Top 10

Bumping this. Curious to see what many would consider top ten at this point. For those still around, compare and contrast what you previously called your top ten.

Hmm this is no definitive list as I have so many more films to watch but will say:

1. A Streetcar Named Desire
2. An Education
3. Atonement
4. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
5. The Godfather
6. Glengarry Glen Ross
7. Goodfellas
8. All The President's Men
9. Midnight Cowboy
10. Dial M For Murder

(non Bond, obviously, and just from the top of my head).

Guest wrote:

This list is a rough approximation of the current state of affairs of my cinematic tastes.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
2046 (2004, dir. Kar-Wai Wong)
THE 3-PENNY OPERA (1931, dir. G. W. Pabst)
ANDREI RUBLEV (1966, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)
BARRY LYNDON (1975, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959, dir. Alain Resnais)
LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (1961, dir. Alain Resnais)
RAN (1985, dir. Akira Kurosawa)
THE TRIAL (1962, dir. Orson Welles)
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966, dir. Mike Nichols)
VERTIGO (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
VIVRE SA VIE (1962, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)

Not worlds different:

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968, dir. Stanley Kubrick)
2046 (2004, dir. Kar-Wai Wong)
THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
BLOW OUT (1981, dir. Brian De Palma)
CONTEMPT (1963, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959, dir. Alain Resnais)
MYSTERIES OF LISBON (2010, dir. Raul Ruiz)
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984, dir. Sergio Leone)
TOUCH OF EVIL (1958, dir. Orson Welles)
VERTIGO (1958, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Top ten timekillers would be as follows:

THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998, dir. Joel and Ethan Coen)
DRESSED TO KILL (1980, dir. Brian De Palma)
THE EIGER SANCTION (1975, dir. Clint Eastwood)
F FOR FAKE (1974, dir. Orson Welles)
FACE/OFF (1997, dir. John Woo)
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947, dir. Orson Welles)
THEY LIVE (1988, dir. John Carpenter)
THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR (1999, dir. John McTiernan)
TO CATCH A THIEF (1955, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (1974, dir. Mel Brooks)

They Live is a great B-movie. No film should cost a hundred million dollars.

10 Dark Romances

Breaking The Waves (von Trier) (Asmussen)
Cat People (Schrader) (Ormsby)
Circus of Horrors (Havers) (Baxt)
Hands of the Ripper (Sasdy) (Davidson)
Leaving Las Vegas (Figgis)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
Obsession (De Palma) (Schrader)
Peeping Tom (Powell) (Marks)
Unearthly Stranger (Krisch) (Carlton)
Vertigo (Hitchcock) (Taylor)

Brilliant list, Ambler. Those films would make for a nice binge-a-thon.

Here's a new top 10:

VERTIGO (Hitchcock)
OBSESSION (De Palma)
COME AND SEE (Klimov)
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (Lean)
F FOR FAKE (Welles)
ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ (Siegel)
STOLEN KISSES (Truffaut)
THE LONG GOODBYE (Altman)
THE LADYKILLERS (Mackendrick)
SALESMAN (Maysles Brothers, Zwerin)


Runners-up:

TAXI DRIVER
CZECH STREETS: VOL. XXIII
Dog's Sex Tape on VHS
Oh, and GHOSTBUSTERS.

Erica Ambler wrote:

They Live is a great B-movie. No film should cost a hundred million dollars.

Apparently, skyrocketing film budgets has much more to do with advertising than anything else. A $30 million picture still requires, at minimum, about $70 million in advertising.

Harmsway wrote:

Erica Ambler wrote:

They Live is a great B-movie. No film should cost a hundred million dollars.

Apparently, skyrocketing film budgets has much more to do with advertising than anything else. A $30 million picture still requires, at minimum, about $70 million in advertising.

That's really scandalous when you think about it!

That's partly why studios only fund films for high budget films because it costs so much to advertise in this digital age.

Why should digital media result in increased advertising costs? I'd expect the exact opposite to happen.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Why should digital media result in increased advertising costs? I'd expect the exact opposite to happen.

I don't think digital media decreased the amount of effort that studios have to spend advertising a film in print and on television. It just added yet another arena where they have to spend money.

There *are* ways around this system, of course. Take the success of Snowpiercer, with its VOD-centric release strategy. It blew the standard Hollywood release strategy out of the water and showed that there is a way forward for the $40 million picture. But it requires the studios to be more creative, and to have a cinematic product good enough to generate positive word-of-mouth. But creativity and quality isn't something that the studios are good at, so it's hard to see Snowpiercer becoming a new model for business.

Erica Ambler wrote:

They Live is a great B-movie. No film should cost a hundred million dollars.

10 Dark Romances

Breaking The Waves (von Trier) (Asmussen)
Cat People (Schrader) (Ormsby)
Circus of Horrors (Havers) (Baxt)
Hands of the Ripper (Sasdy) (Davidson)
Leaving Las Vegas (Figgis)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch)
Obsession (De Palma) (Schrader)
Peeping Tom (Powell) (Marks)
Unearthly Stranger (Krisch) (Carlton)
Vertigo (Hitchcock) (Taylor)

Wonderful little film, which I only saw for the first time last year.

Salomé wrote:

Circus of Horrors (Havers) (Baxt)

Wonderful little film, which I only saw for the first time last year.

It cost next to nothing to make which meant the financiers gave the director and writer relative freedom. According to screenwriter George Baxt, all they told him was to 'make sure there's plenty of tits and blood'.

They got all that plus a very interesting pulp-take on the nature of genius and masculinity. Shot in fantastically lurid Technicolor.

Erica Ambler wrote:

Salomé wrote:

Circus of Horrors (Havers) (Baxt)

Wonderful little film, which I only saw for the first time last year.

It cost next to nothing to make which meant the financiers gave the director and writer relative freedom. According to screenwriter George Baxt, all they told him was to 'make sure there's plenty of tits and blood'.

They got all that plus a very interesting pulp-take on the nature of genius and masculinity. Shot in fantastically lurid Technicolor.

What is your take on "Horrors of the Black Museum"?

Your point about the financiers' carte blanche is well made. Compared to Hammer, Anglo-Amalgamated has a far more sexualized twist on violence and horror.

Personally I thought Erika Remberg nearly stole the entire movie. Could have made for an excellent Connery era Bond girl.

Erika Remberg is terrific. I think it's fair to say that the women in Circus of Horrors steal the show; they're strong and curvaceous, and couldn't be more different to the child-like victims of today. As for the men, apart from Anton Diffring, they're mostly weak and/or uninteresting.

I don't entirely agree about the difference between Anglo and Hammer's horror output. Some early Hammer monster films are quite erotic, Dracula in particular, but I think it's true that they were more subtle (can a Technicolor film be described as vanilla?) than some of their competitors. Less 'nasty', certainly. Often the nudity in later Hammer horror films seemed to be bolted-on in some desperate attempt to remain relevant, but hard to fault that as a market response. Incidentally, I didn't realise that the original idea for Hammer's glorious failure, Vampire Circus, came from George Baxt as well. Maybe that's because he went uncredited.

x

None of those characters are memorable other than perhaps Nancy Allen's in her then husbands movies.

Jill McBain is an obvious omission.

Others that I would add:
Kitty from "Scarlet Street"
Feathers from "Rio Bravo"
Elita from "Bring me the Head of Alfredo Garcia"
Emmy from "3:10 to Yuma"
Sylvia from "Le Pacte des Loups"
Belle Starr from "The Long Riders"
Séverine from "Belle de Jour"

x

Erica Ambler wrote:

Some good ones there, Sabs. I disagree about Severine. Not my definition of the Happy Hooker. I'd add Suzie Wong to the list.

Well if the happy aspect is important, then I'm not sure if Jill McBain would qualify either.
She's never really in control of her own circumstances in that movie. And her introduction is rather tragic.

Erica Ambler wrote:

 I don't know - maybe the list was written by some teen-scum who thought film was invented in 1978. /

Salomé wrote:

Séverine from "Belle de Jour"

It's almost amazing that she was left out, especially given the popularity of the film now. More proof that the author was a total putz.

Julie Christie's character in McCABE AND MRS. MILLER would be another obvious choice.

I laughed at CORVETTE SUMMER making the list. Has anyone else watched that piece of shit?

I don't think I could ever make a definitive list of my Top 10 favorite films, or my picks for "best," or guilty pleasures. Hell, I can barely rank the Bond films.

I admire you all.

x

Just to put this into perspective, this list includes DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO.

Makeshift Python wrote:

Just to put this into perspective, this list includes DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO.

The author wasn't too keen on doing any actual research. Or even a fucking Google search, for christsake.

Xenia93 wrote:

I don't think I could ever make a definitive list of my Top 10 favorite films, or my picks for "best," or guilty pleasures. Hell, I can barely rank the Bond films.

I admire you all.

I'm the same, my favourites change with the seasons. Only the ones I don't like stay at the bottom.