80s/90s
I’ll have some thoughts about the Sight and Sound list and related issues myself, but since it’s generated some discussion I thought I’d spur more discussion of the more recent movies that generally aren’t in serious contention to generate the consensus to make it on a best-films-ever list. I did 80s and 90s list back in the early days of the blog that didn’t survive the migration to WordPress, so while nearly 10 years later these won’t be the same here’s where I am now:
1980s
- Raging Bull
- The Decalogue
- Crimes and Misdemeanors
- The Vanishing (needless to say, not the Hollywood travesty)
- This Is Spinal Tap
- Atlantic City (On a general point, Malle is exceptionally underrated)
- The King of Comedy
- Once Upon A Time In America
- Do the Right Thing
- The Thin Blue Line
1990s
- GoodFellas
- The Dreamlife of Angels
- Fargo
- The Sweet Hereafter
- Out of Sight
- To Live
- Boogie Nights
- Lone Star
- The Big Lebowski
- American Dream
The bottom starts to get really arbitrary there. I really like the Kieslowski trilogy, although not as much as The Decalogue; Glengarry Glenn Ross is my favorite filmed play; Short Cuts is uneven but is exceptional at its best, the strongest post-Nashville Altman; I love Trainspotting, which I think is still Boyle’s best picture; I might include Pulp Fiction if you gave me a cut without the Willis/de Medeiros scenes; I like both 90s Solondz movies; Being John Malkovich is real good. Election. That’s not an exhaustive list of stuff that could have been included. Secrets and Lies is very good. I need to revisit 90s Wong Kar-Wai too…
I had thought about Spinal Tap the other day in relation to Erik’s post- but nice call. Also, Out of Sight and Thin Blue Line. Sadly, Morris could release one of those a year just limiting himself to Texas death row cases.
Writing and comedy tend generally to be underrated in “prestige” competitions.
What’s the matter with them? They don’t give you aural pleasure?
First I’ve heard of anyone’s objecting to that film based on *those* scenes.
Here’s my favorite 80s
1. Shoah
2. Brazil
3. A Fish Called Wanda
4. Fanny and Alexander
5. Splash
6. Pink Floyd: the Wall
7. Tess
8. Gandhi
9. Aliens
10. Angel Heart
Here’s my favorite 90s
1. Richard III
2. Matilda
3. Schindler’s List
4. The Usual Suspects
5. Time Regained
6. Se7en
7. Twelve Monkeys
8. JFK
9. C’est la vie
10. Magnolia
Looking at this list, they are clearly influenced by the fact that with the exception of Shoah, Fanny and Alexander, and Aliens I saw all these decades within the decade they were made. They therefore all play a disproportionately large role in my cinematic imagination. The attempts to fill all the holes in my cinema knowledge has really only been a sustained process of the past seven years.
Two things about Scott’s lists. “The Blue Kite” is a tougher minded movie about Maoism than “To Live.” But “To Live” is the better movie: it has more cinematic flair and the characters are more attractive. Characters don’t have to be attractive to get our sympathy, but they at least have to be interesting in some way. “The Big Lebowski” to me has a nasty taste. If someone took “Cutter’s Way” and gave it to the murderer in that movie to produce, he would come up with “The Big Lebowski.”
That version of Richard III is highly entertaining. I watch it every couple of years.
What you think about The Big Lebowski I think about Barton Fink. I find the contempt with which it (effectively) treats Odets and Faulkner renders it unwatchable.
I’ve never made it all the way through Barton Fink. I’m always bored literally to sleep and wake up with a hotel on fire and John Goodman screaming.
I agree. Faulkner certainly was no saint, but he deserved better that his portrayl in Barton Fink.
I agree about Barton Fink. It’s the most overrated movie in the Coen oeuvre.
No way. I liked it a lot- but then I didn’t overrate it- I saw it very early and there was no buzz or non buzz. Well, I guess it won at Cannes, but it was not overwhelming and clearly a niche movie. I think Raising Arizona was underrated.
Decided to re-watch The Big Lebowski this past weekend because of all the recommendations. I’d remembered enjoying it but it hadn’t stayed with me. It truly is an hilarious film, even if the friendship of Dude and Goodman’s character seems a bit of a stretch. Moore’s artist is spot-on, and the cameos by Turturro and Thewlis are pitch perfect. I can’t stand Huddleston, though, as an actor. Every time he appears it’s like nails on a chalkboard.
Tougher-minded than To Live? Less subtle and nuanced about human nature is more accurate.
interesting that you included Boogie Nights in your 90′s list. we have recently signed up for a 3 month freebie, all the pay channels for the price of HBO, which we already had. Boogie Nights has been showing (for the past couple of months) on 3 of those pay channels.
i hadn’t seen it since it first went to video tape. i’ve had occasion to watch it a couple of times recently, and have realized what a surprisingly good movie it is. burt reynolds does an excellent job, taking what could easily (and probably the standard) be a creepy/pervert character, and actually making it sympathetic and likeable. quite an achievment, considering the industry in question. really, there wasn’t a truly weak performance out of any of the principals. even nina hartley (in what i assume to be her first role in a straight movie) did a solid job.
The Alfred Molina sequence alone is worth the price of admission. The whole thing is just a beautiful piece of filmmaking, and watching both recently I’m surprised how much better it’s held up than Magnolia.
I also thought the sequence with the parking lot performance, Rollergirl/limo beat-down, and donut shop robbery all intertwined was a pretty awesome 15 minutes of cinema. The ominous bell tolling throughout was a nice touch. For as much as I love There Will Be Blood (and Pucnhdrunk Love), I still think Boogie is the best movie from PTA.
Also the recording studio. “Granted, the physical tapes are yours. But the magic on the tapes is ours!”
Feel. Feel. Feel. Feel my heeeeaaaaaat.
And list of 80s movies that does not have Local Hero in the top 3 or 4 films of the decade may be discounted out of hand.
Local Hero would make my top 10 for the 1980s pretty easily and Gregory’s Girl might slip in as well.
Agreed.
I think Prizzi’s Honor belongs on any ’80s list. Honorable mention to Bull Durham and Amadeus.
Bull Durham is one of those movies I loved so much back in the day but just doesn’t stand up to a recent rewatch. Costner is terribly miscast and he brings down the whole film.
I have to (mostly) disagree here. For me both the humor and lightness of Shelton’s script as well as Robbins’s performance, stand up pretty well. And while I see where you’re coming from re: Costner, I think he’s actually serviceable in this one.
Kevin Costner almost never looks like he’s having a good time in a movie. I keep wanting to say “if it hurts that much, why do you do it?”
Which, of course, is perfect for the role of Crash Davis.
Bingo.
His performance in Silverado, way back in the day, is the only exception I can think of. It’s also the only Costner performance I really enjoy.
I haven’t seen Local Hero in ages; you may well be right. Bull Durham could also have been included.
More broadly, British cinema seems under-represented. I’m not sure how well Stephen Frears’ early work has stood up, but it certainly rocked my world at the time. And surely something from Mike Leigh (80s or 90s) deserves inclusion. Then there’s Mona Lisa, Wish You Were Here, Withnail and I, My Left Foot, The Cook, The Thief, etc., and I’m sure others I’m forgetting.
(Also, re Frears: The Grifters deserves consideration.
I don’t have any major arguments against those lists. I don’t think I’d put Atlantic City that high, but it is a good movie. I have been thinking about watching Boogie Nights again to see if it stands up. And I’d almost certainly have Happy Together on my list. And one of the Kitano films as well–Fireworks or Sonatine, depending on the day.
I was thinking about Kitano too. If they had been 80s movies at least one would have made it; the 90s are a tougher field.
3 Women and Gosford Park are both better movies than Short Cuts, says I. (No Iranian film? I was just talking up Panahi’s The White Balloon to a friend the other day.)
Gosford Park was very overrated, says I. Haven’t seen 3 Women since college; didn’t care for it on first viewing but that may not have been accurate.
I went to see Gosford Park and came out asking, “so, where is the *real* Gosford Park movie that everyone’s saying is so awesome?” Never did find it.
3 Women was horrid. There has probably never been as erratic a movie maker as Altman. Some great movies – McCabe, California Split – a bunch of decent but overrated movies (Gosford Park, Nashville) but a whole lot of incredibly bad films – the one about the fashion industry, Buffalo Bill, Kansas City
Don’t forget Popeye!
Throwing out a few that haven’t been mentioned (and I would also put Pulp Fiction and The Usual Suspects on the list):
Paris, Texas
The Remains of the Day
Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels
The Remains of the Day is really good. L,S, a TSB is very entertaining, although I guess I thought it was too shallow to merit inclusion.
I dunno, doing a movie like LS&TSB well is a lot harder than it looks. If you don’t absolutely nail the plotting, the whole thing falls apart.
But then again, I think I’m in the minority among flick-watchers in that I don’t think theme is more important than plot. I mean, if something is trying to be a Very Serious Picture and drops the ball on the themes, that’s a big problem. But it seems pretty arbitrary to impose the standard of Very Serious Pictures on movies that entirely revolve around plot and action.
RoTD was excellent, but it I enjoyed Howards End more. I know it is very old school, but it is excellent. Maybe it pulls a few punches, but there is some subtlety there.
So glad to see you include Malle, who is underrated both as a conventional and documentary filmmaker. Seeing “Moonrise Kingdom” this weekend, the influence of “Au Revoir Les Enfants” was evident.
I’d add Koyaanisqatsi (and, as mentioned on the other thread, Brazil) to my list of 80s films, too.
So: original Vanishing vs. Hollywood – is this the greatest disparity between original and remake ever?
And by the same director!
is this the greatest disparity between original and remake ever?
Han shot first.
I think any list of films that doesn’t segregate them by genre doesn’t make much sense. Imho, you can’t really compare, say, Westerns and Sci Fi flicks and make anything but gushy comments about how they “influenced cinema” or they “stand up well” or something similarly fudge-like. I mean, look at the films in these lists; most of them are so different that clear means of comparing them are hard to find. While I think Scott’s idea of doing the comparisons by decade makes more sense (though how he left The Big Easy off his ’90′s list is hard to see), but has the same problems within decades.
Oth, it’s easy to call The Seven Samurai the best action picture; The Searchers the best Western (though I might have picked She Wore a Yellow Ribbon), Psycho the best thriller, and so on. Doing it that way makes the whole problem of determining influence across pictures and genres a lot easier and pinpoints the themes and practices more clearly too.
But, hey, I’m just a jive political scientist looking for a way to make comparisons within and across categories easy and sensible. That’s never been what people want to do when they talk about movies, but, by God, it should be!
Agreed.
Speaking of Westerns. It’s not really my genre, but I’m surprised that The Unforgiven hasn’t been mentioned more on these lists. I’ve only seen it in bits and pieces, but I remember at the time it got quite the hype as one of the all-time greats of the Western genre.
Shallow Grave. That is all.
Defensible; that’s an excellent movie.
The White Balloon and Chungking Express should definitely be in the 90′s list. In fact, I think both of them made my Best 10 films since 1968 list. I would also include Pulp Fiction, Claire Denis’ Chocolat, and Cronenberg’s Crash, and Starship Troopers.
Meanwhile, recently rewatched Out of Sight, and don’t think it holds up all taht well.
It holds up after 50 viewings!!!!!
What amazes me about your list is that I have seen only one of the 20 films. What was I doing?
I would have to include Blade Runner in the ’80s list.
I’m glad someone else thinks Boyle is over-rated.
Competely agree on Sunshine and Slumdo Millionaire.
If you could include only a fragment of a move, I would include “They Live” up to the point Roddy Piper runs out of bubblegum.
Is that before or after the 90-minute fight scene?
Ah yes, Raging Bull. The most overrated movie in history. Along with “2001″, the only other film people call “great” that I would give a 1 star review to.
You must be impressed by meaningless camera movements, overwrought music, boxing matches that don’t look at all realistic (and this was only a few years after Rocky, which showed you it wasn’t that hard to make fight scenes that looked like actual fights). On top of everything else it was, by the accounts of just about everyone who knew the man, a gigantic libel of Jake La Motta.
Martin Scorsese has made some good films. I don’t agree it was the number 1 film of the 1990′s, but Goodfellas is a very good film and you are right to rate it highly. But my lord is Raging Bull crap, and it’s crap precisely because of Scorsese’s faults as a director. He tries to be too stylized, too interested in atmosphere and special effects and trying to get the audience to think about his technique. The guy’s got a tremendous ego, and he tries to impose it on his films. (Indeed, even in Goodfellas, there are a couple of cringing examples of this, like when Ray Liotta speaks to the camera in the courtroom scene.)
Raging Bull is terrible. It wouldn’t even make a top 10 list of BOXING movies.
Somewhat surprised that no one’s mentioned Rushmore. A genuinely lovely movie, full of feeling, that happens also to be great-looking and very, very funny. I adore Local Hero too, for some similar reasons, but Rushmore is quite a bit better, I’d say. (For one thing, it contains no painfully dumb/unfunny scenes featuring Burt Lancaster and that fucking shrink.) At this point, I have no reason to believe Wes Anderson’s got another one of these in him.