Author Topic: Top Films of All Time  (Read 944387 times)

duder

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 4404
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #270 on: March 31, 2009, 06:23:28 PM »
Can we move on to the next page so I don't have to look at Madeyeshawn's avatar again?
...

duder

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 4404
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #271 on: March 31, 2009, 06:23:41 PM »
Thanks.
...

FLYmeatwad

  • An Acronym
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 28785
  • I am trying to impress myself. I have yet to do it
    • Processed Grass
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #272 on: March 31, 2009, 07:14:27 PM »
Can we move on to the next page so I don't have to look at Madeyeshawn's avatar again?

Perhaps.

jororo

  • Junior Member
  • *
  • Posts: 14
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #273 on: April 01, 2009, 12:11:18 AM »
-The Fire Tongue Bowl. Another German movie. And the best there is. A school comedy with a serious core, and Heinz Ruehmann at the topof his game as charming Hans Pfeiffer (with three f!)

The Fire Tongue Bowl? That can't really be what the film is known as, can it? Die Feuerzangenbowle translated literally would be something like fire-tongs-punch...

Hm, I just checked: it looks like the drink "Feuerzangenbowle" is not really known anywhere else, which would explain why it doesn't have a proper English name.

Anyway, nice choice! It is a bold statement to call it the best German movie there is, but it comes close. (The rest of your list was fun to read as well!)

At least the movie data base of my choice (ofdb.de) translates it like that...

I really think that the German film is quite down and has been for a long time. There are some really good efforts (The Downfall; The Experiment; Run, Lola, run; The Boat; a number of works by Schlöndorff and Herzog; Muenchhausen; I am not talking about silent movies here) but they are few and far between. There are so many bad romances and really unwatchable "comedies" that it is hard to find the few gems. A lot of German movies are either stupid to excess or that concerned with content and message that they forget to entertain.
While I do really like some German movies, and the situation has improved over the last 15-20 years, to the point that most movies that make it to cinema are at least watchable, I still think that the German film industry  has not fully recovered from the creative bloodletting in the thirties and forties, so that the best movies from Germany were made before or during that - the great silent movie efforts (Caligari is still haunting, so is the Golem), Lang's work in Germany (before the war!) or The Blue Angel are, at least in my opinion, as good as or better than anything after that put together. Am I being too hard on German films? Maybe, but I was forced to watch "Otto- Der Katastrophenfilm"...


"Robin of Sherwood" has 26 of the greates TV episodes ever made! Especially the first two seasons are superb, Michael Praed (later of Dynasty "fame"...) gives a performance for the ages as young, idealistic Robin Hood, perfectly balanced by Ray Winstone's Will Scarlett, a cynical veteran who believes in this young boy from Locksley almost against his will. The pilot, the two-parter "The Hounds of Satan" and both season finals are, in my opinion, the Robin Hood ever captured on screen. The third season also has its moments (Jason Connery takes on the hood), but falls behind the first two.

And Clannad provides a mystical and enthralling soundtrack
"To my brother George - the richest man in town!"

ferris

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 10830
  • "Bravo Vincent....Bravo!"
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #274 on: April 01, 2009, 01:15:28 AM »
Ok, so I'm the nerd who keeps an Excel spreadsheet with 100 movies.  I update the thing every time I watch a movie, and I save a new copy of the spreadsheet so I can keep the history.  I call it the ever-changing top 100.  Here's the current top 20:

1-Close Encounters of the Third Kind   (1977, Steven Spielberg)
2-American Beauty   (1999, Sam Mendes)
3-Synecdoche, New York (2008, Charlie Kaufman)
4-The Godfather  (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
5-Life is Beautiful  (1997, Roberto Benigni)
6-The Incredibles  (2004, Brad Bird)
7-There Will Be Blood  (2008, Paul Thomas Anderson)
8-In America  (2003, Jim Sheridan)
9-Fargo  (1996, Joel Coen)
10-Pulp Fiction  (1994, Quentin Tarantino)

11-The Truman Show (1998, Peter Weir)
12-Magnolia  (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson)
13-No Country For Old Men   (2004, Joel and Ethan Coen)
14-Raiders of the Lost Ark   (1981, Steven Spielberg)
15-Adaptation  (2002, Spike Jonze)
16-Jaws   (1975, Steven Spielberg)
17-The Untouchables  (1987, Brian De Palma)
18-Ferris Beuller's Day Off  (1986, Jon Hughes)
19-Amadeus  (1984, Milos Forman)
20-Never Cry Wolf   (1983, Carroll Ballard)

(List updated 5/19/2009)
« Last Edit: May 19, 2009, 08:56:32 AM by ferris »
"And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs" - Exodus 8:2 KJV
(switchboard)

Emiliana

  • Elite Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 2239
  • Life is a Cabaret!
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #275 on: April 01, 2009, 03:04:08 AM »

I really think that the German film is quite down and has been for a long time. There are some really good efforts (The Downfall; The Experiment; Run, Lola, run; The Boat; a number of works by Schlöndorff and Herzog; Muenchhausen; I am not talking about silent movies here) but they are few and far between. There are so many bad romances and really unwatchable "comedies" that it is hard to find the few gems. A lot of German movies are either stupid to excess or that concerned with content and message that they forget to entertain.
While I do really like some German movies, and the situation has improved over the last 15-20 years, to the point that most movies that make it to cinema are at least watchable, I still think that the German film industry  has not fully recovered from the creative bloodletting in the thirties and forties, so that the best movies from Germany were made before or during that - the great silent movie efforts (Caligari is still haunting, so is the Golem), Lang's work in Germany (before the war!) or The Blue Angel are, at least in my opinion, as good as or better than anything after that put together. Am I being too hard on German films? Maybe, but I was forced to watch "Otto- Der Katastrophenfilm"...

Actually, I don't think you're being too hard on German film. Yesterday, I didn't think this through properly, because then I would have realised that I can't come up with many German films that are better than Die Feuerzangenbowle (and I haven't even seen half of the non-silent-era films that you listed).

Germany's output of the horrid comedies and total snoozefests (I probably have more affection for the "bad romances" than you) have almost turned me off German cinema altogether - I have seen only one German film in the theatre over the last 12 months. That said, I have never taken the time to analyze why good German films are so rare, but your explanation of an extremely extended recovery period after the fourties makes sense. Also, the financing procedures at work here put lots of obstacles in people's ways... But you have obviously put more thought into this than I have, so I'll shut up now.

Note to self: watch more pre-war German films...

roujin

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 15508
  • it's all research
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #276 on: April 01, 2009, 08:19:25 AM »
Those Berlin School films look pretty interesting  :-\

Solid Blake

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 5028
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #277 on: April 01, 2009, 08:21:23 AM »
1. Adam
2. Adam
3. Adam
4. Adam
5. Adam
6. Adam
7. Adam
8. Adam
9. Adam
10. Adam
11. Adam
12. Adam
13. Adam
14. Adam
15. Adam
16. Adam
17. Adam
18. Adam
19. Adam
20. Adam

smirnoff

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 26251
    • smirnoff's Top 100
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #278 on: April 01, 2009, 11:02:56 AM »
Ok, so I'm the nerd who keeps an Excel spreadsheet with 100 movies.  I update the thing every time I watch a movie, and I save a new copy of the spreadsheet so I can keep the history.  I call it the ever-changing top 100.  Here's the current top 20:

20-Never Cry Wolf

I'm so glad someone else put this on their list. (err somehow I forgot to include on the last list I posted, but
I think I included it in the top 100 ballot anyways.) Great pick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

smirnoff

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 26251
    • smirnoff's Top 100
Top Films of All Time
« Reply #279 on: April 01, 2009, 11:31:38 AM »
Updated list. This is how I feel, right now anyways. :)

1- Lord Of The Rings (Fellowship if it has to be one)
2- The Fog of War
3- Amadeus
4- Star Wars (A New Hope)
5- Braveheart
6- Terminator 2
7- Never Cry Wolf
8- Endless Summer 2
9- Princess Mononoke
10- Vanilla Sky
11- Touching The Void
12- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
13- Into the Wild
14- Casino
15- The Sting
16- Rounders
17- The Insider
18- The Big Lebowski
19- Sideways
20- Snatch