Top five FAVORITE movies? (Can include animation)

[ShyViolet]

I know it’s extremely extremely difficult to list just five, but thought maybe we could give it a try. . Any genre is fine: drama, horror, romance, comedy, adventure...etc.

The very first one should be your all-time favorite...the rest can all be runners-up.

My personal list:

1.).Lawrence of Arabia
2.) Schindler’s List
3.). Minority Report
4.) WALL-E
5.) The Box

[Ben]

(can include animation)

Animated movies are movies too, Vi.


I’ll have to have a proper think about a top five, but Superman: The Movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Back To The Future Trilogy (yeah, I’m gonna cheat that one!) are in there.

[ShyViolet]

Of course I know! . I just thought it made things clearer.

And good choices! (Though not too much of a surprise )

[Randall]

1. Superman The Movie (hands down!)
2. Star Wars
3. It's a Wonderful Life
4. Fantasia
5. King Kong

Huh, I don't remember The Box at all. Richard Matheson, eh? Interesting.

Minority Report is an underrated sci-fi classic!

Schindler's List is awesome, but I haven't been able to watch it again it since seeing it in the theatre. I went with a group of friends from work in Orlando, and we were all so traumatized, none of us could speak afterward. We all just went silently to our cars. I tried to say good night, and just about broke down right there in the parking lot. I didn't even say good-bye to the girl who drive me home. What a devastating film. I did finally start sobbing when I got into my apartment.

[ShyViolet]

Wow, that’s just so beautiful and touching Rand. Thank you for sharing.

Huh, I don't remember The Box at all. Richard Matheson, eh? Interesting.

Yeah, The Box is based on the Matheson short story “Button, Button” (it was also made into an 80s Twilight Zone ep) which has the same basic premise (push the button, get a million dollars and someone you don’t know will die) but other than that the plot is completely removed from the original story. The film itself (Donnie Darko’s Richard Kelly directed, and it came out in 2009) is so hard to explain in a sentence or two, so I’ll just say it deals magnificently in themes like damnation, hell, heaven, God, love, and space travel. And that’s just for starters. I know it was mostly panned on RT but it’s so so so brilliant....many critics have said that it was a huge step down from Donnie Darko (“not ambitious enough”) but in my opinion the reverse is true.


On MR: All I’m going to say is that, in my opinion, if the film had been released maybe ten years later it might very well have gotten a Best Pic nom.

[James]

No way I could pick just five without a LOT of thought! But I can give you the very easy number one...

1. Mary Poppins

[EricJ]

1.).Lawrence of Arabia
2.) Schindler’s List
3.). Minority Report
4.) WALL-E
5.) The Box

I have the distinct feeling you made this ENTIRE thread just to tell us you liked the last film Richard Kelly ever directed....Ooo-kay.

No way I could pick just five without a LOT of thought! But I can give you the very easy number one...
1. Mary Poppins

I'd put that in my Top 3, but only not #1 because I'm still not sure where "Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm" would place.

Although every time security-question passwords ask "What is your favorite movie?", I always answer Xanadu. Yes, it's really #5, but who in the world would ever guess that one?

[James]

Uh oh, Eric is right! This has all been an elaborate Now You See Me like setup by Shy to get our security question answers!

[Dan]

My top five has been relatively unchanged for years.

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
2. Princess Mononoke
3. Seven Samurai
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
5. The Hidden Fortress

[ShyViolet]

Very cool list! .

I love the LOTR films too; although they’re still generally held in very high regard, I think that with ALL the epic fantasy prequels/trilogies/sequels over the last 15 years, LOTR has sort of been...forgotten? Maybe that’s not the right word. (I’m actually someone who LOVES the movies but have never actually read the books, so maybe I’m misreading the situation.) It just feels like with so many other fantasy movies-adapted-from books series released over the years like like Harry Potter and Hunger Games, LOTR was sort of lost in the shuffle.

Oh right and then there was the Hobbit Trilogy, duh! The retread nature of those films (except for Martin Freeman’s performance) definitely went a long way towards damaging some of the “luster” of the LOTR movie trilogy in audience’s eyes. (In my opinion.)

[Ben]

Yes, I’d agree with that. It’s not that LOTR has been "forgotten", but The Hobbitses certainly went some way, instead of enhancing the earlier films, to sullying them quite a bit.

[Dan]

Guess I move around different social areas cause LotR is always regarded highly around places I hang in.

Also helps that my dad's a Tolkien head.

[EricJ]

Yes, Fellowship will still go down as one of the iconic Great Films of the 00's, and Return as "the Last Great Oscar Picture", but you have to distance the cine-historical achievement of the original LOTR Trilogy from the more, um, personal bits of Peter Jackson that he threw into the Hobbit Trilogy that you now can't UN-see in his better movies.

(And, yes, I mean the guy in the dress from "Battle of Five Armies". For a start.)

[Ben]

Funny...just last night we caught a clip of Slumdog Millionaire on TV and both me and my wife turned to each other and said, "you know, I think this was the last Best Picture winner that really deserved its Oscar", meaning as a film that could stand with the real classics in that list. Sadly since then, the prize has gone to lesser and lesser films, though we look forward to running Parasite in around three weeks. I’d agree, though, that ROTK is probably the last "great" Oscar Best Picture, in terms of its achievement.

[ShyViolet]

There’s a LOT of stuff I disagree with (and maybe a bit that I do agree) in this worst-to-best list of all Best Picture winners from 2000 until 2017, but it’s kind of an interesting read. (Slumdog is ranked at #11)

(But seriously...Gladiator at NUMBER 8????? I know it was Russell Crowe’s real breakout role that made him a superstar, and I LOVED the film and Hans Zimmer score at the time...but the screenplay verged on cliche and CGI effects felt SO out of place. Even the writer acknowledges that it really wasn’t all that great. Also he falsely claims that back around 2000 epics about ancient times/sword fighting were a big thing but that went away quickly. What??? One of the big reasons Gladiator was such a massive hit was that these kinds of films hadn’t been done theatrically in FOREVER. And the constant stream of quasi-historical/fantasy epics in general during the 2000s was obviously influenced by the massive success of this film. (Remember Troy with Brad Pitt and Alexander with Colin Farrell?)


https://www.businessinsider.com/oscar-b ... st-2017-12

Also I still love Chicago and Crash (even though I agree Brokeback should have won instead for 2005) and wish they would be acknowledged more often nowadays as the great films they really were. . (Maybe not perfect, but sure as heck better than Gladiator! )