An update of the thread.

Favorite Films
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese;1976)
Collateral (Michael Mann;2004)
Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville;1967)
Buffalo '66 (Vincent Gallo;1998)
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch;1995)
Heat (Michael Mann;1995)
Memento (Christopher Nolan;2000)
Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino;1994)
Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese;1973)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles;1941)

Best Films (Alphabeticle Order)
8½ (Fellini;1963)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick:1968)
Citizen Kane (Welles;1941)
The Godfather (Coppola;1972)
Once Upon a Time in America (Leone;1984)
Le Samouraï (Melville;1967)
The Seventh Seal (Bergman;1957)
Short Cuts (Altman;1993
Taxi Driver (Scorsese;1976)
A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes;1974)

A new angle to an old debate...

What makes The Seventh Seal a better film than Buffalo '66?

Seriously, can we do one of these threads without getting into the same fucking debate with the same words over and over?

I've since abolished my ways of seperating the two. One, easy list, that just completely speaking to me emotionally and recreationally.

Fight Club (Fincher; 1999)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese; 1976)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Gilliam; 1998)
Being John Malkovich (Jonze; 1999)
Once Upon a Time in America (Leone; 1985)
Mullholland Dr. (Lynch; 2001)
Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo (Leone; 1966)
Requiem for a Dream (Aronofsky; 2000)
The Graduate (Nichols; 1967)
Rebel Without a Cause (Ray; 1955)

What does a list do? What is its purpose? So I can simply look at yours and say it's pretty and so you can simply look at mine and say it's also pretty?

What's the point in this thread, anyway? There's no real change to your last list, to your tastes the last time round. There's no room for give and take, but just to list a few films we already know others know we like. There's no real vouching, no real effort, no real taking steps back and saying, "Hey, I like this film, I like that film, but I don't know, I'm not too keen on that one". And it's only from those kinds of questions that you get to find out why you like something, and thus become, in my opinion, a lot closer to your declared loved ones (the films on your list, in this instance).

Since your "update" is anything but a revision (really, I see one film that wasn't there before), you're lending yourself to a wide-open debate on the difference between favourites and best.

So you don't want to use the same words over and over again. I agree, that'd be pathetic. But I'd like to think that as film enthusiasts we can and are able to discuss the same debates with fresh approaches, to shed new light, to illuminate new truths, in order to understand where others come from... no, to understand where yourself is coming from.

Which is why I specifically started my post with the words, "A new angle to an old debate". Because to my knowledge my question hadn't been asked before. And I find it all the more intriguing because it has been met with silence.

I didn't make this thread to discuss. There is no deep or philosophical meaning in it at all. It's just a top ten list. What are your favorite and/or best movies ever? Time has gone by and opinions have changed on films. This has nothing to do with how one ranks a top ten.

To discuss this double list again is nothing more then redundant.

But your tastes haven't changed.

At all. I see the same usual suspects as last time you posted a list. And posting a list for listmaking purposes seems redundant to me. It should be a starting point for discussion. Otherwise, what is the point? Boredom?

Whatever, though, I will assume your refusal to acknowledge my question is more to do with the inability to even contemplate it.

Minor changes made. If you wanna know why I'm a compulsive list-maker, then I can't answer that. I guess you can compare me to John Cusack in High Fidelity, only with films.

And my refusal to acknowledge your question has more to do with the fact that I've debated it more then 5 or 6 times in the past. My responses have not changed, if you want my arguement, search for the old threads.

But I asked a new question, a very specific question, and you're refusing to answer it.

What makes The Seventh Seal a better film than Buffalo '66?

By the way, I wouldn't say you're a compulsive listmaker.

You've only posted a top ten best and favourite film, and you're recycling it every few months or so.

One list. Maybe two. Hardly compulsive.

1. Stalker (Tarkovsky; 1979)
2. Journal d'un Cure de Campagne (Bresson; 1951)
3. Vivre sa Vie: Film en Douze Tableaux (Godard; 1962)
4. Dead Man (Jarmusch; 1995)
5. Paris, Texas (Wenders; 1984)
6. Chinatown (Polanski; 1974)
7. Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Herzog; 1972)
8. Sans Soleil (Marker; 1983)
9. Le Samourai (Melville; 1967)
10. A Woman Under the Influence (Cassavetes; 1974)


...maybe.

The Seventh Seal is a film that best shows the significance of death, and while it seems to be a pessimistic film through the whole journey of it, like many people feel in life, it ultimately sums death up as something not to be feared. It also sports some of the most memorable images in cinema. While I haven't seen any other Bergman, this really made me wanna see more, as the direction is excellent and carries no tangents in my mind.

Buffalo '66 is a different film. I like to think of it as the loser or degenerate's romance film. It depicts a down and out life many can relate to and while it seems like a Scorseseish film at times, mainly with the subplot, it ends off unexpectedly upbeat, but without any corniness. I think it's an excellent film and one of the best of the 90's, but not one of the best ever. Both have impacted me in different ways, but I think The Seventh Seal is a more important film both cinematically and in it's meaning.

As for my list-making, keep in mind that these boards aren't my whole life. I make many lists among friends on movies and music and pop culture in general. I'm not gonna post all of them. As for your annoyance with the presence of this thread, I guess 50% of it could root from boredom. Then again, very little excites me about this board in general anymore.

What, my crappy boring-ass song lists don't cut it anymore?

I don't like you, so yes.

1) Scarface (Brian De Palma; 1983)
2) Kill Bill Volume 2 (Quentin Tarantino; 2004)
3) Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese; 1980)
4) Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese; 1990)
5) The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola; 1972)
6) JFK (Oliver Stone; 1991)
7) The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer; 1995)
8} The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen; 1998)
9) Scream (Wes Craven; 1996)
10) The Boondock Saints (Troy Duffy; 1999)

HONORABLE MENTIONS
-Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg; 1993)
-Memento (Christopher Nolan; 2000)
-Fight Club (David Fincher; 1999)
-Snatch (Guy Ritchie; 2000)

Fav Film
Goodfellas
Bronx Tale
Pulp Fiction
Casino
T2
Star Wars
Indiana Jones
Plus Many More


Best Film
Godfather Part 1
Godfather Part 2
OUATIA
Shawsahnk Redemption
2001
Raging Bull

Well, I'm going to say that I still find amusement in these lists, because I can see where each of us have formed our own niches in particular styles and genres and stereotypes of film. It's humorous.

exactly,we all have our own choices and opinions we don't all study films religousley(sp)like some people so lists will be differant..

My Best:

"Godfather" 1-2 & 3

"Walk The Line"/ Joaquin Phoenix/Reese Witherspoon

"The Other Side Of Midnight"/1977 / Marie France Pisier/John Beck/ Susan Sarandon

"Body Heat"/ William Hurt/ Kathleen Turner

"The Notebook"/ Rachel Mc Adams/ Ryan Gosling/James Garner/Geana Rowlands

Y...yeah... Thanks for rephrasing...

High five?

Deep Throat (1972)

You kids and your Watergate-humor.

So, De Niro, It think those lists are good. But why is 2001 one of the best ever but not one of your favourites?

so wheres your list.

Best Movie EVER!
Plan 9 from Outer Space

Here is the list of my favorite films:
1. The Godfather Trilogy
2. Raging Bull
3. Mean Streets
4. Goodfellas
5. Apocalypse Now (and Redux)
6. Laura
7. It's a Gift
8. Bride of Frankenstein
9. Duck Soup
10. Seconds
11. Nosferatu (Murnau)
12. Metropolis
13. True Confessions
14. Chinatown
15. The Thing (Carpenter)

My list of greatest films doesn't mean that my favorites aren't "great," it means that I recognize the following as great films but don't enjoy watching them as often as my faves:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Sgt. York
3. Greed
4. Gone With the Wind
5. Double Indemnity
6. Asphalt Jungle
7. The Wild One
8. Viva Zapata!
9. Nights of Cabiria
10. Open City

But Turnbull, what sort of attributes are you looking for in films to deem them great as opposed to "re-watchable"?

I think people use the terms "greatness" and "importance" interchangeably, and wrongly. Indeed, they often define greatness by importance. But this is wrong, I think, since the term importance is endlessly problematic. Important for, and to, what, for instance? Generally important? Socially important? Do they tackle grandiose, universal themes to become important? People often attribute Citizen Kane as the most important film in Cinema History, and often (because of that) the greatest, too. It includes some wonderful cinematic techniques, narrative devices, many shots of self-evident and -contained beauty, but in using it in case studies academics and critics and fans and whatnot often overlook other films that did the same thing before it... depth of focus, for example, had been around for years, and so had ceilings in shot compositions - neither are solely attributable to Welles or Toland. It seems to me that Kane is a sort of compendium of cinematic tools, the same way in 1941 as Amélie (2001) is today: you can use both films to introduce academics to almost every shot in the filmmaker's vocabulary. In that sense, Amélie is very much in the same vain as Kane, but since it is also in dazzling colour, does that make it even more important?

Hollywood films are problematic too, since a lot of the time they are or were made solely for profit, for pleasure by means of a commercial aesthetic (read Maltby, Hollywood Cinema, 2nd ed.). And so, important films within the vertically integrated studio system are probably best assessed by the most commercially successful (that is, made the most profit - the top five, when adjusted for inflation, reads: Gone With the Wind, Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Titanic, Jurassic Park.

But since that list is measured by concrete figures, and in turn those figures reflect an industry designed to make profit, if you were to term "greatness" by commercial profit it would be a lot more preferable than universal themes. "Universal" is after all another term which begs definition: love and hate are probably the only ones that have been around since the beginning, and memory binds the two as the two themes move linearly through time. Still, even if we were to set such a definition of universal in stone, how well the film tackled it would be up to interpretation.

Gone With the Wind might be a great film as it combines an important time in American history (the Civil War) with a universal story of love or passion or whatever; but I don't think it does it in a profoundly cinematic way. It's not adding anything new to what the original novel covered; most of its delights are contained in the "literariness" of the one-liners and general discourse of the narrative. I count one or two shots in Gone With the Wind which are of any especial visual merit. It is interesting in the context of Hollywood's studio system in 1939, an interesting case study for filmmaking as a collaborative process, but leaves me emotionally indifferent - I've seen it twice now, once on the big screen, and have no real desire to see it ever again.

What of The Birth of a Nation (1915), for instance? Is that not just as important as Gone With the Wind? It covers the Civil War again, is of historical significance in terms of both its social values of the time (racism in and within the film) and cinematic innovation: Griffith's putting all kinds of techniques together to form a cinematic language more coherent and weighty than anything Gone With the Wind might conjure.

What of Don Juan (1926), the film credited as the first film released with pre-recorded sound? Isn't that a technical innovation in itself?

I find it interesting that the top ten lists popping up here exclude the likes of Hitchcock, Ford, Griffith, Eisenstein, Godard, Bresson, Ozu and other such widely regarded directors. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but stress the absurdity in such "objectified" lists when those are left out. I think Hitchcock, with Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) (and many others) is responsible for some of the most cinematically profound films ever made. (That is, they all are profound explorations of the notion and obvious themes arising from a visual medium.)

Eisenstein, a director and film theorist, is a key figure in Soviet montage cinema, from which an "important" editing pattern and technique stems. But why isn't Battleship Potemkin (1926) on the list?

Lighting might play an important part in Cinema, and so where are the German Expressionists? I don't see Weine's The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari (1919) on there at all.

If Cinema is a medium whose real artists are the directors, the auteurs, then why not make account for important films within certain directors' oeuvres, regardless of general critical acclaim? What of, for instance, Dune (1984)? It's David Lynch's wort film, I think, but might be his most important, because he said himself that when he made it he vowed never to make a big-budget studio film ever again. Or you could perhaps claim Blue Velvet (1986), which he made immediately after Dune, with great personal risk following such commercial failure, to be his most important - and, since Lynch is one of the most important cinematic figures in Cinema, either or both of those films are the most important films in general, and ths the greatness. And why might Lynch be important? Because his recurring themes all find significance in the recurring patterns and images of his medium - there is something intensely erotic between the logic of dreams and the presentation of his films. Our reception of Cinema, of the perpetuality of the camera, might not be so different from how we relate to our own dreams and the sensations within them..the way we lend meaning to them from outside the form, the way we remember them afterwards, the way we connect otherwise irrational moments and fragments to a conveniently cohesive whole.

I'm rambling here, but my point is the absurdity between favourites and best. I'm not saying you're saying your Top Ten Favourites aren't great, Turnbull, but I am dubious over your definition of greatness in general. I'm not even disputing that those Top Ten "Best" films are great (they might be); but my point is that those best films are being judged in the same way that the favourites are: how they pertain to your own definition of each.

I think, then, that it is considerably important to define "best" and "favourite" if you're going to distinguish a difference between the two. Only Turnbull attempted this, but even then I find a contradiction, a tension between subjective and objective aims.

When, for instance, does a film go from "re-watchable" to "great"? When you've seen it, say, five times and you're stillgetting stuff out of it? I thought,Turnbull, that you'd seen The Godfather over a 1,000 times. Is your experience of it dead, then? But I thought you posted new questions and considerations still. To me that means the film is still living and evolving, producing new meanings and new contexts for meanings inside of your mind, it's still connecting with you on a thematic or formal or aesthetic level.

And what might "thematically important" mean? Themes can be found anywhere, in novels, in newspaper stories, in philosophical essays, in paintings, in anything. Depends on our interpretation, or on how well (some might argue, not so sure about it myself) the author communicates the theme or meaning or message.

There's nothing particularly cinematic about thematics, not unless it was Cinema itself. What is cinematic, (that is, unique to the medium we're listing texts from, here) is the presentations of such themes. Gone With the Wind might present a theme of faith and passion, of love and war, and pit the two against each other very well, but like I said in my previous example, most of that stems from its literary origins. The theme might well indeed be universal, but it isn't anything which the novel hasn't taken up.

It seems a shame too to be measuring the value of texts by their ability to teach us, by how widely accessible or how profoundly penetrating they are. Usually, this celebrates melancholy and tragedy and neglects comedy and popular works. There is often little room for popular opinion, even though that is in itself a popular (and reductive, dangerous, destructive) notion put forward by critics and academics.

Cinema is unique in that it takes on all of the potential for profundity found in other previous arts and makes it immediately accessible - you don't need to sit for hours reading a hundred pages to exposit characters, because you can tell what characters are like by just seeing them kick a cat or stroke a cat or something, in the opening scenes of a film. Basically (in the conventional sense, there are of course exceptions), you know where you are by the end of the opening credits, in terms of character association, mood, tone, rhythm and where it's generally all leading. Cinema is unique in that it can simultaneously tackle "problematic issues" and be seen by all; it was born little over a century ago, and I don't think its any coincidence that the 20th Century saw the gulf between high culture and low culture decrease, and black and white became grey. I don't think it's any coincidence that criticism has been turned upside down. It seems a shame then to maintain some sort of highbrow approach by saying what is educative or insightful and what isn't.

Poetry doesn't teach us about anything but its own poetics; novels, once we've read enough of them, do not teach us anything but about their own novelistic form or approach or style; films are not qualified to teach us about anything other than Cinema. What you can find in Gone With the Wind you can find in historical textbooks, surely. Apart from moving images, or narrative rhythm... which is what I'm judging it by, and which is why I don't rate it all that highly.

With that said, I think the following films might have influenced me most in my appreciation of Cinema. Ideally, for me, great films are formally, thematically and aesthetically of interest. I'm grading them by how resonantly they connect with me over multiple viewings. That is, how deeply or consistently they form meaning from their aesthetic, formal and thematic presentation, and those in term are graded by the evolution across several (at least three, often more) viewings. If I were to break down those three into individual definitions, I'd go along with this: aesthetics are the primary elements unique to cinematic language, first and foremost the image, and running alongside that, often appreciated and intended subconsciously, is sound; formal qualities is the cinematic form (as opposed to language), the form which the images and sounds take, the narrative shape if you like, the way the narrative unfolds; thematically is what the film says to me, what (not how) I might extract in terms of meaning from the film.

In short, I suppose in a way you could say these have taught me most about the medium I love.

There are twelve films, because I cannot bring myself to leave out two. In chronological order:


Persona Ingmar Bergman (1966 / Sweden)
Weekend Jean-Luc Godard (1967 / France)
Don't Look Now Nicolas Roeg (1973 / UK)
Taxi Driver Martin Scorsese (1975 / USA)
Eraserhead David Lynch (1976 / USA)
Manhattan Woody Allen (1979 / USA)
Blue Velvet David Lynch (1986 / USA)
Kárhozat Béla Tarr (1987 / Hungary)
Éloge de l'amour Jean-Luc Godard (2001 / France)
Irréversible Gaspar Noé (2002 / France)
Lost In Translation Sofia Coppola (2003 / USA, Japan)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Michel Gondry (2004 / USA)

Mick, I'm no cinematic deep-thinker. My views are strictly subjective. The films in my "great" list are films that I thought were great in my viewing--great looking, great themes, great execution, direction, acting, etc.--not because they represented important milestones in cinema history, or because the critics attached tremendous significance to them (although some were critics' choices). I like them all, but the ones in the "favorite" list are those I watch time and again.