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Have you ever looked over the Internet Movie Database’s Top 250? It’s almost as ridiculous as Movie Podcast Weekly, the Most Offensive Family-Friendly Podcast on the Internet… To celebrate our 250th episode, we endeavor to speed-round, micro review, through some serious rapid-fire chaos, IMDb’s Top 250 list as it appeared on July 24, 2017. (You can view this entire list of 250 movies in the show notes below.) We also bring you Feature Reviews of Dunkirk (2017) and Bokeh (2017) and Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017). We are also joined by MPW listener and film lover Mack Robins, a filmmaker who is currently running a Kickstarter campaign for his new short film, “Unseen.” Join us! This is one of our wildest shows yet!
If you’re new to our show… Movie Podcast Weekly typically features four hosts — Jason, Andy, Karl and Geek Cast Ry — along with frequent guests. We give you our verdicts on at least one new movie release from the current year that’s currently playing in theaters, as well as several mini reviews of whatever we’ve been watching lately. New episodes release every single week!
SHOW NOTES:
I. Introduction
— Recorded on July 24, 2017 (Pioneer Day in Utah)
— Welcome returning guest Mack Robins
— Mack’s short film Unseen
[ 0:07:00 ] II. Abbreviated Mini Reviews (ABRIDGED) and Commentary
Jason: Ozark Season 1, Episode 1 (streaming on Netflix)
Karl: The Loss of John Heard
— Jeff Cannata’s review of “Oh, Hello on Broadway” during The /Filmcast Ep. 427: War for the Planet of the Apes (also has a great listener feedback email about worst-ever movie-going experience — a must-listen)
Ryan: Ready Player One trailer
— A few other notable trailers…
— ***New podcast on Movie Podcast Network: We Deal in Lead western podcast! Yee-haw!
III. New in Theaters This Past Weekend [ Friday, July 21, 2017]:
Dunkirk
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets
Girls Trip
First Kill
The Black Prince
The Girls Without Hands
Killing Ground
Who the F*** Is That Guy?
The Gracefield Incident
Landline
Kuso
The Fencer
FEATURE REVIEWS HAVE TIME STAMPS:
[ 0:24:04 ] IV. Feature Review: DUNKIRK (2017)
Jason = 9 ( IMAX Theater / Buy it! )
Andy = 8.5 ( Theater / Rental )
Karl = 10 ( Masterpiece / Theater / Buy it on 4K! )
Mack Robins = 10 ( Theater / Buy it! )
[ 0:52:15 ] V. Feature Review: BOKEH (2017)
Jason = 7 ( Stream on Netflix )
[ 0:59:44 ] VI. Feature Review: VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (2017)
Karl = 5.5 ( Wait for Netflix )
— Special Features 004: Top 10 Movie Posters (Any Genre) and Top 10 Horror Movie Posters
— Movie Podcast Network Meetup in Salt Lake City: October 14, 2017
[ 1:07:28 ] VII. MPW Reviews THE IMDb TOP 250 LIST
Note: Of course, Internet Movie Database’s Top 250 movies list is always changing, but here is the IMDb Top 250 list as it appeared on Monday, July 24, 2017.
1. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
2. The Godfather (1972)
3. The Godfather: Part II (1974)
4. The Dark Knight (2008)
5. 12 Angry Men (1957)
6. Schindler’s List (1993)
7. Pulp Fiction (1994)
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
9. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
10. Fight Club (1999)
11. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
12. Forrest Gump (1994)
13. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
14. Inception (2010)
15. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
16. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
17. Goodfellas (1990)
18. The Matrix (1999)
19. Seven Samurai (1954)
20. Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)
21. City of God (2002)
22. Se7en (1995)
23. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
24. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
25. Life Is Beautiful (1997)
26. The Usual Suspects (1995)
27. Léon: The Professional (1994)
28. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
29. Spirited Away (2001)
30. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
31. American History X (1998)
32. Interstellar (2014)
33. Psycho (1960)
34. Casablanca (1942)
35. City Lights (1931)
36. The Green Mile (1999)
37. Dunkirk (2017)
38. The Intouchables (2011)
39. Modern Times (1936)
40. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
41. The Pianist (2002)
42. Rear Window (1954)
43. The Departed (2006)
44. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
45. Back to the Future (1985)
46. Whiplash (2014)
47. Gladiator (2000)
48. The Prestige (2006)
49. Memento (2000)
50. The Lion King (1994)
51. Apocalypse Now (1979)
52. Alien (1979)
53. Sunset Boulevard (1950)
54. The Great Dictator (1940)
55. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
56. Cinema Paradiso (1988)
57. The Lives of Others (2006)
58. Grave of the Fireflies (1988)
59. Paths of Glory (1957)
60. Django Unchained (2012)
61. The Shining (1980)
62. Wall-E (2008)
63. American Beauty (1999)
64. The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
65. Princess Mononoke (1997)
66. Aliens (1986)
67. Oldboy (2003)
68. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
69. Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
70. Das Boot (1981)
71. Citizen Kane (1941)
72. North by Northwest (1959)
73. Dangal (2016)
74. Vertigo (1958)
75. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)
76. Braveheart (1995)
77. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
78. M (1931)
79. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
80. Amélie (2001)
81. Like Stars on Earth (2007)
82. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
83. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
84. Double Indemnity (1944)
85. Taxi Driver (1976)
86. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
87. Amadeus (1984)
88. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
89. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
90. Toy Story 3 (2010)
91. Your Name (2016)
92. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
93. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
94. The Sting (1973)
95. Toy Story (1995)
96. Bicycle Thieves (1948)
97. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
98. The Kid (1921)
99. 3 Idiots (2009)
100. Snatch (2000)
101. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
102. For a Few Dollars More (1965)
103. L.A. Confidential (1997)
104. The Hunt (2012)
105. Good Will Hunting (1997)
106. Scarface (1983)
107. The Apartment (1960)
108. My Father and My Son (2005)
109. Rashomon (1950)
110. A Separation (2011)
111. Metropolis (1927)
112. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
113. All About Eve (1950)
114. Yojimbo (1961)
115. Batman Begins (2005)
116. Up (2009)
117. Some Like It Hot (1959)
118. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
119. Unforgiven (1992)
120. Downfall (2004)
121. Raging Bull (1980)
122. Die Hard (1988)
123. Children of Heaven (1997)
124. The Third Man (1949)
125. Heat (1995)
126. The Great Escape (1963)
127. Chinatown (1974)
128. Ikiru (1952)
129. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
130. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
131. Inside Out (2015)
132. Ran (1985)
133. The Gold Rush (1925)
134. The Secret in Their Eyes (2009)
135. On the Waterfront (1954)
136. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
137. Room (2015)
138. Incendies (2010)
139. Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
140. Blade Runner (1982)
141. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
142. The Seventh Seal (1957)
143. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
144. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
145. Casino (1995)
146. La La Land (2016)
147. A Beautiful Mind (2001)
148. The Elephant Man (1980)
149. Wild Strawberries (1957)
150. V for Vendetta (2005)
151. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
152. The General (1926)
153. Andrei Rublev (1966)
154. Warrior (2011)
155. Logan (2017)
156. The Bandit (1996)
157. Trainspotting (1996)
158. Baby Driver (2017)
159. Sunrise (1927)
160. Dial M for Murder (1954)
161. Gran Torino (2008)
162. The Deer Hunter (1978)
163. Gone With the Wind (1939)
164. Fargo (1996)
165. The Big Lebowski (1998)
166. The Sixth Sense (1999)
167. Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
168. The Thing (1982)
169. Finding Nemo (2003)
170. No Country for Old Men (2007)
171. Tokyo Story (1953)
172. Rang De Basanti (2006)
173. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)
174. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
175. Rebecca (1940)
176. There Will Be Blood (2007)
177. Come and See (1985)
178. How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
179. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
180. A Wednesday (2008)
181. Mary and Max (2009)
182. Gone Girl (2014)
183. Into the Wild (2007)
184. Shutter Island (2010)
185. Life of Brian (1979)
186. It Happened One Night (1934)
187. Platoon (1986)
188. Wild Tales (2014)
189. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
190. Rush (2013)
191. The Wages of Fear (1953)
192. Network (1976)
193. In the Name of the Father (1993)
194. Stand by Me (1986)
195. The 400 Blows (1959)
196. Ben-Hur (1959)
197. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
198. Spotlight (2015)
199. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
200. Persona (1966)
201. 12 Years a Slave (2013)
202. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
203. Jurassic Park (1993)
204. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
205. Memories of Murder (2003)
206. Amores Perros (2000)
207. Stalker (1979)
208. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
209. Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003)
210. The Truman Show (1998)
211. Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009)
212. The Nights of Cabiria (1957)
213. The Princess Bride (1987)
214. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
215. Before Sunrise (1995)
216. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
217. Sholay (1975)
218. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
219. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011)
220. Rocky (1976)
221. Prisoners (2013)
222. Touch of Evil (1958)
223. Gandhi (1982)
224. Catch Me If You Can (2002)
225. Diabolique (1955)
226. Annie Hall (1977)
227. Donnie Darko (2001)
228. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
229. The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
230. The Terminator (1984)
231. 8 1/2 (1963)
232. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
233. Barry Lyndon (1975)
234. Groundhog Day (1993)
235. Hera Pheri (2000)
236. La Haine (1995)
237. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
238. Jaws (1975)
239. Infernal Affairs (2002)
240. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
241. Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)
242. The Help (2011)
243. Beauty and the Beast (1991)
244. The Battle of Algiers (1966)
245. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
246. In the Mood for Love (2000)
247. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
248. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
249. Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
250. PK (2014)
You can check out IMDb’s current Top 250 list here.
VIII. Wrap-Up / Plugs / Ending
COMING UP ON MPW NEXT WEEK:
Episode 251 where we’ll be reviewing “Atomic Blonde” and “A Ghost Story” and Jason’s Big (Belated) Birthday Bash whose Main Event is MPW’s Top 11-20 All-Time Favorite Movies! Featuring special guest William Rowan Jr. of The Sci-Fi Podcast. Join us!
LINKS FOR THIS EPISODE:
Support Mack Robins’s Kickstarter for his new short film, “Unseen.”
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E-mail us: MoviePodcastWeekly@gmail.com.
Leave us a voicemail: (801) 382-8789.
Follow MPW on Twitter: @MovieCastWeekly
Leave a comment in the show notes for this episode.
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In regards to Dunkirk, I thought the atypical narrative was one of the film’s most engaging elements — which says a lot, considering how engaging every other element of the film was. I think the non-linear spin was employed so that all three stories built up their tension simultaneously and could merge at their climaxes. If the stories were told one by one in their entirety, I think the audience would be given time to move back to the center of their seat, so to speak. This way, despite the stories taking place over varying spans of time, they are related to each other and made inseparable, as they should be. All these characters experienced the same event and though their specific experiences differed, some of them not partaking in the war at all, their experiences are given equal weight.
Also, I’m sure you guys got it, but I’m not sure you explicitly stated it (SPOILERS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW THE NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE OF DUNKIRK):
The time frames given at the beginning of the film (one week, one day, one hour) told us the time span over which each particular story took place. I thought this was brilliant in its initial ambiguity, because at first, we have no idea what this means. I didn’t even know the story would be told in a non-linear fashion, so for half of the movie, where I was engrossed in what was happening in each story, I was trying to place it in the larger context of the other stories and the battle in general. This allowed me not just to think of each story in a vacuum and recognize the weight each story carried. At first I thought the time spans were referring to the point at which each story began following the battle. Growing up in Canada, I was completely ignorant of this part of history and had no idea what it was, so as I realized that this wasn’t the case and the stories were converging and the battle was not over for any of the characters, I was even more sucked into the larger story as a whole that was told by each third of the film. As someone who doesn’t love war films because I have trouble relating, being that I’ve grown up in such a privileged position, the narrative technique of Dunkirk really helped by not letting me off the hook for a second.
I agree with the Marshmallow Man. Telling the three central stories in parallel in Dunkirk gives them all equivalent emotional impact. If the film had been given a more traditional structure, then we’d have spent the first two-thirds of the movie on the worsening situation at Dunkirk, not even meeting the British citizens who participated in the boat rescue until something like the 75 minute mark. The planes would have been scrambled to support the rescue with maybe 15 or 20 minutes to go. Instead, we become more less equally invested in all three phases of the rescue simultaneously. And while I knew about the film’s structure going in, I think Nolan pulled it off well enough that even viewers sitting down to watch the movie with no advance warning of a fractured narrative could follow it without too much trouble. Which is pretty impressive to me.
I loved the long march through the IMDb Top 250. It turns out that I’ve only seen 117 of the films on the list. I’m no Jason or Andy when it comes to familiarity with the critical pantheon. I’d actually be interested to hear from the panel how many of the films each of them has seen, and not just how many times they had to pass because someone else didn’t save them from an embarrassing revelation. 🙂 Interestingly, I have seen one that all five members of the panel passed on: Grave of the Fireflies, No. 58. Perhaps not surprisingly, it’s a Japanese animated film (come on, Mack!) that tells the story of two young siblings who survive a firebombing attack on Kobe (the city in Japan, not the NBA basketball player) during World War II. Left alone (their father is off fighting in the war; their mother is killed in the firebombing), the kids take care of each other on the streets of the city. It’s a lovely and powerful film. It’s also one of Roger Ebert’s Great Movies, so maybe Jay will watch it someday, too.
Another one i was surprised to hear everyone pass on was The Hunt from 2012. It’s on Netflix, so I thought even if they didn’t see it when it was released theatrically someone may have gotten around to it — Jay, specifically. It’s a Jay movie if I’ve ever seen one. I think he’d say “drama films are not my favourite, but this movie right here shook me, no kidding. It is so scary you guys! The situation gets more deadly the longer he’s into it! Yes! Jay of the Dead!”
Check out The Hunt, Jay.
Mads Mikkelsen’s performance is phenomenal in that one. A must see.
As is Mary & Max, especially for Jay, considering his past with the autism spectrum podcast. Beautiful movie, really struck a chord with me.
Bokeh was really interesting and I don’t like boring movies. This one surprisingly didn’t annoy me. I like survival films. The ending was good. I didn’t see it coming, mind blowing.
IMDb Top 250, so funny, guys! I laughed out loud a few times while you were playing along to this silly game. I agree with you, the list is ridiculous but you made it entertaining!
FUn show! I was surprised at all the passes for Hachi: A Dog’s Tale, especially after hearing in previous episodes talk about needing good movies to show your kids. Hachi has no talking dog. No slapstick. It’s a great family film based on a true story. A year after my daughter saw it (at about age 9), she heard a piece of classical music and recognized that it was the song played in Hachi when a key character dies. A year later! So we bought the DVD.
Thanks for the recommendations and giggles!
PS. Jay, I gave up pretty quickly on “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” too. And I’d paid for it on Red Box (or maybe even Blockbuster).
The IMDb 250 section was hilarious, but as an Indian listener I especially found it hilarious when you guys came across the Indian movies on the list! Specifically, Ryan passing on “Munna Bhai M.B.B.S.” (which I’ve seen, and should not be on this list) and “Rang De Basanti” (also watched it, but it’s been too long for me to be able to say whether it should be on here). I would recommend number 81, Like Stars on Earth (2007) as well as number 99, 3 Idiots (2009).
Jason, thank you so much for having me on your show again. I wanted to add one of my short films for people to watch. This is one that I did a few years ago. Please check it out:
Also don’t forget to check out my Kickstarter for my new short film coming next year
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/666315984/unseen-a-mack-robins-short-film
What a great trip around the IMDB 250. The best part was Karl lambasting the placement of EVERY movie on the list. Would love to hear what his true top 20 would be.
I’m sure there were many great films left off of this list, but one glaring absence that stuck out to me was David Fincher’s Zodiac. This is a film I keep returning to year after year, and I consistently marvel at how meticulous each detail of the film jumps off of the screen. I think Fincher’s keen eye makes San Francisco feel so real in a way that few films achieve. Top it off with an A-list cast within their prime, a true-crime mystery for the ages, and you have one of the best films of the aughts. I know it didn’t do great at the box office, but I can’t believe that the internet didn’t ultimately rally around this film and boost it’s collective rating. I guess attention to detail and brilliant storytelling have gone out of fashion with the movie-going audience of today.
Were there any other glaring omissions felt by anyone else? I think that the MPW crew proved, if anything other than quality podcast entertainment, that the IMDB’s top 250 list is incredibly flawed, and should be treated as a cautionary guide at best for viewing great films.