16 Comments

We're going to need a bigger poll.

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Superb

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This is murder! Don’t make me choose.

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I can't not vote for Raiders, since I saw it in the theater when I was 10 and was maybe the next coolest movie viewing of my life after Star Wars at age 6 and Empire at age 9.

Also, I like Minority Report quite a bit.

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It's always a coin flip on Raiders and Jaws for me. Raiders is one of my favorite theater experiences. Jaws made me fall in love with the art of filmmaking. I went Jaws this time. It's a Sophie's Choice.

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Jaws. But not mad at a Raiders win here.

However, Saving Private Ryan is maudlin, hyper-patriotic drivel. As far as war films go, it’s a C- at best.

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Agreed on all fronts, Pops.

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My mind immediately goes to Raiders of the Lost Ark, a film I find endlessly rewatchable. (And one that has been often copied but never surpassed.

Ps. Where is A.I Artificial Intelligence?

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Substack limited the poll options, so I went with the ten most likely to accrue votes in my estimation. Working on a future alternative for polls like this.

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Would you recommend Duel? One of the few I haven't seen.

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Duel is awesome

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Jaws and Schindler's List are my top pics

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I watched Schindler again a year or so ago. This time around I was amazed at how accessible the film is without shying away from the horror of the Holocaust. The final sequences leave me feeling the film falls just short of perfect, but it might be the most important film made in American about World War Two when the history of cinema is finally written.

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Agree re: final scenes of Schindler’s. Saving Private Ryan suffered from a similar problem. As did Munich, now that I think about it.

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The Munich ending is a more effective ending, but still flawed. Saving Private Ryan veers into melodrama with the "Tell me I lived a good life" thing.

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I personally like Raiders as a movie more, but I think Jaws was just a better film. Raiders certainly spawned a bigger franchise, as the Jaws sequels were largely garbage, but Jaws had a more significant impact culturally as a single movie, I think. People were afraid of the ocean.

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