Thank you. :)

I agree with what you say about 2001, except the bit about emotion (HAL gets very emotional, which is obviously the point). I know what you're getting at though.

Good points about Alien and The Wild Bunch too (the latter and Bonnie and Clyde pretty much invented modern screen violence).

As for film noir, I've got a piece on that coming up, so I'll save comment for now.

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner belongs to a trend of "Angry Young Men" British films of the late 1950s/early 1960s, that also included the likes of Room at the Top, A Taste of Honey, Billy Liar, This Sporting Life, and others. I'd argue they were hugely influential on later British social realists ranging from Ken Loach to Mike Leigh and various others.

As for your comments re: Planet of the Vampires and the likes, yes I see your point. For instance, one could argue Black Christmas had similar innovations to the more widely celebrated Halloween and did them first. On the other hand, I don't think Peter Jackson based his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings on Bakshi's take, or at least, certainly not to a great degree. Considering he adapted all three volumes and included much material omitted by Bakshi (the Arwen/Aragorn romance, for example), I think that's a rather unfair and ungenerous assessment of his achievements.

As you say, there are many factors and components affecting what constitutes greatness in cinema - all relative, but nonetheless fun to attempt to define and pontificate over. :)