The Best Movie Of All Time

I just saw a movie called "Bully". It came out in 2001. I somehow thought I had seen it but I could not quite remember. I think it is my second time. This time it struck me. I watched it on DVD on my 19" computer monitor. My heart started to pound in the middle of the movie... I thought It was going to burst. It kept pumping uncontrollably right to the very end then it very slowly slowed down during the credits. I was gasping for some awkwardly absurd meaning afterwards, and my breath...
I went on an internet search and found this review that I think is real well written about the movie. It is a brilliant movie in so many aspects, much reminiscent to the "lord of the flies" motif but in a quite current time suburbia.

http://www.badlit.com/review_bully.html

This is certainly one of the true greats, and what about that fabulous score by Bernard Hermann!

Going way WAY back (well, 3 months) I liked Ebert's list MUCH better than the AFI's list--because Ebert admits that some of the greatest films have been made in languages other than English!

There are 5 movies I have seen at least 50 times each...2 of them are not in English.

BTW, I just saw "Bad Education," Almadovar's latest. I still like his earlier films that're almost exclusively about women--he seems to be able to get into our skins.

Welcome to A2K, dickon! AFI is the American Film Institute, not the Foreign Film Institute so Ebert's Great Movies are obviously going to include many foreign films. BFI, the British Film Institute has come up with lists, the most predominate is the polling of the world film critics and directors list of best films. This does include foreign films:

Sight and Sound Critics Top Ten Poll 2002

1

Citizen Kane (Welles)

Dazzlingly inventive, technically breathtaking, Citizen Kane reinvented the way stories could be told in the cinema, and set a standard generations of film-makers have since aspired to. An absorbing account of a newspaper tycoon's rise to power, Orson Welles' debut film feels as fresh as tomorrow's headlines. And he was only 26 when he made it.


2

Vertigo (Hitchcock)

A gripping detective story or a delirious investigation into desire, grief and jealousy? Hitchcock had a genius for transforming genre pieces into vehicles for his own dark obsessions, and this 1958 masterpiece shows the director at his mesmerising best. And for James Stewart fans, it also boasts the star's most compelling performance.


3

La Règle du jeu (Renoir)

Tragedy and comedy effortlessly combine in Renoir's country house ensemble drama. A group of aristocrats gather for some rural relaxation, a shooting party is arranged, downstairs the servants bicker about a new employee, while all the time husbands, wives, mistresses and lovers sweetly deceive one another and swap declarations of love like name cards at a dinner party.


4

The Godfather and The Godfather part II (Coppola)

Few films have portrayed the US immigrant experience quite so vividly as Coppola's Godfather films, or exposed the contradictions of the American Dream quite so ruthlessly. And what a cast, formidable talent firing all cylinders: Brando, De Niro, Pacino, Keaton, Duvall, Caan. Now that's an offer you can't refuse. Who voted for The Godfather?


5

Tokyo Story (Ozu)

A poignant story of family relations and loss, Ozu's subtle mood piece portrays the trip an elderly couple make to Tokyo to visit their grown-up children. The shooting style is elegantly minimal and formally reticent, and the film's devastating emotional impact is drawn as much from what is unsaid and unshown as from what is revealed.





6

2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)

One of the most ambitious Hollywood movies ever made, 2001 crams into its two-hour plus running time a story that spans the prehistoric age to the beginning of the third millennium, and features some of the most hypnotically beautiful special effects work ever committed to film. After seeing this, you can never listen to Strauss' Blue Danube without thinking space crafts waltzing against starry backdrops.



7

Battleship Potemkin (Eisenstein)

Eisenstein's recreation of a mutiny by sailors of the battleship Potemkin in 1905 works as daring formal experiment - which pushed the expressive potential of film editing to its limit - and rousing propaganda for the masses. The Odessa Steps sequence remains one of the most memorable set-pieces in cinema.


8

Sunrise (Murnau)

Having left his native Germany for the US, F.W. Murnau had all the resources of a major Hollywood studio at his disposal for this, his American debut. What he produced was a visually stunning film romance that ranks as one of the last hurrahs of the silent period.



9

8 1/2 (Fellini)

Wonderfully freefloating, gleefully confusing reality and fantasy, 8 1/2 provides a ringside seat into the ever active imaginative life of its director protagonist Guido, played by Fellini's on-screen alter-ego Marcello Mastroianni. The definitive film about film-making - as much about the agonies of the creative process as the ecstasies - it's no wonder the movie is so popular with directors.


10

Singin' In the Rain (Kelly, Donen)

Impossible to watch without a smile on your face, this affectionate tribute to the glory days of Hollywood in the 1920s is pleasure distilled into 102 minutes. With Gene Kelly dance sequences that take your breath away and a great score by Brown and Freed, this is the film musical at its best.

There are also the director's selection of the best ten films ever made and lists of the best directors:


http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/

Whether AFI will relent and ever come up with a list of foreign films is a good question.

BFI's list of the top ten--either the directors' or the critics'--include FIVE foreign language films. I REALLY think it's time we got put in our place! Sometimes the "Best Foreign (language) Film" Oscar goes to the Best Film--PERIOD! Like--last year?

Since Bollywood alone makes more movies than Hollywood, the output is more than evened up. That helps make sense that it would be expected that half the movies are foreign. I like to watch the Oscars and see what they've voted on but it's a self-gratifying organization made up of members of the industry. It only sometimes coincides with a film that has done huge box office or what the critics cite as the best films (curiously these days there are more Hollywood and American independent films on those lists than foreign films). Foreign films are hurt by the aversion to sub-titles, the number one bugaboo of American film goers. Worse yet is what is perceived as poor translations in dubbed versions of a movie and the reason for that is trying to find words with similar pronunciation so it matches the movement of the mouths of the actors (something most people do not realize).

What is possibly more significant is there are no movies after 1974 which doesn't bode well for foreign films either.

The reader's votes based on the top twenty are revealing:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/userpoll/index.php

best movie of all time
Hi, i'm new to to a2k, in regards to the topic i would have to say my best film of all time would have to be Goldfinger or Diamonds are forever.

Re: best movie of all time


Welcome 2 a2k!


Bond rules!

Yea, I enjoyed Sound Of Music... I even have it in my DVD collection.... I love musicals...

My favorite Bond movies are, from the first period "From Russia With Love" and from the second period (post Sean Connery and Roger Moore) "Goldeneye."

"The Spy Who Love Me" was the best of the Moore outings.

I feel that one of the best movies of all time, at least in the horror category anyways, has got to be Hitchcock's "Psycho".

He was a master of pschological suspense without actually showing gory scenes. I saw this as a kid in a theatre when it first came out in 1960. Scared the heck out of me.

I have subsquently seen it a few more times on TV and it still holds up after all these years. It's all the more frightening in black and white.

Best Movie
I agree with Edgar's general statement that there are so many good movies that it is impossible to name a favorite. My own opinion is likely to change from time to time.

That said, one that I can watch over and over is My Fair Lady. This, however, is true, for me, of many musicals.

Sometimes it can be worth while to watch an old film just to hear a great bit of dialog. I think of "The Fabulous Baker Boys." Just following the scene with Michelle Pfeiffer on the piano there is a scene where she and Jeff Bridges are standing in the empty ball room, and she is telling him what her life has been like. It's marvelous dialogue. I wonder that anyone can write so well. Pfeiffer delivers it just right--every time.

I'm always thrilled when I hear dialog I think is good.

I recall watching Silence of the Lambs, many years ago, and thinking how scary it was, but it really didn't show many gory scenes, or at least it was kept to a minimum, even though the viewer is left with the impression it is gory.

My favorite Hitchcock is North By Northwest.

We've debated this before whether this topic should be "Favorite Film" rather than any pronouncement of a "Best Film." A top ten list can be revealing also but may by genre. This thread has obviously gone a long time so I could have an inclination to feature it. It's still the Best Film label that has made me reticent.

I have probably seen "North by Northwest" more times than any other Hitchcock because it's so damn entertaining. Martin Landau's sly portrayal of a gay character considering the time the film was made is a gem. Although Kim Novak's cold, icy performance in "Vertigo" was excellent, it was Hitchcock taking advantage of her very low key acting style (or maybe lack of acting ability), Eva Marie Saint is still by favorite Hitchcock blonde. I think the scene in the train diner car is one of the most erotic encounters between two people in all of filmdom and without resorting to the usual soft porn scenes to produce it's effect. Of course, who could ever short Cary Grant? My favorite scenes with the actor is when he's trying to explain his perdicament to his mother.

The best movie ever made would most likely have to be... Starship Troopers

I just rented a DVD called "Latter Days". It is about a male mormon missionary that discovers he has homosexual feelings for another man. I was a christian missionary struggling with similar issues and the movie rang some bells. My friends who have watched the movie with me have commented on how powerfully the movie touched them too.

I do not necessarily rate this among the best movies of all time. But I personally hold it as a framework for how I have resolved many of my own fears and conflicting perspectives. So for me it is the practical message of the movie that rates high.

I think that gay emotions are among the most difficult to confront both on a personal level and in a peer environment.

I have encountered some of the most profound thought in "Latter Days" than any other movie has conveyed, to me, in years. Especially the "little dots" thing in the movie.

People do not stop and ask themselves after a movie or a sitcom... what have I learned? Was that experience worth it? What did the mindless laugh tracks teach me?

What did you "learn" from "The Godfather"? That there are really bad mobsters that have no regard for human life? That is true but, so what? I guess it can teach others of the pitfalls of a life of crime and to at least pay their taxes, cover their tracks better. I don't know, I cannot personally relater to a mobster. That is so far from what I am about. Do we learn that, people often find it more convenient to kill out of a grudge than to let things go, forgive and forget or that the actor has paper towels stuffed in his cheeks?

You can watch a sitcom for a whole hour and sometimes learn only one thing... not to cheat on your homework or something mundane and senselessly mediocre. I guess your homework is a good thing to do yourself but the sitcoms do not usually address the underlying problem and causes of laziness, deception and a lack luster attitude of heart.

I scrutinize what I watch more when I ask myself "What Have I Learned?" If you should happen to rent "Latter Days" let me know what you think.

I know I have gone from a simple post of what is your favorite movie to, a more philosophical take. Not so much what is your favorite movie but what exactly was it that impacted you in the movie so much that you never forgot it.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

"There's no place like home..."

Kill Bill I and II - best movie, and best villian

Sixth Sense - best drama and acting

Pulp Fiction is my fav of all time, followed by Kill Bill 1 and True Romance

too many:
Lolita
rainman
LOrd Ring