1950s Archives - Movie SmackdownÂ®

Cloud Atlas (2012) vs Tree of Life (2011)

Cloud Atlas (2012) vs. The Tree of Life (2011)

October 25, 2012 Eric Volkman 9

We at the Smack like a sprawling, epic movie about Big Themes as much as anyone else. So in this edition weâ€™re throwing two big, brainy behemoths against each other in a ring-shaking Sumo contest.

In the challengerâ€™s corner, weighing in at a few thousand pounds and nearly three hours in length, is a film so big it needed three credited directors: Cloud Atlas, essentially six movies in one, covering a range of genres, time periods and motifs. Our reigning champ is The Tree of Life, a thick, mood piece by Terrence Malick about a middle-aged manâ€™s reflections on his upbringing and relationship with a tough, unhappy father. And, oh yeah, the origins of life and nature while weâ€™re at it. […]

Independence Day (1996) -vs- The War Of The Worlds (1953)

March 28, 2010 Rodney Twelftree 4

Last year here at Movie Smackdown we got the idea to see what readers thought was the Best Alien Invasion Film of All Time. We thought that the genre really broke down into two sections — “Classic” and “Modern.” And so we did what we always do in these cases, we put it to our readers and let them weigh in.

We have two winners now, and we’re about to put them to the test against each other. For our purposes, we defined “Classic” as all the films that existed in the early 1950-1970 period (although all our candidates came from the 1950s), and “Modern” as everything that followed. Interestingly, fully half of our “modern” films were re-makes from the “classic” era. The “Classic” race was a close as hell, the “Modern” race yielded a clear winner. Here are our results: […]