The Top 10 Movies About Movies of All Time

We love them. Obsess over them. Rant when they don’t work and get even angrier when they insult our intelligence or expectations. From the moment turn of the century audiences cringed at the sight of a locomotive coming straight at them, the movies have meant more to us than, perhaps, any other medium (settle down, TV — and you too, music). We adopt their dialogue, follow their mandates on fashion and fame. We enjoy the looks into lifestyles we could never envision for ourselves while eagerly tweaking emotions (anger, fear, laughter, sorrow) that we normally try to avoid. So it makes sense that, eventually artists involved in the craft would want to explore the meaning of movies. Take them apart. Reference and homage them. Perhaps, even go so far as add commentary on their creation. This movies about the movies become a Bible of sorts, a window into a world that, without filter, comes to mean so much to us.

Let’s clarify the category before we go any further, however. Yes, most of the movies will feature movies in them. Yes, we have also included movies that comment on the movies themselves without going into specific examples. It’s a mess, we know. After all, a film like Hitchcock actually tackles some of the issues that came from the making of Psycho. But when viewed within its core intention, it’s really an exploration of the Master of Suspense’s relationship with his wife Alma. On the other hand, Tropic Thunder may center on the making of a big dumb military drama, but it’s really more a comedy of ill-mannered movie stars in over their heads. We’ve tried to parse through the complicated differences and have come up with a list of 10 that we can be proud of. Sure, there are a few MIA entries (Silent Movie, CQ) that should, perhaps, be included. Overall, however, this list offers up one particular point of view.

Back in 1998, few in film were willing to back a movie which made most of its points off the latent homosexuality of Bride of Frankenstein director James Whale. But Bill Condon bravely stood his ground, giving us a peek at how important gay talent was in the glory days of early cinema. Sir Ian McKellen, long before Lord of the Rings and X-Men, gave a stellar performance as the British auteur who came up from humble beginnings only to struggle with his personal life his whole career. Intercutting reenactments from Bride, we learn how life really does imitates art, and visa versa.

In one of his rare early films in which he did not appear, American treasure Woody Allen deconstructed film and our fascination with same by telling the tale of a meek housewife (then muse Mia Farrow) who uses cinema as an escape. Once there, she learns that the line between fantasy and reality can be as blurry as an out of focus process shot. Eventually, a rugged actor (Jeff Daniels) literally walks off the screen to make all her dreary dreams come true. What happens next is an inventive free for all that questions the very make-up of movies, as well as our desire to lose ourselves in them.

One of the best mockumentaries of all time, this collaboration between Peter Jackson (yes, THAT Peter Jackson) and Costa Botes purports to tell the story of New Zealand film legend Colin McKenzie and the many accidental innovations he added to the art form. Mixing interview footage with “clips” from said forgotten “films,” we get a wonderful, weird glimpse into how artists view their medium, as well as how we re-imagine the past to fit the future. While some may see it as a minor moment in Jackson’s career, it explains his love of movies more than any big budget Middle Earth epic.

This movie has one of the most original premises of all time: specifically, that when F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich) made Nosferatu in 1921, he used an actual vampire (Willem Dafoe) to bring a sense of real horror to his fright film. Yes, in this fictionalized account of the filming, the director determines that the only way to add authenticity to his craft is to bring a real neckbiter to the ball. While flawed a bit in execution, this fascination film makes the case for what is fact and what it truly fiction. From the audiences perspective, Max Schreck seemed to be a monster. Maybe, he really was.

Tim Burton has always championed the outsider, and who was more of an outcast in his time than the kooky cross-dressing director of the film’s title? Part whimsical revisionism (Wood, as essayed by Johnny Depp, is portrayed as a bumbling dreamer when he was, in actually, a troubled alcoholic), part celebrity portrait (Martin Landau’s riveting turns as a dying, drug-addled Bela Lugosi), this amazing monochrome love letter illustrates the cut rate filmmaking that became Wood’s signature. It also highlighted the hopes dashed, and the chew ’em up and spit ’em out spirit of ’50s era Hollywood.

5 – 1

We know, we know, this will be a very controversial choice indeed. Many will wonder why a film about video store slackers recreating movies for their devastated inventory would warrant placement here, let alone such a high ranking. Well, the answer is quite simple – this is the greatest statement about the collective cultural consciousness that resulted from the invention of the VCR ever made (may be the only one, for that matter). In fact, the entire approach to the film — fans “remembering” the movies and making them from memory — indicates the impact of home video clearer than any critical deconstruction or scholarly overview. So there.

The best movie musical of all time and a telling indictment of the moment cinema adopted sound. On the surface, we have the simple story of a leading man (the amazing Gene Kelly) who must learn the ropes of an entirely new technology while his usual co-star (the equally magnificent Jean Hagen) has “voice issues” of her own. Enter the country gal (Debbie Reynolds) who can sing and dance with the best of them, and watch as The Artist cribs most of this movie for its post-millennial Oscar win. Almost cruel in how it treats the conversion to talkies, it’s the songs that carry us through the carnage.

Right up there with the documentary How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It) , this look at Melvin Van Peebles and the start of the blaxploitation movement is a monumental achievement for both father and son. Yes, Mario saddled up to play his influential dad, describing in definitive biopic style how the making of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song both redefined and almost destroyed his career. Highlighting the horrors faced by black filmmakers in the volatile 1960s,we get the standard making-of material, along with more probing, personal angles which explain why Van Peebles as his movie are so important.

Leave it to the Coens to create the kind of motion picture mindfuck that leaves you questioning reality while illustrating the dangers of “selling out, Hollywood style”. Our hero (John Tuturro) is a faux East Coast intellectual who heads over the bright lights of Tinseltown to make some quick cash. What he discovers is a den of thieves. Some (like mogul Jack Lipnick – Michael Lerner) just want to steal his talent. Others, like gruff ‘insurance salesman’ Charlie Meadows (John Goodman) may actually want his soul. A harrowing portrait of what happens when you stop being true to yourself, this is a masterpiece of cinematic shadows and fog.

Perhaps the most telling movie about a movie, and about the movies in general, ever made. As one of the architects of the French New Waves, Francois Truffaut was always looking for ways to twist the art form into both a commentary and critique on what we expect a motion picture to be. Going even more ‘meta,’ he uses a film set and the behinds the scenes intricacies of same to blur the lines between art and artifice. While his previous films simply played with the foundations of the medium, Day for Night actually lifts the veil off the process, and in doing so, illustrates is magic, maniacal facets. Sheer genius.