I find list making a nerdly and generally tedious proposition, but TotalFilm made a movie-related list and it hit the Reddit front page, so I thought I could post it and we could just skip to the part where we argue about it. That’s the only reason people like lists, right? KNIVES OUT! I’LL CUT YOU IF YOU DON’T AGREE WITH ME, FAGTROLL! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!
TotalFilm‘s list of the 50 Greatest Films You’ll Only Watch Once:
The Birth Of A Nation (1915)
The Machinist (2004)
Elephant (2003)
Jude (1996)
American History X (1998)
The Mist (2007)
Breaking The Waves (1996)
Solaris (1972)
Un Chien Andalou (1928)
A Woman Under The Influence (1974)
The Elephant Man (1980)
Dead Man Walking (1995)
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)
Biutiful (2010)
Hotel Rwanda (2004)
The Seventh Seal (1957)
Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Sophie’s Choice (1982)
The Road (2009)
Mirror (1975)
Downfall (2004)
Make Way For Tomorrow (1937)
The Travelling Players (1975)
La Strada (1954)
Blue Valentine (2010)
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
City Of Life And Death (2009)
Straw Dogs (1971)
Happiness (1998)
Inland Empire (2006)
Antichrist (2009)
Precious (2009)
Lilya 4-Ever (2002)
Tyrannosaur (2011)
Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
Gone With The Wind (1939)
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Grave Of The Fireflies (1988)
Audition (1999)
Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer (1986)
Schindler’s List (1993)
Nil By Mouth (1997)
Come And See (1985)
Sátántangó (1994)
Salo (1975)
Requiem For A Dream (2000)
Martyrs (2008)
Irreversible (2002)
Funny Games (1997)
Shoah (1985)
Well, I agree with some of them – Dead Man Walking, Leaving Las Vegas, Hotel Rwanda, Downfall – all films I remember as being good, but I think proved their point by me only seeing them once. But I’ve seen Happiness and American History X and Un Chien Andalou like a billion times. Birth of a Nation I watch once a year on my birthday (I kid, I kid).
Other films, I disagree with calling “great” – Elephant is awful, for instance. Van Sant makes a Columbine movie that isn’t really about Columbine that people call “lyrical” because it doesn’t really have a point. It’s just wallowing in a tragedy that they don’t even have the balls to call by name while offering no real insight into the event and calling it art. Blegh. I’ll smell my own farts, thank you. Precious was just tacky and embarrassing (though Mo’Nique is brilliant). As for Solaris, I’m one of the few that liked the Clooney version, but my only list that Andrei Tarkovsky films would make would be The 50 Greatest Films That I Tried to Watch Like 12 Times But Always Fell Asleep Because the Camera Was Too Far Away and I Couldn’t Even Tell What the Hell Was Going On. I know at least two and a half people reading this are with me on that one, am I right, fellas?! And yo, don’t you hate it when French New Wave muhf*ckas be all obtuse and non-linear with they juxtapositions and sh*t? WOOF WOOF WOOF… /Def Film Major Jam
[ReditForward explains their choices here]