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Comments
I agree with your premise: I cannot honestly place a Bond movie in my top 10, not even FRWL which I consider the best. That said among the list you gave there are a few titles I would consider lesser than some Bond movies. But then again, they wouldn't make my top ten anyway.
1-OHMSS
2-Lincoln
3-Casino Royale
4-Avengers
5-The Lord of the Ring
6-City Lights
7-Downfall
8-The Living Daylights
9-The Great Dictator
10-The Time Machine (Rod Taylor's)
Wow, what a mix. Everything from action films to a historical drama, superhero film, fantasy adventure, and silent movie. Very interesting!
Thank you for your kind comment. What I can't stand are comedy which don't make me laugh, "girl" movies and "repertoire" stuff. I'm a comik book collector, so you can understand my interest for super-heroes films. My interest in political history is great, as my bookshelf can testify, and who can't marvel at the genious of Charles Chaplin?
Bottom line, James Bond fills my need of super-heroe and political interest all together.
What can't be explain is the lack of baseball movies on my top-10 list. Surely had I made a top-15 list you would have found Eight Men Out somewhere in there along with JFK, Monte Carlo or bust, Saving Private Ryan and The Natural!
I've seen SPR, Goodfellas, SR, Aliens and BH, and I own SPR and BH. Personally, I rate OHMSS very much in the same class as those films, and better than SR.
I would also argue against drawing too bright a distinction between "best" and "favorite." At the end of the day, it is a movie's job to grip the viewer, and for certain types of movies, to entertain him. If a film fails in those tasks, it is not a great movie regardless of what the New York Times or a Film Studies prof at UCLA may say.
That's a great point. And for someone like me, my favorite films are some of the movies I do think are the best ever made, like Casablanca or Good Will Hunting. I realize that some others I re-watch all the time aren't the pinnacle of filmmaking, but I do enjoy those more than the likes of many films you'd find in a top 10 film list in a so-called prestigious paper or magazine, and that is quite telling.
That said, you can make a distinction between quality and your own appreciation of a work of fiction. I never liked Marcel Proust, but he is a far better writer than many I enjoy reading more. I think it is only honest (and humble) to say that quality goes beyond personal tastes.
Here are the ten BEST movies ever made (in no particular order):
2001: A Space Odyssey
Serenity
Blade Runner
The Living Daylights
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
The Road Home
Raiders Of The Lost Ark
Superman: The Movie
Planet Of The Apes (original)
Metropolis (Moroder version)
And ANYONE who does not agree.....
can rightfully make fun of my silly choices, I guess.... :)) ;)
I understand all that and am able to look at it that way sometimes, I was just simply stating that more often than not, objective thinking isn't my forte. I am right brained, after all...
I wouldn't be so sure. As of recently I've been very cynical towards today's movies. And I do love the Cinema Snob. thecinemasnob.com
But popularity is not the issue. I'm talking about one's personal opinion, not the views of the masses. Hence, DAF is not one of the most popular films of all time, nor is it beloved by the critics. Nevertheless, I believe it is a very good film despite some technical flaws. I think we sometimes get hung up on the technical aspects of films, while ignoring their artistry and entertainment value. To properly judge a film's quality, we must take everything into consideration, while understanding that how we weight various components of the film will vary from person to person.
Beyond Bond, I would have to say Planet of the Apes, Godfather and the best of the Clint Eastwood westerns, ie The Good The Bad and The Ugly, High Plains Drifter and a personal favourite Pale Rider.
Do you mean that they're your favourite films or do you actually think that the first 9 Bond films are the best films ever made?
The only distinction I would make is that I wouldn't include any obviously cheap low budget stuff, or real bad stuff, even if I did enjoy it in a good "bad" film kind of way.
Bond films however are all very well made, by top industry professionals, so I am happy to rank my favourite Bonds as the 10 greatest films every made.
In fact I would probably extend the list to include Bond as exclusively top 20. I am not a huge fan of the re- boot films or NSNA, so they might be the first Bonds to get competition from Apes, Godfather and the Eastwood westerns, if I had to put together a top 30, but even these lesser Bonds would all get top 30 consideration, even QoS.
yes I have said that about a hundred times, in every Bond film ranking list that I have ever posted. DAD currently a solid #20 in my rankings. Although I have been known to bump it up ahead of AVTAK , TWINE and TND from time to time.
The re-boot films are a solid 21-23 in the Eon rankings. In my alternative Bond film rankings I have them, 2-4 behind NSNA, in this order CR, SF, and QoS, but this is more of a Bond film ranking discussion.
It does attest to the greatness of Bond though, that even the alternative Bonds can compete in an over-all, all time best film discussion. Awesome.
I wouldn't even say it makes the top 20 Bond films.
Same here. Goldfinger and Skyfall come close!
Well, popularity becomes an issue if it all comes down to personal opinion, because then quality would be in the end judge by the sum of personal opinions and the last winner of X Factor ends up a greater singer than, say Natalie Dessay, just because opera is not very popular. But who is the true artist, and who has the best technique, who really masters the voice? I know one can get hung up on technical aspects, but I wouldn't make such a distinction between technique and artistry. Heck, in all art forms I think they go hand in hand. Hitchcock and Kubrick were great movie makers because they were technicians. Their movies are works of art because of their mastery of technique.
Now I am not diminishing what Terence Young, Sam Mendes or even Martin Campbell did. They managed to give genuine artistic merit, artistic quality, to escapist movies and this is why Bond has endured while many other action heroes have faded, or lost their initial appeal. And I watch the movies more often that I watch Hitchcock or Kubrick or Polanski. But I read George Pelecanos more than Ernest Hemingway, yet I know very well who is the greatest writer, and it's not Pelecanos.
When I refer to cinematic artistry, what I'm talking about, more than anything else, is an aesthetic sensibility. An eye for the beautiful, the arresting, the bizarre. The end result is filmic imagery that beguiles or rivets the viewer. And while a certain amount of technique is required to present this imagery, far and away the most important requirements are imagination and taste. It is these elements of many/most Bond movies that are overlooked in the rush to criticize a certain plothole, a poorly written line or a clumsily acted scene.
And it's meet that you should mention literature in your closing sentence. I rate Ian Fleming as among the most aesthetically gifted of all thriller writers, yet it is the comparatively mechanical and prosaic LeCarre whom the critics cite as the greatest thriller writer. Tosh, says I.
Even if I don't hate it, I'll change OHMSS for GF in any top list.