Matterden

It is really a good film!

lucky92

Star Wars, again...

rotorm

Warcraft

ammocave

The Great Escape
A Clockwork Orange
Citizen Kane

cvrle1

Lawrence of Arabia, The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur

NoWhammies

Citizen Kane
Ten Commandments
Avatar
Doctor Zhivago

CharlesClark

Lord of the rings.

Cornchips

Star Wars and Gone With The Wind.

Frankly, I don't give a damn about SW.

Clyde1820

Gone With The Wind -- I don't think I've actually seen the whole thing. Just bits and pieces, the few times it's been on TV.

Citizen Kane -- Hadn't seen it, up to about 20yrs ago, then decided to. Wondered what all the hubbub was about. My thought at the time was that it doesn't live up to its hype.


Most of the other "epic" and highly-lauded films of the past 75 years are ones I've seen. Chalk it up to parents with interesting and wide-ranging tastes for "good" film.

A couple of more-recent epic (aka mini-series) type films I've seen are from the Herman Wouk books: The Winds Of War, and War And Remembrance. Talk about melodramatics, though the underlying premise (challenges of gearing up for WWII and the impact the war had on a family). Worth seeing ... once. To be fair, the original novels were far superior. Liked his earlier work, The Caine Mutiny, too ... and its film adaptation, though I never did see the play.

FiftySix

Late reply . . .

I've seen all three and wish I'd never seen A Clockwork Orange. I have never figured out why it is well known.

Shimagnolo

I'm singing...in the rain!
[evil grin]

gios 

Avatar.

Bob Ross

You need to sit next to a professional cinematographer and/or a really enthusiastic undergrad who just completed his second semester of Film Studies when watching Citizen Kane to truly appreciate what's going on in that movie. I don't believe it was made to be entertaining or even necessarily to tell a story; I think Welles made that movie as an experiment to convince himself that he could achieve certain things that had not yet been accomplished in movie making.

Clyde1820

You're probably right.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (the 1984 version with John Hurt and Richard Burton) is somewhat like that as well. But I can get really into the characters, at which point I get most of it. But it's got much the same vague, strange, cinematographic-backflips type approach to direction and editing that just make me wonder what they were trying to accomplish.

I love films that have a couple of clear points to them. Doesn't necessarily need to be storyline/plot. Can be, say, the simple cinematography (ie, beautiful landscapes and film making), such as some lush David Lean films. Can be the mood or presentation of a film that's wonderful, even if the storyline's a bit hard to follow (ie, The Brothers Karamazov, with Yul Brynner).

Even a stark film without much to commend it aside from a simple script and the mood of the thing ... like, say, The Duel (starring Dennis Hopper). That film's wonderful, since it's so "tight" and direct. The viewer is put right in the shoes of the guy who's being chased.

As for an Orson Welles film, I'd much rather see The Stranger yet again instead of sitting through another viewing of Citizen Kane, any day.

MinnMan

I've never seen any Star Wars movie. Or any Star Trek movie.

I'm a working scientist and when I was young, a fan of science fiction (in book form). Fanciful science fiction movies don't interest me at all.

I know bunches of planetary scientists and people who are now higher-ups at NASA who love that stuff. In my opinion, it clouds their judgement and makes them cheer leaders for human space exploration to the detriment of scientific discovery.

CharlieWex

my favorite movie is "criminal intelligence."

Bob Ross

Thread Drift: I highly recommend The Hundred-Foot Journey ...and not just because it is a charming and funny story with excellent performances by all actors. I love this movie because the cinematographer must have approached this film with the concept of making the light in each frame a point of interest. Light is quite literally a character in the film, and its appearances are always notable, elegantly and sumptuously captured, and provide an engaging counterpoint to the human performances onscreen. Watch the movie in a dark room and prepare to be enthralled.

Clyde1820

I'll look for it. Thanks for the reference.

Loved the 1981 Peter Weir-directed film Gallipoli, for much the same reason. Great storytelling, plot and acting. Beautiful cinematography counter-balancing and enhancing the heart-breaking reality of the film.

Same with David Lean's films Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. Great acting, strong stories, but also beautifully filmed. I'd probably put Lean's film A Passage To India in that group, as well, for the same reasons.

Another in the same vein, though really a play instead of a feature film: the 1981 Luis Valdez film Zoot Suit. Wonderfully filmed, with great acting and a good storyline. It has the typical pacing of a play, and the mood is played with by the director and cinematographer to keep the tension and the beauty of the story. Similarly done, the 1985 Richard Attenborough film A Chorus Line was a play with its great pacing, but with cinematography that kept it interesting and beautifully shown, despite (IMO) an otherwise "B-film" production.

genec

Until a few years ago I had never seen the whole movie "It's a Wonderful Life." I had seen the beginning, the end and snippets... but never sat down to watch it from beginning to end... man, that middle depressing stuff really justifies the end.

maddmaxx 

Is it possible to be a cheer leader for just the opposite because one has a different viewpoint? IMO scientific discovery happens at NASA just like it happens in medical facilities. Which is "real"? Star Wars energized an entire generation of young science students.

MinnMan

I don't understand your point. What do you mean by "just the opposite"?

Perhaps you are not clear on my point. Human space exploration is by far the most expensive form of science research of any kind, but it is only one aspect of NASA's activities and it pays paltry dividends in discovery as compared to "unmanned" space research.

Edit: This is the best NASA can do for the great science done by the International Space Station, at a total cost of $150 billlion. That is 20 X the annual budget of the National Science Foundation. ALL of the National Science Foundation - chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, mathematics, etc. etc.

What would really energize young scientists would be fantastic job opportunities in world-class facilities around the nation. But we can't afford that.

maddmaxx 

Do you like the computers you use in your science? Most concede that today's computers owe much of their original impetus to Apollo flights to the moon. Personally I know what we had in the late 60's and I know what major changes took place in the next few years. That is but one small thing driven by NASA research that doesn't always show in a budget analysis about who spends how much on what.

I would recommend the following read with attention to pages 14 and 15 for some specific NASA investment in technologies closer to your interests. IMO picking one form of technological investment over another is more subjective than objective.

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/f...les/SEINSI.pdf

I only point to this because of your statement: I know bunches of planetary scientists and people who are now higher-ups at NASA who love that stuff. In my opinion, it clouds their judgement and makes them cheer leaders for human space exploration to the detriment of scientific discovery.

MinnMan

Yawn. Apollo? Dragging out some old trope from more than half a century ago is no better than telling me I should like paying my phone bill because of the heroics of Bell Labs.. And your lead point is not even true. Though there were many technological dividends of the Apollo program, giving NASA primary credit for the computer age is ridiculous hyperbole.

BTW, though you don't seem to grasp the distinction, my criticism is specific to the post-Apollo manned space program, not NASA as a whole

jack pot 

... I wonder if we would be better served if the all scientific research was under government auspices ... military R&D accounts for a large % of civilian used technology and most university need and use government money. Total government oversight may seem somewhat constricting but the alternative of disconnected aims and goals seems very inefficient. Worse is our current attempt to mix the two because more often than not it accentuates the worst part of each

Welshboy

I'm another who hasn't seen 'Gone with the wind' and I've never seen 'Breakfast at Tiffanys'. I've not seen any LOTR or Matrix films.