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Top 27 best movies - ever

Re: Top 27 best movies - ever

Brenthoven said:
I've seen documentaries on it, but never the actual movie.
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It's funny, is very tame as such things go, and actually has a plot. I think it is the only movie of its genre I have ever actually watched all the way through. :p
 
Re: Top 27 best movies - ever

Kepler said:
Caligula is so bad it fails even worse as a movie than as a porno.

Poor Malcolm McDowell.

Speaking of whom...

Roger Corman is still alive?!
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Not to mention-Peter O'Toole, John Gielgud, and Helen Mirren. All of whom have done better things with their time on the screen.
 
Re: Top 27 best movies - ever

Saw part of V for Vendetta again last night. To me, it is considerably underappreciated and underrated, probably because many people get distracted by the political backstory.

V for Vendetta is probably the best re-telling of the Frankenstein story I've ever seen. That's what makes it such a great movie. The rest of it is the setting in which the Frankenstein story takes place.

I'm going to discuss plot details next, it's not the plot that drives the story so much as how very well told it is. I can watch this movie once every eight or nine months, it doesn't get old because it's done so well.

What makes V a Frankenstein story?

The central image of the film is V emerging from the flames, they repeat it several times (and the title includes "vendetta" another clue). V seeks out revenge on everyone who mistreated him in the prison, and then he also seeks revenge upon the regime that authorized the use of humans as test subjects by bringing it down.

In the Frankenstein novel, the creature befriends a blind person and helps him, in V he befriends Evie and helps her. The relationship with the blind person / Evie character emphasizes the creature's underlying humanity and capacity for empathy and also illustrate how ultimately the passion for revenge overwhelms that spark of humanity. Both the novel and the movie end with the creature's suicide after he kills all the people who caused him to become a monster in the first place.

To me, it's an absolutely brilliant re-telling of a classic story in a modern setting.
 
Re: Top 27 best movies - ever

Slap Shot said:
I realize you tried to explain this claim, but lolwut? Did you even read Mary Shelley?
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There was a movie that closely was the version of Shelley's Frankenstein, and it's vastly different from the popular version that most are familiar with. I prefer the popular version, myself.

As for V For Vendetta, I thought I read that the original author said the movie was horsesh* because of all the political stuff or something, that it wasn't what he wrote (sorta like the whole Willie Wonka vs Charlie/Chocolate Factory thing).
 
Re: Top 27 best movies - ever

Slap Shot said:
I realize you tried to explain this claim, but lolwut? Did you even read Mary Shelley?
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Yes, I did. I also read The Lord of the Rings and saw those movies too. The movies completely omitted The Old Forest and Tom Bombadil and the barrowdowns yet I thought that made for a much better movie than if those scenes had been included. Glorfindel at the ford of Bruinen became Arwen instead and I thought that was a much better choice too.

The storytelling elements of a good film are different than the storytelling elements of a good book (which is why all eight of the Harry Potter movies were so meh: they tried to follow the books way too closely: you adapt a book, you don't transcribe it!).



I was referring more to how the story was told, not so much the contents. the art of the story-telling, more so than the details of the story.

I found it amusing that people were debating whether V was a "terrorist" or a "freedom fighter" and arguing over the other political stuff.

Monstrous people created a monster who then got his revenge on them all, and a monster who was so consumed by his thirst for revenge that, when offered love and companionship if he would run away with Evie, instead (after hesitating a few moments) says "I can't" and goes off to finish the job instead, knowing he would die.
 
Re: Top 27 best movies - ever

I really think you're missing what Frankenstein was. The monster wasn't given just a simple moment or two to become a pitiable, he was that character from the very concept to execution. Everything the monster does throughout the story is run from one bad situation to another until he happens across the blind man. The explicitly evil character was Dr. Frankenstein, and the mob was used to display mankind's darker, unappealing side of how we react to fear.

As opposed to V for Vendetta, the masses were cowed to an authoritarian government. V was the hero for the masses, made such by his extreme experience at the hands of that same government performing cruel tests upon him. V was active in the choices he made, pushing the plot to its ultimate conclusion.
 
Re: Top 27 best movies - ever

Slap Shot said:
I realize you tried to explain this claim, but lolwut? Did you even read Mary Shelley?
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I do understand where you are coming from. I had a similar reaction at first when a famous film critic described Forbidden Planet as a re-telling of The Tempest.

But then, ...

https://falconmovies.wordpress.com/...et-1956-is-really-the-tempest-by-shakespeare/

or

http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1214&context=clcweb

or

http://shakespeareonfilm.com/PDF's/Forbidden Planet.pdf




I am not at all saying that the film-makers deliberately intended to do a re-telling of the story, merely that the movie turned out that way, whether they consciously intended it to or not.
 
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Re: Top 27 best movies - ever

St. Clown said:
I really think you're missing what Frankenstein was. The monster wasn't given just a simple moment or two to become a pitiable, he was that character from the very concept to execution. Everything the monster does throughout the story is run from one bad situation to another until he happens across the blind man. The explicitly evil character was Dr. Frankenstein, and the mob was used to display mankind's darker, unappealing side of how we react to fear.

As opposed to V for Vendetta, the masses were cowed to an authoritarian government. V was the hero for the masses, made such by his extreme experience at the hands of that same government performing cruel tests upon him. V was active in the choices he made, pushing the plot to its ultimate conclusion.
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There's more than one way to appreciate a movie. "less filling, or tastes great" eh?
 
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