JCC Amph The JCC's Top 100 Films of All Time Part II: Street Fighter Boogaloo (Now Complete)

Oldboy was on my list, so I'm glad it made the final list. There's just so much to love about that movie. I love the simplicity of its premise; it's a mystery that just instantly grabs you: a guy gets kidnapped and just held prisoner for years and years without ever knowing who or why. Then he's just as mysteriously released and sets out to find out the answers to those questions. It was such a great hook, that I went to see it when an arthouse theater did a revival screening of it a few years after it first came out and, I think, at that time, it was probably both the weirdest movie I'd ever seen and the movie with some of the most extreme violence I'd seen, though it's certainly been outdone in the violence arena since.

The movie just establishes what it is so early, just immediately with that scene of the jumper of the roof of the building right at the start. It's such a funny scene and also really dark and then it leads into Oh Dae-su getting in the elevator and you see a woman standing there and then the camera pans over and you see that he's just plastered himself up against the wall in fear and then the elevator drops and you just hear his scream. I could not stop laughing. Then he walks outside, cool music is playing and the jumper lands on the ******* car behind him. I was just hooked. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. And this is like the first ten minutes. But every scene has something really special in my opinion. The hammer fight is, of course, fantastic, but the movie is just full of fantastic touches; there's that one shot where the film just freezes and then a dotted line is drawn from the hammer to the person he's about to hit with it.

And, man, that lead performance. Everybody in the movie is really perfect, but Choi Min-sik's performance in the lead is just acting on another level. He gives an equally unhinged supporting performance in Lady Vengeance, the follow-up to Oldboy in Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy; if anybody reading this likes Oldboy, but hasn't seen Lady Vengeance, you really must. It's a very different film, stylistically, but it is a beautiful, harrowing movie. Also, must mention Oldboy's score, which people don't talk about enough. Tremendous score. All of the tracks on the soundtrack are named after movies, which is cool.



Lunch is over; I'll be back to give my thoughts on the others shortly.

 

70. Godzilla (1954)
Directed by: Ishirō Honda
29 Points, 2 Votes
Voter comments: I like the Godzilla franchise, but its a real shame that its led to this only being thought of as a monster movie, when the original is so thought provoking and such effective allegory. Amazing score as well. The American recut of the film to make it a generic (if not outright bad) monster movie without depth is one of the worst things done to post-war Japan ~Lowbacca_1977

The best, most serious, and most grounded entry in the franchise, although I will say that 2016's Shin Godzilla gives it a good run for it's money.





69. Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Directed by: Nelson Shin
30 Points, 2 Votes
Voter comments: It saw the end of my Transformers collection and the beginning of a new Transformers collection. My mother was NOT happy ~FatBurt

I've never actually seen this one.





68. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Directed by: Ang Lee
30 Points, 2 Votes
Voter comments: None submitted

"We have a legend. Anyone who dares to jump from the mountain, God will grant his wish. Long ago, a young man's parents were ill, so he jumped. He didn't die. He wasn't even hurt. He floated away, far away, never to return. He knew his wish had come true. If you believe, it will happen. The elders say, "A faithful heart makes wishes come true.""

When that fight in the bamboo forest starts: https://i.imgflip.com/62hcy7.jpg?a466872





67. Toy Story (1995)
Directed by: John Lasseter
31 Points, 3 Votes
Voter comments: None submitted

Remember loving this as a kid, but haven't watched it in ages.





66. No Country for Old Men (2007)
Directed by: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
31 Points, 3 Votes
Voter comments: You know! The one with the coin! This movie actually sucks because it makes it look like Cormac McCarthy is an easily filmable author. It feels so effortless! ~JoinTheSchwarz

"What you got ain't nothin' new. This country's hard on people. You can't stop what's coming. It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity."

Picking a favorite Coen Brothers film is like picking a favorite child, but this easily in the top echelon. Also, while Bardem got most of the attention when this came out, for money, the film's best performance comes from Tommy Lee Jones.

 

Quite happy Excalibur made it. I recall seeing Gene and Ebert review it and they disliked it. Like wtf? It does a great job of conglomerating stories, Excalibur, the sword in the stone, the sword of the Lady of the Lake. A beautiful and mythological movie, legendary. It won't come up on streaming for free. But it's $12.99 for purchase. The music from Wagner fits perfectly.

 

"A dream to some....A NIGHTMARE TO OTHERS"

I love Excalibur so much. So happy it made the list.

 

seen all 5 of these (27/35 so far), and i'd give them all a thumbs up. no country isn't my favorite coen movie, but i agree that it's in the top tier.

 

No Country for Old Men is the first from my list - 12th on my list

For me it's about the connection to the book. I love All The Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road. And All the Pretty Horses has such a terrible movie adaptation. There have been plenty of successful best selling novels that have been completely eclipsed by their film adaptations: Jaws. The Exorcist. But No Country For Old Men has pulled up next to the novel without displacing it.

4 lists
Blues Brothers
Excalibur

3 lists
The Apartment
Do the Right Thing
Kingdom of Heaven
The Matrix
No Country for Old Men
The Thin Man
Toy Story

2 lists
Airplane
Bicycle Thieves
Black Dynamite
Cinema Paradisio
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Django Unchained
Duck Soup
Dune 1984
Full Metal Jacket
Godzilla
Howl's Moving Castle
In the Mood for Love
Little Women2019
Lost in Translation
Malcolm X
Mary Poppins
National Lampoon's Vacation
Network
Oldboy
Parasite
The Phantom Menace
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Superman the Movie
Three Colors: Blue
Transformers: The Movie (1986)
Witness

 

Godzilla
I have shamefully not seen this, but I've always been very curious about it and it's on my to-watch list.

Transformers: The Movie
I think I saw this, but I don't remember much of it. Not something I'd list as a top-20 film.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
is great. I came very close to putting it on my own list.

Toy Story
is a lot of fun.

No Country for Old Men
Is very good. Not my favorite Coen brothers film though.

 

I think people overlook Jones in No Country For Old Men because it’s dismissed as Jones being Jones again. The Marshall from the Fugitive but in a different movie.

There is a lot of nuance that makes it a similar but different character. Jones is billed as the lead in the movie after all.

Jones brings emotion and the consequences of danger to the movie. If I remember correctly he never crossed paths with the other two main characters while they are alive.

He’s a step behind for most of the movie. Not a step behind because he missed something, but because the people he’s looking for have a head start. The entire film he’s getting closer and closer to catching up.

I want Josh Brolin’s character to slow down and get caught so Jones can help him. Jones being know for this type of role helps that in the movie.

It also feels like Jones had scenes with Brolin and Bardem’s characters. The way he interprets crime scene evidence to figure out what happened. And these haunting near misses like the glass of milk or the editing trick at the end when the audience thinks the hotel room isn’t empty.

I like stories where the character is in it the entire time but ultimately doesn’t have much effect on what the end is. There seems to be a reckoning building between Jones, Brolin, and Bardem’s characters. And then jus Jones and Brolin. But it’s not. It never was. I really like that.

Jones character recognizes this and talks about it at the end. It’s a very satisfying ending.

There are probably a dozen movies where Tommy Lee Jones plays a character similar to his suffers no fools full of grit Fugative character. This is arguably his best.

Have any of you seen Man of the House? A mob crime is witnessed by a college sorority. To keep the girls safe until the trial Tommy Lee Jones’s character must begrudgingly live at the sorority house.

It’s a lot like House Bunny but with Tommy Lee Jones.

 

Found the Oldboy scene I was talking about. No spoilers as this happens very early in the movie. But after this happens, you're either on board with the movie or you're not. I was.



Still working on the prior post.

Malcolm X is a real triumph. Washington is fantastic in it and Lee's direction is top notch. I would need to see it again to get super specific as I have only seen it once and it was a long time ago. That "bamboozled" speech scene is just a knock out.

Howl's Moving Castle is not one of my favorite Miyazaki's. It's got a lot of good stuff in it. I'm typically a supporter of the original language version and not the dub, but Jean Simmons' performance as Grandma Sophie is just absolutely fantastic. A lot of people talk about Billy Crystal's Calcifer and I'm less sold on him because he's clearly doing his own thing and not entirely capturing the tone of the original film. But Simmons is amazing. And it does have one of Joe Hisaishi's best scores for Miyazaki . . . hell, it might actually be his best one. Some of themes in this are just so gorgeous. Anyway, it's definitely a thumbs up from me because, you know, Miyazaki and it's got the Scarecrow and the Witch of the Waste and all that. It's still really good. Totoro was the Miyazaki that was the closest to making it on my list though. It's maybe the most plotless of his movies and the most genuinely child-like and so I just find it so wonderful. Spirited Away is a more emotionally mature work than Totoro, but in a good way. It's probably my number two Miyazaki. I'd probably put Kiki and Wind Rises above Howl's Moving Castle as well. There's just something special about all of his movies that I've seen though.

And then I haven't seen Excalibur or Three Colors: Blue. The Three Colors trilogy is a pretty embarrassing blindspot for me.

Seen: 20/30; Thumbs Up: 18; Thumbs Down: 2.

 

Toy Story is a very good movie and a very important movie for the effect it has on movies to follow.

More surprising is that Toy Story 2 is an even better movie. It’s a better movie in the way Empire Strikes Back and The Godfather Part 2 are better because of what the sequel can build on from the already great first movie.

Crazier still the best scene in the Toy Story series could be the ending for Toy Story 3 at the landfill.

 

Personally, I feel that perhaps the number of votes should have had precedence over any inner-list ranking. So, movies in 4 lists should all be above movies in 3 lists and so on.
Or maybe not, actually... I'm torn about this. What is more worthy? Being liked by many people or being whole-heartedly loved by fewer?

 

a hybrid approach with

1 point for 2 lists. 4 points for 3 lists. 8 points for 4 lists...1,099,511,627,776 points for being on 40 lists.

 

I agree that the number of votes should've been more important, in retrospect, but there should be some weighing. Disagreed with your distinction between "liked" and "loved," as it pertains to someone's top-20. Out of the... how many? Movies that everyone has seen, I'm not sure there's all that great a difference between the #1 and the #20 on any given individual's list.

 

Haven’t seen Transformers or No Country for Old Men



Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon… only have seen it once, but do remember rather liking it! 3 1/2 out of 4.



Toy Story… it’s timeless for a reason; will always holdup, and has my 2nd favorite Randy Newman song (take a wild guess as to what’s the first ). 4 out of 4.




Godzilla… the American-ized/Raymond Burr edit does offer it’s own merits (even with the gutting of much of the political subtext, Burr’s character -named Steve Martin - is presented in a good manner, particularly as a friend to Dr. Serizawa), but the original is where it’s at. The atomic/post WWII subtext, yeah, but also the emotional pull*** of Godzilla‘s various attacks, the complicated Dr. Serizawa/Emiko/Ogata relationship & Yamane, despite what it’s brought, wanting the creature to be studied.



***





I mean, goddamn, how can you not feel the emotion there?



Also, the roars…



.



Chilling.


5 out of 4; A+!

 

This is literally why I said we shouldn’t do ranked choice but the conditions were laid out from the jump.

 

Spoiler: boring post

Inner-list ranking might be needed in order to rank movies with the same number of lists.

A movie for each list gets a score increment D = 21 - PositionInList
(1 point for the last, 20 points for the first... I guess that's what Adam did?)

Then, what I had in mind was a bonus B = 20*(L-1) to each movie's score, where L is the number of lists the movie is in.

 

Too much work. You just have people make lists where order doesn’t matter, they get up to five flags, a film gets one point for appearing and four more points if it is flagged, sort by points, ties defer to number of lists.

But it’s too late.

 

Crouching Tiger almost made my list. I saw it twice in the cinema and a number of times on DVD/Blu-ray (unfortunately the subtitles are not the same as in the theatrical release) and rate it very highly. The sword fight between Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang is one of the best ever, imo. Great film.

Toy Story is something that everyone likes, and I’m no different.

No Country is well done but I don’t really like it.

I’ve not seen Godzilla and Transformers.

 

What do you know stuff about math or something???

 

It’s honestly not a mathematically sophisticated proposal and would probably lead to a lot of annoying alphabetical sort ties. But I do think it’s a quick and dirty way of making it very “risky” from an aggregate list perspective to devalue your true favorites, in a manner that wouldn’t take a lot of thinking by participants or hosts. Controversially and conversely, it also severely undervalues weak consensus - if ten people think Movie X is good enough to list, but not to flag, it won’t make it as high as Movie Y if three people absolutely love the latter, a system that some people really would not like. Mind you, there is provably no optimal system of voting, so, y’know, life sucks.

 

Thumbs up for No Country, Toy Story, and Godzilla. Haven’t seen Crouching Tiger or Transformers.

Spoiler

1. In the Mood for Love
2. The Thin Man
3. The Apartment
4. Parasite
5. Bicycle Thieves
6. The Blues Brothers
7. No Country for Old Men
8. Witness
9. Airplane!
10. Cinema Paradiso
11. Network
12. Do the Right Thing
13. Lost in Translation
14. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
15. Kingdom of Heaven: Director's Cut
16. Toy Story
17. Django Unchained
18. Malcolm X
19. Godzilla
20. Full Metal Jacket
21. The Matrix
22. Duck Soup
23. Mary Poppins
24. Excalibur

1. Oldboy
2. Black Dynamite
3. Little Women
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
5. Superman: The Movie
6. National Lampoon's Vacation
7. Three Colors: Blue
8. Howl's Moving Castle
9. Dune
10. The Serpent and the Rainbow
11. Transformers: The Movie

 

So based on the chatter in this thread, I watched Network tonight. I think I understood what it was trying to say while also attempting to be entertaining. While I was engaged at first, I actually started to get a little bored towards the middle and it never pulled me back in. I appreciate the movie not focusing entirely on the character of Howard Beale and again attempting to entertain with the side story of Diana and Max. I understood the lesson there, but I didn't find it specifically profound. As for the movie as a while, its message was maybe more profound back in 1976, but now, in 2023, I guess it's just sad that a lot of what the movie pointed out is still happening today.

Props to Ned Beatty for his character's big scene in the board room with just him and Beale. I've only ever seen him as the bumbling Otis in Superman The Movie so to see him knock a scene out of the park was very cool.

IMO, I suppose I see the appeal of this movie but I don't see myself revisiting it or wanting to show my wife it or putting it on any top X list. I guess it's finally nice to know where "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" actually comes from.

 

Best of this batch is No Country for Old Men which is probably my pick for best Coen Brothers movie which I think is kind of a perfect movie. I remember watching it one Friday evening and then going back the very next day and watching it Saturday afternoon. I think it's just a fantastic script and I get that it's based on a book, but adaptation is also hard. I like the way it subverts the roles that you expect. I like the way the Josh Brolin character in particular is handled; I really love the slow fade on that final shot of him at the pool. It's just . . . the sins of the flesh, you know? All the performances are great. I do think Javier Bardem is chillingly good; it was rightfully a star-making performance and one that hasn't lost it's power even after it's been parodied. It's hard to compare Bardem to Jones because they're such different characters and different performances, but I think I would agree with Adam that Jones gives the best performance in the movie; it's absolutely the best performance of his career. That final monologue is . . . amazing.

Toy Story is fantastic. It's hard to pick a favorite Pixar. Inside Out is the one that I put on my list, but you could make a case for a half-dozen (or a full-dozen maybe) others and Toy Story is one of them. Pixar already having it this figured out with their first movie is kind of insane. They're already doing two of the things that always elevate their films. 1. Casting that's so good "perfect" doesn't even begin to describe it. 2. A central pair of opposed characters to bounce off of each other. I mean, look at Inside Out, the one I put on my list. It has those exact two same things going for it. Tom Hanks and Tim Allen are just both absolutely brilliant here and there's a reason that Woody and Buzz remain so iconic; they're really well-written characters. Toy Story has poignancy, of course, but it is also just gut-bustingly funny when Woody and Buzz are butting heads. I find the idea of a toy that doesn't know he's a toy to be particularly brilliant and Allen just nails it.

Then Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which I really do owe a revisit. I suspect I would love it even more, but, even with some of my memories faded, I do love it. The action is spectacular and I think both Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-fat give really layered and excellent performances. And, yeah, I used to the own the soundtrack. Didn't everyone?

Godzilla and Transformers: The Movie I haven't seen. So, that's three more thumbs up for this batch.

Seen: 23/35; Thumbs Up: 21; Thumbs Down: 2.

I was really scratching my head trying to figure out what word you had starred out there. All I could come up with was "pullass" and that really wasn't making sense to me.