{"id":3237,"date":"2013-09-11T00:15:33","date_gmt":"2013-09-11T04:15:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=3237"},"modified":"2013-09-12T14:11:52","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T18:11:52","slug":"the-10-best-movies-ever-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/the-10-best-movies-ever-made\/","title":{"rendered":"The 10 Best Movies Ever Made"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"kane\"
\n

\nThe cinematic powers-that-be tend to decree that <\/span><\/b>Citizen Kane<\/span><\/a> is the best movie ever made, or sometimes <\/span><\/b>Raging Bull<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 I don’t have a problem with that appraisal.\u00a0 It’s fun.\u00a0 Lists are fun\u2014they expose people to cool movies they may not have heard of, and cause debates over who\u2019s the most badass horror villain from the 80s, or what the <\/span><\/b>best movies for libertarians<\/span><\/a>\u00a0are.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

However, what is<\/i> annoying is that whenever these movie freemasons decide that Vertigo <\/a>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<\/a> or whatever really deserves to be ranked third-best. These lists also do a good job of tricking people into thinking The Godfather<\/a> is artistically superior to Back to the Future<\/a>, which is ridiculous.
\n
\nI like Citizen Kane and Raging Bull.\u00a0 But I\u2019m okay with admitting that they aren’t great movies.\u00a0 They’re beautiful exercises in the tools of filmmaking, but that’s about it.\u00a0 I love movies, so I can appreciate the use of animal sounds and quick reverse cuts in a boxing match, and matted effects shots in fake newsreels, but the movies I<\/i> think are the best movies ever made also<\/i> utilize all sorts of clever tricks\u2014and when they do, it’s to move the story forward and affect you emotionally, not merely impress you with flash. That\u2019s what makes them the best, to me.<\/p>\n

When the AFI says Citizen Kane is the best movie ever made, they’re using the same criteria that the girl down the street uses when she says The Notebook<\/a> is her favorite movie: they like<\/i> it.\u00a0 The reason the AFI likes Citizen Kane more than any other movie is because they understand all the cinematic tricks and the historical context.\u00a0 The reason the girl likes The Notebook is because it uses cinematography, dialogue, story structure, performance, and a bunch of other things to effectively tug at her heart strings.\u00a0 So who is \u2018more right\u2019?\u00a0 Neither.\u00a0 How could they be, and who the fuck cares?<\/p>\n

People separate their personal favorite from what they think is the best for absolutely no reason.\u00a0 If something is your favorite, then you should think it’s the best, and vice versa.\u00a0 You like something because it does things better than other things.\u00a0 If it didn’t, you’d like those other things more.\u00a0 Which is why there’s no such thing as a \u2018guilty pleasure\u2019\u2014you either like something or you don’t.\u00a0 If you like something stupid, then you\u2019re stupid, and hiding behind the term \u2018guilty pleasure\u2019 just means you’re smart enough to be embarrassed by your own stupidity.<\/p>\n

Do me a favor for a second and imagine a world where the notion of \u2018best\u2019 does not exist, the AFI never makes a 100 Best Movies Ever Made<\/a> list, and no critic gives any thumbs up or awards any stars.\u00a0 What then?\u00a0 Is the world of art lost, awash in a sea of unranked oblivion where nobody knows what to like?\u00a0 No, because movies would still exist, and you\u2019d still like them or not like them (and you might even be more sure about which ones you really like verses the ones you\u2019re merely supposed to like).<\/p>\n

If we study all of the variables you could use to determine some sort of objective \u2018best\u2019, then Citizen Kane is actually a miserable failure.\u00a0 It’s only really triumphant in one category, and the weakest one at that: being thought of as the best by the most film geeks.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t do the most money at the box office, it\u2019s not the most played on television or the most screened, it doesn\u2019t sit atop the IMDb Top 250<\/a> list, and it\u2019s not even in \u201cRick\u2019s Picks\u201d at my local Family Video.<\/p>\n

So why do movie geeks love it so much?\u00a0 Well, frankly, because it\u2019s good.\u00a0 Like I said, it\u2019s not a bad movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s a technical achievement way ahead of it\u2019s time.\u00a0 It was made in an era when movies were basically just bad plays put on film.\u00a0 Citizen Kane said fuck all that and actually used the camera to express things.\u00a0 It utilized clever staging and lens choices to express the drama that was happening on the page.\u00a0 This method of filmmaking wouldn\u2019t really be put back into practice until the mid 70\u2019s, when directors influenced by Citizen Kane were coming of age, and that certainly adds to its mystique.\u00a0 It\u2019s been said that although the first Velvet Underground record didn\u2019t sell that many copies, everyone who bought one started a band.\u00a0 That\u2019s kinda similar to what happened with Citizen Kane.\u00a0 And so, in a very pure way, with genuine love and affection, critics, filmmakers, and movie geeks like to champion it.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s take a movie like Tremors<\/a>.\u00a0 I think Tremors is better than Citizen Kane on every level (and not just because it\u2019s in color, which certainly doesn\u2019t hurt).\u00a0 According to many people out there, I\u2019m wrong for thinking that.\u00a0 And they mean \u2018wrong\u2019 literally.\u00a0 Which is insane.\u00a0 They\u2019ve defined themselves so zealously with a certain intellectual identity that they\u2019ve lost their grip on all logic.\u00a0 Deep down, they probably don\u2019t actually think Citizen Kane is the best movie ever made (aka, their favorite\u2014in fact they probably get more enjoyment out of Tremors) but getting them to admit this is damn near impossible.<\/p>\n

Whatever your favorite thing is, it\u2019s the best thing ever made, to you.\u00a0 And that little \u2018to you\u2019 at the end makes you right and wrong all at once, and the entire conversation moot.\u00a0 The AFI\u2019s list has an implied \u2018to us\u2019 after it, as do Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin\u2019s reviews.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, peoples criteria and understanding of the word \u2018good\u2019 has become completely perverted.\u00a0 People think that \u2018good\u2019 in art denotes some kind of larger cultural context, as if the opinion of millions of faceless people out in the world have anything to do with their own taste or understanding of art.\u00a0 This causes people to break movies into two categories: \u2018good\u2019 movies and \u2018entertaining\u2019 movies.<\/p>\n

How much a movie entertains you and how good it is are exactly the same idea, though.\u00a0 If the show Seinfeld<\/a> is not entertaining to you, then it\u2019s not a good show, end of story.\u00a0 You can admit that it is a solid technical achievement, or that it is popular, because those things have an objectivity to them.\u00a0 Popularity can be measured by viewership and DVD sales, ratings, etc., and technical level (albeit somewhat subjective) can be judged by film format, composition, resolution, etc.\u00a0 But goodness has no way of being measured.\u00a0 The fact that all of your friends like Seinfeld can\u2019t make the jokes funny to you, and so if you call the show good, you\u2019re perverting the word; in fact, you\u2019re lying.<\/p>\n

The classic thing people love to say is \u2018it\u2019s a good movie, but I couldn\u2019t watch it every day\u2019.\u00a0 Well, if it\u2019s so good, why not?\u00a0 The reason isn\u2019t that it\u2019s so moving that it interrupts your entire life by plunging you into a week-long introspective journey, it\u2019s that the movie is fucking boring but you feel obligated to say it\u2019s good anyway.\u00a0 The Shawshank Redemption<\/a>, Forrest Gump<\/a>, The Postman<\/a>, these are long, deep movies, but I could watch them every day because they\u2019re good<\/i>.\u00a0 Good and entertaining is exactly the same thing. I hate to break it to you, but if you were so moved by a movie that you were plunged into an \u2018introspective journey\u2019, all that actually happened was you were entertained, very effectively, by a piece of art. (A piece of art belonging to the same form as Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel<\/a>.) Being moved deeply by Fellini\u2019s Satyricon<\/a> doesn\u2019t make you deep, it makes you shallow for being moved by such crappy shit.\u00a0 Back to the Future is one of the best movies ever made because its goodness, its entertainment value<\/i>, is achieved by way of pure artistic hard work and craftsmanship.\u00a0 It is a more well thought out, better conceived, better constructed, and therefore much more entertaining piece of art than The Godfather.\u00a0 Entertainment and high art are exactly the same thing.<\/p>\n

When people go to mediocre movies like Transformers<\/a> and The Hangover<\/a> in order to \u2018turn off their brains\u2019 and \u2018be entertained\u2019, they\u2019re presupposing that a film needs to be stupid in order to be entertaining.\u00a0 But a movie being stupid is not a sign of entertainment, and more importantly, a movie being entertaining is not a sign of dumbness\u2014in fact, it\u2019s a mark of transcendence necessary to a movie\u2019s goodness<\/i>.\u00a0 The best movies ever made (Ghostbusters<\/a>, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones<\/a>, et al.) are entertaining and smart and smartly made, so much so that they negate the need for most other movies.\u00a0 Bad art is so flashy and and homogenized that it has successfully tricked intellectuals into thinking you have to be boring and mindless in order to be smart.\u00a0 Just look at Upstream Color<\/a> or Blue Valentine<\/a>.\u00a0 How ironic is it that to be smart you have to be stupid, and vice versa?<\/p>\n

Most movies aren\u2019t good.\u00a0 This is because making a good movie is very difficult, and it should be.\u00a0 Good art shouldn\u2019t be easy.\u00a0 If everything was good, being good would lose all meaning and it wouldn\u2019t be special.\u00a0 And at that point, you\u2019ve killed art.\u00a0 (And not by criticizing it, which the intellectual elite like to say \u2018kills art\u2019, when really they mean they\u2019re not smart enough to figure out why something is good so they don\u2019t even want to know.)<\/p>\n

So, now that I\u2019ve explained how \u2018best\u2019 works, I will list the ten best movies ever made, in order. I’m not going to talk about them at all because I really should write an entire essay devoted to each one, which I will do at some point:<\/p>\n

1. Signs<\/a> (2002)
\n2. American Movie: The Making of Northwestern<\/a> (1999)
\n3. Back to the Future<\/a> (1985) \/ Back to the Future: Part II<\/a> (1989)
\n4. Raising Arizona<\/a> (1987)
\n5. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters<\/a> (2007)
\n6. Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills<\/a> (1996) \/ Paradise Lost 2: Revelations<\/a> (2000)
\n7. Field of Dreams<\/a> (1989)
\n8. The ‘Burbs<\/a> (1989)
\n9. Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/a> (1981) \/ The Temple of Doom<\/a> (1984) \/ The Last Crusade<\/a> (1989)
\n10. Small Town Ecstasy<\/a> (2002)<\/p>\n

Bonus ones:<\/p>\n

11. Stone Reader<\/a> (2002)
\n12. Ghostbusters<\/a> (1984) 9\/12\/13 Edit:\u00a0<\/strong>This wasn’t originally on the list, but after much consideration, I’ve decided it deserves to be.<\/em>
\n13. The Shawshank Redemption<\/a> (1994)
\n14. Comedian<\/a> (2002)
\n15. Tremors<\/a> (1990)
\n16. When Harry Met Sally…<\/a> (1989)<\/p>\n

Damn, 1989 was a good fuckin\u2019 year for movies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"kane\"
\n

\nThe cinematic powers-that-be tend to decree that <\/span><\/b>Citizen Kane<\/span><\/a> is the best movie ever made, or sometimes <\/span><\/b>Raging Bull<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 I don’t have a problem with that appraisal.\u00a0 It’s fun.\u00a0 Lists are fun\u2014they expose people to cool movies they may not have heard of, and cause debates over who\u2019s the most badass horror villain from the 80s, or what the <\/span><\/b>best movies for libertarians<\/span><\/a>\u00a0are.<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

However, what is<\/i> annoying is that whenever these movie freemasons decide that Vertigo <\/a>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<\/a> or whatever really deserves to be ranked third-best. These lists also do a good job of tricking people into thinking The Godfather<\/a> is artistically superior to Back to the Future<\/a>, which is ridiculous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,17,1270],"tags":[1265,2665,2666,2671,2500,843,582,2676,2677,1508,566,847,2675,688,2673,399,37,2672,576,844,1624,567,1880,716,2674,864,570,332,1245,104,185,504,2668,2667,409,833,903,845,2678,2680,2670,1225,2669,569,2679,1593,579,1588,701,2681],"class_list":["post-3237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-gregsessays","category-gregslists","tag-10-best-movies","tag-10-best-movies-ever-made","tag-10-best-movies-of-all-time","tag-afi-100-movies","tag-alvin-and-the-chipmunks-2-the-squeakquel","tag-american-movie","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-back-to-the-future-part-2","tag-back-to-the-future-part-ii","tag-blue-valentine","tag-citizen-kane","tag-comedian","tag-fellini","tag-field-of-dreams","tag-forrest-gump","tag-ghostbusters","tag-greg-deliso","tag-imdb-top-250","tag-indiana-jones","tag-paradise-lost","tag-paradise-lost-2","tag-raging-bull","tag-raiders-of-the-lost-ark","tag-raising-arizona","tag-satyricon","tag-seinfeld","tag-shawshank-redemption","tag-signs","tag-small-town-ecstasy","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-stone-reader","tag-the-10-best-movies-ever-made","tag-the-10-best-movies-of-all-time","tag-the-burbs","tag-the-godfather","tag-the-hangover","tag-the-king-of-kong","tag-the-king-of-kong-a-fistful-of-quarters","tag-the-last-crusade","tag-the-notebook","tag-the-postman","tag-the-rules-of-the-game","tag-the-shawshank-redemption","tag-the-temple-of-doom","tag-transformers","tag-tremors","tag-upstream-color","tag-vertigo","tag-when-harry-met-sally"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3237"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3247,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3237\/revisions\/3247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}