Psycho (or Rebecca) are his best. Birds is mediocre Hitchcock. NbyNW is fantastic, as is Shadow of a Doubt. Joseph Cotten is elite.
As with much of capitalistic society, the singular pursuit of money since the 80s has diluted the pool of quality movies imo. Obviously there are some criticism biases at play, but the 40s and 50s were high tide for elite studio pictures and itās not particularly close.
My second hot take is that For a Few Dollars More is better than TGTB&TU.
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Cosign this and almost posted it earlier.
I just about got sunburn from that take.
Few Dollars More has the iconic three-way standoff with incredible music, but with diegetic music. And it has this guy, who is like the hardest motherfucker in the history of Westerns, heās the hardest dude in a film with Clint Eastwood and Lee van Cleef.
Absolutely brilliant movie.
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RIP James Caan.
I watched a bunch of movies a couple of weeks ago when I was sick and one of them was Thief, an early 80s heist movie written and directed by Michael Mann. Pretty good. Might be the only movie Iāve seen him star in besides the original Rollerball.
Reports of his passing mentioned The Godfather, Brianās Song, and Elf, but for some reason no mention of his weird and funny supporting role in Bottle Rocket. 
Edit: Thief worth watching just for an amazing soundtrack of electronic music by Tangerine Dream.
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Iām embarrassed to admit I only saw Thief for the first time a few months ago, and itās A+ one of the coolest heist movies Iāve ever seen, holds up perfectly.
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This right here. The score is definitely superior.
Caan had a small role in Dogville. He has one scene in that film that tops everything else heās done imo.
But thatās largely because Van Cleef is not even half as hard in FaFDM as he is in TGTB&TU!
Misery
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tbqh, Lee van Cleefās greatest performance was when he was on The Twilight Zone, one of the GOAT TZ episodes.
Oh I forgot about Shadow of a doubt, this used to be my favourite Hitch but I havenāt seen it in ages, I should rewatch.
NbyNw I rewatched recently. Might be because Iāve seen it many times but for most of the spy thriller stuff it seems to be in autopilot mode, however as soon as thereās a dialogue between Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint it becomes hyper focused (on their horniness for each other). I had a teacher in school who said that Hitchcock films were only about sex and I thought it was a bit silly, but for this one at least itās pretty convincing.
Also Orson Welles was not a fan lol (this whole twitter thread is great)
https://twitter.com/JFrankensteiner/status/1522763251800494081?s=20&t=cnqKHGjMOhSVRIsxm6T2yg
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I think that since the 80s there are more bad, big blockbuster movies AND there are more great movies. If anything, there are so many terrific films made every year now that they donāt stand out any more as Important Achievements like the best movies in, say, the 1940s.
Bad hot take. Vertigo is 100% a must see.
You can say the same about Shatner
The number of people here who havent seen 12 Angry Men is astounding. Go watch it right now.
The movie is so good that even the god awful Tony Danza remake isnt half bad.
Probably true about all forms of entertainment.
- The Lion King
- Top Gun: Maverick
- Harakiri
- The Grave of Fireflies
- Cinema Paradiso
- Coco
- Your Name
- 3 Idiots
- High and Low
- CapernaĆ¼m