Watching the Greatest Hits from the Last 120 Years | Hacker News Reader

Watching the Greatest Hits from the Last 120 Years

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There are a couple of strong periods in that list, but comparing, say, the 50s or the incredible run from the early 70s to the 80s against the contemporary period makes it look like children took over the ticket booking in recent years.

Even the family films back then seem to have had an artistic depth and cultural resonance beyond the empty spectacle and brand familiarity that dominate the present hits in the list.

Seems to be caused by the author's somewhat arbitrary selection of films from those recent years. Many are neither Best Picture winners, nor Oscar bait, nor even top grossing movies. Using Rotten Tomatoes' Top Movies seems to be a choice fraught with issues; what does most popular even mean for them, based on the user-submitted audience scores for that site? Why RT and not IMDB? Why not just use top grossing for everything?

Yes, the MCU-ification of everything is not great, but if one was to complain about popcorn blockbusters, that's a trend that's existed since Jaws/Star Wars, and there were far worse fare from the '80s-'00s.

Yeah, I was confused by the criteria to be included in the list. I focused on the inclusion of 1989's Glory (which is a fine movie) to try and figure it out, Glory isn't in the top 10 grossing movies for that year. I tried to navigate rotten tomatoes to see what it thinks the top films are for 1989 but couldn't figure out how to set up a filter. Maybe if I create an account I could do it, but not interested enough to pursue further.

The 1950s were hardly a pinnacle of good filmmaking: The era was ruled by horse operas, fer chrissake! You think superhero movies are ominpresent now, oaters were inescapable from the 1920s until the 1970s! And the endless parade of Teen Idols and war movies and Creature Features... strictly for the gum chewers, believe you me. And, after all, it was the era of the Hays Code, which comprehensively dumbed things down to the level where it wouldn't even get banned in Boston.

It was the B-movie era. You usually saw a double feature and a cartoon or two for your dime.

The same night could include Giant and a forgettable sci-fi flick.

I'm going by the list. The 50s entries are clearly far more impressive than recent ones.

That's because there's clearly a flaw in how they chose the recent ones.

Yeah there's a great bounty of amazing films in the last couple decades, but... a solid 2/3 of the picks on the 2000-on part of that list aren't things I'd pick as examples of great cinema, even factoring in popularity pretty heavily.

Fully agree. Contemporary cinema is still an art full of pleasant surprises, yet there’s Spiderman in the list. It’s not a bad movie, but ignoring the whole A24 thing?..

I've seen a complaint throughout the later half of the 20th century which I don't see much anymore: culture has become "youth culture". It is no longer a common gripe because we can't see this distinction any more.

Others here think this is simply the result of a selection bias, but I think it is more than that. Sure, there are still "grown up" films being made, but look at where the cultural moment is and has been -- very much oriented to and catering to youth.

The dominance of youth culture is in turn probably a second-order phenomenon, given mass culture and commercial advertising.

How about it's because kids buy most of the tickets, so lets cater to them.

Agree. Having seen now perhaps 75% of the "1001 Films to See Before You Die", you begin to see the breadth and depth that film can be. It makes most of the popular films of the last decade or two look like a single, narrow genre within film.

So many entertaining films I would not have been exposed to otherwise. I had first knocked out the "AFI Top 100" but the "1001" brings in all manner of foreign films, experimental films, more silent films, etc.

To be sure, the "1001" has exposed me to some real, um, turds. But, hey, Warhol did some great silkscreen prints.

And while French New Wave never resonated with me, I get it now, having seen everything that came before. And you can see how films like "Easy Rider" probably were not possible until New Wave kicked down the walls.

And that has been the joy of my own "film school" at home: seeing how the medium has grown and evolved over the years. It is, as I say, why I am so disappointed in Hollywood's recent offerings.

(Note: I understand the blog focused on American films/history. Just relating my own experiences once I stepped outside of American cinema.)

The problem with allowing for only one (and occasionally two) movies per year is that great movies do not appear equally distributed. There could be a year in which four absolute fantastic movies were made while in the next year saw only mediocre releases. By approaching the list based on year, this would imply that you get to watch one of the mediocre movies of the second year but only one (or two) of the fantastic movies of the year before.

Yup. Even if you only look within a relatively small category of films one per year can miss a bunch. For example, consider the category of animated feature length films released after 2000 in the US, and pick one per year by picking the winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

In 2001 you'd miss Monsters, Inc. because of Shrek.

In 2002 you'd miss Lilo & Stitch because of Spirited Away.

In 2004 you'd miss Shrek 2 because of The Incredibles.

In 2005 you'd miss Howl's Moving Castle and Corpse Bride because of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

In 2008, no Kung Fu Panda because of WALL-E.

In 2009, no Coraline or Fantastic Mr. Fox because of Up.

In 2010 you'd miss How to Train Your Dragon because of Toy Story 3.

In 2011 no Kung Fu Panda 2 because of Rango.

In 2012 no Frankenweenie, ParaNorman, The Pirates! Band of Misfits, or Wreck-it Ralph because of Brave.

In 2014 no How to Train Your Dragon 2 because of Big Hero 6.

2015 no Shaun the Sheep Movie because of Inside Out.

2016 you miss Kubo and the Two Strings and Moana because of Zootopia.

2019 No How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World because of Toy Story 4.

2021 you'd miss Raya and the Last Dragon and Luca because of Encanto.

Most of the winners are good...but if you just put all the above mentioned films in a pool and asked most people to pick their top 14, most would have a lot of films on their list that were not among the winners of the aforementioned years.

Yeah, I agree. Limiting to one is tricky, when years like 1982 are famous for having multiple amazing films (in this example all released in the summer)

You're right that "Greatest Hit of that year" is going to wildly swing in quality, and you could miss other films that are arguably the better film.

Take that 1982 example again, the writer chose E.T. .. an amazing film by all accounts, but ignored Bladerunner, Empire Strikes Back, The Thing, Tron, Conan the Barbarian, Wrath of Kahn etc etc...

Sure not all these films are equal, but the metric of highest grossing film might work fine in the older years.. but I'm going to say that lately, that metric doesn't work anymore. And it doesn't work because honestly, was Spiderman the best film from last year?

I thumbed to 1939 in the "1001 Films to See Before You Die" and got these (three I believe are "foreign" films however):

Stagecoach, Zangiku Monogatari, Babes In Arms, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Wizard of Oz, Destry Rides Again, Only Angels Have Wings, Gone with The Wind, Le Jour Se Lève, Gunga Din, Ninotchka, La Règle Du Jeu, Wuthering Heights

IIRC, Gandhi swept through most of the awards in 1982 and many movies that could have been recognized for their brilliance went unnoticed by the awards because Gandhi was such a powerhouse of a movie.

Yeah, you're obviously not going to get as much that's as old, but I think I'd rather use something like IMDB's top 250 - https://www.imdb.com/chart/top/.

Maybe throw some much older ones in on some other basis - e.g. a couple of Christmases ago I discovered there have been a lot of adaptations of 'Oliver[!] [Twist]', and the one that I considered 'the' one (i.e. that I watched as a child, basically) was far from the first; we watched a few of the much older ones, spanning 1920-40ish iirc, quite interesting.

The list has 5 from 1939, so it's not limited to two per year.

[edit]

Also 5 from 1951, 4 from '61 and several years with 3 (most recently 1990)

Ahem.

[EDIT] Possible NSFW warning, just occurred to me that I think sometimes they include banner images from films that might be NSFW

https://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000.htm

If you're serious about trying to watch a top-list of films from all of film history, you probably just want to use that top 1,000. They have spreadsheet versions you can download to sort and filter and carve up as you please, to get, say, a top-film-per-year list (I wouldn't recommend it because there are some amazing years and some not-so-amazing ones, but hey, you do you). There's also a kind of next-1,000 annex if you want more.

It's serious film nerds applying a bunch of methodology on top of a huge selection of critical lists and such. If you get serious about trying to produce such a list yourself, odds are you'll just end up reproducing most of what they did, and the more-serious you get the more it'll approach their work. Simpler to just use that.

[EDIT]

Straight to the list, for the impatient^wefficient

Same maybe-potentially-nsfw-randomized-banner-image warning applies.

https://www.theyshootpictures.com/gf1000_all1000films_table....

My first thought was that he's going to have a lot of fun watching "The birth of a nation" and "Song of the south".

But more importantly, and more in line with the original intention, from 1999 on there are a lot of sequels. Is he going to watch Kill Bill 2 without seeing the first one? Is he going to skip Harry Potter 2 and 3? Sure, right now this is not going to be a problem, but good luck doing the same experiment in 50 years.

"The Birth of a Nation" and "The Song of the South" are fair with regard to American history. "The Birth of a Nation" because of the effect it had on the national dialog at the time when it was released. It looks like the only film with Lillian Gish in it on their list as well.

"The Song of the South" might be noteworthy simply for Disney's attempt to bury that film in the recent decades. I don't put it in the same category as "The Birth of a Nation" with regard to how offensive it is (although I am not in the demographic that would be personally offended by either). I'm a huge fan of Joel Chandler Harris' original stories — maybe Disney failed by trying to make Harris' works too "Disney".

I manage to make it through a lot of movies that might, not unfairly, be described as "so boring I'd rather be at the DMV" or "so confusing I don't think even the director knew WTF was happening".

I bailed on Birth of a Nation about halfway through. I can usually suffer through a historically-significant film even if I'm not really loving it (I made it through Battleship Potemkin while hardly enjoying a minute) but Birth was just too much. It wasn't the offensiveness (that can be its own kind of entertaining, in a pinch) but that it was really long, and really dull. Maybe it picked up in the back half, but I doubt I'll ever find out.

I'd say the director's sort-of followup Intolerance also counts as a bit of a challenging watch for modern audiences, but I found that one way more fun.

Song of the South rotten tomatoes score 47

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/song_of_the_south

So why is it on the list at all?

Because it's entertaining and a classic for kids.

Yeah it may well be. My own mother used to sing me the "zipeddy do dah" song as a very young child. The performance of it in that film is absolutely amazingly fantastic. And it's the only thing I've ever seen of it other than one other lowlight. The talent, charisma, and charm on show in that performance is mind-boggling greatness.

The film also has a strong element of pro-slavery propaganda which is kind of why it's quite hard to find and probably why a successful disney flick with one of the great musical performances on film has such a low rotten tomatoes score.

So a list has been made of films selecting the top one or two from each year based on highest rotten tomatoes score. But not this film, which has a low score and has some lines in it that maybe some people love but many loathe and detest, including me.

Why is this film a special case for the stated rule for selecting these films? Does that pro-slavery element have anything to do with it?

I'm going to complain about the 1984 selection. Here are the top 10 grossing films from 1984 (from Box Office Mojo):

  1 Beverly Hills Cop $234,760,478 $234,760,478 100% - -
  2 Ghostbusters $229,242,989 $229,242,989 100% - -
  3 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom $179,870,271 $179,870,271 100% - -
  4 Gremlins $148,168,459 $148,168,459 100% - -
  5 The Karate Kid $90,815,558 $90,815,558 100% - -
  6 Police Academy $81,198,894 $81,198,894 100% - -
  7 Footloose $80,035,402 $80,035,402 100% - -
  8 Romancing the Stone $76,572,238 $76,572,238 100% - -
  9 Star Trek III: The Search for Spock $76,471,046 $76,471,046 100% - -
  10 Splash

Their picks are Amadeus and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Amadeus is probably the "critics pick" but I can't come up with any formula that picks the #3 box office as "most popular" from that year. I don't remember it being particularly well received when it came out, and it certainly is panned in hindsight. Hardly anybody would pick it as their favorite from that list of 10 movies...

Did something similar when I was in college. I watched the IMDB Top 250 and AFI's Top 100 (lots of overlap at the time). I started aggressively, thinking I could watch one movie a day, and struggled to appreciate any of the movies I watched. I was watching movies to check them off my list. Watching "good" movies back to back made it hard for me to appreciate them; it made my baseline of "what a movie is" too high to enjoy. This made me slow down and add movies between the films on my list. I started watching poorly reviewed movies and found some of my favorite movies along the way.

I like your idea of "... and to understand more about what life was like by watching what they watched ..." That's something I didn't like about strictly sticking to an AFI list. To me, some movies contributed a ton to cinema and are a slog to get through. "Birth of a Nation", "Citizen Kane", and "Gone with the Wind" were more fun to read about than to watch. You can't avoid this with your list having some on there that I dread, but the goal of your list makes more sense to me.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane and getting to think about Netflix DVD subscriptions and my spreadsheets again. I'd like an update when you are done.

The 1915 move is The Birth of a Nation (aka The Clansman). It's one of the highest grossing films of all time, and is regarded as one of the most racist films of all time. It's very much worth learning about as it pertains to the mainstream American acceptance of violent racism into the 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_a_Nation

"Watching the subjects of the most successful promotional campaigns over the last 120 years"

Looking at the list it's interesting to see how much sequels have taken over the box office

At least you'll get to (re)watch both Top Gun movies!

His command of English is catastrophic.

Missing "the great dictator".

Missing a lot of great films, their whole methodology is out of whack.

No "Jeremiah Johnson"?!?

Seems like TV series in recent years are much more worthy than some of the top yearly pics.

That's pretty horrible list if it's missing Heat, Fight Club and Falling Down from 90s, also no Jagten from newer movies.

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