ILX All-Time Film and Morbsies Poll: RESULTS Thread for ILX's Favorite Movies, Films, Cinema, Flicks & Moving Pictures

I chose Beware of a Holy Whore. Better Ali than Maria Braun, though.

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/062-the-maltese-falcon.jpg

62. THE MALTESE FALCON (John Huston, 1941, USA) [733.1 points; 10 votes; Morbs silver]
S&S: 490 | TSPDT: 258 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "Few books are filmable as is, and the only one I can think of that works brilliantly as virtual Cliff Notes is The Maltese Falcon."

the maltese falcon" was one of the first old movies i ever saw, when i was about 12: i remember i was so excited about it i repeated the entire plot, scene by scene, to one of my friends at school the next day. he wasn't very interested.
― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, October 13, 2003 1:25 AM

There's actually a reproduction of 'the stuff dreams are made of' leering down from the top of a bookcase in my house.
― Michael White, Wednesday, April 9, 2008 9:59 AM

The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite movies of all time.
― Pancakes are one of my favorite ways to party. (ENBB), Saturday, July 25, 2009 7:14 PM

'Maltese Falcon' is my favourite film.
― darraghmac, Wednesday, April 9, 2008 10:03 AM

The Maltese Falcon is my favorite SF film.
― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, January 18, 2005 12:04 PM

I love posting with a man who likes to post.

The expression on Bogart's face as he watches (with admiration!) how Astor moves around the living room still pretending to be a meek demure thing is one of the best things in movies.

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/061-au-hasard-balthazar.jpg

61. AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (Robert Bresson, 1966, France) [734.91 points; 11 votes]
S&S: 20 | TSPDT: 34 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "I don't cry at the end of that one, tho, sorry. It is, after all, a donkey."

My g/f uses it as shorthand for bonkers crazy film buff doolaliness ('donkey movies'). Its appeal is totally opaque to me. If someone could explain it without employing mystico-catholic-transcendental terminology, I'd be grateful.
― ENRQ (Enrique), Friday, May 7, 2004 7:52 AM

i love the braying ass that interrupts the music during the opening credits of balthazar. who says bresson was humorless?!
― edb, Wednesday, June 20, 2007 10:55 AM

Balthazar is a captivating character, but Au Hasard Balthazar as a film is hard for me to grasp
― Dan S, Friday, December 13, 2019 6:11 PM

During the film's last five minutes I just broke down. Even after having read about it for years I had no idea how incredibly heartbreaking and at the same time beautiful the ending would be. And this is in a film full of just intense, resonant moments, both beautiful and horrible. I really, in all my years of watching, loving and hating films, don't think I've ever been moved by a film like this one has and I can't stop thinking about it.
― Jay Vee (Manon_70), Thursday, May 6, 2004 4:18 PM

the scene where the donkey encounters the other caged animals in particular is a transcendent bit of filmmaking.
― Darcy Sarto (Ward Fowler), Thursday, November 17, 2016 9:23 AM

acht, i got bored and switched it off about an hour in. i wish i had stuck it out tho, i love crying.
― jed_ (jed), Thursday, May 6, 2004 6:57 PM

funny how among all the recent commentary on this film, no one has thought to ask the donkey what he thought of his character.
― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, June 20, 2005 10:26 PM

people voted for braveheart?
― grove street (party) direction (voodoo chili), Monday, August 30, 2021 3:26 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

More like Bravefart
― Precious, Grace, Hill & Beard LTD. (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, August 30, 2021 3:49 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

now that i would've voted for
― grove street (party) direction (voodoo chili), Monday, August 30, 2021 3:53 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

Bray, Fart
― i carry the torch for disco inauthenticity (Eric H.), Monday, August 30, 2021 4:03 PM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

aka Au Hasard Balthazar
― Gwar ina Babyon (James Redd and the Blecchs), Monday, August 30, 2021 4:45 PM

100. ROSEMARY'S BABY (Roman Polanski, Roman 1968, USA) [620 points; 10 votes]
99. LA JETÉE (Chris Marker, Chris 1962, France) [623.33 points; 9 votes; 1 first-place vote; Morbs silver]
98. MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (Miyazaki Hayao, 1988, Japan) [623.9 points; 10 votes]
97. SEVEN SAMURAI (Kurosawa Akira, 1954, Japan) [624.67 points; 9 votes]
96. MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid, 1943, USA) [625.71 points; 7 votes]
95. SHOWGIRLS (Paul Verhoeven, 1995, USA) [628 points; 4 votes]
94. ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011, Turkey) [636 points; 6 votes]
93. ERASERHEAD (David Lynch, 1977, USA) [636.9 points; 10 votes]
92. THE GODFATHER (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972, USA) [643.4 points; 10 votes]
91. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (Alain Resnais, 1961, France) [645.82 points; 11 votes]

90. MANDY (Panos Cosmatos, 2018, USA) [646.5 points; 8 votes]
89. THIS IS SPINAL TAP (Rob Reiner, 1984, USA) [650.91 points; 11 votes]
88. JOHNNY GUITAR (Nicholas Ray, 1954, USA) [651 points; 6 votes]
87. THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (Victor Erice, 1973, Spain) [652 points; 8 votes]
86. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang, 1991, Taiwan) [655.5 points; 6 votes; 1 first-place vote]
85. THE LADY EVE (Preson Sturges, 1941, USA) [656.4 points; 10 votes; Morbs silver]
84. CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette, 1974, France) [658.57 points; 7 votes]
83. THE KING OF COMEDY (Martin Scorsese, 1983, USA) [659.82 points; 11 votes; Morbs gold]
82. WILD STRAWBERRIES (Ingmar Bergman, 1957, Sweden) [661.5 points; 6 votes]
81. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (Frank Capra, 1946, USA) [661.63 points; 8 votes]

80. CALIFORNIA SPLIT (Robert Altman, 1974, USA) [663 points; 6 votes]
79. UNDER THE SKIN (Jonathan Glazer, 2014, UK) [665 points; 12 votes]
78. THE WICKER MAN (Robin Hardy, 1973, UK) [668.5 points; 8 votes]
77. THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Sergio Leone, 1966, Italy) [670 points; 12 votes; Morbs silver]
76. DAISIES (Vera Chytilová, 1966, Czechoslovakia) [674.29 points; 7 votes; 1 first-place vote]
75. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (John Ford, 1962, USA) [683.63 points; 8 votes; Morbs gold]
74. DAYS OF HEAVEN (Terrence Malick, 1978, USA) [683.63 points; 8 votes; 1 first-place vote]
73. BEING JOHN MALKOVICH (Spike Jonze, 1999, USA) [700.6 points; 10 votes]
72. PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965, France) [705 points; 6 votes]
71. MIRROR (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975, USSR) [708.38 points; 8 votes; Morbs gold]

70. M (Fritz Lang, 1931, Germany) [708.67 points; 9 votes]
69. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1943, UK) [715.71 points; 7 votes]
68. CRUMB (Terry Zwigoff, 1994, USA) [716.63 points; 8 votes]
67. PULP FICTION (Quentin Tarantino, 1994, USA) [717.5 points; 10 votes; 1 first-place vote]
66. TOUCH OF EVIL (Orson Welles, 1958, USA) [719.33 points; 9 votes; 1 first-place vote]
65. 3 WOMEN (Robert Altman, 1977, USA) [725.3 points; 10 votes]
64. BACK TO THE FUTURE (Robert Zemeckis, 1985, USA) [728.55 points; 11 votes]
63. ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974, West Germany) [729.2 points; 10 votes; Morbs silver]
62. THE MALTESE FALCON (John Huston, 1941, USA) [733.1 points; 10 votes; Morbs silver]
61. AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (Robert Bresson, 1966, France) [734.91 points; 11 votes]

I assign it every semester in my class but haven't watched it since 2005 lol. Too difficult.

I like that in today's rundown there's two middle films in what I think of as unofficial auteurist trilogies in 3 Women (Persona ... Mulholland Drive) and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (All That Heaven Allows ... Far from Heaven).

The Maltese Falcon's great, but I've been meaning to rewatch The Asphalt Jungle, which really impressed me the one time I saw it--that could be my favourite of the two.

didn't realize until today that Ali is an homage to All That Heaven Allows

Man the asphalt jungle is tougher than the maltese falcon by some distance iirc

Not as much fun, though, and I like it fine except for the treatment of the Sam Jaffe character.

Well it not playing for fun is a large part of the toughness

Hayden's is a hell of a performance

balthazar :((((((((

yeah if there's a bigger genuine tearjerker in the 100 i'll be amazed

i cried a bit when Back to the Future turned up

Hayden will be in at least three of the Top 100, maybe four.

Ah theres still time for it to place higher xp

need to watch Balthazar again. my one Bresson vote was for A Man Escaped

i cried a bit when Back to the Future turned up

― maybe these baps are legends (Noodle Vague), Thursday, October 28, 2021

:)

Ali was surprisingly tender-hearted for a Fassbinder film

Stumbling in late just as a bunch of stuff I probably gave lots of points popped up. (Touch of Evil, 3 Women, Feat Eats the Soul, Balthazar.) Might avoid checking my dimly-remembered ballot and just keep letting the rollout casually deliver pleasant reminders...

Thanks Eric H!

The last two were both in my top 25. Ali isn't the Fassbinder I voted for but it would have been #2.

Maltese Falcon I had ridiculously high, because I have a really strong emotional attachment to it. I don't remember how old I was the first time I saw it, probably a teenager, but that movie represented so many things to me. About cities and mysteries and men and women. It's grown-up film, it's about people who have seen and done things. The cast is spectacular, Mary Astor maybe my favorite of the bunch. And the dialogue is so good and sparse and clean and hilarious. Balthazar I tried to not like while I was watching it, because I kind of resented its pretensions, but it's so good.

with 125 films to work with I didn’t feel compelled to vote for only one film per director. I included 2 films for several of them and 3 films for two (Lynch and Weerasethakul)

Oh me either. It was just only one Fassbinder cracked my list.

I'm confused by the voting system. Quite a few of these (3 Women, AHB etc) have been on my longlist - do those votes count points-wise or are they just moral support?

I'd have to assume they count in the 'votes' count at least - otherwise Rosemary's Baby, at #100 appearing on 10 out of 60 lists-of-25 would be a little odd.

The honourable mentions were awarded one point each or something.

Sure - I think the point range is just higher than most people would intuit - Colonel Blimp on 715.71 points from 7 votes, for example

balthazar the least interesting bresson for me (the horses legs in lancelot over any of this) so put my votes for the big man elsewhere

75. THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (John Ford, 1962, USA) [683.63 points; 8 votes; Morbs gold]

if you catch me on the right day of the week i might say this is the greatest film hollywood ever produced, hopefully more ford higher up. the unsettling, realist totality, of the limp enigmatic train moving away from us over the broad plain in the final shot is perhaps my favourite final shot in cinema.

yeah if there's a bigger genuine tearjerker in the 100 i'll be amazed

― imago, Thursday, 28 October 2021 bookmarkflaglink

i cried a bit when Back to the Future turned up

― maybe these baps are legends (Noodle Vague), Thursday, 28 October 2021 bookmarkflaglink

Lol

Prior to weighting, ballots' top 25 got from 100 points down to 76 points (or 88 points if unranked), and the honorable mentions all received 20 points.

(Full disclosure, I gave Morbs' ballot a tiny bit of extra weight because, frankly, he earned it.)

Damn straight

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/060-sunrise.jpg

60. SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (F.W. Murnau, 1927, USA) [752.6 points; 10 votes; 1 first-place vote]
S&S: 6 | TSPDT: 8 | BOXD: 186

MORBS SEZ: "If you want your leading man's adultery with a Wicked City Woman to avoid alienating the audience, I guess clapping a wig like that one on Janet Gaynor is the way to go." (Slant review.)

I think Sunrise is overrated. For real Murnau action, check out Nosferatu, Tabu, or the Last Gasp.
― DV (dirtyvicar), Saturday, December 7, 2002 4:54 PM

I think Sunrise has the raw power of, oh, plays by Sophocles, that sort of thing.
― Michael Daddino (epicharmus), Sunday, April 27, 2003 2:17 PM

its misogyny has always kept me from holding it close to my heart. I prefer the other Janet Gaynor film of 1927, Seventh Heaven. … I feel that Murnau's "Nosferatu" is one of the ten greatest films ever made, and suspect that the only reason people go on about "Sunrise" is that critical opinion does not like to accord just levels of acclaim to a film about a bloodsucking vampire
― amateurist (amateurist), Sunday, April 27, 2003 3:58 PM

it probably has more to do with the fact that Sunrise is still a moving film, but Nosferatu (great tho it is) really isn't scary anymore. horror doesn't age well, sadly.
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Sunday, February 1, 2004 6:14 PM

OK, it's been a long time since I saw Sunrise, but I remember being bored by it. I dunno, maybe I should watch it again.
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, November 3, 2003 4:02 AM

GOD SUNRISE SUCKED THE ONLY COOL PART WAS THE HOTT FLAPPER CHICK THEY WERE KIND OF LIKE SCENESTER BABES OF THE 20S NO PS I SAW THIS ON FUCKING 16 MM BITCHES
― Spinning Down Alone You Spin Alive (ex machina), Tuesday, November 9, 2004 3:03 PM

yay!

Low ranking aside, I still maintain that this is about as close to a consensus favorite as exists among people who treat film as popular art.

When it's on, I wonder if it's the peak of cinema's possibilities.

Then came Brett Ratner.

Good start. One of the handful of silents I've seen (the film canon I've explored the least)

Okay, now I definitely don't understand how you get over 700 points from 7 votes without any #1s?

Not that it matters! More people like more = more good!

That's where the weighting comes in.

raw point totals + (average points per vote x 3) + (number of votes x 10)

Oh cool!

Sunrise was my #1 vote, it's one of the most beautiful films and I love how effortlessly it shifts from horror to drama to comedy to drama again.

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/059-synecdoche-new-york.jpg

59. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman, 2008, USA) [768.67 points; 9 votes]
S&S: 490 | TSPDT: 651 | BOXD: DNP

MORBS SEZ: "I thought the first 45 mins was the most unapologetic body-disgust cinema I've seen made by someone other than Cronenberg … I thought it was full of the worst of life! Which admittedly is not something most people want to see."

Its sequel should be called Metonymy Falls, Wisconsin. And then comes Metalepsis, Minnesota: The Vengeance of Adele. those unfamiliar with Greek names for figures of speech and upper-midwestern geography should just trust me that all this is hilarious
― nabisco, Saturday, May 24, 2008 12:29 PM

I couldn't stand this until Dianne Wiest's moment, so I'm in the minority. Hoffman's sad sack act grated on me.
― The Screaming Lobster of Challops (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, March 15, 2009 1:00 AM

for realz, i'm ready for a moratorium on movies about misunderstood "genius" males who bang lots of women and alienate everyone. i would have loved to see a version of this where dianne wiest was the macarthur-winning PSH character and got to navel-gaze in the company of several doting young men.
― elliot easton ellis (get bent), Sunday, May 24, 2009 1:58 AM

I was just thinking about this movie this morning. I think it can be summed up by the phrase "crippling narcissism"
― Jesus, the Czar of Czars (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, October 29, 2009 12:08 PM

For me, a film can pretty much say anything as long as I enjoy just looking and listening. Some of the weirder Godard shit, for example, just sweeps me along and I blink and nod and look at the pictures, regardless of how "difficult" the filmmaking is supposed to be. This, though, is the UGLIEST film I've ever seen, on a technical/aesthetic whatever level, I don't know what word to use. On the other hand, a film about something horrific like genocide can make me put aside (or at least qualify) aesthetics in the name of giving me something to think about. But there's nothing to think about here other than self-indulgence. David Lynch, whose films I enjoy but am ultimately indifferent to, kind of walks a line between this nightmare/abjection philosophical shit and just cool visual poetry. Like I say, I'm not a fan, but maybe it works for him, I dunno. But this... The piece-of-shit filmmaking. The cowardice of the little gags (which is all you get really.. people point out that they found the movie "funny," but these are sad little jokes that refer only to the movie itself. That's manipulative, sadistic filmmaking, it's a very high price of admission for a few shitty little jokes and PSH's fucking mug). This actually WAS torture. I can only conclude that was the intent. That this film was an actual weapon. I was revolted by it.
― the fantasy-life of nations has consequences in the real worl (fields of salmon), Thursday, June 11, 2009 1:04 AM

it's my favorite movie, nothing else comes close at all. has been since the night I saw it for the first time. it was on the weekend, and I was so bowled over by it I went by myself again at one of the last showings on a school night that Wednesday or Thursday. I couldn't believe it, it just nailed me to the wall. I think the circumstances at the time - beyond seeing it in a theater and knowing nothing going in - compounded my emotional response significantly. But long after all that, the film still yields so much for me, it is the work of art that we watch Caden struggle and fail to create. And even though my viewing a few weeks ago felt a little tepid or removed, the movie's in the front of my head again. I saw a movie with Dianne Wiest in it today and I was on the verge of tears every time she was on screen. I kept thinking about her reverie toward the end of SNY, "Where is my little girl?...Where is my little girl?..." The only time we see "Eric," Ellen Bascomb's husband and (according to Olive) Caden's lover. It's beguiling but there are no loose ends or unfinished thoughts. But if you watch it again, you should be in a position to be absorbed and overwhelmed, otherwise I imagine the pitch and the speed can be ridiculous. I mean, for how powerful the movie is, it's also really fucking funny. Consistently.
― flappy bird, Sunday, December 30, 2018 3:21 PM

The silence says it all on this one.

Lol at thirty minutes passing and no comment. Another of the 'awesome when you're 17' films. Fuck everyone, amen, amirite!!!

I'm still shocked this placed above Sunrise.