[PLEASUREMAN]

One of the great frauds of movie criticism are all the turgid, boring, overhyped, earnest, overpraised, and basically unlikeable films that end up on the lists of greatest movies of all time. If anything, a supremely great film must be one which the viewer can watch multiple times and not weary of; I watched Casablanca once and came away thinking that Bogart and Bergman were mismatched and that the drama wasn't very interesting. I have not had the slightest desire to see it since.

The Godfather ranks near the top of worst great movies. I saw it many years after its reputation had been cast in concrete, and while I admit the film does feature one of Brando's best performances, it also features one of Pacino's worst, and overall the picture is greatly outshone by all the more sophisticated mafia verite films that have been made since. Critics hate admitting that landmark films have been made irrelevant by their successors, but it's often true.

"Great" directors usually have an overeducated and obsessive fanbase who really do want to watch their favorite auteur's work over and over again, arguing endlessly over some stupid detail or bit of throwaway symbolism. Their lack of perspective--their inability to really appreciate the films as art as opposed to slavishly admiring directorial whim--deprives their opinions of any value. Ingmar Bergman, like Orson Welles, is the sort of auteur who inspires contemptible adoration from fannish cinephiles; unlike Welles, Bergman has never made a truly enjoyable or interesting film. Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, Persona--no one will come right out and say it, but Bergman's tedious explorations of character and existentialism are suicidally dull. Not impenetrable or abstruse but ponderously self-indulgent. Worse, his cinematic navel-gazing has inspired hundreds of terrible imitators, and derailed Woody Allen's career for most of a decade (it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for it to get derailed again).

Citizen Kane is the least interesting Welles film, but weak-egoed cinephiles always get blown over by its epicness. When they get around to Vertigo or The Searchers I always think they're pulling my leg--both movies feature overwrought character moments and ridiculous plots. The Searchers has scenes of John Wayne's Acting that probably work better on an old black and white television after downing a six pack of beer and the better part of a Thanksgiving turkey. Jimmy Stewart is entertaining in Vertigo mostly because he's taken the gloves off--this time he's just going to Jimmy Stewart the fuck out of it.

The Seven Samurai has begat so many cinematic offspring that we may as well just face the fact that she's an old whore who has fucked the whole town. I think this is as close as the Japs can get to making a great movie, but I don't grade on a curve. Kurosawa is their Bergman--people say they like his films but the last time they saw one was in their second year of college. And they fell asleep 45 minutes in.

I wouldn't normally bring up Schindler's List--a) it was directed by Spielberg so obviously it's an artistic failure, and b) anything the critics have lauded since the mid-80s is mooted because serious movie criticism died out by the mid-80s--but any excuse to get in a dig at the hammy, sentimental, lowbrow, childish, and derivative hack director is good enough for me. It remains a cosmic mystery that Kubrick apparently approved of Spielberg taking over A.I. (at least according to Spielberg)--it is difficult to think of two directors more dissimilar in talent and sensibility.

Gone With the Wind is of course a ridiculously stupid chick flick, no more notable than the average Nancy Meyers film and definitely unworthy of its canonic status.

That it's a subjective exercise doesn't stop cinephiles from endlessly compiling lists of their favorites, and to me the problem with their doing so is the pretension of it. These are the worthy films that will enrich you aesthetically and intellectually, even as you drift off during the second act. I always suspect they hold back their true favorites in deference to the highbrow movies they know their peers will nod at--mostly because that's human nature, to want to appear a little better than we really are.

I don't mind admitting that two of my favorite movies are Ghostbusters and Star Wars (the latter in spite of its embarrassing nerd cachet), in large part because I can still sit down and watch them afresh and be thoroughly entertained. And it's easier for me to make time for The Shining than 2001 because the latter movie features the longest throat clearing exercise in the history of film (though no one has the nerve to admit it). Oh, I liked 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vida--but let's be honest, I may never watch them again. Same goes for Alphaville, The Third Man, and Apocalypse Now. (Yes, Apocalypse Now has some very good scenes--I just don't feel the need to sit through Coppola's masterpiece one more time. The Vietnam War isn't getting any younger.)

The point isn't to revel in easy-on-the-brain middlebrow entertainment inasmuch as it is to force an admission that film isn't particularly suited to cerebral art, despite so many attempts to make it so (and to celebrate the attempts). It's better to let go of the movie that bowled you over when you were a college student and still responded to pompous allegories, and to think for yourself rather than rubber-stamp a list of oldies that have been superceded by better works. This truth is never more evident than when scanning with dead eyes all the lists of great movies.

[rho]

Casablanca is a movie I can still watch again. It has a nice cadence and it's often pretty to look at. Same with the Godfather movies--well, the first two, anyway.

Part of the problem of any listing of "greatest movies" is they are so very bound up with circumstance. While it may be true that the Godfather movies have been surpassed by imitators, the fact that they are imitators is what makes the originals so great. Or, if "great" isn't the right word, "important". This is where these lists tend to get confused. There's a difference between "great" and "important". A movie can be one, or both, but being "great" or "important" is not necessarily the same thing.

Seven Samurai, IMO, is both, but its cachet is that it's important. So important that it's been copied endlessly in whole or in part. A lot of its "greatness" only appeals to film nerds, so it's not hard to see why it gets lost in the shuffle, but a lot of the filmaker's common chestnuts were introduced by Seven Samurai. If the movie seems ordinary, it's because you've seen the same thing a hundred times from other directors, who copied it from this movie.

Story-wise, I think Yojimbo is a lot more interesting, but it's not nearly as important. (Except that Sergio Leone copied it extremely well in Fistful of Dollars.) Ran is much more beautiful to look at (and itself owes a lot to Shakespeare). But Seven Samurai gets the nod, because it birthed so much cinemagraphic vocabulary.

But if I were making up a list of great movies, yeah, I'd have to include Ghostbusters, and two other Bill Murray vehicles: Groundhog Day, which took a simple and silly conceit and made a touching and entertaining movie out if it; and Rushmore, which showcased Wes Anderson's abilities before he decided to eat his own brain. I'd also include the entire Thin Man series, as it's among the best examples of on-screen chemistry between leads. Moonlighting owes a lot to the Thin Man movies.

[tycoon2020]

NancyBoy did you enjoy the movies 'borat' and 'ali g in da house'

[PLEASUREMAN]

tycoon2020, 15 November 2009 - 05:44 PM:

NancyBoy did you enjoy the movies 'borat' and 'ali g in da house'

I haven't seen either of them

[PLEASUREMAN]

rho, 15 November 2009 - 04:52 PM:

Part of the problem of any listing of "greatest movies" is they are so very bound up with circumstance. While it may be true that the Godfather movies have been surpassed by imitators, the fact that they are imitators is what makes the originals so great. Or, if "great" isn't the right word, "important". This is where these lists tend to get confused. There's a difference between "great" and "important". A movie can be one, or both, but being "great" or "important" is not necessarily the same thing.

Seven Samurai, IMO, is both, but its cachet is that it's important. So important that it's been copied endlessly in whole or in part. A lot of its "greatness" only appeals to film nerds, so it's not hard to see why it gets lost in the shuffle, but a lot of the filmaker's common chestnuts were introduced by Seven Samurai. If the movie seems ordinary, it's because you've seen the same thing a hundred times from other directors, who copied it from this movie.

The problem I have with this approach is that it seems caught up in assigning credit to whomever got their first. Alot of developments in film, specifically narrative developments, were bound to happen eventually, particularly when looking at film's early period. I am more inclined to honor the best exploitation of an idea rather than the first occurrence of it, especially in films that have staying power over generations. Of course many older films do retain a great deal of power and I don't take anything away from directors like Hitchcock or Wilder or others, but "pioneering" seems more appropriate in many cases--particularly since film is such a young medium.

There's another problem here, in that directors love to quote other directors even though the quote usually isn't very important artistically--perhaps just an iconic image or frame, or whatever. But who cares? I've seen The Searchers which has been frequently quoted, but it's difficult to take a movie with so many hammy performances and which features an awfully melodramatic exploration of vengeance that seriously, the movie is confined by Western formula of the time. Just because lots of people quote Ford or Kurosawa or Hitchcock doesn't make the movies they quote particularly great, although I can see why directors who veer toward the film buff side would get a great charge out of doing so. Blade Runner has been quoted by zillions of inferior sci fi movies--it's still a really badly written, mawkish, overrated piece of shit.

If Leone copied Kurosawa he also greatly revitalized what he copied, by marrying it to a distinctive view of the Old West that is bound up in American identity in a fairly profound way--and it's still awfully entertaining.

[jshotgunMEMBER13]

A problem is with the medium - 2001 is a piece of crap when it's on TV on a Sunday afternoon, but watching it in a proper cinema just blows you away - same for Apocalypse Now, these are the kind of films you have to really lose yourself in to fully appreciate, and I find it very hard to do that unless I'm in a cinema, I tend to get distracted or bored with these longer films but it's just a whole different experience. Yes Ghostbusters is amazing, but it's a different kind of film so I don't think it's really comparable. It all depends I guess on how you define "great", there's lots of different aspects there - entertainment, meaning, significance, atmosphere, technical brilliance/innovation etc. - that all get mixed up completely subjectively.

[cleon]

Ghostbusters is great. I hadn't seen it since I was a kid, but when I rewatched it there was all kinds of funny things that I totally missed when i was 7. 2001 was totally shit though.

[yeahimlupin]

Well I hated Gone with the Wind and but none of the other movies mentioned struck me as being bad. I really liked Laurence of Arabia quite a bit for the beautiful backgrounds, if nothing else.

[jshotgunMEMBER13]

How the hell did I fuck that post up and how do I edit it?

[PLEASUREMAN]

jshotgunMEMBER13, 16 November 2009 - 06:12 AM:

How the hell did I fuck that post up and how do I edit it?

You have an edit button for your posts, right? I fixed it, probably your browser double-posted and it didn't get caught (IPBoard merges posts within a short span of time)

[rho]

PLEASUREMAN, 15 November 2009 - 06:36 PM:

The problem I have with this approach is that it seems caught up in assigning credit to whomever got their first. Alot of developments in film, specifically narrative developments, were bound to happen eventually, particularly when looking at film's early period. I am more inclined to honor the best exploitation of an idea rather than the first occurrence of it, especially in films that have staying power over generations. Of course many older films do retain a great deal of power and I don't take anything away from directors like Hitchcock or Wilder or others, but "pioneering" seems more appropriate in many cases--particularly since film is such a young medium.

I don't disagree. To some extent we've adopted the language of literary criticism for film criticism because film is so young. We've only had real moving pictures for what, a century or so? Recognizable criticism is barely half that old, but we're using vocabulary and insights developed for a much more mature medium. Or put another way, Hammurabi's Code has a lot of howlers in it that look ridiculous to our modern eyes, but it doesn't alter its intrinsic importance and value.

Of course, eventually the post-modernists will get their unwashed mitts on film criticism as well (some judge this has already occurred) and fuck it up like they've done everything else.

Referencing the Mad Men thread, it's possible that we're witnessing the nadir of "important" films. Anybody who's at all interested in telling a complex and complete story is much more likely to look to episodic television rather than the big screen. From the business side, TV is far more appealing, if only because you don't have nearly the same problems with distribution or venue or marketing. The big theatre is thus relegated to obvious blockbusters. In fact, it's getting to where you run a major risk in even trying to have a theatrical opening, as a poor box office showing gives the perception that it's a loser, even if it isn't. If they tried to make a Mad Men movie it would have a hard row to hoe to find any kind of an audience before it vanished without a trace.

If we are seeing the lessening importance of the theater as a guiding principle for cinematography you may find that these lists of "Great Movies" will cease to add many new titles. Kurosawa will be lauded as a groundbreaking auteur merely be being around in the short few decades where film was relevant.

[PLEASUREMAN]

What's interesting is how creative stagnation in movies drove HBO and Showtime to put money into premier content...and ability to make money on video sales allowed them to focus on shorter, high quality runs rather than the syndication model of hundreds of episodes that could run in any sequence. Mad Men is probably the apex of that strategy in that it is being used by a non-premium channel which has to rely solely on the ads and video sales (I hear Showtime is bleeding paying subscribers anyway...but their premium content has never been that good).

It just so happens that with tighter budgets and shorter schedules, writers have far more control in television than they ever did in movies. Even before this trend, TV was more a writer's medium than a director's or actor's. Of course now the networks are getting it from both ends, cheap writerless reality content on one side and on the other premium shows that they can't possibly match with their primetime schedules and broad audiences.

And at some point in the 90s, film actors started getting interested in TV, probably because the pool of new movies made each year seems to get smaller and smaller as studios bet the bank on tentpoles. It's a TV golden age, no doubt. Don't know how long it will last before the accountants jump in and micromanage. Say, you should make this character a hip edgy black guy...that would make it a four-quadrant cast...think about it. It could really give this picture about the struggles facing a small aging convent some heat. That's actually how the V remake looked to me. TV trying to be movies again. See also Dexter--the world's most sensitive and caring serial killer. I am bracing for the worst.

[nicotine stain]

I love the invective you aim at Spielberg. Your judgment about Godfather is dead on. But your claim about Bergman seems to be based on the fallacy that, if the films require effort to appreciate, then they can't be interesting.

Bergman wrote first rate dialogue. It conveys so much about his characters that you have to linger over the subtitles to appreciate the stories
and depth of the personalities. The films are a test of reading comprehension, but the material on these tests is fucking great writing. For example, the marital spats in Scenes from a Marriage are so lifelike and upsetting you want to turn away but are compelled to watch. The complexity of his dialogue and characters increases the effort required of the viewer, but it also gives his films a literary quality that other films can't achieve.

The cinematography in his films, before and after Sven Nykvist, was beautiful too. The composition of his scenes can be appreciated just like great photographic art.

[Jeff Fries]

Is the title a swipe at Ebert's "The Great Movies" project? I hope so.

Nancyboy if you haven't heard of Jonathan Rosenbaum you might enjoy his article on greatest movie lists and his Ingmar Bergman obituary ("who cares"). I assume you haven't heard of him or you would have mentioned him by now.

[PLEASUREMAN]

nicotine stain, 16 November 2009 - 07:28 PM:

I love the invective you aim at Spielberg. Your judgment about Godfather is dead on. But your claim about Bergman seems to be based on the fallacy that, if the films require effort to appreciate, then they can't be interesting.

Bergman wrote first rate dialogue. It conveys so much about his characters that you have to linger over the subtitles to appreciate the stories
and depth of the personalities. The films are a test of reading comprehension, but the material on these tests is fucking great writing. For example, the marital spats in Scenes from a Marriage are so lifelike and upsetting you want to turn away but are compelled to watch. The complexity of his dialogue and characters increases the effort required of the viewer, but it also gives his films a literary quality that other films can't achieve.

The cinematography in his films, before and after Sven Nykvist, was beautiful too. The composition of his scenes can be appreciated just like great photographic art.

I have seen several of his films but not Scenes from a Marriage (the idea of the movie puts me off--my loss I suppose). As far as the writing sometimes it is good, sometimes indulgent. I know he has fans, one of my best friends from college loves him which is how I got introduced to his movies. It's interesting that you bring up his writing, I find him more literary than cinematic, which is usually problematic. Generally he is too depressive and fatalistic, but obviously that is a matter of philisophical inclination (I don't crave aspirational happy movies, but gloomily cerebral is not much better--one of the problems I have with Kubrick). As a filmmaker obviously he has been very influential. But I think his films are visually uninteresting and impossible to really enjoy.

I can put effort into a movie or book but it has to be more than a homework assignment--a process of puzzling out all the symbols and hidden meanings and allusions. I find much of that to be pretentious--put the meaning out in front, don't make a puzzle of it, the meaning doesn't become more meaningful by being made mysterious. A movie about two people who are each halves of a whole just seems like an art school gimmick (and dichotomies are not very rich in artistic or philisophical possibility). I know that sort of thing was popular in the New Wave era. I am not saying Bergman is terrible or only a snob would like him, clearly he was capable and talented as a dramatist, and somewhat as an examiner of the human condition, but I question how many people truly enjoy his films--vs. love to talk about them.

He also made far too many movies. Many of them just aren't any good. I question that approach. It seems that at times he was more in love with the process of making films than in developing an idea to its fullest. That to me is a serious complaint because it leaves everyone but devotees unsatisfied; it must have been a great lifestyle. Woody Allen has that problem to the nth degree. He makes a film a year but his batting average is terrible. He is like an extreme declension of Bergman (whom he worshipped of course--embarrassingly for both men).

I also tire of hearing about Wild Strawberries (not that it comes up much). It's not even his best work, let alone the end-all be-all of cinema that my friend thinks it is.

[PLEASUREMAN]

Jeff Fries, 16 November 2009 - 11:31 PM:

Is the title a swipe at Ebert's "The Great Movies" project? I hope so.

Nancyboy if you haven't heard of Jonathan Rosenbaum you might enjoy his article on greatest movie lists and his Ingmar Bergman obituary ("who cares"). I assume you haven't heard of him or you would have mentioned him by now.

I'm not familiar with what Ebert is up to...really says it all that he's the best of the current regime of widely read movie critics. I hate Ebert but from him to say David Edelstein is like dropping off a cliff and plummeting to the center of the earth. I guess it's just a sign of the times.

I will check out the links, and I am enjoying reading the differing views in this thread.

edit: also if that guy takes the knives to AFI that would be great...those fucking assholes had some thing in Dallas and completely screwed up the framing of Double Indemnity...I mean completely screwed it up, as in Barbara Stanwyck's head missing during several of her dialog scenes. WHAT THE FUCK

[PLEASUREMAN]

By the way I feel bound to add some of my own favorites, since I've taken mindless jabs at everyone else's. Actually if you've visited Udolpho you will see that some of the banner graphics are indications.

First, Three Days of the Condor. Beautifully shot movie that I think encapsulates the very best of 70s cinema. A very smart thriller plot and I don't know that it has been surpassed. Redford once dismissed it as one of his in-between movies. What an idiot, it's by far his best movie.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I just admire the fact that Tobe Hooper, who has not done anything interesting since, accidentally threw together a masterfully primal experience that could only be delivered in a movie. This is like some teenager getting drunk and beating Tiger Woods by three strokes. Movies at their best are visceral.

Alien. Some movies I just appreciate for pulling video, sound, mood, and story together in a perfectly synchronized experience. On the one hand you could look at this as just a snazzier version of man in a rubber suit jumping out at people, or a 10 little Indians rehash. It's not at all meaningful as anything other than a scarefest. But so what, it's brilliantly done. Ridley Scott peaked way early.

Parallax View. When I got my wedding photos done I asked the photographer if she could give them a Gordon Willis quality. I know that is kind of insane, but this is to me one of his best movies, I can just sit and watch the way every scene is so perfectly framed over and over. Dialogue? Plot? Who cares, it's a fantastic visual experience and it does not involve aliens or spaceships or anything out of the ordinary. It's also a nice look at paranoia and has a fantastic soundtrack and creepy vibe.

Manhattan. Speaking of Gordon Willis. This is a movie that could actually make you like New York Jews. So much better than Annie Hall, which was a pretty weak entry in my opinion.

Robocop. Does this movie ever end up on anyone's best list? That's the whole problem. They never show a sense of humor--even the comedies they like are moldy and dour. This is a terrific parody of movies, America as seen through movies, and megalomaniacal Dutch directors who probably didn't think they were being that scathing.

A Touch of Evil. This movie does end up on a lot of lists. I think it's better than Citizen Kane, which underwhelmed me. This is a terrific noir movie, I saw the re-edited version. Welles really was a genius, how fucking sad that the guy's last job was voicing a Transformers cartoon. For the love of God.

12 Monkeys. Probably my favorite Gilliam movie, because there's so little Gilliam in it.

Okay, running out of steam. There you go. Obligatory Hitchcock entry: Rear window. (But in a different mood I'd pick Psycho.)

[rho]

12 Monkeys was the movie that made me stop hating Brad Pitt.

For Kurosawa remakes, The Magnificent Seven is golden-age cinema at its best. Bonus points for Steve McQueen's attempts to upstage Yul Brenner.

[Lookwell!]

Nancyboy in a similar vein what is your opinion of the "best bands"? Everyone always swears up and down that the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, etc are the best of the best but I can't even get through half their songs I find them either annoying or so boring I zone out and I suspect I'm not alone in this opinion

[rho]

Lookwell!, 17 November 2009 - 06:13 PM:

Nancyboy in a similar vein what is your opinion of the "best bands"? Everyone always swears up and down that the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, etc are the best of the best but I can't even get through half their songs I find them either annoying or so boring I zone out and I suspect I'm not alone in this opinion

People say the same thing about Dostoevsky and Austen.

Elvis is just some Mississippi redneck singing darky music until you put him in context.