Friday, September 26, 2008

Empires 500 Movies

A rant if you will indulge me:

So Empire have compiled their readers top 500 films.
suffice to say the usual suspects dominate and everywhere I look I seem to find people bashing it as fanboyish nonsense. Fair enough, when it comes to subjective matters the wisdom of crowds is usually pretty skewed.

But as much as a lot of the empire list annoys me, the righteous 'my taste is so superior' backlash annoys me much further and in fact sends me rallying to wave my flag with the Empire hordes.

lets take a quick look at the alternative. The following is the top ten from the top 100 critics films in Sound and Vision ( a 'proper' movie review/criticism magazine).

1. Citizen Kane / Orson Welles
2. Vertigo / Alfred Hitchcock
3. The Rules of the Game / Jean Renoir
4. The Godfather and The Godfather Part II Francis Ford Coppola
5. Tokyo Story / Yazujiro Ozu
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey / Stanley Kubrick
7. Battleship Potemkin / Sergei Eisenstein
8. Sunrise / F.W. Murnau
9. 8 1/2 / Federico Fellini


I am depressed just looking at the titles, don't get me wrong I love some of these movies
(godfather and Vertigo are particular highlights) and I'm sure those I haven't seen
are very worthy (they are all on my list I believe).

The problem is where you gonna crack a smile, Only 2001 offers any serious escapism (that I know of) here
and for that, is it really better than the Empire Strikes back?
I know which one I'd rather watch.

p.s for what Its worth here was my submission (as far as I can recall, unfortunately
the original list is no longer available on the empire site. ) to the Empire List.

1. Princess Bride
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Casablanca
4. Big Trouble in little china
5. Requiem for a Dream
6. Shawshank Redemption
7. Spider-man 2
8. Pans Labyrinth
9. Dragon: the bruce lee story
10.The Dark Knight


Yep I'm one of the people that bumped Dark knight into the top 15,
I stand by that I think its an great movie. I think I'd review it now
that other movies pop into my head ( no "once upon a time in the west",
"Army of Darkness" or "Hellboy", tough to call what I'd bump out)