All Time Best Movie
All Time Best Movies With A Number In The Title
The title of a film can be just as important as the content found within it. Some are judged by their name, while others have become memorable because of it. Numbers cardinal, ordinal and nominal have always had a special place in film titles, and have been found in them as far back as the 1900 British documentary "Noon Hour of 3000 Employees," and the dramatic 1911 Italian short, "Sixtus the Fifth."
Narrowing down the best movies with a number in the title is no easy feat, as tough choices had to be made (our deepest condolences to both Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and its remake, "The Magnificent Seven"), and rules had to be set, and followed, mainly: 1) no titles with numbers that represent a sequel or subsequent film, no matter how genius the title is, a la "2 Fast 2 Furious," and 2) no titles with a year, past, present, or future, with apologies to the best of them — Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Those are lists for another day. Today, let's stick with bringing to the surface the best of these not so hidden figures.And one note for budding filmmakers — if you want to make a mark on your debut film, use a number in your title. If your film has got the goods, the numbered title certainly can't hurt.Just ask François Truffaut, Sidney Lumet, Darren Aronofsky, Géla Babluani and Neill Blomkamp
One Day in September
The Summer Games of the XX Olympiad were the first to be held in Germany since the Nazi-saturated 1936 ones in Berlin. The motto was "Heitere Spiele ("The Cheerful Games"), and security on the grounds was purposely lax. At 4:30 a.m. on the 5th, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took 11 Israeli athletes and coaches hostage, and in the process took the games hostage as well. The world was glued to their televisions to see how it all played out, and the unfolding tragic events are given a chilling and suspenseful retelling by Macdonald through archival footage, revealing interviews, and an excellent soundtrack.
The Michael Douglas-narrated doc took home Oscar gold at the 2000 Academy Awards, and an in-depth companion book by Simon Reeve was released the same year. The 2005 Steven Spielberg-directed film "Munich" examined the Israeli covert operational response that followed the massacre.
Best Movies With A Number In The Title
New Line Cinema / Warner Bros.
Narrowing down the best movies with a number in the title is no easy feat, as tough choices had to be made (our deepest condolences to both Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" and its remake, "The Magnificent Seven"), and rules had to be set, and followed, mainly: 1) no titles with numbers that represent a sequel or subsequent film, no matter how genius the title is, a la "2 Fast 2 Furious," and 2) no titles with a year, past, present, or future, with apologies to the best of them — Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Those are lists for another day. Today, let's stick with bringing to the surface the best of these not so hidden figures.
And one note for budding filmmakers — if you want to make a mark on your debut film, use a number in your title. If your film has got the goods, the numbered title certainly can't hurt. Just ask François Truffaut, Sidney Lumet, Darren Aronofsky, Géla Babluani and Neill Blomkamp.
The single day referred to in the title of Kevin Macdonald's 1999 documentary "One Day in September" was the 5th day of the ninth month of 1972, when the Munich massacre took place, and shattered the friendly and peaceful image of the Olympics forever.
The Summer Games of the XX Olympiad were the first to be held in Germany since the Nazi-saturated 1936 ones in Berlin. The motto was "Heitere Spiele ("The Cheerful Games"), and security on the grounds was purposely lax. At 4:30 a.m. on the 5th, the Palestinian terrorist group Black September took 11 Israeli athletes and coaches hostage, and in the process took the games hostage as well. The world was glued to their and televisions to see how it all played out, and the unfolding tragic events are given a chilling and suspenseful retelling by the Macdonald through archival footage, revealing interviews, and an excellent soundtrack.
The Michael Douglas-narrated doc took home Oscar gold at the 2000 Academy Awards, and an in-depth companion book by Simon Reeve was released the same year. The 2005 Steven Spielberg-directed film "Munich" examined the Israeli covert operational response that followed the massacre.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Writer Ken Kesey plucked the name of his acclaimed 1962 novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," about patients in an Oregon psychiatric hospital and the staff who "help" them, from the nursery rhyme "Vintery, Mintery, Cutery, Corn." A year after the book's release it headed to Broadway, where the play adapted by Dale Wasserman from the novel starred Kirk and Douglas as new patient Randle McMurphy, and co-starred Gene Wilder and William Daniels as fellow inmates.
Douglas secured the film rights to "Cuckoo," but couldn't get it off the ground — that is until his son Michael gave it a try. With Czech-American filmmaker Miloš Forman directing, and Jack Nicholson in the lead role, the 1975 film became just the second film to win all five major Academy Awards. While the "Cuckoo" made the elder Douglas "more money" than any film he acted in, it was "one of the biggest disappointments of my life," and he "would gladly give back every cent if I could have played that role at 70 years old."
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" was actually six books published in three volumes. The middle volumes, called "The Two Towers," had "actually no real link between them," and in letters to publisher Rayner Unwin, Tolkien expressed, "I am not at all happy about the title," and initially let the two (out of a possible five to choose from) towers' identity be "ambiguous." In the final pages of the first volume, "The Fellowship of the Ring," the publishers spelled out which towers are highlighted in the follow-up volume — Orthanc and Minas Morgul, shown in a book cover illustration created by Tolkien himself.
Initially, Miramax had asked Peter Jackson to make only two movies out of the three volumes, but it turned into a trilogy when it moved forward with New Line Cinema. "The Two Towers" had to be reworked as a middle chapter to connect the other two films, and in the process, the towers' identities were changed to Orthanc and Barad-dûr to better suit the film's plot.
The "Two Towers" turned out to be the highest-rated film of the "LOTR" trilogy by critics, while the incredible motion-capture work of Andy Serkis as the CGI character Gollum and the intense 40-minute Battle at Helm's Deep helped it to become the highest grossing film of 2002. "Towers" received six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, and won two. It also contains the scene (which he didn't direct) that Jackson called his favorite of the trilogy.
District Six was an area within Cape Town, South Africa, where many different races and religions once lived together. That is until 1966, when the apartheid regime came knocking and declared the area "whites only," displacing more than 60,000 of its residents and knocking down their homes and their lives in the process. This one dark chapter of the country's very dark history served as inspiration for Neill Blomkamp's 2009 debut feature: a parable about segregated aliens, where they were confined to and where they are being relocated from — the internment camp called "District 9."
"District 9" is an expansion of Blomkamp's documentary-style 2006 short film "Alive in Joburg," and was the project he and Peter Jackson moved forward with after their adaptation of the video game "Halo" fell apart. Both starred actor Sharlto Copley. With shades of the humanity of "E.T." and wizardry of "Starship Troopers," Blomkamp's film does an excellent job playing with audience perceptions, while relaying a message of finding similarities in our differences. "District 9" grossed over $210 million worldwide and was feted with four Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and (rightfully so) Visual Effects. After years of speculation, "District 10" is currently in the works.
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