The Lady Eve 1941

Watch all of these in order if you want to truly understand the world we live in today

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I well remember being taken to Blazing Saddles at the age of 10, when I was far too young to understand most of the jokes. At the same time, I could see how important Blazing Saddles was to my parents and their friends. They quoted from it for months—years—afterward.

As much as savoring a particular joke, I realize now, they were trying to reclaim that initial, joyful shock to the system. There’s not a film on the WGA’s 101 Funniest Screenplays that doesn’t produce such an unexpected jolt, if not a sustained quake, and for the same reasons Blazing Saddles did—by transgressing accepted norms.

One question that this list asks, however: Should a great comedy simply be gauged by the laughter it elicits? “Satire is what closes on Saturday night,” George S. Kaufman famously quipped. A number of the comedies on this list went under-appreciated at the box office and by critics; years, if not decades, had to pass before the work began to receive its due. This was as true for Buster Keaton’s The General as it was nearly half a century later for Harold and Maude, and 30 years after that for Office Space.

The oldest movie on the list is Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush (1925), while the most recent is Bridesmaids, released in 2011. The latter also has the distinction of being written by two women—Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, working in slapstick, a genre historically dominated by men. Bridesmaids comes in at no. 16, immediately after When Harry Met Sally, written by the legendary Nora Ephron. Comedy screenwriting has long been a playground that women and writers of color have not had enough time in. The work of Richard Pryor on Blazing Saddles, Tina Fey on Mean Girls, Amy Heckerling on Clueless, and Hagar Wilde, co-writer of Bringing Up Baby, makes you wonder what a list would be if the playground had been more inclusive all along.

In the end, the variety of films on the list—as different as Being There is to Airplane! or Duck Soup is to Fargo—indicates how difficult it is to gauge a great comedy by any set of particular criteria. Better to say the best comedy writers and comedians are like astronauts, launching themselves beyond the ozone layer of the tasteful and the expected in order to find the forbidden or the outrageous or the merely uncomfortable. Whether that produces an outrageous comedy like Mrs. Doubtfire or a satire like Dr. Strangelove, the goal is still provocation. And truth.

Written by Paul Brownfield
2015-11-15

I started off by gathering ratings from IMDB (User/Critic Average), Rotten Tomatoes (Tomatometer, Critic Average, Audience Score, User Average), Metacritic (Critic Average, User Average) and Letterboxd (User Average). I was then able to determine a rating (out of 10) for each individual rating and therefore come up with an average rating for each site. Each site’s average rating was then weighted fairly so that no site’s ratings were favored above the rest.

The next step was to make sure that each film was treated fairly. Other top movie list’s like IMDb’s Top 1000 removes films that have under a certain viewing number (25,000 I think), but rather than ruling out films that may have been overlooked by the general audience (especially older films), I opted to alter these films score by carefully deducting points depending on how many people have seen it, and therefore voted on it. I also thought it was needed to make sure that recent films (released within the past 36 months) were also not favored, as it usually takes 3 years for the average rating to settle down. So I also added a deduction to these films that fell under this rule.

Taken from here: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/3hbiio/update_1001_greatest_movies_of_all_time_plus/

Movies of the 40's, Jürgen Müller (ed.) Taschen.

As a genre, the romantic comedy has had pretty sharply defined highs (the 1940s and 1980s) and lows (1990s-2000s) based on viewer appetite and studio competence, but thanks to this thing we call “the human condition,” hope-laden fables showing how two people can, indeed, find and cherish one another despite all obstacles will never stay out of fashion long—no matter how soulless and cynical the industry. Whether because we are young and naïve, not-so-young and searching, or old and grumpy with a soft spot (or wistful memory), there’s always an appetite for fascinating meet-cutes, resolved comedies of errors and melted gruff exteriors. So no matter your particular poison when it comes to scripted takes on love and relationships, let Paste’s list of the 100 Best Romantic Comedies of All Time provide you just what the doctor ordered.

List published April 2013. Updated and expanded in October 2018

Source: https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/romantic-comedies/the-100-best-romantic-comedies-of-all-time/

HollyWood Movies based on Popularity

Best Movies of the Decade

This is a list based on the show 'The Movies' on CNN and compiled by a user on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/ct3rer/every_single_movie_mentioned_on_cnns_the_movies/

Top 10 Trakt Popular of all movies released before 1980 according to Trakt's Popular tab.
Tweet @DannyVFilms for any adjustments or corrections.

For movies released after 1980 see Top 10 Domestic Gross by Year:
https://trakt.tv/users/dannyvfilms/lists/top-10-domestic-gross-by-year-1980-present

So this year BBC Culture decided to get serious about comedy. We asked 253 film critics – 118 women and 135 men – from 52 countries and six continents a simple: “What do you think are the 10 best comedies of all time?” Films from any country made since cinema was invented were eligible, and BBC Culture did nothing to define in advance what a comedy is; we left that to each of the critics to decide. As always, we urged the experts to go with their heart and pick personal favorites, films that are part of their lives, not just the ones that meet some ideal of greatness.

Created August 2017

The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board was established in 1988. Each year, 25 "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films" are preserved, to increase awareness for its preservation. To be eligible for inclusion, a film must be at least ten years old but it is not required to be feature-length, nor is it required to have been theatrically released.

Source: https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/

A personal introduction to 1000 movies by the provocative contemporary film critic and historian David Thomson.

Source: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Have-You-Seen-Introduction-masterpieces/dp/014102075X

Trading on its impeccable reputation, Halliwell’s now presents it’s Top 1,000 favorite films. Starting at number 1,000, each entry includes a plot summary, cast and crew, awards, key critical comments, DVD and soundtrack availability, and a wealth of other interesting details. To supplement the countdown, there is commentary from film stars, show business personalities, well-known critics, and the movers and shakers in the film industry, each naming their favorite films or weighing in on Halliwell’s selection. Illustrated throughout with classic and modern film stills and posters, this is a book that every cinema fan will want to own. John Walker is one of Britain’s leading film critics.

The list has 42 extra films, because trilogies, or series, are counted as one entry (The Godfather, The Apu Trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, Antoine Doinel, Laurel and Hardy shorts, etc...)

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Halliwells-Top-1000-Ultimate-Countdown/dp/0007181655

All the comedies mentioned in the filmography of the book "Film Comedy" by Geoff King, published in 2002.

"From slapstick to satire and subtle innuendo. From the grotesque to the carefully mannered. From madcap anarchy to the darkly deadpan. Film comedy comes in a wide range of forms. For as long as film has existed as an entertainment medium, so has film comedy. ... Comedy was one of the most popular formats in the early years of cinema and has remained so ever since." (from the introduction to the book)

Missing: Edward Penishands (1991)

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Film-Comedy-Geoff-King/dp/1903364353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402285691&sr=8-1&keywords=film+comedy

This list is compiled from a collection of movie reviews in the 501 Must See Movies book. The movies have been split up into 10 genres, each with 50 movies (except for the last, which has 51): Action/Adventure & Epic, Comedy, Drama, Horror, Musical, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Mystery/Thriller, War and Western.

Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/659583.501_Must_See_Movies

A list of the 100 20th century films as chosen by the film critic Leonard Maltin. This list appears in Maltin's book titled Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 2000 (Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide).

Source: http://www.filmsite.org/maltin.html