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I'm watching LAWRENCE OF ARABIA on TCM right now.  I've sat through that film at least a dozen times from beginning to end, and piecemeal many times.  It never gets tired or boring for me.   I do not own it as TCM shows LAWRENCE OF ARABIA very often, so I don't need to own it.  And though I think LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is ENDLESSLY WATCHABLE, it's more than that.  I suspect it is not historically accurate, but I am not talking about historic perfection, but CINEMATIC PERFECTION!  TCM shows it regularly, and I always find myself enraptured by it.  It is, for me, enthralling. 

What film for you is PERFECT? 

There are a few that for me personally are perfect films:

12 Angry Men: This one doesn't do as well watching in piecemeal fashion as Lawrence is. It really depends on dramatic development from start to finish. Put me at the beginning of this film and, no matter how many times I've seen it, I am absolutely hooked.

Papillon: This film is interesting and intriquing to me no matter what point I happen to arrive. I guess it's the triumph over impossible odds that gets me.

Cool Hand Luke: Again, triumph over adversity, and the protagonist has got some serious balls. Again, this one gets suck me in no matter what segment I come into.

Patton: The film, and the man, fascinate me for a myriad of reasons. That's the most appropo term to describe this film for me, endlessly fascinating.

Jaws - Great thrills, believable story line to a point and wonderful characters.  Its my all time favorite and I never get sick of watching it. 

THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy.  As a lifelong fan of the series, I just eat it up every time I get the chance!  What a cinematic masterpiece.

I also love GLADIATOR.  I watch it every fall with my sophomore World History class, and I cry at the end every time.

RoboCop.  It's as though it was made specifically for me to enjoy.

I think PATTON was on my list of ENDLESSLY WATCHABLE films, and I would definitely include it as a candidate for CINEMATIC PERFECTION. 

JAWS is great, but for me, NOT ENDLESSLY WATCHABLE, and therefore falls short of perfection, though, it comes CLOSE.   :smile: :thumbup:

LORD OF THE RINGS?   :lookingup:  Yawn. 

I like ROBOCOP.  Perfect?  Nah.  :wink:

Plan 9 from Outer Space- it is the perfect bad movie out there because it is very enjoyable and dumb, a good Friday night late movie. :smile:

  These are all great choices. I could jump into any of these movies at any point and feel like I was picking up from where I last left off. I know it sounds really weird but watching movies like these almost feels like catching up with an old friend, interesting yet familiar.

   I'd add the 1972 Three Musketeers to the list, and M*A*S*H.   The Three Musketeers takes place in a historical period I find interesting, it's got humor and swashbuckling, and it's just a good old fashioned adventure story. The acting is top notch. It doesn't take itself too seriously either. To me it's about as good as fun, exciting escapist fare can get.


M*A*S*H manages to be funny, biting, messy, tragic and hopeful all at the same time. Altman is one of my favorites. It's about as subversive as a movie gets, with stroing political and religious ideas but it's also incredibly funny.

Wow, you all really like boring movies.   :buggedout:

Sorry.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1972) is great!  Yeh, that's just about PERFECT! 

12 ANGRY MEN is ENDLESSLY WATCHABLE with PERFECT performances. 

Tremors- Okay, maybe it's not as classical as some mentioned, but it's perfect and happens one of my favorite movies.

Road House-As far action films go, you cant get any better than Road House

:bouncegiggle: 
Grow up.   :wink: :thumbup:

If growing up means watching Lawrence of Arabia all the way through, I will gladly stay a child.   :cheers:

Hey, I love a good mindless, fast-paced, b-movie. Otherwise I wouldn't be here so much. But I also like the slower-paced films as well. This is a truly unique community and I'm glad that it is.

Cheers.

 :cheers:

Psycho (1960)- The most perfect horror movie ever made. Filmmakers of a lesser ilk can add all the gore, nudity, rape, and beastiality they want, they’ll never top this one in terms of a truly terrifying adult film.

 Dumbo (1941)- The most perfect thing to ever have Disney's name on it. An endless pleasure, one of those rare features (animated or otherwise) that seems richer every time you watch it. Also the only other time a movie's ever made me cry. It works particularly because it's given the same mentality as the shorts. No bull about being "serious," just a bunch of talented guys at their finest doing their best and most personal work. Also contains Ward Kimball's finest hour.

Harry & Tonto (1974)- A rich, tender, rapturous film, one of real humanity unlike so much of the robotic crap cranked out by Hollywood. No race and chase, no explosions, no gratuitous sex and violence, no special effects. The kind of slow-moving, human-interest story you just don't get to see anymore. One of those films you must see before you kick the bucket. Also the only other time (besides the above film) a film ever got me teary-eyed. And like a lot of perfect films, its story is one that will never age, no matter what age it was made.

Others will come to mind soon enough.

If I had to pick a perfect movie, I would go with Seven Samurai. Action! Drama! Starving peasants! The movie has it all. I wouldn't say it is endlessly rewatchable, because how often do you get a four-hour chunk of free time?

However, if I had to pick the perfect action movie, my vote goes to Predator. Straight-up, no-nonsense, killing-stuff action.

I'll second the JAWS & ROBOCOP posts, there's a lot more to those films than just a big shark and a cyborg police officer. I don't feel I need to explain my love of Jaws, as I've posted about it numerous times before when it's been brought up. As for Robocop, it's one of those films that defines its decade and genre. Brilliantly directed, acted, full of violence, social commentary, it's sci-fi, drama, action, tragedy, comedy.....I could seriously watch it non-stop for the rest of my life and I would not complain at all.

I'd also have to say GROUNDHOG DAY and my favourite movie of all time TO LIVE & DIE IN L.A., which has William Peterson in it, a soundtrack by Wang Chung and features the greatest car chase scene in the history of cinema.

 :thumbup: I will second that. It's rare to find somebody who doesn't at least like it a little bit. It's ironic that this was the last film that Bill Murray and Harold Ramis worked together on before their big falling out.

:bouncegiggle:
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA is cinematic perfection.  It's your loss that you can't sit through it.  Baby.   :teddyr:  

All excellent choices, though I think PINOCCHIO is DISNEY's greatest achievement.  

SEVEN SAMURAI is great, but I think RASHOMON is perfection, and ENDLESSLY WATCHABLE (I think that is the first essential characteristic of a PERFECT movie).  I can't sit thru SEVEN SAMURAI endlessly, a "4 hour movie" (3.5 anyway) but I can sit through LAWRENCE OF ARABIA apparently quite often and that's 4 hours too.  :smile: :thumbup:

I can't explain it, but I love GROUNDHOG DAY, too, and have sat through many times and always at some different point that I catch it on the TV... another movie I love that I don't need to own 'cause it's on so often.  

How bout some comedies? Blues Brothers is the best comedy IMO because of the goofy things done in it, as in this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouHkL7u9qLw
A Chevy Vega Wagon fell a mile high; the many cop chase scenes, and, of course,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oMtdXaqBx4
the infamous mall scene

Seven Samurai - A film which has so much cinematic magic stuffed into it that it can be almost overbearing. I really can't think of anything wrong with it.

For my money the perfect film keeps my interest from the beginning to the end. To that end the following are perfect to me: The Manchurian Candidate (1962), The Godfather (1972), Seven Samurai (1954), City of God (2002), The Omen (1976), Inception (2010), Rocky (1976), The Wrestler (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), Batman Begins (2005) and Ground Hog Day (1993).

CITY OF GOD, which I've seen maybe 3 or 4 times on IFC before their commercials...  :lookingup: 
A painful movie experience, and an important one.  :bluesad: It's certainly very watchable...   :thumbup:

To me, this seems rather similar to that old "Endless Watchable" topic we had a while back (heck wasn't there even two threads like that already, perhaps even more). Well maybe the original intent here from AHD was different because heck a lot of very flawed and far from perfect films can be endlessly watchable (films like Soylent Green, The Omega Man, They Live and many more fit this bill well for me anyways) but few seem to get it all right, being both a fantastic film with practically no flaws throughout and endlessly watchable too. Hmm perhaps the following for me...

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
On the Waterfront
Groundhog Day
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Paths of Glory
The Third Man
Duck Soup
All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
North by Northwest

Damn, I forgot Scarface and Serpico. Both powerhouse performances from Mr. Pacino, constantly engrossing and solid throughout.

Robocop (Great to see it mentioned already. I think people forget just how good this film is).

The Fly (1986)

The Terminator

Aliens

Casino

Jaws

The Orphanage

The Innocents


With my list it tends to be films with simple stories. I think thats why I like them so much. The Terminator, The Fly and Jaws only really have three chraracters in them (four - if you count the shark in Jaws) they're simple, but wonderfully so. There's nothing in them that doesn't need to be in them.

Robocop is a bit smarter. In its runtime it has action, sci-fi, satire, revenge but the film never becomes a mess or confusing. Sadly, other than this board, it tend just to be thought of as Peter Weller in silly blue armor.

Aliens' build up of tension is simply fantastic. The art design is great, the actors are great. Its full on intense and exciting. I watched it last night and forgot just how good it is. Its a film that takes its time to get to the action but never gets dull and always keeps you on your toes.

The Orphanage and The Innocents are spooky stories, again with terriffic leading performances and film making of the highest order to deliver some very creepy scares. They never become over the top and deliver just what they need to to send shiver down the spine.

Casino is an intresting one as I don't ususally like gangster films. Its nearly three hours going but the momentum of the plot is always in gear its got a ton of characters, but it never gets confusing and covulted. It has a great juke box soundtrack. The rise and fall of these charaters is something thats fascinating to behold.
In the end, everyone gets what they deserve...

GODFATHER, PART II.  I would almost say Part I, but there are too many glaring continuity and other errors in that one.

GOODFELLAS, PULP FICTION, NUTS IN MAY

no matter how many times I've seen these on video/dvd, I still get disappointed if they come on TV and I miss them...

Groundhog Day every time.  :thumbup:

I would also throw in Back To The Future 1 and 2 and Ghostbusters.

The perfect gangster movie- Scarface. I watched Scarface for a whole month straight once and I still enjoy it.

Cant believe no one has mentioned Back To The Future yet. I can easily sit through Parts I-III

I have.

Plan 9 From Outer Space is a perfect movie in its own peculiar way  :drink:
EDIT: And 'In Bruges' was a perfect movie.

I agree with LAWRENCE of ARABIA.
Also....
.The TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE-One of those rare birds-a horror film that is still unnerving after multiple veiwings.
.NIGHT of the LIVING DEAD (1968)-Romero took INVISABLE INVADERS and The LAST MAN ON EARTH-added B stock music-and made ground breaking  a classic that has been endlessly ripped off to this day.
.I agree with Pillow on PLAN 9 from OUTER SPACE-a messterpiece of inane,insane genuis.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) - Perfect in every way.

Y'know if I had to guess which movie I have seen the most times from beginning to end, it would probably be NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, which is landmark.  That movie still spooks me, and I love it.  It's a "bad movie" or make that: BAD MOVIE , but also effective!!  And it's strange mix yields a unique film as you stated, "copied" (over n over n over novernover n).

The TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE is relentless and for that kind of intense horror I need to be prepared, as in "set".  It falls short of perfection for precisely the reason you cite: it's still "unnerving".  It is a masterpiece that many people apparently imagine is this or that, the lack of genuine recollection is fascinating to me.  I like some TOBE HOOPER movies.  A lot.  

Brick (2005) is a good mixture of Neo-Film noir with Teen Film, but is just the perfect movie for an experience that is hard to explain in detail, you just got to see it to understand what I'm trying to say.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cVzHeJ0Z3I

Then I must add Manhunter (1986)

You know, I've heard about this movie many times, but for whatever reason, I've never seen it. I'm surprised that I haven't. I'm going to have to remedy that.

MANHUNTER is good, but SILENCE OF THE LAMBS is superior.  MANHUNTER was remade a few years ago with the title taken from THOMAS HARRIS' novel: RED DRAGON.  MANHUNTER and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS are faithful to the books... which are terrific reads, and being literature, do have other dimensions barely alluded to in the movies.  I've not seen the RED DRAGON remake. 

I knew that Manhunter was based on Red Dragon. I've read Thomas Harris' Hannibal books except for Red Dragon. I thought the final one, Hannibal was a very good book but the movie was just horrid. The Silence of the Lambs was indeed very true to the book in both story detail and I think got the feel right, thanks in no small part to Jonathan Demme.

^If you haven't seen Manhunter yet just watch any episode of CSI with William Petersen in it...it's almost the same thing  :twirl:  All kidding aside I like both films, but I really feel Silence Of The Lambs is the better of the two.

The Big Lebowski

I thought HANNIBAL the movie was... annoying.  I haven't read that book.  SILENCE does not allude so much to the "Pascal Lamb" and "Golgotha after the deposition" leaving out a dimension in the book, but it holds up well.  Red Dragon was a terrific novel, possibly superior to the book Silence of the Lambs. 

I have a friend from high school who claim to be that rare person, though she admits she found some of the jokes funny.

Perfect movie?  Hmm... hard to say.  The movie that comes closet to being perfect for me is Dick Tracy.  Just everything about the film to me is perfect, with acting being the possible exception.  I love this film.

Raiders of the Lost Ark and Paprika also feel like perfect films to me.  Outside of the insanity of Paprika and some nitpicks with Raiders, I can't think of anything I could complain about with these two films.  I could say Perfect Blue, but I need to see it a couple of more times.

Red Dragon is one of the few books that I have actually read, the reason I wanted to know how (or if) the book has covered the way the FBI analyzed the Toilet Paper from Manhunter; the scene in the movie is impressive for 1980's Forensics. The book itself seemed to be written during the late 1960's to late 1970's... More towards 1979...

Oddly, I like Manhunter more then Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon remake (saddly Red Dragon remake isnt like the book)

I think I have Red Dragon somewhere. I think I picked it up at a used bookstore and it just got stashed. I'll have to dig it out.

I know how you feel about Hannibal the movie, but the book is good and you should read it sometime. Interestingly, Jodie Foster refused to reprise her role because she didn't like the ending of the book and what happens to Clarice. So, they recast the role with Julianne Moore and change the ending away from what Foster objected to anyway.

 :question:

I won't provide a spoiler in case you plan to read it.

When I see someone say that they loved "Gladiator," I always have to ask, did you see the same story in an earlier film 1964's "Fall of the Roman Empire?" "Gladiator" may be the better film to show a school class, as it may be the more historically accurate, but otherwise I think "Fall of the Roman Empire" comes off as the better film.

Better acting.
Better action.
Better cinematography.
Better direction.
Better lighting. I still remember how they lit one scene with the sunlight falling down through the tree leaves.
Better spectacle. They did it the hard way. With human bodies.
And a better cast of actors.

Never have seen that film, I'll have to check it out.

Another movie I have watched again and again without ever tiring of it is Mel Gibson's THE PATRIOT.  Beautiful cinematography, breathtaking battle sequences, and incredible performances.  I always cry in a couple of different scenes in that movie, esp, when Benjamin Martin's little girl chases after him as he rides off to battle again, begging him not to go!  Simply an incredible film.

The Princess Bride

I'm surprised I didn't think of this immediately. Now I don't have hard statistics on this (man, I wish I did), but I've probably watched this movie more times than any other movie. In fact, I can pretty much state that I have seen this movie hundreds of times.

Anyway, The Princess Bride makes me feel better about the world for the sheer fact that this movie exists in it. I'm pretty sure I could recreate the entire movie from start to finish from memory.

"You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous of which is never get involved in land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this: Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha, ha--"

"The Rodents of Unusual Size?  I think they're a myth!"

I feel that way about most of Rob Reiner's films.

Actually, let me restate that. I feel that way about most of Rob Reiner's films from the 80's. His more recent work is very hit or miss.

PEE WEES BIG ADVENTURE. How I didn't think of this first I do not know.

I love absolutely everything about this film.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE is PERFECT!!!  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeTEgwojedo

Just watched it again 2 or 3 weeks ago... aside from being endlessly watchable, it's funny, with witty repartee but never self-involved, faithful to the novel (the first time I watched this was in high school English while reading the book) a perfect film adaptation...it's... perfect.  


I do like the earlier film; CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER, STEPHEN BOYD, ALEC GUINNESS, SOPHIA LOREN...!!!  My favorite Roman type movie, I think...

Deep Red. That is all.  :smile:

I just watched this. I think it is perfect for a different reason in that there is something  for everyone in it be it the love story, sword play, comediac moments, revenge, pirates and it's enjoyable for people of all ages.

Dangerous Liasons....what a great movie!

Road Warrior

Expendables

Sin City

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToQgeO8r2T0  

This movie was on last night and I watched it again.  But one needs to listen to SOUNDER.  The dog is "Sounder" and he's the heart of the film, struggling, old and parched, but cared for... a symbol... it's not about the dog at all.  When MARTIN RITT made his movie, he knew it was SOUNDER.  The movie's name is SOUNDER.  It's sold a certain way like in this trailer, but in fact it's about texture and sound; and the film is superior.

Lives of Others- take a 'look' (bad pun) at the trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3_iLOp6IhM