A "post your top ten movies" thread.

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Jethro Q. Walrustitty
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Post by Jethro Q. Walrustitty »

Good fucking Lord.

I'm not going to get dragged into a movie debate, but Christ on a CROSS, Jonsey - you put crap like Mallrats on your top ten - to say nothing of the "Mummy Returns with Elves" Two Towers movie - and there's no sign of Street Trash? What's WRONG with you? (Besides, Peter Jackson will never top Dead Alive aka Braindead - his masterpiece.)

Oh, and Blade Runner = overrated and boring. Zzzz. I bought the DVD years ago based on positive buzz and was stunned at how dull it was. You might as well put "Legend" on your top ten. (Or "Leaving Las Vegas", for Christ's sake.)

Props to "bot" for mentioning Aguirre. Herzog rules - I had him sign my "Fitzcarraldo" DVD when he was in town about a year ago.

Haven't watched Barton Fink yet, but I did just record it (in WS) on my DTivo and have transferred it to DVD. Was going to watch it last night, but we (we being me and the wife) started watching 8 1/2 Women instead.

Anyways, no top ten list is complete without Brazil, a Herzog/Kinski movie (My Best Fiend would qualify), Dawn of the Dead, a Buster Keaton film, and you should probably have a Scorcese flick in there, too. I might be even tempted to put in Dellamorte Dellamore - it's that good.

Now, in true troll fashion, I shall probably never look upon this thread again, but merely take pleasure in having dumped on some folk's opinions. Cue evil laughter.

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Did you even read what I wrote, or just look at the pictures? Bruce saves Mallrats. His performance is so good that he elevates the film above the -- oh, right, I am talking to a guy who hates Blade Runner. You're quite clearly mad.

I like Street Trash. Bill the Cop is in the top ten, in terms of my favorite movie characters. But c'mon, you can't honestly say that was a "great" film or anything. The bunch of us could have made it in an empty lot.

Day of the Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead all have shit for production values, and there are some really, really cheesy moments to them. The Evil Dead II is a better movie than all three of them. And I love zombie movies.

Your comments regarding the Two Towers will one day come back to haunt you. It's impossible not to sit through that thing and say "WHAT A FLICK." There are a bunch of summer "blockbusters" that try to be what the Two Towers is incidentally. What it is by accident, what it is as an effect of being so great. It starts off with wizard v demon, for chrissake. If you can't dig that then maybe movies aren't really for you.
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

Roody_Yogurt
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Post by Roody_Yogurt »

I also agree that Blade Runner is super overrated, and yes, Brazil is fantastic.

Maybe I'll start throwing some of my own movies out later.

Ben Formerly Pinback Parr

Post by Ben Formerly Pinback Parr »

Nice username length.

Anyway, I have now officially added "Chasing Amy" to my Netflix queue.

We'll just see about this.

Mind you, I'm expecting this to be the greatest movie of all time, Jonsey. Anything less will be a vast disappointment. And there have been an awful lot of movies made. You say it's better than 2001, though, I gotta believe you. Heck, according to you, it's better than both Godfather I and II rolled into one. That sounds like one boffo film! I can't wait to see it.

It better be great. Not good, you understand. Not, "cute, fun, good movie".

It better be... great.

Greatest movie of all time, you say.

Ben Formerly Pinback Parr

Post by Ben Formerly Pinback Parr »

Roody_Yogurt wrote:I also agree that Blade Runner is super overrated
For the record, I'd like to DISAGREE with this, and casually suggest that anyone who thinks so is dopey. Particularly people who bag on the director's cut for the unicorn scene and M. Emmet Walsh getting the number of replicants wrong at the beginning. You're all missing the point. You're all standing at the Mona Lisa and complaining that there are smudges on the glass. (*)
Brazil is fantastic.
This is true, of course.

(*) Assuming there's glass around the Mona Lisa. And if there isn't, hey, shut up.

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Ben Formerly Pinback Parr wrote: For the record, I'd like to DISAGREE with this, and casually suggest that anyone who thinks so is dopey. Particularly people who bag on the director's cut for the unicorn scene
The unicorn's scene is lovely. Except for the fact that there's no physical evidence that indicates that Deckard is a replicant.

Fuck, even the scar that Ford picked up in Mexico or Teheran or wherever the hell he was disputes the android proposition.

and M. Emmet Walsh getting the number of replicants wrong at the beginning. You're all missing the point. You're all standing at the Mona Lisa and complaining that there are smudges on the glass. (*)
That's SO not true. Yes, he got the number wrong. The director was trying to make the thing a bit of a puzzle movie, and he lets that detail slip!?! What the -?! No. No. FUCK RIDLEY SCOTT.

He was trying to be oh-so-clever. Well, he failed at that.

It's still a beautiful film in spite of that, though.

Also, regarding Chasing Amy:
Mind you, I'm expecting this to be the greatest movie of all time, Jonsey. Anything less will be a vast disappointment. And there have been an awful lot of movies made. You say it's better than 2001, though, I gotta believe you. Heck, according to you, it's better than both Godfather I and II rolled into one. That sounds like one boffo film! I can't wait to see it.
Of course you'll hate it. Here's how you'd best be able to enjoy it :

1) Be me.
2) Collect a lot of comics.
3) Be me in 1997.
4) See this movie in 1997.

Sadly, most of those things are impossible. Seeing how I did not start quietly reading Pinback's Web Central until late 1998, it is not even possible for you to be like me in reverse by having the traits you exhibited and crafted so well during the original PWC become traits that I myself wish to add to my trait collection, therefore making us alike without any work from yourself.

You'll dislike it, I think. More so because I hyped it before it reached your eyes.

By the by, Alien is supposedly being re-released in April of 2004. I have never seen Alien. That's worth flying out to California for, my friend. But will the hype ruin it? Will the hype cause me to say, "Pfff. Wasn't that good."? Well, no. That's because I am at heart an optimist and you are a raging alcoho -- I mean, raging pessimist.

Ah, well. You might enjoy Affleck's performance.
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

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Post by Ben Formerly Pinback Parr »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:no physical evidence that indicates that Deckard is a replicant.
There's no physical evidence that Darth Vader is Luke's father either, but we sort of accept is as fact, you know?
That's SO not true. Yes, he got the number wrong. The director was trying to make the thing a bit of a puzzle
No, this is definitely NOT true. Now, I'm more than happy to say FUCK RIDLEY SCOTT due to every movie he (or, shall we say, his brother?) has made since Thelma & Louise, particularly the unwatchable Black Hawk Down and the insanely horrible Gladiator, but the replicant-counting problem was due to nothing else but him trying to work with original film which was all fucked up because the goddamn studios screwed with his Artistic Vision (which, in the late 70s and early 80s, was actually substantial). It was not an "intentional mistake", it was just a fuck-up due to all the crap the evil studio stuffed shirts put the movie through.
Of course you'll hate it.
Don't say that. I'll probably even like it, but then come on here and give you shit just for fun.
1) Be me.
Wish I could.
2) Collect a lot of comics.
"Never in a million years." - Bob Wheeler (Brent Spiner), _Night Court_
3) Be me in 1997.
4) See this movie in 1997.
These both seem exceedingly unlikely.
You'll dislike it, I think. More so because I hyped it before it reached your eyes.
If it relates at all (and I'm sure it doesn't, since C. A. seems to be the "non-standing Kevin Smith movie" in the K. S. ouvre, here are my opinions of the following movies:

Clerks: Cute.
Dogma: Occasionally funny, but unspectacular.
Jay & Bob: Really, really horrible.
I have never seen Alien.
Oh my god. If I had read ahead in your post and seen this, I wouldn't have bothered writing any of the above nonsense and just focused on this. You have never seen Alien? You've never seen Alien. Well... I don't know what to say about this. It will knock Re-Animator way the fuck out of your top 10 if you're looking for a token horror movie to put up there, but that's not even the half of it.

Never seen Alien. Whew.
That's worth flying out to California for
It's on, dude.
But will the hype ruin it?
Nope.
Will the hype cause me to say, "Pfff. Wasn't that good."?
Nope.

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Ben Formerly Pinback Parr wrote:There's no physical evidence that Darth Vader is Luke's father either, but we sort of accept is as fact, you know?
Er... yes there is. They are both Jedi. Being a Jedi seems to be hereditary.

Being an android seems to give you super human strength or agility. Roy, Leon and Daryl Hannah's character all had it. Deckard didn't because the actor playing him didn't know he was a replicant until after the film was shot, and the director took enough of the source material to base his movie on, but didn't think that maybe he's have to completely re-write some sections because he made a fundamental change to the source.

If I am going to go re-make Ocean's 11 and cast George Clooney as Danny Ocean but have him, unlike Sinatra, be able to shoot laser beams out of his eyes, well, that's certainly going to change how they get into the vault. If I am going to re-write that, I can't ignore any aspect of the giant change I made. Ridley there did.

That's SO not true. Yes, he got the number wrong. The director was trying to make the thing a bit of a puzzle
No, this is definitely NOT true. Now, I'm more than happy to say FUCK RIDLEY SCOTT due to every movie he (or, shall we say, his brother?) has made since Thelma & Louise, particularly the unwatchable Black Hawk Down and the insanely horrible Gladiator, but the replicant-counting problem was due to nothing else but him trying to work with original film which was all fucked up because the goddamn studios screwed with his Artistic Vision (which, in the late 70s and early 80s, was actually substantial). It was not an "intentional mistake", it was just a fuck-up due to all the crap the evil studio stuffed shirts put the movie through.
I did not mean to imply that it was an intentional mistake. It was an unintentional one. But if he is going to have people ask after his film, "OMG, was Deckard an android or a replicant?" then he'd better get ALL the details right! That's all I'm sayin'.


re: Chasing Amy.
Don't say that. I'll probably even like it, but then come on here and give you shit just for fun.
Well, sure.

If it relates at all (and I'm sure it doesn't, since C. A. seems to be the "non-standing Kevin Smith movie" in the K. S. ouvre, here are my opinions of the following movies:

Clerks: Cute.
Dogma: Occasionally funny, but unspectacular.
Jay & Bob: Really, really horrible.
You should put Mallrats in your Netflix queue. Fast forwarding through the parts of the movie that Jeremy London is affects the tale, surprisingly, not really that much at all.

I have never seen Alien.
Oh my god. If I had read ahead in your post and seen this, I wouldn't have bothered writing any of the above nonsense and just focused on this. You have never seen Alien? You've never seen Alien. Well... I don't know what to say about this. It will knock Re-Animator way the fuck out of your top 10 if you're looking for a token horror movie to put up there, but that's not even the half of it.

Never seen Alien. Whew.
I think I've seen 3/4th of Alien3. I think I have seen a bit of Aliens. But Alien? I am almost positive that I have not seen a single frame of it.

Alien is one of those movies that I should list at the beginning of my message regarding movies I should have seen, but haven't. Road Trip for Alien, yes, yes -- in fact, if the original, non-remastered version is playing anywhere between FC and LA a trip should be in order.
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

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Ice Cream Jonsey
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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Ridley there did.
Ridley or Tony, anyway.
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Ben Formerly Pinback Parr

Post by Ben Formerly Pinback Parr »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Being an android seems to give you super human strength or agility.
This is incorrect. Replicants are rated on an alphabetical scale on both their physical and mental capabilities. Roy was an AA. Daryl was an AB. Leon was AC. All three got top grades for physical capability. Roy was the smartest, Leon the dumbest. Deckard was probably a CB or somesuch. Hey, we can't all be Lance Armstrong.
You should put Mallrats in your Netflix queue.
Let's just see how Chasing Amy works for me first. Don't go crazy now.
I think I've seen 3/4th of Alien3. I think I have seen a bit of Aliens. But Alien? I am almost positive that I have not seen a single frame of it.
Aliens was excellent, but for an entirely different reason. Alien is a grand masterpiece of filmmaking, not to mention a scary-slash-exciting movie. But that's almost secondary when compared against the mastery of celluloid that is displayed by the creators of that film. Hoooly shit.

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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Ben Formerly Pinback Parr wrote:
Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Being an android seems to give you super human strength or agility.
This is incorrect. Replicants are rated on an alphabetical scale on both their physical and mental capabilities. Roy was an AA. Daryl was an AB. Leon was AC. All three got top grades for physical capability. Roy was the smartest, Leon the dumbest. Deckard was probably a CB or somesuch. Hey, we can't all be Lance Armstrong.
Where the hell is this from? Not the movie, I don't think.

I think that you made it up. I think that your mind is gone. I think you shouldn't have glorified, now you're wrong --

SUCK SuCK sUcK SuCK SUCK sUcK suCK SUCK SuCK sUcK SuCK
the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

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Post by Ben Formerly Pinback Parr »

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Where the hell is this from? Not the movie, I don't think.
Actually, it's from the movie "Blade Runner"? Maybe you've seen it?

When M. Emmet Walsh is giving Deckard the lowdown on all the replicants, he shows them on a TV screen. Each of the robots has a "serial number" which described them. For instance, Roy's serial number is:

N6MAA10816

N6: Nexus 6
M: Male
A: Physical ability
A: Mental ability
10816: Incept date, Januay 8, 2016.

Here are the other serial numbers, for your amusement:

Leon: N6MAC41717
Pris: N6FAB21416 (heh. Valentine's day, just noticed that.)
Zhora: N6FAB61216




I think that you made it up. I think that your mind is gone. I think you shouldn't have glorified, now you're wrong --

SUCK SuCK sUcK SuCK SUCK sUcK suCK SUCK SuCK sUcK SuCK[/quote]

Benjamin Formerly Ben Pin

Post by Benjamin Formerly Ben Pin »

Uh. Pretend I deleted all that other crap.

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Post by bot »

First of all, whoever says Blade Runner is over-rated simply doesn't understand the movie. They might as well say that 2001: A Space Odessey could have been better because it was a little long and drawn-out.

Having said that, I think I'm siding with Ben Parrish, or Pinback, or whatever his moniker-of-the-day is, in the ongoing debate. Of course it is possible to make replicants in varying degrees of strength, resilience, etc. Especially if you are, ala Sean Young's character, a replicant who has been designed to think it's human, because it would undoubtedly give rise to a slight bit of cognitive dissonance to simultaneously believe you are a normal human being and yet be able to lift small automobiles and toss them around. Perhaps Deckard is an older model who has been reconditioned to be a "Blade Runner." Rather than being far-fetched, this would seem to be an ideally efficient solution for the sort of techno-fetishized world envisioned, an android shepherd keeping watch over android sheep.

Also - wherefore this diffuse hate for director Ridely Scott? Blackhawk Down was enchanting the way it used war to illustrate the inevitable slide of life toward entropy (from the orderliness of the boot camp, with all its various queues, with an escalating unhinging and plans going-awry that finally results in the utter chaos of barreling down a back-alley in a Hummer, screaming, with glass stuck in your face). Even Legend was remarkable in that it gave us the best version of the dark lord the silver screen has yet produced, played admirably by Tim Curry. Didn't Scott also direct Alien? (yes he did, I just googled it) A flat-out masterpiece. In fact I can think of few other directors more skilled at cultivating atmosphere in film. What the hell??

On the other hand, I agree again with Pinback that Kevin Smith's films are vastly over-rated. Usually amusing and clever, sometimes even pithy, but never truly challenging, incisive, or profound, and none of his films worthy of inclusion in a discriminating top-fifty list, let alone a top ten.
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Post by Protagonist X »

You know, I never noticed the serial numbers before. Nice catch, Ben.

Did you pick that up through repeated viewings or was there a friend or book that pointed it out? I like the film, but I had a friend who worshipped it, wore out two videotapes of it, could recite huge passages of it from memory -- and even he hadn't deciphered the serial number detail. Or if he did, he didn't tell me.

Although he did have an extended analysis of the "Cityspeak" snippets and what could be extrapolated about the society of the future from them. He had a huge riff about a wave of Hungarian immigrants in Los Angeles, from which he derived the idea of massive ecological failure in the former Soviet Bloc as the cause for all these Hungarians moving to the Valley. That sort of thing.

It's all the little details like that that make a film live and breathe. Brazil, one of my top 10, does some similar stuff with all the cool details in the background.

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Post by Base Monitor »

IF I WAS MODERATOR OF THIS BASE WHICH I SHOULD BE I MIGHT ADD I WOULD UNSTICKY THIS THREAD BECAUSE IT HAS DEVOLVED FROM ITS ORIGINAL PURPOSE BUT IS STILL VERY POPULAR AND WOULD END UP AT THE TOP ANYWAY. BUT I GUESS NOBODY WANTS TO GIVE A JOB TO A GUY WHO CAN ACTUALLY HANDLE IT. PAR FOR THIS COURSE.

n/t

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Post by Benjamin Alexander Parris »

bot wrote:I think I'm siding with Ben Parrish
Always a smart move. I like this, this "bot".
Also - wherefore this diffuse hate for director Ridely Scott?
There is a long-running feud between me and him, only he doesn't know about it. It stems from the fact that he made Alien and Blade Runner, two of the greatest films in the history of the art form, and since then he's decided to, instead of staying true to his visions and making truly excellent movies, take directing classes from his no-good brother Tony. Black Hawk Down and Gladiator were two perfect examples of Tony Scott movies, and should be roundly panned because of it.
Blackhawk Down was enchanting the way it used war to illustrate the inevitable slide of life toward entropy (from the orderliness of the boot camp, with all its various queues, with an escalating unhinging and plans going-awry that finally results in the utter chaos of barreling down a back-alley in a Hummer, screaming, with glass stuck in your face).
Weeeell, no. There's a difference between "illustrating chaos", and "editing a film so poorly that you couldn't figure out what was happening, even if you wanted to". Gladiator is even more inexcusably bad in this respect, because you're SUPPOSED to know what's going on, but you can't. Quick cuts of disjointed action does not equal storytelling. It equals crap.

But besides all that, Black Hawk Down featured indistinguishable actors spewing trite, shallow dialogue, which has become another unfortunate trademark of Ton-- err, RIDLEY'S recent movies.

If he hadn't made Blade Runner and Alien, none of this would bother me in the slightest. I just want to know what happens, between the time you do that, and the time you make crap.

I have a similar beef going with Franky Coppola, who made THREE of the greatest movies of all time, including Godfathers I and II, and now he makes movies like... well, like Godfather III.

What happens to an artist to allow himself to do that?
I agree again with Pinback
Again, I applaud your perspicacity.

Benjamin Parrish from San

Post by Benjamin Parrish from San »

Protagonist X wrote:Did you pick that up through repeated viewings or was there a friend or book that pointed it out?
I read a couple FAQs.
could recite huge passages of it from memory
He could, but... good lord, he DIDN'T, did he?

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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Base Monitor wrote:IF I WAS MODERATOR OF THIS BASE WHICH I SHOULD BE I MIGHT ADD I WOULD UNSTICKY THIS THREAD BECAUSE IT HAS DEVOLVED FROM ITS ORIGINAL PURPOSE BUT IS STILL VERY POPULAR AND WOULD END UP AT THE TOP ANYWAY. BUT I GUESS NOBODY WANTS TO GIVE A JOB TO A GUY WHO CAN ACTUALLY HANDLE IT. PAR FOR THIS COURSE.

n/t
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Freddie

Post by Freddie »

Ben.

How would you define the "magic" of Blade Runner?

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