This month’s Team Top 10 11 at The Film Experience, perfectly (if accidentally) timed for the recent Cannes win of Blue Is the Warmest Color, is a list of the best comic book/comic strip adaptations ever filmed. As distinct from the best superhero movies, which means something a little bit different.
I was rather badly off-consensus with this one, though the final list is difficult to find fault with (outside of Ghost World, which I like less than just about everybody I’ve ever discussed it with). Please go check it out, and in the meanwhile, here’s the ballot I submitted. You’ll notice an absence of The Dark Knight; a lot of Batman and I wanted to put on the brakes somewhere, it’s not my favorite of Nolan’s trilogy, and whatever its merits as a movie, it’s not nearly the best Batman picture as a comics adaptation.
1. Superman (1978)
2. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)
3. My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)
4. When the Wind Blows (1986)
5. Batman Begins (2005)
6. Oldboy (2003) [on the TFE list]
7. Danger: Diabolik (1968)
8. Spider-Man (2002)
9. Dick Tracy (1990) [on the TFE list]
10. Persepolis (2007) [on the TFE list]
Just missed the cut (alphabetically):
Addams Family Values (1993)
Batman Returns (1992) [on the TFE list]
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
A History of Violence (2005) [on the TFE list]
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) [on the TFE list]