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I think the cinematography is pretty special in The Parallax View. Some of the shots really have a 'Mondian Art' aesthetic with the uses of the various rectangular structures. In some ways this films feels like a precursor to The International where the various buildings dwarf the individuals...

If your cable package included the MGM channel back around five or so years ago (not the current MGM+ offering) this film would surface every month or so. - Walter.

With the knowledge that no list is going to please all the people all the time... Not a bad list by any means, but I was a bit surprised at the absence of A Clockwork Orange and The Last Picture Show. On the other hand I was pleased to see Vanishing Point make the list. One of my favorites...

Prior to 1968 three films standout (for me) in the visual domain. Ranked in order: 1) Forbidden Planet - Mostly for the production design, particularly the various remnants of the Krell technology on Altair IV. 2) This Island Earth - Once again production design, in the second half of the...

Those films are all solid choices, I was drawn to The Day The Earth Stood Still for its relevance during the early days of society's living in the shadow of the Atom Bomb. I realize it was an 'off the top of your head' style list, but to that list I would add Them! which is probably my number...

1950's - The Day The Earth Stood Still 1960's - 2001: A Space Odyssey 1970's - Alien 1980's - Blade Runner 1990's - The Matrix 2000's - Children of Men 2010's - Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - Walter.

It is a solid list of films. One thing that jumps out at me is the almost complete absence of Westerns, with only McCabe and Mrs. Miller at #17 (which is described by some as an "anti-western") - Walter.

One of the real pleasures of revisiting films is re-imaging that initial theatrical experience, sometimes good and sometimes bad. I can remember a lot of my theatrical experiences and they are about 99% positive. (Most of what follows I've posted previously, so apologies.) One of the first...

When I was (much) younger I tended to follow stars more than directors. Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and Jean-Claude Van Damme were pretty much guaranteed to get me to the theater whenever a new film came out featuring that performer. Sequels and certain franchises (Star Wars and James...

A few opinions... While the marketing and delivery of films has evolved in response to technological and societal changes, human nature is relatively unchanged. I believe that a lot of the factors that account for audiences following "stars" are still in play in terms of identification and...

All solid choices. Given her interest in graphic novels with likely horror elements I would recommend Sunset Blvd. considering its visual elements and cinematography or Vertigo given the psychological aspects of the film's protagonist. Always nice to hear that younger folks are embracing some...

Most definitely SF. For me, the exploration of change in society or culture due to invention or technological change is one of the strongest defining attributes of SF in the arts. Imagining the changes to criminal justice and the politicization of those changes due to the creation of the...

I'd suggest that any film that achieves a large initial box office return is not a cult film regardless of its current status in popular culture. I would argue that films such as any of the Star Wars franchise features or Smokey and the Bandit are the antithesis of cult due to their popularity...

Dumped my VHS tapes. (Pretty much everything I had on tape has been supplanted by LD/DVD/Blu-Ray). Even though I don't currently have an LD player setup in my HT rack you'll have to pry my LD collection from my cold, dead, fingers. - Walter.

Absolutely. If you look at the roles that actors like Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart have taken on in recent years, I have no doubt in my mind that the financial security that the Twilight franchise provided for them has enabled them to take on more esoteric (at least in some cases)...

One additional factor to consider is the creative talent behind the film. Filmmakers like Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, and Denis Villeneuve (for instance) have very strong visions for their films that will make this much less of a factor. Now people may be looking over...

I tend to think of Westerns more in terms of aesthetics vs. themes. The themes of exploration and settlement tend to be associated with the Western. Of course this is often associated with films exploring historical (non American West) or SF genres; so it isn't unique to the Western. The...

BTW, before someone points out the apparent contradiction in my previous two posts... :) A) Outland is a Western set in space. B) Westerns are largely defined by the settings and era. I think Outland, due to its strong story resemblance to High Noon, overrides considerations of settings and...

To be honest it has been way too long since I've seen Seven Samurai to really comment upon it, but I am pretty familiar with The Magnificent Seven. Maybe both films are adventures in different settings. I do believe that different genres can be defined in different ways. Westerns are defined...

Yes, but the SF component of the story (pre-cognitive abilities and the ramifications of how that would affect law enforcement) is the fundamental point of the film. It is much more than simply a trapping. One of the defining examples of SF is the exploration of societal changes due to the...

Science Fiction is a very subjective concept. To quote Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it". Personally I believe that SF is more conceptual and that a lot of what passes for SF is merely 'dressed up' with the props associated with the genre. Star Wars is kind of a grab bag of genres -...

It is such an open ended question that there are simply too many to list, but I will name one individual. For my money, maybe the best actor working these days is Oscar Isaac. These are kind of the same question in some ways. The easy answer is Paul Newman who is arguably my favorite actor...

My $0.02... The Empire Strikes Back is a great film and is arguably the best film in the franchise. It offered up a glimpse of what the Star Wars series could have become, adult oriented galaxy spanning space opera that achieved some measure of emotional resonance. The more juvenile aspects...

Essentially reposting what I said in the Thor trailer thread... I am not overly thrilled about Portman coming back to the franchise, but only because I never was sold on the relationship between Thor and Jane Foster. As noted in the other thread, the dynamic will probably be different this...

I sort of wonder what a Science Fiction film from Tarantino would look like. (?) I know he was associated with Star Trek at some point but this did not materialize. Probably not the right choice for that franchise, as I would not associate Trek with a potentially hard R film. - Walter.

The '70s and to a lesser extent the '80s dominate my 'formative' years as a film enthusiast so a lot of my revisits are to that period. (Just watched the director's edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture earlier today, so there you go. :) ) I have a lot of love for the period of film making...

In retrospect, I think part of the reason that my '77 list was shorter was that Star Wars took up a lot of my theatrical viewings that year. Easily the most repeat theatrical viewings for me of any film. On to 1976... Taxi Driver - Simply a great film. Loved the gritty street milieu that...

Continuing with 1977... This is a shorter list. I didn't see a lot of films this particular year and there are some highly regarded films that I have still not seen to this day and some that simply did not resonate with me. Anyway, for what it is worth... Star Wars - I've previously posted...

Well, the 1970s is for me, and a lot of other folks one of the best decades for films, period. No other qualifiers required. My 1978 list (to keep this going) looks like this... The Deer Hunter - Looking back on this film, I am not quite as enamored as I was in 1978, but it retains the top...

I suppose it depends upon how broadly you define the criteria. While there were a few obvious franchise / sequels during the '60 and '70s; most notably Jame Bond; if you look at Hollywood's past there were a lot of pairings of individuals which constituted quasi franchises (at least to me)...