MC Consensus: British Isles

[Spinal]

Submit your TEN to TWENTY favorite films from the British Isles and .... eventually .... I will give you a list of the top films. Films should have UK or Ireland as a country of origin in IMDb:

The point system is as follows

1st Place- 20 points
2nd Place - 18 points
3rd Place - 16 points
4th Place - 14 points
5th Place - 12 points
6th Place - 10 points
7th Place - 9 points
8th Place - 8 points
9th Place - 7 points
10th Place - 6 points
11th Place - 5 points
12th Place - 4.5 points
13th Place - 4 points
14th Place - 3.5 points
15th Place - 3 points
16th Place - 2.5 points
17th Place - 2 points
18th Place - 1.5 points
19th Place - 1 point
20th Place - .5 points

(Point system is weighted to give your top films a boost and to minimize the discrepancy between the films in the bottom half of your list.)

There will be no restrictions on short films. A list must have ten films to be eligible. If you list more than twenty films, I will assume that the top twenty films are the ones you want to receive points. If you do not list your films 1-20, I will assign the points from the top on down.

If you decide to edit your ballot, please make a new post indicating the changes. I will give at least 24 hours warning before tallying votes.

If, for some reason, you would like to like to submit your ballot via private message, I will accept those as well. However, your ballot will be revealed after the final results are posted.

You may begin now.

[Spinal]

OK, let's try this. Please note the altered rules. I am letting you list as many as 20 films for this thread. Minimum is 10. UK and Ireland eligible. I will make a final list as large as the statistics warrant.

[Mysterious Dude]

1. The Man in the White Suit (1951)
2. The War Game (1965)
3. Lord of the Flies (1963)
4. Blow-Up (1966)
5. The Maggie (1954)
6. A Hard Day's Night (1964)
7. The Crying Game (1992)
8. The Duellists (1977)
9. Life of Brian (1979)
10. Kes (1969)

11. The Wrong Trousers (1993)
12. Romeo and Juliet (1968)
13. Shaun of the Dead (2004)
14. Peeping Tom (1960)
15. My Childhood (1972)
16. Time Bandits (1981)
17. Overlord (1975)
18. Topsy-Turvy (1999)
19. Sexy Beast (2000)
20. Frenzy (1972)

The Elephant Man and Children of Men didn't seem sufficiently British.

[Lazlo]

1. Pride and Prejudice (2005)
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
4. The Bridge on the River Kwai
5. Bright Star
6. Fish Tank
7. Sunshine
8. Brooklyn
9. Control
10. Hunger
11. 28 Days Later
12. Once
13. Senna
14. Wallace and Gromit in "The Curse of the Were-Rabbit"
15. In the Loop
16. Sweet Sixteen
17. In America
18. Gandhi
19. The Elephant Man
20. Far From the Madding Crowd (2015)

[Spinal]

1. Life of Brian
2. A Zed and Two Noughts
3. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover
4. Brazil
5. The War Game
6. Once
7. Prospero's Books
8. A Clockwork Orange
9. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
10. Marat/Sade

11. Orlando
12. Drowning By Numbers
13. The Wrong Trousers
14. O Lucky Man!
15. Henry V
16. Shaun of the Dead
17. Lawrence of Arabia
18. The French Lieutenant's Woman
19. Happy Go Lucky
20. Prick Up Your Ears

[dreamdead]

1. The Red Shoes
2. A Zed and Two Noughts
3. Secrets and Lies
4. Naked
5. A Room with a View
6. Blow-Up
7. This is England
8. The Dead
9. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
10. 28 Days Later

11. Dead Man’s Shoes
12. Brief Encounter
13. O Lucky Man!
14. The Third Man
15. The Crying Game
16. Distant Voices, Still Lives
17. The War Game
18. Brooklyn
19. Ratcatcher
20. In the Name of the Father

Not quite: Bloody Sunday, Fish Tank

[Lazlo]

1. The Red Shoes
2. A Zed and Two Noughts
3. Secrets and Lies
4. Naked
5. A Room with a View
6. Blow-Up
7. This is England
8. The Dead
9. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
10. 28 Days Later

Regrettably absent:
Dead Man’s Shoes
The Third Man
The Crying Game
Brief Encounter
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Ratcatcher
Brooklyn
In the Name of the Father
Bloody Sunday
The War Game
O Lucky Man!
Fish Tank

You can do up to 20 this time, so you don't have to have quite so many regrets!

[dreamdead]

D'Oh. Clearly more reading skills are necessary.

[Melville]

Leaving off a bunch of American co-productions to thin the field,

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. The Third Man
3. A Clockwork Orange
4. Bright Star
5. Deep End
6. The Servant
7. Hunger
8. The Wicker Man
9. Night and the City
10. The Devils

11. A Zed & Two Noughts
12. Naked
13. Kes
14. Another Year
15. A Passage to India
16. Once
17. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
18. The Lobster
19. Locke
20. 45 Years

Could've just as easily included Repulsion, Secrets and Lies, Odd Man Out, O Lucky Man!, The Deep Blue Sea, In the Loop, The Duke of Burgundy, Don't Look Now, The Browning Version, Under the Skin

[Gizmo]

1. A Clockwork Orange
2. The War Zone
3. Barry Lyndon
4. The Life of Brian
5. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
6. Trainspotting
7. The Third Man
8. Shaun of the Dead
9. The Magdalene Sisters
10. Children of Men

11. Atonement
12. Brazil
13. Gosford Park
14. The Crying Game
15. The Bridge on the River Kwai
16. Ghandi
17. Once
18. Wallace and Grommit: Curse of the Wererabbit
19. The Elephant Man
20. 28 Days Later

[baby doll]

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell / Emeric Pressburger, 1943)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988)
A Zed and Two Noughts (Peter Greenaway, 1985)
Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell / Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
Naked (Mike Leigh, 1993)
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1965)
Providence (Alain Resnais, 1977)
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)

The Draughtsman's Contract (Peter Greenaway, 1982)
Petulia (Richard Lester, 1968)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
Performance (Donald Cammell / Nicolas Roeg, 1970)
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)
The Browning Version (Anthony Asquith, 1951)
Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
The River (Jean Renoir, 1951)
Saboteur (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)

[Peng]

1. Brief Encounter
2. The Long Day Closes
3. The Descent
4. In America
5. Sunshine (2007)
6. The Red Shoes
7. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover
8. The Innocents
9. The Lady Vanishes
10. Kind Hearts and Coronets

11. The Bridge on the River Kwai
12. Secrets and Lies
13. Romeo and Juliets (1968)
14. A Matter of Life and Death
15. Once
16. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
17. Happy-Go-Lucky
18. Lawrence of Arabia
19. The Third Man
20. Song of the Sea

[Yxklyx]

How are you making these lists? When I use UK on IMDB's search I get nearly all of Kubrick's films and a lot of other films that I would never have considered.

[Mysterious Dude]

I looked at all my highest-rated movies and picked out the British ones. IMDB wasn't very helpful this time.

[Grouchy]

Ok, I can do this now. So it's basically all British films?

1. Peeping Tom
2. The Third Man
3. The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover
4. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
5. The World's End
6. Life of Brian
7. Trainspotting
8. The Man Who Would Be King
9. A Matter of Life and Death
10. This is England

11. The Long Good Friday
12. The Crying Game
13. Shaun of the Dead
14. Hope and Glory
15. The Fallen Idol
16. Melody
17. Performance
18. Ratcatcher
19. Withnail & I
20. The 39 Steps

[Grouchy]

Am I the first one to include The Man Who Would Be King? So sad.

[Spinal]

Apparently using the term 'British Isles' to refer to the United Kingdom and Ireland collectively is something of a controversial topic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Isles_naming_dispute).

[Grouchy]

Well, d'oh. IIRC the Irish have blown a few people to pieces because of it.

[baby doll]

How are you making these lists? When I use UK on IMDB's search I get nearly all of Kubrick's films and a lot of other films that I would never have considered.I did mine mostly from memory, though there were a few borderline cases (The River, Petulia, Providence) where I had to double check before adding them.

[Raiders]

1. Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
2. The Servant (1963)
3. The War Game (1965)
4. O Lucky Man! (1973)
5. Dead Man's Shoes (2004)
6. The Butcher Boy (1997)
7. The House of Mirth (2000)
8. Naked (1993)
9. Brief Encounter (1945)
10. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
11. Barry Lyndon (1975)
12. Ratcatcher (1999)
13. The Red Shoes (1948)
14. The Deep Blue Sea (2011)
15. Mona Lisa (1986)
16. Accident (1967)
17. Another Year (2010)
18. Excalibur (1981)
19. Peeping Tom (1960)
20. A Zed and Two Noughts (1985)

[baby doll]

Edited my list to make it fully numerical.

[Spinal]

Edited my list to make it fully numerical.

I tally these as we go along. So when you edit without telling me what changed, I have to start all over again.

[baby doll]

I tally these as we go along. So when you edit without telling me what changed, I have to start all over again.Sorry about that. It's the same films, I just put them in a numerical order (whereas before they were arranged chronologically).

[Spinal]

No problem. Thanks for the clarification.

[Spinal]

Anyone else?

[Stay Puft]

1. The Falls
2. The 39 Steps
3. Blow-Up
4. Excalibur
5. The Third Man
6. Life of Brian
7. Barry Lyndon
8. Brief Encounter
9. Bloody Sunday
10. Bright Star

This post is brought to you by the letter B.

[Spinal]

We'll have at least a top 15. It would be great to do another top 20. Voting will be open for another couple of days.

[ContinentalOp]

1. The Third Man
2. Night and the City
3. A Fish Called Wanda
4. Life of Brian
5. Hot Fuzz
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Attack the Block
8. Shaun of the Dead
9. The Guard
10. Brief Encounter
11. The World's End
12. Croupier
13. Sexy Beast
14. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

[Spinal]

Last call for these. I'll probably start sometime later in the day. Still a top 15 for now.

[Spinal]

Never mind. It's been a day. This won't be starting for a while. You still have time.

[thefourthwall]

1. Peeping Tom
2. The Red Shoes
3. The Third Man
4. Blow-Up
5. Secrets and Lies
6. Naked
7. In America
8. A Room with a View
9. Brooklyn
10. Elephant

11. This is England
12. Bright Star
13. Fish Tank
14. Dirty Pretty Things
15. The End of the Affair
16. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
17. The Butcher Boy
18. Red Road
19. Once
20. Kill List

[Winston*]

1. Secrets and Lies
2. Another Year
3. Naked
4. High Hopes
5. Topsy-Turvy
6. Happy-Go-Lucky
7. Mr Turner
8. Life is Sweet
9. Vera Drake
10. All or Nothing
11. Career Girls
12. Bleak Moments

[Spinal]

1. Secrets and Lies
2. Another Year
3. Naked
4. High Hopes
5. Topsy-Turvy
6. Happy-Go-Lucky
7. Mr Turner
8. Life is Sweet
9. Vera Drake
10. All or Nothing
11. Career Girls
12. Bleak Moments

The capper would have been to put Spice World at #13.

[Spinal]

#20

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/In_America_movie_zps7lzjv93q.j pg
We heard Manhattan before we ever saw it, a thousand strange voices coming from everywhere.


In America

Director: Jim Sheridan

Year: 2002

A family of Irish immigrants adjust to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.

Nominated for 3 Academy Awards including Best Actress (Samantha Morton), Best Supporting Actor (Djimon Hounsou) and Best Original Screenplay.
Nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Original Song at the Golden Globes.
Nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Won Best Supporting Male (Hounsou) and Best Cinematography at the Independent Spirit Awards. Nominated for 4 others including Best Feature and Best Director.
Won Best Original Screenplay from the National Board of Review.
Nominated for Best Original Screenplay by the Writers Guild of America.

Sarah Bolger and Emma Bolger called 'cut' and 'action' in every scene in order to make the acting easier for them.

"In America is not literally autobiographical ... but it is intensely personal. It's not the typical story of turn-of-the-century immigrants facing prejudice and struggle, but a modern story, set in the 1980s and involving new sets of problems, such as racism and the drug addiction in the building and the neighborhood. It is also about the way poverty humiliates those who have always prided themselves on being able to cope." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#19

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/shaun-of-the-dead-poster_zpsnvnxstjq.jpg
We have to get out of here. If we don't they'll tear us to pieces, and that is really going to exacerbate things for all of us.


Shaun of the Dead

Director: Edgar Wright

Year: 2004

A man decides to turn his moribund life around by winning back his ex-girlfriend, reconciling his relationship with his mother, and dealing with an entire community that has returned from the dead to eat the living.

Nominated for 3 BAFTA Awards including Best British Film.
Won Best Screenplay at the British Independent Film Awards. Nominated for 2 others including Best British Independent Film.
Nominated for 2 awards from the London Critics Circle including Best British Film.

Shaun tells Liz that he's going to take her to 'the place that does all the fish'. When he opens the phone book you can see that the restaurant is literally called The Place That Does All the Fish.

"I think Shaun Of The Dead is one of the best scripts written in five years, it’s kind of a masterpiece." - Quentin Tarantino

[Spinal]

#18

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/the-servant-film-poster_zpsztgquicp.jpg
He may be a servant but he's still a human being.


The Servant

Director: Joseph Losey

Year: 1963

An aristocrat moves to London and hires a servant for all services at home. He seems to be a loyal and competent employee, but the master's girlfriend does not like him and asks him to be sent away.

Won 3 BAFTA Awards including Best British Actor (Dirk Bogarde). Nominated for 5 others including Best Film and Best British Actress (Sarah Miles).
Won Best Screenplay at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

When Losey was hospitalized for two weeks during the shoot, Bogarde continued filming assisted by daily instructions over the phone from Losey's hospital bed. When Losey returned to the set he did not re-shoot any of the script.

"A film such as this probably couldn't be made now without cries of protest over its representational politics, which is probably a good thing. That doesn't mean that viewers can't look upon Losey's masterwork and get a little charge at seeing what a dark and powerful force queerness could be on screen at a certain moment in history - a servant to many masters who was always watching through the crack in the closet door, ready to strike at a moment's notice." - Matthew Connolly, Slant Magazine

[Spinal]

#17

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Bright-Star-film-images-003ded09-cc51-42aa-9677-d6122f9370e_zpsmnh75vm3.jpg
There is holiness in the heart's affection.


Bright Star

Director: Jane Campion

Year: 2009

The three-year romance between 19th-century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne near the end of his life.

Nominated for Best Costume Design at the Academy Awards.
Nominated for Best Costume Design at the BAFTAs.
Won Best Technical Achievement (for cinematography) at the British Independent Film Awards. Also nominated for Best Director, Best Actress (Abbie Cornish) and Best Supporting Actress (Kerry Fox).
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the César Awards.
Nominated for Best British Film and Best Actress (Cornish) at the London Critics Circle Film Awards.

Ben Whishaw met his husband, composer Mark Bradshaw, while both were working on this film.

"Every frame of this exquisite period romance features an attention to detail, a passion for literature and an intense, fully clothed, pre-Victorian sexiness that suggest a director in something close to rapture. [Campion's] as much on fire for John Keats as his beloved Fanny Brawne." - Amy Biancolli, San Francisco Chronicle

[Spinal]

#16

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/distant_voices_still_lives_sin ging_poster_zpseqe1zlzs.jpg
Here I go again/I hear those trumpets blow again/All aglow again/Taking a chance on love ...


Distant Voices, Still Lives

Director: Terence Davies

Year: 1988

An impressionistic view of a working-class family in 1940s and 1950s Liverpool.

Won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won Film of the Year and Best Director at the London Critics Circle Film Awards.
Won the International Critics' Award at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Due to the extreme low budget, it had to be shot on weekends over a period of two years.

"Not the least among its achievements, Terence Davies's wondrous Distant Voices, Still Lives offers a crystallization of the appeal of the musical. An odd linkage, to be sure, since the genre's trademark studio boisterousness would seem a world away from the kitchen-sink dreariness of the director's mood piece about his years growing up with his working-class family in post-WWII Liverpool, dominated by his abusive ogre of a father. Yet Davies transcends the facile trap of misery-porn by tapping into the basic notion that could make musicals so enlivening—music as direct expression, music as emotion felt." - Fernando F. Croce, Slant Magazine

[Spinal]

#15

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/lawrence-of-arabia-poster_zpsoqdwkykj.jpg
Nothing is written.


Lawrence of Arabia

Director: David Lean

Year: 1962

The story of TE Lawrence, the English officer who successfully united and lead the diverse, often warring, Arab tribes during World War I in order to fight the Turks.

Won 7 Academy awards including Best Picture and Best Director. Nominated for 3 others including Best Actor (Peter O'Toole) and Best Supporting Actor (Omar Sharif).
Won 6 Golden Globe Awards including Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Director and Best Supporting Actor (Sharif). Nominated for 3 others.
Won 4 BAFTA awards including Best Film. Nominated for 1 other.
Won Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures from the Directors Guild of America.
Nominated for a Grammy for Best Original Score from a Motion Picture or Television Show.
Won Best Director from the National Board of Review.
Won Best British Dramatic Screenplay from the Writers Guild of Great Britain.

Although 227 minutes long, this film has no women in speaking roles. It is considered to be the longest narrative film not to have any dialogue spoken by a woman.

"With help from the likes of Martin Scorsese, Robert A. Harris has carefully restored British director David Lean's Oscar-winner to mint condition. The film had been severely cut and allowed to deteriorate, but today it is as mighty as when it premiered in 1962. Lawrence's beauty and place of honor in the epic hall of fame are without question, as is its status as perhaps the most manly movie ever made. Lean portrays a weirdly lopsided, oddly womanless cosmos. The only females in the film are skewered corpses, except for a glimpse of a harem that Harris has proudly added. He calls Lawrence a 'boy's movie.' Others call it homoerotic, and Lean has agreed." - Rita Kempley, The Washington Post, 1989

[Spinal]

#14

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/barry-lyndon-movie-poster-1975-1020144218_zpswbdq1ezd.jpg
A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.


Barry Lyndon

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Year: 1975

An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's aristocratic position in 18th-century England.

Won 4 Academy awards including Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design. Nominated for 3 others including Best Picture and Best Director.
Nominated for 2 Golden Globes including Best Motion Picture - Drama and Best Director.
Won 2 BAFTA Awards including Best Direction and Best Cinematography. Nominated for 3 others including Best Film.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the César Awards.
Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America.
Won Best Film and Best Director from the National Board of Review (tied with Nashville in both cases).
Won Best Cinematography at the National Society of Film Critics Awards.
Nominated for Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium by the Writers Guild of America.

Production was moved from Ireland to England after Kubrick received word that his name was on an IRA hit list for directing a film featuring English soldiers in Ireland.

"There isn't much for a verbally-oriented person to chew on. There's no conceptual or discursive aspect, no kernel of pop sociology or philosophical nutmeat. It isn't at all like Nashville or Last Tango in Paris, where a knowing reviewer could write the kind of richly allusive in-depth analysis that critics have long done for novels. Instead, Barry Lyndon throws down the gauntlet to those film critics who are really literary or drama critics in disguise and tests their ability to appreciate qualities of form, composition, color, mood, music, editing rhythms-- among other cinematic qualities that generally do not greatly interest them." - John Hofsess, The New York Times, 1976

[Spinal]

#13

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/BRITISHQUAD150-2_zpskeudi6ov.jpg
What would frighten me to death? Set the mood for me, Mark.


Peeping Tom

Director: Michael Powell

Year: 1960

A young man murders women, using a movie camera to film their dying expressions of terror.

Named the #24 British film of all-time and the #18 horror movie of all-time by Total Film.
Named one of the 25 Most Dangerous Movies by Premiere.

Generally regarded as the first horror movie to use the convention of seeing things from the killer's point of view.

"The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer. Even then, the stench would remain." - Derek Hill, Tribune, 1960

"From its slumbering, mildly salacious beginning to its appallingly masochistic and depraved climax, it is wholly evil." - Nina Hibbin, Daily Worker, 1960

"In the last three and a half months... I have carted my travel-stained carcass to some of the filthiest and most festering slums in Asia. But nothing, nothing, nothing - neither the hopeless leper colonies of East Pakistan, the back streets of Bombay nor the gutters of Calcutta - has left me with such a feeling of nausea and depression as I got this week while sitting through a new British film called Peeping Tom." - Len Mosley, Daily Express, 1960

"I have always felt that Peeping Tom and 8½ say everything that can be said about film-making, about the process of dealing with film, the objectivity and subjectivity of it and the confusion between the two. 8½ captures the glamour and enjoyment of film-making, while Peeping Tom shows the aggression of it, how the camera violates... From studying them you can discover everything about people who make films, or at least people who express themselves through films." - Martin Scorsese

[Spinal]

#12

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/Brief-Encounter_2589284b_zpsdr3d6qw0 .jpg
It's awfully easy to lie when you know that you're trusted implicitly.


Brief Encounter

Director: David Lean

Year: 1945

Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband.

Nominated for 3 Academy Awards including Best Direction, Best Actress (Celia Johnson) and Best Screenplay.
Won the Grand Prize of the Festival at Cannes.
Won Best Actress (Johnson) at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

Carnforth Station was chosen partly because it was so far from the Southeast of England that it would receive sufficient warning of an air-raid attack, so there would be time to turn out the filming lights to comply with wartime blackout restrictions.

"One day, years and years ago, just after the war, he had nothing to do and he went to a theater in the middle of the afternoon to see a movie. Not a Hollywood movie: a British movie. He said the main character was not glamorous, not a babe. And at first he wondered why he was even watching it. But twenty minutes later he was in tears, and had fallen in love with her. And it made him feel that it wasn't just a movie." - Kathryn Altman, wife of Robert Altman

[Spinal]

#11

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/v5jSbCj8lkXUrGlJUC9mzDSqrst_zp sazewzcjt.jpg
Circumsized mediocrity is screwing my wife!


The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Director: Peter Greenaway

Year: 1989

The wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husbands restaurant.

Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won 4 awards at the Catalonian International Film Festival including Best Director and Best Actor (Michael Gambon, who tied with Nicolas Cage for Vampire's Kiss).

The four title characters are named for the actors Greenaway originally wanted to play them. Richard (The Cook) is for Richard Bohringer, the only one of Greenaway's original choices retained in the final film. Albert (The Thief) is named after Albert Finney. Georgina (His Wife) is for Georgina Hale. Michael (The Lover) is named for Michael Gambon, whom Greenaway eventually re-cast as Albert.

"The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover is not an easy film to sit through. It doesn't simply make a show of being uncompromising -- it is uncompromised in every single shot from beginning to end. Why is it so extreme? Because it is a film made in rage, and rage cannot be modulated." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#10

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-movie-poster-1975-1020465243_zpswdbwxxux.jpg
Sorry, I searched for a quotable line from this movie, and I just couldn't find one.


Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Director: Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones

Year: 1975

Moose Trained by: Yutte Hermsgervordenbroti

Special Moose Effects: Olaf Prot

Moose Costumes: Siggi Churchill

Moose choreographed by: Horst Prot III

Moose trained to mix concrete and
sign complicated insurance forms by: Jurgan Wigg

Antler-care: Liv Thatcher

King Arthur and his knights embark on a low-budget search for the Grail, encountering many, very silly obstacles.

Named the #5 comedy of all-time by Total Film.

South African cliff swallows are found in Botswana, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Their nests are commonly built from mud under artificial structures such as huts and bridges. European swallows (or barn swallows) are the most widespread species of swallow in the world and can be found not only in Europe, but also Asia, Africa and the Americas. The barn swallow is a bird of open country that normally uses man-made structures to breed and consequently has spread with human expansion. As a tropical plant, the coconut is not native to Europe, but grows in tropical territories of European countries, such as Martinique and Guadeloupe (France), the Canary Islands (Spain), Sicily (Italy) and Madeira (Portugal).

"I have no idea whether Mr. Gilliam and Mr. Jones have seen Robert Bresson's rather more austere film, Lancelot of the Lake, which was shown at last year's New York Film Festival, but there are times when Monty Python and the Holy Grail seems to be putting on Mr. Bresson unmercifully. The dour lighting and landscapes that are so important in the Bresson film are tossed into this comedy without apparent thought for the havoc they do Lancelot. Mr. Bresson's emphasis on what you might call the sound of knighthood (clanking armor, horses' hoofs) is also hilariously parodied, as well as the violence of the age, on which the Python people have the last bleeding word. Everyone interested in Mr. Bresson would do well to stay away from Monty Python and the Holy Grail until after they see Lancelot. The comparison, which may never have been intended, is nevertheless lethal to the work of the great French director." - The New York Times, 1975 (author unspecified)

[Spinal]

#9

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/secrets-and-lies-cinema-quad-movie-poster-5_zpsmncwibhl.jpg
Life isn't fair then is it. Somebody always draws the short straw.


Secrets & Lies

Director: Mike Leigh

Year: 1996

A successful black woman discovers that her birth mother is a lower-class white woman. Emotions run high and everyone's secrets are exposed.

Nominated for 5 Academy awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress (Brenda Blethyn) and Best Supporting Actress (Marianne Jean-Baptiste).
Won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama (Blethyn). Nominated for 2 others including Best Motion Picture - Drama.
Won 3 Awards at Cannes including the Palme d'Or and Best Actress (Blethyn).
Won 3 BAFTA awards including Best British Film, Best Actress (Blethyn) and Best Original Screenplay. Nominated for 4 others including Best Film and Best Direction.
Nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role (Blethyn) at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the César Awards.
Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America.
Won Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won 3 awards from the London Film Critics Circle including British Film of the Year. Nominated for 1 other.
Nominated for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen by the Writers Guild of America.

To add a spontaneous effect to the performances, Leigh met with each actor individually and only told them what their character would know at the beginning of the film. As filming progressed the actors were hearing the secrets for the very first time. Brenda Blethyn, for instance, didn't know that Marianne Jean-Baptiste was black and they had never met before the scene where their characters meet in the film.

"There's not a weak performance in Secrets and Lies, a fact made more notable by the seeming ease with which the cast performs as an ensemble. It's odd that it takes a movie like this, which minimizes stylistic intrusions and allows the cast and story to propel themselves to a charged, conciliatory conclusion, to remind us how good filmmaking can be." - Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club

[Spinal]

#7 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/MPW-47847_zpsi3ibhojd.jpg
I'm only doing my job. Some people are bullfighters, some people are politicians. I'm a photographer.


Blow-Up

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Year: 1966

A mod London photographer seems to find something very suspicious in the shots he has taken of a mysterious beauty in a desolate park.

Nominated for 2 Academy awards including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
Nominated for Best English-Language Foreign Film at the Golden Globes.
Nominated for 3 BAFTA awards including Best British Film.
Won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.
Won 2 awards from the National Society of Film Critics including Best Film and Best Director.

Considered the first British feature film to show full frontal female nudity. As a way of bypassing the Production Code, MGM created Premiere Productions, a dummy company which had no agreement or affiliation with the Production Code and, therefore, did not have to adhere to its standards. MGM did not have to cut the nudity or other sexually explicit scenes and maintained all rights to the film. When the film opened to rave reviews and excellent box office, this was considered the final blow for the Production Code's credibility and it was replaced with a ratings system less than two years later.

"Antonioni, like his fashion-photographer hero, is more interested in getting pretty pictures than in what they mean. But for reasons I can't quite fathom, what is taken to be shallow in his hero is taken to be profound in him." - Pauline Kael

"Whether there was a murder isn't the point. The film is about a character mired in ennui and distaste, who is roused by his photographs into something approaching passion. As Thomas moves between his darkroom and the blowups, we recognize the bliss of an artist lost in what behaviorists call the Process; he is not thinking now about money, ambition or his own nasty personality defects, but is lost in his craft. His mind, hands and imagination work in rhythmic sync. He is happy." - Roger Ebert

[Spinal]

#7 (tie)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/ca0357ed7f5d3f72f6aa036262e27f 1a_zpsr5dhfkex.jpg
Goodness is something to be chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.


A Clockwork Orange

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Year: 1971

In future Britain, a charismatic delinquent is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem.

Nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director.
Nominated for 3 Golden Globes including Best Motion Picture - Drama.
Nominated for 7 BAFTA awards including Best Film, Best Direction and Best Screenplay.
Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America.
Won Best Film and Best Director at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.
Won Best Foreign Film at the Venice Film Festival.
Nominated for Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium by the Writers Guild of America.

The doctor standing over Alex as he is being forced to watch violent films was a real doctor, ensuring that Malcolm McDowell's eyes didn't dry up.

"What in hell is Kubrick up to here? Does he really want us to identify with the antisocial tilt of Alex's psychopathic little life? In a world where society is criminal, of course, a good man must live outside the law. But that isn't what Kubrick is saying. He actually seems to be implying something simpler and more frightening: that in a world where society is criminal, the citizen might as well be a criminal, too." - Roger Ebert, 1972

[Spinal]

#6

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/wargame_zpshvsdtes2.jpg
Technically and intellectually, we are living in an atomic age. Emotionally, we are still living in the Stone Age.


The War Game

Director: Peter Watkins

Year: 1965

A fictional, worst-case-scenario docu-drama about nuclear war and its aftermath in and around a typical English city.

Won the Academy award for Best Documentary Feature.
Won 2 BAFTA awards including Best Short Film.
Won a Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival.

Although produced by the BBC, the film was banned from television broadcast. The official reason was for violence and depiction of human suffering, but some speculated that it may have been because it went against the official government line concerning survivability of nuclear attack. Instead, the film was given wide release in theaters.

"While the horrors it shows, such as firestorms, the melting of children's eyes and the mercy shooting by police of rows of victims who are too badly burned to be helped, are based upon actual experiences in Hiroshima and in German cities in World War II, the monstrous piling up of these horrors in one picture seems a calculated showing of the worst. And the fact that no immediate way to avoid this is suggested to the audience by the film makes it, for most, a sheer frustrating excitement of morbidity and dread. Mr. Watkins, whom I talked to in London after seeing his film there in June, said he hopes it will agitate people to demand the elimination of nuclear bombs. But one might guess it will serve that purpose only if shown in connection with some concrete and widespread campaign. Otherwise it is no more than a powerful, isolated horror film." - Bosley Crowther, The New York Times, 1966

[Spinal]

#5

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/350391_full_zpsznjxbkya.jpg
In the land of the legless the one-legged woman is queen.


A Zed and Two Noughts

Director: Peter Greenaway

Year: 1985

A set of identical twins lose their wives in a car crash caused by a white swan. The brothers, who are zoologists, become obsessed with the death and decay of animals. They both have a relationship with the driver of the crashed car.

Received no major film awards.

Early in the movie, we are shown a newspaper article about the deaths of the protagonists' wives. This page also contains sidebar articles detailing events from two of Greenaway's subsequent films, The Belly of an Architect and Drowning by Numbers.

"A Zed and Two Noughts is such a private film I hesitate to write more about it. I haven't a clue as to what it's supposed to be about." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times, 1986

"Like so many of Greenaway's films, Zed wallows in the graphic meatiness of bodies - naked lovers in bed, animals rotting in stop-motion, a woman losing her identity one limb-amputation at a time - but it finds beauty in bodies as well, particularly in the unforgettably eerie climax. Greenaway's first of many collaborations with cinematographer Sacha Vierny is almost unbearably lovely in its painterly compositions and vivid colors, but Greenaway deliberately juxtaposes beautiful order and hideous rot to disturbing effect, and that's the simplest layer of his symbolism." - Tasha Robinson, The A.V. Club

[Spinal]

#4

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/NAKED-UKPoster_zps8yjkn5mb.jpg
No matter how many books you read, there is something in this world that you never ever ever ever ever fucking understand.


Naked

Director: Mike Leigh

Year: 1993

Parallel tales of two sexually obsessed men, one hurting and annoying women physically and mentally, one wandering around the city talking to strangers and experiencing dimensions of life.

Won Best Director and Best Actor (David Thewlis) at Cannes.
Nominated for Best British Film at the BAFTA Awards.
Nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Independent Spirit Awards.
Won British Actor of the Year (Thewlis) at the London Critics Circle Film Awards.
Won Best Actor (Thewlis) at the National Society of Film Critics Awards.
Won Best Actor (Thewlis) at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards.

The song sung by Johnny and Louise near the film's end was one Leigh used to sing with his friends in Habonim, the international socialist Jewish youth movement he joined as a schoolboy.

"Don't expect the watery grog of most movies. This is 90-proof, single-malt stuff. You sip it neat and you don't handle heavy machinery afterward. This movie will stay with you long after you've seen it, thanks to Thewlis's performance, Leigh's direction, Andrew Dickson's haunting bass-and-harp soundtrack, cinematographer Dick Pope's indelible images -- and the unalloyed, naked conviction of it all." - Desson Howe, The Washington Post

[Spinal]

#3

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/805af125-2a27-418c-bbab-f3e8bfa373ec_zpsvoii0fcf.jpg
My dear Livy, not even the best magician in the world can produce a rabbit out of a hat if there is not already a rabbit in the hat.


The Red Shoes

Director: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Year: 1948

A young ballet dancer is torn between the man she loves and her pursuit to become a prima ballerina.

Won 2 Academy awards including Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color. Nominated for 3 others, including Best Picture.
Won the Golden Globe for Best Original Score.
Nominated for Best British Film at the BAFTA Awards.

The film received only a limited release in the U.S., in a 110-week run at a single theatre, the Bijou in New York City.

"The film is voluptuous in its beauty and passionate in its storytelling. You don't watch it, you bathe in it. Yes, the ending is a shocker, but you see it coming and there's no way around it; the movie tells us a fairy tale and then repeats it as real life. " - Roger Ebert

"Blubbery and self-conscious, but it affects some people passionately, and it's undeniably some kind of classic." - Pauline Kael

[Spinal]

#2

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/passion_zpshc4pevck.jpg
He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy!


Life of Brian

Director: Terry Jones

Year: 1979 A.D.

Brian is born on the original Christmas, in the stable next door. He spends his life being mistaken for a messiah.

Named the #1 comedy of all-time by Total Film, the British TV network Channel 4, and The Guardian.
Named the #28 British film of all-time by the British Film Institute.

The only character to appear in all four Python films is God.

"Just when you thought that the uproarious English comedy troupe had taken bad taste as far as it could go in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, along comes Monty Python's Life of Brian to demonstrate that it's possible to go even farther in delirious offensiveness. Bad taste of this order is rare but not yet dead." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times, 1979

If you enjoyed this film, why not see ...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/220px-Lanotteposter_zps8krlhyao.jpg

[Grouchy]

Hah, I'd never thought about it before, but it's true that Holy Grail exposes Bresson's Lancelot for the insufferable bore that it really is.

[Spinal]

#1

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/The-Third-Man-poster_zpsja1bgpxp.jpg
I believe in God and Mercy and all that. But the dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils.


The Third Man

Director: Carol Reed

Year: 1949

A pulp novelist travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend.

Won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. Also nominated for Best Director and Best Film Editing.
Won the BAFTA award for Best British Film. Also nominated for Best Film (from any source).
Won the Grand Prize of the Festival at Cannes.
Nominated for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures by the Directors Guild of America.

The Vienna Police Department has a special unit that is assigned solely to patrol the city's intricate sewer system, as its network of interlocking tunnels make great hiding places for criminals on the run from the law. The actors playing police officers in the film were actually off-duty members of that unit.

"One of the very few major disputes between Carol Reed and myself concerned the ending, and he has been proved triumphantly right. I held the view that an entertainment of this kind, which in England we call a thriller, was too light an affair to carry the weight of an unhappy ending. Reed on his side felt that my ending -- indeterminate though it was with no words spoken -- would strike the audience, who had just seen Harry die, as unpleasantly cynical. I admit I was only half-convinced: I was afraid few people would wait in their seats during the girl's long walk from the graveside and that they would leave the cinema under the impression of an ending as conventional as mine and more drawn-out. I had not given enough consideration to the mastery of Reed's direction, and, at that state, of course, we neither of us could have anticipated Reed's brilliant discovery of Mr. Karas, the zither player." - Graham Greene

[Spinal]

1. The Third Man (104.5)
2. Life of Brian (75)
3. The Red Shoes (64)
4. Naked (62.5)
5. A Zed and Two Noughts (57.5)
6. The War Game (57)
7t. A Clockwork Orange (54)
7t. Blow-Up (54)
9. Secrets and Lies (52.5)
10. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (49)
11. The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (48)
12. Brief Encounter (47)
13. Peeping Tom (47)
14. Barry Lyndon (44)
15. Lawrence of Arabia (41.5)
16. Distant Voices, Still Lives (40.5)
17. Bright Star (36.5)
18. The Servant (28)
19. Shaun of the Dead (26.5)
20. In America (25)

Night and the City (25)
The 39 Steps (24.5)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (24.5)
Another Year (23.5)
Once (23)

Where possible, ties are broken with the film receiving mentions from the most posters getting the higher spot.

[baby doll]

Hah, I'd never thought about it before, but it's true that Holy Grail exposes Bresson's Lancelot for the insufferable bore that it really is.I don't see how making a comedy based on Arthurian legends exposes Lancelot du lac as any thing, especially as Bresson's film begins after the quest for the Grail has been abandoned.

[Grouchy]

I don't see how making a comedy based on Arthurian legends exposes Lancelot du lac as any thing, especially as Bresson's film begins after the quest for the Grail has been abandoned.
I meant it in the way that both movies try to strip Arthurian (or post-Arthurian, whatever) legend to a kind of revisionist pragmatic realism, but Bresson's is a bore while Holy Grail is one of the most creative comedies ever made.

[baby doll]

I meant it in the way that both movies try to strip Arthurian (or post-Arthurian, whatever) legend to a kind of revisionist pragmatic realism, but Bresson's is a bore while Holy Grail is one of the most creative comedies ever made.Whether either film qualifies as realistic seems to me highly questionable, but it's obvious that both are revisionist retellings of Arthurian legend. Bresson's film defamiliarizes the legend through its emphasis on the later years and the intense physicality of its style; The Holy Grail does this through irreverent, often deconstructive humour. In other words, how much you like Lancelot du lac depends largely on how you respond to Bresson's style (I like it a lot), whereas how much you like The Holy Grail depends entirely on how funny you find the jokes (I only find them intermittently so) as it lacks any formal or stylistic interest whatsoever.

[Grouchy]

Whether either film qualifies as realistic seems to me highly questionable, but it's obvious that both are revisionist retellings of Arthurian legend. Bresson's film defamiliarizes the legend through its emphasis on the later years and the intense physicality of its style; The Holy Grail does this through irreverent, often deconstructive humour. In other words, how much you like Lancelot du lac depends largely on how you respond to Bresson's style (I like it a lot), whereas how much you like The Holy Grail depends entirely on how funny you find the jokes (I only find them intermittently so) as it lacks any formal or stylistic interest whatsoever.
It's true, I just wanted to repeat how much I was once bored by Lancelot du Lac in an arthouse film theater. I'm much more of a fan of the earlier Bresson films.

I think this moment is ART, though:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ryPUJyQf6g

[dreamdead]

#10

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v696/joel_harmon/monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-movie-poster-1975-1020465243_zpswdbwxxux.jpg
Sorry, I searched for a quotable line from this movie, and I just couldn't find one.


http://replycandy.com/wp-content/uploads/Tobey-Maguire-Funny-Face-I-See-What-You-Did-There.jpg

Interesting results. I'd never really thought that Watkins's film was that loved, so count me pleasantly surprised.

Feel bad that none of Meadows's work was represented here.

Love that The Third Man closed it out, even if I didn't place it that high. Each viewing makes that film click more and more.

[Grouchy]

Yeah, The Third Man is pretty much a perfect film.

[baby doll]

So what's next? China-Hong Kong-Taiwan?

[Spinal]

So what's next? China-Hong Kong-Taiwan?

Ha, that's exactly what I was thinking.