Best film effects?

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

I Agree witha  lot of these:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/01/sci-fi-vfx/?pid=2501&viewall=true
-Ed

[retrorussell]

I thought the Gremlin puppets in Gremlins were incredibly well-done for its time.

[Jim H]

I'm of the opinion that Avatar has the most convincing special effects of its kind (completely CG characters, and a lot of them, in CG environments) ever made.

[Dan]

I'm glad John Carpenter's The Thing is in there, those effects really blew me away. Also the transformations in An American Werewolf in London were just awesome, too (that one shot where his head changes shape? Incredible). The Howling showed the actual change better in my opinion, though An American Werewolf in London had more realistic shots.

Also, the superimposed moon in The Evil Dead. In some shots you can barley see the square around it.

[Flick James]

"Best effects" can mean a lot of things, can't it?

What cracks me up are the comments where people talk about how realistic effects when said effects are portraying something unreal. Hey, I loved Inception, but bending landscape effects are "realistic?" The aliens in Men in Black are so "realistic?" Personally, I thought the effects in the latter were terrible, but it just cracks me up that people talk about those kinds of effects as being realistic.

I look at special effects in two main ways: what are they trying to portray, and what the effect(s) did to me.

In the former case, if it's trying to create something realistic, then I would say that Saving Private Ryan was superb. I talked to an older gentleman when I was in the Navy who had been a field medic in Vietnam and his opinion was that Saving Private Ryan was disturbingly realistic and brought back some horrifying memories. If the effects are trying to create something unreal or fantastic, then I defer to:

What the effect(s) did to me. That's purely subjective and what works for one doesn't necessarily work for another. I mean, when I saw Men In Black used as an example, I nearly lost it. Yet, for that person, those effects were awesome. Whatever.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

Just Watched District 9 and Pan's Labyrinth, both have very good effects.  I look for "seamlessness" in my serious effects and these worked very well.
-Ed