Rotten Tomatoes Just Named the Best Movie of All Time: It’s a 27-Year-Old Thriller You Haven’t Seen
It's a modern neo-noir that changed the genre, but is now almost forgotten.
Naming the best movie in history is quite an ambitious task. Ask a hundred movie buffs what their favorite movie is and they will all come up with their own answer – from The Lord of the Rings to Apocalypse Now to Alien.
But Rotten Tomatoes took on this impossible mission and compiled a list of the 300 best movies of all time based on critics' scores, user scores, number of reviews, and other factors. And the first place movie was one that (almost) no one expected.
If the second and third places were taken by The Godfather and Casablanca – classic films that everyone with even a passing interest in cinema has seen–- then the first place went to the 1997 noir detective story L.A. Confidential.
What is L.A. Confidential About?
Three very different detectives – Bud White (Russell Crowe), Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) – are investigating a mass murder. The suspects seem to have been found and killed in a shootout, but the detectives do not believe in their connection to the crime: they come to the conclusion that there is some kind of conspiracy behind it all.
L.A. Confidential Defined the Crime Genre 27 Years Ago
L.A. Confidential is considered one of the most important crime films of the 90's, which once received 2 statuettes out of 9 Oscar nominations, but is now forgotten by many. L.A. Confidential is the spiritual successor of the great Chinatown by Roman Polanski, a deconstruction of the noir genre and, above all, an adaptation of James Ellroy's bestseller of the same name, which has long since become part of the literary canon.
Few modern crime genre writers can match James Ellroy's ability to create a noir atmosphere within the pages of his works. Ellroy's books have always been popular with both readers and movie producers, with the number of adaptations approaching a dozen. Reading Ellroy's books, however, should not begin with L.A. Confidential – to an unprepared reader, the thick darkness, slow narrative, and confusing structure may seem unnecessary and even repulsive.
In contrast to the book, Curtis Hanson's movie is even too straightforward at times, but this straightforwardness is its strength – together with the neo-noir style, it coexists perfectly with a rather dynamic thriller that has had a significant influence on the genre.
Source: Rotten Tomatoes