Best Movie Ever Made.

[BloodyWolverine]

I can't believe i forgot too put in The 10 Commandments or Gone With The Wind.

 

[SuperFerret]

Eh, both of those suck anyway.

 

[BloodyWolverine]

This looks like less of a best movies of all time list and more of a BloodyWolverine's favorite movies list to me.

No no i never even seen Citizen Kane or No Country for Old Men. Just kinda what came up with when entered my head.

 

[Johnny Drama]

Which critics? Roger Ebert is a lot more credible than anybody at AICN, for example.

Roger Ebert didn't have a single bad thing to say about the movie and gave it a PERFECT 4 STAR rating, rating it over Doubt, Revolutionary Road and The Wrestler, and on par with Milk. Those were the most critically acclaimed films last year, the ones with the most oscars at the end of the day, and Ebert rated The Dark Night above those.

__________________________________________________
The Dark Knight

July 16, 2008
By Roger Ebert

“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”

“The Dark Knight” is not a simplistic tale of good and evil. Batman is good, yes, The Joker is evil, yes. But Batman poses a more complex puzzle than usual: The citizens of Gotham City are in an uproar, calling him a vigilante and blaming him for the deaths of policemen and others. And the Joker is more than a villain. He’s a Mephistopheles whose actions are fiendishly designed to pose moral dilemmas for his enemies.

The key performance in the movie is by the late Heath Ledger, as the Joker. Will he become the first posthumous Oscar winner since Peter Finch? His Joker draws power from the actual inspiration of the character in the silent classic “The Man Who Laughs” (1928). His clown's makeup more sloppy than before, his cackle betraying deep wounds, he seeks revenge, he claims, for the horrible punishment his father exacted on him when he was a child. In one diabolical scheme near the end of the film, he invites two ferry-loads of passengers to blow up the other before they are blown up themselves. Throughout the film, he devises ingenious situations that force Batman (Christian Bale), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to make impossible ethical decisions. By the end, the whole moral foundation of the Batman legend is threatened.

Because these actors and others are so powerful, and because the movie does not allow its spectacular special effects to upstage the humans, we’re surprised how deeply the drama affects us. Eckhart does an especially good job as Harvey Dent, whose character is transformed by a horrible fate into a bitter monster. It is customary in a comic book movie to maintain a certain knowing distance from the action, to view everything through a sophisticated screen. “The Dark Knight” slips around those defenses and engages us.

Yes, the special effects are extraordinary. They focus on the expected explosions and catastrophes, and have some superb, elaborate chase scenes. The movie was shot on location in Chicago, but it avoids such familiar landmarks as Marina City, the Wrigley Building or the skyline. Chicagoans will recognize many places, notably La Salle Street and Lower Wacker Drive, but director Nolan is not making a travelogue. He presents the city as a wilderness of skyscrapers, and a key sequence is set in the still-uncompleted Trump Tower. Through these heights, the Batman moves at the end of strong wires, or sometimes actually flies, using his cape as a parasail.

The plot involves nothing more or less than the Joker’s attempts to humiliate the forces for good and expose Batman’ secret identity, showing him to be a poser and a fraud. He includes Gordon and Dent on his target list, and contrives cruel tricks to play with the fact that Bruce Wayne once loved, and Harvey Dent now loves, Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal). The tricks are more cruel than he realizes, because the Joker doesn’t know Batman’s identity. Heath Ledger has a good deal of dialogue in the movie, and a lot of it isn’t the usual jabs and jests we’re familiar with: It’s psychologically more complex, outlining the dilemmas he has constructed, and explaining his reasons for them. The screenplay by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who first worked together on “Memento&#8221 has more depth and poetry than we might have expected.

Two of the supporting characters are crucial to the action, and are played effortlessly by the great actors Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Freeman, as the scientific genius Lucius Fox, is in charge of Bruce Wayne’s underground headquarters, and makes an ethical objection to a method of eavesdropping on all of the citizens of Gotham City. His stand has current political implictions. Caine is the faithful butler Alfred, who understands Wayne better than anybody, and makes a decision about a crucial letter.

Nolan also directed the previous, and excellent, “Batman Begins” (2005), which went into greater detail than ever before about Bruce Wayne’s origins and the reasons for his compulsions. Now it is the Joker’s turn, although his past is handled entirely with dialogue, not flashbacks. There are no references to Batman’s childhood, but we certainly remember it, and we realize that this conflict is between two adults who were twisted by childhood cruelty — one compensating by trying to do good, the other by trying to do evil. Perhaps they instinctively understand that themselves.

Something fundamental seems to be happening in the upper realms of the comic-book movie. “Spider-Man II” (2004) may have defined the high point of the traditional film based on comic-book heroes. A movie like the new “Hellboy II” allows its director free rein for his fantastical visions. But now “Iron Man” and even more so “The Dark Knight” move the genre into deeper waters. They realize, as some comic-book readers instinctively do, that these stories touch on deep fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes. And the Batman legend, with its origins in film noir, is the most fruitful one for exploration.

In his two Batman movies, Nolan has freed the character to be a canvas for a broader scope of human emotion. For Bruce Wayne is a deeply troubled man, let there be no doubt, and if ever in exile from his heroic role, it would not surprise me what he finds himself capable of doing.

 

[BloodyWolverine]

Look at page 1.

Angeloz

I always call that movie 11 Apollo 13 mostly i guess because actually heard of a Apollo 11 mission before.

 

[Johnny Drama]

I can't believe i forgot too put in The 10 Commandments or Gone With The Wind.

Your biggest mistep was not including Casablanca, easily the greatest film of all time. Some would say Citizen Kane. They would be wrong.

 

[Evil Twin]

All that doesn't matter. I'm just defending BloodyWolverine's opinion but pretty much saying "why not?" But hey, he can debate his reason for putting it on there from now on. Like I've said before, with 39 choices on the poll, you aren't going to please everyone as we can all obviously see from your post as well as others. The Dark Knight was a hell of a better choice than Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl on his poll. Like I've said before, what Wiseman said was debatable. It still is. Six billion people on this planet have differing opinions.

Oh well.

Hey, if we're saying that TDK isn't the worst choice on the poll, then I'll agree too. I'm just saying that let's not oversell TDK in the larger scheme. Certainly, one of the tests is the test of time and influence to mark whether a film belongs among the all time greats, and it's way premature to discuss that.

But, as I said, you could have 500 choices and not catch everything. As the various film polls for the decade are proving, even here you have a range of opinion and 20 some movies a year tend to garner votes as the best.

 

[SuperFerret]

Your biggest mistep was not including Casablanca, easily the greatest film of all time. Some would say Citizen Kane. They would be wrong.

Casablanca was god awful, I couldn't even make it through the damn thing.

 

[Schlosser85]

Citizen Kane is, to me, one of the most dull as a stick movies ever made.

 

[CBGB]

I completely disagree.

Which movies from the past few years deserve to be in the top 50 movies of ALL TIME? The only one I can really think of is Pans Labyrinth and the LOTR trilogy, because critics love it so much. I didn't love Pans Labyrinth, but I've seen on some top 50 lists.

 

[Evil Twin]

Roger Ebert didn't have a single bad thing to say about the movie and gave it a PERFECT 4 STAR rating, rating it over Doubt, Revolutionary Road and The Wrestler, and on par with Milk. Those were the most critically acclaimed films last year, the ones with the most oscars at the end of the day, and Ebert rated The Dark Night above those.

Nowhere in that review does Ebert call TDK "one of the greatest movies ever made."

Roger Ebert has given hundreds of films 4 star reviews as a reviewer. That doesn't mean he considers most, or even more than a handful, of them contenders for the 50 Greatest Films of All Time. It's perfectly reasonable to consider TDK a terrific film, but not one of the 50 greatest of all time. Especially, if you've seen thousands of films in your lifetime and spent time seeking out the classics and key influential films.

Heck, read Ebert's commentary on the Spectator list. He calls out other films conspicuous by their absence and personal favorites, but not TDK.

But, that's enough. My point isn't that TDK isn't critically acclaimed and a terrific film. Or that it won't grow in stature and influence to the point where it will be considered in that class some day. But, as of this moment, there's no evidence that TDK is regarded as more than a terrific action / comic book film among critics. Certainly, I think someone needs to point to one credible critic that explicitly makes the case that TDK is among the 50 greatest films ever made before making the claim that most critics consider it that.

But, I think that's enough. I'd rather talk about the cases for films.

 

[Johnny Drama]

Which movies from the past few years deserve to be in the top 50 movies of ALL TIME? The only one I can really think of is Pans Labyrinth and the LOTR trilogy, because critics love it so much. I didn't love Pans Labyrinth, but I've seen on some top 50 lists.

You have fallen off your rocker. It's a good movie, but c'mon guy.

 

[Schlosser85]

I think it's kind of pointless/snobbish to repeat whether or not critics have called a movie one of the greatest films of all time.

Just because critics say it, doesn't make it so, frankly.

 

[CBGB]

No, I'm just basing it off a book I bought that rated Pans Labyrinth as 23rd best movie of all time. Ridiculous, I know.

 

[Laderlappen]

Well enough about the shortcomings of a poll. Frankly, for the history of film, you could have 500 choices and not catch all of the all time greats.

I want to explain what I see in my pick.

The Seven Samurai

The basis of the modern action film and the modern epic are in this film. Pretty much every "team on a mission" film owes at least some debt to it. It's part of the chain of Kurosawa films that lead to Yojimbo which in turn helped create the spaghetti westerns which made Clint Eastwood a star. You can spot it's influences in Lord of the Rings. You see a shot of riders cresting a hill and then descending to attack, know that The Seven Samurai did it first. You see someone pull out a map to orient the characters and audience, see The Seven Samurai. You see someone die in slow motion, see The Seven Samurai again.

It's a logistical tour de force. Kurosawa uses deep focus in some remarkable ways. In some ways when you know everything had to go perfectly in one take, as actors talk in the foreground while buildings burn in the distance, in perfect focus, in the background. Kurosawa, through wind and rain machines, commands the elements, fire, wind, rain, and earth. Expert archers fire real arrows into blocks of wood on extras backs. People get run down by horses. The final battle is filmed in a torrential downpour and mud. No cgi trickery, here.

Kurosawa also manages to juggle a large ensemble. But even the most minor characters reveal hidden depths through the course of the film. And, right in the center is Toshiro Mifune who starts as a broad buffoon, but is peeled back to reveal a man of real depth and emotion.

If a test of a film is that you can watch it again and again and discover something new, then The Seven Samurai is right up there. Deep, exciting, influential, entertaining, and expertly crafted.

I completely agree about Seven Samurai. My all time 4th favorite film.

Which movies from the past few years deserve to be in the top 50 movies of ALL TIME? The only one I can really think of is Pans Labyrinth and the LOTR trilogy, because critics love it so much. I didn't love Pans Labyrinth, but I've seen on some top 50 lists.

I have 3 in my top 50: There Will Be Blood, Brokeback Mountain, & Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. LOTR is also in my top 50 but they came out more than 5 years ago(time just flies by).

 

[hpwiz89]

The Dark Knight!

 

[CBGB]

I have 3 in my top 50: There Will Be Blood, Brokeback Mountain, & Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. LOTR is also in my top 50 but they came out more than 5 years ago(time just flies by).

Those are great films.

 

[Johnny Drama]

I completely agree about Seven Samurai. My all time 4th favorite film.

I will co-sign. Not my number 4, but definitely a timeless classic. I am almost horrified to see the remake come to fruition.

I have 3 in my top 50: There Will Be Blood, Brokeback Mountain, & Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. LOTR is also in my top 50 but they came out more than 5 years ago(time just flies by)

And again I will agree with you. There Will Be Blood and Brokeback Mountain are both up there for me as well.

 

[Johnny Drama]

No, I'm just basing it off a book I bought that rated Pans Labyrinth as 23rd best movie of all time. Ridiculous, I know.

What book is this? Please provide a lik. Not that I don't believe you, but I would like to see the rest of their choices if they put Pans Labyrinth as the 23rd best film of all time. Because that is just whacky.

 

[Evil Twin]

I will co-sign. Not my number 4, but definitely a timeless classic. I am almost horrified to see the remake come to fruition.

.

Yeah, I know the feeling. Which is kind of ironic since it's been remade three times; in the west; in space; and with bugs.

 

[CBGB]

What book is this? Please provide a lik. Not that I don't believe you, but I would like to see the rest of their choices if they put Pans Labyrinth as the 23rd best film of all time. Because that is just whacky.

This book.

It's a reasonable list. I could PM you their Top 50 if you would like.

 

[Johnny Drama]

This book.

It's a reasonable list. I could PM you their Top 50 if you would like.

That would be awesome, thanks.

 

[lime]

How can the best movie ever made not be in this pool? Titanic! The movie is the best. Won 11 Oscars, and it's not in the pool?

 

[Wiseman]

How can the best movie ever made not be in this pool? Titanic! The movie is the best. Won 11 Oscars, and it's not in the pool?

I just threw up everywhere

 

[-Arya-]

How can the best movie ever made not be in this pool? Titanic! The movie is the best. Won 11 Oscars, and it's not in the pool?

:facepalm