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What do you consider to be the best films ever made?

Taking into consideration some of the following:

1. Great production and direction
2. Great cinematic execution, good photography, sets, costumes, etc.
3. Good and meaningful plot
4. Meaningful thematic development
5. Great acting
6. The stories ability to draw the viewer in
7. The main characters transformation during the process (which is fundamental, I think)
8. The timeless and universally enduring quality of the film
9. Whatever else you might consider

What then do you think are some of the best movies ever made?

Using the above criteria, my top two choices would be To Kill a Mockingbird with Gregory Peck, and Apocalypse Now Redux with Martin Sheen.

Personally, on these kinds of lists that you see floating around, Citizen Kane is always at the top. Yet I fail to see how that could be. I hated Citizen Kane, and I can't help but feel that its classification as The Best Film Ever Made is one of those self-perpetuating lies or mistakes that just keeps being retold and retold because someone sees that list, thinks there must be something in it, and then repeats what they read.

What do you think?

Tags: Cinema, Film, Movies

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by sacha on July 30, 2009 at 1:30pm

The Usual Suspects is one of the few American films on my list. Fabulous film. Kevin Spacey was brilliant.

Permalink Reply by Elizângela Araújo on August 23, 2009 at 3:12pm

One of... Sergei Eisenstein´s "Alexander Nevsky"

Permalink Reply by Dallas (on hiatus) on August 23, 2009 at 4:42pm

Never heard of it. What is it about?

Permalink Reply by OutlawGirl on August 30, 2009 at 11:03pm

Well, I may not have the best taste, but here it goes:

Planet of the Apes (1968)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
Kill Bill volumes 1 & 2 (2003 & 2004)
Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Star Wars Episode IV (1977)
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Hotaru no haka, AKA Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Jurassic Park (1993)

And, just because I think it deserves some recognition for being the best of the worst:

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Permalink Reply by Dallas (on hiatus) on August 31, 2009 at 8:29am

What is Grave of the Fireflies about?

Permalink Reply by OutlawGirl on August 31, 2009 at 2:41pm

To sum it up in a short sentence: Grave of the Fireflies is a Japanese animated film about the life and death of a teenage boy and his baby sister after their mother is killed during a bombing raid in WWII. By saying "life and death" I am not spoiling anything, as the film begins with the young man's death in a subway station and joining his sister in the spirit world. The "afterlife" makes up only a small part of the film and simply serves as a story telling device. After the first scene, which I think only lasts about nine minutes, the film goes back in time beginning with the day of the bombing.

Grave of the Fireflies a beautiful but terribly sad film. There is also a live action version, which I have not seen, but I can tell you that the animated version is absoultely superb. This is definately NOT a film for children. Nor is not the sort of film that can easily be watched over and over. In fact most of the people I've met who enjoyed the film have said that, even though they loved the story, they would not want to watch it again because of how heart wrenchingly sad it is, at least not for a long time. Unless you truly wanted to study the film, there's no need to watch it twice anyway. It stays in your mind.

I think everyone should see it at least once, because it is honestly a masterpeice.

(A little story about my experiance with the film: I rented the DVD from Hollywood video the first time I saw the film. For some reason the Hollywood video near by where we live tends to have very dirty DVDs, so it was no surprise to me that the disc needed a little cleaning up. In fact it was so dirty that the first time I put it into our DVD player it wouldn't play. I managed to get the film to play after cleaning up the disk without any problems and was deeply moved by what I saw.

When the day came to take it back I thought I would watch it one more time, but for some reason the disc was skipping this time and continued to do so even after I cleaned it again. I wrote a note on a post-it and stuck it to the case before I took it back to the store. The note read: "This is a beautiful film; please clean the disc.")

Permalink Reply by OutlawGirl on August 31, 2009 at 2:58pm

"Nor is it the sort of film that can easily be watched over and over."

Sorry for this, I made a typo and didn't notice until after the fifteen minutes were up.

Permalink Reply by Dallas (on hiatus) on August 31, 2009 at 3:22pm

Thanks. I'll place a request on it.

Permalink Reply by Eric A Flynn on February 10, 2013 at 2:59pm

Along the same lines is Jin Roh: The Wolf Brigade. Dark, gritty and highly political, this is a unique and compelling history lesson from World War II. It also retells the tale of "Little Red Riding Hood". The anime artwork is brilliant in both mood and extraordinary detail. I wouldn't show this film to pre-teens and younger.

Another film in my collection which I think forms the counterpoint to Grave of the Fireflies is Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. The voice acting is excellent (Patrick Stewart is one of the mains) the anime is really well done and the film's environmental message is accessible to all ages.

Permalink Reply by Louis on August 31, 2009 at 3:42pm

M*A*S*H

Permalink Reply by Jaume on August 31, 2009 at 4:27pm

I gave up making and amending a personal list of favorites. But these directors would certainly help populating it:

My 7 wonders of film, in no particular order -

Ingmar Bergman
Akira Kurosawa
Andrei Tarkovsky
Yasujirō Ozu
Vittorio De Sica
Krzysztof Kieślowski
Pedro Almodóvar

with Federico Fellini, Jean Renoir and Peter Greenaway the most likely outsiders to make a '10 best' list.

Add Young Frankenstein and The Life of Brian for absurd comedy relief.

Permalink Reply by Dallas (on hiatus) on August 31, 2009 at 4:37pm

I like Bergman and Kurosawa, and if I recall the name correctly, I've seen some Ozu film(s), and many Almodovar films, too, though I'm not sure I'd say they were my favorites. I'm pretty sure I didn't like Tarkovsky (Solaris?), and I don't know the other two.