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"The Greatest Films of our Time"

So what makes a great film? In this topic I want you too put down a great film and say what makes it so good. As a start the film I would choose would be Arlington Road. As a keen film collector myself(I've got 140 now)I now appreciate a good film instead of just watching a cheap action film.

Take Starship Troopers for example great special affects and great action, but the whole film was tack. Now it's quite hard to describe what makes it so bad, but it just was. While with Arlington Road you are presented with a non stop roller coaster ride of a film.

Everything in the film, in my opinion, was perfect. It started great and ended in a remarkable scene that leaves you there speachless. When the film ended I was actually sweating. Also it supplies us with more than what most films give us. You watch it and think 'Yeah, yeah I've seen it all before this is gonna happen next'. But the thing is that is what the film has made you to believe. I bet no-one here could have predicted such a good ending.

There wasn't a dull moment and even when he is teaching in the classroom it still keeps your attention because of the way the film is presented. Now if there are any other films like this out there then please tell me because I have never seen any film which compares to Arlington Road.

It's rather depressing that everybody's "greatest" films of all time were made in the last few decades (bar a very few exceptions). Nobobody has even mentioned a film by arguably the greatest British filmmaker ever - Hitchcock. Any of his suspense films such as Rear Window or, my personal favourite, Notorious are far superior to almost any thriller made more recently.
Also there was even less foreign films than old films. What about Cyrano de Bergerac or Hana Bi.
That's not to say that there are no good films being made these days, on the contary there are many and The Usual Suspects happens to be one of my all time faves, but we have over a hundred years to choose from let's look a bit further than 1970.

Fav films? Its too late to go into detail about them so i'll just list a few:

A couple of adapted Stephen King's works:
Shawshank redemption
Green Mile

I'm a big gangster film fan:
Goodfellas
Godfather parts 1&2

I like sci-fi films:
Close encounters
The Matrix
Star Wars

I like the 'epic' style of films:
Gladiator
Ben-Hur

Adventure films:
Just any Indiana Jones Film

Comedies:
Happy Gilmore
Something about Mary etc. (fun films really)

Oh dear. Quite a long list. Never mind!

You ever get to see the different versions of Brazil (Gilliam had a very well publicised fight with the Big Wigs over how it ended - culminating in a Love Conquers All version and Gilliam's one)? Pick up the three disk Criterion version of it, well worth the huge piles of cash they'll charge you for it. All sorts of stuff on it, including both versions of the film and huge mountains of information on how they came about through all the fussin' an' a feudin'

It does show the different ways people consider a film to be good though, doesn't it?! Personal taste is everything, my list of films may be completely different to yours and even compiling a group list is not exactly a fair representation of which films are the best, one person's Matrix may be another's Brazil, if you get my meaning.

For what it's worth, my list would include:

Ghostbusters - Although it's easy to ridicule as light and not the stuff of seminars, it's well written and contains a lot of intelligent humour, as well as being well acted.

Brazil - A work of art and challenging to the mainstream idea of cinema, possibly why it wasn't very successful the first time around.

Star Wars (a new hope) - The effect it had on the people of the time was incredible, the first of it's kind.

Yo Jimbo - Precursor to modern day westerns, this japanese movie has a feeling of greatness about it and is emotionally charged.

Close Encounters - You either love it or hate it, but the excellent effects and groundwork that Speilberg did on alleged UFO sightings made this one of the first 'serious' alien contact films.

I'm sure I can think of more later, but that's my list for now.

Some of my favs:

The Great Escape
Zulu
Leon
Shawshank
Anything by The Coen Bros
David Fincher movies
Withnail & I
Cannonball Run

I feel I must metion something about Myst1que's list and how it wasn't included in my last post's conception. You could add a few more to the "Worse Than Matrix" list from that to keep Rocky company. Feel free to do it yourself in your own time.

Why am I bothering to even write this post? I should go to bed and stop the chatter...

CJC wrote:
> The Matrix! This must be classed as the best film of the last
> millenium!

Not it must not. For a start we've barely had a century of traditional motion pictures. In fact, to conclude, there are hundereds of films better than The Matrix, for example, Jaws (just because someone else mentioned it earlier in the thread). Oh, and Clerks, that's been mentioned too. And Fargo. Not forgetting Usual Suspects and Arlington Road. In fact, every filom mentioned so far is better than The Matrix. Bar Rocky.

I'll add Rear Window to the list - my favourite film ever.

hahaah treminater...hooo
meez kant spel wite

*takes deep breath*

Back to the future parts I,II and III
the indiana jones trilogy
die hard
superman
the rock
treminater II-judgement day
Star Trek II-the wrath of kahn
Empire Strikes Back
jaws
batman
Aliens
Transformers the movie
groundhog day
ghostbusters

there i'm done i know i have missed some off...but there you go my top movies of all time..and not one chick flick in sight...god i hate chick filcks

The Shawshank Redemption ... a classic!