The MoFo Top 100 Musicals Countdown

I've never seen Dancer in the Dark

I watched Dancer in the Dark for this countdown and was very impressed (and depressed) by it. It's a tough watch and I may never rewatch it, but I liked it enough to put it #14 on my ballot.

Here's what I wrote about it:

I watched The Blues Brothers a few years back for a Hall of Fame and didn't care for it.

My Ballot:
2. Charlotte's Web (#79)
4. Stingray Sam (#46)
6. Walk the Line (#95)
11. Les Misérables (#34)
12. Corpse Bride (#61)
13. Chicago (#21)
14. Dancer in the Dark (#20)
15. The Jungle Book (#63)
20. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (#66)
21. Alice in Wonderland (#48)
23. Sing Street (#40)
25. Joe's Apartment (One Pointer)

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It looks like it is streaming for fee on Tubi and or for those who have Roku as well, although with Tubi it might be interrupted at two or three points with commercials.

Just a fair warning. If you're watching Dancer in the Dark for the first time... or really anytime, it's a movie that you might want Kleenix with and might feel more comfortable watching alone. For me, it's one of a handful of select films in class that, along with A Place in the Sun, The Land Before Time, Splendor in the Grass, Amelie, Breakfast at Tiffany's, and The Shootist that leaves me an emotional "who the Hell turned on the faucet?" wreck and mess. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot to add the Artrax scene in The Never Ending Story, which absolutely rips my guts out and strangles me with them.

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The Blues Brothers was #50 on the MoFo Top 100 of the 1980s, #59 on the original MoFo Top 100 in 2010, and #21 on the MoFo Top 100 Comedies. Dancer in the Dark was #38 on the MoFo Top 100 of the Millennium and #49 on the MoFo Top 100 of the 2000s.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Dancer in the Dark is an awful, awful film. I hate it! It was my #15.

Yeah, of course I don't mean the above in a quality sense, but more that it's indeed a very depressing and nasty movie to get through. As per usual with the good ol' Danish Depression King himself, Lars von Trier. But it really did something very original with the whole musical genre and while it's bleak and uncomfortable it's also a very touching and moving story. It's not a film I happily sit down and watch again and again... but it deserves to be here.

I did not like The Blues Brothers...

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Dancer in the Dark is a really good film and if I'd seen it in recent memory it might have made my list, but I haven't, so it didn't.

The Blues Brothers is not for me.

Both of these are well known 'round these here parts as favorites of mine, so rather unsurprisingly both made the top part of my ballot...


To this day, Dancer in the Dark is the single most emotionally devastating cinematic experience I have ever had. You can read the whole story of my first viewing in THIS THREAD. Suffice to say I think Von Trier's film is a masterpiece. I liked Björk fine before the movie but I loved the soundtrack for Lars' twisted Musical melodrama. On paper the plot description reads like Soap Opera tawdriness, but through Von Trier's brutal prism and embodied by Björk's delicate other-worldliness it hit me like a ton of bricks. It can still knock me on my butt so I don’t rewatch it often, but it lives inside my soul. I had it fourth on my ballot.


I have loved The Blues Brothers since first seeing it as a ten-year-old. It wasn’t just funny, it was cool! Comedy is often the playground of the goofball. But Jake and Elwood were cool. And fronting a kick-ass band! I wound up being in bands in my forties and fifties, which was an unexpected journey. I have always said that I didn’t yearn to be a rock star performing on stage all those years my singing talents were restricted to the car and shower, and that is true. But I DID always want to be a Blues Brother. As I got older and more seriously into music I realized what a gateway their records and personas had been. Donald “Duck” Dunn and Steve Cropper alone have played on dozens and dozens of truly classic tracks in the ‘60s and ‘70s and the whole band was made up of supertalents. Later in my life I would see Ray Charles and James Brown multiple times live in concert, and to think in my white bread home where my father’s musical “taste” tended toward so-called Easy Listening like Captain & Tennille that I was introduced to such legends by an epic comedy full of car chases. Besides the cool factor and being chock full of legends the flick really holds up for me. And nary a gig goes by where I am not quoting it at some point (“We have both kinds: Country and Western”). Unlike Dancer in the Dark, I rewatch Jake & Elwood's exploits often. Like three or four times a year, at least. It is some of my cinematic comfort food.

The Blues Brothers was my sixth choice. That makes a baker’s dozen of my titles and reveals half of my Top Ten.

HOLDEN’S BALLOT
3. Pennies from Heaven (#56)
4. Dancer in the Dark (#20)
5. A Hard Day’s Night (#23)
6. The Blues Brothers (#19)
7. That Thing You Do! (#31)
11. This is Spın̈al Tap (#55)
13. A Star is Born (#43)
14. Hair (#47)
15. Sing Street (#40)
17. Amadeus (#97)
18. Once (#25)
21. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (#69)
25. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (#74)

I had #20. Dancer in the Dark at #13 on my ballot.

I've seen it only once, in theatre, about fifteen years ago. What a supporting cast: Catherine Deneuve, David Morse and Peter Stormare, all of these are top favorites of mine.

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"Population don't imitate art, population imitate bad television." W.A.
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Count me in that camp as well... kind of. While I don't outright dislike The Blues Brothers, it's a film that despite its legendary and iconic status, no doubt exponentially amplified by the untimely death of John Belushi, just as The Dark Knight's reputation is heightened by Heath Ledger's early demise, The Blues Brothers is a glorified sketch/musical comedy that I believe is from an old SNL skit. Of course all this was before my time as I didn't get into SNL until the early 1990s, so the closet thing to my generation's Blues Brothers is Wayne's World, which didn't make my list either.

The Blues Brothers is decent and entertaining, but it's a film of its time and I don't think it's necessarily timeless or has aged well. Yes, it does have that Chicagoland Midwest local flavor thing going for it, but there's nothing really about it that transcends into greatness. The characters are two-dimensional and really just act to service a fun and silly plotline and some interesting sampling and touring through some solid music. There's a gazillion and one cameos, which is novel and cute, but nothing that strikes me as artistic or neat beyond just being able to see the workings behind the curtain and imagining the filmmakers giving a call to the agents of Ray Charles, Cab Calloway, Aretha Franklin, etc saying "Hey, wanna make an appearance in this movie and get paid X number of dollars for two days work?" It's all so gimmicky and empty to me really. A cash cow that had great artists living off the dividends of previous work and taking a quick pay day.

To me, The Blues Brothers is the "We Are the World" of musicals or the film equivalent of the 1980s super bands. Sure it's fun and as far as SNL films go, it's definitely one of the better outings, but I think a lot of nostalgia, the host of cameos, SNL fans "back in the day when SNL was good!", John Belushi's death, and some admittedly well choreographed and filmed action sequences, all combine into a gumbo to give people the impression that The Blues Brothers is so much more than what is really there.

Oh well, I get that people love it, but to me it's just a fun, well done, "throw away" film that like Wayne's World is quotable and people look fondly back upon, but from an artistic, writing, thematic, etc point of view... it's just very run of the mill and formulaic paint by numbers.

Dancer in the Dark is not a film I've seen. I'm not a fan of Lars von Trier. At all. No vote.

The Blues Brothers is one of my all-time favorites. Its sense of humor is right up my alley. Like Holden Pike, I'm always quoting it:
Elwood:"It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses."
Jake: "Hit it."

Mysterious Woman (Carrie Fisher): "So for me, for my mother, my grandmother, my father, my uncle, and for the common good, I must now kill you, and your brother."

The Penguin: "And don't come back until you've redeemed yourselves."

Elwood: "I bet these cops got SCMODS."
Jake: "SCMODS?"
Elwood: "State County Municipal Offender Data System."
And on and on. I love the music in it. I knew Booker T. & the M.G.'s before the movie, so it was a treat to see Steve Cropper and Donald "Duck" Dunn from that band in the film. Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, just all these greats in the movie.

The impossible stunts in the movie, including Jake and Elwood getting blown sky high by the Mystery Woman about 100 feet into the air by a flamethrower and landing hard back on the pavement with nary a scratch, getting their flophouse disintegrated by a bomb by the same woman and just brushing the dust off their clothing and walking away, the "Illinois Nazis" driving off a mixmaster bridge in Chicago and suddenly being about a mile above the city, the countless cars wrecking into each other when Jake and Elwood make a left turn, just more and more. It's one of the movies that pours on the excess and I never get tired of it. It's #5 on my list. So glad to see it break the Top 20.

#1. On the Town #93 (list proper)
#5. The Blues Brothers #19 (list proper)
#6. Easter Parade #78 (list proper)
#8. Meet Me in St. Louis #33 (list proper)
#9 Yankee Doodle Dandy #32 (list proper)
#10. Gigi #85 (list proper)
#12. Calamity Jane #84 (list proper)
#14. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers #71 (list proper)
#18. The Muppet Movie #45 (list proper)
#25. Neptune's Daughter (one-pointer)

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Blues Brothers really didn't leave an impression on me.

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John Belushi's death has zero effect on my high regard for The Blue Brothers.

No surprise here

1. The Blues Brothers (#19)
5. Charlotte's Web (#79)
7. Stingray Sam (#46)
10. The Lure (#51)
11. Yankee Doodle Dandy (#32)
13. Dancer in the Dark (#20)
14. A Star is Born 2018 (#43)
15. Sing Street (#40)
16. Once (#25)
17. Calamity Jane (#84)
20. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (#66)
21. A Star is Born 1954 (#67)
23. Pink Floyd - The Wall (#41)
24. The Young Girls of Rochefort (#36)
25. 42nd Street (#76)

It'll also be interesting to see how the decade breakdown of the entries land once we see the full top 100 list. I think there's going to be a lot of recency bias on the list as it looks like so many of the golden age of Hollywood musicals just aren't showing up and may not show up at all. Really strange.

Although to be fair, I do lean heavily toward the other camp in that I am definitely more bias toward the traditional Hollywood musicals of yesteryear and although I did have Dancer in the Dark, which is from the 2000s, the next two most recent musicals I had on my list are from the 1980s... one of which is Pennies From Heaven and the other which has ZERO chance of showing up at this point. The only other musicals that have showed up in the 1990s or after that I even marginally considered for my list are The Nightmare Before Christmas, Team American World Police, South Park, and Beauty and the Beast.

I was just tabulating this and here's my breakdown by decade, which is actually very balanced and spread out over the years at least up until the 1980s.

1920s - 0
1930s - 4
1940s - 4
1950s - 4
1960s - 6
1970s - 4
1980s - 2
1990s - 0
2000s - 1
2010s - 0
2020s - 0

Dancer in the Dark was #2 on my ballot. I don't think Von Trier will ever top his Breaking the Waves - Dancer in the Dark - Dogville peak. As others have noted, it's highly depressing and probably the most depressing film which will make this list, but it's also darkly comedic in a sense which makes it hard to narrow down the film's emotional spectrum to a single emotion. Also, while I don't normally pay attention for acting, Björk's acting is quite possibly the best performance by a non-actor I've ever seen.



I haven't seen The Blues Brother.

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2. Dancer in the Dark
4. The Burden
6. Inside Llewyn Davis
7. The Young Girls of Rochefort
8. Top Hat
12. Duck Soup
16. Meet Me in St. Louis
17. The Music Man

Yeah I completely believe that and I also believe many other people feel the same way too. However, and I'm barely... just barely old enough to remember people still talking about John Belushi and his death when I was a child and then his death's resurgence when there was a lot of the talk regarding Chris Farely's death in 1997 and how Farely idolized Belushi and how Farley also had narcotics abuse issues just as Belushi did. I was a big fan of Farely as a kid and I was a freshman in high school when he died and it was a huge discussion point around the crowd of friends and buddies I hung out with at the time, many of whom had older siblings who loved and talked about John Belushi. It's no secret or unknown phenomena that the untimely death of a pop culture star can lend them a certain iconic and martyrdom status which might in some regard lead one to overestimate their talent, quality, etc. We saw the exact same thing happen with Heath Ledger and of course perhaps the "poster-boy" for this effect in James Dean - who I do love his films by the way. And of course there's the 27 Club in the music world too and the whole Nirvana effect. Had these icons not died in their prime when they were still very much a dollar draw and very in demand to plant butts in the seat, would they have such a strong legacy? We'll never know. Some I'm sure would, others I'm sure wouldn't.

So while in regards to my earlier comment about the reputation and lasting legacy of The Blues Brothers, while John Belushi's death might not have impacted at all your high regard for the film, there's a truth and an objective fact that John Belushi's death has had a lasting positive impact on the film overall and has cemented its cult status and legacy around the film and its esteem in an entire generation of fans. Keep in mind we live in a time where sketch comedy is the norm and standard and there are a billion options, but aside from maybe The Carol Burnette Show, Laugh In, the Red Skelton Show, etc for a whole generation of Americans born between say 1945 and the early 1970s, they had never seen anything quite like a John Belushi or SNL which at the time was absolutely cutting edge. Across the pond Monty Python was making waves, but SNL back in the 1970s was truly risky and dangerous and offensive stuff... not the butt of jokes and the safe softball stuff it is today. So a whole generation of programmers, producers, critics, journalists, etc really REALLY pushed that film and the legacy of Belushi along with his other films like Animal House into cult culture and iconic status.

So while his death didn't necessarily impact you, what could have impacted you or if not you it definitely impacted people in the subsequent years, was that similar to Footloose, The Blues Brothers was on TV all the time if you grew up in the late 80s, 90s, and into the early 2000s. It played on TBS, it was on TNT, it played on USA, it played on Comedy Central, it played on VH1, and it occasionally played on the big three networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) and because the image of Ackroyd and Belushi in the big sun glasses, black hats, and black suits and ties is sooo distinctive it just stood out. Even if a person has never stopped to watch the film, if a person is over the age of 35 they will instantly recognize the image of the Blues Brothers or have flipped through it in channel surfing in the years of cable TV before Netflix, Youtube, and streaming.

As such I still hold with my argument that part of the lasting appeal of the film's cult and iconic status, has less to do with the actual quality of the film and more to do with the status, outside factors, and world around the film itself and yes, whether we like it or not, John Belushi's death IS a factor in its high esteem from a macro point of view.

I'm not reading all of that.

What? I stopped at "I'm not..." Oh, well, even though we can't apparently, maybe other people can read more than three words.