The Abyss is a good one if only for those dying/resuscitation scenes--which have already somewhat become a cliche. Nevertheless, I have never been more into a movie than I was during those scenes.
Jonathan Rosenbaum's opinion on Saving Private Ryan is as facile as it is geeky; it's as if he's trying to counter any response by saying "I've seen more movies than you have" -- that's more likely to be the case than Spielberg sitting there with a check-list of every war movie he has seen. Besides, there are many, many (most?) war movies that say -- among other things -- war is hell, absurd, necessary, surreal, exciting, upsetting and uplifting. What appealed to me about Spielberg's film over Malick's is it's sense of chaos in the first hour -- and I don't think any film ever got it quite like that one did, that sense of not knowing where the next bullet is coming from -- and its narrative momentum, which, to my mind, Malick completely lacked. Malick preferred shooting achingly long National Geographic shots of rotting leaves while some hick on the soundtrack talked on and on and on about the glory of nature. It was hokey. I always loved Roger Ebert's line about it: "My guess is that any veteran of the actual battle of Guadalcanal would describe this movie with an eight-letter word much beloved in the Army."
I feel the same way about the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan. But the rest of the movie was cheesy-schmaltzy-sentimental-Spielberg crap. The main point is that Saving Private Ryan doesn't offer much that is new. You can argue that it in some way records history and makes it connect with a lot of people. The Thin Red Line did offer something new, and the contrast of peace/beauty/nature with war was in some ways more powerful to me than a movie of constant combat.
Roger Ebert speculating on a military person's take on a war film--could one get any less authoritative?
32 -
Shark
Mar 13, 2004 at 4:38 am
re: Powerful War Films
FWIW: my father landed on Omaha Beach and walked/crawled with the US Infantry to Berlin (Patton's 3rd). After a month is the hedgerows, he and one other man were the only survivors from his platoon. From 6-44 to 5-45, every CO they had was killed, and his two best buddies were sent behind the lines with "battle fatigue" ie they went nuts under fire.
Well, this is one of those cases where we just part company. I thought The Thin Red Line was a failure, and I thought Saving Private Ryan was, at least in parts, the work of a cinema master. I tend to think of Spielberg much in the way I do Scorsese and De Palma -- great filmmakers who don't make great films anymore, just occasionally good ones with touches of genius.
The Thin Red Line is not meant to be taken as realism - it isn't meant to "put you in the thick of battle". I have no use for realism in war films - call it personal taste - but I find it shallow and repulsive to agnonize over the physical consequences of war, like Spielberg's film does. Plus, it is one cheezy flick - especially that ending!
Interesting, John Lars. It's been years since I saw the Thin Red Line and so my memory is fuzzy, but I do recall it had its own scenes of grim, bloody war realism. I double-checked with a "parent's guide" on the Internet, which records "dogs eating the remains of men, graphic battle deaths ... graphic battle mutilation deaths, sequences of multiple graphic deaths, and sequences of mutilated bodies." Did you find these instances of realism shallow and repulsive? Or does Malick get off scot-free in your book because he didn't "agonize" over them?
Malick showed war as violent, because is wasn't abstract-enough of a film to have them do ballet on the battlefield. I wouldn't compare hardly anything in Malick's film to the documentary-esque camerawork of Spielberg's opening battlescene. It was meant to be an accurate depiction of what war is - which Malick's film's realism only goes so far. Spielberg was too worried over the gory details of battle to actually say anything - which is the difference between someone who makes movies, and an actual artist.
Nice footwork on your part, but I don't buy it. It's completely disingenuous to call Spirlberg's film "shallow and repulsive" because it "agonize[s] over the physical consequences of war" and then put up Malick's bloody film as some kind of superior example. First of all, it is neither shallow nor repulsive to look war in the face and feel for the people engaged in it -- if that is the case, then we can discredit all war literature going back to Thucydides. Gore is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Spielberg's film; what I think of is how absorbing the story is, and how it aimed for a genuine realism, realism that was as truthful to its subject as the violence was in Raging Bull or The Wild Bunch. Spielberg had an imaginative sense of war and the way it affects people who fight it; Malick, by contrast, mostly just wanted to make a great film, a lasting artistic statement -- which in Malick's case means a combination of slo-mo prettiness and dull voice-over haikus, which in the process assured not only that he didn't make a great film, but that he didn't even make a very good one.
Realism in a war film in itself is shallow. Essentially anyone can recreate past events - Spielberg is a fine technical director, so not just anyone could recreate them as well - but the thought behind the film was certainly one-dimensional. Film in itself is an abstraction of reality - if I wanted to know about the D-Day invasion, I'd talk to people who were involved or read pieces of non-fiction on it. I wouldn't watch Spielberg's film - it didn't tell anyone anything they already didn't know.
And if all you got out of Malick's film was slow-mo prettiness, I am genuinely sorry.
Jon, either you're too dense or I'm too dumb. First of all, I have no idea what the phrase "abstraction of reality" means and why it applies to one of these two grimly realistic films but not the other. I'm further confounded by your insistence that if you "wanted to know about the D-Day invasion, [you would] talk to people who were involved or read pieces of non-fiction on it" and that "Spielberg's film ... didn't tell anyone anything they already didn't know." Really? Nothing? And Malick's ... did? What did Malick's story tell us that you can't get from non-fiction -- or fiction for that matter, like the novel it was based on -- or a visit to the VFW post?
"And if all you got out of Malick's film was slow-mo prettiness, I am genuinely sorry."
If you bought into the idea that there's anything more to it, then I'm the one who is sorry. It is a shallow film.
I'm still not sure how Malick's film is grimly-realistic. The film has gotten a lot of flack from people from the "unrealistic" voiceovers - "Why would a soldier be pondering about nature in the midst of battle?". Problem being is that the voiceovers are collective subconsciousness - and aren't meant to be the literal thoughts of many of the soldiers. The film shows scenes of wartime violence, so yes - it does have elements of realism (ALL films do - even the most abstract). But, it wasn't meant to be a starkly accurate recreation of WW2 or battle - not nearly in the sense of that Spielberg's is. Malick was more concerned with his themes than a technical recreation. The level of realism in Spielberg's film was meant to be leagues above Malick's.
All art is an abstract of reality. Spielberg's film isn't - not matter how "realistic" it is - the same as actually being in the D-Day situation. It's a film, with actors and a director - a hokey score and script - it's an abstraction of reality.
There is nothing like Malick's work in existence - and no, I haven't seen a single war film or read a book that describes it (and life itself) as governed by a series of paradoxes, that is as profoundly sorrowful, or is as thematically complex.
Renoir's film certainly is a masterpiece - but I find The Thin Red Line to be the more moving. Plus, The Rules of the Game is Renoir's highlight - definitely a step up for him as an artist.
43 -
Smenkharon
May 14, 2004 at 3:44 pm
I am shocked at the inclusion of Apocalypse Now on this list, especially with the debate between The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan going on. Saving Private Ryan is not even on the list and while it doesn't deserve to be there, I would argue that it is a better film than the incomprehensibly silly Apocalypse Now! Even Heart of Darkness is superior! Other than that I have no complaints about your list although mine would probably look much different.
44 -
duane
May 14, 2004 at 5:29 pm
Yes, we are all shocked by this. I am wondering if and how I will ever recover. A dark day indeed.
I'd also substitute Seven Samurai for Ran. Cinematography was better and, hey, it later was remade into a Western just as the Hidden Fortress was made into a science fiction movie.
Tampopo and Taxing Woman were probably more popular in Japan than Kurosawa and dealt with current day life in a humorous way.
Cabaret for making a musical political in a way that made most people uncomfortable by touching on homosexuality or bisexuality. The original musical and even the original stories did not yet this was the very reason Isherwood was in Berlin. Also, although I also love The Sound of Music, Cabaret dealt with the Nazis as more something sinister-- Nazis could manifest easily in one's neighbors so there was a greater blurring of the lines between good and bad than in The Sound of Music.
I also like a short animation Creature Comforts but this might be out of category as both a short and animation (clay).
47 -
Eric Olsen
Aug 09, 2004 at 9:30 pm
PT, just saw Fantasia again the other day, it is truly amazing and I could watch it over and over, which is rare because I have a short attention span from being hit on the head. The 4 year-old loved it too (good sign) I'd put Fantasia in the top 20.
I've never seen you write here before, but I was expecting the worst since I always hate everyone's horrible "Top 20 Movies" list. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Like Rosenbaum, you're an astute critic and have good taste. No Spielberg movie belongs anywhere near the Top 20 List of any self-respecting person who values art over commerce.
Keep up the good work. I'm impressed.
OK, I'm adding to my intellectuals list: Sam Vaknin, the anesthesiologist physician dude, and now John Lars Ericson. These are the people that make this site worth reading.
Oh, and I should add that I was rather impressed by the rest of you in your taste as well. I can't think of a single movie in that list I hate, and only a couple (Saving Private Ryan and Alien) that I raise an eyebrow at. But even those two movies I enjoyed, even if they weren't particulary profound.
Dirtgrain: you're also borderline on the intellectuals list, by the way (surprising as that may be). You clearly appreciate good art and writing even if you don't have the right idea about what criticism and interpretation is. You're a good consumer of ideas.
Purple: are you hot? You're probably too smart to be hot, but just checking.
And yes, that's important. All women know if they're hot and they all think it's important, so be honest.
That is all.
50 -
matt
Dec 20, 2004 at 9:58 pm
You have some great movies on the list - but I have a hard time not including these -
Amadeus
High Plains Drifter
American Beauty
The Verdict
51 -
CK Dexter Haven
Dec 21, 2004 at 12:51 am
A couple highly eccentric and amusing movies from Scotland:
I Know Where I'm Going
Whiskey Galore!
And since it's the holidays, my best holiday movie:
Holiday - Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Lew Ayres. Touching, yet athletic, and some of the best character actors of the time.
Article comments
26 - duane
Eh, what was the best line in the whole book? It's been awhile
27 - Jeff
"My god, it's full of stars!".
I realize that Kubrick put the movie out before Clarke finished the book so maybe the omission is not that bad.
28 - Dirtgrain
The Abyss is a good one if only for those dying/resuscitation scenes--which have already somewhat become a cliche. Nevertheless, I have never been more into a movie than I was during those scenes.
29 - Dirtgrain
John Lars, that was a killer quote about Saving Private Ryan.
30 - Rodney Welch
Jonathan Rosenbaum's opinion on Saving Private Ryan is as facile as it is geeky; it's as if he's trying to counter any response by saying "I've seen more movies than you have" -- that's more likely to be the case than Spielberg sitting there with a check-list of every war movie he has seen. Besides, there are many, many (most?) war movies that say -- among other things -- war is hell, absurd, necessary, surreal, exciting, upsetting and uplifting. What appealed to me about Spielberg's film over Malick's is it's sense of chaos in the first hour -- and I don't think any film ever got it quite like that one did, that sense of not knowing where the next bullet is coming from -- and its narrative momentum, which, to my mind, Malick completely lacked. Malick preferred shooting achingly long National Geographic shots of rotting leaves while some hick on the soundtrack talked on and on and on about the glory of nature. It was hokey. I always loved Roger Ebert's line about it: "My guess is that any veteran of the actual battle of Guadalcanal would describe this movie with an eight-letter word much beloved in the Army."
31 - Dirtgrain
I feel the same way about the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan. But the rest of the movie was cheesy-schmaltzy-sentimental-Spielberg crap. The main point is that Saving Private Ryan doesn't offer much that is new. You can argue that it in some way records history and makes it connect with a lot of people. The Thin Red Line did offer something new, and the contrast of peace/beauty/nature with war was in some ways more powerful to me than a movie of constant combat.
Roger Ebert speculating on a military person's take on a war film--could one get any less authoritative?
32 - Shark
re: Powerful War Films
FWIW: my father landed on Omaha Beach and walked/crawled with the US Infantry to Berlin (Patton's 3rd). After a month is the hedgerows, he and one other man were the only survivors from his platoon. From 6-44 to 5-45, every CO they had was killed, and his two best buddies were sent behind the lines with "battle fatigue" ie they went nuts under fire.
He told me the movie that best captured war was:
All Quiet On the Western Front (1930)
33 - Rodney Welch
Well, this is one of those cases where we just part company. I thought The Thin Red Line was a failure, and I thought Saving Private Ryan was, at least in parts, the work of a cinema master. I tend to think of Spielberg much in the way I do Scorsese and De Palma -- great filmmakers who don't make great films anymore, just occasionally good ones with touches of genius.
34 - John Lars Ericson
The Thin Red Line is not meant to be taken as realism - it isn't meant to "put you in the thick of battle". I have no use for realism in war films - call it personal taste - but I find it shallow and repulsive to agnonize over the physical consequences of war, like Spielberg's film does. Plus, it is one cheezy flick - especially that ending!
35 - Rodney Welch
Interesting, John Lars. It's been years since I saw the Thin Red Line and so my memory is fuzzy, but I do recall it had its own scenes of grim, bloody war realism. I double-checked with a "parent's guide" on the Internet, which records "dogs eating the remains of men, graphic battle deaths ... graphic battle mutilation deaths, sequences of multiple graphic deaths, and sequences of mutilated bodies." Did you find these instances of realism shallow and repulsive? Or does Malick get off scot-free in your book because he didn't "agonize" over them?
36 - John Lars Ericson
Malick showed war as violent, because is wasn't abstract-enough of a film to have them do ballet on the battlefield. I wouldn't compare hardly anything in Malick's film to the documentary-esque camerawork of Spielberg's opening battlescene. It was meant to be an accurate depiction of what war is - which Malick's film's realism only goes so far. Spielberg was too worried over the gory details of battle to actually say anything - which is the difference between someone who makes movies, and an actual artist.
37 - Rodney Welch
Nice footwork on your part, but I don't buy it. It's completely disingenuous to call Spirlberg's film "shallow and repulsive" because it "agonize[s] over the physical consequences of war" and then put up Malick's bloody film as some kind of superior example. First of all, it is neither shallow nor repulsive to look war in the face and feel for the people engaged in it -- if that is the case, then we can discredit all war literature going back to Thucydides. Gore is not the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Spielberg's film; what I think of is how absorbing the story is, and how it aimed for a genuine realism, realism that was as truthful to its subject as the violence was in Raging Bull or The Wild Bunch. Spielberg had an imaginative sense of war and the way it affects people who fight it; Malick, by contrast, mostly just wanted to make a great film, a lasting artistic statement -- which in Malick's case means a combination of slo-mo prettiness and dull voice-over haikus, which in the process assured not only that he didn't make a great film, but that he didn't even make a very good one.
38 - John Lars Ericson
Realism in a war film in itself is shallow. Essentially anyone can recreate past events - Spielberg is a fine technical director, so not just anyone could recreate them as well - but the thought behind the film was certainly one-dimensional. Film in itself is an abstraction of reality - if I wanted to know about the D-Day invasion, I'd talk to people who were involved or read pieces of non-fiction on it. I wouldn't watch Spielberg's film - it didn't tell anyone anything they already didn't know.
And if all you got out of Malick's film was slow-mo prettiness, I am genuinely sorry.
39 - Rodney Welch
Jon, either you're too dense or I'm too dumb. First of all, I have no idea what the phrase "abstraction of reality" means and why it applies to one of these two grimly realistic films but not the other. I'm further confounded by your insistence that if you "wanted to know about the D-Day invasion, [you would] talk to people who were involved or read pieces of non-fiction on it" and that "Spielberg's film ... didn't tell anyone anything they already didn't know." Really? Nothing? And Malick's ... did? What did Malick's story tell us that you can't get from non-fiction -- or fiction for that matter, like the novel it was based on -- or a visit to the VFW post?
"And if all you got out of Malick's film was slow-mo prettiness, I am genuinely sorry."
If you bought into the idea that there's anything more to it, then I'm the one who is sorry. It is a shallow film.
40 - John Lars Ericson
I'm still not sure how Malick's film is grimly-realistic. The film has gotten a lot of flack from people from the "unrealistic" voiceovers - "Why would a soldier be pondering about nature in the midst of battle?". Problem being is that the voiceovers are collective subconsciousness - and aren't meant to be the literal thoughts of many of the soldiers. The film shows scenes of wartime violence, so yes - it does have elements of realism (ALL films do - even the most abstract). But, it wasn't meant to be a starkly accurate recreation of WW2 or battle - not nearly in the sense of that Spielberg's is. Malick was more concerned with his themes than a technical recreation. The level of realism in Spielberg's film was meant to be leagues above Malick's.
All art is an abstract of reality. Spielberg's film isn't - not matter how "realistic" it is - the same as actually being in the D-Day situation. It's a film, with actors and a director - a hokey score and script - it's an abstraction of reality.
There is nothing like Malick's work in existence - and no, I haven't seen a single war film or read a book that describes it (and life itself) as governed by a series of paradoxes, that is as profoundly sorrowful, or is as thematically complex.
41 - Rodney Welch
On that criteria, Renoir's Grand Illusion beats it cold.
42 - John Lars Ericson
Renoir's film certainly is a masterpiece - but I find The Thin Red Line to be the more moving. Plus, The Rules of the Game is Renoir's highlight - definitely a step up for him as an artist.
43 - Smenkharon
I am shocked at the inclusion of Apocalypse Now on this list, especially with the debate between The Thin Red Line and Saving Private Ryan going on. Saving Private Ryan is not even on the list and while it doesn't deserve to be there, I would argue that it is a better film than the incomprehensibly silly Apocalypse Now! Even Heart of Darkness is superior! Other than that I have no complaints about your list although mine would probably look much different.
44 - duane
Yes, we are all shocked by this. I am wondering if and how I will ever recover. A dark day indeed.
45 - Alexey
How about Tarkovsky's Solaris?
46 - Purple Tigress
Animation doesn't count?
Fantasia?
Spirited Away?
I'd also substitute Seven Samurai for Ran. Cinematography was better and, hey, it later was remade into a Western just as the Hidden Fortress was made into a science fiction movie.
Tampopo and Taxing Woman were probably more popular in Japan than Kurosawa and dealt with current day life in a humorous way.
Cabaret for making a musical political in a way that made most people uncomfortable by touching on homosexuality or bisexuality. The original musical and even the original stories did not yet this was the very reason Isherwood was in Berlin. Also, although I also love The Sound of Music, Cabaret dealt with the Nazis as more something sinister-- Nazis could manifest easily in one's neighbors so there was a greater blurring of the lines between good and bad than in The Sound of Music.
I also like a short animation Creature Comforts but this might be out of category as both a short and animation (clay).
47 - Eric Olsen
PT, just saw Fantasia again the other day, it is truly amazing and I could watch it over and over, which is rare because I have a short attention span from being hit on the head. The 4 year-old loved it too (good sign) I'd put Fantasia in the top 20.
48 - Bob A. Booey
John Lars,
I've never seen you write here before, but I was expecting the worst since I always hate everyone's horrible "Top 20 Movies" list. However, I was pleasantly surprised. Like Rosenbaum, you're an astute critic and have good taste. No Spielberg movie belongs anywhere near the Top 20 List of any self-respecting person who values art over commerce.
Keep up the good work. I'm impressed.
OK, I'm adding to my intellectuals list: Sam Vaknin, the anesthesiologist physician dude, and now John Lars Ericson. These are the people that make this site worth reading.
Oh, and Fantasia in 5!
That is all.
49 - Bob A. Booey
Oh, and I should add that I was rather impressed by the rest of you in your taste as well. I can't think of a single movie in that list I hate, and only a couple (Saving Private Ryan and Alien) that I raise an eyebrow at. But even those two movies I enjoyed, even if they weren't particulary profound.
Dirtgrain: you're also borderline on the intellectuals list, by the way (surprising as that may be). You clearly appreciate good art and writing even if you don't have the right idea about what criticism and interpretation is. You're a good consumer of ideas.
Purple: are you hot? You're probably too smart to be hot, but just checking.
And yes, that's important. All women know if they're hot and they all think it's important, so be honest.
That is all.
50 - matt
You have some great movies on the list - but I have a hard time not including these -
Amadeus
High Plains Drifter
American Beauty
The Verdict
51 - CK Dexter Haven
A couple highly eccentric and amusing movies from Scotland:
I Know Where I'm Going
Whiskey Galore!
And since it's the holidays, my best holiday movie:
Holiday - Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Lew Ayres. Touching, yet athletic, and some of the best character actors of the time.