The 100 Best British films
Alex
The Eastern SeaboardPosts: 2,694MI6 Agent
Well, according to the people who made this list....
Goldfinger is #16 and Casino Royale made 70.
Personally, I don't agree with their first choice. However, judge for yourself.
http://www.empireonline.com/100britishfilms/default.asp?film=100
Goldfinger is #16 and Casino Royale made 70.
Personally, I don't agree with their first choice. However, judge for yourself.
http://www.empireonline.com/100britishfilms/default.asp?film=100
Comments
Cant believe The Kings speech isn't much higher !!
I personally would have put The Italian Job, The Wicker Man and Sexy Beast in higher places.
On the whole I like the list, although Zulu, The Italian Job, Black Narcissus, The Ipcress File and The Wicker Man are all films which I feel should be in the top 20.
Kind of funny though, you wouldn't do a Top 100 American films - would you? Though it would be kinda cool to do so: Superman, Once Upon A Time in America, They Shoot Horses, Stagecoach, Some Like It Hot, The Graduate, Grapes of Wrath, All the President's Men and so on.
Btu generally, they're just seen as great movies anyhow.
EDIT: By which I mean, we don't see the above films as American films, they're just films like they transend all that, and by implication the British films don't.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
It is kind of fun to see that the British list is at least fair enough to pick widely loved and popular choices, including comedy. But is Shaun of the Dead really one of the top ten films to come out of the UK? I would have easily put it below Casino Royale.
Opinion of course, still a great list of excellent movies.
And Mr. Beech, I disagree with your sentiment that this list was "at least fair enough to pick widely loved and popular choices." Quality is not necessarily related to popularity, and often the inverse is true. See, for example, the career of cinematic hack Michael Bay.
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There aren't widely loved and popular choices on that list?
Made (at least partly) in the UK? In that case Full Metal Jacket is British, but Licence to Kill isn`t.
British producers? That would exclude all the Bonds.
Made for British money, perhaps? Or with a mainly British cast?
It would be easier to make such a list of Norwegian films (That is, if there really are 100 good Norwegian films). Our movies are usually made by Norwegians (other than our mania to nearly allways include at least one Swedish or Danish actor in the cast) and seen by Norwegians. ;%
I wasn't clear. Yes, there are "widely loved and popular choices on that list." I disagree with your implication that including such films on the list is in itself a good thing, or that this list is somehow better than the AFI list because it better represents popular opinion.
A Gent in Training.... A blog about my continuing efforts to be improve myself, be a better person, and lead a good life. It incorporates such far flung topics as fitness, self defense, music, style, food and drink, and personal philosophy.
Agent In Training
Well I didn't mean to say one was really better, just that they seem to have different angles for making the lists. I think it is a good thing to include certain movies that would definitely be excluded from the AFI list. I don't think all lists should use similar criteria to the AFI list because that list is most certainly selected on some historic and specific criteria that very likely does not represent "the people's list" that the public might make.
My point is, the British list does represent popular choices better than the AFI list, whether that is why they are there or not. And that is a good thing because it adds diversity to the lists giving opinions on these films. My point was not that it is absolutely better, I do think it is a good think for both to exist.
Some are actually American productions and can't really be counted.
Get Carter, Dracula, Curse of Frankenstein, The 39 Steps, Peeping Tom, A Matter of Life and Death, Life of Brian, the Bonds, and Lawrence which I still think is the greatest film that ever will be made.
But the one that absolutely defines "British" to me is always slighted: The IPCRESS File.
Who voted for this?
Over this?
There's not enough Peter Sellers represented in this list. What was that one movie where David Lodge, Bernard Cribbins & Sellers are prison inmates with Lionel Jeffries as the sputtering warden? Classic.
'Two Way Stretch' I think.