Ok..it is the same movie I'm thinking of! I saw it when I was young, but I liked it for some odd reason! I found it to be very metaphoric!

I can think of a few James Bond female villans who are better. I'm betting Typhoid Mary in Elektra will be better. Ursa from Superman 2 was better. Mystique from X-men is better. Lady Deathstrike from X2 is better. Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct is better. Jason's mom in Friday the 13th? Elle Driver in Kill Bill? Both Jessica Walter in Play Misty for Me and Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? I guess there are many that I see as better, as far as my definition of a good villianess goes, but to each their own.

Oh oops. I meant for comic turn movie villainesses. If we're gonna open it up to all the femme fatales, than Barabar Stanwick, Lana Turner, Linda Fiorentino, and Kathleen Turner are all up there. I don't think Mystique from X-men is all that breat. She's just a pawn, never calls her own shots, and just runs around looking kinda serpentile. Deathstrike had like two minutes in X2. All she did was fight. No sign of brains or personality.

Oh yeah...Glenn Close in Dangerous Liasons takes the cake. (but I haven't gotten there yet on my list). :wink:

Yesh. Hackman should have won Best Actor for that.

I've seen most of those movies on the second list, even The Red Balloon! I haven't yet seen The Bad Seed, Ran, or My Twentieth Century. I LOVED TGTBATU, Better off Dead, and L.A. Confidential. I'm not crazy about the Red Balloon.

I was just giving you the business. I knew what you meant.

I'll miss doing things like that when I retire?

What are you retiring from?

Okay, #s 21-30, in no particular order:

Pirates of the Caribbean (2003)
Strictly Ballroom (1992/Australia)
The Sweet Hereafter (1997/Canada)
Dangerous Liaisons(1988)
Adaptation (2002)
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1990)
Chinatown (1974)
Color Trilogy: Red (1994/France)
Spirited Away (2001/Japan)
Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Too tired to write a lot right now, so I'll just give my grades.

Dead Man - 7/10
Batman Returns - 7/10
Chicago - 8/10
L.A. Confidential - 9.5/10
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - 9/10
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - 7.5/10
Pirates of the Caribbean - 8.5/10
Spirited Away - 8.5/10

Pirates of the Caribbean - 8.7/10 (Without Depp, it'd be a 6/10 )
Strictly Ballroom - 9.4/10
Dangerous Liasons - 9/10 (I loved Cruel Intentions for some reason, though, perhaps because Witherspoon was in it )
Adaptation - 9.8/10
Chinatown - 9.4/10
Spirited Away - 9.5/10

Sure Depp was part of the charm of Pirates. But Vidal was smart enough to give him space to do his thing. Something that Finding Neverland could have learned from. But c'mon, six out of ten without Depp? The movie itself was very good. Nice little tricks and turns but that weren't out of the blue. Made for an excellent second and third viewing when the little wink at the end makes sense, etc. Booooo. 6/10. You have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe 7.5/10 and with Depp a 9.5/10. But the whole caste did a great job. Keira would not be the star she is today if it wasn't for that role either. And people forget how unabashedly fun Geoffrey Rush's performance was in that movie. He was unhesitant to growl.

Woohoo. Got alot of 9+ out of you this round. You have good taste.

Cruel Intentions wasn't a bad movie actually. People give it alot of rap for being a teen remake of an adult film, but it was handled quite well. I love when he Ryan messes with the Psychiatrists daughter in the beginning. Hahaha.

Never seen My Twentieth Century.

Not a huge L.A. Confidential fan. Red Balloon is brilliance.

Better off Dead.. meh.

All of these are great. I found Red to be my least favorite of the trilogy (Blue is my favorite, but I'm also a huge Binoche fan). Curious, do Blue and White end up on your list anywhere?

The Sweet Hereafter is easily one of the top 10 films of the 1990s. I heartily recommend anybody finding Atom Egoyan's (spelling?) catalog and giving it a whirl.

I'm not a huge Spirited Away fan either, the first time I saw it I thought it tread a bit on the Totoro legacy.

My friends are HUGE Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead junkies.

Your bias for Kenneth Branagh films begins to rise to the top. :wink: Keanu Reeves was so horribly miscast in that movie, but how can you miss a chance to see Branagh and Thompson doing their dance? Notable for being Kate Beckinsale's first film.

I agree. While Depp was defiantely (and deservingly) the main attraction and the primary reason for the success of the film, there was more than his performance holding it up.

The entire film has a rythym to it that Knightly seems as tuned into as Depp. Her one liners that are horrible on the page are carried through with percision and Rush is also great and delivers the best line in the whole picture:

"Y'eve gone off the edge of the map mate! Here there be monsters!".

Also the soldiers are fun to watch, as are the pirates thesmelves. And I must applaud anybody who made that film that the captain/suitor to Knightly's character WASN'T a one dimensional villian type.

Then the technical aspects... It's all very top notch.

Even Orlando wasn't horrible, he gets stuck with all these similar parts where he is the straight uptight guy though.

Wow Dolce... Chicago's in your top 10! I mean it was a great movie but I just thought it was just entertaining... nothing more.

BATMAN RETURNS had potential OK, but the fact that they made the character Oswald Cobblepot out to be some Jekyll and Hyde, fish eating freak was radically different than the Penguin from the comics cause he was nothing like that and that's where this failed.. Catwoman in the movie was good and Michelle Pfeiffer should've played her in the movie "Catwoman" instead of Halle Berry...

L.A. Confidential - 8.8/10 - My second favorite of 1997
Spirited Away 8.9/10 - My favorite of 2002
Pirates of the Caribbean - 7.6/10 - 11th of 2003
Chinatown - 8.3/10

All great.

Good Bad Ugly, LA Confidential, Pirates of Caribbean = good lady

Rest = Naughty girly

Better off Dead is one of the ones that falls into the nostalgia more so than quality category. Heh. I think it was the first Cusack film I ever saw.

Yay, Red Balloon brilliance!

What didn't you like about L.A.? *spoilers* I love how when Sapcey is shot he's still smart enough to give the chief a name that will trigger bells with Crowe. sheer brilliance. well, to me at least.

My twentieth century makes Fellini seem fast-paced, but its just a very haunting sort of ambiguous movie.



Blue makes it up there.

Amen to sweet hereafter, in fact, I'm watching it over tonight, because I just saw Felicia's Journey last night. You're right about his work. I'm actually going over to foreign/indie to dedicate an entire thread to him afterwards. The guy is in a league of his own.

Your friends have good taste.

Hahaha. i didn't notice that. Geesh, i hope his frankenstein doesnt make the list, because its pretty damn close. He's a smart actor/director. Keanue I don't think was so bad in his role. He's supposed to be intense and, well "off." I think they could have found someone better, but in the sceme of things, he did a better job in that than anything other than Bill and Ted's excellent adventures.

and thank-you for seeing what i saw in Pirates. That movie was awsome. anyone that thinks otherwise, clearly has no idea what they are talking about. 8)

Its no particular order PE. Its in my top 100, not my top ten. I'm just releasing them in batches to stimulate conversation. But yeah, I thought it was pretty fun. I've seen it 'bout 4 times.



Yeah, when he bites the fishes is a weak point. But until then i thought it was great that you didn't actually know what he was working on. Often the "bad guys" plots are too simple (they're just robbing something, or want to blow the world up). It was great that he went to the city archives to write everyday, and that people thought he was searching for his parents' names, when in fact he was actually writiing up the names of every first born sun. Thats the kind of stuff I like. i thought it was better than spider-man 2, when he basically just has these arms that take over, and robs a bank so his arms can continue "taking over the world." Pfieffer ruled as cat woman, she was smart to turn down the current movie, she has a good filtering process. Berry isn't a bad actor per se, she just can't spot a bad script even if it falls on her head. Catwoman was unsaveable, regardless of who took the lead.

@ DP07 = You have great picks too then. :wink:

@algren = Why naughty? Dangerous Liaisons anyone?

Okay. here's another ten, #s 31-40:

Cabaret (1972)
Cane Toads (1988/Australia)
To Live (1994/China)
Blow-Up (1966/Italy/England)
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Hud (1963)
Children of a Lesser God (1986)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988/Spain)
Goldfinger (1964)

Yeah...there some back-to-back Faye in there. She's one of my faves, a film she was in will pop up once more.

#S 41-50:

Working Girl (1988)
Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
Network (1976)
Seven Beauties (1976/Italy)
My Cousin Vinny (1992)
Mississippi Burning (1988)
The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
No Man's Land (2001/Bosnia-Herzegovina) I'll never watch it again though
Jurassic Park (1993)
The Nightmare before Christmas (1993)

Enyoy... :arrow:

Good choice! :-D

I have to say that some of the tension scenes were magnificent. I hate to resort to the now cliche water rings in the drinking cups when T-rex was approaching, but it really was perfect. That movie was just great effects, great script and cast, awsome dinasaurs, just good good good, all the way around.

I saw it when I was like 10 years old. I liked it alot then, but my reaction at that age is usually not a good indicator of whether I'd like a movie now. I mean, I loved transformers back then. hehe. I have to see it again. I'll add it at netflix.

Jurassic Park - 7.9

I have not seen most of these films, but of the ones I have, I like.

Y'all haven't seen Working Girl. It was actually really fun. Joan Cusack was hilarious in it. "Want anything? Coffee, Tea, Me?"

And Weaver deserve an oscar for best supporting actress.

"Who makes it happen Tess? You do."

So good.

Numbers 51-60:


Three Colors: Blue (1993/France)
Lysistrata (1987?/Greece)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail (1975)
Glory (1989)
Nowhere in Africa (2001/Germany)
Fargo (1996)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Madchen in Uniform (1931/Germany)


8)