Top 5 films by genre

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Sut
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Re: Top 5 films by genre

Postby Sut » April 30th, 2016, 2:23 am

Interesting that out of the LOTR films Fellowship seems to make lists but not the other two. Personally I found Fellowship a little slow paced and preferred the pacing of the Two Towers and Return of the King.

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scotland
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Re: Top 5 films by genre

Postby scotland » April 30th, 2016, 6:25 am

Sut wrote:Interesting that out of the LOTR films Fellowship seems to make lists but not the other two. Personally I found Fellowship a little slow paced and preferred the pacing of the Two Towers and Return of the King.


I prefer beginnings in fantasy stories - when you first encounter a new world, where its all strange and anything could happen. When Harry Potter first enters Diagon Alley or Hogwarts, when Charlie enters the chocolate room in Willy Wonka, when the dwarves sing their story in the hobbit, when Luke enters the cantina on Mos Eisley, when the little girl first goes through the wardrobe into Narnia, when Peter Parker first discovers he has superpowers, when Dorothy goes from sepia to color and walks out into Oz...those 'not in kansas anymore' moments are really astounding in fantasy stories.

Luigi & Peach
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Re: Top 5 films by genre

Postby Luigi & Peach » April 30th, 2016, 8:13 am

scotland wrote:
Sut wrote:Interesting that out of the LOTR films Fellowship seems to make lists but not the other two. Personally I found Fellowship a little slow paced and preferred the pacing of the Two Towers and Return of the King.


I prefer beginnings in fantasy stories - when you first encounter a new world, where its all strange and anytning could happen. When Harry Potter first enters Diagon Alley or Hogwarts, when Charlie enters the chocolate room in Willy Wonka, when the dwarves sing their story in the hobbit, when Luke enters the cantina on Mos Eisley, when the little girl first goes through the wardrobe into Narnia, when Peter Parker first discovers he has superpowers, when Dorothy goes from sepia to color and walks out into Oz...those 'not in kansas anymore' moments are really astounding in fantasy stories.


Scotland, I agree with your examples for the most part, and that there is a special feeling you get the first time you're introduced to a new world, but I think the problem is that all the movies you gave as an example had a beginning, middle, and end. Fellowship has a beginning, middle, and kind of ending. I realize why it ended like it did, but it still personally spoiled the movie just a little bit for me. I still like it, but I'm not dying to rewatch it over and over.

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scotland
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Re: Top 5 films by genre

Postby scotland » April 30th, 2016, 9:04 am

Good point on Fellowship. For one thing, the book source material is already a sequel, isn't it. The Hobbit was written long before, as a story, but Fellowship was an adult oriented sequel already. Then it begins with a birthday party for the previous protagonist, very much setting it up as a sequel. Jackson preserved that, although he could have made Fellowship a mash up of Hobbit and Fellowship, couldn't he? It is hard to pin point the 'not in kansas anymore' moment in Fellowship. The moment should be when they first enter Elrond's home of Rivendell -- yet how do we, as Frodo, enter Rivendell? Dying, unconscious, and then awakening in a bed - then its time for the council.

So, yes, good points on Fellowship. I think it was our introduction less of Frodo entering a world of magic, but overall we, the audience, entering New Zealand and the whole world of Tolkien - finally - after 50 years of the book being a seminal bedrock piece of fantasy fiction as a big budget live action movie. Its like the first 1978 Superman movie - finally, a big budget well done Superman movie instead of serials or cartoons. I think that's why Fellowship ranks so high - its not the story in the Fellowship per se, but that finally, Tolkien had come to the big screen, well done, beautifully shot in New Zealand, good actors, and a plot we knew by heart anyway.

For old geeks like me, who grew up on the Tolkien Bestiary and Dungeons and Dragons, we knew exactly where the movie was going to end. It ends with the shattering of the Fellowship, but its not a fully satisfying ending but far more of a story hook, a cliffhanger. Maybe a better ending would have been after Gandalf falls (fly you fools!) but everyone is relatively safe on the other side of Moria. To older geekdom, the ending was not disappointing, but expected - but I totally understand that if the movie were your introduction to Tolkien, if the movie is judged solely on its own merits, then almost none of that counts.

Luigi & Peach
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Re: Top 5 films by genre

Postby Luigi & Peach » April 30th, 2016, 3:33 pm

I had previously read the books at the time of the movie, but in all fairness it had been a number of years prior to viewing the movie in theaters so I did not recall how the first book ended. I very much enjoyed the scenery of the movie and the introduction and development of the characters. I just left at the end of the movie feeling mildly let down. Maybe it was just because I felt I was going to have to wait another year or two to have the "cliffhanger" resolved (even though I kind of recalled how the books went). It was kind of like paying full price for half a movie (even if it was a pretty fulfilling 2 hours). I realize that this wasn't the fault of the movie, more just a result of the source material. Maybe if I had been more familiar with the books I wouldn't have been bothered by this. Since that first Fellowship movie came out I've read and reread The Hobbit, so maybe it's time to get around to rereading the LOTR trilogy.

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Re: Top 5 films by genre

Postby matmico399 » April 30th, 2016, 4:12 pm

Top 5 Hitchcock films

5. The Birds
4. Psycho
3. Rear Window
2. Rope
1. Vertigo

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Re: Top 5 films by genre

Postby matmico399 » April 30th, 2016, 4:16 pm

Top 5 Kubrick films

5. Lolita
4. Full Metal Jacket
3. The Shining
2. Paths Of Glory
1. A Clockwork Orange

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scotland
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Re: Top 5 films by genre

Postby scotland » January 9th, 2018, 10:27 am

I found this older thread http://videogamecritic.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=202515&t=4627 about essentially the same idea of favorite movies.

One that keeps coming up is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. This just aired on TCM's "The Essentials" and a director called it the most essential of The Essentials, and how much it changed everything in culture and the movie biz.

What resonance did this movie have - especially compared to later blockbusters like Jaws or Star Wars.

I am a sci-fi geek, and while I appreciate some of the visuals, I have a hard time really enjoying this movie. The pace is glacial, the two early stories take an hour to set up the last hour and a half (the length of an entire movie by itself). Here we sit in 2018, with a networked world of computers no one in 1968 could have conceived of, and the idea of an emotionally conflicted and eventually deranged and murderous AI seems remote.

I like the idea of the movie as spiritual journey, and there are some wonderful moments, such as cutting to intermission just as it infers that HAL knows Frank and Dave have built a contingency plan (conspiracy) to turn off his higher functions (lobotomize) him if they conclude he is in error). That's a nice bit of work, yet then it quickly jumps to Hal murdering Frank on EVA, so quickly the actual moment of murder is never even shown (we just see Frank-as-asteroid sailing away)

If the movie is exploring evolution (From ape to man, from man to man-built mind, from man to noncorporeal mind), then did it succeed?

I also read the book over the summer, and there are a few notable differences. The one that sticks out is that the Monolith is not just observing a critical moment in the dawn of humanity, its experiment on that whole tribe early on. This is hinted at in the movie (the original cut may have had more of that first segment - the people on TCM discussed how Kubrick recut the movie while it was in theaters!)

Any huge fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Help me appreciate the movie more.


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