Time Magazine has released a list of the 100 Best Movies, as compiled by Time movie critics Richard Schickel and Richard Corliss. Admittedly, these kind of lists are very subjective, but IMHO, there are some glaring omissions from this one. For instance, perhaps the single best movie ever made, To Kill a Mockingbird is not included, but A Hard Day’s Night is?
What other glaring omissions or unwarranted inclusions do you see?
The Awful Truth is hardly at the level of something like Bringing Up Baby, though A Hard Day’s Night most certainly belongs on the list.
The Lady Eve is a tolerable choice, but for Preston Sturges, I’d prefer Miracle of Morgan’s Creek or The Plam Beach Story, both superior.
I also see that A Christmas Story and Miracle of 34th Street are conspicuously missing.
The Singing Detective (1986 version)? That’s utterly brilliant, but it’s a six-episode miniseries, not a movie.
Well, if everyone’s entitled to their opinion, I guess you’ll just have to accept that whoever slapped that list together is entitled to his, too.
Drunken Master II…?!
I disagree with the omission of Strange Brew from the list. Surely, there can’t be more than 90, 95 movies better than this?
There’s no Rashomon or Seven Samurai on that list. But they did choose Ikuru as their Kurosawa entry.
As far as these things go, this isn’t the worst list - it looks like they put some thought into it, rather than polling the office ala the AFI lists.
And Yojimbo.
Almodóvar gets Talk to Her instead of All About My Mother?
As a devoted fan of the great physical comedians, I’m pleasantly surprised to see Drunken Master II get some recognition; Jackie Chan in that film gives one of the most graceful, amazing physical comedy performances in cinema.
Same for The Man With A Camera (which I’d always heard translated as “Man With a Movie Camera”), a jaw-droppingly brilliant film that I’d never even heard of until someone gave my wife a copy about a year ago: it’s groundbreaking, elegant, and profound, but doesn’t seem to get the kind of recognition it deserves (or maybe it does and I’ve just never heard it).
And I think Sherlock, Jr. is a better choice for Buster Keaton than The General which is his standard entry on such lists.
From my cinematic perspective, it seems to be a pretty well thought-out list. It’s got some great choices that you don’t usually see making such lists (I wholeheartedly second the inclusion of City of God, even though it’s only three years old), and it leaves out some of the standard warhorses that seem to be famous mainly for being famous.
I don’t agree with all of the choices–personally, I wouldn’t have put LOTR any closer to this list than Jurassic Park–but at least they don’t seem to have autpoiloted the standard entries like Rear Window and Sunset Boulevard.
I have to agree that it is nice to see a list where some thought seemed to go into it rather than the popular Top 100 films. Some interesting choices resulted.
After all, the purpose is to get people talking… not to ‘nail’ the choices.
The Third Man isn’t on the list, but The Fly is.
I realize any such list is subjective, but why should I be interested in the opinions of people who think The Fly is one of the 100 best movies ever made, but The Third Man isn’t?
Huh. Gone with the Wind isn’t on the list - deservedly so, IMO, but still an interesting (and generally unprecidented) decision
Well, I’m fairly impressed.
Who’s in? Herzog, Ray (Nick & Satyajit), Godard, Fassbinder, Kubrick, Wong, Donen, Polanski, Renoir, Welles, Chaplin, Truffaut, Vidor, Kiezlowski, Bunuel, Ulmer, Fellini, Kurosawa, Siegel, Cronenberg, Hawks, Sturges, Lean, Vertov, Minnelli, Lang, Resnais, Bresson, Lubitsch, Hitchcock, Kazan, Tourneur, Bergman, Scorsese, Ford, Keaton, Murnau, Almodovar, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Angelopolous, Walsh & Wenders.
All extraordinary directors that deserve placement. Nit-picking which of their films exactly is losing the forest from the trees–at least they’re represented, deservedly.
There are some choices obviously included because of the star (Barbara Stanwyck, Jackie Chan, Fred & Ginger, W.C. Fields), and a good mix of deserved classics and overlooked cult followings. Probably the most questionable 5 are Farewell My Concubine (something by Zhang Yimou or Edward Yang would’ve been more deserving), Finding Nemo (if you have to pick Pixar, nothing beats the first Toy Story), Leolo (Huh? Tons better coming-of-age stories. Loach’s Kes for one), Goodfellas (3 Scorseses but none by Rossellini or Dreyer? Uh-uh), and Yojimbo (second-tier Kurosawa, especially with 2 Leones already on the list).
All-in-all, pretty impressive, though not having Harold Lloyd, the Marx Bros, Eric Rohmer, or the Maysles Bros still hurts.
I don’t know what they were thinking with The Fly. If a genre film is what they’re after, how about Alien?
And Gilliam.
I’ve never seen Brazil on one of these lists before.
After lists like this are published, I like to imagine the editors and panelists in a conference room surfing the web for threads like this and saying " :smack: Damn! I knew we forgot something!"
I’m really glad they aren’t ranked, I’ve always hated that. At a certain point you get to a certain level where it’s ridiculous to distinguish between movies, not to mention pointless.
I would have liked to see Fargo on the list, maybe Bridge on the River Kwai and Apocalypse Now as well.
I’m glad Spielberg made the list. It’s an unpopular opinion between my friends but what can I say…
Even better would have been Jaws.
And Monty Python and the Holy Grail was one of the funniest movies ever made. That should count for something.
Interesting that they counted “Lord of the Rings” as one film, not three.
And I so agree with whoever said they were glad about no ranking of films. In a list this long that would have been ridiculous.
Actually, the same applies to Berlin Alexanderplatz and Kieslowski’s The Decalogue, as their entry for the latter acknowledges.
Not a bad list in my estimation, but where is Touch of Evil for starters?
I saw one of them on CNN. He said the Fly was put on for the basic themes is elicits, the transformation is akin to people knowing they will die, etc.