Editorials > Five Perfect Films

Many may say that there is no such thing as a “perfect” anything. There are no perfect people, to be sure, and so it must invariably follow that there are no perfect books, no perfect pieces of music, and no perfect films.

While this is a valid point, it doesn’t change the fact that certain films, when considered inside their respective genres, certainly feel perfect – films so wonderfully made that their flaws become either invisible, negligible, or totally irrelevant. These five films represent the best of their genres. They are most definitely not the only perfect films in existence, and they aren’t even necessarily the best films ever made, but they remain nonetheless unparalleled in their perfection in what they set out to do.

Sci-Fi  - Blade Runner

If somebody was to tell you about a film where a bounty hunter runs around and kills a half-dozen humanoid robots, you would make several assumptions about said film:

1. It will be action-packed.
2. It will be shallow.
3. It will (most likely) suck ass.

Blade Runner, though it is most definitely about a bounty hunter killing renegade robots, does not apply to a single one of these criteria. Instead of making a typical futuristic action film, Ridley Scott created what essentially amounts to a sci-fi art film: Blade Runner, though ostensibly about a robot-killing detective, really asks some heavy philosophical questions. What is it to be human? What is “humanity”? Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) jumps across rooftops and engages in fistfights (sort of), but the real point of the movie is not the violence the characters engage in or the world they inhabit, but rather the questions they are forced to ask themselves.

It also doesn’t hurt that Blade Runner includes some of the moodiest, most well-composed cinematography in film history. Every shadow, every cityscape, and every neon light in futuristic San Francisco looks just as impressive today as it did in 1982.

Serial Killer Films - Se7en

Attention to all directors who plan on making a serial killer movie at some point:

Don’t.

The perfect serial killer film has already been made, and it’s better than anything you could ever hope to produce in your lifetime.

Se7en has literally everything you could ever want from a serial killer flick: disturbing gore (though not gratuitously so – if you actually pay attention to the actual violence shown and not inferred, there’s very little), moody direction, well-developed characters, an unconventional plot, and a memorably horrifying plot twist.

What’s really great about Se7en is that, for a film about violent, deplorable murders, it’s ironically a film that everyone can enjoy. Teenagers looking for a quick scare and some gross-out moments will not be disappointed. Film buffs will marvel at the construction of Andrew Kevin Walker’s script as well as David Fincher’s direction. Fans of cop films will adore the realistic, un-clichéd portrayals of Detectives Mills and Somerset.

Not to mention the fact that the climax is even better when recreated with stuffed animals.

Films to make you forget that the world is a pile of shit – Amelie

For every film like Se7en that cause you to lose your faith in humanity, there has to be a film like Amelie to restore it. For all the murders and rapes and horrible things in the world, we still have to believe that in some tucked-away corners of the world, there are kind, generous, infuriatingly attractive people who want nothing more than to make the world a better place.

In that genre of film, Amelie is unmatched.

If you need to get a girl to sleep with you, Amelie is the movie you put in. The story of a lonely but kind girl who sets out to help everyone she meets is so goddamn sweet and heartwarming you’ll probably develop an angina. Whether she’s tricking two neurotics into falling in love with one another, wondering how many people in the world are having orgasms right now (fifteen), or playing a drawn-out game of cat and mouse with the man she adores, it’s more or less impossible to finish watching Amelie and not want to hug something.

This feeling lasts for a good half-hour, until the demands and monotonies of your daily life once again become painfully inescapable.

Westerns - Once Upon a Time in the West

Sergio Leone’s films are not for the impatient. In The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, Lee Van Cleef stands in a doorway for a full minute, simply staring at the man he is about to kill. In For a Few Dollars More, standoffs are a minimum of two minutes long.. In Once Upon a Time in the West, the entire ten minute prologue consists of nothing more than three trenchcoat-clad men with guns waiting for a train. No dialogue. No music. Just the sound of a creaking windmill, and three bad dudes twiddling their thumbs as a train arrives.

And it’s the most dramatic goddamn ten minutes of nothing ever put on film. Most directors use dialogue to build tension: Leone used silence. The best moments of the film – which is almost 3 hours long, despite having a screenplay of no more than 100 pages – usually consist of little to no dialogue. Seemingly mundane moments are drawn out to immeasurable lengths, as events build and build atop one another until a sudden, spectacular burst of violence (as is the case when the three men in the prologue are suddenly killed by Charles Bronson after he gets off the train)

Not to say the dialogue, when there is some, isn’t fantastic. Take the conversation Harmonica (Bronson) and one of the gunmen have after he steps off the train:

“You Frank?”

“Frank sent us.”

(Harmonica looks at the three horses the three gunmen rode in on)

“You bring a horse for me?”

“Heheheh…Looks like we’re…looks like we’re shy one horse.”

(Harmonica shakes his head)

“You brought two too many.”

Badass. While other westerns almost achieve OUATITW’s greatness (The Wild Bunch comes to mind), no Western has ever been as epic, as stylish, and as well-directed as Once Upon a Time in the West.

Gangster Films - The Godfather

Yeah – I know that last week I talked about how shitty the Sonny vs Carlo brawl was, but that’s an easy scene to overlook in the grand scheme of the film. In the epic, blood-soaked tale of the Corleone crime family, what’s one shitty fight scene?

In many ways, The Godfather’s placement on this list should go without saying. It’s the #1 highest rated film on the IMDB boards, it’s referenced more frequently than any other film in history, and its effect has not been even minutely lessened in the 35 years since its release.

The film is insanely subtle, spectacularly operatic (pretty much every scene of violence is memorable, and, in a macabre way, kind of beautiful), and yet still personally affecting. No other film in the history of cinema has managed to succeed in the ways that The Godfather does.