Director: James Whale Cinematographer: John J. Mescall
A chastened Henry Frankenstein abandons his plans to create life, only to be tempted and finally coerced by the Monster, encouraged by Henry’s old mentor Dr. Pretorius, into constructing a mate for him.
Director: Bryan Singer Cinematographer: Newton Thomas Sigel
Inspired by the 1981 Uncanny X-Men story line “Days of Future Past” by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, the film focuses on two time periods, with Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) travelling back in time to 1973 in desperate attempt to change history and prevent an event that results in doom for both humans and mutants. Bryan Singer, who had directed the first two X-Men films, returns as director with a large budget of $205 million and the principle cast members of both the earlier films and the reboot. While it might be a struggle for those unfamiliar with the franchise, strong storytelling, thrilling action and impressive special effects combine to create one of the best of not just the X-Men series but superhero films in general.
Buy or Rent (watch online)
Blu-ray
The Rogue Cut, Buy or Rent (Watch Online)
The Rogue Cut (Blu-ray)
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
X-Men Days of Future Past Blu-Ray/DVD Combo
X-Men: First Class / X-Men: Days of Future Past / X-Men: Apocalypse (4K UltraHD + Blu-ray + Digital HD)
X-Men Trilogy Vol. 2 (X-Men: First Class / X-Men: Days of Future Past / X-Men: Apocalypse) [DVD]
James McAvoy (younger adult) and Patrick Stewart (adult) as Charles Xavier / Professor X
Michael Fassbender (younger adult) and Ian McKellen (adult) as Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto
Jennifer Lawrence as Raven Darkhölme / Mystique
Halle Berry as Ororo Munroe / Storm
Nicholas Hoult (younger adult) and Kelsey Grammer (adult; uncredited) as Dr. Hank McCoy / Beast
Anna Paquin as Marie / Rogue
Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde
Peter Dinklage as Bolivar Trask
Shawn Ashmore as Bobby Drake / Iceman
Omar Sy as Bishop
Evan Peters as Peter Maximoff / Quicksilver
Josh Helman as Major William Stryker
Daniel Cudmore as Peter Rasputin / Colossus
Fan Bingbing as Blink
Adan Canto as Sunspot
Booboo Stewart as Warpath
Famke Janssen and James Marsden reprise their roles as Jean Grey and Scott Summers / Cyclops respectively in cameo appearances.
Lucas Till reprises his role as Alex Summers / Havok.
Evan Jonigkeit portrays Toad.
Gregg Lowe portrays Ink.
X-Men comic-book writers Len Wein and Chris Claremont appear as United States congressmen.
Michael Lerner plays Senator Brickman.
Mark Camacho portrays U.S. President Richard Nixon.
Brendan Pedder portrays the ancient mutant, En Sabah Nur.
Directed by Bryan Singer Produced by Bryan Singer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Hutch Parker Screenplay by Simon Kinberg Music by John Ottman Cinematography Newton Thomas Sigel Edited by John Ottman Running time 131 minutes Country United Kingdom, United States Language English
Director: Jean Cocteau Cinematographer: Nicolas Hayer
The central film of Cocteau’s Orphic trilogy (the others being The Blood of a Poet and Testament of Orpheus) updates the classic Greek myth of Orpheus to contemporary Paris (albeit a strange fantastical Paris), and follows a sensitive young Left Bank poet (Jean Marais) who despite popular acclaim for his work, feels isolated and uninspired. He becomes obsessed with the princess of death, but after his lovely but unhappy wife Eurydice (Marie Dea) is stricken down by the Princess, he must descend into the underworld to reclaim her. While some may struggle with the slow pace and find the heavy use of symbolism pretentious, fans of art cinema and Cocteau’s eccentric genius should find that surreal visuals and a timeless narrative combine to create a magical and poetic masterpiece.
Criterion Collection (DVD)
Blu-ray
VHS
Orphic Trilogy (The Criterion Collection) DVD
Jean Cocteau: The Orpheus Trilogy (VHS)
A Beginner’s Guide To Cinema (Vol. 2) – 7-DVD Box Set ( The Blue Angel / Double Indemnity / Orpheus (Orph e) / Tokyo Story (Tôkyô monogatari) / Imitat [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import – Australia ]
Jean Marais Jean Cocteau Orpheus 8×10″ Photo K7757
Directed by Jean Cocteau Produced by André Paulvé Screenplay by Jean Cocteau Music by Georges Auric Cinematography Nicolas Hayer Edited by Jacqueline Sadoul Running time 95 minutes Country France Language French
Below is a list of the supposedly top 10 best superhero movie sequels compiled by Mark Hughes for Forbes in June 2013. Hughes writes screenplays for film & TV, and writes about movies for Forbes. He was previously a co-host for Superhero News Channel on YouTube with Sean Gerber, and on the Superhero News podcast with Gerber. His writing has featured in the Hollywood Reporter, Huffington Post, What Culture!, Slate, Batman On Film, American Live Wire, and others. He has also appeared on more than six-dozen TV and radio stations nationwide to discuss the Oscars and cinema in 2018 and 2019. Few surprises other than the narratively flawed The Dark Knight Rises being placed ahead of The Dark Knight.
Continuing on with our look at what makes the best superhero films has coincided with some controversial comments from Martin Scorsese where he suggested that Marvel films were not cinema and have more in common with going to a theme park than a movie theatre. He was backed up by another of America’s greatest living directors, Francis Ford Coppola, but has received plenty of criticism within the industry. (https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/marvel-movies-francis-ford-coppola-disney-martin-scorsese-a9163816.html). Maybe the Marvel Universe films have failed to transcend their genre in the same way as Christopher Nolan’s visually striking and technically accomplished Dark Knight Trilogy but they do reflect something of people’s fears, fantasies and hopes. Take a look below at Screencrush.com’s May 2013 list of all the modern Marvel Movies (basically the 34 films released since 2000 when the first X-Men film was produced) ranked from the worst to the best and you’ll see plenty that’s certainly cinematic.
34 Ghost Rider
33 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
32 Fantastic Four (2015)
31 Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
30 Fantastic Four
29 Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
28 The Punisher
27 Elektra
26 Daredevil
25 The Amazing Spider-Man 2
24 Iron Man 2
23 X-Men: The Last Stand
22 The Amazing Spider-Man
21 Spider-Man 3
20 Hulk
19 X-Men: First Class
18 The Incredible Hulk
17 X-Men
16 Spider-Man
15 Thor
14 The Wolverine
13 Punisher: War Zone
12 X-Men: Days of Future Past
11 Ant-Man
10 Iron Man
9 Thor: The Dark World
8 ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’
7 Captain America: The First Avenger
6 X2
5 Captain America: The Winter Soldier
4 Iron Man 3
3 Avengers: Age of Ultron
2 Spider-Man 2
1 The Avengers
In July 2019 NewsaRama published an updated version of an earlier list of what they consider the best ever comic-book based superhero movies. The presumption would be that the order is a countdown from 10-1 although this is not specified. One thing that stands out is that the Avengers movies have been separated while Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy have been listed in one entry.
Akira Kurosawa was regarded as one of the most important and influential film-makers in the history of cinema. He directed 30 films over a 57 year career, including renowned masterpieces such as winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, Rashomon, as well as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) Yojimbo (1961) and later career epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985).
Phi-Phenomenon.org is a website that lists the results of many film polls from across the web. They use these lists, if they meet a certain criteria, to compile their own master list using a formula to work out the ranking. This list includes the best 2,811 films derived from over 1,300 lists containing over 17,000 unique films.
Master List by Rank
The Visual Effects Society is a professional, honorary society, dedicated to advancing the arts, sciences, and applications of visual effects and to upholding the highest uniform standards and procedures for the visual effects profession. VES is the entertainment industry’s only official trade organization representing the extended community of visual effects practitioners including supervisors, artists, producers, technology developers, educators and studio executives. Its global members contribute to all areas of entertainment from film, television and commercials to music videos, games and new media.
Flickchart is a Florida-based movie-ranking and social networking website. Launched in September 2009, Flickchart is the brainchild of web programmer Jeremy Thompson and web designer Nathan Chase. The impetus behind the site’s creation came from an argument over the placement of Pulp Fiction and The Empire Strikes Back on the Internet Movie Database Top 250. Thompson and Chase concluded that the limitations of movie rating systems using stars or numbers failed to produce accurate “Best Movie of All Time” lists. Flickchart was designed to remedy the issue by forcing users to decide between two random movies repeatedly until an accurate list is created, rather than rating each movie individually.
The Best Movies of All Time
Screencrush.com is film website that provides movie reviews, TV recaps and celebrity news and the latest movie trailers. It is part of the wider Screencrush network owned by Townsquare Media, Inc. (formerly Regent Communications until 2010), an American radio network and media company based in Purchase, New York.
Dave’s Movie Database is a blog by Dave Whitaker where he’s created a database to accumulate multiple best movie lists and aggregate them to produce The Top 100 Movies of All Time.
The Top 100 Movies of All Time
Best Rated Movies
Reddit is an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website. Registered members submit content to the site such as links, text posts, and images, which are then voted up or down by other members. Posts are organized by subject into user-created boards called “subreddits”, which cover a variety of topics such as news, politics, science, movies, video games, music, books, sports, fitness, cooking, pets, and image-sharing. Submissions with more up-votes appear towards the top of their subreddit and, if they receive enough up-votes, ultimately on the site’s front page.
Reddit Top 250
FilmAffinity is a movie recommendations website created in 2002 in Madrid, Spain by the film critic Pablo Kurt Verdú Schumann and the programmer Daniel Nicolás. As of 2016, the site listed 125,000 movies and series and had 556,000 reviews written by its users.
Top Filmaffinity Best Movies
CINEPAD was a movie site administered by Jim Emerson. The below list was compiled from the results on other lists.
New Musical Express (NME) is a British music, film and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a ‘rock inkie’, the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a free publication, before becoming an online brand which includes its website and radio stations.
Forbes is an American business magazine. Published bi-weekly, it features original articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. Forbes also reports on related subjects such as technology, communications, science, politics, and law. Its headquarters is located in Jersey City, New Jersey. The magazine is well known for its lists and rankings, including of the richest Americans (the Forbes 400), of the world’s top companies (the Forbes Global 2000), and The World’s Billionaires. In 2014, it was sold to a Hong Kong-based investment group, Integrated Whale Media Investments.
Business Insider is an American financial and business news website founded in 2009 and owned by the German publishing house Axel Springer. It operates 14 national editions and an international edition. Several national editions are published in local languages.
The 50 best movies of all time, according to critics (2020)
Newsarama is an American website that publishes news, interviews, and essays about the American comic book industry. It is owned by Future plc. Newsarama began in the mid-1995 as a series of Internet forum postings on the Prodigy comic book message boards by fan Mike Doran.
Bravo is an American basic cable television network, launched on December 8, 1980. It is owned by the NBCUniversal Television and Streaming division of Comcast’s NBCUniversal through NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. The channel originally focused on programming related to fine arts and film. It currently mainly focuses on lifestyle reality television series targeted at 25-to-54-year-old women as well as the gay community.
The Daily Beast is an American news website focused on politics, media and pop culture, founded in 2008. It has been characterized as a “high-end tabloid” by Noah Shachtman, the site’s editor-in-chief from 2018 to 2021. In a 2015 interview, former editor-in-chief John Avlon described the Beast’s editorial approach: “We seek out scoops, scandals, and stories about secret worlds; we love confronting bullies, bigots, and hypocrites.” In 2018, Avlon described the Beast’s “strike zone” as “politics, pop culture, and power”.
In April 2014 Rolling Stone magazine published a list of the 15 greatest superhero movies. The results came from asking their readers to select their favourites. Remarkably among the 15 are some true duds such as Daredevil and Man of Steel which supposedly were hated among both critics and cinemagoers but here are listed above Superman II and Captain America: The Winter Soldier!
In the summer of 2014 American media company BuzzFeed evaluated the marvel surperhero films released up to that point and then published a list of the Top 20. No surprise to see the huge box-office extravaganza Avengers at the top of the list with Sam Raimi’s critically acclaimed Spider-Man 2 placing second.
Our Continuing look into the best superhero films of all-time brings us to this top ten from financial news and services website TheStreet.com. Last updated in June 2014 the films are listed with information on their production budgets and sales information, although are presumably listed in order of preference.