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

one of the greatest movies

DON: Cinema was and is a very important inspiration to us as Artists. We spent countless hours in dark screening rooms reviewing films like Grand Hotel, Psycho, and Touch of Evil as prep work for the writing of our classic Hotel California album.

GLENN: Orson Welles taught us there was more to the concept of a 'Touch of Evil' than whatever was happening between Lois Chiles and ol' Deep, I mean Golden Throat over here after the show!

DON: Well, yeah.

morbz otm, it's a great watch but not sure it quite lives up to it's shadow

One of the most surreal aspects of the Trump rallies was when he'd lapse into one of his campy reveries - "Whatever happened to movies like Sunset Boulevard" - and the mutants would have to recalibrate and figure out how they were going to go along with this one.

President Norma Desmond

hollywood vampire movie has a big shadow cos it is great imo

^agree

That shot of Holden hauling himself out of the pool, my god

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/024-in-the-mood-for-love.jpg

24. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar-wai, 2000, Hong Kong) [952.55 points; 11 votes]
S&S: 33 | TSPDT: 42 | BOXD: 37

MORBS SEZ: "I didn't find much 'emotion' in In the Mood for Love. I liked the whistles and bells in [2046] more, and preferred its view of 'love' -- more meanness and random kindness / cruelty."

I just want to gush about how gorgeous In the Mood For Love is, which I just finished watching again.
― sleep (sleep), Monday, December 12, 2005 9:22 PM

We have paved the way for the American remake of In the Mood for Love starring Ice-T and Alan Cumming.
― Amateurist (amateurist), Monday, January 20, 2003 3:12 PM

Ew now I'm getting mental images of In the Mood for Love with Stiller and Jack Black as the leads.
― El Diablo Robotico (Nicole), Tuesday, May 11, 2004 12:46 PM

I am a big WKW fan, but I am one of the only people I know who didn't enjoy In The Mood For Love.
― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Thursday, May 20, 2004 2:21 PM

I'm the other. I keep telling myself it's because I saw it on a small TV screen on video and wasn't able to enjoy the "sumptuous" cinematography.
― jaymc (jaymc), Thursday, May 20, 2004 5:00 PM

In the Mood for Love works on a 13" set! You were watching a color TV, right?
― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Monday, September 12, 2005 11:43 AM

it's fairly boring (though at the same time beautiful).
― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Thursday, May 20, 2004 5:04 PM

Wow, In the Mood For Love is the most crushing movie I've ever seen, perhaps.
― kyle (akmonday), Thursday, May 20, 2004 5:07 PM

In The Mood For Love is fine, but not a patch on earlier Wong. Best movie of the century for any of them, no....
― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Tuesday, August 23, 2016 11:00 AM

Finally got around to In the Mood for Love and yeah it's gorgeous but a bit of a snooze and frustrating - just do it already!
― i know kore-eda (or something), Thursday, January 18, 2018 8:26 AM

was fairly nonplussed about this when i saw it, but at this point my stance is firmly "the emperor has no clothes and too much slow motion"

Don't like the only Wong I've seen (Chungking Express) but will give this one a go.

have seen it 3 or 4 times now and it seems deeper and more complex with each viewing

This is the spot Chungking Express had on my ballot.

as I mentioned in another thread, it's a compressed, complicated story that advances in largely shorthand scenes with unexpected moments that are suddenly intimately expanded

also a lot of content dealing with time and memory, with presaging or echoing of certain moments and the replaying of scenes with a different perspective

...also the use of multiple different frame rates, overcranking, step-printing, different exposures

Yep, there's the "one Wong." I love Wong to pieces so my only beef with In the Mood is that it sucks up oxygen from other things I love, like Chungking Express (which I also voted for), 2046, and Ashes of Time. I can understand knocking it as "just" a style exercise, but I think in Wong in a lot of ways style is content. (If this wallpaper could speak ...)

(my top 25 vote for In the Mood was really kind of a collective Wong vote, but I knew that was the one that would make the chart)

it's definitely worth watching on a big screen

Chungking Express is also great. I remember liking Happy Together, but it's been a long time since I've seen it

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/023-alien.jpg

23. ALIEN (Ridley Scott, 1979, USA) [983.75 points; 12 votes]
S&S: 265 | TSPDT: 111 | BOXD: 78

MORBS SEZ: "Alien bored and disgusted me in high school (but it's FEMINIST lol) … Alien was shown in big-screen glory at Lincoln Center today, and in honor of this thread, I didn't go."

Alien did terrify me when it came out, but whatever it is that brings me back to a horror film once the scares are registered, that was missing.
― clemenza, Thursday, May 24, 2012 5:15 PM

that maternal subtext is HUGE and significantly complicates the subtext of the first (ripley defending her womanhood against the asexual rapaciousness of the alien and the asexual murderous logic of the android) the sexual subtexts are easily the best thing about the alien movies - why else have giger design the shit?
― vahid (vahid), Thursday, August 19, 2004 11:19 PM

Even though Ridley considers the theatrical cut his "director's cut," I think Alien does benefit from exactly two additions in the longer cut: The scene where they listen to the alien beacon, which is an amazing piece of sound design; and the longer version of Harry Dean Stanton's death, where Kotto and Weaver run in at the end and his blood splashes down on them.
― Brony! Broni! Broné! (Phil D.), Thursday, May 24, 2012 5:19 PM

alien is my comfort movie
― i am not an idle hunter-gatherer, i am a scientist (rrrobyn), Friday, November 14, 2008 4:19 PM

I think it is a.) the greatest monster movie ever, and b.) better at being the best-ever in its category than any of the other best-ever category contenders that I've seen (important caveat). Its real leap (beyond its amazing design and conception) was dispatching with the superfluous hero and boiling the story down to monster vs. damsel. IN SPACE! Seriously, I think it's one of the greatest movies ever made. I don't know how you could improve it.
― something of an astrological coup (tipsy mothra), Thursday, May 24, 2012 7:23 PM

Alien a satisfyingly canonical non-canonical pick.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, May 24, 2012 5:14 PM

I am the HR Giger of cock.
― Snappy (sexyDancer), Monday, February 7, 2005 7:39 PM

I'm chagrined that Nathaniel Dorsky, Roberta Findlay, and Teo Hernandez will not make the top 25.

P. S. That's a lie. This poll has been lots of fun. I've been watching some of the more remote-to-me titles lately. Tonight's The Mirror. Rewatched North by Northwest recently and it went so poorly that it made me feel like one of Hitchcock's dreaded plausibles. But a provocative essay in Lee Edelman's No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive is opening it back up. Reads Landau as the agent of reproductive futurism's destruction.

Today probably would've been a "bye thread" day for old Morbsy.

Reads Landau as the agent of reproductive futurism's destruction.

that's the line in Landau's resume.

https://media1.giphy.com/media/3oKIPc9rSrhcI7a2wo/200w.gif

controp here: The Fincher Alien is the best one.

and you get Brian Gould in it yelling: Sit the heck darn - in a Transbarnslantic accent.

I remember liking Happy Together, but it's been a long time since I've seen it

That's the 3rd Wong I voted for. (I know 3 Wongs is a lot! I said I love him.)

hm, i probably should've put happy together on my list.... oh well

Anyway Alien was my #1 vote in the horror movie poll back whenever we did that, and I think it's a great movie from top to bottom and start to finish. Best monster of any monster movie, great cast, amazing design, and I love the griminess of everything. The first big sci-fi movie where things really felt dirty and greasy?

HT is my Wong pick.

Aliens is my pick.

I rewatched Alien and s during the pandemic and it's the first one that's the good one.

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/022-rear-window.jpg

22. REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954, USA) [1,003.2 points; 15 votes; 1 first-place vote]
S&S: 53 | TSPDT: 41 | BOXD: 52

MORBS SEZ: "It's great, but too much about Man And Woman to be my favorite."

I think Rear Window starts with its sexual politics something that Vertigo finishes, which is the theme of manipulation, sometimes cruel manipulation. hopefully het marriages aren't primarily about that!
― kenan, Monday, August 13, 2007 12:01 PM

in a movie where everything is completely amazing, probably the most amazing thing is Grace Kelly's transformation into vapid spoilt society icequeen into AWESOME INTREPID SUPERWOMAN
― hoos rotorvator (acoleuthic), Saturday, January 2, 2010 12:04 PM

the best girlfiend ever.
― milo z (mlp), Monday, January 29, 2007 2:42 PM

Not only is Rear Window maybe the best Hitchcock, it's also one of those rare movies that are, while you're in the act of watching them, clearly the best movie ever made.
― Eric H., Monday, August 13, 2007 11:17 AM

I love the huge fancy bags that she brings the take-out food in. What a world.
― El Tomboto, Thursday, July 27, 2017 11:10 PM

I've never really gotten into this film, I think always seeing it on a tiny tv screen severely diminishes it. need to rectify
― Οὖτις, Friday, July 28, 2017 11:15 AM

lol, i'd take fucking disturbia over rear window
― i've seen the way you've treated other fuxxors you've been with (Tape Store), Saturday, June 6, 2009 12:34 PM

I mentioned the great shot of Burr and the wedding ring on a different thread. My other favourite, one of the most dreamlike shots I can think of, is the slow-motion kiss. It's like something out of Lynch
― clemenza, Sunday, August 22, 2010 8:17 PM

time for a gay remake of Rear Window.
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, May 21, 2008 8:55 AM

with a slightly amended title?
― Ste, Wednesday, May 21, 2008 9:30 AM

Back Door
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Wednesday, May 21, 2008 9:36 AM

alien def the best of the franchise followed by covenant

ha ha rear window

Finally, something from my 25. Cmon this bangs

A preview of coming attractions.

worst imperial-phase hitchcock. a clever conceit and great to write an essay about, but a joyless thing to watch

it's very good and when people start saying it's not so good it strengthens my feeling that movie opinions and lists are all bad

I hedged on the number of Hitchcocks I voted for, but this was a no-question proposition. His best.

(My other one didn't remotely place.)

This film absolutely exemplifies my early 20s with my oldest friend, a budding cinephile, who'd invite me to his flat so we could, y'know, thrill in the possibilities of film. This one was particularly thrilling and remained so when I watched it again later. I don't doubt it'd repeat the dose now

can relate, those are the kinds of experiences that informed my views on films

I hedged on the number of Hitchcocks I voted for, but this was a no-question proposition. His best.

― Milm & Foovies (Eric H.

otm. imago too

This and Notorious are forever neck and neck.

Lol I guess Eric's other one wasn't Frenzy?

I never knew he did a movie of Juno and the Paycock. I'm quite loosely attached to this O'Casey play from doing some work on the sets for a production of it at Bradford Playhouse once.

Far too much Hitchcock.

For those counting, Hitchcock and Altman are tied with 4 each.

was trying to remember

I'd rather have more Hitchcock than Altman tbh

I'm trying to forget xp

My votes went to shadow of a doubt and the one that's still to come