Top Discoveries of 2025

I didn’t watch a lot of movies this year (I’ve been really into gaming lately), and most of the ones I watched were newer. Except for my #1, these are all recent releases.

1. Compensation (1999, Zeinabu irene Davis)

2. Flow (2024, Gints Zilbalodis)

3. The Ice Tower (2025, Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

4. My Favourite Cake (2024, Maryam Moghadam and Behtash Saneeha)

5. Hard Truths (2024, Mike Leigh)

6. All We Imagine As Light (2024, Payal Kapadia)

7. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood (2023, Anna Hints)

8. Pavements (2025, Alex Ross Perry)

9. Aftersun (2022, Charlotte Wells)

10. Microhabitat (2017, Go-woon Jeon)

Honorable mentions: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Sinners, Marona’s Fantastic Tale, Nickel Boys, Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, The Hyperboreans, Children Underground, The Mother of All Lies, The Brutalist, Sly Lives!, Look Back, Mudbound, One Battle After Another

My Top 100 Films (2025 Revision)

It’s been four years since the last revision of my favorites list. In that times, I haven’t watched a lot of movies. But my tastes have shifted a bit, mainly away from the canon and towards more contemporary films, especially those by women and people of color. I don’t want to label this a conscious effort to be more “woke” (although I hate how that term has become a dirty word) but more of an attempt to expand my horizions… and finding some delightful surprises along the way.

What’s out? Blade Runner, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, The Exorcist, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Werckmeister Harmonies, Winter Light, Blue Velvet, Last Year at Marienbad, Rear Window, and 8½. For most of these, it was simply a matter of a recent rewatch not giving me the “oh yeah, this is one of my treasures” vibe. All have been moved to the “Honorable Mentions” list.

What’s in? If Beale Street Could Talk, Babylon, One Way Passage, Four Daughters, We Grown Now, Daughters of the Dust, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Rye Lane, Faya Dayi, and The Story of Qiu Ju. Mostly recent releases that really struck a chord with me, but also a couple of older selections that grew on me with a revisit. I’m most hesitant about We Grown Now and Dirt Roads, because I’ve only watched them once. We’ll see if they stick around the next time I update this.

Alright, enough of my yappin! Let’s get on with the list….

1. An Actor’s Revenge (1963, Kon Ichikawa)

2. Airplane! (1980, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker)

3. Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)

4. All About My Mother (1999, Pedro Almodovar)

5. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023, Raven Jackson)

6. American Movie (1999, Chris Smith)

7. An Angel at My Table (1990, Jane Campion)

8. Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)

9. Babylon (1980, Franco Rosso)

10. The Big City [Mahanagar] (1963, Satyajit Ray)

11. The Black Stallion (1979, Carroll Ballard)

12. Blazing Saddles (1974, Mel Brooks)

13. The Blues Brothers (1980, John Landis)

14. The Browning Version (1951, Anthony Asquith)

15. Cairo Station (1958, Youssef Chahine)

16. Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)

17. Charulata (1964, Satyajit Ray)

18. Cocorico Monsieur Poulet (1974, Jean Rouch)

19. Daughters of the Dust (1991, Julie Dash)

20. The Dead (1987, John Huston)

21. Devi (1960, Satyajit Ray)

22. Devils on the Doorstep (2000, Wen Jiang)

23. Do the Right Thing (1989, Spike Lee)

24. Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)

25. Drugstore Cowboy (1989, Gus Van Sant)

26. Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch)

27. Faces (1968, John Cassavetes)

28. Fanny and Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman)

29. Fargo (1996, Joel and Ethan Coen)

30. Faya Dayi (2021, Jessica Bashir)

31. Four Daughters (2023, Kaouther Ben Hania)

32. Gimme the Loot (2012, Adam Leon)

33. Girl Walk//All Day (2011, Jason Krupnick)

34. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, James Foley)

35. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone)

36. Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)

37. Hairspray (1988, John Waters)

38. High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)

39. The Hole (1998, Ming-liang Tsai)

40. House a.k.a. Hausu (1977, Nobuhiko Obayashi)

41. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, Barry Jenkins)

42. Imitation of Life (1959, Douglas Sirk)

43. Innocence (2004, Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

44. Jules and Jim (1962, Francois Truffaut)

45. Linda Linda Linda (2005, Nobuhiro Yamashita)

46. The Long Day Closes (1992, Terence Davies)

47. Malcolm X (1992, Spike Lee)

48. A Man Escaped (1956, Robert Bresson)

49. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)

50. Midnight Run (1988, Martin Brest)

51. A Moment of Innocence (1996, Mohsen Makhmalbaf)

52. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)

53. Murder By Contract (1958, Irving Lerner)

54. The New World (2005, Terrence Malick)

55. The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)

56. El Norte (1983, Gregory Nava)

57. Offside (2006, Jafar Panahi)

58. Once (2006, John Varney)

59. One Way Passage (1932, Tay Garnett)

60. Ordinary People (1980, Robert Redford)

61. The Organizer (1963, Mario Monicelli)

62. Our Little Sister (2015, Hirokazu Kore-eda)

63. Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)

64. Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982, Alan Parker)

65. Rafiki (2018, Wanuri Kahiu)

66. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)

67. Red Beard (1965, Akira Kurosawa)

68. Rosetta (1999, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

69. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)

70. Rye Lane (2024, Raine Allen-Miller)

71. Safe (1995, Todd Haynes)

72. Scenes From a Marriage (1973, Ingmar Bergman)

73. The Scent of Green Papaya (1993, Anh Hung Tran)

74. Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)

75. Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)

76. The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)

77. Songs from the Second Floor (2000, Roy Andersson)

78. Sorry to Bother You (2018, Boots Riley)

79. Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky)

80. Stop Making Sense (1984, Jonathan Demme)

81. The Story of Qiu Ju (1992, Zhang Yimou)

82. Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander Mackendrick)

83. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

84. Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)

85. Thief (1981, Michael Mann)

86. Three Colors: Blue (1993, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

87. Through a Glass Darkly (1961, Ingmar Bergman)

88. Time of the Gypsies (1988, Emir Kusturica)

89. The Trial (1962, Orson Welles)

90. The Turin Horse (2011, Bela Tarr)

91. The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000, Anh Hung Tran)

92. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

93. The Wayward Cloud (2005, Ming-liang Tsai)

94. We Grown Now (2023, Minhal Baig)

95. Wendy and Lucy (2008, Kelly Reichardt)

96. What Time Is It There? (2001, Ming-liang Tsai)

97. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, Mike Nichols)

98. The Wicker Man (1973, Robin Hardy)

99. A Woman Under the Influence (1974, John Cassavetes)

100. You, the Living (2007, Roy Andersson)

 

Honorable mentions:

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut)
8½ (1963, Federico Fellini)
All That Heaven Allows (1955, Douglas Sirk)
All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)
Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman)
The Americanization of Emily (1964, Arthur Hiller)
Aparajito (1956, Satyajit Ray)
The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000, Jonas Mekas)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950, John Huston)
Autumn Sonata (1978, Ingmar Bergman)
Beyond the Forest (1949, King Vidor)
The Big Combo (1955, Joseph H. Lewis)
Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)
Blast of Silence (1961, Allen Baron)
Boogie Nights (1997, Paul Thomas Anderson)
Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam)
The Burglar (1957, Paul Wendkos)
Carmen (1983, Carlos Saura)
Carrie (1976, Brian De Palma)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg)
The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Peter Greenaway)
The Cranes Are Flying (1957, Mikhail Kalatozov)
Crooklyn (1994, Spike Lee)
Cruel Gun Story (1964, Takumi Furukawa)
Days of Heaven (1978, Terrence Malick)
The Decalogue (1989, Krzysztof Kieslowski)
Dial M for Murder (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
Dillinger Is Dead (1969, Marco Ferreri)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988, Terence Davies)
Le Doulos (1962, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Drowning By Numbers (1988, Peter Greenaway)
Duck Season (2004, Fernando Eimbcke)
El (1953, Luis Buñuel)
An Elephant Sitting Still (2018, Hu Bo)
Elevator to the Gallows (1958, Louis Malle)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Irvin Kershner)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974, Werner Herzog)
The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin)
The Exterminating Angel (1962, Luis Bunuel)
Face a.k.a. Visage (2009, Ming-liang Tsai
The Face of Another (1966, Hiroshi Teshigahara)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, Wes Anderson)
Female on the Beach (1955, Joseph Pevney)
I Fidanzati (1963, Ermanno Olmi)
Force of Evil (1948, Abraham Polonsky)
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969, Toshio Matsumoto)
The Furies (1950, Anthony Mann)
Gaslight (1944, George Cukor)
The Graduate (1967, Mike Nichols)
Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Alfonso Cuaron)
The Heiress (1949, William Wyler)
Holiday (1938, George Cukor)
House Party (1990, Reginald Hudlin)
Human Desire (1954, Fritz Lang)
I Stand Alone (1998, Gaspar Noe)
In Cold Blood (1967, Richard Brooks)
In the Heat of the Sun (1994, Wen Jiang)
In the Loop (2009, Armando Iannucci)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, Steven Spielberg)
Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959, Bert Stern)
Jellyfish (2007, Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret)
The Kid With a Bike (2011, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989, Hayao Miyazaki)
The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick)
The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
The Lady Vanishes (1938, Alfred Hitchcock)
Lady Vengeance (2005, Chan-wook Park)
Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais)
Limite (1931, Mario Peixoto)
The Lineup (1958, Don Siegel)
Lola (1961, Jacques Demy)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002, Peter Jackson)
Lost in America (1985, Albert Brooks)
Love Exposure (2008, Sion Sono)
Love Streams (1984, John Cassavetes)
The Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismaki)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Middleman [Jana Aranya] (1976, Satyajit Ray)
Mind Game (2004, Masaaki Yuasa)
Moonlight (2016, Barry Jenkins)
The Mortal Storm (1940, Frank Borzage)
Network (1976, Sidney Lumet)
Night and the City (1950, Jules Dassin)
Nightmare Alley (1947, Edmund Goulding)
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979, Werner Herzog)
Not One Less (1999, Zhang Yimou)
Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)
O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000, Joel and Ethan Coen)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959, Robert Wise)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, Milos Forman)
Orlando (1992, Sally Potter)
A Page of Madness (1926, Teinosuke Kinugasa)
Paths of Glory (1957, Stanley Kubrick)
Peacock [Kong Que] (2005, Changwei Gu)
Pickup on South Street (1953, Sam Fuller)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, Peter Weir)
La Promesse (1996, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)
Quadrophenia (1979, Franc Roddam)
Ran (1985, Akira Kurosawa)
Rat-Trap (1982, Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
Remember the Night (1940, Mitchell Leisen)
Ride the Pink Horse (1947, Robert Montgomery)
Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Sátántangó (1994, Bela Tarr)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953, Ingmar Bergman)
Sepet [Chinese Eye] (2004, Yasmin Ahmad)
The Set-Up (1949, Robert Wise)
The Seventh Victim (1943, Mark Robson)
Shame (1968, Ingmar Bergman)
Silent Hill (2006, Christophe Gans)
Sing Street (2016, John Carney)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen)
Sita Sings the Blues (2008, Nina Paley)
The Skin I Live In (2011, Pedro Almodovar)
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, Ingmar Bergman)
The Son (2002, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973, Victor Erice)
Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki)
Storm Fear (1955, Cornel Wilde)
The Story of Qiu Ju (1992, Zhang Yimou)
Subarnarekha [The Golden Thread] (1965, Ritwik Ghatak)
Sudden Fear (1952, David Miller)
Swimming to Cambodia (1987, Jonathan Demme)
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977, Luis Bunuel)
They Made Me a Fugitive (1947, Alberto Cavalcanti)
Thieves’ Highway (1949, Jules Dassin)
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
Thirst for Love (1966, Koreyoshi Kurahara)
Three Colors: Red (1994, Krzysztof Kieslowski)
The Tree of Life (2011, Terrence Malick)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica)
Waiting for Happiness (2002, Abderrahmane Sissako)
Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers (1993, Nick Park)
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Bela Tarr)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962, Robert Aldrich)
When Strangers Marry a.k.a Betrayed (1944, William Castle)
Who’s Camus Anyway? (2005, Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
Winter Light (1962, Ingmar Bergman)
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999, Abbas Kiarostami)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming)
The Wolf House [La Casa Lobo] (2018, Joaquin Cociña and Cristóbal León)
Woman in the Dunes (1964, Hiroshi Teshigahara)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988, Pedro Almodovar)
Xanadu (1980, Robert Greenwald)
Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa)
Young Frankenstein (1974, Mel Brooks)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)

Top Discoveries of 2024

A couple of things different about this year. First of all, I watched mostly newer movies (except for revisits). This is primarily because I’ve pretty much exhausted most of the classic films I was interested in… though of course I am sure there any many, many out still out there worth seeing. The other thing I’ve been focusing a lot on women directors, particularly women of color. The canon is largely dominated by white males, and I’m more interested in seeking out different perspectives. And it’s been very fruitful. 12 of my top 20 are by women, including the entire top 7 (it also the means the worst movie I watched all year, The Substance, was directed by a woman). Several of these will be making the revision of my all-time top 100, which I’m hoping to do in 2025.

Yes, I know putting a stand-up special on this list is debatable, but it’s feature-length. And really, really good.

1. Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2023)

2. Rye Lane (Raine Allen-Miller, 2023)

3. We Grown Now (Minhal Baig, 2023)

4. All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson, 2023)

5. 20,000 Species of Bees (Estibaliz Urresola Solaguren, 2023)

6. Jacqueline Novak: Get on Your Knees (Natasha Lyonne, 2024)

7. Kokomo City (D. Smith, 2023)

8. The Taste of Things (Anh Hung Tran, 2023)

9. Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons, 1997)

10. Rockers (Ted Bafaloukos, 1978)

11. I Am Not a Witch (Rungano Nyon, 2017)
12. Anora (Sean Baker, 2024)
13. Beyond Utopia (Madeleine Gavin, 2023)
14. Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismaki, 2023)
15. Monster (Hirokazu Koreeda, 2023)
16. Daughters (Angela Patton, Natalie Rae, 2024)
17. The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)
18. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)
19. To Kill a Tiger (Nisha Pahuja, 2022)
20. A Thousand and One (A.V. Rockwell, 2023)

Honorable mentions: Killers of the Flower Moon, Heretic, May December, Bottoms, Hala, Mulholland Falls, Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis, The Disappearance of Shere Hite, Film: The Living Record of Our Memory, The Warriors, Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, Rumours, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Past Lives, Beauty and the Dogs

43 rewatches (+ 1 short)
69 new viewings (+ 43 shorts)

Top Discoveries of 2022

1. Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir, 2021)

2. Paris Is Burning (Jennie Livingston, 1990)

3. Robin Redbreast (James MacTaggart, 1970)

4. Il Demonio (Brunello Rondi, 1963)

5. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021)

6. Anchoress (Chris Newby, 1993)

7. Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011)

8. Tilbury (Viðar Víkingsson, 1987)

9. Earwig (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2021)

10. Ethnic Notions (Marlon Riggs, 1986)

Honorable mentions: Witchhammer, Celia, Penda’s Fen, Basu Poribar, Throw Down, Farewell Amor, Eyimofe

My Top 100 Films (2021 Revision)

Last time I did this list, I made it into one big “top 250” list. Revisiting several of these movies in the past couple of years, I realized that there were definitely two tiers. There are films I deeply admire and enjoy, and then there are films that are like a part of my soul. I wanted to maintain that distinction. The top 100 are the movies I feel will always satisfy me, entertain me, move me, or fascinate me. It’s a fluid list (this is certainly not the final revision), and perhaps some films are included (or excluded) to achieve the roundness of the number 100, but they’re all special to me. The honorable mentions below these are all wonderful films too, ones that I heartily recommend.

1. 8½ (1963, Federico Fellini)

2. An Actor’s Revenge (1963, Kon Ichikawa)

3. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)

4. Airplane! (1980, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker)

5. Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)

6. All About My Mother (1999, Pedro Almodovar)

7. American Movie (1999, Chris Smith)

8. An Angel at My Table (1990, Jane Campion)

9. Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)

10. The Big City [Mahanagar] (1963, Satyajit Ray)

11. The Black Stallion (1979, Carroll Ballard)

12. Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)

13. Blazing Saddles (1974, Mel Brooks)

14. Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)

15. The Blues Brothers (1980, John Landis)

16. The Browning Version (1951, Anthony Asquith)

17. Cairo Station (1958, Youssef Chahine)

18. Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)

19. Charulata (1964, Satyajit Ray)

20. Cocorico Monsieur Poulet (1974, Jean Rouch)

21. The Dead (1987, John Huston)

22. Devi (1960, Satyajit Ray)

23. Devils on the Doorstep (2000, Wen Jiang)

24. Do the Right Thing (1989, Spike Lee)

25. Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)

26. Drugstore Cowboy (1989, Gus Van Sant)

27. Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch)

28. The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin)

29. Faces (1968, John Cassavetes)

30. Fanny and Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman)

31. Fargo (1996, Joel and Ethan Coen)

32. Gimme the Loot (2012, Adam Leon)

33. Girl Walk//All Day (2011, Jason Krupnick)

34. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, James Foley)

35. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone)

36. Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)

37. Hairspray (1988, John Waters)

38. High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)

39. The Hole (1998, Ming-liang Tsai)

40. House a.k.a. Hausu (1977, Nobuhiko Obayashi)

41. Imitation of Life (1959, Douglas Sirk)

42. Innocence (2004, Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

43. Jules and Jim (1962, Francois Truffaut)

44. Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais)

45. Linda Linda Linda (2005, Nobuhiro Yamashita)

46. The Long Day Closes (1992, Terence Davies)

47. Malcolm X (1992, Spike Lee)

48. A Man Escaped (1956, Robert Bresson)

49. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)

50. Midnight Run (1988, Martin Brest)

51. A Moment of Innocence (1996, Mohsen Makhmalbaf)

52. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)

53. Murder By Contract (1958, Irving Lerner)

54. The New World (2005, Terrence Malick)

55. The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)

56. El Norte (1983, Gregory Nava)

57. Offside (2006, Jafar Panahi)

58. Once (2006, John Varney)

59. Ordinary People (1980, Robert Redford)

60. The Organizer (1963, Mario Monicelli)

61. Our Little Sister (2015, Hirokazu Kore-eda)

62. Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)

63. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, Peter Weir)

64. Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982, Alan Parker)

65. Rafiki (2018, Wanuri Kahiu)

66. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)

67. Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)

68. Red Beard (1965, Akira Kurosawa)

69. Rosetta (1999, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

70. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)

71. Safe (1995, Todd Haynes)

72. Scenes From a Marriage (1973, Ingmar Bergman)

73. The Scent of Green Papaya (1993, Anh Hung Tran)

74. Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)

75. Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)

76. The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)

77. Songs from the Second Floor (2000, Roy Andersson)

78. Sorry to Bother You (2018, Boots Riley)

79. Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky)

80. Stop Making Sense (1984, Jonathan Demme)

81. Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander Mackendrick)

82. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

83. Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)

84. Thief (1981, Michael Mann)

85. Three Colors: Blue (1993, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

86. Through a Glass Darkly (1961, Ingmar Bergman)

87. Time of the Gypsies (1988, Emir Kusturica)

88. The Trial (1962, Orson Welles)

89. The Turin Horse (2011, Bela Tarr)

90. The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000, Anh Hung Tran)

91. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

92. The Wayward Cloud (2005, Ming-liang Tsai)

93. Wendy and Lucy (2008, Kelly Reichardt)

94. Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Bela Tarr)

95. What Time Is It There? (2001, Ming-liang Tsai)

96. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, Mike Nichols)

97. The Wicker Man (1973, Robin Hardy)

98. Winter Light (1962, Ingmar Bergman)

99. A Woman Under the Influence (1974, John Cassavetes)

100. You, the Living (2007, Roy Andersson)

 

Honorable mentions:

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut)
All That Heaven Allows (1955, Douglas Sirk)
All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)
Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman)
The Americanization of Emily (1964, Arthur Hiller)
Aparajito (1956, Satyajit Ray)
The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000, Jonas Mekas)
The Asphalt Jungle (1950, John Huston)
Autumn Sonata (1978, Ingmar Bergman)
The Beautiful Washing Machine (2004, James Lee)
Beyond the Forest (1949, King Vidor)
The Big Combo (1955, Joseph H. Lewis)
Blast of Silence (1961, Allen Baron)
Boogie Nights (1997, Paul Thomas Anderson)
Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam)
The Burglar (1957, Paul Wendkos)
Carmen (1983, Carlos Saura)
Carrie (1976, Brian De Palma)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg)
The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Peter Greenaway)
The Cranes Are Flying (1957, Mikhail Kalatozov)
Cruel Gun Story (1964, Takumi Furukawa)
Daughters of the Dust (1991, Julie Dash)
Days of Heaven (1978, Terrence Malick)
The Decalogue (1989, Krzysztof Kieslowski)
Dial M for Murder (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
Dillinger Is Dead (1969, Marco Ferreri)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988, Terence Davies)
Le Doulos (1962, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Drowning By Numbers (1988, Peter Greenaway)
Duck Season (2004, Fernando Eimbcke)
El (1953, Luis Buñuel)
An Elephant Sitting Still (2018, Hu Bo)
Elevator to the Gallows (1958, Louis Malle)
The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Irvin Kershner)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974, Werner Herzog)
The Exterminating Angel (1962, Luis Bunuel)
Face a.k.a. Visage (2009, Ming-liang Tsai
The Face of Another (1966, Hiroshi Teshigahara)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, Wes Anderson)
Female on the Beach (1955, Joseph Pevney)
I Fidanzati (1963, Ermanno Olmi)
Funeral Parade of Roses (1969, Toshio Matsumoto)
The Furies (1950, Anthony Mann)
Gaslight (1944, George Cukor)
The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
The Graduate (1967, Mike Nichols)
Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Alfonso Cuaron)
The Heiress (1949, William Wyler)
Holiday (1938, George Cukor)
House Party (1990, Reginald Hudlin)
I Stand Alone (1998, Gaspar Noe)
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, Barry Jenkins)
In Cold Blood (1967, Richard Brooks)
In the Heat of the Sun (1994, Wen Jiang)
In the Loop (2009, Armando Iannucci)
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, Steven Spielberg)
Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959, Bert Stern)
Jellyfish (2007, Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret)
The Kid With a Bike (2011, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989, Hayao Miyazaki)
The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick)
The Lady Eve (1941, Preston Sturges)
The Lady Vanishes (1938, Alfred Hitchcock)
Lady Vengeance (2005, Chan-wook Park)
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989, Akl Kaurismaki)
Limite (1931, Mario Peixoto)
The Lineup (1958, Don Siegel)
Lola (1961, Jacques Demy)
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002, Peter Jackson)
Lost in America (1985, Albert Brooks)
Love Exposure (2008, Sion Sono)
Love Streams (1984, John Cassavetes)
The Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismaki)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Middleman [Jana Aranya] (1976, Satyajit Ray)
Mind Game (2004, Masaaki Yuasa)
The Music Room [Jalsaghar] (1958, Satyajit Ray)
Naked (1993, Mike Leigh)
Network (1976, Sidney Lumet)
Night and the City (1950, Jules Dassin)
Nightmare Alley (1947, Edmund Goulding)
Not One Less (1999, Zhang Yimou)
Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)
O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000, Joel and Ethan Coen)
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959, Robert Wise)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, Milos Forman)
Orlando (1992, Sally Potter)
A Page of Madness (1926, Teinosuke Kinugasa)
Paths of Glory (1957, Stanley Kubrick)
Peacock [Kong Que] (2005, Changwei Gu)
Pickup on South Street (1953, Sam Fuller)
La Promesse (1996, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)
Quadrophenia (1979, Franc Roddam)
Ran (1985, Akira Kurosawa)
Rat-Trap (1982, Adoor Gopalakrishnan)
Remember the Night (1940, Mitchell Leisen)
Ride the Pink Horse (1947, Robert Montgomery)
Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Sátántangó (1994, Bela Tarr)
Sawdust and Tinsel (1953, Ingmar Bergman)
Sepet [Chinese Eye] (2004, Yasmin Ahmad)
The Set-Up (1949, Robert Wise)
The Seventh Victim (1943, Mark Robson)
Shame (1968, Ingmar Bergman)
Silent Hill (2006, Christophe Gans)
Sing Street (2016, John Carney)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen)
Sita Sings the Blues (2008, Nina Paley)
The Skin I Live In (2011, Pedro Almodovar)
Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, Ingmar Bergman)
The Son (2002, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
The Spirit of the Beehive (1973, Victor Erice)
Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki)
Storm Fear (1955, Cornel Wilde)
The Story of Qiu Ju (1992, Zhang Yimou)
Subarnarekha [The Golden Thread] (1965, Ritwik Ghatak)
Sudden Fear (1952, David Miller)
Swimming to Cambodia (1987, Jonathan Demme)
That Obscure Object of Desire (1977, Luis Bunuel)
They Made Me a Fugitive (1947, Alberto Cavalcanti)
Thieves’ Highway (1949, Jules Dassin)
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
Thirst for Love (1966, Koreyoshi Kurahara)
Three Colors: Red (1994, Krzysztof Kieslowski)
The Tree of Life (2011, Terrence Malick)
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica)i)
Waiting for Happiness (2002, Abderrahmane Sissako)
Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers (1993, Nick Park)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962, Robert Aldrich)
When Strangers Marry a.k.a Betrayed (1944, William Castle)
Who’s Camus Anyway? (2005, Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
The Wind Will Carry Us (1999, Abbas Kiarostami)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming)
The Wolf House [La Casa Lobo] (2018, Joaquin Cociña and Cristóbal León)
Woman in the Dunes (1964, Hiroshi Teshigahara)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988, Pedro Almodovar)
Xanadu (1980, Robert Greenwald)
Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa)
Young Frankenstein (1974, Mel Brooks)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)

My Top 250 Films

UPDATE June 17, 2020: I swapped out four titles. Gone are Saraband, War and Peace, The Cloud-Capped Star, and Lawrence of Arabia. The first three didn’t feel like favorites any longer on recent rewatches. As for Lawrence, while I know I liked it, none of it has really stuck with me except for a couple of spare moments, it just didn’t belong. In their place, I added The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo), Sing Street, Sorry to Bother You, and Young Frankenstein. The first three are recent movies that really struck a chord with me. YF is an old, old favorite that I thought had lost its appeal, but when I showed it to my wife, all the magic returned.

The bad news for the list overall is that it’s (slightly) more heavily weighted towards English-language films. The good news is that it’s (slightly) more recent and fresh. Also not quite so dominated by Ingmar Bergman. Unfortunately I don’t have reviews to link to for the new entries, however.

It’s been a few years since I updated my list of favorite films. Which makes sense because I’ve seen so few movies in those years that I have nothing “new” to add, at least in terms of something I hadn’t seen before. Still, every now and then I’d revisit a movie and think “Maybe this one is too high, I should move it down a little.” Or “I really do love this, I should make room for it on my list.” Tastes change. So I thought I’d take a stab at it. But as I agonized over chart positions, I was struck by how meaningless all this ranking stuff is. I would mentally pit one film against another to determine which I “liked” “more” and almost always the answer was… “well, it depends.” And then there was the question of what deserved to be in the prestigious Top 100 and what would be relegated to the less-flashy “Top 101-250” (ugh, I’ve always hated that clunky title) list.

So I said to hell with it. No more numbers, no more ranking. I took my previously ranked top 100, crammed it together with my unranked 101-250, threw out some movies I wasn’t quite as smitten with anymore, added some I had grown fonder of, then alphabetically ordered them into one egalitarian superlist. And I liked it! Okay sure, if you put a gun to my head and asked me to name my #1 all-time fave, chances are I’m gonna blurt out Fanny and Alexander, but goddamn it I can’t be bothered to wring my hands over what should be #74 and what should be #75. I could really throw caution to the wind and just list all the movies I love without making it conform to a nice round number. But hell, there’s got to be some hand-wringing over these things, that’s part of the fun.

Okay, enough prelude, here we go! Some more in-depth notes follow the list.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)

2. The 400 Blows (1959, Francois Truffaut)

3. 8½ (1963, Federico Fellini)

4. An Actor’s Revenge (1963, Kon Ichikawa)

5. The Adversary [Pratidwandi] (1972, Satyajit Ray)

6. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)

7. Airplane! (1980, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker)

8. Alien (1979, Ridley Scott)

9. All About My Mother (1999, Pedro Almodovar)

10. All That Heaven Allows (1955, Douglas Sirk)

11. All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)

12. Amadeus (1984, Milos Forman)

13. American Movie (1999, Chris Smith)

14. The Americanization of Emily (1964, Arthur Hiller)

15. An Angel at My Table (1990, Jane Campion)

16. Aparajito (1956, Satyajit Ray)

17. The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)

18. Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)

19. As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000, Jonas Mekas)

20. The Asphalt Jungle (1950, John Huston)

21. Autumn Sonata (1978, Ingmar Bergman)

22. The Beautiful Washing Machine (2004, James Lee)

23. Betrayed/When Strangers Marry (1944, William Castle)

24. Beyond the Forest (1949, King Vidor)

25. The Big City [Mahanagar] (1963, Satyajit Ray)

26. The Big Combo (1955, Joseph H. Lewis)

27. The Black Stallion (1979, Carroll Ballard)

28. Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)

29. Blast of Silence (1961, Allen Baron)

30. Blazing Saddles (1974, Mel Brooks)

31. Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)

32. The Blues Brothers (1980, John Landis)

33. Boogie Nights (1997, Paul Thomas Anderson)

34. Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam)

35. The Browning Version (1951, Anthony Asquith)

36. The Burglar (1957, Paul Wendkos)

37. Cairo Station (1958, Youssef Chahine)

38. Carmen (1983, Carlos Saura)

39. Carrie (1976, Brian De Palma)

40. Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)

41. Charulata (1964, Satyajit Ray)

42. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977, Steven Spielberg)

43. Cocorico Monsieur Poulet (1974, Jean Rouch)

44. The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)

45. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989, Peter Greenaway)

46. The Cranes Are Flying (1957, Mikhail Kalatozov)

47. Cruel Gun Story (1964, Takumi Furukawa)

48. Days of Heaven (1978, Terrence Malick)

49. The Dead (1987, John Huston)

50. The Decalogue (1989, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

51. Devi (1960, Satyajit Ray)

52. Devils on the Doorstep (2000, Wen Jiang)

53. Dial M for Murder (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)

54. Dillinger Is Dead (1969, Marco Ferreri)

55. Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988, Terence Davies)

56. Do the Right Thing (1989, Spike Lee)

57. Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)

58. Drowning By Numbers (1988, Peter Greenaway)

59. Drugstore Cowboy (1989, Gus Van Sant)

60. Duck Season (2004, Fernando Eimbcke)

61. El (1953, Luis Buñuel)

62. Elevator to the Gallows (1958, Louis Malle)

63. The Empire Strikes Back (1980, Irvin Kershner)

64. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974, Werner Herzog)

65. Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch)

66. The Exorcist (1973, William Friedkin)

67. The Exterminating Angel (1962, Luis Bunuel)

68. The Face of Another (1966, Hiroshi Teshigahara)

69. Faces (1968, John Cassavetes)

70. Fanny and Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman)

71. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009, Wes Anderson)

72. Fargo (1996, Joel and Ethan Coen)

73. Female on the Beach (1955, Joseph Pevney)

74. I Fidanzati (1963, Ermanno Olmi)

75. Funeral Parade of Roses (1969, Toshio Matsumoto)

76. The Furies (1950, Anthony Mann)

77. Gaslight (1944, George Cukor)

78. Gimme the Loot (2012, Adam Leon)

79. The Girl Can’t Help It (1956, Frank Tashlin)

80. Girl Walk//All Day (2011, Jason Krupnick)

81. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992, James Foley)

82. The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)

83. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966, Sergio Leone)

84. Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)

85. The Graduate (1967, Mike Nichols)

86. Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog)

87. Hairspray (1988, John Waters)

88. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004, Alfonso Cuaron)

89. Hausu a.k.a. House (1977, Nobuhiko Obayashi)

90. The Heiress (1949, William Wyler)

91. High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)

92. The Hole (1998, Ming-liang Tsai)

93. Holiday (1938, George Cukor)

94. House Party (1990, Reginald Hudlin)

95. I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (2006, Ming-liang Tsai)

96. I Stand Alone (1998, Gaspar Noe)

97. Imitation of Life (1959, Douglas Sirk)

98. In the Heat of the Sun (1994, Wen Jiang)

99. In the Loop (2009, Armando Iannucci)

100. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989, Steven Spielberg)

101. Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)

102. Innocence (2004, Lucile Hadzihalilovic)

103. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)

104. Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959, Bert Stern)

105. Jellyfish (2007, Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret)

106. Jules and Jim (1962, Francois Truffaut)

107. The Kid With a Bike (2011, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

108. Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989, Hayao Miyazaki)

109. The Killing (1956, Stanley Kubrick)

110. The Lady Vanishes (1938, Alfred Hitchcock)

111. Lady Vengeance (2005, Chan-wook Park)

112. Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais)

113. Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989, Akl Kaurismaki)

114. Limite (1931, Mario Peixoto)

115. Linda Linda Linda (2005, Nobuhiro Yamashita)

116. The Lineup (1958, Don Siegel)

117. Lola (1961, Jacques Demy)

118. The Long Day Closes (1992, Terence Davies)

119. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002, Peter Jackson)

120. Lost in America (1985, Albert Brooks)

121. Love Exposure (2008, Sion Sono)

122. Love Streams (1984, John Cassavetes)

123. Malcolm X (1992, Spike Lee)

124. A Man Escaped (1956, Robert Bresson)

125. The Man With A Movie Camera (1929, Dziga Vertov)

126. The Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismaki)

127. A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

129. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)

129. The Middleman [Jana Aranya] (1976, Satyajit Ray)

130. Midnight Run (1988, Martin Brest)

131. Mind Game (2004, Masaaki Yuasa)

132. A Moment of Innocence (1996, Mohsen Makhmalbaf)

133. Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)

134. Murder By Contract (1958, Irving Lerner)

136. The Music Room [Jalsaghar] (1958, Satyajit Ray)

137. Mysteries of Lisbon (2010, Raoul Ruiz)

138. Naked (1993, Mike Leigh)

139. Network (1976, Sidney Lumet)

139. The New World (2005, Terrence Malick)

140. Night and the City (1950, Jules Dassin)

141. The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)

142. Nightmare Alley (1947, Edmund Goulding)

143. Nights of Cabiria (1957, Federico Fellini)

144. El Norte (1983, Gregory Nava)

145. Not One Less (1999, Zhang Yimou)

146. Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)

147. O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000, Joel and Ethan Coen)

148. Odds Against Tomorrow (1959, Robert Wise)

149. Offside (2006, Jafar Panahi)

150. Once (2006, John Varney)

151. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, Milos Forman)

152. Ordinary People (1980, Robert Redford)

153. The Organizer (1963, Mario Monicelli)

154. Orlando (1992, Sally Potter)

155. A Page of Madness (1926, Teinosuke Kinugasa)

156. Pather Panchali (1955, Satyajit Ray)

157. Paths of Glory (1957, Stanley Kubrick)

158. Peacock [Kong Que] (2005, Changwei Gu)

159. Pickup on South Street (1953, Sam Fuller)

160. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975, Peter Weir)

161. Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982, Alan Parker)

162. La Promesse (1996, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

163. Quadrophenia (1979, Franc Roddam)

164. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981, Steven Spielberg)

165. Ran (1985, Akira Kurosawa)

166. Rat-Trap (1982, Adoor Gopalakrishnan)

167. Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)

168. Red Beard (1965, Akira Kurosawa)

169. Remember the Night (1940, Mitchell Leisen)

170. Ride the Pink Horse (1947, Robert Montgomery)

171. Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)

172. Rosetta (1999, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

173. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001, Wes Anderson)

174. Safe (1995, Todd Haynes)

175. Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Kenji Mizoguchi)

176. Sátántangó (1994, Bela Tarr)

177. Sawdust and Tinsel (1953, Ingmar Bergman)

178. Scenes From a Marriage (1973, Ingmar Bergman)

179. The Scent of Green Papaya (1993, Anh Hung Tran)

180. Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)

181. Sepet [Chinese Eye] (2004, Yasmin Ahmad)

182. The Set-Up (1949, Robert Wise)

183. Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)

184. The Seventh Victim (1943, Mark Robson)

185. Shame (1968, Ingmar Bergman)

186. The Shining (1980, Stanley Kubrick)

187. Silent Hill (2006, Christophe Gans)

188. Sing Street (2016, John Carney)

189. Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen)

190. Sita Sings the Blues (2008, Nina Paley)

191. The Skin I Live In (2011, Pedro Almodovar)

192. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955, Ingmar Bergman)

193. The Son (2002, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

194. Songs from the Second Floor (2000, Roy Andersson)

195. Sorry to Bother You (2018, Boots Riley)

196. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973, Victor Erice)

197. Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki)

198. Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky)

199. Stop Making Sense (1984, Jonathan Demme)

200. Storm Fear (1955, Cornel Wilde)

201. The Story of Qiu Ju (1992, Zhang Yimou)

202. Subarnarekha [The Golden Thread] (1965, Ritwik Ghatak)

203. Sudden Fear (1952, David Miller)

204. Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander Mackendrick)

205. Swimming to Cambodia (1987, Jonathan Demme)

206. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

207. A Tale of the Wind (1988, Joris Ivens)

208. Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)

209. That Obscure Object of Desire (1977, Luis Bunuel)

210. They Made Me a Fugitive (1947, Alberto Cavalcanti)

211. Thief (1981, Michael Mann)

212. Thieves’ Highway (1949, Jules Dassin)

213. The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)

214. Thirst for Love (1966, Koreyoshi Kurahara)

215. Three Colors: Blue (1993, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

216. Three Colors: Red (1994, Krzysztof Kieslowski)

217. Through a Glass Darkly (1961, Ingmar Bergman)

218. Time of the Gypsies (1988, Emir Kusturica)

219. Touki Bouki (1973, Djibril Dip Mambety)

220. The Tree of Life (2011, Terrence Malick)

221. The Trial (1962, Orson Welles)

222. The Turin Horse (2011, Bela Tarr)

223. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

224. Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica)

225. The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000, Anh Hung Tran)

226. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

227. Visage [Face] (2009, Ming-liang Tsai)

228. Waiting for Happiness (2002, Abderrahmane Sissako)

229. Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers (1993, Nick Park)

230. The Wayward Cloud (2005, Ming-liang Tsai)

231. Wendy and Lucy (2008, Kelly Reichardt)

232. Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Bela Tarr)

233. What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962, Robert Aldrich)

234. What Time Is It There? (2001, Ming-liang Tsai)

235. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966, Mike Nichols)

236. Who’s Camus Anyway? (2005, Mitsuo Yanagimachi)

237. The Wicker Man (1973, Robin Hardy)

238. The Wind Will Carry Us (1999, Abbas Kiarostami)

239. Winter Light (1962, Ingmar Bergman)

240. The Wizard of Oz (1939, Victor Fleming)

241. The Wolf House [La Casa Lobo] (2018, Joaquin Cociña and Cristóbal León)

242. Woman in the Dunes (1964, Hiroshi Teshigahara)

243. A Woman Under the Influence (1974, John Cassavetes)

244. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988, Pedro Almodovar)

245. Xanadu (1980, Robert Greenwald)

246. Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa)

247. You, the Living (2007, Roy Andersson)

248. Young Frankenstein (1974, Mel Brooks)

249. The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)

250. A Zed and Two Noughts (1985, Peter Greenaway)

Let’s get into the nitty-gritty. First of all, I regret that I don’t have better reviews to link to for a lot of these. Some of them are very brief (I think one is just a quote from the movie!) and a couple aren’t especially positive. But oh well. Some of them I just never wrote a decent review for, and I sure don’t have the time to do it now.

Alphabetization can be tricky when dealing with foreign language titles. I’ve tried to go with the titles most commonly used in America. For Pratidwandi and Jana Aranya I used the English translations because I suspect that’s what Criterion will do when they eventually release them. I also maintained consistency in ordering without using leading articles, as in El Norte and I Fidanzati. One English title presented a problem: Betrayed is just as commonly referred to as When Strangers Marry. I opted for the former to match Warner’s DVD release.

There were 27 revisions to the list. I didn’t remove any films that were in my previous top 100, but gone from the old “101-250” list are:

Amélie
Annie Hall
Band of Outsiders
Close-Up
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Cry of the City
Le Doulos
Dying at Grace
F for Fake
Force of Evil
Goodbye Solo
Un homme qui dort
Hoop Dreams
Kanal
Kill Bill
The Letter Never Sent
Love and Death
Metropolis
Napoleon
The Phenix City Story
Play Time
Psycho
Serenity
Talk to Her
Viridiana
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Wild Strawberries

Woody Allen loses big here. He simply creeps me out now to the point where I can’t enjoy his movies like I used to. Likewise, Talk to Her is a great movie but problematic to a degree I can no longer ignore. It’s a shame to lose three documentaries but as much as I admire the ones I removed and would recommend them, they’re not films I would go back to or are special to me. I also lost three noirs, but replaced them with three that are dearer to me. I just watched Wild Strawberries again the other day, and while I think it’s fantastic, it’s just not crying out to me to be included. There’s nine other Bergmans on the list so it’s probably okay. Let’s see, what else? I felt that Wallace & Gromit were already covered well enough with Wrong Trousers. Some of these are movies I could easily have in my library and yet I haven’t felt compelled to buy them, which made them easy cuts. And then there’s some I still really like but there were others I preferred to include.

So let’s get to the additions:

The Big Combo
Blazing Saddles
Cocorico Monsieur Poulet
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Duck Season
The Empire Strikes Back
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Female on the Beach
In the Heat of the Sun
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The Kid With a Bike
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Lost in America
Love Exposure
Mind Game
The Organizer
Pickup on South Street
La Promesse
Quadrophenia
Ride the Pink Horse
Smiles of a Summer Night
The Son
Spirited Away
Swimming to Cambodia
That Obscure Object of Desire
The Wind Will Carry Us
A Zed and Two Noughts

Some of these were added because recent rewatches warmed me up to them: Distant Voices, Mind Game, and Smiles of a Summer Night. Those were all in the past month and really were the impetus for redoing this list. A couple — The Empire Strikes Back and Lord of the Rings — are populist choices that I realized I was snubbing purely out of snobbery. Likewise, some are old favorites that I maybe don’t “rate” as highly as others for whatever reasons, but they have a special place in my heart: Lost in America, Last Crusade, Swimming to Cambodia and Blazing Saddles. As you can see, we have our three new noirs. And I realized that the Dardenne brothers are more precious to me than I previously gave them credit for, with three new entries. I’m pleased to bring slightly more animation to my list as well.

Some notes on the list as a whole…. there are 21 films that I’ve only seen once. I was going to list them, but screw it, I’ve done enough listing things for one day. Almost all of them were on the chopping block at some point as I agonized over what to include. After all, to what extent can you call a film a “favorite” if you haven’t even bothered to see it a second time? But sometimes a single viewing can leave a big impact, and they’re all movies I look forward to seeing again, when the time is right (sadly, six of the 21 still have no decent home video release in this country).

Only seven films directed by women on my list, which I’m not proud of. There are several others I would call honorable mentions, but there’s no denying that females are under-represented in my list. Part of this I can blame on an industry that is extremely gender-imbalanced. But I should really do more to seek out films by women. Also there are only a scant few movies by African-Americans, another area where my filmic education has room for expansion. Doing a bit better as far as international cinema goes. By my quick count, there’s 110 films in languages other than English (plus two silents of foreign origin).

In addition to the 9 Ingmars, there are 8 films by Satyajit Ray, and 5 each by Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ming-liang Tsai.

Three of the four people in that Boogie Nights screenshot have passed away in recent years. William H. Macy, watch your back!

I’ve made my lovely wife sit through about 60 of these. Some she really loved, but boy, there were some she really really hated.

Alright, that’s enough nerding out over my own damn list. Thanks for reading!

The End

It’s time for me to pack it in. This blog has run its course. Not only am I watching fewer (way fewer) films than I used to, but I write about them even less. Writing about them has become a burden rather than a joy. When I sit down with a movie, I feel this neurotic urge to take mental notes, like I should start composing a review in my head because really I ought to be writing about it. And that gets in the way of experiencing the damn thing. So I think it’s best to end it. By officially putting a period on this paragraph, those voices in the back of my mind can quit nagging me about the next one. Not having to think about whether or not I’m going to review a film will help me enjoy the act of watching them more.

I put over 13 years into this thing. For about two, maybe three of them I think I actually did some pretty decent reviews. According to my spreadsheet, there are over 5700 reviews on this blog. Out of those, there are maybe 50 I’m pretty proud of. Not a great ratio, but I’ll take it. It was really nice to know that a few people were out there reading my stuff. There’s an ocean of movie review blogs out there, and I have no illusions… mine will quickly be forgotten by the handful of people who noticed it. As it should be. It was just me voicing my opinions on movies, which I never really knew much about anyway. I know what I like, and every once in a while I could articulate the reasons why.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Look of Silence

We’ve been binging on the show “Hannibal” lately. More like hate-watching, for a bunch of reasons I won’t get into. But one of the reasons is that the show came out of the gate with absurd levels of gore (although apparently Botticelli’s naked ladies have to be blurred out because painted depictions of nipples and vaginas are disgusting, right?) and has to keep upping the ante in order to keep being “disturbing”.

Not one thing in that show is half as disturbing as this documentary. Because where the killers in “Hannibal” usually have some ridiculously complicated psychology behind their actions, the Indonesian paramilitary Komando Aksi are real, and they don’t explain away their murders as a love of mushrooms or some such nonsense. It seems rather that they killed simply because they could, because the military stood behind them and allowed them to purge the country of “communists”.

This is of course Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to The Act of Killing. It does not have the same surreal flourishes as its predecessor (though it is exceptionally well-shot). It may, in fact, feel redundant to some. We see again that these killers have no remorse, or if they do, they are burying it under deep layers of justification. They will happily discuss the nature of their killings, but get cagey when pressed on why they did it, how they feel about it, or why they didn’t try to stop it.

The film mostly centers around Adi, the brother of a man whose murder was particularly savage. Adi confronts (gently… like the softer version of Kenzo Okuzaki in The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On) those who participated in or were aware of his brother’s killing. He’s an optometrist, an almost too-poetic touch as he tries to bring some clarity to the situation. What he and Oppenheimer reveal is our awful capacity for unspeakable violence and the rationalization of it. And it also probes our capacity for forgiveness, and how we attempt to make sense of an insane world.

While this may not bring anything new to the overall picture of Act of Killing, its more personal approach makes it just as engaging. And it’s just as chilling. Rating: Great (90)

IMDb

another big dump of little reviews

The Wolfpack – This is an interesting story, but it seems like it should have been more interesting. The buzz around the film was that “these boys learned everything they know from the movies!” so I expected the movie-watching to figure more into how the Angulos’ minds and personalities were shaped. But either that wasn’t a big factor or it wasn’t touched on. The movies were just their entertainment. And as a cinephile, I guess I was disappointed that their cinematic obsessions appeared to be mainly Tarantino and Batman. I guess overall it was engaging but it wasn’t what I’d imagined the story to be, which is why expectations are bad. Rating: Good (73)

Call Me Lucky – I don’t think Barry Crimmins is an especially funny comedian (he’s okay) but he is a compelling individual. I’ve really got nothing else to say about this. A solid doc. Rating: Good (75)

Riffraff (rewatch) – I don’t buy as many DVDs/Blu-Rays as I used to, but I still sometimes make hasty purchases for movies I don’t really need to have in my collection. Riffraff is right on the edge. It’s very entertaining, and I enjoyed my second viewing. But will there ever be a third? When am I going to wake up and say to myself, “Man, I really want to watch Riffraff today”? I can’t picture it, but for now I’ll hold on to it. Rating: Very Good (86)

The Wrong Man (rewatch) – On the fence about this one, too. I’ve always maintained this is underrated Hitchcock, and I still do. It’s not edge-of-your-seat thriller stuff, but there’s a lot of noir and new wave atmosphere to it. But having seen it three (maybe four?) times now, I’m not sure I would gain anything from an additional viewing. Another one I’m keeping “for now”. Rating: Very Good (85)

Mukhsin (rewatch) – No doubts about keeping this one, I just wish I had a decent copy of it. Sadly, it looks like Yasmin Ahmad’s “Orket trilogy” (as well as the director herself) is going to fade further into obscurity, without ever getting a proper release. The third film in the trilogy is the lightest and loveliest of them, even if one can’t help missing Sharifah Amani (though her sisters do an excellent job). I don’t like “championing” movies and telling people they “should” watch this or that. But it would please me if the trilogy (starting with Sepet) gained a wider audience, and maybe attracted the attention of a studio willing to do a worthy home release of the films. Rating: Very Good (88)

About Elly – One of Farhadi’s best, almost up there with A Separation. I would try to avoid reading anything about the content of the film. In fact, I shouldn’t say any more myself. An excellent study of human behavior and relationships. Rating: Very Good (87)

Zoolander (rewatch) – I got Carrie to rewatch this with me, even though she’s not a fan. She is still not a fan. I’m slightly less of a fan. There aren’t as many big laughs as I thought there were. On the other hand, very very little about the movie bugs me, and almost everything is worth at least a smile. It’s a stupid movie, but it’s a stupidity that speaks to me. It’s a comfortable stupidity. Rating: Good (77)

Bedazzled – On the flipside, this movie (the Harold Ramis remake, not the original) is the stupidity that speaks to Carrie… and not to me. I tried to embrace the absurdity of it, get into the spirit of what they were trying to do. It didn’t happen. I had one good laugh, when Fraser is talking with all the sand in his mouth. The rest of it just didn’t do it for me. I can’t decide if Brendan Fraser is the worst choice or the best choice, but one thing I’m sure of is that they tried to nerd him up waaay too much in the beginning. It doesn’t work for Fraser, and it doesn’t work for where the character ends up. Rating: Poor (52)

Edge of Doom (rewatch) – Ah, we’re back to Noirs I Probably Didn’t Need to Buy. EoD is great, it’s a dark as hell movie with real tension and real bitterness. If I was building a library of Film Noir You Should See, it would have a spot. But for my personal collection? Do I need to see it a third time? I don’t think so. Besides, it can get kind of annoying after a while to watch Farley Granger run around and getting mad about a “I want a big funeral!” Because even though this is his best work besides They Live By Night, Granger is a lousy actor. Rating: Very Good (86)

Walden (Diaries Notes and Sketches)

Three years ago, I watched Jonas Mekas’s epic 5-hour “diary film”, As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty. I fell in love with it and placed it among my top 100 films. Mekas’s home movies were edited into a sustained ecstatic burst of joy and delight, a celebration of love, family, nostalgia. And yet it was with some hesitation that I made a blind purchase of this new Blu-Ray collection, featuring this, his first diary film. Would the gamble pay off?

Well, yes and no. Walden is much in the same spirit, jittery handheld footage melded with an often unrelated soundtrack, highlighting moments that Mekas felt worth highlighting. And some of these moments are indeed beautiful and sweet and filled me with that same sense of joy. But too often Mekas is more concerned with events than moments. Early in the film, the first appearance of The Velvet Underground. Near the end, John and Yoko’s “bed-in”. Significant events in cultural history, but even though Mekas was there, the personal perspective is lacking. And he doesn’t bring anything to make them interesting, either. It’s just… yep, you were there to film it.

Although some two hours shorter than As I Was Moving, it feels longer. When the movie gets into that wonderful, random rhythm it’s fascinating. But there are three sections where it gets rather bogged down. One is a visit with Stan Brakhage and his family. While there are a few items here and there that elicit a smile — Stan’s wife Jane riding a mule, for example — it spends too long just documenting rather than finding the special parts. It’s boring in the way we expect home movies to be boring. Another section spends far too long at the wedding of film historian (and with Mekas, co-founder of the Anthology Film Archives) P. Adams Sitney. Clearly Sitney was a close friend… so why does this feel so distant and impersonal? It’s mostly a bunch of people milling around in a tent. And lastly, there’s a section entitled “Wendy’s Wedding”. I don’t know who Wendy is, but for what must be 7 or 8 interminable minutes, we watch her dance in a nightclub, wearing her bridal gown and caught in stuttering fragments by the strobe light. Fun and interesting for maybe a minute or two. Mekas tries our patience.

If this sounds like a lot of kvetching, it’s because I had hoped for a more consistently enjoyable experience. Mekas is perhaps still finding his voice here (speaking of his voice, his spoken musings on the soundtrack are still wonderful). One of the most memorable aspects of As I Was Moving was his clear love for his wife and children. This was before they were part of his life, so some of the best scenes here are when he delights in the loves and children of others. I would say about 70% of the film is what I wanted… the rhapsodic observations, the latching on to images of beauty, the reminder to take a minute to enjoy life rather than just living it. He needs to apply more of his personal touch to that other 30%. Hopefully Lost, Lost, Lost will be more successful in that regard. Rating: Good (73)

IMDb