Dracula Presents: The Top 100 Movies of All Time (2015 List)

In all of their collective artistic endeavors, no member of the extended Coppola family has taken a bigger shit in the American public's lap than Jason Schwartzman.

Why all the hate for Jason Schwartzman?

He's Zooey Deschanel with a penis and even less talent.

93. Letters From Iwo Jima

Year: 2006

Director: Clint Eastwood

Writer(s): Iris Yamashita

Starring: Ken Watanabe, Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryō Kase, and Nakamura Shidō

Based on: "Picture Letters from Commander in Chief" edited

by Tsuyoko Yoshido

Studio: Warner Brothers

Country of Origin: USA

Language: Japanese

Running Time: 141 Minutes

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
In 2006 Clint Eastwood made a film about the battle of Iwo Jima called Flags for Our Fathers that everyone thought would be an Oscar-sweeping sensation but when it finally came out it was mostly met with apathy. As that film is increasingly forgotten it is its companion piece told from the Japanese perspective, Letters from Iwo Jima, that has emerged as the true classic. Telling the story of Captain Tanida (played excellently by Ken Watanabe) as he defends the tactically important Island in a battle against the oncoming American troops. Of course a film told from the perspective of enemy combatants in a war against the United States is a true anomaly coming out of Hollywood and seems especially curious coming from a man synonymous with Western heroes, but Eastwood has always subverted people’s expectations when it comes to matters of patriotism and he does an amazing job of walking a tightrope of sensitivity, always falling on the side of humanism even when dealing with some of the Japanese soldiers’ fanatical tendencies. In fact it is probably no coincidence that Eastwood was making a movie that tried to empathize with a group of potential suicide bombers right at the height of the Iraq war. Beyond that Eastwood is simply on the top of his game in terms of pure filmmaking, injecting the film with a really beautiful lyricism while also depicting the horrors of war in harsh but necessary light. In retrospect this film is something of a peak in Eastwood’s 21st century career and he’s struggled to find the right material and execute on it properly, but Letters is a hell of a peak just the same.

Amazing film. Glad to see it make the list.

Agreed.

#92 The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

Year: 1966
Director: Sergio Leone
Writer(s): Sergio Leone, Luciano Vincenzoni, Agenore Incrocci, and Furio Scarpelli
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef
Studio: United Artists
Country of Origin: Italy
Language: Italian/English
Running Time: 177 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Let’s be clear: Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is a dumb movie. It’s a shallow western about three rather thinly drawn badass gunfighters trying to find some buried gold and killing a lot of people along the way. That they were able to make a nearly three hour movie out of that concept and not have anyone complain about it is kind of amazing. So I think it’s safe to say that the film isn’t a success because of its script, and while Eastwood, Wallach, and Van Cleef do deliver some iconic tough guy performances their intentionally simplistic characters also aren’t what make the film a success. Really what makes the film work is plainly Sergio Leone’s virtuosic filmmaking. Leone is a filmmaker who used the disreputable but unrestrained world of Italian exploitation genre cinema in order to create these needlessly grand entertainments. He utilized unconventional but clean framings and camera angles as well as some really pitch perfect editing in order to create exceptionally effective action scenes while also maintaining a really subversive sense of humor. His key collaborator of course is composer Ennio Morricone, who used a similarly experimental sensibility to create one of the most iconic movie scores of all time which seems to meld perfectly with Leone’s editing choices in order to really propel them.

The Ecstasy of Gold, into the final Mexican standoff, might be my favorite 10-15 minutes of cinema.

Goddamit I love that song so much.

I have the movie on VHS. There was times in the 1990's and EARLY 2000's where I would pop the tape into the VCR and rewind to that scene and just watch that scene over and over again. 

91. United 93

Year: 2006

Director: Paul Greengrass

Writer(s): Paul Greengrass

Starring: Ben Sliney, Peter Hermann, David Alan Basche, and Omar Berdouni

Studio: Universal Pictures

Country of Origin: USA

Language: English

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
I’m not a big believer in the concept of “too soon” at least when it comes to art and sensitivities. I do sometimes balk at movies that try to make conclusions about current events a little too quickly but I don’t think it’s a mistake to face our nation’s collective demons quickly and that’s exactly what happened when Paul Greengrass made the first film to focus on the September 11th attacks a mere five years after the fact. The film doesn’t try to explain the reasons behind the attack or suggest a direction for the nation to take up going forward, instead it’s a sort of thriller about the day of the attack and about the people forced to react to the situation and as they became the first Americans to enter into a post-9/11 mentality. The film is devoid of movie stars and almost anything else that would make this feel more like a movie than like a sort of reconstruction of what happened on board the ill-fated Flight 93. Greengrass who would make his mark by bringing a special sort of intensity to action films like The Bourne Supremacy, proved to be the perfect choice to helm such a project and takes a sort of solemn eye to the project but also isn’t afraid to make the film an engaging experience for the audience.

89. The Manchurian Candidate

Year: 1962

Director: John Frankenheimer

Writer(s): George Axelrod

Starring: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, and James Gregory

Based on: The novel "The Manchurian Candidate" by Richard Condon

Distributor: United Artists

Country of Origin: USA

Language: English

Running Time: 126 Minutes

Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Sometimes movies just become creepier as they age. I’m sure The Manchurian Candidate was plenty creepy when it came out in 1962, but in the years since it’s taken on something of an aura. This is in no small part due to the fact that it ends with a politician being killed with a sniper rifle a year before the Kennedy assassination happened but even without that parallel I feel like the film would still linger in the mind. Part of that has to do with its paranoid conspiracy plotline which has its characters out of control of their own actions and constantly unsure of themselves. It might also have to do with its ending, in which all the “bad guys” certainly die but which still leaves you kind of unsure if good really won over evil. Frankenheimer was ahead of his time in many ways during the 60s, his brand of paranoia would become much more popular a decade later in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Beyond that though it’s just a damn good thriller with some really memorable set-pieces. The film seems to almost pick up where Alfred Hitchcock (who was still active at the time but was just beginning to enter his awkward late stage) was sort of leaving off except with a slightly more modern and bleak outlook.