Listosaurus Rex

The headline reads:

The New York Times has assembled a very thorough list of their picks for the 1000 best talkies ever. It’s quite a list, and each one is linked to the original NYTimes review which you can access with a free nytimes.com account. This list is one of the most substantial, deep resources for movies that I’ve found on the ‘net.

The list starts with The Jazz Singer in 1927 and goes up through the end of 2002. The picks range from documentaries like Hoop Dreams to gangster flicks like Mean Streets to musicals like West Side Story to kids films like Bambi to timeless epics like Ben-Hur, and everything in between, including plenty of indie and unheralded films.

Because they gave themselves a thousand spots, they are able to fit in most of the great and beloved movies that come to mind. You’ll never be able to please everyone, though, and because so many movies are included, it makes some of the surprising absences even more disturbing. I’ll give them that Great Escape spoof Chicken Run is a charming animated flick, but is it really better than the source material, which somehow is not included on the list?

I had to stop and take a deep breath when I realized The Empire Strikes Back somehow got snubbed.

I’ll grant them the two very different and impressive interpretations of Beauty and the Beast being included, but do they really need two versions each of Little Women, Henry V, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet, yet can’t find a spot cult favorite and critical darling Donnie Darko?

Okay, I’ll admit I’ve seen fewer than a hundred of these films (about 75 on a cursory counting). I’m a child of the eighties and nineties, that much is true. Of course I’ll grumble about personal favorites Jurassic Park and Rudy not being on the list. And, sure, both of the Indiana Jones sequels weren’t as impressive as the Raiders, though I think they should both be on any Top 1000 list. But I draw the line when the list leaves out Terminator 2, The Matrix, There’s Something About Mary, and Field of Dreams.

I’m also surprised not to see Before Sunrise or City of God, though the latter might not have been reviewed by the time they made the list. Pet cemetary documentary Gates of Heaven, which Roger Ebert once called one of the ten greatest films ever, is nowhere to be seen. Though I’ve never seen it, this discrepency is pretty shocking.

Need a few more? The Princess Bride. Once Upon a Time in the West. Menace II Society. Caddyshack. All left out.

Okay, I’m done ranting now. They did hit 90+% of the movies I felt deserved a spot, including a few I didn’t expect to see, like Bull Durham, Shrek, and Adaptation.

It’s interesting to think about what movies that have come out since ‘02 would be on the list. The Prestige, Before Sunset, Ratatouille, Finding Nemo, Spider-Man 2, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, Pirates 1, Lost In Translation, Sin City, Casino Royale, and Batman Begins are all entries that both I liked and critics liked.

Overall though, what NYTimes.com has given us is a free and a massive resource of some of the most critically acclaimed movies to hit the big screen in the past eighty years. I certainly prefer the dynamic and more interesting IMDb Top 250, and 1000 is almost too many to be useful, but the list is certainly something to keep bookmarked before a trip to Blockbuster or as you update your NetFlix queue.

Any other movies you think should have been included?

This post is an entrant into the Carnival of Cinema: Episode 57