Kinematoscope

#173 The Grapes Of Wrath
"I always sort of assumed it was about giant, lab-grown grapes that gain sentience and then turn on their masters."

#174 How To Train Your Dragon
"No dragon-related puns in this entire post. That's not how I roll."

#175 Casino
"...overrun with incessant voice-over, from both De Niro and Pesci, as if they're recording a DVD commentary."

#176 The Gold Rush
"Was He Sleeping With The Leading Lady This Time? -Of course he was! That's the Chaplin way."

#177 Grave Of The Fireflies
"Sakuma Drops: Starve To Death A Little Slower!"

#178 Les Diaboliques
"...until the big reveal you might wonder why they couldn't whittle it down to an hour for an episode of 'Hitchcock Presents.'"

#179 The Night Of The Hunter
"It opens with an oddly disembodied Lillian Gish reading Bible verses to some children's oddly disembodied heads, against a backdrop of stars. What?"

#180 The Princess Bride
"If there's a Framing Device Acceptability Scale, then Fairy Tale Told To A Child is on one end and Elderly Deathbed Flashback is on the other."

#181 The Incredibles
"It's a peculiar brand of faux-populism that Brad Bird promulgates....What's the lesson here?"

#182 Judgment At Nuremberg
"but I didn't know if he was speaking German or English!"

#183 The Killing
"Seriously, this movie's only 83 minutes! A Kubrick film? I thought I would need the entire afternoon."

#184 The Wild Bunch
"Opening shootout! Count the bullets at home!"

#185 Children of Men
"The thing about the future is, the people in it don't think of it that way."

#186 Kind Hearts and Coronets
"'The Scapegrace of the Century!' according to the trailer. What the heck is a 'scapegrace'?"

#187 The Exorcist
"Nail down your bedposts, put away the split-pea soup, and bone up on your Latin folks, because it's time to get straight-up horrified in here!"

#188 The Best Years Of Our Lives
"The moment when she tells her parents 'I'm going to break that marriage up!' I totally pumped my fist!"

#189 The Kid
"...this leads to perhaps the most emotional scene in silent comedy history."

#190 The Hustler
"...largely a quiet, soul-searching, staring-in-the-mirror-while-drinking-from-the-bottle type of film."

#191 Harvey
"From now on if anyone asks 'Is there anything I can do for you?' I'm going to smile and respond 'Well what did you have in mind?'"

#192 Dial M For Murder
"Do you think Alfred Hitchcock ever killed anyone? ...clearly he gave it a lot of thought."

#193 Rosemary's Baby
"What follows is a disturbingly psychadelic dream (OR IS IT?) in which she's undressed on a boat (maybe?) and then raped by a demonic creature."

#194 King Kong
"So yeah, a larger-than-normal primate, that's fine- didn't you say something about AN ISLAND COVERED IN PREHISTORIC DINOSAURS?"

#195 A Streetcar Named Desire
"Plus that one "Simpsons" episode is just so much better now!"

#196 Sleuth
"the howling of a man in a clown costume as a shot is fired...it's the kind of fun Edgar Allan Poe would be proud of."

#197 Shadow Of A Doubt
"Listen to the score as she runs to the library. Never has reading a newspaper been so dramatic!"

#198 Kill Bill Vol. 2
"On second thought, 'blood-soaked passion project' can refer to every single Quentin Tarantino film."

#199 Stalag 17
"I mean, sure, there's cross-dressing, near-ubiquitous cross-eyed mugging, and easy laughs, but sometimes people get shot."

#200 Brief Encounter
"But if you saw Unfaithful and thought to yourself 'this would be great without all the sex and violence,' then Brief Encounter might just be the film for you!"

#201 The African Queen
"Along the way: rapids, gunfire, larger rapids, a broken propeller shaft, a muddy river delta, (possibly real) leeches, and an awkward romance!"

#202 Duck Soup
"Blah blah, songs, mirror gag, street vendor, and so on. More quotes!"

#203 Rope
"It starts with a muffled shriek, and ends with a gun fired into the air. In between...cold cuts and champagne! Let's do this."

#204 Little Miss Sunshine
"This leads inexorably to what is without a doubt the Worst Scene of the Countdown so far..."

#205 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
"Why are they randomly flying around like that? Is this ever going to be addressed?"

#206 Bringing Up Baby
"...googling informs me that this is not a real thing, since we don't have clavicles, or collar bones, in between our ribs ("intercostal") and neither did brontosauri..."

#207 The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
"Benajmin poignantly sees a hummingbird at sea, even though he's somewhere in Europe and hummingbirds are native to the Americas." (note: I full-on parodied this one).

#208 The Lost Weekend
"Psychadelic fake bat freakout!"

#209 Letters From Iwo Jima
"My question is, when the hell does war ever get fun?"

#210 Ed Wood
"...to him, each take was perfect, because he was living the dream, man!"

#211 The Conversation
"Just imagine all the various wiretaps, microchips, satellites, and other indicators of the coming robot war that could be monitoring your every word these days!"

#212 The Diving Bell And The Butterfly
"This is the type of (true) story that leaves me with the impulse to hug my mom, kiss my girlfriend, high five strangers, write novels, hit home runs, and traverse countries."

#213 Changeling
"...the message in something this extremely backward and wrong just boils down to "What the f*ck!" the more you think about it."

#214 Bonnie and Clyde
"Long sequences of gun-fire end abruptly with Flatt and Scruggs' jaunty banjo tune 'Foggy Mountain Breakdown.'"

#215 Good Will Hunting
"Can a young man find his way in the world, even if all he has are a genius intellect, loyal friends, an impassioned mentor, a concerned therapist, and the love of a beautiful woman?"

#216 All Quiet On The Western Front
"Then the nightmare begins."

#217 Crash
"Crash: The Most Important Movie About Race Relations Ever, Unless You’re Asian, Because Then You’re Probably Too Busy Human Trafficking To Care- A Scene By Scene Recap"

#218 The Day The Earth Stood Still
"Oh no! My milkshake will not blend! The horror!"

#219 Sweet Smell Of Success
"I kept expecting events to naturally escalate and result in an accidental death of some sort."

#220 Frankenstein
"He just grabs the criminal brain and figures it’ll be no problem."

#221 Magnolia
"Plus, and I can’t stress this enough, a metric ton of frogs."

#222 Spartacus
" If you have three hours and sixteen minutes to spare, grab a copy and follow along at home!"

#223 His Girl Friday
"Don’t divorce Cary Grant, because he will always trick you into remarrying him."

#224 Big Fish
"That’s how I’d wanna go, too."

#225 In The Heat Of The Night
"...and keep in mind this is when Will Smith was negative one year old."

#226 The Philadelphia Story
"That’s just how they talked back then, I suppose."

#227 Manhattan
"...and I suddenly felt for the guy! What?"

#228 Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?
"Because she’s afraid of living without cheekily modernist self-deception, get it?"

#229 Mystic River
"Considering moving east? If so, Dennis Lehane would like you to keep in mind that Boston is where happiness goes to die."

#230 Rocky
"Do you believe that America is the land of opportunity? Because Apollo Creed does."

#231 Young Frankenstein
"Wait, Gene Hackman is in this film? I had no idea."

#232 Let The Right One In
"Happily ever after?"

#233 Howl's Moving Castle
"It’s like Miyazaki thinks war never solves anything, or something. Huh."

#234 Safety Last!
"He promptly walks through roofing tar on his way downstairs."

#235 Casino Royale
"And why is Bond naked and tied to a chair? Mystery and excitement!"

#236 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
"Mostly there are gunshots and John Wayne having staring contests."

#237 Planet Of The Apes
"Man, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve said 'it’s a heck of a lot better than the Mark Wahlberg version'..."

#238 Pirates Of The Carribean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
"Let’s settle this once and for all: It’s pronounced ca-RIB-bean, not carri-BE-an."

#239 In Bruges
"But then, things happen, and it’s crazy awesome."

#240 La Dolce Vita
"That’s really it, and it is in no way as exciting as it sounds."

#241 The Searchers
"And of course he stops himself, but for a moment there you're like 'NO WAY!'"

#242 Once
" If that high note doesn't move you, your heart is made of stone and you probably hate things like puppies and sunshine."

#243 Roman Holiday
"But wait- what’s that in the air? Is it love? Is it pizza? Nope, probably love."

#244 Network
"Do you know how many of those lines reflect actual human speech? None of them!"

#245 Arsenic And Old Lace
"Ah, the forties! Thirteen dead men, you say? Have a kiss."

#246 Infernal Affairs
"I knew it was coming as soon as I saw an elevator..."

#247 In Cold Blood
"Let’s get this joke out of the way- turns out Robert Blake is really convincing as a mentally unstable killer!"

#248 Shaun Of The Dead
"It’s like a corpse-filled echo chamber of awesomeness."

#249 Harold And Maude
"If I want to be me, should I then proceed forthwith with that being of myself?"

#250 Out Of The Past
"Death, taxicabs, shadows, smoke, gunshots and car chases- what more do you need?"


How It Works: A lot of people ask me how I get the order if the list changes all the damn time. What I do is copy the list, delete all the ones I've already done, move everything up and do whatever's in that spot. This often means I'm working a little higher than the actual top 250 ranking (For Example I just posted Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at 205 despite its present rank at #224. This means 19 films I've already done moved higher than 205, so I had to delete them and condense). As I get higher, the differences should be less extreme.