Ebert's "Great Movies" - how many have you seen?

On what do you base this claim? The movie's been out for 11 years - I don't sense any cult following for it yet, and don't see why one will develop...

 

I've seen 188, although I wouldn't say they were all great. I didn't rate Dark City, and never liked Jaws. A pretty good selection of European cinema, even if it's a tad predictable. Come And See and Cries And Whispers are my pick of the bunch.

 

I've seen about 25 of them in full. Many of these movies are before my time, and while I enjoy a good classic movie, my tastes have often veered from those on this list.

 

Like Colin I don't hate the film, it is enjoyable, but Matthew McConahy's(sp) charcter was a bad decision from start to finish. The script also had some dialog that makes me want to gag. I would give the movie a B- rating overall and never place it on a great movies list.

 

Very nice list. No complaints about anything there (especially as Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America don't appear!). Ebert can be way too forgiving of films. I'm glad when he finally narrowed down the GREAT ones he showed some restraint. Too much work to count up what I've seen!

 

looks like I have seen 179 as far as I can remember

 

I find it surprising the reverence shown for Kubrick and his so called convoluted big hidden meanings, at say the end of 2001' yet would be ever ready to deride Spielberg's handling of a 'Kubrick inspired' script such as A.I. I see the 2001 connection between the need for death and 'the rebirth of innocence' to ever be allowed to and/ or to go further out in space at the end of 2001 - continued somewhat...in the created child in A,I,
If one then looks at A.I : through the eyes of that child, and how it reacts -given its situation, the apparent silly irrationality then starts to make real sense. When I first saw the film, I was not much impressed but now more familar with it: find rich seams of thought in it. And only because I beleive...Spielberg -not Kubrick- handled it.
Frankly I shudder to think what Kubrick -had he lived- made of it.

Throughout his filmaking life, we were confronted with an cold ice-pick mind,
Underneath all the lauded praise, there was an inhuman streak in so much of his obsessive work, that permeated the finished product -film.
His outlook on the World represents to me ...a mind that consisted of maybe 200 empty ballrooms.. all you hear is either the doors or the echo of them slamming shut in a chilly drafty breeze - an absolute lack of warmth anywhere. Eyes Wide Shut perfectly epitomises that : based upon an exceptional boring French movie from the early 50's :La Ronde.
Coupling such aspects with jarringly noticable bad production values or outright 'clangers;' in many cases. The silly noticeable visiblly 'cheap' England locales meant to represent the U.S... or Vietnam in one instance. Throwing the observant viewer into total disbelief. with Lolita, Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket or even a famed concert hall used ...as a hostipal in Clockwork Orange! Not forgetting Alex's supposed use of a then particular known puny non Dolby cassette tape to create mind blowing Beethoven sound.
It is the little things that finally pile up.

 

I've seen 100 give or take one or two I don't remember.

 

132 for me. At least as an adult. There might be a few more that I saw on TV as a child, but don't remember. It's not a bad list, although there are a few personal favourites of mine that I might have added - Inglorious Bastards, True Romance and Airplane for three.

 

OK, maybe that was poorly worded. There are only another 30 or so that I know I want to watch. There are probably at least that many that I've seen parts of and don't care to see the entire movie. The rest are up in the air.

 

52 start to finish.

I'm another big fan of Contact, but I've always had a thing for space movies.

 

About 115 for this viewer, give or take a couple...

 

.

 

About 155 that I've seen start to finish. And probably the vast majority of the ones I haven't seen I've at least heard of, or seen parts of.

 

I must admit I've always had a hard time separating "Contact" the movie from "Contact" the world's worst trailer. That promo gave away 95 percent of the story! I remember being stunned when I saw the movie - there was so little that happened that we didn't already know.

I still wouldn't think it's a great movie, but I suspect that disappointing initial screening will always leave a bad taste.

Footnote: they used to round up the extra for "Contact" at a shopping center around the corner from the apartment I lived in back then. I remember seeing big signs that read "CONTACT". I didn't realize what they meant until a few weeks later when I saw a newspaper article about the local parts of the shoot...

 

about 90 per cent of the movies listed..

 

That's a pretty interesting list, I've seen about half of them.

 

I thought it was a running joke about how trailers for films by Robert Zemeckis tend to give away too much of the plot. But then, I could have sworn he once said his trailers are done this way because audiences want to know exactly what they are getting in the film.

 

Only 22

 

All but 26. I wouldn't call all of these great movies. Some great, some good, some interesting and some not so much.

The advantage (or disadvantage depending on I liked the film) of access to Melnitz and film school t UCLa.

 

Did you ever know any folks from the film Phd program at UCLA? Been thinking about that.

 

Yeah a couple. I also knew Howard Suber quite well one of the professors there (and he responded to one of my reviews one time. Interestingly, i unconsciously used a phrase that he used to say in class to us in the review thinking it was original and, he was right, I stole it from him without realizing where it had come from).

Richard Walters the screenwriting instructor out there was a fun guy. I kept trying to talk him into letting me see his unproduced draft for "American Graffiti" that he worked on for Lucas.

I didn't always agree with him but there's no doubt about his love and extensive knowledge of film.

The only guy I never got along with there was John Bohem an interesting professor who I just never saw eye-to-eye with. He also gave me a lower grade on my project one (I had a different professor for project two) because I did it all with synch sound (all project ones at that time could have sound but they weren't supposed to be synched with dialogue like mine was, etc.).

I remember how grueling it was putting that puppy together but took a short cut and had the cast re-record their entire performance to speed the process along since my sound person made some mistakes (hey, it was her first project).

I had already done six or seven 16mm projects on my own prior to coming to UCLA (project ones were done in Super 8--man, this IS dating myself) and 20 plus Super 8 projects as well as a number of videotape projects prior to doing the project one and project two films at UCLA so I had a number of short cuts that made it both cost and technically effective.

Usually the project two's were reserved for many of the masters students but I talked my way into the class (and bit off quite a bit more than I could chew at the time).

 

Yeah, I recall a quote along those lines, and I think he's 100 percent wrong. Trailers exist to entice a viewer to go see a movie, not to tell a viewer 95 percent of what'll happen in the movie. People might want to have some idea about a movie's plot/action, but I don't think they want to know everything that happens in it!

If all trailers gave away as much as the trailer to "Contact", I'd stop watching them - or stop going to movies!

 

All but twenty. (Herzog and Bergman seem to be my two big blind spots.) It's a much better list than I was expecting, though some of the more recent choices are pretty eccentric. It's sad if he thinks that Departures is the best that current Japanese cinema has to offer.

For those checking their own tallies, note that Le Boucher is the Chabrol film from 1970, not 2003 as listed on Ebert's page.

 

It was based on a piece by Arthur Schnitzler, but it wasn't La Ronde, it was his novella Dream Story.