I agree with this – it’s still one of the best examples of CG, despite being one of the earliest.
Personally I’d rank Jurassic Park well ahead of LOTR (and I can’t wait until my kids are old enough to see it!). LOTR really bothered me; it seemed like, often, objects in the distance were just as focused and had the exact same color intensity as objects up close. Same with the more recent Star Wars, with row after row of soldiers all exactly the same, even though the furthest rows were farther away.
In general I’d agree; however, I’ve found that black & white cinematography tends to show off pixelation and contrast defects far worse than color, especially with dark images; the amount of color variation is to low, I guess, and you end up seeing distinct patches of dark. You’ll also never get the kind of contrast from a backlit screen as you will from projection. Watching the “emerging from the desert” scene in Lawrence of Arabia, for instance, never has the same impact on any television or monitor, regardless of size, as it does on even a modest cinema screen. (It should, of course, be viewed in full 70mm projection if at all possible.) Howe’s work is best seen in the cinema, where his Expressionalist-inspired paranoic camerawork in films like The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds are nothing short of breathtaking.
The biggest flaw was coincidentially naming it after an H.G. Wells story to which it has no relation whatsoever, other than the titular temporal displacement device and a few incidental character names.
My vote, although it has already been mentioned, goes for Blade Runner. Many other films have had very impressive cinematography and special effects, but few have held up as well as this pre-CGI masterpiece of a claustrophobic, dystopian world in which vice, decrepitude, and mortality aren’t just atmosphere or themese but are tangible characters, more important than the actors themselves.
Stranger
I see “Koyaanisqatsi” is already mentioned, but don’t forget the other 2 in the trilogy: “Powaqqatsi” and “Naqoyqatsi.” There’s some very nice photography in all of them, but “Powaqqatsi” is the least depressing.
One of the many things I love about Fargo is the look of it.
We just rented and watched A Good Year. It was not a big earth-shattering great movie, but it was directed by Ridley Scott and it was filmed in Provence. It’s gorgeous to look at, and IMDB says that the locations were the Chateau La Canorgue and the village of Bonnieux. Francophiles would enjoy this bit of eye candy.
And I always like Russell Crowe and Albert Finney, so they helped matters along, too.