Greatest Movies of All Time

[MsJack]

The Thing (1982)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Memento (2000)

[yellowstone123]

dantana, Ronin is my dad's favorite. He watches it every time it comes on. Great choice.

[honorentheos]

Phew. This is a difficult question to answer. Even if I reframe it as my favorite movies rather than attempting to assess which movies are the greatest the temptation is there to engage in just about every form of self deception. I have movies I remember fondly from youth that didn't hold up (Tron, anyone?). And there are movies that impacted me that I wouldn't recommend to anyone else. Example, Lars Van Triers Melancholia which I find beautiful and which captures some kind of truth otherwise not seen in film, in my opinion. But is it a great movie? No.

I've watched the Coen Brother's O, Brother, Where Art Thou? probably more than any other movie, and could rewatch it right now and feel it was time well spent. One of the greatest? It's very good, quotable, but when I get together with film geeks we don't talk about it.

I saw Oppenheimer on the Friday of its opening weekend. I participate in a bar trivia game on Mondays with a few coworkers, one of whom loves film and we spent over a half hour after everyone else went home discussing it. Did I love it? Yeah, both as narrative device and as film. Is it a great film? Hmmm. I don't think it will be seen that way years from now. I could talk about it for hours, though.

Honorentheos, It is interesting to see peoples lists but it might be fun to discuss them a bit. I find my own list questionable, subject to easy change so discussion is not a argument but more of what did you see.

I thought about O Brother, I have long had some interest in that music. It was an odd journey with visionary qualities . I checked Roger Ebert comments and found they matched my thoughts for better or worse.

All of these scenes are wonderful in their different ways, and yet I left the movie uncertain and unsatisfied. I saw it a second time, admired the same parts, left with the same feeling. I do not demand that all movies have a story to pull us from beginning to end, and indeed one of the charms of "The Big Lebowski," the Coens' previous film, is how its stoned hero loses track of the thread of his own life. But with "O Brother, Where Are Thou?" I had the sense of invention set adrift; of a series of bright ideas wondering why they had all been invited to the same film.

(inviting any further observations)

Hi huckelberry, I'll be your...um, Huckleberry? (another good movie, by the way)

Before discussing O Brother, Where Art Thou? , I thought it worth sharing this recent article about 10 of Roger Ebert's favorite movies:
https://movieweb.com/roger-ebert-favorite-movies/

They're all great but I wouldn't put any of them in my personal top 10. His list reminds of one of the infinite blocks of time being killed while I was in the military when a conversation hypothetical was tossed out: If you were stranded on an island for over a year but could have the full discography of three musical acts with you, who would those three acts be? The youngest guy fresh out of Basic/AIT started with the Beatles. "Good choice, but when was the last time you actually listened to the Beatles? Ah, an answer one gives because if you don't give that answer folks won't think you know anything about music, right? Got it. Don't feel obligated to tell folks what you think they want to hear, tell them what three artists YOU would actually want to listen to exclusively for at least a year." Ebert's list reads like a film appreciation class final. I don't think those are his personal favorites to watch, though. ETA: I take that back in part. I do expect he does love some of them. Taxi Driver, for example. Blade Runner? I don't know if I'd believe he rewatched it out of love for the film.

Anyway, why I can rewatch O, Brother, Where Art Thou? more than any other film, and have as best as I can tell?

The movie's loose use of The Odessey to tell a more modern tale about an intelligent, secular man whose pride has earned him both the displeasure of "the gods" as well as their attention straddles a line I enjoy. It presents ideas about god, the devil, religion, faith, rationalism, in a context that the Coen's captured in a virtuoso composition of film and music. The thread of the story is that McGill's adherence to rationalism in a clearly irrational series of events, ending with him returned home ala the hero's journey but not changed despite what appears to be a change when he confronts his own death at the hands of the sheriff/devil...which is essential to the story, in my opinion. The movie presents multiple faces of god and the devil, religion and rationalism, fate and agency...and it does it with beauty and wit.

[honorentheos]

The Thing (1982)
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Memento (2000)

Check, check, and check.

[Morley]

Memento? I could watch it now if someone were down especially if they had never seen it before because it's fun to watch with someone for their first time.

Memento (2000)

Obviously, I need to add to my experience. I'll find and watch it this week. Thank you both for the nudge.

[honorentheos]

Memento? I could watch it now if someone were down especially if they had never seen it before because it's fun to watch with someone for their first time.

Memento (2000)

Obviously, I need to add to my experience. I'll find and watch it this week. Thank you both for the nudge.

If I could bring the DVD by and watch with you, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Hope you enjoy it!

[huckelberry]

Honorentheos, It is interesting to see peoples lists but it might be fun to discuss them a bit. I find my own list questionable, subject to easy change so discussion is not a argument but more of what did you see.

I thought about O Brother, I have long had some interest in that music. It was an odd journey with visionary qualities . I checked Roger Ebert comments and found they matched my thoughts for better or worse.


(inviting any further observations)

Hi huckelberry, I'll be your...um, Huckleberry? (another good movie, by the way)

Before discussing O Brother, Where Art Thou? , I thought it worth sharing this recent article about 10 of Roger Ebert's favorite movies:
https://movieweb.com/roger-ebert-favorite-movies/

They're all great but I wouldn't put any of them in my personal top 10. His list reminds of one of the infinite blocks of time being killed while I was in the military when a conversation hypothetical was tossed out: If you were stranded on an island for over a year but could have the full discography of three musical acts with you, who would those three acts be? The youngest guy fresh out of Basic/AIT started with the Beatles. "Good choice, but when was the last time you actually listened to the Beatles? Ah, an answer one gives because if you don't give that answer folks won't think you know anything about music, right? Got it. Don't feel obligated to tell folks what you think they want to hear, tell them what three artists YOU would actually want to listen to exclusively for at least a year." Ebert's list reads like a film appreciation class final. I don't think those are his personal favorites to watch, though. ETA: I take that back in part. I do expect he does love some of them. Taxi Driver, for example. Blade Runner? I don't know if I'd believe he rewatched it out of love for the film.

Anyway, why I can rewatch O, Brother, Where Art Thou? more than any other film, and have as best as I can tell?

The movie's loose use of The Odessey to tell a more modern tale about an intelligent, secular man whose pride has earned him both the displeasure of "the gods" as well as their attention straddles a line I enjoy. It presents ideas about god, the devil, religion, faith, rationalism, in a context that the Coen's captured in a virtuoso composition of film and music. The thread of the story is that McGill's adherence to rationalism in a clearly irrational series of events, ending with him returned home ala the hero's journey but not changed despite what appears to be a change when he confronts his own death at the hands of the sheriff/devil...which is essential to the story, in my opinion. The movie presents multiple faces of god and the devil, religion and rationalism, fate and agency...and it does it with beauty and wit.

Honorentheos, thanks for the thoughtful response. One of the good things about this thread is a push to remember or reconsider some films. My memory was a bit faded for this movie , I have done some refreshing of my memory. I see sense in your take which sees more sense than Ebert's fragments.(I do not always share his view)

This thread has presented several high quality films which for whatever reason faded in my memory and I had google to refresh my memory. That may be a age thing, but other movies I seem to remember much more clearly. Some of the difference is personal quirk rather than quality of the different films. I have like the reminder. I have also liked the suggestion of movies I am not familiar with.

It did cross my mind that Oh Brother would fall into that approach to story which can be called postmodern whiich you have expressed interest in.

[huckelberry]

O Brother, Where Are Thou? stands apart in its uniqueness; I defy anybody to name a film like it. I love the film for the same reason Jacques Tati’s Playtime is my favourite feature of all time: it trades in a kind of filmmaking that never really existed. For Tati it was about space and architecture. But O Brother’s singularity is harder to define – a combination of songs, history, mythology and comedy, mixing literature and theatricality with the language of music videos.
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An absurdist time capsule of a period that sort of existed and sort of didn’t, the film’s intellectualism is inseparable from its willing embrace of nonsense, further muddying the waters in the already unclear debate about what constitutes “high” versus “low” art. Here the Coens show a clever synergy with the film from which the title originates: the writer/director Preston Sturges’ brilliant 1941 film Sullivan’s Travels, about a snobby film director who wants to make a highfalutin social realist drama (called O Brother, Where Art Thou??) before eventually embracing the value of silly escapism.

So much to love; so much to revere. And yet trying to make sense of O Brother, Where Art Thou? comes part-and-parcel with the sensation that one is being deliberately led down the garden path. Perhaps, as Everett himself puts it: “It’s a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/202 ... rs-classic

article in the Guardian by a LukeBuckmaster.

As I reviewed more bits from google, you tube pieces of the film my memory refreshes. Interesting moving yes. I find there is a layer of terror in this.every elusive threat.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Ha! I used to own that movie and soundtrack. Oh brother, I mean.

My top 3 in order of times viewed:

1) Southwest episode IV

2) I Huckabees (it helped with my existential crisis)

3) OBWAT

My top 3 arthouse movies, when I used to go to such things:

1) Brokeback mtn (not sure it quals as such, but that’s where I saw it)

2) Rushmore

3) Being John Malkovich

I wish I could be more avant-garde, like, I dunno, loving movies like Antichrist or Elephant, but I don’t. I tried.

Top 3 cape**** movies:

1) The Dark Knight

2) Avengers: Infinity War (just edged Iron Man)

3) Iron Man

- Doc

PS - Honorable mention to Eternal Sunshine for arthouse, I guess?

[Gadianton]

Eternal Sunshine and Momento are definitely required.