Thursday, August 17, 2017

Tomatoes on the Wall

Rotten Tomatoes dot com has a list of the top 100 films of all time. I saw a news piece on the telly about what films made the list. Scenes from Orson Welles' 1941 masterwork Citizen Kane played as a background for the story. What struck me about seeing Kane in that context was how modern, or recent, it looked. Some folk could be forgiven if they thought it was a new movie, or television series, for that matter, that had been shot in black and white, and not a 76 year old picture.

Citizen Kane was not only influential because some people say it was but its DNA strands are in so much of what has come along since 1941 (even when filmmakers are just copying the copyists).


The top ten portion of the Rotten list, picked from a large field (critics average):

1. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
2. Citizen Kane (1941)
3. The Third Man (1949)
4. Get Out (2017)
5. Mad Max: Road Fury (2015)
6. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
7. All About Eve (1950)
8. Inside Out (2015)
9. The Godfather (1972)
10. Metropolis (1927)


My top ten list would include numbers:

1.
2.
6.
10.


3 comments:

DonaldAR said...

I'll try this again. Got used to auto-htmling in 21st-century apps. ;) Hope this works...

#5. is Mad Max: Road Fury (2015)?!?! Is that a joke? While not a horrible film, "Mad Max: Fury Road" does not, IMHO, belong anywhere near the top 10.

Why? Because e.g.:

Everything Wrong With Mad Max: Fury Road (CinemaSins)

Mad Max: Fury Road is a very very bad movie.(A philosopher goes to the movies)

and THINK MAD MAX: FURY ROAD IS A GREAT FILM? YOU’RE WRONG. HERE’S WHY. (Other Worlds Austin ).

Now, if you'll indulge me a bit of a digression: After attacking Rotten Tomatoes, Hollywood is now blaming YouTube fan reviews for its problems (QUARTZ). I found this quite amusing. I though CinemaSins’s breakdown of Jordan Vogt-Robert's "Kong: Skull Island" quite apt. I thought his "70-plus-tweet rant" sulky and sad.

BTW: I'm sorry: "What the hell is with the, what is it - “yeard?” - hanging off Vogt-Roberts' face?" Is he trying to look like a doofus?

Tibor said...

Gotta say I have some problems with this list and yours too...you have number 1 at the top of your list? Really? Critics have consistently ranked the number 1 number 3 at best!

Simon St. Laurent said...

Recent movies ending up on lists like this is due to the "glow"; elation over a new film that is good. Of course, time is not kind to this type of flick.

Hi Tibor: That is not my order, just an easy matchup to what what's on their top-ten list. Top film on the list, for me, would be "2001: A Space Odyssey" or "Citizen Kane" or "Metropolis".


Yeah, where is "King Kong" (1933), "Dr. Strangelove", "Battleship Potemkin", "Bicycle Thieves"?....

It's just a list.