evil Dead 2 (Raimi, 1987)
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I can get behind this.

EDIT: Wait, it's "AMERICAN" films, whatever the fuck that means. So then Scott and Miller are out be default? Or is it like produced by the American film system?
 
G

Gobias

Banned
I feel like they put the Dark Knight on there so they could just say, "Hey, we're hip too" as they finish off the list with every conventional American classic.
 
V

ViewtifulJC

Banned
Timeaisis said:
EDIT: Wait, it's "AMERICAN" films, whatever the fuck that means. So then Scott and Miller are out be default? Or is it like produced by the American film system?
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" For the purposes of this poll, it is any movie that received funding from a US source. The directors of these films did not have to be born in the United States – in fact, 32 films on the list were directed by film-makers born elsewhere – nor did the films even have to be shot in the US. "

Timeaisis pls read the op
 
X

xbhaskarx

Member
No Coen brothers at all... WTF Miller's Crossing should be in the top ten.

Buntabox said:
Devin Faraci's follow up article is pretty good. Points out there is no Paul Thomas Anderson, Coen Brothers, or David Fincher. Which is really odd.

Link
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"I hate to keep harping on The Dark Knight but for real, almost any Coen Brothers movie deserves to be here before The Dark Knight."

Let's see...

Definitely superior to The Dark Knight:
Miller's Crossing
Barton Fink
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Big Lebowski
Raising Arizona
No Country for Old Men
True Grit
Blood Simple
A Serious Man
Fargo
O Brother, Where Art Thou?


Probably superior to The Dark Knight:
The Ladykillers
Burn After Reading
Intolerable Cruelty
Inside Llewyn Davis
The Man Who Wasn't There

Yeah, he's got a point.

jwk94 said:
Vertigo but not The Birds? Why?
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Are you serious? LOL

American Eskimo said:
I've never met anyone who's watched citizen kane, myself included
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You've never met anyone who's taken an introductory film course in college?
 
M

MaxwellParrish

Member
ShaoranWright said:
The lack of animated films (traditional animation or 3D) suggest me that those critics don't have a soul, sure there's the lion king, but only one?, c'mon!.

And it turns out that Citizen kane is the Citizen Kane of the best films, never expected that to be honest.
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Initially I didn't notice that Lion King was listed and I just attributed the lack of animated films to the usual prejudice that animation is not really a film. The presence of Lion king make things worse, actually : I don't think is the best film of the Disney Reinaissance, much less that it can be preferred to any film of the Golden Era.

On another note, I find pretty strange the inclusion of Marnie over, for example The Birds, Stranger on a train or Notorius
 
T

Timeaisis

Member
ViewtifulJC said:
" For the purposes of this poll, it is any movie that received funding from a US source. The directors of these films did not have to be born in the United States – in fact, 32 films on the list were directed by film-makers born elsewhere – nor did the films even have to be shot in the US. "

Timeaisis pls read the op
Click to expand...

Sorry, my brain turned off at citizen cane #1.
 
O

Oersted

Member
More diverse set of films than Sight & Sound? Which asks for great films from around the world and not just USA.


Wut OP.

Wut.
 
F

FTF

Member
Buntabox said:
Devin Faraci's follow up article is pretty good. Points out there is no Paul Thomas Anderson, Coen Brothers, or David Fincher. Which is really odd.

Link
Click to expand...

Look I love TDK, and would have singled out others way before that (but to get more clicks, etc. I get it), but his point stands on the omissions. Where is There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, The Master, Seven, The Social Network, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, etc, etc. Where is The Silence of The Lambs??? Why is Schindlers List so low???

Anyway, as with most movie lists, it sucks...or too much of it sucks/seems wrong.
 
T

TakeItSlowDude

Member
Your Entertainer said:
I've never seen Citizen Kane.

Would a 20-something year old who appreciates good movies in general (favorites are The Good/Bad/Ugly and American Beauty) like it? I haven't seen many movies made before the 50s. I suspect its age will show and I won't really like it that much.
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It is a fairly straightforward and entertaining movie, not sure why people are calling it boring. I would like to see those same people watch some elliptical and rudderless European arthouse or auteur films that the critics love to go on about.
 
G

GRW810

Member
Millions of people rate Shawshank Redemption the best film ever yet a few snobby 'experts' have no place for it in a top 100. Laughable.
 
M

MrPink93485

Member
FTF said:
Look I love TDK, and would have singled out others way before that (but to get more clicks, etc. I get it), but his point stands on the omissions. Where is There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, The Master, Seven, The Social Network, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, etc, etc. Where is The Silence of The Lambs??? Why is Schindlers List so low???

Anyway, as with most movie lists, it sucks...or too much of it sucks/seems wrong.
Click to expand...

TDK isn't deserving to be on the list, but the salt levels from Faraci regarding TDK and Nolan in general is always kind of amusing.
 
G

Gabriel_Logan

Member
FTF said:
Look I love TDK, and would have singled out others way before that (but to get more clicks, etc. I get it), but his point stands on the omissions. Where is There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, The Master, Seven, The Social Network, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, etc, etc. Where is The Silence of The Lambs??? Why is Schindlers List so low???

Anyway, as with most movie lists, it sucks...or too much of it sucks/seems wrong.
Click to expand...

If we're talking Holocaust movies, the Pianist is by far and away the better movie. It's a crime its not on here.
 
T

tolkir

Member
My top 10 would be (sorry critics):

01. A Clockwork Orange (UK-USA)
02. Sunset Boulevard
03. Reservoir Dogs
04. Fight Club
05. Into the Wild
06. The Godfather
07. Se7en
08. Manhattan
09. The Shawshank Redemption
10. No Country for Old Men

If A Clockwork Orange isn't valid, I would add 12 Angry Men or Toy Story 3.
 
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