Showing posts with label North by Northwest. Show all posts

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Top 25 Thrillers

This is a list of the top 25 thrillers of all time. Included in the mix are suspense, mystery, horror, and film noir. The list was created by aggregating the resources at the bottom of this page.

1. Vertigo (1958)
2. Rear Window (1954)
3. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
4. Psycho (1960)
5. North by Northwest (1959)

6. Chinatown (1974)
7. Se7en (1995)
8. Memento (2001)
9. L.A. Confidential (1997)
10. No Country for Old Men (2007)

11. The Third Man (1949)
12. Blue Velvet (1986)
13. The Usual Suspects (1995)
14. Zodiac (2007)
15. Dial M for Murder (1954)

16. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
17. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
18. The Sixth Sense (1999)
19. Strangers on a Train (1951)
20. Double Indemnity (1944)

21. The Conversation (1974)
22. Rebecca (1940)
23. Shutter Island (2010)
24. The French Connection (1971)
25. The Shining (1980)

Resources:

Dave’s Movie Database: Genre Lists
ABC News/People Magazine (3/22/2011). “Best in Film: The Greatest Movies of Our Time” (includes top 5 suspense/thriller movies)
American Film Institute (2016). “Top 10 Mystery”
American Film Institute (6/12/2001). “100 Most Thrilling American Films”
TheCinemaholic.com (8/11/2019). “20 Best Suspense and Mystery Movies of All Time”
Esquire.com (6/12/2018). “The Best Thriller Films Ever Made”
Guinness Book of Film (1999). “The Top 100 Films by Genre Type” (includes top 5 thrillers)
HiConsumption.com (8/27/2019). “The 25 Best Thrillers & Suspense Movies of All Time”
Internet Movie Database (3/27/2013). “Best Suspense/Thriller Movies Ever”
Norman, Barry (1993). “100 Greatest Films of All Time” (includes top 10 thrillers)
Ranker.com “The Best Psychological Thrillers of All Time”
ScoopWhoop.com (5/5/2016). “21 Intriguing Hollywood Suspense Thriller Movies That Will Keep You Guessing Till the End”
Taschen (July 2014). “Film Noir: 100 All-Time Favorites”
TasteOfCinema.com (12/7/2018). “The 20 Best Suspense Thrillers of All Time”

Originally posted 8/31/2019; last updated 5/25/2023.

Monday, June 10, 2019

Time Out:

100 Best Films

Time Out is a London-based magazine which offers reviews of various forms of entertainment, including film. Over the years, they have published various all-time best lists of movies and a book of the 1000 top movies. This list is an aggregate of six of those lists (see resources at the bottom of the page). Astonishingly, only 10 titles appear on all six lists.

1. The Godfather (1972)
2. Citizen Kane (1941)
3. Taxi Driver (1976)
4. Chinatown (1974)
5. Apocalypse Now (1979)
6. Some Like It Hot (1959)
7. Raging Bull (1980)
8. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
9. Tokyo Story (Tôkyô Monogatari) (1953)
10. Blade Runner (1982)

11. The General (1927)
12. Goodfellas (1990)
13. Pulp Fiction (1994)
14. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
15. The Red Shoes (1948)
16. A Matter of Life and Death (aka “Stairway to Heaven”) (1946)
17. Annie Hall (1977)
18. The Shining (1980)
19. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
20. Gone with the Wind (1939)

21. Casablanca (1942)
22. Mean Streets (1973)
23. Star Wars – Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
24. The Third Man (1949)
25. The Piano (1993)
26. Persona (aka “Masks”) (1966)
27. Schindler’s List (1993)
28. The Seven Samurai (Schichinin no Samurai) (1954)
29. Vertigo (1958)
30. North by Northwest (1959)

31. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
32. The Searchers (1956)
33. Jaws (1975)
34. The Rules of the Game (La Règle du Jeu) (1939)
35. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
36. Once Upon a Time in the West (C’era Una Volta Il West) (1968)
37. Fargo (1996)
38. The Sweet Life (La Dolce Vita) (1960)
39. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
40. Double Indemnity (1944)

41. Battleship Potemkin (Bronenosets Potyomkin) (1925)
42. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
43. Breathless (A Bout de Souffle) (1959)
44. Notorious (1946)
45. The Deer Hunter (1978)
46. Brazil (1985)
47. The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeria) (1966)
48. Paris, Texas (1984)
49. Don’t Look Now (1973)
50. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)

51. Withnail and I (1987)
52. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
53. Cinema Paradiso (Nuovo Cinema Paradiso) (1988)
54. There Will Be Blood (2007)
55. A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
56. All About Eve (1950)
57. The Apartment (1960)
58. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
59. The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) (1957)
60. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

61. Boogie Nights (1997)
62. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
63. Kes (1969)
64. On the Waterfront (1954)
65. Breaking the Waves (1996)
66. La Haine (1995)
67. Rear Window (1954)
68. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
69. The Wild Bunch (1969)
70. L’Atalante (aka “Le Chaland Qui Passe”) (1934)

71. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
72. Touch of Evil (1958)
73. Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion) (1937)
74. Psycho (1960)
75. Performance (1970)
76. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
77. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
78. American Beauty (1999)
79. His Girl Friday (1940)
80. Léon: The Professional (1994)

81. Rashômon (1950)
82. The Conformist (Il Conformista) (1971)
83. City Lights (1931)
84. An American in Paris (1951)
85. Blue Velvet (1986)
86. The Passion of Joan of Arc (La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc) (1928)
87. Midnight Cowboy (1969)
88. Harold and Maude (1971)
89. Sansho the Bailiff (Sansho Dayu) (1954)
90. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

91. Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)
92. Monster (2003)
93. Andrei Rublev (1996)
94. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
95. M – Eine Stadt Sucht Einen Mörder (1931)
96. Naked (1993)
97. Se7en (Seven) (1995)
98. Black Narcissus (1947)
99. Hidden (Caché) (2004)
100. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)

Resources:

Dave’s Movie Database: Movie Lists
Time Out (6/10/2019). “The 100 Best Movies of All Time”
Time Out (4/26/2018). “The 100 Best Movies of All Time as Chosen by Actors”
Time Out (2016). “The 100 Best Movies of All Time”
Time Out (May 2006). 1000 Films to Change Your Life
Time Out (1998). “Top 100 Films”: readers’ picks
Time Out (5/17/1995). “Top 100 Films (Centenary)”

Originally posted 7/25/2019; last updated 5/29/2023.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

North by Northwest released 50 years ago today

North by Northwest

Released: July 28, 1959

Studio: MGM

Genre: mystery/thriller/action

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 13.28 Worldwide: ?

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 232.40 Worldwide: ?

Directing: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenwriting: Ernest Lehman

Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason

Review:

North by Northwest is “one of the all-time great entertainments” ^LM and is “considered by many to be Hitchcock’s best picture.” ^VD It “treads a bizarre tightrope between sex and repression, nightmarish thriller and urbane comedy,” ^T95 but is also “a sly, witty satire on the shallow ethics of modern advertising man.” ^T98

“Cary Grant is truly superb” ^T95 as Roger Thornhill, a Madison Avenue ad executive travelling cross country from New York to Mount Rushmore. He is desperately “trying to find out what’s going on and slowly being forced to assume another man’s identity” ^T95 as he is chased “by both spies (who think he’s a double agent) and the police (who think he’s an assassin).” ^LM

The movie is marked by “one memorable scene after another,” ^LM including “Grant getting frantically chased by a machine-gun firing crop duster through a corn field.” ^VD There’s also “a literal plot-twisting cliff-hanger…and the chase across the face of Mount Rushmore.” ^FS

“Grant allegedly told Hitchcock that the script was ‘terrible’ halfway through filming and that he had no idea what was going on. Grant believed the film was going to be a bomb. Hitchcock banked on his confusion aiding his character and therefore the film.” ^MSN