To me it has to be The Godfather.

Now to be fair I have a distinction between greatest movie ever and best or most fun movie ever, just like I do in boxing (Muhammad Ali the greatest, Sugar Ray Robinson the best and Arturo Gatti the most fun)

E.T., Avatar and Jurassic Park have to be among the best and most fun movies ever, The Craft and Pretty Woman also get serious consideration in the latter category.

The Godfather, The Godfather dos and Rocky numero uno are the Greatest movie contenders to me, The Godfather one the leading contender

Yours?

Close. It’s GoodFellas. To me, it just doesn’t get any better.

The most FUN movie of all time, however, where you knew the entire cast had a blast filming it and you wish you could have been part of it because they’re all so damned likeable and you wanted to be friends with all of them once it was over? Cannonball Run.

EA CO AS wrote:

Close. It’s GoodFellas. To me, it just doesn’t get any better.

The most FUN movie of all time, however, where you knew the entire cast had a blast filming it and you wish you could have been part of it because they’re all so damned likeable and you wanted to be friends with all of them once it was over? Cannonball Run.

GoodFellas to me is a contender too...

Cannonball Run was very funny!

If there is one movie that I tell people that they have to watch, Goodfellas hands down.

Shawshank Redemption for the best, followed by Shaving Ryan’s Privates (may have gotten the title slightly wrong) and Battle of Britain.

But the one movie I can watch over and over again is The 5th Element. Anything Luc Besson works for me, but “The 5th” is his masterpiece in my mind.

B777LRF wrote:

Shaving Ryan’s Privates .

Saving Private Ryan?

AntonioMartin wrote:

B777LRF wrote:

Shaving Ryan’s Privates .

Saving Private Ryan?

Jokes cease to be funny when you have to explain them ...

ACDC8 wrote:

If there is one movie that I tell people that they have to watch, Goodfellas hands down.

To me among gangster movies:
1. Godfather
2. Goodfellas
3. Godfather 2
4. Casino

All were awesome.

Sidenote: I was dating a woman at the time when The Craft came out, who was "Nancy Downs" come to life both in hotness and in her goth-wicca way of dressing. After the movie, I got into the entire goth style myself lol...

B777LRF wrote:

AntonioMartin wrote:

B777LRF wrote:

Shaving Ryan’s Privates .

Saving Private Ryan?

Jokes cease to be funny when you have to explain them ...

Well I just thought that sounded too much like a porn movie!

AntonioMartin wrote:

1. Godfather
2. Goodfellas
3. Godfather 2
4. Casino

Not that I have anything against the Godfather or Godfather 2, both were absolute brilliant - but I just prefer Scorsese's take on mob movies. The Irishman and A Bronx Tale were also incredibly good.

No idea why The Irishman gets so much hate, Joe Pesci's performance alone is beyond profound - a complete 180 of his usual mob roles and he pulled if off the way only Pesci can. He was menacing as Tommy DeVito and as Nicky Santoro but as Russel Bufalino - menacing to the tee.

AntonioMartin wrote:

B777LRF wrote:

Shaving Ryan’s Privates .

Saving Private Ryan?

Tell me you don't watch porn without telling me.

This should be a whole other thread - proper film titles and their porn film rip-offs.

For me personally, 2001 has to be near the top, along with Apocalypse Now.

Sight and Sound Magazine just released their "Greatest film of all time" survey for 2022. They only conduct this survey every ten years.
1 - Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
2 - Vertigo
3 - Citizen Kane (previous No. 1)
4 - Tokyo Story
5 - In the Mood for Love
6 - 2001: A Space Odyssey
7 - Beau travail
8 - Mulholland Drive.
9 - Man with a Movie Camera
10 - Singing in the Rain

The Godfather comes in at 12
Taxi Driver in at 29
Psycho in at =31
North by Northwest (my personal favourite film ever) =45

https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/ ... s-all-time

Probably surprising for many, only one film made in the last 20 years makes to top 50.

Yes, The Godfather Saga is #1

What makes a movie truly “the greatest”?

The original Star Wars would have to take the title of the most influential, or most ground breaking. It changed movies, the movie making business and really the nature of popular entertainment forever. And how mind blowing must the original have been? Here’s a clip on YouTube of a sound recording from a screening of the original Star Wars in 1977. When Han saves Luke in the Trench Run people got up in the theatre and cheered! I’ve been going to movies since the 90s and have never experienced a movie that has made the crowd do that.

https://youtu.be/PzRveOGMflo

Of the other films that could be ranked the greatest? There’s probably many contenders, so I went through IMDB’s Top 250 list and chose the movies I’d rewatch again and again:

The Shawshank Redemption
Goodfellas
Back to the Future
LA Confidential
Rush
Platoon
Hotel Rwanda
Catch Me If You Can
Gran Torino
V For Vendetta
Downfall
Heat
Schindler’s List
The Matrix
The Silence of the Lambs

Best adventure with good acting: Force 10 from Navarone (sp).
Best comedy anyone, regardless of language, can enjoy: Mister Hulot's Holiday.
Same, and you get to see some really GREAT US-made cars from the 1950s: Mon Oncle.
Best comedy done well on what was probably a small budget: The Man in the White Suit.
Best airplane-in-trouble movie EVER: The High and the Mighty. Adder: amazing theme song (signature tune).

Mulholland Drive

Surely being a member of A.net the best movie has to be Airplane. I have to watch the uncut version every couple of years. ( And don't call me Shirley)
Also I'm only giving him a few more minutes and I'm out of here.

Best Christmas movie
Christmas Story

2nd best comedy
Mars Attacks
Honorable mentions to Animal House and Blue Brothers

AntonioMartin wrote:

To me it has to be The Godfather.

EA CO AS wrote:

Close. It’s GoodFellas. To me, it just doesn’t get any better.

It's strange how movies about such despicable human beings are so celebrated.

I read the book that Goodfellas was based on ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiseguy_(book) ) and a whole lot of books about the Mafia in New York as well as Whitey Bulger's set of thieves and murderers here in Boston.

They give you a much better sense of what "the life" really is like.

To do one crime (for instance to kill someone) you need some partners i.e. accomplices. Yet once that crime is done these partners become liabilities since they know you did it and can rat you out, so now you need to murder them too. And so it goes, murders 1 triggers murder 2 which triggers murder N, and people looking over their shoulder because they know they could be the next one to be whacked so they too join in the game and start whacking the people they're afraid of. What a life!

These people add nothing to society, in fact they are a large negative drain on society, and after reading a few books about their lives, I can no longer watch these kinds of movies.

Another unpopular take. I watched "The Sopranos" for the first time recently since I didn't have HBO back in the day yet I was on a DL flight and it was there on the IFE, and it was underwhelming. I was told it was "great" because the writing was so good, but, nope, the writing wasn't great at all, IMO.

The device of using a therapist to drive along the plot line was pretty uninspired and transparent, IMO. Even with this device the main plot lines dragged on and on, and minor plot lines appeared then disappeared without resolution.

The show had a lot of "sizzle" back in the day because it showed naked strippers and (simulated) oral sex, and the characters were flamboyant. I get it, I grew up in the New York media sphere of influence and knew a lot of Italian Americans, they have a lot of flamboyant gestures and phrases and many know how to dress well. I can see how some Italian Americans felt celebrated by the movie, but, meh, it's a bunch of gangsters running a strip club or a "waste management" firm and plotting to murder each other because that's their go-to problem resolution move.

I can tell you based on what I've read and a few personal experiences the real thing ain't anything like what it is portrayed in these movies and show, there is very little glamour involved. It's a bunch of people living a life of thievery and murder, knowing they are one step away from being killed by their enemies or even by people who they think of as their friends.

Revelation wrote:

AntonioMartin wrote:

To me it has to be The Godfather.

EA CO AS wrote:

Close. It’s GoodFellas. To me, it just doesn’t get any better.

It's strange how movies about such despicable human beings are so celebrated.

I read the book that Goodfellas was based on ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiseguy_(book) ) and a whole lot of books about the Mafia in New York as well as Whitey Bulger's set of thieves and murderers here in Boston.

They give you a much better sense of what "the life" really is like.

To do one crime (for instance to kill someone) you need some partners i.e. accomplices. Yet once that crime is done these partners become liabilities since they know you did it and can rat you out, so now you need to murder them too. And so it goes, murders 1 triggers murder 2 which triggers murder N, and people looking over their shoulder because they know they could be the next one to be whacked so they too join in the game and start whacking the people they're afraid of. What a life!

These people add nothing to society, in fact they are a large negative drain on society, and after reading a few books about their lives, I can no longer watch these kinds of movies.

Another unpopular take. I watched "The Sopranos" for the first time recently since I didn't have HBO back in the day yet I was on a DL flight and it was there on the IFE, and it was underwhelming. I was told it was "great" because the writing was so good, but, nope, the writing wasn't great at all, IMO.

The device of using a therapist to drive along the plot line was pretty uninspired and transparent, IMO. Even with this device the main plot lines dragged on and on, and minor plot lines appeared then disappeared without resolution.

The show had a lot of "sizzle" back in the day because it showed naked strippers and (simulated) oral sex, and the characters were flamboyant. I get it, I grew up in the New York media sphere of influence and knew a lot of Italian Americans, they have a lot of flamboyant gestures and phrases and many know how to dress well. I can see how some Italian Americans felt celebrated by the movie, but, meh, it's a bunch of gangsters running a strip club or a "waste management" firm and plotting to murder each other because that's their go-to problem resolution move.

I can tell you based on what I've read and a few personal experiences the real thing ain't anything like what it is portrayed in these movies and show, there is very little glamour involved. It's a bunch of people living a life of thievery and murder, knowing they are one step away from being killed by their enemies or even by people who they think of as their friends.

Ok Rev, but what’s your fave movie of all time?

Silence of the Lambs is a favorite for me

Aaron747 wrote:

Ok Rev, but what’s your fave movie of all time?

Easy to answer, since "fave" is quite subjective, "greatest of all time" suggests one needs to be more sensitive to what others value.

My fave movie is Contact. Jodie Foster, Matthew McCoaughey. Based on a novel by Carl Sagan. Plot line explores the boundaries of science and technology vs religion in relation to extraterrestrial intelligence. Has lots of plot twists, and you get to see Jodie Foster's boobies too! One of my other hobbies, ham radio, makes an appearance early on. What more could you ask for? Maybe some airliners?

The Arroways' amateur radio station that young Ellie uses is authentic and period-appropriate. The radio is a Collins KWM-2A, generally regarded as the "Cadillac" of ham radio transceivers of its day, with matching speaker to the right. The Morse Code key visible on the table is a Vibroplex Semi-Automatic "Bug" model. Introduced in 1905 and still being manufactured, it is notable for having a clever weight-and-spring mechanism that allows the operator to send a string of "dits" by pressing and holding the lever to the "dit" side, rather than having to press it repeatedly, allowing for faster sending of code. However, it requires some practice and skill to fully exploit this capability. A couple of older radios are shown behind Ellie's dad when he sits in the corner and gives her the clue of "orange juice" for the location of Pensacola. The lower of the two (black and silver in color) is one of the Hallicrafters SX-62 receiver series, manufactured from 1949 into the mid-1960s. Featuring frequency coverage of 540 kHz to 109 MHz, it was one of the earliest radios to include the ability to receive the FM Broadcast band along with AM Broadcast and shortwave bands. The unit in the movie appears to have had its volume knob (the leftmost of the five visible knobs) replaced with a larger, non-standard knob. The original would match the other four knobs in size and general appearance.

Ref: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/trivia/

Loving the love for Martin Scorsese here, he was one of the best but I think his best work was Taxi Driver. As a honorable mention I think Stephen King has to be there. Christine, Firestarter, Cujo, It, Misery, Pet Cemetary etc.

NIKV69 wrote:

As a honorable mention I think Stephen King has to be there. Christine, Firestarter, Cujo, It, Misery, Pet Cemetary etc.

Shawshank was also based on Steven King's work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shawshank_Redemption

For me it's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Every single performance in that movie was amazing. Nicholson won best actor and his may have been the least convincing role. All the patients were totally believable and what more can you say about Luise Fletcher's performance except outstanding?

Another one I rate very high, although it's a very "dark" movie is Taxi Driver. Deniro made me believe was Travis Bickle, not just an actor playing a role.

AntonioMartin wrote:

ACDC8 wrote:

If there is one movie that I tell people that they have to watch, Goodfellas hands down.

To me among gangster movies:
1. Godfather
2. Goodfellas
3. Godfather 2
4. Casino

All were awesome.

Sidenote: I was dating a woman at the time when The Craft came out, who was "Nancy Downs" come to life both in hotness and in her goth-wicca way of dressing. After the movie, I got into the entire goth style myself lol...

Don't forget Donnie Brasco in that list!

Fugghetaboutit.

Revelation wrote:

Aaron747 wrote:

Ok Rev, but what’s your fave movie of all time?

Jodie Foster's boobies

Ref: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118884/trivia/[/quote]
Prosthetic boobies probably.

Nevertheless...I mean, yeah!

scbriml wrote:

AntonioMartin wrote:

B777LRF wrote:

Shaving Ryan’s Privates .

Saving Private Ryan?

Tell me you don't watch porn without telling me. :lol.

You got me, boss!

Revelation wrote:

NIKV69 wrote:

As a honorable mention I think Stephen King has to be there. Christine, Firestarter, Cujo, It, Misery, Pet Cemetary etc.

Shawshank was also based on Steven King's work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shawshank_Redemption

I'm a huge fan of Stephen King, as far as screen adaptations go, its always a hit and miss. Movies like Shawshank, Green Mile, Stand By Me, The Shining, Dr. Sleep, Misery and the new IT were great - other adaptations ranged from "meh" to just God awful. 1922 was another good adaptation.

Going against the flow here, my favorite (war) movie is Blackhawk Down. Great movie with a great cast, but also shows the futileness and pointlessness of war even when a superpower is involved. But excellent in showing the bravery of all involved in the battle.

No love for Kelly's Heroes?

Ummm.... am I seriously the 31st post in this thread and am the first person to mention Casablanca...?

Surprised that no one has mentioned Schindler's List or The Dirty Dozen yet.

cjg225 wrote:

Ummm.... am I seriously the 31st post in this thread and am the first person to mention Casablanca...?

Nor Gone with the Wind.

It is all very subjective but none of my personal favourites have appeared so far:

Bridge on the River Kwai
Lawrence of Arabia
Battle of the River Plate
Dr Zhivago
Pulp Fiction
The English Patient

scbriml wrote:

Sight and Sound Magazine just released their "Greatest film of all time" survey for 2022. They only conduct this survey every ten years.
1 - Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Out of curiosity, and having nothing better to do on a wet Saturday in December, I watched this the other day, all 3h 20mins of it . It's a bit of a slog, but strangely, you kind-of get into it after the first two hours, and by that stage it's even vaguely mesmerising. Is it the best film of all time? Not by a long shot, but it is interesting, and probably unique. Something to watch when you really, really, really, really, really have nothing else to do . . .

As for favourites, mine would have to be Ron Fricke's Samsara, followed by his Baracka. I could watch them over and over and over again.

for me -

Godfather, Godfather II, Silence of the Lambs, Casino, Goodfellas, Ghostbusters, Sideways, Lord of the Rings trilogy

Dr. Strangelove holds a pretty strong 1st place for me.

These days the only major filmmaker making anything worth watching is Wes Anderson.

It is hard to say ever, because there are good movies for different genres.

I would say Shawshank Redemption ranks among the highest on my rewatchability list.

johns624 wrote:

No love for Kelly's Heroes?

Certainly in the discussion for greatest opening of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA9581o27uA

Tombstone is worthy of an honourable mention.

M564038 wrote:

Dr. Strangelove holds a pretty strong 1st place for me.

These days the only major filmmaker making anything worth watching is Wes Anderson.

Oh yea agree Dr. Stranglove !!!!

ER757 wrote:

For me it's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Every single performance in that movie was amazing. Nicholson won best actor and his may have been the least convincing role. All the patients were totally believable and what more can you say about Luise Fletcher's performance except outstanding?

Another one I rate very high, although it's a very "dark" movie is Taxi Driver. Deniro made me believe was Travis Bickle, not just an actor playing a role.

Love One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, agreed about the actors

Movies when on I always watch:

Goodfellas
Christmas Vacation
The Shawshank Redemption
Groundhog Day
Singles (best movie soundtrack ever!)

Honorable mentions:

Scarface, Casino, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, Mars Attacks (ACK ACK) !

STT757 wrote:

Movies when on I always watch:

My list has Unforgiven on it.

Great star power: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris.

Very introspective look at the whole genre of the "Western" movie, something I grew up with.

Extremely violent, but it's not gratuitous violence, it's there to make a point that the "heros" of Westerns actually lead an empty life, just like mobsters in the modern world.

Starship Troopers. If you know, you know.

The problem with defining greatest movie has to do with definition of greatest.
The era in which the movie was made has to be taken into account.
Many movies are propagandistic (if thats even a real word) and exploit good acting over poor plot to make a commentary on current values. Some even attempt to have a plot and good acting.
Spaghetti Westerns are 60 years old but probably led the way for good music making up for periods with absence of plot.
The Lord of the Rings series is pitiful in plot and detail compared to the books but has better music.
Jaws the book was written to elicit sympathy for the plight of misunderstood sharks whereas Jaws the film was almost the advertising posterboy for sharkfin soup.
I find that it's rare when a flm is better than the book it's based on. This may be atributable to the fact that a good book is intended to last days whereas a movie has typically 1hr30 to express a lifetime or just to help people forget how much of their life they spend being ordinary.
Don't even start about the later Matrix and John Wick films where you can go and have a few games of billiards while waiting for the tedious fight scenes (about 60% of the movie) to end.
Although, courtesy of Amazon, I have come across possibly the worst film I have watched this year: Bruce Willis and the Chinese Air Force. The acting is pure primary school nativity play. Unless this film was intended to be a tribute to 1930's propaganda films it's lacking plot, acting, good effects and good music
That said Dr Strangelove is a good commentary on historical insecurity, Groundhog Day points the Monty Pythonesque question "But what is it all abour really?"

Revelation wrote:

STT757 wrote:

Movies when on I always watch:

My list has Unforgiven on it.

Great star power: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, Richard Harris.

Very introspective look at the whole genre of the "Western" movie, something I grew up with.

Extremely violent, but it's not gratuitous violence, it's there to make a point that the "heros" of Westerns actually lead an empty life, just like mobsters in the modern world.

Yes, high on my list as well. The "good guys" weren't really good (they were assassins after all) and the "bad guy" wasn't altogether bad - he was a sheriff trying to prevent a hit on someone. There werea lot of gray areas as far as high moral ground in that one, something very rarely seen in westerns.

Die Hard 1 (2 is also good but not quite the greatest of all time), Terminator 2, Back to the future, the empire strikes back.

Arion640 wrote:

Die Hard 1

And since we're in December, it's a good time to remind everyone that Die Hard is the greatest Christmas movie of all time.