Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

I beg to differ on whether Alien would stay near the top if one considers the subsequent films.  While Aliens was good and Alien III passable, Alien IV and AvP sucked—and that’s being generous.

Similarly for Bond.  For every good Bond movie, there’s a turkey.

I would actually go with Die Hard as the best.  Die Hard III was a fun action movie, and Die Hard II wasn’t too bad.  I admit to skipping IV, but that would have to be bad on a Highlander: the Source level to knock down the first three movies.

What, no “Star Trek?”

I’d put Dirty Harry up there with Die Hard, in terms of quality.  And frankly, the first Star Trek movie was mediocre—below the average for the original tv series.  On th eIMDB question, though, I’d have to go with Star Wars.

Raiders of the Lost Ark should be on that list come next May.

I probably reviewed about half of the films on this list in my movie reviewer days (i.e., college, grad school), and Star Wars was on my All-Time Top Ten list.  The only other movies that I would have considered giving four stars would be Alien and Dirty Harry.  Maybe.

Star Wars was the only film that had it all in terms of the quality of the script, acting, cinematography/special effects, score, and everything else that contributed to making it a transporting and fun experience.  BTW - my glowing review of the film at the time got a lot of heat from the artsy side of the school.  They ridiculed it as something that only an aerospace engineering major could love (referring to my major).  Back then, any movie with obvious appeal to a wide audience was suspect in the eyes of the campus humanities types.

How positively weird. The oldest movie is, what Dr. No from the 60’s? There were seriously no movie franchises before that? Or were they all so bad they don’t count? Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Blondie, Abbott and Costello, The Bowery Boys, Laurel and Hardy, Charly Chaplin, Charlie Chan and the like may win the modern standards of great, but they still deserve to be on the list.

Would you count High Plains Drifter and or Pale Rider as the continued adventures of the Man With No Name? If so, my vote is for FFoD.