Inside a Dog

By way of introduction...

2007-06-27T22:50:00.000-04:00

At the dawn of cinema, films were less than a minute long. Cameras were simple and held only a small amount of film, and films usually documented real-life happenings. Of course, when you consider that so many people buy video cameras only to use them to record kids' baseball games and birthday parties, have we really come so far?

As cameras became capable of holding more film, movies got longer, and eventually directors began to connect individual shots. The shots had a progression, which gave birth to cinematic narrative. Finally, in 1903, the Edison Company made THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, an 8-minute film often acknowledged to be the first feature film. One hundred years later, there are music videos longer than THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, and the generally accepted duration for feature films is somewhere around two hours. Still, it's easy to see the progression that has taken place in the past century.

I kicked off this list in 2003. Along with the centennial of the feature film, 2003 marked the year in which I turn 25. That's fully one-fourth the age of the feature film, for those of you keeping score at home. To commemorate both my personal milestone and the larger cinematic one, I decided to compose a list (with commentary) of my 100 favorite feature films.

How did I go about making this list? What I ended up doing was to make a long list of every film I've seen that I considered even remotely worthy of a list of this kind. Both acknowledged greats and sentimental favorites made the list. And then I made a few criteria by which to pare down my list. To begin with, since I was making a list of feature-length films, every film I chose had to be over 45 minutes long, to accommodate the slimmer running times of the silent era. Also, I limited myself to a maximum of two films per director, so as to spread the wealth, and since some personal favorite directors (Hitchcock, Godard, Bergman, etc.) would've eaten up quite a bit of valuable list space otherwise. After I used those criteria to cut out some of the films (quite a few, actually), I had to knuckle down and ask myself which movies I couldn't bear to part with, and which I could (with some trepidation) give the axe.

I managed to confine myself to 100 selections for my original 2003, but even then I knew that I wouldn't be able to leave well enough alone. So rather than setting it in stone I decided to keep it constantly evolving, to add new titles as they sprung to me, and move existing ones around as I saw fit. Who knows? Perhaps I'll eventually include every masterpiece I've seen.

In short, I wanted the films on the list to reflect the double-edged nature of my cinematic appreciation. On the one hand, I consider every film on this list to be a masterpiece, fascinating on an intellectual and aesthetic level. On the other hand, I love every film on the list. I've seen each film I've included a number of times (a number larger than 1, smart-alecks), and each has a special place in my mind and in my heart. These are the films that play in my memory.

Some thoughts on films I haven't included. There are a number of "important" films that get talked up in film courses and textbooks but didnt make my list because I dont really feel especially strongly about them. For example, yeah, I see why OPEN CITY or BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN are great and influential films, but if I'm browsing the shelves at the video store, I'm not going to stop and say "ooooooh, OPEN CITY!" and reach for the box. Conversely, there are certain films I enjoy greatly but don't really qualify as "masterpieces" in my book, such as DIE HARD or DUMB AND DUMBER. And then there are the movies for which I just didn't have enough room.

Aside from those films shoved aside due to my two-films-per-director limitation (which I'll mention when I comment on the directors films which did make the cut), I imagine the following omissions will be glaring to some:

- THE GODFATHER / THE GODFATHER PART II- I really like these, particularly the first, but it came down to a choice between this and another Coppola film, so out it went.

- STAR WARS trilogy- call me crazy and revoke my geek license, but I really don't enjoy these that much anymore. Sentimental value just wasn't enough of a reason to include this.

- GONE WITH THE WIND- this movie has never- NEVER- done it for me. Something in my genetic makeup just won't allow me to like this. Which is fine by moi.

- RAGING BULL- I respect this, but it just doesn't hit me as hard as the Scorseses that did make the list.

- THE WIZARD OF OZ- I saw this again recently, and realized that it just didn't grow with me. See the "nostalgia" comment for STAR WARS.

- SOME LIKE IT HOT- lots of fun, but drags somewhat for me in the second hour. Not as tight as the classic comedies which did make the cut.

- PULP FICTION- for a long time, this was a big and important film for me, but now just a pretty damn good one, and there just isn't room for pretty damn good.

- SCHINDLER'S LIST- one of Spielberg's better movies, but not quite one of his masterpieces. Sue me, I like the entertainments more.

- THE GRADUATE- never really shared everyone's love for this one. Bancroft's pretty great, but Ben and Elaine don't really hold much interest for me.

- THE EXORCIST- plays great in the theatre, on the big screen with surround sound, but the films I've included on the list carry over their impact to a more intimate home viewing, while this loses much of its effectiveness on video or DVD. In other words, watching a film in a theatre is ideal, but a masterpiece is a masterpiece no matter where you see it.

So there you are. I believe this list is a reflection of the breadth of my personal tastes in, and experience with, cinema. Hopefully, to read it will help you better know me as a movie lover.

Detour (1945)

2007-06-09T12:35:00.001-04:00

Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer. Starring Tom Neal and Ann Savage.

B-pictures in the 1940s were scruffy and scuzzy, shot quickly and on the cheap, and starring grade-Z has-beens and never-would-bes. They were inconsequential and forgettable as a rule, merely whetting the appetite for the more expensive and respectable A-picture on the double-bill. Yet, after many of those other films have faded from memory, DETOUR endures. Perhaps this story of a lovesick loser's domination by a "dame with claws" lives on because it so perfectly conveyed the desperate sleazy essence of what was later dubbed film noir. Stars Neal and Savage would never be mistaken for good actors, but they were just right for DETOUR.

My Dinner With André (1981)

2007-06-09T12:31:00.001-04:00

Directed by Louis Malle. Starring André Gregory and Wallace Shawn.

In which the stars (playing versions of themselves) meet for dinner and talk for an hour and a half. Oh, what things they say! André, recently returned from a series of adventures all around the world, relates experiences such as a Polish theatre group who meets in the forest, British farmers who talk to insects, and being buried alive. Wally listens intently to what André has to say, but then resists, asking if all these exotic adventures are necessary to live fully, when he is perfectly happy with his normal life, drinking coffee, living with his girlfriend, reading Charlton Heston's autobiography. You'd never guess that two guys talking for an hour and a half would make for great cinema, but here it does.

Two For the Road (1967)

2007-06-09T12:30:00.001-04:00

Directed by Stanley Donen. Starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney.

Audrey Hepburn is one of my favorite classic Hollywood stars, and this is my favorite of her films. She and Finney play a married couple who remember their tumultuous history together on a road trip through France. Frederick Raphael's screenplay jumps back and forth in time, between the blessed early days of their relationship to their current discontent. Donen's stylish swingin'-60s direction is one of the few cases of this style not dating over the years. Witty and comical, but never frivolous, the film contains some hard emotional truths.

The Hustler (1961)

2007-06-09T12:27:00.000-04:00

Directed by Robert Rossen. Starring Paul Newman, George C. Scott, Piper Laurie, and Jackie Gleason.

Hollywood in the early 1960s was in flux- the old glamour was fading away, new and more down-to-Earth stars were rising, and the studios didn't know which direction they were going in. This is one of the most fascinating and emblematic of that period's films, a film made within the system that nonetheless embraced a kind of realism. Newman, in a great performance, plays Fast Eddie Felson, a cocky kid trying to make it as a pool hustler, only to learn hard lessons both in the game and in life from Laurie's handicapped drunk, Gleason's smooth-operating champ Minnesota Fats, and Scott's ruthless manager. The film is the pinnacle of the nearly-extinct art of black-and-white 'Scope, with the wide framing and deep focus ideal for re-creating the smoky, lonely world of late-night pool halls and bus stations. The very opposite of a formulaic sports movie, Fast Eddie is forced to learn things from playing the game that he would prefer not to learn.

High and Low (1963)

2007-06-09T12:26:00.001-04:00

Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Mihashi.

Looking back on Kurosawa's filmography is like reading a list of classic films (RASHOMON, IKIRU, THE SEVEN SAMURAI, THE HIDDEN FORTRESS, THRONE OF BLOOD- and thats just the 1950s). Kurosawa was dismissed by Japanese critics in his time as being "too Western", and like his famed samurai epics owe a debt to American Westerns and adventure pictures, HIGH AND LOW was adapted from a pulp novel by Ed McBain. On the surface, it's a gritty kidnapping drama, and the film observes the crime and the investigation in great detail. However, what makes the film truly great is how acutely Kurosawa examines the notion of social class in modern-day Japan.

On the Waterfront (1954)

2007-06-09T12:24:00.001-04:00

Directed by Elia Kazan. Starring Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger, Lee J. Cobb, and Karl Malden.

This film is a sticking point among many who believe Kazan was a rat who basically used this as a venue to excuse his actions, but in the greater scheme I think it's an important capsule of a prickly and difficult time. Brando's Terry Malloy struggles with the idea of standing up to the criminal element who has taken over the Hoboken docks, including his own brother Charley (Steiger). The film is informed by a more hard-hitting style than most Hollywood films of the time, and Kazan takes much of his cue from the Method acting of his stars- this, along with Kazan's earlier A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, is one of the great demonstrations for a new kind of cinematic acting. In my mind, it's Brando's best "early" performance, in service of a film which, though ideologically tricky, can't be ignored.

Broken Blossoms (1919)

2007-06-09T12:22:00.001-04:00

Directed by D.W. Griffith. Starring Lillian Gish, Donald Crisp, and Richard Barthelmess.

Griffith's film, which is sometimes called the first depiction of an interracial relationship produced in Hollywood, is one of the most visually beautiful films of the silent era. The film's story, about a battered girl (Gish, of course) who seeks solace from a Chinese immigrant (Barthelmess) is simple even by silent melodrama standards, but what makes the film endure is Griffith's visual sense. BROKEN BLOSSOMS was produced around the same time as the rise of German Expressionist cinema, and while Griffith may or may not have been directly influenced by German films of the period, his visualization of the city, with its shadowy streets and foggy docks, has a striking similarity to those European works. Add to this the expressive face of Lillian Gish (who, incidentally, was born near where I grew up) and the film remains a classic even when so many of Griffith's other works have dated.

Rififi (1955)

2007-06-09T12:20:00.000-04:00

Directed by Jules Dassin. Starring Jean Servais, Carl Mohner, and Perlo Vita.

After Dassin was blacklisted by the McCarthy-era Congress, he decided to move to France rather than stop making films. It's our gain, since RIFIFI is a masterpiece of the heist genre. All the ingredients are here- a veteran con, a crack team of crooks, seedy locations. As for the heist itself, it's a doozy, a low-tech affair involving such gadgets as an umbrella, unfolding over the course of a half-hour of pure cinema without music or dialogue. The film's wrap-up is fascinating in its nihilism, as one by one the team members begin to betray each other. Sure, it's all been done over and over again since RIFIFI was made, but Dassin should be praised for making such an influential film. What makes it a classic is how wonderfully it still works for me even after so many have imitated it.

Jaws (1975)

2007-06-09T12:17:00.000-04:00

Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw.

Nowadays, this film takes a good portion of the blame for the downfall of risk-taking Hollywood and the rise of the blockbuster mentality. Seen on its own, however, it remains a crackling suspense yarn. Spielberg sets the audience up beautifully, establishing the beachfront community setting, while tantalizing us with scenes in which, well, something is killing the swimmers (love the shot in which the floating pier turns around). In the film's second hour, it becomes more of an adventure story, in which the film's three main characters hunt down the great white shark. These scenes are where JAWS takes off, with three specific men- Scheider's pragmatic and water-fearing police chief, Dreyfuss' nebbishy young scientist, and most memorably Shaw's crusty sea salt- on a single mission. One of the most popular movies ever made- and it still works.

Wings of Desire (1987)

2007-06-09T12:07:00.001-04:00

Directed by Wim Wenders. Starring Bruno Ganz, Solveig Dommartein, and Otto Sander.

Here's another film we shouldn't hold responsible for what it spawned (in this case, the jaw-dropping Cage/Ryan vehicle CITY OF ANGELS). Wenders' poetic film has been criticized by people I know as being insubstantial, but just as there's a place in music for symphonies and piano preludes alike, so too great films come in every stripe. WINGS OF DESIRE tells the story of angels who inhabit the skies over Berlin, able to hear the thoughts of people and to transcend time, but incapable of experiencing life. Much like Wenders' other masterpiece PARIS, TEXAS, which I almost chose instead of this, the film focuses on a character who regards life impassively while those around him go about their business. Eventually, one of the angels decides to "take the plunge", trading in his wings and immortality for the chance to live and die as a human. The film isn't really about its story though (that was the mistake the remake made), but rather about the choice between standing outside of life and seeing everything, or experiencing life despite its inherent limitations.

Alien (1979)

2007-06-09T12:03:00.000-04:00

Directed by Ridley Scott. Starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, and Ian Holm.

Simply put, one of the scariest movies I've seen. Scott (whose subsequent film, BLADE RUNNER, just missed the cut), making only his second feature, cannily fused the horror and sci-fi genres to create a creepy haunted-house movie in outer space. Sure, everyone now knows Weaver's Ripley character as a tough-talking hardass, but she's one of the crew here, and it's interesting to see her as she earns her action hero stripes in a trial by fire (or, more appropriately, a trial by acid-blood). Likewise, everybody knows about the chest-bursting scene- sorry if I spoiled it if you didn't- but what makes the film frightening even to people like me who've seen it dozens of times is the atmosphere of dread set by the film's chilly, sterile visual style.

Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

2007-06-09T12:02:00.001-04:00

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

2007-06-09T12:00:00.000-04:00

Directed by Rob Reiner. Starring Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer.

This film about the trials and tribulations of the "World's Loudest Band" would deserve a spot on this list simply by virtue of how funny it is. Few films are this quotable, or this consistently clever (or stupid, since theres a fine line between the two). But what really makes the film a masterpiece is how fully-realized Spinal Tap really is- there's never a time when Spinal Tap doesn't feel like a convincing band, and indeed the film's stars toured a number of times as Tap after the film was released. THIS IS SPINAL TAP perfected the format of the "mockumentary", a goof on documentary style which would be impossible if the filmmaker and his actors hadn't so completely figured out their characters and their mythology. We watch the film and while we know that SPINAL TAP was a fictional band at the time, the film convinces us that they could be real, which makes everything even funnier. Really, the comedy gets turned up to eleven, and if you don't know what I'm talking about, see the film.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

2007-06-09T11:58:00.001-04:00

Directed by Luis Bunuel. Starring Fernando Rey, Stephane Audran, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Bulle Ogier, Paul Frankeur, and Delphine Seyrig.

Luis Bunuel is another great filmmaker who made so many great films (VIRIDIANA, BELLE DE JOUR, THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL, L'AGE D'OR) that many of them won't make this list (though if I could include shorts, UN CHIEN ANDALOU would be near the top). In Bunuel's later years, he held onto his famous fetishes and obsessions- hypocrisy, perversity, feet- while displaying a more cutting wit. In DISCREET CHARM, we observe six idle bourgeois as they repeatedly sit down to dinner only to find themselves unable to eat. At one point, they visit a restaurant and order their food when they see a corpse lying on a table in the next room; in another scene, they sit down for a feast only to discover their food is made of plastic and they are sitting onstage in front of an audience. Bunuel's film skewers bourgeois manners and ceremony, revealing them as mere window-dressing to mask our more primal urges- he seems to ask why it's necessary to make such a fuss over eating, something we need to live? Throughout, Bunuel also adds surreal asides and circles in and out of dream sequences, making for a highly original and quite entertaining experience.

After Life (1998)

2007-06-09T11:56:00.001-04:00

Directed by Hirokazu Kore-Eda. Starring Arata and Erika Oda.

The issue of where we go after we die has been an question on the minds of people throughout the world ever since humans discovered their mortality. This film posits a place somewhere between the living world and the eternal where the recently deceased are asked to select one memory from their lives to carry with them for eternity. AFTER LIFE has an almost documentary-like feel to it, with friendly interviewers and hurried office workers who have deadlines to make so that the newly-dead can move onward. Much of the film's impact comes from this realism, and the way it avoids the religious iconography that's common to films about the hereafter in favor of a more secular and universal approach. The film's premise not only invites us to know the characters onscreen better, but also to consider what memory we might choose if we were asked. Much like Kore-Eda's first film, MABOROSI, AFTER LIFE is a thought-provoking and beautiful film.

See also: Review at Epinions.com

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)

2007-06-09T11:52:00.000-04:00

Directed by Jacques Demy. Starring Catherine Deneuve and Nino Castelnuovo.

I've never really been one to cry at movies regularly, and musicals are hit-and-miss with me, but this film is not only one of my favorite musicals but makes me cry every time I watch it. The film's opening scenes depict a young couple in love, but then reality sets in and they are parted and forced to accept life's compromises. This was Deneuve's star-making role, and Demy does justice to her youthful beauty and charisma here (though she wouldn't prove what a deep actress she could be until later in her career). Just as glorious are the Technicolor version of the title city and the all-sung score by Michel Legrand and Demy, with cornerstone song "I Will Wait for You" used adeptly throughout. This is a great and overwhelmingly emotional film.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

2007-06-09T11:49:00.001-04:00

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Starring Martin Sheen, Robert Duvall, and Marlon Brando.

Coppola's Vietnam-era update of Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS took four years of his life to complete, and the result was a mad but often glorious meditation on the insanity of war. Sheen plays a marine assigned to find and kill Brando's Kurtz, and as he journeys upriver to find him he also finds himself agreeing and empathizing with Kurtz's highly unconventional ideas. When he meets Kurtz, however, he discovers that he is insane and dangerous and must come to grips with his own conflicting feelings, his own heart of darkness. Coppola went through hell to make the film, but the finished product is full of indelible images and goosebump-inducing soundscapes (see it on a big screen, if possible), and the finished product is haunting. Seek out the original version of the film, as the REDUX version is not an improvement.

L'Argent (1983)

2007-06-09T11:48:00.001-04:00

Directed by Robert Bresson. Starring Christian Patey and Sylvie van den Elsen.

Bresson was famous as perhaps one of the most artistically rigorous of the master filmmakers, and I wasn't sure which of his films to choose for this list (I also seriously considered were MOUCHETTE and AU HASARD BALTHASAR). In the end, I found myself drawn back to his final film, an adaptation of a Tolstoy story, about the tragic path taken by a forged bill, and those whose lives it touches. What makes the film effective is its message- dishonesty leads to dishonesty, crime leads to crime- made particularly poignant in the tale of a truck driver who is arrested for using the forged bill (which someone else gave him, though no one will 'fess up), and then loses his job and his wife, is forced by a lack of money to assist in a messy bank robbery, is thrown into jail, and then when released is completely without resources. In the wrong hands, it could have been a wrongheaded bleeding-heart screed, but Bresson's spare style makes the story a universal parable about how fate can pull the rug from under our secure lives when we least expect it.

The Trial (1962)

2007-06-09T11:46:00.000-04:00

Directed by Orson Welles. Starring Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles.

While similar to L'ARGENT in some of its themes, this plays more like the nightmare version of the story. Taking Kafka's famous novel as a starting point, Welles tells the story of Joseph K. (Perkins), a mild-mannered managerial type who wakes one morning and finds out that he is suspected of committing a crime. He doesn't know what the crime could be, nor will anyone tell him, but every facet of his life is placed under scrutiny by those around him, from the police officers who turn over his apartment and jot down every Freudian slip, to Welles as the mountainous Advocate, a distinguished lawyer who demands the respect of his clients only to string them along. The blending of the sensibilities of Welles and Kafka results in a world of shadows and disarray, in which despite a man's best efforts he is at the mercy of those more powerful and influential than he- is it possible that Welles' own career made him think of himself as a Joseph K.-like figure?

My Night at Maud's (1969)

2007-06-09T11:44:00.001-04:00

Directed by Eric Rohmer. Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Marie-Christine Barrault, and Francoise Fabian.

The films of Eric Rohmer are an acquired taste, to say the least. Some find him a minor talent at best, favoring long conversations over visual flair or intricate narratives, but I think that his best films cleanse the palate of big-budget bloat or show-offy technique. This film, my favorite of his (though CLAIRE'S KNEE and THE AVIATOR'S WIFE come close) centers around a few days in the life of a serious young man (Trintignant), after he falls in love with a girl he sees in church (Barrault). The centerpiece of the film is an all-night bull session with Maud (Fabian), the lover of an old friend. During this sequence, which takes up at least half the film's running time, the two discuss everything from love to Pascal to Catholic dogma, which turns out to be a kind of verbal seduction without the traditional payoff, and what makes this sequence wondrous is not only how long Rohmer sustains it, but also how the characters repeatedly surprise themselves (and us) with what they have to say.

West Side Story (1961)

2007-06-09T11:42:00.001-04:00

Directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. Starring Nathalie Wood, Richard Beymer, and Rita Moreno.

At a more ironic point in my life, this was one of my favorite cinematic targets of ridicule. I mean, snapping, dancing gangs? Nathalie Wood as a Puerto Rican? How dopey! So it was with no small amount of shock that I turned on the television a few years ago and proceeded to watch it all the way through, feeling pretty stupid for having dismissed it in the past. What really struck me on this viewing, and subsequent viewings, was how brassy and exuberant it was, and how perfectly the tone of the music and the dance modified the tone of the story. This is one of the great dance films, and the camera, rather than remaining a passive observer as in classic Fred Astaire films, takes an active role in the choreography of the scenes in a way that is constantly surprising. So now that I'm older and not as padded in irony, I'm free to appreciate and love this film, silliness and all.

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

2007-06-09T11:39:00.001-04:00

Directed by James Foley. Starring Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Alec Baldwin, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin and Kevin Spacey.

Many filmmakers adapting stage plays make the mistake of focusing on how to "open up the action", how to make the play more "cinematic". This time around, Foley does absolutely right by David Mamet's play, realizing that what makes a great theatre-to-film transfer isn't variety of locations or cinematic razzle-dazzle, but focus on the characters and the dialogue. The characters in GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS are real-estate salesman each at a different point in his career- Lemmon is the old pro long past his prime, Pacino's the smooth-talker currently riding a hot streak, Harris is a middle-aged man who's getting fed up with the new ways, and so on. The film introduces the men, then stirs them up when it's discovered that one of them stole a batch of precious "leads" which would allow him to get the upper hand on the rest of the salesmen. Figuring out who stole the leads occupies much of the film's second half, but this mystery also illuminates the desperation of all the salesmen, who put forth a great deal of effort with little payoff. Great acting too, by the entire cast, particularly Lemmon as a modern-day Willy Loman coming to grips with his own obsolescence.

Stagecoach (1939)

2007-06-09T11:37:00.000-04:00

Directed by John Ford. Starring John Wayne, Claire Trevor, and Thomas Mitchell.

While I like Westerns, I've never considered myself a fan, usually preferring the recent takes on the genre to the old canon of favorites. However, I can't help but love this prototype for the classical Hollywood Western, mostly because it has everything that makes a good Western so entertaining without any extraneous material, done with high energy and style. The story involves a group of passengers on a stagecoach trip in the Old West, including a pregnant woman, an ex-Confederate gentleman, a lawman, a drunken doctor, and a hooker with a heart of gold. Soon, they're joined by a latecomer, an outlaw called The Ringo Kid, in the role that made John Wayne a superstar. As the journey progresses, the passengers come into conflict at times, and band together at others, particularly during a still-exciting chase scene. The reason the film still works, even after all its imitators should have stolen its thunder, is because of Ford's assured hand, the purity of the storytelling, and above all the performers, especially the practically embryonic Wayne and Thomas Mitchell as the doctor.

Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)

2007-06-09T11:32:00.000-04:00

Directed by Terry Jones. Starring Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin.

I've been a fan of Python since high school, and while I can't necessarily reference every episode of the Flying Circus series in detail, I own all three of the feature films and watch them regularly. As is the case for many people, HOLY GRAIL was my first exposure to Python, but in the fullness of time LIFE OF BRIAN has become of favorite of the three. Structured around the story of a boy born the same night as Christ, in the manger right next door, the film follows the character as an adult as he becomes first a revolutionary, then a would-be messiah, until his crucifixion. But as is the case with Python, the plot is merely an excuse for the film's hilarious moments, and though it's not quite as quotable as GRAIL nor as bizarre as MEANING OF LIFE, it's flat-out funnier. This film also was the deciding factor in the decision of my favorite Python member (Michael Palin, whose scene as the speech-impeded Pilate is a classic), and is one of my most-viewed DVDs.

The Sacrifice (1986)

2007-06-09T11:30:00.000-04:00

Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Starring Erland Josephson and Susan Fleetwood.

The films of director Andrei Tarkovsky aren't made for casual viewing, but for those willing to put forth some effort they can be intensely rewarding. My favorite of his films is this one, his final work, made shortly before his death. In the film, a man living on a remote Swedish island hears over the radio that the end of the world is approaching, and gathers his family and close friends together to await the end together. They talk, and while some accept their fate, others (to quote Dylan Thomas) "rage against the dying of the light", until the man decides to try to do something. He visits a local mystic, who helps the man fend off the end of the world, but at the cost of the man's sanity. Tarkovsky's film is profound, asking a number of difficult questions, and the film is also very beautiful, courtesy of the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist. Certainly not a film for everyone, THE SACRIFICE is a must-see for those who take cinema seriously as a philosophical medium.

Faces (1968)

2007-06-09T11:28:00.001-04:00

Directed by John Cassavetes. Starring John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Gena Rowlands, and Seymour Cassel.

John Cassavetes is widely acknowledged as one of the forefathers of American independent cinema, making intimate films on a limited budget, often using 16mm cameras and casting friends, family members, and his wife Gena Rowlands. While his loosely-styled direction sometimes led to self-indulgent films (like GLORIA), it also crackled with the rawness and spontaneity of its characters' lives, and nowhere is this more in evidence than here. FACES tells the story of a married couple (Marley and Carlin) who decide to separate. While Marley carries on an affair with a prostitute (Rowlands), Carlin goes out with friends, meets a young man (Cassel), and has a one-night stand with him. Cassavetes relishes long scenes of dialogue, and his handheld camera is attuned to minute details of his characters as they drink, ramble, become enraged, then try to put themselves back together again.

See also: Review at Epinions.com

Last Tango in Paris (1972)

2007-06-09T10:51:00.000-04:00

Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. Starring Marlon Brando, Maria Schneider, and Jean-Pierre Léaud.

This film aroused (no pun intended) quite a scandal in its day for its frank depiction of sexuality, but I believe there was more to the controversy than simply sex. After all, the 1970s saw the rise of porn both of the soft- and hardcore stripe. What I think really struck viewers at the time wasn't the explicitness of the sex scenes, but the emotional nakedness of the main characters. Marlon Brando, in perhaps his greatest performance, stars as the recently-widowed Paul, who meets Schneider's Jeanne for anonymous sex only to find it increasingly difficult not to connect with her. The film also examines the characters' outside lives, as Jeanne grows frustrated with her filmmaker fiancé (Léaud), and Paul comes to grips with his wife's death, culminating in one of the most impassioned monologues on film, as an anguished Paul sits next to his wife's corpse. While the film's sexuality has become less shocking since its release, the rawness of the emotion still packs a wallop.

Pandora's Box (1928)

2007-06-09T10:48:00.000-04:00

Directed by G.W. Pabst. Starring Louise Brooks and a bunch of people who aren't nearly as cool as Louise Brooks.

The heyday of the great silent film star Louise Brooks was short, since most of her best work came at the very end of the silent era, but she left her inimitable mark on the history of cinema. If the earlier and more prolific Lillian Gish was silent cinema's embodiment of innocence, Brooks personified experience, and never more vividly than in this film. The bob-topped Brooks stars as an woman of leisure who courts a wealthy man, finds her way onto a gambling ship, and finally becomes a prostitute in late-1800s London, where she meets her doom with a certain infamous client (no points for guessing who). The story is pure silent melodrama, both simple and silly, and that the film works at all, much less as spectacularly well as it does, is a testament to the star power of Brooks. We see her onscreen, playful, smirking, knowing, and realize how the charisma of a truly great movie star can be a spectacle in and of itself.

O Lucky Man! (1973)

2007-06-09T10:25:00.000-04:00

Directed by Lindsay Anderson. Starring Malcolm McDowell and Sir Ralph Richardson.

This film tells the story of the odyssey of a meek coffee-seller as he makes his way through many of the circles of 1970s British society, and the film might've turned out a little like FORREST GUMP if not for its surreal sense of humor. Director Lindsay Anderson sprung from the same cultural climate as Monty Python, and watching O LUCKY MAN! one marvels at how anarchic the film feels. With its bizarre comedy and its way of progressing from one anecdote to the next only to seemingly forget what has come before, it feels like a direct forerunner to the Python films. Malcolm McDowell is perfect as the film's Everyman character, open-faced yet roguish, and he's backed up by a distinguished cast including Sir Ralph Richardson, Rachel Roberts, and a young Helen Mirren. Also appearing throughout the film are Alan Price and his band, who also contributed the film's great song score.

Blow Out (1981)

2007-06-09T10:19:00.001-04:00

Blowup (1966)

2007-06-08T08:29:00.000-04:00

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Starring David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, and Sarah Miles.

I first saw this film back in high school, during my 1960s phase, and I mostly saw the film because it looked cool- the story of a photographer investigating a possible murder in swinging London sounded interesting to me. As I watched it, I was entertained by it, but something else happened- I started doing some serious thinking about what I was seeing onscreen, and I started trying to sort out the deeper issues presented by the film instead of simply appreciating it on a surface level. I guess you could say that this was a key film in my development as a serious and active film viewer, which has led me up to, and beyond, the list you're currently reading. But even since then, after I've seen many other films which have engaged me just as deeply as BLOWUP, the film holds up. The film's issues still resonate, the central mysteries (not of the narrative, but of the film's conception) play around in my mind, and on top of it all it's still really entertaining to me.

Joan the Maid (1994)

2007-06-08T08:28:00.001-04:00

Directed by Jacques Rivette. Starring Sandrine Bonnaire.

Jacques Rivette is perhaps the most overlooked of the great French New Wave directors, with no fewer than three genuine masterpieces to his name- at one point, I toyed with including his films LA BELLE NOISEUSE and CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING on this list. However, in the end I chose this two-part telling of the Joan of Arc story, with Bonnaire's towering performance in the lead role. Rivette's film is not solely focused on Joan's trial and execution, as C.T. Dreyer's version is, but instead Rivette uses the four-hour running time (nearly six hours in its original television version) to supply a historical context for the story. We see the difficulty of the times, not only from the standpoint of the political climate but also the religious suspicion that was rampant in the period. Through these perils Joan strides, and Bonnaire's achievement is that she manages to make Joan willful and touched by grace, while not shying away from the great anxieties that would've plagued a girl in her situation.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

2007-06-08T08:26:00.000-04:00

Directed by James Whale. Starring Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Ernest Thesiger, and Elsa Lanchester.

After the box-office success of the first FRANKENSTEIN picture, Whale followed it up with an even greater film, and though the original resides comfortably in the realm of the horror genre, BRIDE is a more singular achievement. To begin with, this film takes the perversities that served as the subtexts in FRANKENSTEIN and brings them right to the surface in the newly-introduced character of Dr. Praetorious, who takes an unnatural sort of glee in manipulating life, as in the still-bizarre "homunculus" scene. Whale takes the Frankenstein myth as a jumping off point and adds his bizarre sense of humor, resulting in many great scenes, such as the Creature and Praetorious' underground dinner and the famous blind-man scene (parodied so brilliantly in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN). All this leads up to Frankenstein and Praetorious' creation of the title Bride and her chilling scream when she sees her betrothed. More than half a century before the influx of self-aware horror flicks, this one set the standard.

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

2007-06-08T08:25:00.000-04:00

Directed by Sergio Leone. Starring Robert DeNiro and James Woods.

Even with the greatness of the GODFATHER films and GOODFELLAS, this is my favorite organized-crime epic. Leone's sprawling narrative flashes back to various incidents in the life of Noodles (DeNiro), a small-time New York gangster. A quiet and sort of awkward guy, he grew up with the cocky Max (Woods), and together they became involved in organized crime. Now in old age Noodles must come to terms with his life, particularly his decision to rat out Max to the police. Leone, an Italian by birth, had a knack for American iconography, and the film seamlessly jumps back and forth in time, allowing the different stories to unfold while playing them off each other. This complex structure, with its ingenious transitions (the Frisbee, the ever-ringing phone), is completely lost in the truncated version, which was just as disastrous as the long version is transcendent.

Late Spring (1949)

2007-06-08T08:22:00.001-04:00

8 Women (2002)

2007-06-08T08:21:00.001-04:00

Directed by François Ozon. Starring (from left to right) Firmine Richard, Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Ledoyen, Ludivine Sagnier, Danielle Darrieux, Fanny Ardant, Catherine Deneuve, and Emmanuelle Béart.

This is almost certain to be one of my more controversial inclusions, not only because it isn't universally liked but also because many will maintain it's too soon to include this. All I know is that I can't get enough of this movie. To a longtime francophile, seeing this movie was like Christmas morning when you're six years old. I love the cast- Deneuve has been one of my favorite stars for years, and Huppert has lately achieved best-actress-in-the-world status, at least in my opinion (the rest are pretty awesome too). I love the way Ozon blends the film's style, inspired by Douglas Sirk's films, with an Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery and the occasional song, and fiddles with each genre like a mischievous child who loves taking his toys apart to see what makes them run. I also love the film's sense of wicked fun, and its more serious undercurrents. There are films on this list which may be more acceptably great- I know this. But I also know that in the week-and-a-half this played at the local arthouse, I saw it four times, and every time I saw it it got better and better. Which I guess is my way of saying- if you don't like it, get your own damn list.

Review at Epinions.com

Grand Illusion (1937)

2007-06-08T08:19:00.000-04:00

Directed by Jean Renoir. Starring Jean Gabin, Marcel Dalio, Pierre Fresnay, and Erich Von Stroheim.

Here's the grand-daddy of the modern war film, from one of the great masters. Renoir's classic tells the story of a group of French prisoners of war during World War I, including the great Gabin, as well as Dalio and Fresnay. While Gabin and Dalio are middle-class, yearning to escape their confinement, while Fresnay, a member of the fading upper-class, strikes up a friendship with German officer Stroheim. Renoir was one of the cinema's great humanists, and here he finds poignancy in all his characters, particularly Fresnay and Stroheim, who know their way of life has been doomed by the war, but form a bond in order to hold on to the little they have left. Another director may have made the nobility out to be fools, but Renoir instead has sympathy for them. The escape attempts by the lower-class prisoners are still exciting today, even after we've seen the films that were inspired by this one. GRAND ILLUSION, for all its sadness, also contains no small portion of hope that people may look past their differences and find the goodness in each other.

The Wild Bunch (1969)

2007-06-08T08:18:00.000-04:00

Directed by Sam Peckinpah. Starring William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Ryan.

Much like GRAND ILLUSION, Peckinpah's classic Western deals with men whose way of life has become obsolete, but in terms of style the two films couldn't be more dissimilar. Peckinpah's film is bleak and violent, with the criminals' credo being "if they move, kill 'em!" Holden, a somewhat shallow screen presence during the 1950s, matured into a fascinating actor as he grew older, and he's great as the leader of the bunch, confronting the issue of his age and the new century which will see the end of the Old West. Most strikingly, we see his history with Ryan, a former member of the bunch who is now leading a group of men hunting them down. The film's violence has been described as "balletic", and indeed Peckinpah uses slow-motion and editing to find a kind of harsh beauty in the carnage. But for all the artistry, the violence doesn't get any easier to watch- which is precisely the point.

Taxi Driver (1976)

2007-06-08T08:15:00.000-04:00

Directed by Martin Scorsese. Starring Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster, and Cybill Shepherd.

Scorsese is one of the best directors currently working- some would say the best- and if this isn’t quite his greatest film it’s certainly near the top of the list. Beyond the obvious filmmaking chops on display, what makes this a classic is its still-relevant look at isolation. Robert DeNiro's Travis Bickle, one of the most memorable of all big-screen characters, is dangerous, yes, but much of this comes from how disconnected he is from those around him. For example, he pines for Shepherd's Betsy from afar, but when he finally asks her out he has no idea what to do, so he takes her to a porno theatre. Ultimately, he becomes obsessed with the idea of being an avenging angel, rescuing women from the men who control them, first trying to assassinate the politician Betsy works for, then turning his attention to a sleazeball pimp who controls a teenage prostitute named Iris (Foster). DeNiro's performance is tremendous, a reminder of what a powerful actor he was before his acting became lazy and bloated.

Two English Girls (1971)

2007-06-08T08:13:00.000-04:00

Directed by François Truffaut. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Kika Markham, and Stacey Tendeter.

This film tells the story of a young Frenchman named Claude and the decades-long love he had for the two English girls of the title, sisters named Anne and Muriel. While Anne becomes a fixture of Claude's life (and, for a time, his bed), Muriel is more elusive to him, and he finds himself longing for her. This film is based on a book by Henri-Pierre Roche, who also wrote the source novel for Truffaut's earlier JULES AND JIM, and while the two films are similar in the broad outline, I find that TWO ENGLISH GIRLS is lovelier and more delicate, the work of a more mature filmmaker. I first saw this film not long after a pretty rough breakup, which made the longing of the final scenes all the more poignant for me, but even as time as distanced me from this girl, Truffaut's film retains its effectiveness over me, a testament to how great it is.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

2007-06-07T23:57:00.001-04:00

Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Starring Ryan O'Neal and Marisa Berenson.

This has a reputation for being one of Kubrick's most difficult films, but I think it's one of his best. O'Neal stars, in a surprisingly deep performance, as an ambitious Irishman who aspires to the British nobility. He first becomes a soldier, then a gambler, before catching the eye of a beautiful upper-class woman (Berenson). The first half of the film shows his rise, and the second half charts his fall, and Kubrick films everything in a way that captures the maximum amount of sterile beauty. Most reviews of BARRY LYNDON single out John Alcott's glorious cinematography, and rightly so- every shot in the film could be framed and mounted on a wall. But it's the seemingly distanced style Kubrick utilizes that gives the film its power. As humans, the film says, we set goals for our lives, we aspire to more than we currently have, but it's ultimately out of our hands, and we all must have the same end. A sobering message, to be sure, but an effective one.

The Big Sleep (1946)

2007-06-07T23:54:00.000-04:00

Directed by Howard Hawks. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Martha Vickers.

I've always had a soft spot for classic film noir, and this is one of the greats of its genre. Bogart stars as Philip Marlowe, a private eye who investigates a case centering around murder and a pornography ring. The plot is fiendishly convoluted (neither author Raymond Chandler nor screenwriter William Faulkner could figure it all out), but ultimately the plot isn't key to enjoying the film. What makes this film a classic is how delightfully kinky it all is- it's almost like they hid the pornography plotline in plain sight, lest we forget that it was made under the Production Code. Bogart is at his cynical best, and is well-matched by three memorable women- a flirtatious bookseller played by Dorothy Malone, naughty rich girl Martha Vickers, and most notably Lauren Bacall as Vickers' older sister, who volleys tart dialogue with Bogart like a champion.

The Apu Trilogy (1955- 1959)

2007-06-07T23:53:00.001-04:00

Directed by Satyajit Ray. Starring Soumitra Chaterjee, Sharmila Tagore, and Karuna Banerji.

This is one of two trilogies I've included on this list, and this one tells the story of a boy named Apu who comes from a poor family, and must find his place in the world as he becomes an adult. Ray, who had never even shot a single frame of a film before starting on the first Apu film, PATHER PANCHALI, tells the story in an unhurried manner, not merely focusing on Apu himself but also on the people around him, as his father finds a job in the city, as his mother struggles over whether to allow Apu to go away to school, and most unexpectedly as a schoolmate takes Apu with him to a wedding and Apu finds himself thrust into the role of the groom. The films are at times quite bleak, as most of the people who Apu loves die, but Ray directs the film with a startling blend of realism and beauty. The films don't fall back on cheap contrivances, but are told in an unadorned and lovely way, like old family stories.

Stroszek (1977)

2007-06-07T23:52:00.001-04:00

Directed by Werner Herzog. Starring Bruno S., Eva Mattes, and Clemens Scheitz.

Werner Herzog's films often spotlight people who rush headlong into unfamiliar worlds, and for my money his best work is this, the story of a former mental patient, a prostitute, and a little old man who pool their resources and move from Germany to the United States. Herzog's lead actor, Bruno S., was a diagnosed schizophrenic, and what he lacks in polished acting technique he makes up for with his off-kilter screen presence. It's clear from the beginning that the trio's American adventure is doomed, but they forge on anyway, buying (then losing) a trailer, and trying to live out their version of the American dream until they can no longer do so. The final scenes of the film take the story to another level, as the three are cast to the winds, and Herzog follows Bruno as he makes his way to a rest area and the film introduces the famous dancing chicken. It's hard to say what it all means at times, but it's even harder to forget.

Casablanca (1942)

2007-06-07T23:50:00.001-04:00

Directed by Michael Curtiz. Starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains.

I'm a believer in the idea of the "auteur theory", but there are exceptions to it, and this is probably the most famous of them. Director Michael Curtiz was more a skilled journeyman than an acclaimed genius, and the now-legendary screenplay was allegedly re-written on a daily basis. What is for certain is that CASABLANCA represents sturdy craftsmen and performers working together to produce something that was greater than the sum of its parts. Much of the film's mystique comes from the cast- not only iconic leads Bogart and Bergman but also great character actors like Claude Rains, Sydney Greenestreet, and Peter Lorre. What really puts the film over the top, in my opinion, is the way the film sees Bogart's Rick Blaine, a classic anti-hero who claims to "stick his neck out for nobody" but, when the chips are down, will sacrifice his personal feelings for the greater good.

Gimme Shelter (1970)

2007-06-07T23:48:00.001-04:00

Directed by David Maysles, Albert Maysles, and Charlotte Zwerin. Starring The Rolling Stones.

The late 1960s are a time that is often romanticized by popular culture, a "time of peace, love and understanding", and the like, but this film holds up a mirror to that time, showing that despite the period's lofty aspirations human behavior never really changes- there will always be people who feel the need to make jerks of themselves. Much of the film is devoted to planning a free Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway, but the planning is hasty and careless, and unlike Woodstock the concert doesn't go well. Most notably, the Hell's Angels who were commissioned to work as security ended up stabbing a concertgoer to death, but this was far from being the only act of violence seen in the film. The film's bleak view of human behavior is at a sharp contrast to the nostalgia we often see for the 60s, and by the end of the film when we see the concergoers packing up and going home it's almost like we're witnessing the Age of Aquarius packing it in.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

2007-06-07T23:46:00.000-04:00

Directed by Robert Altman. Starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie.

Robert Altman's take on the Western isn't about cowboys and adventure, but rather about the uncertainty of those who settled on the frontier. Beatty plays McCabe, a gambler who decides to open a brothel in a settlement town, and Christie is Mrs. Miller, a former prostitute who becomes his business partner. Beatty's performance is easily his best, loose and funny, but also sad, and Christie projects a coldness which masks deep and untold secrets. Altman sets the film in a cobbled-together little village that bears little resemblance to old-style movie Western storefront towns, and his vision of the West is fresh and bracing, with its characters that come out of the woodwork, whispering rumors and gossip in the background. The weather is a palpable presence in the film, as the story moves from snow into rain and mud and back into snow again, and Leonard Cohen's song score doesn't punch up the story, but instead serves as an emotional commentary.

Freaks (1932)

2007-06-07T23:45:00.001-04:00

Directed by Tod Browning. Starring Olga Baclanova, Roscoe Ates, Wallace Ford, and Leila Hyams.

Perhaps the greatest exploitation film of all time, Browning's early-sound-period masterpiece tells the story of the titular freaks, who travel around with the circus for the entertainment of "normal" people. Rather than holding them up to scorn, Browning focuses on how they have formed a family, manifested in their revenge against a gold-digging trapeze artist. By extension, Browning is examining the tendency of all those outside mainstream society, "the unwanted" as they are called in the opening crawl, to band together against the world that has rejected them. There is, of course, the obligatory romantic subplot between the "normal" characters, but that's less interesting than the film's observation of its various genetic misfits, like the legless Johnny Eck, who ambles around on his hands, and the limbless Prince Randian, who lights a cigarette using only his mouth. When the final revenge scene comes, Browning wisely avoids showing the scene in great detail, instead concentrating on shadows and nightmarish imagery.

See also: The Movie Moment: Freaks (Screengrab)

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)

2007-06-07T23:44:00.001-04:00

Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Starring Gunnar Björnstrand, Ulla Jacobsson, and Eva Dahlbeck.

Before Bergman became a legend for his dark, psychologically probing work, he made this lighter film, an ensemble comedy about various people in love and the complications that ensue. It's a romantic roundelay in the classic theatrical tradition, in which the affluent characters are somewhat uneasily paired off at the beginning, and by the end they are more successfully matched, while a pair of lusty servants find time for a romance of their own. At the center of the film are a lawyer played by Björnstrand and an actress played by Dahlbeck, from which all the other relationships radiate, and Bergman controls the story perfectly, as the men take everything with the utmost seriousness, and the younger characters are more swept up in emotions than the older ones.

The Producers (1968)

2007-06-07T23:40:00.000-04:00

Directed by Mel Brooks. Starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.

Mel Brooks' once-infamous debut film has lost a lot of its shock value in the years since its release, but none of its hilarity. Mostel and Wilder star as a pair of Broadway producers who raise a great deal of money for an unspeakably bad show, hoping to bilk the investors and run off with the cash. Brooks' direction looks pretty clumsy in retrospect, but the film is so funny it hardly matters. It starts out well, as the con is hatched and put into action, and by the time the show (an atrocity titled "Springtime for Hitler") becomes a surprise smash, the film has achieved levels of lunacy that few others have reached. And it's oh-so-quotable, and filled (once again) with priceless supporting turns like Dick Shawn's hippie Hitler and Kenneth Mars' Nazi playwright. On top of it all, the film features one of the screen's greatest comedic odd couples, with Mostel at the top of his game and Wilder reaching the pinnacle of fussiness.

Peeping Tom (1960)

2007-06-07T23:35:00.001-04:00

Directed by Michael Powell. Starring Karl Boehm and Anna Massey.

Powell was well-known for his 1940s Technicolor fantasies, but when this film was released, it was so poorly-received that it effectively ended his career as a director, which is a shame. The film is a masterful portrait of Marc (Boehm), a killer who films his victims as he kills them and then watches their filmed expressions of horror. The story is a nightmarish tale of voyeurism and the heavy psychological toll it takes upon the voyeur, and though Hitchcock also made films about voyeurism, he tended to cloak them in the trappings of commercial suspense films, where Powell placed the theme front and center in the work. The film also works as an effective thriller, as police investigate the murders and Marc begins to fear that the law is closing in on him. However, the most chilling moments in the film deal with his compulsion to kill and to watch, which in his mind have become intertwined.

Walkabout (1971)

2007-06-07T23:33:00.000-04:00

Directed by Nicolas Roeg. Starring Jenny Agutter, Lucien John, and David Gulpilil.

The title refers to the Aboriginal rite of passage in which a teenage male is forced to spend months alone in the Outback, to test whether he can survive on his own. Nicolas Roeg's first solo directing credit (he's also responsible for the gorgeous cinematography), combines the story of Gulpilil's walkabout with the plight of a white teenager and her little brother (Agutter and John) who are lost there. As their paths cross, the film contrasts the two teenagers, both at a crucial point in their lives, but they don't manage to forge a deep connection as they would in a more conventional film. Meanwhile, nature looms all around them, expansive and uncaring, sometimes beautiful (as in Agutter's famous nude swimming scene), but just as often frightening. WALKABOUT confidently walks through a minefield of potential clichés and copouts (a lesser film would've devolved into me-Tarzan-you-Jane silliness) coming out at the end not only unscathed but triumphant.

See also: Review at Epinions.com

Seconds (1966)

2007-06-07T23:30:00.001-04:00

Directed by John Frankenheimer. Starring Rock Hudson, Murray Hamilton, and Salome Jens.

Kafka might've enjoyed this film, in which we meet a middle-aged man (Hamilton) who has a picture-perfect suburban life, but has become completely dissatisfied with it. One day, the man receives a call from an old friend, believed to be dead, about a company that can change his identity and place him in a new life. After the procedure to change his appearance, the man (now played by Hudson, in easily his best performance) discovers he doesn't much care for his new life either and decides he wants out. There is a way out, but it isn't what he imagined. Frankenheimer's bizarre meditation in identity has the qualities and the power of a vivid nightmare (special mention to James Wong Howe's great black and white cinematography), as well as being a crackling and intelligent thriller.

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

2007-06-07T23:26:00.001-04:00

Heavenly Creatures (1994)

2007-06-07T23:23:00.001-04:00

Directed by Peter Jackson. Starring Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey.

Jackson is best known for his ambitious Lord of the Rings films, but he made an even greater impression on me with this earlier work. Inspired by a real-life murder case, the film stars Winslet and Lynskey as Juliet and Paulina, two high school girls who become the closest of friends. Each feeds the other's love for romantic and bloody fantasies, and as we see the film through Paulina's eyes we also observe how her relationship with Juliet has caused her fantasies and reality to co-mingle, until the girls end up killing Paulina's mother. The film, however, is hardly depressing, but intoxicating, as the immediacy of Jackson's style ensnares the audience in the girls' fantasy world, even as we dread what will happen next- which makes the film's final events all that much sadder.

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

2007-06-07T23:17:00.001-04:00

Directed by Alain Resnais. Starring Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada.

The broad outlines of Resnais' visionary film sound trite- a French woman and a Japanese man conduct an affair against the backdrop of post-bomb Hiroshima- but the way the story plays out is anything but. As the film's lovers learn about each other, they also learn about each others' worlds, and each comes to identify the other through the great tragedy in the other's past. Most poignantly, the film flashes back to the woman's life in Nevers, France during and after the Occupation, when she had an affair with a German soldier and was then persecuted by the members of her community. Resnais, in collaboration with writer Marguerite Duras, has made a poetic and profoundly sad film about how people are the sum total of their pasts, and how the past imprisons us all.

Eraserhead (1977)

2007-06-07T23:15:00.001-04:00

Directed by David Lynch. Starring Jack Nance.

Lynch's vision is so rich and strange that, when he's on his game, the results are like nothing you've ever seen before. I almost chose his 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet instead of this, but upon reflection I decided to go with his very first feature, because it's such a completely original work. Shot on the cheap over the course of four years, it tells the story of a young man (Nance) who gets married, looks on as his wife gives birth to then abandons a bizarre baby, and becomes obsessed with a woman who lives inside his radiator (yes, really). Many of Lynch's typical obsessions- the 50s, body parts, musical numbers- are present here, but what sets this film apart from his other work is how he's less beholden to a specific inspiration (such as small-town life or Hollywood), making the film that much harder to pin down, or to forget.

Singin' in the Rain (1952)

2007-06-07T23:12:00.000-04:00

Directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly. Starring Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, and Jean Hagen.

That this remains the quintessential film about the dawn of sound in Hollywood movies is almost incidental to its greatness. What's really important here is how purely joyful this movie is to watch. Kelly, with his muscular dancing and everyman charm, is still wonderful to watch onscreen, particularly in the famous title number, and he's well-matched by O'Connor (with his immortal showstopper "Make 'Em Laugh") and fresh-faced neophyte Reynolds. What sets this film apart from most musicals, such as those starring Fred Astaire, is that in all those lesser films the story was a trifle, serving as a clothesline for the singing and dancing. Here everything feels important- nothing's forgettable. Donen, Kelly and company pulled out all the stops to entertain the audience, and they succeeded brilliantly.

Band of Outsiders (1964)

2007-06-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Starring Anna Karina, Claude Brasseur, and Sami Frey.

The popular line on Godard is that his classic work came early in his career, and that after this period his work became more obscure and less rewarding. I'm pretty much in agreement with that, since the post-60s Godard films I've seen have mostly been too ponderous and self-absorbed to work for me, but in his first decade as a filmmaker, he seemingly churned out one masterpiece after another. Band of Outsiders, while not quite my favorite Godard film (check back at a later date for that one), is a close second. The plot involves two would be criminals (Brasseur and Frey) who team up with a girl (Karina, Godard's wife at the time) to rob a rich couple. The real pleasures of the film, though, are in the offhand moments presented- dancing the Madison in a café, a full-out sprint through the Louvre, Karina's luminous face- and the film culminates in a death scene that's quite possibly the most poetic moment in any of Godard's classic films.

Army of Shadows (1969)

2007-06-07T23:04:00.001-04:00

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

2007-06-07T23:03:00.001-04:00

Directed by David Lean. Starring Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif.

Even today, this film stands as a benchmark for directorial ambition, with a grand historical sweep, huge crowd scenes, and spectacular desert vistas. Yet the greatness of Lean's film is that, upon reflection, it's a character study about a strange and singular man, British officer T.E. Lawrence (played by O'Toole). Lawrence wasn't a traditional dashing man of action (the film doesn't expound upon his homosexuality, but it's there) as much as an enigmatic figure who saw a situation that required a hero and mainly by force of will assumed the role. The film doesn't end with a battle scene, but with resignation and inevitability, as the world in which Lawrence thrived is replaced by politics and pragmatism. And yeah, the landscapes are pretty awesome too.

Waking Life (2001)

2007-06-07T23:02:00.001-04:00

Directed by Richard Linklater. Starring Wiley Wiggins.

One of the best (and rarest) feelings one can have as a moviegoer is the feeling that you're seeing something new and exciting onscreen. Such was the case when I first saw this film. Waking Life doesn't have a dominating story so much as it leads the audience through a series of conversations, most but not all of which include Wiggins, who listens and sometimes comments on what is said. The conversations range from philosophical debates to angry rants, and each is fascinating and stimulating. If there is a plot, it involves Wiggins' inability to awaken from his dream (of which the conversations are a part). What really pushes this film into the realm of greatness is its visual style, which takes conventionally-shot footage and rotoscopes vibrant, dancing computer animation on top of it in a way that makes me giddy every time I watch it.

A Hard Day's Night! (1964)

2007-06-07T23:01:00.001-04:00

Directed by Richard Lester. Starring The Beatles.

Prior to this film, rock'n'roll had something of an uneasy relationship, with stars like Elvis Presley making profitable but disreputable movies. However, with this film, rock cemented its presence in cinema in a big way. In this film, the Beatles (playing versions of themselves) spend the hours prior to a televised concert rehearsing, preparing, and killing time, but the film, while in documentary style, is fictionalized. All four of the Beatles were natural performers, each unafraid to kid his own image, and all of them get their showcase scenes (the most memorable being Ringo's escape into the outside world). The music is great too, naturally, and instead of using performance numbers throughout, Lester scores scenes and montages with the songs much like previous filmmakers did with instrumental pieces, which served to make the songs and the images inseparable from each other. When the final concert comes at the end of the film, it's just about perfect, focusing not only on the song itself, but also on the band members emotions and the audience's reaction, creating a rush of adrenaline that's rare and quite special.

Sunrise (1927)

2007-06-07T23:00:00.002-04:00

Directed by F.W. Murnau. Starring George O'Brien and Janet Gaynor.

One of the most beautiful of all silent films, Murnau's masterpiece tells the story of a young man from the country (O'Brien) who is lured to the city by a sophisticated woman. The events in the film are the stuff of melodrama- the man attempts to kill his wife in order to escape his old life, for example- but few films encompass such a broad spectrum of emotions. Murnau made the influential classics Nosferatu and The Last Laugh prior to emigrating to Hollywood for this film, and died a few years later in a car accident (sordid details of the crash can be found in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon), and as in these films, the black and white cinematography here is extraordinary. What really makes this film great, though, is how Murnau makes the idea of young love timeless- the simple pleasures the couple enjoys together, the emotional peaks and valleys of youth, and the ways the film turns the man and the woman into every man and woman who has ever loved or hoped to love.

Dodsworth (1936)

2007-06-07T23:00:00.001-04:00

Directed by William Wyler. Starring Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, and Mary Astor.

This film, based on Sinclair Lewis' novel, is a bracingly mature portrait of the breakup of a marriage. Huston and Chatterton portray a rich American couple who vacation in Europe following his retirement, and as they discover European ways she grows weary of her husband and courts one European man after another. Huston gives a great performance, gruff and stalwart as a naive but caring husband who starts to implode because of his wife's infidelity and, more importantly, her disloyalty to him. But what sets this apart from so many modern films is Chatterton's performance, which isn't shrill and cartoonish, but is a three-dimensional portrayal of a woman who feels the years catching up with her, and just wants to be beautiful to someone again.

The Age of Innocence (1993)

2007-06-07T22:59:00.002-04:00

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)

2007-06-07T22:59:00.001-04:00

Directed by Victor Erice. Starring Ana Torrent, Isabel Telleria, and Fernando Fernan Gomez.

Erice's feature debut tells the story of a young girl growing up in small-town Spain during the 1930s, and Torrent is heartbreaking in the lead role, giving one of cinema's greatest child performances as a shy but kind little girl who watches FRANKENSTEIN and then comes to believe that a fugitive hiding in a nearby barn is the Creature reincarnated. Mostly, the film's greatness lies in Erice's mastery of tone, as each scene plays like a vivid memory from childhood- the vague feeling of boredom on a lazy afternoon, the excitement of hushed stories told by siblings when you're supposed to be asleep, and the pure joy of watching a movie. When the film is over, my memory of it felt nearly as distant as the memories of my youth, and nearly as treasured.

Duck Soup (1933)

2007-06-07T22:58:00.000-04:00

Directed by Leo McCarey. Starring the Marx Brothers and Margaret Dumont.

The Marx brothers were probably the greatest comedy team of the sound era, and in my opinion this is their greatest film, since unlike so many of their other features this one isn't diluted by soggy romantic subplots. This one finds Groucho as the clueless newly-appointed leader of a country called Freedonia, with Harpo and Chico spying on him for the opposition, but really that's just an excuse for each to play to his unique gifts (verbal dexterity, ethnic comedy, and silent-film slapstick, respectively). Many classic bits here, but my favorite has to be mirror sequence, a wonderfully-sustained piece of comic filmmaking that goes on far longer than it has any right to. DUCK SOUP was a flop when it was first released, but audiences now (correctly) recognize its genius.

Three Colors trilogy (1993-1994)

2007-06-07T22:57:00.002-04:00

Directed by Krzystzof Kieslowski. Starring Juliette Binoche, Zbigniew Zamachowski, Irene Jacob, and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Kieslowski's final work, a series of films inspired by the tenets of the French revolution (liberty, equality, and fraternity), is one of the few modern pieces of cinema that makes its points subtly, through its luminous images, rather than bludgeoning the audience with heavy-handed dialogue. In BLUE, Binoche is stunning as a widow who tries to escape her old life; WHITE finds Zamachowski returning to his native Poland, working his way up through the new capitalist economy, and trying to win back his estranged wife; and the masterful RED deals with the unique friendship between fashion model Jacob and retired judge Trintignant. The films defy expectation and categorization, and while each exists as a piece unto itself the trilogy gains power when seen as a unified work, especially in the great final sequence of RED, which with a grand brushstroke ties all three films together magnificently. This is possibly the definitive work about what it meant to be a citizen of the world at the turn of the millennium, but its ideas and appeal are timeless.

Do the Right Thing (1989)

2007-06-07T22:57:00.001-04:00

Directed by Spike Lee. Starring Danny Aiello, Spike Lee, Ossie Davis, and John Turturro.

Spike Lee has been one of the more controversial figures in American cinema for the past two decades, and this, his best film, is also his most inflammatory. Much of the controversy comes from his evenhanded treatment of the film's dozen or so main characters, none of whom are heroes but rather flawed and often selfish individuals. On the hottest day of summer in a Brooklyn neighborhood, tensions begin to rise between races and generations until everything explodes in a riot that leads to the death of a young man and a destruction of a business. What makes this film a masterpiece, in my opinion, is that no one is a villain, but each character acts according to his or her nature, and those who saw the film as an incitement to riot weren't paying attention.

Sans Soleil (1982)

2007-06-07T22:56:00.002-04:00

Directed by Chris.Marker.

I haven't seen nearly as many non-narrative films as I should have, and certainly not enough to speak in depth on the unique power of Marker's meditation on cinema and memory. For me, however, the film's greatness is in the ways it illuminates the strange and wonderful world in which we live. Marker, utilizing the device of letters read in voiceover, is able to find wonder in everyday things, like a parade, the technological maze of downtown Tokyo, and the usually-discouraged sight of people looking into the camera. The film's most moving sequence, for me anyway, was of a town that had been buried under volcanic ash, and particularly the letter-writer's memory of children playing there years before. By jettisoning traditional notions of narrative and characters and focusing instead on the small ways people try to find their own niche in the world, Marker finds a unique angle on what Jacques Tati attempted with PLAY TIME- that is, "a film about everyone."

Dead Man (1995)

2007-06-07T22:56:00.001-04:00

Directed by Jim Jarmusch. Starring Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer.

While there are a number of Westerns I love, it's not a genre I find myself drawn too all that often. But then this film is like no vision of the West I've ever seen. Depp stars as William Blake, a newcomer to the West who has a bullet near his heart and a price on his head, and one of the many ways the film subverts its ostensible genre is that the meek Blake is about as far from a cowboy as you can get. Jarmusch, a great filmmaker who has always been attentive to the juxtaposition of cultures, surrounds Blake with memorable supporting characters, notably Farmer's hilarious Nobody, a Native American who believes Blake to be the famed poet. The film feels like a long pre-death vision by Blake (the dead man of the title), and this is heightened by Jarmusch's deadpan style and languid pacing, the shimmering black-and-white cinematography, and Neil Young's jarring guitar score.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)

2007-06-07T22:55:00.000-04:00

Directed by Alexander Mackendrick. Starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.

This film's status as one of the most quotable ever would by itself warrant it a spot on this list, but there's much more to it than simply a slew of great lines. Lancaster gives a wicked performance as the powerful gossip columnist J.J. Hunsecker, and Curtis matches him (no pun intended- those who've seen the film will know what I mean) as flunky publicist Sidney Falco, who kisses up to Hunsecker for space in his column and cleans up his dirty work. Mackendrick and screenwriters Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets create an acrid portrait of New York in the 1950s, with its ruthless powers-that-be and unscrupulous underlings, who would do anything to be powerful in their own right. At one point, Hunsecker calls Falco "a cookie full of arsenic," and that describes this film as well as anything I could say about it.

Chinatown (1974)

2007-06-07T22:54:00.002-04:00

Directed by Roman Polanski. Starring Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and John Huston.

Polanski's superlative neo-noir detective story feels like an urban legend from Los Angeles' sordid past. Nicholson stars as J.J. Gittes, a private eye who takes an adultery case and then stumbles onto murder and then a deeper conspiracy, centering around a father and daughter (Huston and Dunaway, respectively). Polanski respects the classics of the genre, while adding a more contemporary vein of sadness, ably assisted by Nicholson's performance, which uses the actor's usual sardonicism to mask deep and untold sorrows. Robert Towne's screenplay is often singled out as one of the greatest ever produced in Hollywood, setting a compelling and suspenseful mystery against the backdrop of the burgeoning L.A. metropolis of the 1930s, and the film builds to a strange, tragic, and unforgettable climax in the titular neighborhood. As much as I love vintage detective movies, this is still my favorite in the genre.

Shame (1968)

2007-06-07T22:54:00.001-04:00

Directed by Ingmar Bergman. Starring Liv Ullmann, Max Von Sydow, and Gunnar Bjornstrand.

I consider myself a Bergman fan, and out of all his classics this is, in my opinion, his best work. Ullmann and Von Sydow play a married couple living on a remote Swedish island, going about their daily lives and contemplating having a child. However, when the island is bombed in an air raid, their lives are thrown into upheaval- both of them are taken in for questioning about possible collaboration with the enemy, and even after they are acquitted soldiers from both sides storm their home. But the key to the film is the way the war stirs up the long-buried secrets and resentments which have been sublimated in peacetime so that the marriage can function smoothly, especially when Von Sydow's casualness turns (in his wife's eyes) into cowardice. I'm not a big fan of the typical war film (particularly not the combat subgenre), but when I see the effect war has on everyday lives far from the traditional fields of battle, I can't help but be moved, and SHAME is in my opinion the best example of this.

Les Bonnes Femmes (1960)

2007-06-07T22:53:00.002-04:00

Directed by Claude Chabrol. Starring Stephane Audran, Clothilde Joano, Bernadette Lafont, and Lucille Saint-Simon.

Chabrol was one of the founding members of the French New Wave, and this film was a key early work in the movement. It uses many of the New Wave's ideals- location shooting, stylistic experimentation, non-literary inspiration- to tell the story of four girls working in a Paris department store. As we get to know the characters, their lives together and individually form the various plot strands of the film- Jane's free-and-easy lifestyle, Rita's impending marriage, Ginette's secret life as a singer in a music hall, and Jacqueline's budding relationship with a man on a motorcycle. Near the end of the film, the story takes a turn into the romantic and then the macabre, but these don't feel like plot twists because Chabrol has set them up through his characters' behavior, and the action unfolds with an inspired combination of unpredictability and inevitability. In the final sequence, Chabrol takes the film to another level entirely, a more philosophical one, and though he doesn't (and shouldn't) make clear the meaning of the sequence, it somehow makes perfect sense, and caps the film beautifully.

See also: Review at Epinions.com

The Singing Detective (1986)

2007-06-07T22:53:00.001-04:00

Directed by Jon Amiel. Starring Michael Gambon, Janet Suzman, and Patrick Malahide.

This is the second television miniseries to be selected for this list, but it's so riveting and cinematic that I believe it to be worthy of inclusion. Gambon (in one of the greatest performances I've seen) stars as Philip Marlow, a former writer of detective fiction who is now lying in a hospital with acute psoriasis and arthritis. While his body is in pain, his mind is in a frenzy, sorting through his memories of the past, hallucinated musical numbers, a new mystery he's trying to sort out, and occasional visits to real life. Amiel directed, but the creative center of the project was the late Dennis Potter, who combined his pop-cultural obsessions with his own struggle with the disease that afflicts his protagonist. THE SINGING DETECTIVE is bleak and sometimes brutal, but also strangely life-affirming, as Marlow discovers that he can't be cured unless he wants to be. Television so often shows forgettable and trashy programming, but a transcendent work like this one ennobles the medium.

See also: Review at Epinions.com

Children of Paradise (1945)

2007-06-07T22:52:00.000-04:00

Directed by Marcel Carne. Starring Arletty, Pierre Brasseur, Albert Remy, and Jean-Louis Barrault.

Carne's epic-length ode to the theatre has been referred to as "The French GONE WITH THE WIND", but I believe this to be far superior to that American so-called classic. Against a backdrop of 1800s Paris, we see the characters' destinies unfold: Frederick (Brasseur), a blowhard with aspirations to the stage; Lancenaire (Remy), a cold-hearted criminal; Baptiste (Barrault), easily the most likable mime ever to grace the screen; and Garance (Arletty), a woman of loose morals who captures the hearts of all the men around her. As the four characters drift together, apart, and back together, Baptiste emerges as the film's most poignant character- though he's idolized by both Garance and Frederick for his great talent, his obsessive love for Garance overwhelms him, culminating in one of the saddest sequences in any film I've seen. Carne shot much of CHILDREN OF PARADISE in secret, using clandestine sets to avoid the occupying German authorities of the time, and the result is perhaps the textbook example of a great film springing from difficult circumstances.

Come and See (1985)

2007-06-07T22:51:00.001-04:00

Directed by Elem Klimov. Starring Aleksei Kravchenko.

Klimov's masterful re-enactment of the Nazi invasion of Byelorussia during World War II is possibly the most harrowing war movie ever made. The events are seen through the eyes of a teenage boy (Kravchenko), who when the film begins wants to join the local army. However, as the Nazis storm from town to town, they leave a trail of carnage and suffering in their wake, and the boy's patriotism turns to madness. Klimov's camera follows the boy relentlessly from one horrifying vision to the next, and as the film's events grow more inexplicable to the boy, his horror becomes our own. Virtually every modern war film says that war is hell, but none is as hellish (or as strangely beautiful) as this one.

The Lady Eve (1941)

2007-06-07T22:39:00.000-04:00

Directed by Preston Sturges. Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, and Charles Coburn.

"Screwball comedy" has never been my favorite genre- I've never cared for MY MAN GODFREY or BRINGING UP BABY, for example- but I'm a fan of Preston Sturges' movies, and this is my favorite of his. The main reason why his films are an exception to the rule is because the characters in his work are fully-realized instead of being cartoonish, and this one features some great ones. Fonda's shy millionaire and Stanwyck's spirited con artist are a pleasure to behold, and as the film observes them gravitating toward each other, away, and then back together again, we can't help but root for them. There's also some great character acting in the supporting roles, with the cultivated Coburn acting as Stanwyck's father figure (though whether they're actually related remains a mystery), William Demarest as Fonda's suspicious servant, and the froglike Eugene Pallette croaking out his dialogue as Fonda's cranky dad. When the laughs come, they don't come at the expense of the characters so much as they spring out of the characters, which makes us laugh even more

Vertigo (1958)

2007-01-21T10:46:00.002-05:00

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring James Stewart and Kim Novak.

Possibly Hitchcock's most acclaimed and analyzed film, this is easily one of the most dreamlike of the masterpieces of classical Hollywood. Stewart stars as Scottie, a former police detective with a paralyzing fear of heights, who is hired by an old school friend to tail his wife. Gradually, he becomes obsessed with her, and after she dies under mysterious circumstances, Scottie's affections shift to a shop girl who bears an striking resemblance to the dead woman. All Hitchcock's obsessions are on display here- phobias, chilly blonde women, voyeurism, manipulation- but the difference between this film and many of his other works is that he uses the structure of the story to illuminate these obsessions, particularly in the scene where Scottie transforms the shop girl into the image of his beloved. The film unspools beautifully, capturing you in its spell, and Bernard Herrmann's immortal score is eerily romantic.

Rules of the Game (1939)

2007-01-21T10:46:00.001-05:00

Directed by Jean Renoir. Starring Marcel Dalio, Nora Gregor, and Jean Renoir.

This comedy of manners from French humanist Jean Renoir is one of the first truly great examples of an ensemble piece in cinema. There are no central protagonists in this story, and certainly no heroes or villains. Instead, Renoir uses his large cast to examine class issues and social mores in European society at the time, assembling the gentry and their servants at a country home over a weekend and observing their interactions and individual stories. Renoir doesn't portray the monied characters as being fundamentally different than their servants, as members of both classes engage in domestic squabbles, rivalries, and flirtations, and he punctuates this idea by casting himself in the role of Octave, a kind of free-agent who associates with members of both sectors, maintaining a distance on both that allows him to marvel at their similarities. It seems like his biggest theme here is, for better or worse, we're all more similar than we pretend to be. Robert Altman re-worked Renoir's structure into his film GOSFORD PARK, but while his allegiance to the lower classes provided an interesting perspective on the film, his work doesnt hold a candle to Renoir's masterpiece.

8 1/2 (1963)

2007-01-21T10:45:00.002-05:00

Directed by Federico Fellini. Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimee, Claudia Cardinale, and Sandra Milo.

In Fellini's quintessential film about filmmaking, his frequent collaborator Mastroianni stars as Guido, a celebrated director who has made a successful film and now struggles with the problem of doing a follow-up. Fellini's circumstances while making the film were similar, having just made the international hit LA DOLCE VITA, and Fellini to his credit didn't do anything to disguise this fact. Instead, he channeled his real-life difficulties into the story for this film, in which producers can't seem to understand why Guido cant get going on his film (particularly after they've erected an enormous launchpad set for use in the movie). Meanwhile, Guido finds his mind wandering back into the past, and he has to juggle the various women in his life, which comes to a head in an immortal scene where he unsuccessfully plays lion-tamer as all his women are gathered in one room. Much of the pleasure in watching this film comes from his direction, as the camera dances past actors moving as if to some distant tune.

Double Indemnity (1944)

2007-01-21T10:45:00.001-05:00

Directed by Billy Wilder. Starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson.

This is perhaps one of the most cynical films ever bankrolled by a Hollywood studio, and little wonder- no fewer than three world-class cynics were involved in the film (director/cowriter Wilder, cowriter Raymond Chandler, and source author James M. Cain). MacMurray stars as an insurance man who joins with femme fatale Stanwyck to kill her husband and collect his life-insurance payment, but what really gives the film its zing is that neither of the characters seem to be in it for obvious reasons- Stanwyck doesn't seem to care that much about the money, and the two of them don't seem to be in love or even to like each other very much. Some of the film's best scenes involve MacMurray's relationship with Robinson, a claims investigator who knows more than he lets on. This film is dark and amoral even by present-day standards, and all the more potent as a result.

M. Hulot's Holiday (1953)

2007-01-21T10:44:00.002-05:00

Directed by and starring Jacques Tati.

With the expression "summer movie" synonymous today with loud, rapidly-edited action and lame excuses for comedy, its refreshing to watch a film like Tati's classic, a movie thats really about summertime. As is the case with much of his work, there isn't much of a story going on, merely a series of scenes connected by a central idea- in this case, people vacationing at a beach resort. The rhythms of the film are leisurely, like a lazy summer afternoon watching the sea, and characters drift in and out of the scenes so that we accept them as people rather than overdetermined characters. Tati was a master of visual gags as well, but they're not of the laugh-till-you-puke variety, but instead are carefully constructed in order to feel completely spontaneous, flowing out of the actions of a scene. Although my own summer vacations seem to have become a thing of the past, Tati's vision lets me remember the fun I once had.

Satantango (1994)

2007-01-21T10:44:00.001-05:00

Directed by Béla Tarr. Starring Mihaly Vig, Putyi Horvath, Laszlo Lugossy, and Eva Almassy Albert.

At roughly 7 ½ hours in duration, this film has for years been a kind of Holy Grail for card-carrying film buffs. But while the length is daunting, SATANTANGO is time wonderfully spent, rewarding an attentive audience’s patience in spades. Tarr employs extremely long takes, bravura tracking shots, and an understated use of overlapping time frames to tell the story of a few days in the life of a run-down Hungarian farming commune in waning years of Communist rule. The story is divided into twelve sections, the first six of which establish the commune and its people, and the final six employing these characters to craft a scathing yet sad postmortem for Communism in Eastern Europe. But to summarize the film’s plot does little credit to the greatness of SATANTANGO as a work of cinematic art. Without employing tricks most filmmakers use when striving for immediacy, Tarr places the audience firmly in the film’s reality, full of mud, rain and loneliness, but in a way that never wallows in despair. In fact, two of the film’s extended sequences are among the funniest pieces of filmmaking I’ve seen in a long while. SATANTANGO, for a film that is hyped almost like a cinematic dare for adventurous moviegoers, is surprisingly accessible and emotionally engaging, although the film’s effectiveness has almost nothing to do with conventional melodramatic devices and everything to do with the attention to detail that’s central to Tarr’s filmmaking style. When SATANTANGO was introduced to the audience I saw it with, it was described as “not so much a movie as a place you visit.” For me, that pretty well sums up what I love so much about it- it creates a world as distinctive as any in movie history, discovers the seemingly insignificant people who dwell within, and simply observes them over the course of a few pivotal days in their lives. SATANTANGO is a peerless cinematic experience, one every true lover of film should treat himself to at least once in his lifetime.

The Red Shoes (1948)

2007-01-21T10:43:00.002-05:00

Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, and Marius Goring.

First things first- I don't much care for ballet (Sorry mom). But for some reason this film works for me magnificently. One of the major reasons for this may be because Powell and Pressburger understand artists so deeply that they realize that the desire and need to express oneself through one's chosen art can be an all-consuming and sometimes self-destructive impulse. Jack Cardiff's luminous cinematography, in "glorious Technicolor" as they used to say, enhances the fairy-tale quality of the story, as young ballerina Shearer (has red hair ever been brighter on film?) rises in the ranks of a famed ballet troupe run by Walbrook (whose character name, Boris Lermontov, is one of the coolest character names I've ever heard in a movie). The centerpiece of the film is an original ballet composed and choreographed for the film, based on the titular tale, and while I'm not a ballet fan I absolutely adore this sequence, with beautiful music by Brian Easdale, energetic and elegant dancing, and positively inspired images, especially the newspaper that turns into a dancer and then back again.

M (1931)

2007-01-21T10:43:00.001-05:00

Directed by Fritz Lang. Starring Peter Lorre.

I kind of regret only having one Lang film on this list, given that he's one of the pioneers of cinema as an artistically-viable medium, but I guess if I had to choose only one, this would be it. Lorre plays Hans Beckert, a seemingly harmless man who is also a child-killer. As Hans' reign of terror grips the city, the police try to solve the mystery of the killer's identity while the criminal underground decides to hunt down the man whose crimes have led to an increase in police on the streets. In addition to seemingly inventing both the cinematic incarnations of police procedural and the serial-killer mystery, Lang was also ahead of his time in his use of sound- compared to most films of the time which were wall-to-wall dialogue, Lang uses dialogue sparingly, relying instead on silence, sound effects, and Lorre's shrill "Peer Gynt" whistling. In the midst of everything else, Lorre is magnificent as a man who feels an overwhelming compulsion to commit his heinous crimes, helpless to control himself ("I must!" he confesses to an inquisition), and he somehow becomes a pathetic figure as everyone else in the film is bearing down on him.

The Mother and the Whore (1973)

2007-01-21T10:42:00.002-05:00

Directed by Jean Eustache. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Françoise Lebrun, and Bernadette Lafont.

Many of the films on this list are directed by acknowledged master filmmakers with a number of great films to their credit, but Eustache's fame derives almost exclusively from this film. Thankfully, it's so great that it's capable of buoying a filmmaker's reputation without any help. Léaud stars as a twentysomething layabout who spends his days in cafés and his nights with various women. The film doesn't have a conventional story, but instead observes his life and especially his interaction between the main women in his life- the sexually frank Lebrun and the more nurturing Lafont. While the film has modest production values (no musical score, no visual effects), Eustache uses this to his advantage, knowing that fancy frills would only distract from his observation of these characters. One of the film's biggest assets is its naturalistic black-and-white cinematography, which makes every detail in the frame perfectly clear while appearing completely realistic. Mostly though, the film's triumph is in how immersed we become in these characters, as they talk, read, listen to music, drink, screw, and somehow manage to connect to each other.

See also: Review at Epinions.com

Notorious (1946)

2007-01-21T10:42:00.001-05:00

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and Claude Rains.

Hitchcock made so many great films that it's nearly impossible to choose favorites, but while the already-mentioned VERTIGO has a place in my heart I find that I'm partial to his 1946 classic. Why? The casting certainly helps- Bergman is at her most vulnerable and beautiful here, Grant is at his most suave, and Rains is just about perfect. The plot (later cribbed by MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2) has Bergman recruited by Grant to spy on her former lover Rains, a Nazi sympathizer who is still in love with her, and much of the film's suspense comes from the uncomfortable situation Bergman is in- she has feelings for Grant, and it's because of this that she puts herself in danger. Many of Hitchcock's films have tense set-pieces, but this is probably his best-sustained suspense story, as Bergman has to be loyal to the man she's pretending to love on one level while sticking by the man she really does love. The film's final scenes, in which Grant finally decides that Bergman has done enough and comes to her aid while Rains is powerless to stop him, are as perfectly-realized as anything Hitchcock has ever done.

Week End (1967)

2007-01-21T10:41:00.000-05:00

Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Starring Jean Yanne, Mireille Darc, and Jean-Pierre Leaud.

Back in the 1960s, Godard was about as unstoppable as any director could be, churning out one great film after another. This film is seen by many as the turning point in his work, in which his revolutionary leanings overwhelmed just about everything else he put on the screen. The film follows a quarrelling bourgeois couple (Yanne and Darc) as they drive through the French countryside, encountering provincial artists and philosophers, wandering revolutionaries, and all manner of vehicular destruction and mayhem (the ten-minute traffic jam is one of the great sequences in cinema). It's clear here that Godard has contempt for these petty, disaffected bourgeois, as they care more for material items than for ideals, and that the only way he feels they can break out of their apathy is to separate themselves from their lives completely. However, the idea of revolution Godard proposes here isn't very appealing either (they're cannibals, after all), and while it's difficult to say whether Godard finds this a marked improvement on the bourgeois lifestyle it's certainly vividly realized and completely original. This has to be one of the strangest films ever made, but it also contains no small amount of dark comedy, and is endlessly thought-provoking.

The Seven Samurai (1954)

2007-01-21T10:40:00.004-05:00

Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Starring Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura.

While it was sometimes difficult to select my favorite film from a great director, I had no problem choosing a favorite Kurosawa film. This classic is four hours long (with an intermission) but once it gets going, the time flies. Shimura plays the leader of a ragtag band of samurai (there are seven of them, hence the title) who are hired by a village to protect the people from the bandits. The first half of the film consists of the band of samurai being assembled and preparing for battle, while the second half is almost entirely made up of battle scenes between the samurai and villagers and the bandits. Despite its great length, Kurosawa never wastes a minute, establishing not only his characters (Shimura's quiet authority and Mifune's strutting comic machismo stick out in the memory) but also the strategies of battle, so that when the fighting begins everything is completely comprehensible. Finally, Kurosawa casts a critical eye on the Japanese tradition of sacrifice, as the samurai (who were hired for a small amount of grain) sustain heavy losses in battle because, well, that's their lot in life. Even after seeing some of the many films influenced by this one, the original still holds up.

Annie Hall (1977)

2007-01-21T10:40:00.003-05:00

Directed by Woody Allen. Starring Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.

This has been a sentimental favorite of mine since I was a teenager- while sorting out my own insecurities about the opposite sex, it was comforting to see that even famous actor-directors harbored the same anxieties. I'd watch the film over and over (I've lost count how many times), recommend it to my similarly insecure friends, and quote it randomly in conversations. But as close as I got to the film then, I somehow didn't pay much attention to how well-made it was- the use of long takes; the shadowy but somehow still naturalistic cinematography of Gordon Willis; the weaving of confessional monologues, flashbacks, asides, and even animation into the story; the masterfully-structured nonlinear storyline. As I grew as a filmgoer and began to know what to look for, ANNIE HALL grew with me, and sort of became a textbook definition of what a great movie could be: a film that engages you so thoroughly in every moment that it's only upon reflection that you can truly appreciate the thought and craft that went into making it. As much respect as I have for difficult, forbidding, and "indulgent!" works (some of them anyway), I believe a film like ANNIE HALL, which can be appreciated on both a direct emotional level and a more intellectual one, is in the end more valuable, since it allows audiences to choose whether or not they wish to do intellectual heavy-lifting rather than making deep reflection its major raison d'être. Whether I want to puzzle out the precise chronology of the film's events (I'm still a bit fuzzy in one or two spots), to formulate theories about Allen's wavering between anti-intellectualism and (anti-anti-)intellectualism, or just to laugh after coming home from a hard day at work, ANNIE HALL is there for me. It's funny as all get-out, and just because I know exactly how big that spider is or that Woody's going to sneeze in the cocaine doesn't make me laugh any less.

L'Atalante (1934)

2007-01-21T10:40:00.001-05:00

Directed by Jean Vigo. Starring Dita Parlo, Jean Dasté, and Michel Simon.

Director Vigo died shortly after finishing this, his first feature, and while dying young is tragic in and of itself (he was 29), it's an especially monumental loss in light of this film's greatness. The film follows Jean and Juliette (Dasté and Parlo), a newly-married couple, as they embark on their new life on a barge on the Seine. The film quickly establishes that the new husband and wife hardly seem to know each other at all- their faces are solemn following the wedding, and the provincial girl seems ill-prepared for life at sea. As the barge approaches Paris, Juliette, who has never before left her small town, decides to see the world on her own, leaving Jean behind and pining for her. If the film was simply about its main story, however, it would still be lovely but certainly wouldn't warrant a spot this high on this list. The key to the film's greatness isn't the couple but rather Jean's well-traveled first mate, Jules. As played by the great Michel Simon, Jules is one of the great characters in cinema- simultaneously comic, menacing, sexually ambiguous, macabre, and finally heroic. The elements he adds to the film make it truly unforgettable, enhancing its romanticism and also turning into a peerless cinematic magic-realist fairy tale.

The New World (2005)

2007-01-21T10:39:00.002-05:00

Directed by Terrence Malick. Starring Q'Orianka Kilcher, Colin Farrell, Christian Bale and Christopher Plummer.

Snob that I am, I once declared that none of the greatest American films were made during my lifetime. The reasoning behind this was because the true masterpieces were the films that stood the test of time, that had survived years of scrutiny to emerge as classics of the medium. But the first time I saw Malick's fourth film, I was seized by a feeling that I'd almost never experienced before, something I'd read about older critics experiencing in the past. In short, I was witnessing a new film that from the very first frame felt destined to be a classic. What made me feel this way? Could it have been the visual poetry summoned up by Malick and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki? Could it have been the incandescent performances (or should I say embodiments) by newcomer Q'Orianka Kilcher and Colin Farrell, finally making good on the hype? Or was it the way Malick made that rarest of concoctions, a film that transports the audience into a completely new world? Years from now, I expect to fondly reflect on a Friday afternoon in January 2006 and tell some younger film lovers, "yeah, I saw THE NEW WORLD when it came out."

See also: Review at Epinions.com

Nashville (1975)

2007-01-21T10:39:00.001-05:00

Directed by Robert Altman. Starring Ronee Blakley, Henry Gibson, Keith Carradine, and Lily Tomlin.

Altman is best known for making films with expansive canvases (large ensemble casts, interlocking plotlines, etc.) and this may be his most ambitious effort. Set against the backdrop of the title town, the film deals with various people involved in politics, music, or some combination thereof. Altman presents the still-timely notion (in light of the election of Governor Schwarzenegger) that politics and entertainment go hand in hand in American culture. The film also makes Nashville a major character, positing it as a country-music version of Los Angeles, where stars are a fact of life and where nobodies are but an opportunity or a chance meeting removed from celebrity. This is also a great musical, in which the stars do their own singing (and in some cases, wrote the songs as well), with standouts being Carradine's philandering singer-songwriter and Blakley's prodigiously talented and deeply troubled country star. Above all, it's a great entertainment for any audience member willing to keep his brain switched on. Altman's films are so packed to the brim with detail and activity that they tend to reward multiple viewings, and this one is so much fun that watching it over and over is a welcome proposition.

Woman in the Dunes (1964)

2007-01-21T10:38:00.002-05:00

Directed by Hiroishi Teshigahara. Starring Eiji Okada and Kyoko Kishida.

There are many films that are beautiful to look at, but most of them hold you at a distance with their images, much like a painting one stands back and regards but doesn't approach, for fear of losing the intent of the image. Teshigahara's film is a masterpiece in many regards, but perhaps most importantly because its images are so perfectly tactile. In scene after scene we see the man and woman with their bodies covered in sand and sweat after a long day's work, and all we can think of is what it must be like to touch the sand-covered skin. The film's story deals with a man from the city (Okada) who visits a small town, spending the night in the home of a woman (Kishida) who lives at the bottom of a sand pit. After he wakes up the next morning, he makes the shocking discovery that he can't climb out. On the one hand, the film feels like a nightmare, in which a man is held captive against his will and is powerless to escape; on the other, it's an erotic fantasy, in which a man and a woman are trapped together, apart from anyone else. Mostly, it's about the characters' isolation, as they gradually form a kind of makeshift arrangement with each other, and work together simply to avoid being swallowed by the sand (and really, doesn't everyday life feel like that sometimes?). Ultimately, the man finds himself re-evaluating his priorities based on his predicament, and likewise we in the audience can't help but marvel at how strange and sudden occurrences have a way of putting our efforts into perspective.

The Third Man (1949)

2007-01-21T10:38:00.001-05:00

Directed by Carol Reed. Starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, and Orson Welles.

So many films today are made for kids- their styles are flashy and the ideas they present don't challenge us much. Little wonder then, that when I first saw this film in high school, it didn't exactly bowl me over. Reed's masterpiece, based on a book by Graham Greene, is manifestly a film for (and about) adults, people who have experienced setbacks and loss, who remember their youthful idealism and mourn its passing. It wasn't until a few years later, when I was in college and less certain of myself and my future, that I had grown into the film. I was in Vienna with a group from school, and I noticed a theatre near the Prater showing THE THIRD MAN, so I decided to see it again. Afterwards, shaken by how much more it had affected me, I walked over to the Prater and rode the famous Ferris wheel from the film, and thought not just about the film I had just seen, but my life as well. Of course the film was the same as when I had last seen it, but I had changed in the intervening years. Just about everything that can be said about this film's greatness (the immortal zither score, the black and white cinematography, the way it evokes the atmosphere of postwar Vienna, Harry Lime) has been said before, and by writers more eloquent than myself. What THE THIRD MAN represents to me above all else is my experience of seeing it in Vienna, the best moviegoing experience of my life to date.

The 400 Blows (1959)

2007-01-21T10:37:00.000-05:00

Directed by François Truffaut. Starring Jean-Pierre Léaud.

Truffaut's first feature was one of the first key films of the French New Wave movement, a group of former film critics-turned-directors committed to expanding the language of cinema. This, perhaps the greatest film ever made about childhood, tells the story of young, troubled Antoine Doinel, played by Léaud in one of the legendary performances by a youngster. Antoine isn't a bad kid, simply one who is having a difficult time fitting in anywhere- at home, where his parents are too occupied with other aspects of their lives to pay him much attention, and at school, where his boorish disciplinarian of a teacher seems constitutionally incapable of giving Antoine the benefit of the doubt. Before Truffaut became a critic, he was a troubled kid much like Antoine, and the reason the film works as well as it does is because he knows this character so well, refusing to turn him into either a incorrigible brat or a misunderstood saint. Antoine, much like many children of his age, mostly just lives in the moment, doing what he feels he should do at the time, not exactly heedless of the consequences but simply too caught up in the present tense to bother with the future. Though there are both happy and sad moments in the film, this isn't a comedy or a melodrama, but simply a portrait of this boy's life told from his perspective. The film's final scenes, which take place after Antoine has been sent to a detention home after his parents give up on him, have a rare power because they confirm so definitively that the most important people in his life have written him off. All of this leads up to the immortal final shot, where he finds himself all alone on the beach, and when the image suddenly freezes it's like Truffaut is underlining the importance of this moment in his life. That this famous final image was supposedly accidental does nothing to diminish its power.