Again, I didn’t say it was bad. Stiff might be a better term then pretentious. It lagged aand I found the pacing uneven. It was OK. It wasn’t close to my 15.
Fury Road
The Thing
Blade Runner
Blade Runner 2049
12 Monkeys
Alien
Aliens
Ex Machina
Star Wars
Serenity
The Terminator
The Matrix
Edge of Tomorrow
5th Element
Inception
This is hard and I’m sure I’ve left off some that I’ll kick myself for but these are the 15 that come to mind strongest, in rough order. Moon just barely misses the top 15.
I don’t know. They were basically squids with a time travel macguffin built in. I tend to think surreal sci-fi (e.g. 2001, Annihilation, Solaris) has more alien aliens than Arrival.
It’s hard to list a top 15. By what criterion? I tend to value really good hard sci-fi, of which there is precious little in film, and sometimes it misses–I hated Interstellar and thought Moon was just ok. But I guess I’d list the films I enjoyed the most that feature speculative space, science and/or technology. (For instance I love Apollo 13, but it’s a historical movie, not fiction.)
Hard sci-fi
Gravity
The Martian
Just fun films
Aliens
Star Wars (original trilogy–if I must choose one film it’s ESB)
The Matrix
Jurassic Park
District 9
Children of Men
Time travel movies (mostly starring Emily Blunt)
Edge of Tomorrow
Looper
12 Monkeys
Quirky
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Inception
Dark City
Ex Machina
Children of Men as a ‘just fun film’ is dark! I like your style.
District 9 is kind of dark as a “just fun film” too. I agree that’s a very good list.
That is a great list. With the exception of 12 Monkeys. I’m kind of amazed at how many lists that shows up in (in this thread). Y’all really enjoyed that movie, huh?
The Qt3 movie podcast on 12 Monkeys mostly mirrored my thoughts on the movie. I was really hoping when I listened to that, one of the three would really love the movie, and I’d get to finally find out why people love that movie so much, but sadly that didn’t happen.
Also, glad to see some love for District 9. The first half of that movie is just… I have a hard time expressing how disturbing I found the first half of that movie. There I am, sitting virtually alone in a movie theater, watching a documentary that’s convincing me that these alien creatures are the other and to be feared, and should be kept in camps. The second half of the movie is more conventional, but I think it needed to be, not just to show me that the views I formed were bigoted, but just as a palette cleanser so I wouldn’t walk out of the theater disgusted with myself for hating the other, and finally understanding racism “from the inside”, so to speak. I just loved that movie for that.
I love it because it is both smart (not talking down to the audience) and clever (cleverly constructed and filled with dark humor); because it has good actors giving great performances (Pitt, Willis, Stowe, Plummer); because it doesn’t give you an easy out; and because it is a thoroughly internally consistent time travel movie. It’s a brilliant film, certainly Gilliam’s best.
This. And Frank Gorshin.
God yes, forgot about him.
Twelve Monkeys pulls off a tricky narrative feat; it’s a fatalistic movie that gives you a happy-ish ending but doesn’t compromise its fatalistic vision in the process. It’s also a puzzle film, and I find those hard to resist (like Memento, The Prestige).
Yeah, pretty much this. I like the aesthetic of the film as well: the broken-down, low-tech machinery, Willis eating the spider, the hallucinatory vibe of the mental hospital, etc.
Yeah, maybe I should have had a “political overtones” category:)
Huh, so I had almost the opposite reaction. I watched the first half thinking “This is an amazing commentary on the Zimbabwean refugee crisis and South Africa’s attitudes and policies toward it”, and then was disappointed when it turned into an action movie to such an extent that I thought it trivialised any point it was trying to make. I’ve since come round on the tonal shift, but I’m still more disturbed by the glib violence of the second half than the politics of the first half.
That’s my reaction, too. The gleeful, gross violence of the movie turned me off.
Ok, I have zero desire to see it now.
Yeah the first half was amazing in its restraint. I appreciated it. The second half is far less impactful, to the point I barely recall the outlines beyond the big scope.
Oh man, how could I forget Children of Men? That’s up near the top for me and would displace The Terminator from my list.
District 9 would just miss my list. I did not mind the tonal shift. I enjoy a good climax (phrasing) and I enjoyed Wikus’s evolution and character arc.
Speaking of tonal shifts, oh shit, I forgot Sunshine. I hated the shift the first time I saw it but on subsequent viewings it made perfect sense which was great because now I love the movie in its entirety. Ugh. Who gets booted from the top 15? Maybe Sunshine just misses my top 15 because I can’t imagine booting one of the others.
In no particular order (when I use the “+” sign I consider the series a single movie):
T1+2
Alien
Alien 2
The Thing
District 9
Matrix 1+2
Jurassic Park
Edge of Tomorrow
Star Wars IV+V+VI
Back to the Future
Pitch Black
Predator
2001
28 Days Later
Equilibrium
Looking at this list, I notice I seem to have a preference for power fantasy, which a theme I prefer in books too.
Not to harp on your list too hard, it is personal preference after all, but Matrix 2? Matrix 1 is a complete and coherent story. 2 is literally half a movie. If you include it you must include 3. It is really a 2 part film.
Sorry, but that one bugs me.
I just like to pretend the utter rubbish (3) doesn’t exist, I liked 2 enough to include it and it would’ve been a list of 16 if I separated them. :)
Speaking of Matrix, I never did watch 2 or 3. If someone did a super cut that combined the best parts of the latter two movies would/could it be a good movie then?
Also! I have got to watch District 9.