My mother loves to tell the story of how she unwisely had a giant orange soda right before seeing The Right Stuff, but was so enraptured by the movie that she refused to leave during the whole three hours despite massively needing to pee (yes, including the scene where Shepard really needs to pee while stuck in the rocket).
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Yeah, not exactly one of the Academy’s best years on record, no. Shame, too. The Color Purple deserved much better.
But going to what you said near the end, 1985 had a fantastic roundup of films. I’ve seen what you mentioned there, with the exception of Vampire Hunter D.
If they weren’t going to give it up for Ran, I would have been happy for Witness taking all the kudos (Harrison Ford’s never done better work elsewhere), but… not to be, I guess.
Massively off its nut, for sure.
And Ran not even getting Japan’s nod for Best Foreign Language Film (and its only win being Best Costume Design), it’s just… damn.
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You two might appreciate this then: Express Yourself: The Story of Metropolis – Miracle Movies
I swear he has a blog post for just about every possible movie you can think of… 
That movie is fascinating for how little you actually see the shark until the last thirty, forty-five minutes or so. The mechanical shark(s) ( there were five, all nicknamed Bruce) kept breaking down in the water, so Spielberg was forced to improvise how to portray someone getting eaten by this killer shark, and finally just decided that NOT seeing the shark would be scarier than seeing it. That first scene of the girl in the water has become iconic in a way, because you never see the shark; you just see that poor girl getting dragged around in the water while screaming in terror and pain before she’s ultimately yanked under and (ostensibly) consumed alive. In many ways it’s a visceral portrayal of what’s termed thalassophobia, which is a fear of the depths of the ocean, and is a VERY effective reminder that we don’t know everything in the ocean, and even the species we are aware of can behave in unpredictable ways.
Fun factoid: Spielberg has long claimed that he was never as stressed out on a film as he was on Jaws. Everything that could go wrong did; he went well over the planned shooting schedule of 55 days (it stretched to 155), the constant malfunctioning of the mechanical sharks meant that he had to improvise ways to show it when he was filming scenes on top of the water (for instance the yellow barrels Quint uses to mark the location of the shark when they’re hunting it), which sometimes caused further problems (the barrels literally ripped the siding off of the boat being used as the Orca and it promptly sank with the cast, crew, camera, and sound equipment, so they had to build a new boat to match it)… to this day Spielberg claims his nightmares often consist of being on day four or five of shooting Jaws and suddenly realizing he has months to go before shooting will be completed, which makes him jump awake in a cold sweat. And yet that film is, as we’ve all pointed out, the first of the modern summer blockbuster movies. Just goes to show you; often the movies with the most problems on set (be they technical or human-related) often turn out to be the best Hollywood has to offer. It’s like that conflict combines to literally bring out the best in everyone; actors give the performance of their lives, cinematographers shine, directors give the exact direction needed to create the best shot, the crew comes up with improvisations that somehow make things even better… it’s amazing. In contrast, the films with the smoothest possible productions are often just… forgettable.
A lot of people don’t realize just how ground-breaking Citizen Kane was for the film industry. Orson Welles and his cinematographer, Gregg Toland, pioneered many of the filmmaking techniques that are still used to this day, such as deep focus photography (keeping the background of the shot in focus at the same time as the foreground, allowing for action to be happening in the background at the same time as what’s happening in the foreground), the long take, or “mise-en-scene” as the French call it, shooting in “thirds” (each shot relates to the one that comes before it and the one that comes after it), the non-linear narrative structure, new optical effects, and even new ways to transition from one scene to another (for instance, Welles had one actor say the words “Merry Christmas…” in one scene, before it immediately cuts to a new location where the actor finishes the phrase “…and a Happy New Year!”, which allowed Welles to show that 20 years had passed without having to resort to outright telling that to the audience). There’s a reason nearly every poll the American Film Institute has put out since the 1950s has placed Citizen Kane at or near the top of the greatest films of all time list, along with most of the other domestic and international polls. It was truly a film well ahead of its time.
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The Color Purple got eleven nominations but didn’t win a single one. But what really stands out is that Spielberg didn’t get a Best Director nomination, which from the day they were announced was accused of being a deliberate snub due to sour grapes after he showed he could do an “Oscar bait” movie and still make just as much money as his trendier stuff. Especially since it got three acting nominations, and if you know anything about how much of the director’s job is getting the right performances from their actors, that should be an automatic directing nomination too.
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Vampire Hunter D was one of the first “Japanimation” movies (as we used to call them) I saw that I thought, “Oh, huh. Maybe there’s some potential here.”
A failure in technology resulted in a much better movie, and quite possibly a better director, though Spielberg’s penchant for bombast won out in the end.
And also behind it’s time, drawing as it did so heavily on German Expressionists! When I was a kid it was generally regarded the greatest film ever, but it’s fallen a bit in esteem since then. (Trends are a funny thing.)
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I remember seeing Jaws in the theater on its initial release, and screaming my head off – getting so scared that I involuntary slunk down into my seat. The crowd lost it as much. I’ve gotten the creeps and been startled, but that’s the only time I ever out and out screamed during a scary/adventure flick.
I also loved the characters and the editing and while I sometimes tire of Spielberg’s obvious manipulations in other films, his tick and tricks worked like a dream for Jaws. Oh, and the score, jeeze, can’t forget that amazing score.
Jaws was also the first time I got sucked up in the merchandising - I still have the plastic Jaws cup from the concession stand.
Not only an epic movie, but an all 'round epic event for the viewer. Yes, there were event picture before Jaws (007) but this was like a whole other level (course, after Jaws that became the norm, Star Wars went even further with the merch, etc)
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FYI, I have indeed made a list of all the movies listed on here that I haven’t seen, so I do intend to watch them, time permitting.
AFI’s still got it listed as number one, my friend. LOL I looked at their website just today for that and Citizen Kane still occupies the top spot. But then, they only release the poll every ten years, and it’s been… three or four years since the last one.
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Ah, but I got caught in the Jaws talk, HaHa! What I really came here to gab about was Tsui Hark’s Detective Dee Trilogy, I really enjoyed those - he also has the Once Upon a Time in China movies.
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They do, but it used to top, like ALL of them (the lists, I mean). (There were a lot fewer, granted.) And take one like the Sight and Sound poll, where it was 50 years on the top of both the critics’ and directors’ list, to be replaced by Vertigo in 2012 on the former, and to be replaced by Tokyo Story and 2001 on the latter. Which movies were all 45, 60, 65 years old at the time.
It’s not the movies that changed, pace Norma Desmond.
Oh, I saw The Four Heavenly Kings when it came out in…2018?..It was a lot of fun.
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Woa, if anyone has a working definition of “epic” I’d love to see it!
Of the non-obvious ones mentioned upthread:
- Forrest Gump (you know, I think that is an epic)
- 2001 (yeah, scale and epic visuals)
Then I think of “Four Feathers”, which is visually epic but becomes more parlor, so “no”, I guess?
“Five Elements”? It’s got scale but seems too fast-paced. Don’t epics have to be more “grand”?
I think Howard Hawks “Red River” would qualify
This is a slippery topic! But it’s been cool seeing what people think when they think “epic”
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Gotta throw my vote in for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which is not a trilogy at all. It is essentially one long, gloriously engaging 10 hour epic film with 2 intermissions. It’s not perfect, but it’s close. Also
Bridge o/t River Kwai
Great Escape
The Dirty Dozen
Saving Private Ryan
Fiddler on the Roof (a quiet epic)
Avengers Infinity War & Endgame
Dr. Zhivago
Glory
The Ten Commandments
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Oh, I love Fiddler on the Roof. I don’t know how many times I’ve watched that. We had it when I was young on a two-VHS set. 
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I know every song (but two) from that movie but I have never seen it.
They show it yearly at a local theater—as a sing-a-long—and my kids and I feel that our first viewing should NOT be accompanied by the audience.
Then last year, TCM was showing it as a Big Screen Classic in December. Now’s our chance! Well, we all know what happened with last year…
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For those who enjoy the modern martial arts epics like Hero, Crouching Tiger etc. I recommend King Hu’s 1971 meditative masterpiece A Touch of Zen. It won the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes and was originally 400 minutes long. The current print is half that but at 3 hours 20 minutes is still so long it was originally split into two films to be shown in theatres. King Hu’s films are beautifully shot and are hugely influential on modern Wu Xia films. He was also very good for having strong female characters in his films with Pei-Pei Cheng’s lead role in 1966’s Come Drink With Me being an early action heroine. It’s no coincidence that she also played Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
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Ah, great pick Serein, I love A Touch of Zen, love King Hu.
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Just thought you all would like to know, this thread was featured in the backer update this week!
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Would you consider The Dark Crystal epic? It’s kinda slower paced, but I think it’s pretty epic.
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I don’t see why not; that film is amazing.
Although it is a movie I often cite when listing movies that mildly traumatized me as a child; the Skeksis emperor dying and disintegrating was terrifying to young me (indeed, the Skeksis in general were very… off-putting, although I’m well aware they were designed to be so), and Aughra with her removable eye creeped me out horribly. But all of that aside, I would indeed consider that to be an epic film, because of how revolutionary it was to the film industry’s use of puppets.
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I think the argument could be made for The Dark Crystal on the basis of production design alone (which is to say nothing of that captivating story), especially taken in tandem with the Age of Resistance series.
I’m still upset over the cancellation of that series, but being mad over stupid Netflix cancellations pretty much comes with the territory.
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Don’t get me started…
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