It's pretty weak sauce compared to Tetsuo the Iron Man.

Allen, you bring up some good films that I hadn't thought of. I tend to forget about it for some reason, maybe because it's almost too iconic for its own good, but I really do love Jaws. I think it would be interesting if they parsed the best of lists a bit more. I'm not sure if Jaws is one of the greatest movies of all time, but within its own niche, it's pretty unmatched, and awfully entertaining as a kind of pop-culture refraction of Moby Dick. It's also a good example of a movie that seems generally perfectly executed to me. On the other hand it's a pretty small, one-note story, which makes flawless execution a little easier. And sometimes certain flaws and excesses are a part of an artist's unique voice and charm, and that alone can muddy up any attempts at objectivity in these things considerably.

Another more pop-culture-flavored movie I'd put in the running would be Robocop, which I have often argued the merits of. It's an amazing, unique, funny satire, built on a surprisingly effective dramatic backbone. It's very subversive and touches quite cleverly on a whole bevy of themes, fears, trends, and topics, while still working pretty well as action entertainment. (I'm also a fan of Verhoeven's Total Recall and Showgirls, but they probably wouldn't quite crack onto a best of list.)

I'm not positive anything by Miike would make my list. I think he's funny and subversive and one of the most uniquely anarchic directors working today that I know of, but no single movie of his really sticks in my memory or plays in my imagination all that much, at the end of the day. I barely remember Ichi the Killer. I remember the blonde guy slits his mouth and there's some kind of flesh suspension at one point and I remember Ichi the Killer isn't the blonde guy but some nerdy dude who kills people with ice skates ... but like much of Miike, it's so kooky and all-over-the-place, that it mostly just exhausts me, unless I'm really in the mood for him. Frankly I prefer The City of Lost Souls to Ichi, I think. Seijun Suzuki has a similar effect in a less extreme way. To me, they're more Interesting than Great.

I was going to rewatch Vertigo but they don't have it on Netflix. I might rent it on Vudu this week. I watched Small Soldiers instead, because I like a lot of Joe Dante's films. I like the Gremlins-y meanness of some of it, but as the critics warned, it was quite weak on the whole.

K

Wow, I was just going through the full S&S list; In the Mood for Love made #24? Haha. I remember defending ITMFL against Charles' disdain at some point in the past, but #24 of all time is giving it way more than its due.

K

Yee-argh. This is a series of eight "experimental" shorts (totalling over four hours), essentially collages of hundreds of other films weaved together with type graphics, repetitive sound effects and very amateurish cuts. When there was a point to any of them, it was very weakly stated. If this was supposed to be a history of cinema, giving the titles of the movies might have been helpful. The only positive thing about it is that this is likely what the thoughts look like in Quentin Tarantino's head when he masturbates.

So this list entry is obviously shit. In its place, I nominate Myra Breckinridge, starring (sort of) movie critic Rex Reed. Also, written by recently departed Gore Vidal.

Okay, this has got to be a joke. The reputation of this stinker comes from the real people in the case this movie is about playing themselves in a dramatic re-enactment (this pointless movie). Sorry, assholes. I realize it's considered cool in the movie critic crowds to crow about movies from Iran, but an American named Charles Pierce did it almost twenty years earlier with The Legend of Boggy Creek. With original songs.

This one was really good. Starts off a bit one-note (men are lazy slackers, women do all the work), but eventually opens up into a finely nuanced picture of rural Indian culture. Every character experiences some kind of metamorphosis, even the ones that start off as total caricatures. Even Ravi Shankar's score starts off as somewhat silly and obtrusive, then settles into the mix and actually contributes to the overall narrative.

I don't know that it would be in my personal top 50, but it's well done.