Listosaurus Rex

FilmCritic.com, an excellent film review site, has released a list of their picks for the greatest movie endings. (I assume this is obvious, but major spoiler warning alert — skip over the movies you haven’t seen).

Here is their top ten:

1. Dr. Strangelove (1964)
2. Fight Club (1999)
3. Chinatown (1974)
4. Casablanca (1942)
5. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
6. Boogie Nights (1997)
7. Night of the Living Dead (1968)
8. Big Night (1996)
9. Don’t Look Now (1973)
10. Some Like It Hot (1959)

There are a few unconventional picks in there. Boogie Nights is a beloved movie, but I’ve never seen its ending mentioned among the best ever. I’m not sure I’d ever heard of Big Night before this list, and I haven’t actually seen mostly-forgotten horror flick Don’t Look Now.

It’s hard to argue with most of those picks, though. I’m not sure I loved the ending of Chinatown enough to put it in the top five, but there’s no doubt it’s a classic. I was surprised, and impressed, to see Bonnie and Clyde so high: it’s abrupt, stark finale is an amazing moment in cinema.

The rest of the fifty don’t disappoint either. There’s a respectable mix of old and new, blockbusters and cult favorites, comedy and drama. The authors’ writing is penetrative and thoughtful. Each pick is clearly well-thought out, too, with specific reasons for the spot.

I could nitpick about minor qualms I have (Usual Suspects not high enough, no Rudy, no Psycho), but the list is so charming, thoughtful, and complete, that I’ll just let it go. Instead, I’ll remark how pleasantly surprised I was to see Batman Begins, Pulp Fiction, Before Sunset, and a few other personal favorites on there.

The list is clearly passionate, well-informed, and thoughtful. For any cinephiles out there, I recommend you check it out. Who knows, you may fall in love with FilmCritic.com and its 7000+ reviews like I have.

This post is an entrant in the Carnival of Cinema: Episode 58

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