Well then to answer your question, no for me giant monster does not necessarily equal good movie. Do I generally enjoy movies with oversized monsters/animals, yes. But this isn't always the case. For example Pacific Rim: Uprising was, well less than good. While I may not look for the same quality as say a Hollywood critic, I do still have some standards for what I consider a "good movie." If I were to extend my honorable mention, it would include such movies as Arrival (2016), Indiana Jones and the Holy Grail (1989), and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) (I guess you could argue this one has giant monsters in it but not until the very end).
Honestly my top 5 are all interchangeable with each other, I don't have a "favorite" out of these 1. Black Swan (2010) 2. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) 3. Alien (1979) 4. Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi) (2001) 5. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Kaguya-hime no Monogatari) (2013) Rest of the list 6. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) 7. What we do in the Shadows (2014) 8. Spider-Man: Into the Spider Verse (2018) 9. Se7en (1995) 10. Lilo & Stitch (2002) Honorable Mentions 1. Django Unchained (2012) 2. The How to Train Your Dragon trilogy (2010-2019) 3. Logan (2017) 4. Dunkirk (2017) 5. Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame (2018-2019)
In no particular order,and with the usual caveat that tomorrow the list could be completely different (apart from Jaws. And Toy Story. And the Bruce Springsteen one.....). Casablanca (1942) Jaws (1975) Reservoir Dogs (1992) It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) Inside Out (2015) Toy Story 3 (2010) Planet of the Apes (1968) The Railway Children (1970) An American Werewolf in London (1981) Springsteen and I (2013) I’m tagging in @snowleopard - I look forward to his list, which will contain far too many Denzel Washington films but will be interesting nonetheless....
I give up, I just can't do it. I've been rolling this around my brain for about four days during which I've tried to come up with a system of massaging (cheating) the remit (one film for each favourite director, two lists -one for favourite directors, one for more one-off directors, several tens by country/area of origin, several tens by genre) and I still can't narrow the numbers down to anything manageable. The more I think about it, the more that pop into my brain (yesterday had an Antipodean deluge including Once Were Warriors, The Piano, Mad Max 2, Heavenly Creatures and Wake In Fright). Having ruminated on the conundrum for many days I think I'd struggle to reduce my favorites to even a top fifty. Zoo listings are much easier (I've been to far less). The only thing I can say with certainty is that Pulp Fiction is my favourite all time film. I saw it ten times on initial release, three times in the first week of release (Reservoir Dogs, like John the Baptist, had warned me of its coming) and still watch and enjoy it pretty much annually. I could wax lyrically about why I love it and think it's that great but you either already know (or will never know) or can find out almost anywhere (you'd struggle to find a dissenting critic). For me, it's the most important film of the post '70's era. Sorry Marvel (mega) fans but for me Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will be the film event of the year.
I probably agree with this, between this and Filth. If you haven't seen the latter then check it out, or better still get the Irvine Welsh novel first and then check out the film, a great adaptation that stays true to the book. Once upon a time I'd have agreed, but since 2012 the MCU has overtaken even the great Tarantino in my opinion.
I don't really have a definite, 1-10 list, but here are some I enjoy a lot. Sergio Leonne's westerns, with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly being my favorite. The others are great, too. Dersu Uzala. I only saw this once on TCM, but wow, was it fantastic. Star Wars original trilogy. Lord of the Rings trilogy. Pan's Lanyrinth. The Valley of Gwangi. I found this movie really charming, and the work gone into it was really amazing when you hear about the stop motion dinosaurs. Logan. Gran Torino. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The Transformers movies. I find them to be very entertaining and often very underrated for what they are trying to be, and they sometimes are even a little more than meets the eye, with my personal favorite being Transformers: Age of Extinction. I suppose I could put more in the way of artsy, critically acclaimed films, but this is largely based on enjoyment. Bonus mystery film: I remember as a freshman in high school watching a film that, if I recall correctly, was made in Iran (although I can't rule out another Middle Eastern country). I am not sure what Iran's film and filming rules are like, so if it was from Iran, I am not certain if it was pre-Revolution or not (I don't know the date). Either way, in the film there was a family with a father and some children, and the father was a gardener, and he acquired work, and his clients praised his work. I remember it being a very genuine and wonderful film, but I have no idea what the name of it was. Bonus bizarre film: Sergei Parajanov's The Color of Pomegranates. It has no dialogue other than the occasional narration and backyard, and it makes little sense from shot-to-shot, but boy does he have quite the visual imagination. It's one of the most visually creative films I have ever seen, but it's also perhaps the weirdest film I have ever seen.
How big of a film historian/movie buff am I? Let me count the ways... Yes, I like Denzel Washington and I've seen him in 46 films....basically everything he's done. But...I love Harvey Keitel and have watched 70 of his movies. I'm at 92 Robert De Niro films, 50 Meryl Streep, 48 Julianne Moore, 47 Spencer Tracy and I could literally list another couple of hundred actors and actresses as I keep track of all of them. My movie-watching and zoo-visiting numbers border on craziness. Even a fairly obscure actor like Luiz Guzman is someone that I've seen in 31 films, or Ray Liotta in 41, or 17 out of 19 Elia Kazan directorial efforts. I could go on all day! I have a Top 10 movie list ready to go and I'll eventually post it, although I might cheat (as some have done) and add on some honourable mentions as well. In terms of seeing films in the theatre, I saw Pulp Fiction (1994) on 6 occasions and it will probably make my Top 10. As far as directors are concerned, I've watched 36 of Clint Eastwood's 37 films (only missing 1973's 'Breezy'), 35 John Ford movies, 33 Hitchcock and the list descends from there. There are some directors that I have seen practically EVERY theatrical release that they've ever made: Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, Tim Burton, Coen Brothers, Rob Reiner, Robert Zemeckis, Quentin Tarantino, Mike Nichols, Barry Levinson, Christopher Nolan, Michael Mann, Stephen Frears, Steven Soderbergh and my all-time favourite director Martin Scorsese. Even obscure old-time directors like William Wyler and George Cukor are on my list...41 movies combined from those two!
I totally agree...but since I have seen EVERY Tim Burton film then I have to keep going. It's like my Robert De Niro filmography that is at 92 movies. I've only got a few more and I've seen every single De Niro film ever...but I had to sit through Dirty Grandpa (2016) with Zac Efron and it was god-awful.
I'll keep an eye out, on your recommendation -woe betide you if I don't enjoy it. Heretic! Tarantino's a one-man cinema renaissance, MCU is a (largely impeccably well done) commercial project designed by committee.
I admire your commitment, Dirty Grandpa does look like an abomination of a movie! You should do, it's a very low key film compared to a lot of movies mentioned on the lists but I love it all the same! Since The Avengers in 2012 the MCU has gone from strength to strength, but if you notice my list includes Infinity War & Endgame (arguably one entry) and Ragnarok, which has a completely different tone to the rest of the franchise. Agreed, Tarantino is a genius and revelation, just a pity I don't really like his last two films...
You absolute masochist, wouldn't you rather something interesting/good (or something good again) rather than being such a completist? Rhetorical question, I understand your mentality -in my younger days I spent years searching out Romero's Knightriders, Cronenberg's Fast Company and Waters' Mondo Trasho amongst others (and don't even start me on my obsessive quest to watch all the films banned in the UK as "Video Nasties", 80% plus of which were wasted hours of my life).
Will do, for sure -there's a lot of overlap on your list of favourite films (I discovered Step Brothers last year and have watched it three times since). Films don't have to be big/high profile to be great. I loved both Django unchained and (slightly less) Hateful Eight. Strangely, I know a lot of people, like yourself, who don't much like Hateful Eight but love Inglorious Basterds (about my least favourite of his films, it just seems messy and the most un-Tarantino of his films).
Do I detect a possible Jenny Agutter crush? Love American Werewolf, when I first saw it, at a friend's house, I had to walk home on a dark foggy night and I was crapping myself all the way.
Those Meet The Fockers / Parents things were bad enough..... Have you ever followed any of the zoo trip threads posted by @snowleopard? It doesn't matter how godawful something is, so long as it can be ticked off on a list... (I share this approach to zoos. And music. And books. But definitely not films.) Hmmm. No, but now you mention it.... She is a zoo-friendly person too - at Newquay, many years ago, she was a regular 'celebrity' guest. And, of course, AWIL features some marvellous London Zoo scenes....
Its almost as if you like movies with dinosaurs. My main problem with all the Jurassic movies is of course had they just consulted with a good zoo man rather than paleontologists, hunters and chaos theorists the movies would be animal planet zoo documentaries
Inglourious... Pedantic I know, but if the film title deliberately contains a spelling error then you have to go with it I'm afraid!
Top 10 Films: 1- GoodFellas (1990) – My all-time favourite director is Martin Scorsese and this movie is his crowning achievement. It’s not for everyone, as the 300+ f-bombs and graphic violence can be off-putting for some…but it is a magnificent film that I’ve watched on at least 10 occasions. Robert De Niro, Joe “you think I’m funny” Pesci, at least half-a-dozen guys who would eventually feature on the Sopranos series, plus even Samuel L. Jackson as a lowlife named ‘Stacks’. Ray Liotta is the lead but the whole cast, the music and the entire experience is phenomenal. 2- The Godfather (1972) – Another gangster picture, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and a legacy of the fictional Corleone family. I’d probably have Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and Robert Duvall all in my list of Top 10 actors ever and they are each brilliant in this epic. 3- Apocalypse Now (1979) – One of my favourite actors (Harvey Keitel) was originally cast in the lead of this infamous movie, only to be quickly replaced after filming had begun by none other than Martin Sheen. There is top-billed Marlon Brando pocketing a pay-cheque for less than 15 minutes of work, Robert Duvall wanting to go surfing, Dennis Hopper, Laurence Fishburne, Harrison Ford and Vietnam sweating in the background. Epic. 4- Raging Bull (1980) – Arguably Robert De Niro’s most famous role. Martin Scorsese’s boxing masterpiece should have won Best Picture at the Oscars. Who remembers Robert Redford’s Ordinary People? 5- Do the Right Thing (1989) – I've watched every Spike Lee fan and I’ve seen many of his greatest films (Malcolm X, Jungle Fever, Inside Man, Clockers) on lots of occasions. Do the Right Thing is Lee’s best ‘joint’ and it depicts a single day in a Brooklyn neighbourhood from several points of view. A melting pot of tension on a hot NYC day. 6- Heat (1995) – I’ve watched almost every Michael Mann film and his three best all came out in the 1990s. The Last of the Mohicans (1992) has the world’s greatest living actor (Daniel Day-Lewis) running around in the woods, while The Insider (1999) has Al Pacino and Russell Crowe fighting a pro-smoking conglomerate. Heat is the famous movie that pairs Pacino with De Niro…a 3-hour cops n’ robbers epic that I’ve probably seen on 10 occasions. 7- JFK (1991) – I’ve watched every Oliver Stone film and this choice, while mildly controversial, represents a favourite of mine. I recognize close to 25 actors in the outstanding cast and this movie is yet another very lengthy film as a trend of 3-hour movies is emerging on this list. 8- Pulp Fiction (1994) – Quentin Tarantino’s three best films are his first three, in my opinion. Reservoir Dogs is a low-budget classic, Jackie Brown is a simmering crime drama, but the ‘middle-child’ is regarded as Tarantino’s greatest achievement. Profane, full of unexpected twists, hilarious…I saw it 6 times just in the theatre. 9- Dances with Wolves (1990) – Another long-winded film from the 1990s, and a movie that is perhaps not as gripping in its realism as Black Robe (1992), but nevertheless I’ve had a soft spot for Dances with Wolves ever since I saw it in a movie theater shortly after I turned 15 years of age. The vast open plains of the American Midwest, the Sioux language, the bison hunt, the epic canvas…what an amazing film. 10- Jaws (1975) – Hailed as the first summer blockbuster, this Steven Spielberg film still holds up well 44 years down the road. The best thing to ever happen during production was the breakdowns with ‘Bruce’, the mechanical shark, as it forced Spielberg to use the beast only sparingly and this aided in creating tension within the film. There are my top 10 movies of all-time. BUT...I obviously couldn’t find space for Scorsese’s Taxi Driver or Casino…both favourites of mine. David Fincher’s creepy Se7en with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt…or Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption. Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood or My Left Foot, both hugely enjoyable. Jeff Bridges in just about anything…including his iconic The Big Lebowski role; I’ve watched 58 films featuring Jeff Bridges. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Chinatown, On the Waterfront, Fort Apache, Patton, Dog Day Afternoon…all classics.
