The "Greatest" movie

[Valmy]

I saw La Haine un-subtitled back in College and the main thing I remember was the scene where that one dude is breakdancing and all this shit happens and at the end of the scene he is just silently head spinning on his mat.  I also remember a random old man came out of a stall after taking a shit and told some horrible World War II story about taking a shit and main protagonists were like 'why did that dude just tell us that?'.  Oh and the main characters had very coarse language that was hard to follow.

[Valmy]

Favourite - Its tough to pick. I will go with Dr. Zhivago

Oh God I love that movie.

[Ideologue]

Your "best made" criteria seem to completely ignore script and acting. Film is not merely a series of connected images.

There is not even a remotely objective way to rate acting.  Scripts can be evaluated from a logical standpoint, but logic is rarely something that makes a movie bad or good, or even worse or better.

An unobjective rating that takes all facets of the film into account is a better gauge of the overall quality than an "objective" rating of the camerawork.

I agree.  The "unobjective" best is also called a "favorite."

What I was trying to get across on the topic of crowdsourced rankings is that, even beyond the biases and different levels of education of the different participants, the different methodologies employed undermine whatever usefulness such a ranking has left.

At least when you have a single person doing it (or a staff at a newspaper or website) you usually have the opportunity to understand their methodologies (as well as their biases and educations).  When I read Roger Ebert, for example, I know that he's going to be very well-educated in terms of prestige films (e.g., he was one of like a hundred people on the face of the planet to have seen the full restored cut of Cabiria), biased against violence (e.g., Die Hard, The Raid) and arguably against genre films in general, and uses a methodology that values formal and narrative innovators over perfecters (Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey) though he does have a soft spot for movies that push his buttons just right, i.e., movies that star Ingrid Bergman (Casablanca, Notorious).

[Ideologue]

Favourite - Its tough to pick. I will go with Dr. Zhivago
Best - Godfather I and II - dont make me pick between them
Most important - Fail Safe.

Actually, this makes me want to change my "most important" answer.  In terms of impact on society rather than film, Soylent Green is way, way up there.  It's not even that great a movie, but it is pretty much the definitive vision of an overpopulated future and has soaked pretty indelibly into the cultural fabric--and better yet, it's one of the tiny handfull of huge social problems we're actually on track to solve, in small part thanks to the parade of horribles led by Soylent Green.

[Barrister]

Favourite - Its tough to pick. I will go with Dr. Zhivago
Best - Godfather I and II - dont make me pick between them
Most important - Fail Safe.

Actually, this makes me want to change my "most important" answer.  In terms of impact on society rather than film, Soylent Green is way, way up there.  It's not even that great a movie, but it is pretty much the definitive vision of an overpopulated future and has soaked pretty indelibly into the cultural fabric--and better yet, it's one of the tiny handfull of huge social problems we're actually on track to solve, in small part thanks to the parade of horribles led by Soylent Green.

[Savonarola]

Some good recommendations in this thread,though I don't get how Ide can suggest a film he hasn't seen.      'Russian Ark' was interesting, but not exactly earth shattering.

I liked the part where the diplomat was asking about current Russian government:

Diplomat:  What kind of system is there now?  A republic?
Unseen Man:  I don't know.

Twelve years later not much has changed.

"Russian Ark" was an interesting experiment; but I really don't consider it one of the best made films of all times.  The logistics behind putting something like that together must have been incredible; but I didn't care for the point of view shot and there wasn't much of a story.

[Norgy]

Favourite - Its tough to pick. I will go with Dr. Zhivago
Best - Godfather I and II - dont make me pick between them
Most important - Fail Safe.

Actually, this makes me want to change my "most important" answer.  In terms of impact on society rather than film, Soylent Green is way, way up there.  It's not even that great a movie, but it is pretty much the definitive vision of an overpopulated future and has soaked pretty indelibly into the cultural fabric--and better yet, it's one of the tiny handfull of huge social problems we're actually on track to solve, in small part thanks to the parade of horribles led by Soylent Green.

Wow. I'll try that diet of yours.

[Valmy]

My favorite part of Russian Ark was the scene where Nicholas I was having an audience with the Persian ambassador.

[Savonarola]

Actually, this makes me want to change my "most important" answer.  In terms of impact on society rather than film, Soylent Green is way, way up there.  It's not even that great a movie, but it is pretty much the definitive vision of an overpopulated future and has soaked pretty indelibly into the cultural fabric--and better yet, it's one of the tiny handfull of huge social problems we're actually on track to solve, in small part thanks to the parade of horribles led by Soylent Green.

I once saw an interview with Oliver Stone who was convinced Nixon watching "Patton" caused him to escalate the Vietnam War. Ollie said that made "Patton" one of the most influential  films ever made; almost as influential as "JFK".

[Valmy]

JFK 

[Ideologue]

Favourite - Its tough to pick. I will go with Dr. Zhivago
Best - Godfather I and II - dont make me pick between them
Most important - Fail Safe.

Actually, this makes me want to change my "most important" answer.  In terms of impact on society rather than film, Soylent Green is way, way up there.  It's not even that great a movie, but it is pretty much the definitive vision of an overpopulated future and has soaked pretty indelibly into the cultural fabric--and better yet, it's one of the tiny handfull of huge social problems we're actually on track to solve, in small part thanks to the parade of horribles led by Soylent Green.

What?

M: I didn't suggest Russian Ark--but I know that a 90+ minute single take done without computer stitching is borderline impossible, yet they managed it.  Now, how well they managed it and what the ultimate result was is unknown, but if it works at all it's a pretty monumental achievement.  I think I'll watch it tonight if it's still on Netflix Instant.

I've never seen Birth of a Nation either.  It's a three hour silent film about racist vigilantes watched exclusively for historical purposes today.  I am willing to defer to the mass of critics and smart people who have seen it and said that it's effectively a dictionary for film language--though to argue to what degree it's actually innovative would take a Sav-level education in early silent cinema that I don't yet have.  So I bow to his superior wisdom on that one (though cross-cutting, for example, seems so basic and intuitive that I can hardly imagine it took like a decade of feature films for anyone to come up with it).

[Valmy]

Birth of a Nation is fascinating.  Not only is it a beautifully shot film but it tells the Lost Cause version of reconstruction, which is horrifying to say the least.  But, on the other hand, it lets you know what white Americans at the time thought of that era.

[Barrister]

Favourite - Its tough to pick. I will go with Dr. Zhivago
Best - Godfather I and II - dont make me pick between them
Most important - Fail Safe.

Actually, this makes me want to change my "most important" answer.  In terms of impact on society rather than film, Soylent Green is way, way up there.  It's not even that great a movie, but it is pretty much the definitive vision of an overpopulated future and has soaked pretty indelibly into the cultural fabric--and better yet, it's one of the tiny handfull of huge social problems we're actually on track to solve, in small part thanks to the parade of horribles led by Soylent Green.

What?

I doubt 1 person in 10 could tell you what Soylent Green was about (apart from maybe the line "Soylent Green is made of people!".

On the other hand, the idea of a population boom leading to widespread hunger goes as far back as Malthus himself, and was a very common sci-fi trope in the middle to end of the last century.

And the only reason we're on track to "solve" the problem is the near-simultaneous (and otherwise unrelated) invention of widespread fertilizer use and the oral contraceptive, both of which commenced well before Soylent Green.

[Savonarola]

I've never seen Birth of a Nation either.  It's a three hour silent film about racist vigilantes watched exclusively for historical purposes today.  I am willing to defer to the mass of critics and smart people who have seen it and said that it's effectively a dictionary for film language--though to argue to what degree it's actually innovative would take a Sav-level education in early silent cinema that I don't yet have.  So I bow to his superior wisdom on that one (though cross-cutting, for example, seems so basic and intuitive that I can hardly imagine it took like a decade of feature films for anyone to come up with it).

Griffith had used cross-cutting long before "Birth of a Nation."  Many of the techniques he used in "Birth of a Nation" he had developed while making short films.  "Birth of a Nation" as a feature (and a blockbuster) brought them to much more widespread attention.

[Norgy]

Actually, this makes me want to change my "most important" answer.  In terms of impact on society rather than film, Soylent Green is way, way up there.  It's not even that great a movie, but it is pretty much the definitive vision of an overpopulated future and has soaked pretty indelibly into the cultural fabric--and better yet, it's one of the tiny handfull of huge social problems we're actually on track to solve, in small part thanks to the parade of horribles led by Soylent Green.

I once saw an interview with Oliver Stone who was convinced Nixon watching "Patton" caused him to escalate the Vietnam War. Ollie said that made "Patton" one of the most influential  films ever made; almost as influential as "JFK".

I watched his "Untold history of America", and it was really, really poor. There was nothing "untold" about it, just a whole lot of revisionist nonsense about JFK and Henry Wallace. Made me think he's lost the plot, really. I'd have been offended were I American.