Best Narrated Film's

I always enjoy watching film's with a narrated story line my fav's are

Boyz In The Hood
Goodfalla's
Casino
Shawshanks Redemption
Bronx Tale
Carlito's Way

What Do You Think?

Casino, Goodfellas, and Shawshank Redemption come mind. But the best narrated film ever has to be Taxi Driver. Thats without a doubt IMO.

All that have benn said are great but my fav has to be Taxi Driver

fight Culb

My favourites being Taxi Driver and Trainspotting, here's a few more I like: Radio Days, GoodFellas, Casino, Bande à part, Jules et Jim, A Clockwork Orange, Dogville, Ikiru, Apocalypse Now, The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, Platoon (and more...)

Mick

For some reason I can't stand movies with narrating. IMO movie has to be able to communicate without a narration. The only movie that has made me step down from this idea and I actually loved it has been Carlito's way.

Another film which just came to mind was The Thin Red Line in which the narration is used as a poetic compliment to the natural baeuty of the film's mise-en-scene, and used it is to great effect.

Asfaneh, I see your point. Voice-over can induce an almost surreal psychological disbalance within the viewer, and if and when I start to make movies, I would approach voice-over narration very carefully. I suggest you watch Godard's Bande à part (1964), which uses narration as a third-person narrative, and to a witty extreme, whereby Godard, by using it, is constantly reminding us that we're watching a film--and, more importantly, a film that he, as auteur, has made--which is a key point in the nouvelle vague's (French New Wave) counter-dominance to Hollywood.

Hollywood and other dominant cinemas, until the 70s, only used narration as a means of narrating a flashback, telling the viewer what happened in retrospect. Godard (it is unjust to attribute this whole change entirely to him, though) used narration as the whole film, which helped to cahnge the rules somewhat.

Mick

I think we may have our own definitions of narration. Taxi Driver does have a narrating voice-over, but is through a journal. Therefore, the story is not being told as it already happened, but as it is happening. Likewise for Dances With Wolves and the Star Trek films. The Thin Red Line is a series of poetic voice-overs of, what I believe, is deep into the soldiers' souls (I know that's dramatic, but...) and not on "what happened."

So, for good films that go with what I consider narration there's Goodfellas, A River Runs Through It, The English Patient, Legends of the Fall, The Shawshank Redemption, and more. One of the very best uses of narration is with Forrest Gump which Robert Zemeckis said he got somewhat of the inspiration from the narration in Amdeaus.

Since Taxi Driver has since been thrown out, I will have to say Goodfellas, Casino, A Clockwork Orange, and Apoxalypse(sp) Now off the top of my head.

Goodfellas

Everyone mentioned are really good, but fight clubs is si different from alot of them it seems.

Ridley Scott shares your opinion. He was hell bent when "Bladrunner" was originally released with a narraitive track by Harrison Ford. He never felt it was his picture until the Directors Cut was released years later without a narrator and a different ending.

Umm, actually that "Director's Cut" isn't Scott's final cut.

What happened is that at the time in 1991 or so when WB had found some earlworkshop print edits of the movie in its vaults, the time period to assemble this cut was short for Scott and his WB editors.....the problem was all the stuff that was in Scott's "prefered" final cut couldn't be found. Thing was, WB just wanted to release this new cut with the new footage to make cash of the movie's cultdom, which Scott threatened to publicly disown it via full-page ads in all the major entertainment industry newspapers.

Long story short, Scott and WB were able to find some new footage that Scott was satisfied enough(mainly that whole "unicorn dream" deal) and signed off on it. Point is, the Director's Cut out on DVD on a lousy stone-age era DVD is not the guy's cut.

However, apparently WB found that footage that couldn't be found in 1991(or whenever the DC was released) and is making the "final definitive" cut for some super-duper-looper SE DVD sometime in the future.

Neverless, I prefer the version without that narration.

why is that