>what are the qualifiers, IN YOUR Opinion, for greatest films
>of all time. is it the way the story is told? is it the
>innovations a director makes within the film? is it influence
>it has on the films that come after? or pure enjoyment of the
>movie experience?

I count several factors: Technical skill, innovation, influence on the artform. I tend to lean more towards the artistic aspects: the performances, story, the director's work.
One thing I don't give much credence is enjoyment, because it's too arbitrary a factor. People used to call silent movies "the most fun you can have in the dark with a room full of strangers." Now you can't find 5 people who enjoy silent movies. Plus, "enjoyment of the movie experience" tends to be equated with "movies that look familiar to me." And if that's the case, what's more enjoyable, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO or THE EXPENDABLES? You see what I mean? If that's the case, DIE HARD should be in the top five and no one would ever watch an Ingmar Bergman movie.
What people called "enjoyment of the movie experience" 40 years ago bores people today, the same way people 40 years from now will be bored with what we say has "enjoyment of the movie experience."

>contemporary cinema is hindered greatly within the first 3
>because we're 80+ years into this film shit.

They said the same thing about acting in the 1800s, music 100 years after the birth of the phonograph, shit - they claim painting's dead every 50 years since the Renaissance. Arts much older than film continually improve. And when you consider what you can do with film today, stuff you couldn't do just 20 years ago, the "they invented everything already" excuse becomes a poor one.

>i will agree with
>you on near every point you can make about what 2001 did for
>the progression of film from an aesthetic standpoint,

"Aesthetic standpoint" is what the S&S list is supposed to be about. The artistic benchmark for film.

>but as a
>film for enjoyment, after the first 50min, that shit is
>borderline boring and a fucn marathon run to endure. there
>MANY films i'd place priority over it

Again, "enjoyment" is arbitrary. Some people find Bergman's movies enjoyable (I have no clue how or why, but they do). Culturally, we're bred to be bored in seconds. People bitch when a movie's longer than 2 hours, they can't listen to a song that's longer than 4 minutes, and won't cook a meal that takes longer than 30 minutes. You see how such factors determine what one finds "enjoyable?"
Enjoyable has a limited factor on quality. Steven Seagal movies are enjoyable. No one's ever bored watching Jason Statham driving a car. But they are far from quality films. And that's what this S&S list is supposed to be about.

>I mean if you're questioning yourself whether Malcolm X is one
>of the best films ever, i mean we may not need to have this
>conversation

I don't think MALCOLM X is one of the best films ever, but I'm hard pressed to think of many films in the past 30 years that are better. The production quality is very high; the story is well told, even if it's heavy-handed in parts; it's some of the best acting Denzel has ever performed (outside of Daniel Day-Lewis in THERE WILL BE BLOOD, has there been a better performance in the past 30 years?)



"Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which has been given for you to understand." Saul Williams