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[bryant]

After much internal debate, I've finished my top twenty movie list. In order of preference, even. The up-to-date list is here (cool site, by the by) but if you're too lazy to click through:

1. Magnolia
2. Days of Being Wild
3. Brazil
4. Casablanca
5. City of God
6. Bullet in the Head
7. Miller's Crossing
8. Crash
9. Breakfast at Tiffany's
10. Ronin
11. Blue Velvet
12. Goodfellas
13. The General
14. Dead Man
15. Full Metal Jacket
16. The Incredibles
17. Taxi Driver
18. Peking Opera Blues
19. Glengarry Glen Ross
20. The Grifters

Yeah, I like genre movies. Possibly I like guy movies too; be your own judge. Yes, Miller's Crossing is the best Coen Brothers movie. I don't know if Days of Being Wild is the best Wong Kar Wai movie, but it's the best one I've seen -- I understand that In the Mood for Love may supercede it when I finally see that, though. Crash is the best Cronenberg movie because it's the best cast he's ever had, although Videodrome is a very close #2.

There are indeed a lot of movies I haven't seen.

Comments

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Wow, Magnolia? I really had no idea! Probably would be on my own top 20 list as well.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Thank God I've found you. The other person in North America who thinks Miller's Crossing is the best Coen Bros movie. Criminally underseen/underrated/underranked.

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

Oh, everybody knows Miller's Crossing is the best Coen Brothers movie.

But Ronin in the top twenty? Interesting choice.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Now I feel compelled to do my own top 20. However, I already recognize within myself that for me "best" in movies is an emotional reaction that trumps any rational consideration of quality. In other words, my top 20 list is going to contain a lot of mediocre-to-bad movies that happen to have elements that speak to my (largely fanboyish) heart.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Clearly I need to lock you in a room with the Fargo people, the Raising Arizona people, and the Big Lebowski people.

[head58.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen Miller's but I need to. I detested Fargo, found Lebowski to be just meh, turned off Barton Fink 20 minutes in, and adored Raising Arizona the first 20 or 30 times, but it's kind of worn out on my from repeated viewings and quotings (much like Holy Grail).

I need to make up my own list, but it will be surprisingly shallow. Grosse Point Blank, Empire Strikes Back and Chasing Amy will likely be the top 3 though.

[jeffwik.livejournal.com]

Ah, I hear you. I know that the Spanish Prisoner isn't really that great a movie and neither is Heist, but still, there's something that draws me to them. Something named Rebecca Pidgeon.

[bryant]

Yep. Fucking awesome movie. Best of all time.

[bryant]

There's some of that in my list. Namely Ronin and Peking Opera Blues, both of which are great movies but neither of which are objective top twenty material.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Ronin and Peking Opera Blues are going to be high art compared to some of the stuff on my list.

[bryant]

You know, it's just a really, really strong movie. The cast is of a quality that one rarely, rarely finds in a pure action movie -- the only other example I can think of would be Heat. De Niro in both? No coincidence. But in Ronin you also get Stellan Skarsgard and Jonathan Pryce, plus a pair of very talented action movie actors in Sean Bean and Jean Reno. And I have a hard time rating the car chases as anything but the best car chases of all time.

But when you get right down to it, it's just that I have watched Ronin more times than, probably, any other movie I've ever seen.

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

Many of these I haven't seen. I'll clearly have to rectify that.

In the meanwhile, can you explain your love of Ronin to me? I'm not being accusitory. It's just that, when I watched it, I felt the pacing was off and the plot was somewhat insubstantial, and I'm curious if there was something I was missing.

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

Nevermind. Teach me to leave my comment window open for the fifteen minutes it apparently takes for me to miss five other threads appearing and maturing.

[kniedzw.livejournal.com]

Interesting. For pure action, I still think Die Hard trumps most of my other favorites, simply because it so radically redefined the genre and managed to do so with such style and panache.

[kodi]

I feel shame. I've only seen Casablanca, Ronin, Goodfellas, The Incredibles and Taxi Driver all the way through.

Taxi Driver, for me, is one of those movies that was too influential - watching it now, it feels stale because of everything else that's walked the same ground since.

[bryant]

Die Hard is indeed very good.

[bryant]

I would agree, by the by, that the pacing is unusual -- it's almost like two movies back to back, or interlaced, or something. But it works perfectly for me. There's the initial intense action of the original heist, and then there's a long breath, and then there's a fairly furious escalation of betrayal. Each action section is punctuated and grounded by a car chase. It's kinda cool.

[peaseblossom.livejournal.com]

You've never seen In the Mood for Love?!? Even I've seen that. It's freaking incredible.

[peaseblossom.livejournal.com]

Also, where is Velvet Goldmine? And Versus, for that matter.

[kodi]

Hm. Ymdb is a cool site, but trying to get the movies in order is a very, very slow process. I wish they set it up like the netflix queue, where I could just type in a number for each. I know I'm missing some movies, but I'm working on my list here.

Interesting.

[rrauwl.livejournal.com]

I thought that Dr. Strangelove and 7 Samurai would be on there for sure. :) I like the list though. Glengarry Glen Ross has become a particular favorite of mine since I moved into real estate. :) Pacific Heights too.

Now I'll have to watch Bullet in the Head, 'cause I've never heard of it.

[head58.livejournal.com]

I'm trying it out now. I wish it gave you some kind of guidance (like Amazon's or Netflix's "if you liked x you mjight like y"). Right now it's a hit or miss kind of thing as I try to remember movies I liked. I'm sure 5 minutes after I finish I'll think of one I missed.

[kodi]

I went through the top 800 movies in their system, and that helped spark my memory. The "users with lists similar to yours" feature didn't help - it would be great if I needed to round out my top 100, though.

I'm absolutely certain there's one particular movie I'm forgetting, but I'm stumped.

Also, I really wish it would store 30 movies, but only publicly display 20, so that I don't have to worry about "if I knock this off my top 20, but later decide I want to kill something else instead, will I remember it?"

[olofd.livejournal.com]

It's good to see that someone rates Ronin this high. It is a very good movie. I'll also add that the script is nice; I like the fact that there are so many things unanswered at the end of the movie.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

Magnolia #1? You're going to hell. That's all there is to it. That movie blew so. very. goddamn. much.

[bryant]

It's in the queue!

[bryant]

That's what all the cynics tell me, but it's a lie! Shed your chains!

Re: Interesting.

[bryant]

It's John Woo's Vietnam movie. It is flat out incredible. It's not really an action movie, it doesn't star Chow Yun Fat, and it blows me away.

[bryant]

Velvet Goldmine is... there it is. #37. Versus is not a great movie, it is a rollicking movie.

[flit.livejournal.com]

I'm just gonna make this a memory so I remember to see all the movies on this list I haven't seen yet. :)

Hmm, it's growing tempting to make a queue *somewhere*, not that I want netflix but boy it would be great to keep up and not have it all on scraps of paper.

[drivingblind.livejournal.com]

I'll be over in the room with the Hudsucker Proxy people.

I mean, I've watched Miller's Crossing, and I flat out don't get it how people could like it. It's got a lot of solid moments in it, but a ton of it is just filled with swaths of starkly unenjoyable storytelling, for me.

I like some style and rhythm in my quirky. Miller's certainly has that Coen style going, but its rhythm is somewhere between abstract jazz and stuttering syncopation for me. Too experimental for me to enjoy.

I'm trying to remember some signature scenes for me here...

The most indelibly unenjoyable scene for me has lost a lot of the remembered context since I last saw it ... someone getting beaten or shot to death while a mentally challenged individual sat in a chair and screamed his head off. Yeah, I'll take a pass on it.

The "I'm your chum but I'm going to have to beat the crap out of you while you're tied to a chair" bit and gunplay set to Danny Boy -- that stuff wasn't bad. But it didn't keep me.