A Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#550-501)

This is the 10th part of the Top 1000 list.  The introduction can be found here.  This might be the only group of 50 in the Top 1000 without a single Hitchcock, Spielberg, Kurosawa or Woody Allen film among them.
Except for the four films at the bottom, these are all a 91 which is mid-range ****.  The bottom four films are all 92.

 

A Century of Film: Disney – The Films (ranked)

In a sense this is untrue. It’s been 27 years and Disney has yet to make a better film.

So, I have seen every feature film Disney has ever made, from Snow White through Black Widow.  And now I have ranked them all.

First, there is a full alphabetical list of every Disney film.  I won’t try to include too much information so that it isn’t too ridiculously long but I do have at least a slight blurb with every film.  But it does include the rank.  That way you can find a specific film.  At the bottom is the full ranked list.  This list somewhat supersedes my original Animated Ranking list but it might be pretty close – I haven’t checked.

 

A Century of Film: Disney – Box Office

Depending on which chart you use, each of these films can lay a claim to being the biggest Disney film of all-time.

A Century of Film

Disney

The Box Office

“In 1989, USA Today computed that if one adjusted for inflation and changing box-office prices, Snow White’s theatrical earnings up that time would exceed six billion dollars!”  (The Disney Films, 4th Edition, Leonard Maltin, p 32).  That is patently absurd, of course, but it’s the kind of thing that makes all of the box office earnings for all films, but especially Disney films, so difficult to accurately calculate.  There are a lot of things at play and the first, of course, is the complete mythology that builds up around certain numbers.  So let’s start the look at the box office for Disney by looking closely at Snow White.

 

A Century of Film: Disney

A Century of Film

Disney

The Studio

It began with a man named Walt and a mouse named Mickey.  But of course neither of those things is actually true and that’s part of the image that lies behind the company that is not only the most successful movie studio at work today but pretty much an all-encompassing way of life that can not be ignored.

 

A Century of Film: Kids Films

A Century of Film

Kids Films

The Genre

For a lot of people, Kids films mean Animated films.  Perhaps part of the problem is that I really should re-name the genre to Family Films, which I probably would if it didn’t mean making changes in so many different spreadsheets.  “Kids” implies it’s only for children and a lot of these films are only for children (and really shouldn’t even be for them because they’re so insipid) whereas “Family” opens up the notion to films that are good for kids, that kids can enjoy, but really are also aimed at the whole family where adults can also enjoy them.  That would make people stop thinking just “animated” and open things up to films like The Wizard of Oz, Miracle on 34th Street, The Muppet Movie or Babe.

 

A Century of Film: Animated Film

Of all the categories that the Academy took too long to recognize (like Costume Design or Makeup), this is the most excusable.  It would not be until 1941 that there are even multiple feature length animated films, there aren’t five until 1970 and there aren’t really enough to justify a category until the early 80s.  The awards groups probably should have jumped on things earlier like the LAFC (1989) and Annies (1991) did but they didn’t wait way too long like they did with Costume Design and Makeup.

 

A Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#600-551)

This is the 9th part of the Top 1000 list.  The introduction can be found here.  Films #600-571 are a 90 and the rest are a 91 which are both low level ****.

 

Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#800-751)

All of these films except the last one is an 88.  The last one is an 89.  All are low ****.  The introduction is here.

 

Century of Film: The Top 1000 Films (#850-801)

This is the next batch of 50 in my countdown of the Top 1000 films through 2011 (the first century of film).  Down through Last Year at Marienbad, they all earn an 87, which is the highest ***.5, or just short of being a great film.  From #829 on to the end of this list they all earn an 88 which is the lowest rating which earns **** (and thus gets called a great film).  You should probably look at the introduction first.  Your best bet for finding previous groups of 50 is to click here.

 

The Year in Box Office: 2019 (updated)

 

The Year in Box Office

2019

note:  There were some things I meant to put in the post that I forgot.  They are added at the end.

As may be obvious, I have become greatly interested in box office results lately, noting in the last several Adapted Screenplay posts the highest grossing adapted films I haven’t seen for the year.  I have also put a lot of Box Office Mojo’s information into spreadsheets, which is doubly good, since, first, they became a bunch of dicks and put a lot of stuff behind a paywall (fuck you Bezos) and second, because I make a lot more use of it than they did anyway.

One of the bizarre things they have done now is that all of their yearly results initially list the calendar year.  Who has ever wanted that?  Who wants to look at 2015 and see that Force Awakens grossed just short of what Jurassic World grossed simply because of how late in the year it was released?  It’s a stupid default setting.  I don’t deal with that shit.  These are all based off the release date, not the calendar year of when grosses were accumulated.

It seems safe now to run this list now that COVID-19 has pretty much decimated the movie theater industry and brought box office to a virtual standstill, which means I can be pretty confident that nothing on this list will change much, if at all.