Best of the Decade

[DanielBenoit]

1960's
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
2. 8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
3. Bonnie and Clyde - Arthur Penn
4. L'Avventura - Michelangelo Antoini
5. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Stanley Kubrick

This needs some major adjusting.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
2. 8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
3. Persona - Ingmar Bergman
4. Bonnie and Clyde - Arthur Penn
5. L'Avventura - Michelangelo Antoini

[NickAdams]

Christoph Waltz ... there are too many (there can never be too many) strong performances in Inglourious Basterds.

Laura Dern - Inland Empire

Gunnar Björnstrand in everything, but I first took notice of him in The Seventh Seal; I felt he was the only actor in that film that gave a cinematic and not a theatrical performance.

Best of 2000's (this is really hard for me to do so don't judge my decisions TOO harshly)
1. Adaptation
2. The Departed
3. Lost In Translation
3. Wall-E
4. City Of God
5. Children Of Men
6. Pride & Prejudice
7. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
8. The Class
9. The Life Aquatic
10. Amelie
11. The Hurt Locker
12. Rachel Getting Married

I probably left a lot out, but these are the ones that come to mind.

A lot of good ones on here. Adaptation was my number one for awhile. It's still my favorite Kaufman picture.

This needs some major adjusting.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
2. 8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
3. Persona - Ingmar Bergman
4. Bonnie and Clyde - Arthur Penn
5. L'Avventura - Michelangelo Antoini

I'm surprised you're just now seeing Persona. There are a lot of highlights in that film, but Alma's recounting past exploits are a stand out to me.

[DanielBenoit]

Gunnar Björnstrand in everything, but I first took notice of him in The Seventh Seal; I felt he was the only actor in that film that gave a cinematic and not a theatrical performance.

True, very true. The theatricality of the whole film put me a bit off at first, but it's far too powerful, beautiful and greatly acted to dislike.

I'm surprised you're just now seeing Persona. There are a lot of highlights in that film, but Alma's recounting past exploits are a stand out to me.

I know I've seen most of Bergman's other films, and then I realized that I've never seen Persona I think it's his best


I have also decided to expand my 60's list which was the best time for movies everywhere.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
2. 8 1/2 - Federico Fellini
3. Persona - Ingmar Bergman
4. Bonnie and Clyde - Arthur Penn
5. Through a Glass Darkly - Ingmar Bergman
6. Chimes at Midnight - Orson Welles
7. L'Avventura - Michelangelo Antoini
8. La Dolce Vita - Federico Fellini
9. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb - Stanley Kubrick
10. The Graduate - Mike Nichols
11. Lolita - Stanley Kubrick
12. Winter Light - Ingmar Bergman
13. Psycho - Alfred Hitchcock
14. To Kill a Mockingbird - Robert Mulligan
15. The Virgin Spring - Ingmar Bergman


and the 50's which was definitley a time of great foriegn classics (despite the fact that my first three choices are overtly Hollywood )

1. Singing in the Rain - Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly
2. The Night of the Hunter - Charles Laughton
3. Vertigo - Alfred Hitchcock
4. Floating Weeds - Yarujio Ozu
5. Ikiru - Akira Kurosawa
6. Hiroshima, Mon Amour - Alan Resnais
7. Harvey - Henry Koster
8. Touch of Evil - Orson Welles
9. The 400 Blows - Francis Truffant
10. The Seven Samurai - Akira Kurosawa
11. The Seventh Seal - Ingmar Bergman
12. Stalag 17 - Billy Wilder
13. Nights of Cabria - Federico Fellini
14. Strangers on a Train - Alfred Hitchcock
15. Some Like It Hot - Billy Wilder

[NickAdams]

Once you get into the 80's picking five favorites becomes difficult.

[Mathor]

Christoph Waltz ... there are too many (there can never be too many) strong performances in Inglourious Basterds.

Indeed. I believe he will earn his first Golden Globe and Oscar for acting in this film. He's so brilliant in that film.

[DanielBenoit]

Once you get into the 80's picking five favorites becomes difficult.

Eh, the 80's for me wasn't that much of a great time in film. There's probably only thirty or so American mainstream films from that era worth seeing.

Raging Bull is unquestionably the best of the 80's, with Shoah very close behind it. Has anyone seen Shoah? It's a painfully effective ninie hour documentary about the Holocoust, but what's so unique about it is that it doesn't explain through historical documentation like clips from the past, but rather is just a series of interviews with those who were there, including some of those who carried out the killings. It is haunting in that many of the films shots (whilst the interview voice-overs) are of the old ghettos and death camps and the landscape surrounding in the present day. Like ghosts, the past still lingers. The images that the film evokes through words is thoroughly terrifying and graphic, and even more so since virtually nothing is shown onscreen except the haunting landscape and faces of the survivors. It surpasses even Schindler's List in that it deals with the Holocoust as a whole and in a very despairing way, while Speilberg's film depicted one of the extremely few sucsess stories of the Holocost. I've only had the time to watch about half of it, but it is truly great and probably the most important documentary (if not film) ever made.

[NickAdams]

Eh, the 80's for me wasn't that much of a great time in film. There's probably only thirty or so American mainstream films from that era worth seeing.

That's almost shocking. In the 80's there were multiple films from David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Werner Herzog, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen, Jean-Luc Godard, Bela Tarr (I haven't seen the four films he directed in the 80's). There was also Full Metal Jacket and Love Streams. I wouldn't say they were all number ones, but there was a lot under the rubble of the 80's.

Raging Bull would be in my top five and so would Love Streams, but it gets tough after that. I wouldn't even attempt to list a top 70's and 60's those decades were magic.

[DanielBenoit]

That's almost shocking. In the 80's there were multiple films from David Lynch, Ingmar Bergman, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Werner Herzog, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen, Jean-Luc Godard, Bela Tarr (I haven't seen the four films he directed in the 80's). There was also Full Metal Jacket and Love Streams. I wouldn't say they were all number ones, but there was a lot under the rubble of the 80's.

Raging Bull would be in my top five and so would Love Streams, but it gets tough after that. I wouldn't even attempt to list a top 70's and 60's those decades were magic.

Yeah I know. It just seems that the junk from American mainstream cinema was almost endless.

Btw, when I said that there are only about thirty or so films worth seeing from that time; I meant from mainstream America, and thus pretty much not counting any of those names you mentioned (except Scorsese, Allen and Schrader).

Maybe that was a bit of an overstatement. But it cannot be denied that despite these unbelievably great films like The Decalouge or Raging Bull, a great majority of mainstream American (not foriegn) cinema during that time was trash. Anyone ever heard of Highlander? Leonard Part 6? If you do, I pity you.

[NickAdams]

Yeah I know. It just seems that the junk from American mainstream cinema was almost endless.

Btw, when I said that there are only about thirty or so films worth seeing from that time; I meant from mainstream America, and thus pretty much not counting any of those names you mentioned (except Scorsese, Allen and Schrader).

Maybe that was a bit of an overstatement. But it cannot be denied that despite these unbelievably great films like The Decalouge or Raging Bull, a great majority of mainstream American (not foriegn) cinema during that time was trash. Anyone ever heard of Highlander? Leonard Part 6? If you do, I pity you.

Almost endless? It's still going. I wonder if you've seen Quentin Tarantino's film from the 80's "My Best Friend's Birthday"; it's more of a curiosity, like the film Johnny Depp directed "The Brave" (which has Brando).

[DanielBenoit]

Almost endless? It's still going. I wonder if you've seen Quentin Tarantino's film from the 80's "My Best Friend's Birthday"; it's more of a curiosity, like the film Johnny Depp directed "The Brave" (which has Brando).

No I haven't. I knew that Tarantino had obviously did some directorial amatuer stuff before Resevoir Dogs, but I had no idea that it was available to view

Salon.com in there list of best directors of the decade puts Michael Bay at #10. I lost the link so I'll find it later.

[NickAdams]

You can find it on youtube. Type in My Best Friends Birthday part 1.

[Mathor]

my only response to all the bashing of the 80's.

BRAZIL came out in 1985 for crying out loud!

And I don't hate Michael Bay as much for his films as what I learned when i heard an interview from Katherine Bigelow. While she was trying to film the Hurt Locker, the army, the navy, the marines, and the guard all refused to help in any way, shape, or form. For an independent film about a freakin war, she was not given any assistance whatsoever from the military. However, the same year, the army was said to have lended around 100 military planes to Transformers 2, and in fact every facet of the military was willing to give as much as possible to the success of the Transformers 2, including even REAL generals and members of the armed forces were IN the movie. WTF?

[DanielBenoit]

my only response to all the bashing of the 80's.

BRAZIL came out in 1985 for crying out loud!

I'm not bashing those films. They make up about 10% of the total imput of the 80's. Definining the eighties with just a couple films does not turn the era into a reinissance. Every era inevidibly produces masterpieces.

And besides, that comment was reserved for and only for American mainstream films, Brazil is one of those few that was great.

[Mathor]

I'm not bashing those films. They make up about 10% of the total imput of the 80's. Definining the eighties with just a couple films does not turn the era into a reinissance. Every era inevidibly produces masterpieces.

And besides, that comment was reserved for and only for American mainstream films, Brazil is one of those few that was great.

Every era produces terrible mush, and every era produces masterpieces, the 80's is not worse than any other genre. The 80's was a wonderful decade of cinema. You are not looking in the right places. If you look at hollywood films from any decade you'll find stuff that sucks, and stuff that is amazing.

Do the Right Thing
Tootsie
A Christmas Story
This Is Spinal Tap
Crimes And Misdemeanors
Ran
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
Back To The Future
My Dinner With Andre
The Last Temptation of Christ
Out of Africa
The Terminator
Videodrome
Blue Velvet
Salvador
Raiders of The Lost Ark
The Shining
Amadeus
Platoon
The Elephant Man
Raging Bull
On Golden Pond
Gandhi
Driving Mrs Daisy
Dead Poets Society
Blood Simple

those are all pretty wonderful Hollywood films, but one could do go further into the 80's and find many lesser known treasures that I didn't list.

I would even venture to say that most of the "crappy" teen comedies from the 80's like:

Ferris Buelers Day Off
Say Anything
The Breakfast Club

are also pretty decent, though I can see why they wouldn't be the BEST movies of any period of time. But if you put all of these crappy 80's movies against the thousands of new movies like that that come out in the 90's and the 2000's (American Pie, Saw, etc) you would find that those two decades have a lot more crap like that, and a smaller majority of it has any redeeming quality to it. American mainstream has always sucked.

[DanielBenoit]

True, it's just that the 80's was the begining of an era which brought genre-formula pictures into the spotlight. Before then, there was neo-classical Hollywood in which films like Bonnie and Clyde and Taxi Driver had the spotlight, and were financed by big studios. And even before then in the 30's, 40's and 50's, Hollywood did produce tons of formula films, but many of them were great (though not all of course). The 30's and 40's made romantic-comedies that would shame even reasonable modern romantic-comedies like Sleepless in Seattle.

Then after Star Wars and Jaws came along (great movies btw) studios saw the money in special effects blockbusters and almost completely dropped the more innovative artistic films of the 60's and 70's. Of course blockbusters have always existed, but for obvious reasons, David Lean is infinitley better than Michael Bay. In the end, it's not the films themselves that created my opinion of the eighties, but rather the outlook of Hollywood and the fact that it was a transitional period into the formula cliched films that we still have today.