The 10 Best Movies Ever Made

kane


The cinematic powers-that-be tend to decree that Citizen Kane is the best movie ever made, or sometimes Raging Bull.  I don’t have a problem with that appraisal.  It’s fun.  Lists are fun—they expose people to cool movies they may not have heard of, and cause debates over who’s the most badass horror villain from the 80s, or what the best movies for libertarians are.

However, what is annoying is that whenever these movie freemasons decide that Vertigo is the third-best movie of all time or something, it causes all the opinion-scavenging cinephiles-in-training to rant their little hearts out about how The Rules of the Game or whatever really deserves to be ranked third-best. These lists also do a good job of tricking people into thinking The Godfather is artistically superior to Back to the Future, which is ridiculous.
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In Defense of ‘Save The Cat’

wiebe

Steve Wiebe: one of the greatest heroes in cinema.

Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen The King of Kong (what is wrong with you?) see it before reading.

I saw The King of Kong five times in the theater, which is a record for me (I only saw Jurassic Park four times).  I saw it the night it opened at the AMC in Times Square, and the theater was about half full, which is pretty impressive for a limited release documentary.
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‘Connected’: I Don’t Caaaaare!

tiffany


Connected (2011)
Directed by Tiffany Shlain
Written by Tiffany Shlain, Ken Goldberg, Carlton Evans, and Sawyer Steele
82 min.

There’s a great scene in Dumb and Dumber where Jim Carrey has been waiting for Mary Samsonite at the bar for hours, and the black woman from The Young and the Restless (I know this because my mom watches it) comes and sits next to him.  When we cut back hours later, she’s in the middle of a long, boring story about her ex-boyfriend.  Being an idiot, Lloyd makes no attempt to hide his annoyance when asked, with chipper enthusiasm, “And do you know what he said next?” He responds: “Nooo, and I don’t caaare!”

Watching this movie is like sitting next to that woman.
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A Rebuttal to a Rebuttal: Favorite Equals Best, or, Why Back To The Future is Better Than The Godfather

donkey


John,

I’ve been interested in movies for as long as I can remember.  The story I tell is that Jurassic Park started it all.  It certainly didn’t hurt, but movies had definitely been on my mind for way longer than that.  And my parents and grandparents were both movie buffs, so when the AFI released their ill-conceived 100 Best Movies of the First 100 Years of Movies, it was the talk of our family for an entire Thanksgiving dinner.  I was ten or twelve at the time.  By the time I was fifteen, I had seen 92 of the movies listed.
Continue reading A Rebuttal to a Rebuttal: Favorite Equals Best, or, Why Back To The Future is Better Than The Godfather