re: They Shoot Pictures updated their top 1000 films list

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for all the people upset about there not being enough new movies they have an entire sub-section devoted to 21st century films

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Wel,, that was me. I'm not really upset by it, and I do like that they cater more to "serious" film fans, for lack of a better term. There's a place for both the imdb top 250 and the Sight and Sound poll. I do like how they have a different criteria for rating film other than "crowd pleaser", though I wish they wouldn't use "crowd pleaser" as a derogative. It's hard to smuggle in advanced themes while also playing to the back benches. I love movies than can do that.

My knock on the list isn't precisely that they ignore recent films. That's just a symptom. It's just an extremely safe list, particularly for the crowd they are catering to. I mean, I guess having Tokyo Story ahead of any Kurosawa films is a tad interesting, though I disagree with that whole-heartedly. And the highest Bergman film being Persona is a pretty radical ranking (also, maybe one of those times they should've played it safe).

But I always get a kick out of film snobs who love Lawrence of Arabia, but then sniff derisvely towards big budget Hollywood fare. I mean, how much more mainstream epic do you wanna get? Lean is a professional director, but this was a picture designed to make Brits feel even better about being British. Nothing wrong with that, I love the film too, but I then don't turn around and hold Spielberg at arm's length (highest ranked film, #102, though he does have 8 films on the list... but one of them is Duel).

I'd actually say rankings 901-1000 are FAR more interesting. That's when they let their hair down and stopped checking boxes.

I think the website acknowledges without actually saying some of what you guys are touching on. When you go to the director page and click on each director, they talk about movies that made the list and some that did not. They have "Highly Recommended", "Recommended", "Worth a Look" and "Approach with Caution". Many times, the highly recommended movie has a lower rank than some that are just recommended. Ingmar Bergmans page shows "Cries and Whispers", "Wild Strawberries" and "Summer of Monika" as highly recommended while "Persona" is only under recommended. As Baloo pointed out, Persona is his highest rated film on the list (which btw I agree with that ranking, Persona is my favorite of his, one of the most haunting and sexy movies I have seen).