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

Good movie, except

the actress playing christine was especially awful

I probably prefer La Grande Illusion.

Rules of the Game is so incredible. I totally understand why it's given the status it has.

There's some funny-sad stuff about Renoir in that Tavernier doc on French cinema, a friend saying that he was the kind of guy who would get into a discussion claiming to be a communist and if his convo partner was a fascist he'd decide he's a fascist too by the end of it. Also, Jean Gabin: "Renoir as an artist - sublime. Renoir as a human being - less than zero".

Never heard anyone dis Renoir as a human being before.

The new availability of those sublime '30s films will hopefully skew submissions if we should do this again in 2031.

if his convo partner was a fascist he'd decide he's a fascist too by the end of it

Isn't there a well-known Renoir quote: "Everyone has their reasons"?

My #4. Part of the status is obviously its place in history, that it foreshadows what came immediately after. But I think most of it is the way Renoir sustains a tone throughout of comic revulsion. He doesn't exactly loathe the characters, but he sees them for what they are.

being a conversational sponge and demonstrating empathy in order to tease out further insight strikes me as a feature of a political artist rather than a bug

renoir was not a fascist

My students like it but wish it weren't in black and white or in French.

He supported the Popular Front!

Guys, the point of that anecdote obviously wasn't that Renoir was a committed fascist but that he was mercurial and somewhat superficial in his political beliefs. Which needn't mean anything at all about his films, it's just biographical trivia!

I do seem to remember the doc suggesting some slightly slippery stuff happening in that department before he fled to the US but will have to revisit to say anything more clear cut.

his pacifism probably landed him in trouble tbh

The bio published a few years ago is clear about his committed leftist though.

Leftist too

The Crime of Monsieur Lange is very left-wing.

Some days my favourite is A Day in the Country, but that's a smaller film.

kind of an inarguably sublime and monumental piece of art; made my top 25 though i did come close to swapping out for ...monsieur lange which i adore. watched the golden coach since voting and that might have made my ballot too, increasingly have stronger feelings for the more imperfect pieces of his work, where i guess traditional notions of narrative quality and 'seriousness' are just thrown out of the window, and he seems intent in on exploring every possibility of the frames potential.

1. 2001, 2. Vertigo, 3. Mulholland Drive, 4. Do the Right Thing + two more, no idea (not Zodiac, I'm sorry to say).

(Per KJB, I've named Mulholland Drive in full, just so no one thinks I mean Mulholland Falls.)

Sorry to break in on the Renoir talk; I have my own reasons.

clemenza needs to be taken to the zone

les regles du jeu is interesting, seminal and fun but i hardly ever think about it

Guys, the point of that anecdote obviously wasn't that Renoir was a committed fascist but that he was mercurial and somewhat superficial in his political beliefs. Which needn't mean anything at all about his films, it's just biographical trivia!

I think this story says a lot about people who are good at seeing people.

Damn, I keep forgetting Stalker--that's #5.

(Per KJB, I've named /Mulholland Drive/ in full, just so no one thinks I mean /Mulholland Falls/.)

XP I think you mean Cannonball Run...II

there's another ozu coming

^^^My favorite West Side Story number

No Country might not have made it?

You're all forgetting Gandhi.

Yeah, + Tokyo Story--those six.

What about JFK???

Thank you for not being LAZY, clemenza! :) xoxoxo

(xpost) That would be funny. Followed by 100 posts quoting it.

Gandhi is less infuriating than No Country for Adults.

Mulholland Dr. is the movie. MullHolland Drive is a popular YouTube series with Martin Mull and Tom Holland driving around picking up mystery guests who sit in the backseat with a bag over their head and Martin and Tom have to play 20 questions to guess who it is. Much of the humor comes from their age difference, with Holland never knowing who anyone born before 1980 is, and Mull the reverse.

True: I just checked YouTube to see if that was real.

Based on the voting so far, I suspect another Altman over Lee.

xp

Anyone who knows Martin Mull feel free to pitch it.

mulholland dr is only ok

That's not what clemenza was referring too, Lynch dorks.

https://cansesclasseled.files.wordpress.com/2021/11/006-the-night-of-the-hunter.jpg

06. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton, 1955, USA) [1,651.30 points; 20 votes]
S&S: 53 | TSPDT: 43 | BOXD: 141

MORBS SEZ: "The child actors in Hunter aren't particularly outstanding, are they? I also prefer about ten Mitchum performances to this one, even though he's indelible … Has a horror villain ever been dispatched by a superficial wound from an old biddy with a shotgun? then led away by the police... insufficiently apocalyptic ... also 'spawn of the devil's own strumpet' is one of my fave things to call kids … there's no doubt it's a superbly crafted religious-fable-meets-Big Bad Wolf film, but something about it still bugs me. Mostly Lillian Gish."

Acting is so 2010. Concern for "good acting" has blinded many a viewer to genius cinema. And the condemnations are never insightful, pivoting on some bogus, received notion of verisimilitude. Yawn. And yeah, if you told me this was the greatest film of all time, I wouldn't argue with you for a second.
― Kevin John Bozelka, Friday, May 20, 2011 11:53 AM

loooooooooove night of the hunter
― diamanda ram dass (Edward III), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 1:17 PM

Once again, a film so ahead of its time it basically destroyed the director's career.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, May 23, 2012 1:18 PM

i still wish i liked this film more than i do
― amateur!st (amateurist), Thursday, January 1, 2004 12:44 PM

Old things bore me.
― Llahtuos Kcin (Nick Southall), Thursday, January 15, 2004 8:40 AM

I love Curse [of the Cat People] for many of the same reasons I love Night of the Hunter. It doesn't read as "horror" as well to those who didn't enjoy the thrill of horror as kids.
― michael assbender (Eric H.), Thursday, October 13, 2011 1:40 PM (7 months ago)

love night of the hunter, don't consider it a horror movie … i don't know what it is exactly
― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 1:17 PM

i love this film so much i can barely bring myself to defend it. i dunno, i'm sure there are things to criticize about it, but none of the criticisms on this thread really ring true for me -- or if they do, i don't see them as flaws. like, the kids undeniably act 'poorly' and woodenly, but somehow that works for me as part of the texture of the film. i sure don't think that more 'realistic' kids would have made the film better.
― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Friday, May 20, 2011 12:13 PM

I was genuinely shocked to see Shelley Winters dead at the bottom of the lake in a movie from 1955.
― it was a dark and stormy genitals. (Phil D.), Wednesday, May 23, 2012 1:20 PM

TS Out Of The Past vs. Night Of The Hunter
Which is the iconic Robert Mitchum performance: the passive wisecracking tough guy or the malignant preachifying bogeyman? Votes cast for Cape Fear go to Night of the Hunter.
― James Redd and the Blecchs, Tuesday, March 20, 2007 11:00 PM

You cannot poo poo the scare factor of this movie if you didn't see it when you were a little kid. this was the catalyst of many years worth of nightmares. still one of my three or four fav movies evah, also solidified Robert Mitchum as my future sexual ideal. creeeeepy :(
― AIDS BENEDICT (Adrian Langston), Tuesday, December 28, 2004 5:01 AM

i put that "pretty fly" song on all my mixtapes back when i was small
― good news if you wear cargo shorts (contenderizer), Tuesday, July 20, 2010 5:08 PM

For a second I thought you were talking about "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" and was confused.
― Cunga, Tuesday, July 20, 2010 5:20 PM

whooooa nice!!

*to

(xpost) All that would be left is Nashville, though, and I'd say no chance. I've always been one of its more vocal advocates on here--possibly the only person who loves the songs--and even I didn't vote for it. That's another film that I think will fade in the next decade or two as the moment that produced it recedes.

Wow!

The day's first genuine surprise.

Wow. Didn't vote for this but won't complain about it, it's great and one of a kind. (hat tip to my hometown boy James Agee, though obviously most credit goes to Laughton)

i love this movie so much

Oh cool, first thing in the top 20 that I haven't seen yet.

i forgive the list for previous transgressions, this rules

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Thursday, November 4, 2021 4:37 AM (two hours ago)

maybe i won't be excoriated if i decide to post my ballot, then. Aguirre was high on my list but so were at least a few that people noisily griped about :(