I recently became friends with this 56-year-old man and we’re having a movie night tomorrow together. He wants to show me the “trio” of the greatest movies ever made: The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption & Casablanca. Haven’t seen any of those (probably cause of my age: almost 22). For me the 3 greatest movies ever are Titanic, Lord of the Rings 2003 & Spirited Away. Wondering what those are for you.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Interstellar
Dune (2021)
Dumb and dumber, Jurassic Park, the matrix. In no order.
I really like some mentioned so far, so just throwing in one of my picks:
Apocalypse Now
Spirited Away
Yojimbo
The Day of Wrath The Sacrifice The Conformist
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Airplane!
Spirited Away
Spaceballs
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Airplane!
Spaceballs over Blazing Saddles?
Legend of the Drunken Master
Princess Mononoke
Sinister
This is almost an impossible ask unless we at least split it up by genre. How do you compare The Princess Bride to Airplane! to The Shawshank Redemption to Die Hard to Star Wars? All 5 amazing movies but wildly different, each would top the lists in their respective genres but which are the top 3?
Fight Club
Snatch
Grumpy Old Men
The Princess Bride, Requiem For A Dream, and Hot Fuzz.
I usually won’t rewatch a movie I’ve already seen, but I make exceptions for these ones.
You can rewatch Requiem for a Dream!?
Blazing Saddles - Best comedy
Alien - Best horror
Predator - Best action movie
What makes them the greatest is I have watched them dozens of times and enjoy them every single time. There are movies that don’t come to mind that have more technical execution or better acting, but each one of these just nails what it was going for in a way that makes every single scene engaging and satisfying.
Special mention: Hardcore Henry - Greatest video game adaptation
Artistically, I’d say:
- Cloud Atlas
- The Fall
- Pans Labyrinth
For Epics, I’d say:
- Lord of the Rings Trilogy
- Kingdom of Heaven
- Seven Samurai
For Comedies:
- Airplane!
- Home Alone
- Naked Gun
- Hot Fuzz
Super Hero Movies:
- Logan
- Batman: The Dark Knight
- Batman vs. Superman (The Snyder Cut)
Animated:
- Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse
- Spirited Away
- Beauty and the Beast
- Akira
Horror:
- Alien(s)
- The Shining
- The Thing
- Psycho
Honorable Mention:
- Oh Brother Where art thou
- Fargo (the TV series is great too!)
- Django Unchained
- Pulp Fiction
- Dunkirk
- Inglorious Basterds
- Dial M for Murder
- North by Northwest
- Wild Strawberries
(I’m sorry, I love movies)
My top 3 best (but not favorite) movies:
- Rear Window
- The Thing (1981)
- Singin’ In The Rain
This is hard. In the discussion:
- Vertigo
- RoboCop (1987)
- Alien
- Back to the Future
- Schindler’s List
- The Empire Strikes Back
- Toy Story
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- The Silence of the Lambs
- Blue Velvet
- It’s A Wonderful Life
- The Lion King (1994)
- The Iron Giant
- so, so many more I need to watch or rewatch or just can’t think of right now
Good call on your picks, all three masterpieces, and two of the three your friend picked definitely qualify. Shawshank is a fine movie but doesn’t belong among the greatest films ever made, imo. I think it just played on TV constantly in the late 90s and early 00s so people have affection for it.
I am about 40 years old, for context.
To pay tribute to the late director, David Lynch, I finally got around to watching Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and The Straight Story.
The Straight Story was an homage to the American Midwest, and despite being as slow as the protagonists method of transportation, kept my interest throughout.
Mulholland Drive had some brilliant acting, some amazing scenes, and really left a lasting impact on me. Most notably, I was left saying “WTF?”
While Blue Velvet is like a crime drama with Camp turned up to 11. Had some great scenes, and was interesting, but some of the acting choices and dialogue were bewildering to me. (“It’s time to FUCK! Let’s FUCK!” comes to mind lol)
Mullholland Drive is fucking fantastic and I almost put it on the list over Blue Velvet. I’m sure this will forever be debated by film nerds as long film nerds continue to exist. There’s something about that heightened, unreal 80’s vibe in Blue Velvet, plus what a fuckin’ cast. I also like the “dark side of a quaint small town” theme, which reminds me of his work in Twin Peaks a bit, where Mullholland Drive feels more like he’s expressing more a criticism(?) of the place Hollywood occupies in the cultural consciousness. I’m a sucker for a suburban dystopia, it feels more relatable. Ultimately though, Mullholland Drive feels like a second take on the same kind of ideas, and it’s glossier and more plotty, but I personally I like the smaller, more raw version. Lynch was a master of the medium and almost all of his films are either outright masterpieces or at least incredibly artistic curiosities.
LOTR (full trilogy is one movie as far as i am concerned)
Blues Brothers (musical)
Spaceballs (Sci-Fi Comedy)
Hot Fuzz
Shaun of the Dead
Snatch
Those I can just watch over and over, so those are mine. There are better movies out there, but if I can watch them that frequently, then that’s my qualifier I guess.
Runners up: LOTR (honestly they are #1, 2 and 3, but that’s cheating), The Fith Element, Spirited Away, Back to the Future, Heat, Dune (not that one), Saving Private Ryan, Akira, Terminator 2, Princess Bride, Dancer in the Dark, Tombstone, The Sound of Music, The Matrix, Monty Python (Grail and Brian), Naked Gun, Harry Potter series. I guess some of the Star Wars movies, maybe the unadulterated originals and Rogue One.
Worst: Sausage Party (it’s so bad it makes any other movie good)
