Ebert’s ten greatest films of all time (and my top 13)

May 4, 2012 • 4:01 am

Well, movie critic Roger Ebert has spoken: in an essay on his Journal at The Chicago Sun-Times, he’s just compiled a list of his ten greatest films of all time, regardless of era, language, or anything else.  As he says when justifying his choices (do read the piece), “Once any film has ever appeared on my S&S list, I consider it canonized.”

Below are Ebert’s selections; this year he bumped “Dekalog” to keep the list at ten, and made the hideous mistake of replacing it with a film I consider dreadful: “The Tree of Life,” which I reviewed last November and found a pretentious, ponderous, and pointless waste of time.  I cannot reconcile how bad I consider this film with how highly it’s been rated by many critics, including Ebert.  This goes to show (take that, Nick Matzke) that there are no objectively great films. Anyway, here’s Ebert’s list:

Aguirre, Wrath of God (Herzog)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
The General (Keaton)
Raging Bull (Scorsese)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
Tokyo Story (Ozu)
The Tree of Life (Malick)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)

I haven’t seen “2001: A Space Odyssey” (I believe I’m the only living America who can say this), but in general his choices are good ones, although I’m not with him on “Apocalypse Now” (I’d replace it with the Coppola films I give below) or, of course, “The Tree of Life,”

Now I’ve previously published my own list of best movies in June of 2010, deliberately omitting “Citizen Kane”, which is such an obvious choice that I wanted to give other films a chance:

The Last Picture Show (Bogdanovich)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)

Chinatown (Polanski)

Wings of Desire (Wenders)

Ikiru (Kurosawa)

Tokyo Story (plus Late Spring, Early Spring, and Late Autumn, all directed by Ozu and counted as one)

Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)

Make Way for Tomorrow (McCarey)

Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Herzog)

On the Waterfront (Kazan)

The Wizard of Oz (Fleming)

The Godfather Parts 1 and 2 (Coppola, counted as one)

Y Tu Mama Tambien (Cuarón)

And of course I invite readers to submit their own list, or simply one or two choices of “best films,” or to praise or criticize any of the films listed above. But I still think “The Tree of Life” is dreadful.  n.b.: after endless discussion of this movie with my film-buff nephew, who agrees with Ebert, I’m unlikely to change my mind.

296 thoughts on “Ebert’s ten greatest films of all time (and my top 13)”

  1. I’ll consider it a temporary lapse of reason that both y’all have omitted The Great Lebowski from your list.

    1. Omitting The Great Lebowski is ok with me, but The Big Lebowski, now that’s a major omission.

    2. The Third Man
      Godfather 1&2
      The Breakfast Club
      Breakfast at Tiffany’s
      Chinatown
      Rumblefish
      2001: A Space Odyssey
      The Decline of Western Civilization
      Young Frankenstein
      Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown)

      Honorable Mentions:

      Pulp Fiction
      Jackie Brown

      Of the authors choices, most are pretty sound. I liked Birds and Psycho a tiny bit more than Vertigo. Never have truly embraced apocalypse now! For some reason. I thought the movie became too abstract. I may need to really rewatch that one.

      Also, although I like Wings of Desire, Lisbon Story and Paris TX are Wim Wenders movies I like much more than Wings of Desire.

  2. I didn’t much like the 2001 film. The book was much better.

    OK, I didn’t like Citizen Kane, either.

    1. Agree. The book has made a very lasting impression on my then-young mind. The movie, seen a few years later, not so much.

    2. When I rented it, I fell asleep at the beginning and when I woke up at the end it was exactly the same thing, so I figured I hadn’t missed much and never bothered to rewind it.

  4. What is it with Citizen Kane. OK, it’s got moving pictures (just), but we’ve progressed since then. Emporer, clothes etc. And you can’t really appreciate how stupifyingly boring Wings of Desire is unless you’ve seen it in its original German. There, I got to sound pretentious into the bargain!
    I agree about Lebowski. A few more Coens could make it on to the list too ;-).

    2. Let me put it this way… Today you’ll have a lab full of graduate students. They’ll know all about DNA, PCR reactions, cloning, how to induce mutations, etc., etc., etc. and will be able to slice and dice DNA in ways that Darwin couldn’t have imagined even though he knew, somehow, parents had something inside them that passed on some kind of instructions to make offspring.

      That they’re light-years ahead of Darwin doesn’t negate The Origin of Species as a masterful work.

      And so it is with Citizen Kane. It is not celebrated for its CGI or box office success. It is celebrated because it broke the movie mold and gave us the modern film industry and still remains a very good movie, if a bit dated.

      1. Agreed, it’s like not rating Casablanca because it’s ‘full of cliches.’

    3. Sorry, the Coen Bro’s don’t make it on the list. Does entertaining equal great film?

  5. A few months ago we had an Ozu week, where we watched, I think, four of his films (the four that you mentioned). While we generally enjoyed them all (some more than others), our least favorite was Tokyo Story. It’s not that it’s too slow; it just didn’t do it for me. I plan to watch it again at some point, and to read what film critics and historians have to say about the film, but for me, at least right now, it’s just not that great a movie.

  6. Rear Window was a better flic then Vertigo, mainly because Kelly and Ritter were better actors then Novak and Bel Geddes and got a better performance out of Stewart. I have always failed to see the fascination that some critics have for Vertigo.

    1. I had an epiphanic episode on my first viewing of Vertigo. It was Xmas eve; I was 22 and all alone in the big house I shared with 10 or so other students. Late at night, with a few drinks, I turned on Vertigo and thought, never having heard of it before, that it was one of Hitchcock’s duds.

      Then, as the beer took hold, after an hour or so, I realised how necessary the apparently eventless and extended stalking scenes, shot on alienating and over-heated film, were to the crooked emotional intensity of the second half. What a film, and I saw it alone, at Xmas, blub, blub…

      1. The nice thing about many of Hitchcock’s movies is that they are now available in high definition/BluRay. I recently watched a high definition version of Rear Window in 16/9 aspect ratio and it was positively scintillating. Vertigo, The Birds, Dial M for Murder, North by Northwest, Saboteur and Psycho, among others are now available in HD.

  7. Amadeus, though not the stunning achievement of a Citizen Kane, always ranks as one of my favorites. Everything about that film I adore. The rest of my list is pretty conventional: The Godfather, Raging Bull, Lawrence of Arabia, etc.

    I’ll also echo the thoughts of SLC, who posted above, by saying that Rear Window is a better film than Vertigo. Unfortunately, though, there is always something about Hitchcock’s films that prevent them from broaching my list of favorites. In the case of Rear Window, it’s the utterly conventional ending, which I think is a let down in comparison to the claustrophobic, paranoid build up throughout the rest of the movie.

    1. Oh, another film that occasionally shows up on these lists that I would include for myself is The Third Man. Welles’s performance, despite his lean screen time, almost rivals the one from Citizen Kane.

      1. Amadeus is one of those movies that I never tire of watching. Like The Right Stuff and Shawshank Redemption, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Goodfellas. Not saying that that makes them “greatest” list material, but it’s something. Then again I can also watch Stripes, Sixteen Candles, and even Empire Records, ad nauseum.

    3. I fourth Amadeus, and not just because I’m a musician. Both Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham were excellent as their respective characters.

      PLUS!…that soundtrack includes some of the best performances of those pieces I’ve ever heard. Imogen Cooper, Lucia Popp, Neville Mariner…I’m going have a Mozart-gasm…

      I’ve never heard a better Queen of the Night. Such an accurate (note-wise and rhythm-wise) and dramatic performance.

  8. Y Tu Mama did nothing for me.
    Agirre was good but not a favorite.

    No objective bests, as you noted.

    Favorites is the way to term it.

    1. I liked Amores Perros much better. I think Bernal is much better in it.

    2. Much agreed. Not sure what people see in that movie. Maybe I wasn’t watching it properly or something? 🙂

  9. My favorite director is Zhang Yimou, but I only know how to say “thank you” in Chinese so I can only judge the dialogue through the subtitles. Raise the Red Lantern amazed me each time I saw it until I began to understand the allegory. Gong Li is the star of the movie. I’ve never seen an actress who can make you feel an emotion by facial expression, body language, or tone of voice even without the clue of dialogue.

    Raise the Red Lantern also shows Zhang Yimou’s developing the art of color on the screen, which can be seen in Hero and House of the Flying Daggers. I went to see Hero because it was a Jet Li movie but I went back to the theater a couple of more times to watch the use of color in the sets, nature, and the interplay between costumes and nature.

    I tuned into the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics a few minutes late and saw the same use of color in real time, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that Zhang Yimou was the director of the ceremony.

  10. A possible top ten … um 13. (I have a longer list, but even whittling it down to 13 was hard.)

    • 2001: A Space Odyssey
    • The Dark Knight
    • The Italian Job (1969)
    • El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth)
    • Léon (The Professional)
    • The Lord of the Rings (considered as one)
    • The Maltese Falcon
    • Metropolis
    • The Name of the Rose
    • The Princess Bride
    • Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai)
    • Tremors
    • Twelve Monkeys

    Not necessarily the “greatest of all time”, but ones I consistently enjoy watching! Not terribly high-brow, I’m afraid…

    /@

    1. Lord of the Rings, yes.

      Princess Bride? Ooh, we have different tastes in comedy … ;^)

      1. Guys ‘n’ Dolls, surely? I yam thinking Runyon’s the cyat’s pyjamas!

    4. Ant, I’ve seen 8 from your list and of those I’m pretty much in whole-hearted agreement. (Except that 2001 could stand to lose about 10 mins. from the stargate sequence.)

      I’ve seen very few from Ebert’s or Jerry’s list, but I gotta say I would place Chaplin’s “City Lights” head and shoulders over “The General” although I do love Buster Keaton.

  11. I cannot reconcile how bad I consider this film with how highly it’s been rated by many critics, including Ebert. This goes to show (take that, Nick Matzke) that there are no objectively great films.

    How so? You could just be incompetent :p

    (I have not seen Tree of Life and so do not have an opinion)

  12. Although I can’t explain exactly why, I was mesmerised watching “The Tree of Life”. I took neither a coffee break nor a piss break. And that says something.

    I think Jerry must have been in a funny mood when he saw it. Either that or he was not prepared to let the movie speak for itself. And he got pissed off when it defiantly refused to fit into his mould.

    1. “The Tree of Life” is a terrible, boring, pretentious, mess. I think people like it not because they’re in the proper mood, but because they think it reflects well on them to like it. There’s no other way I can account for this aberration.

      Anyhow, a best movie list has to include something by Woody Allen and of course Singing in the Rain.

        1. I still think that “Days of Heaven” is the most beautiful movie ever photographed.

      2. I think with Tree of Life it really depends on what you like. I’ve spent a lot of time watching plotless experimental films which focus on visuals. I like the experience of it and the mood it puts me in, I’m kind of high strung and I find it relaxing. For someone like me, Tree of life was pretty good, not perfect or top 10 of all time, but still good.

        After the superior Days of Heaven (easily Malick’s best film IMO), I like Tree of Life slightly more than The New World and far more than A Thin Red Line and Badlands. Everyone has different taste.

      3. I can get into plotless movies. I think what bothered me about this movie is that it tried to pass off shiny, pretty surfaces and slow motion as ultra- ultra- meaningful. There was an appearance of depth, but no reality. That’s irritating to me, as someone who actually cares about the underlying “meaning of life” type issues (I teach a philosophy class on such things).

        1. Totally. I like to say that Mallick’s films are like paintings come to life. His ability for capturing the beauty of nature is astounding. Tree of Life was more like a beautiful painting that never really moved.

          Have you seen Waking Life? For eye-candy as a starting point for philosophy discussions, it was much better than Tree Of Life. Though in a much different approach.

      4. Oh dear, I forgot Annie Hall–Allen’s best by far. A fantastic movie.

  13. I only watch movies with happy endings, fine so I’m shallow. My favourite movie is “Evolution”. Not very high brow, but appropriate for the blog. 😉

    1. “Not very high brow, but appropriate for the blog.” OK, then! I add Constantine, where Keanu Reeves has to battle against God AND Satan, AND there is a CAT (so he can crossover into Hell briefly)in a small but classic scene.

  14. Young Einstein
    Sweet Land
    The Sound of Music
    Doctor Zhivago
    Out of Africa
    Amadeus
    Tess (Polanski)
    The Deer Hunter
    Godfather trilogy
    Saving Private Ryan (the knife scene — kept me awake all night)
    The Witness
    Seven Samurai
    Cinema Paradiso
    Girl With a Pearl Earring
    Slumdog Millionaire
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    etc.

    1. Young Einstein? Oh, I do hope that this is a joke. What an awful, awful, awful piece of crap that was.

      1. Your comment summarizes my opinion of Young Frankenstein.

        I cannot abide Mel Brooks.

        Comedy (IMO) requires surprise.

        And, obviously: No accounting for taste. Or: That’s why there’s chocolate and vanilla.

  15. I am not really anywhere near enough of a film buff to make a list like this, but I do have to comment that 2001 is not the first, second, or even third Kubrick film I would choose. (Full Metal Jacket and The Shining would tie for first, Clockwork Orange would be third, and then I’d probably consider 2001) The problem with it is that what makes for great cinema sometimes trumps what makes for timelessly entertaining cinema, whereas in e.g. The Shining, the two concerns are never in tension: There is never a moment in The Shining where you are like, “Well that was cool, but somebody who is not into film is not really going to appreciate it,” whereas moments like that abound in 2001.

    I somewhat agree with Chris about Citizen Kane, though I would not be nearly so harsh. It’s a truly excellent movie, but I don’t really understand why it’s consistently near the top of the best-ever lists.

    Maybe some of that is the difficulty of judging a movie outside of the time it was made. I found The General dreadfully boring, for example, and couldn’t make it through very much of it. Maybe it was great at the time, but…

    Too many of the other movies on these lists I must confess to not having seen, so that’s all I will say for now.

    1. “Maybe it was great at the time, but…”

      This is one of the keys I think.

      And it depends what you want from a film. Is it entertainment or is it a literary/visual art statement.

      1. And it depends what you want from a film. Is it entertainment or is it a literary/visual art statement.

        Agreed, although for my own part, I tend to selfishly seek out stuff that works on both levels, whether it be film or any other genre of art. This is why I like films like The Shining, bands like Radiohead, you get the picture…

  18. I’m so happy to see that no one has listed The English Patient. Best film winner, my daughter’s favorite … I found it boring and I disliked the characters.

  19. I think picking “favorite” movies might be a better approach to all this, partly because I’m not sure how you measure “great.” I’ve only seen about half the movies on the two lists, and of those, I like several, dislike a few, and can understand why some, if not most, might be considered “great” by some standard. But there are several movies not on either list that I would rather watch. I’d be willing to watch “Chinatown” this weekend, but I think I could survive without ever seeing “Apocalypse Now” or “2001” again. On the other hand, I’ve never understood the charm of “The Last Picture Show” and I tried to watch it again due to the enthusiasm for it displayed here. It sounded so good I couldn’t recall why I didn’t like it. All the reasons came flooding back after just a few minutes of watching. Maybe I’m not enough of a movie fan.

    1. The only way that I can assess if a movie is “great” or at least “good” is if I frequently refer to it or quote from it or would feel better for watching it again. Besides Strangelove I have a couple of other movies in this vague category but I’m quite sure that they don’t belong on a public list because they are either too obscure to be of general interest or too riddled with imperfections.

    3. I think the attraction of “The Last Picture Show” is in part because it serves as a needed correction for the saccharine nostalgia for the 1950s that is so prevalent. At least my father (who was a teenager then) sees the movie as much better depiction of the times than things like “Happy Days”.

  20. I find it odd that Children of Paradise (Michel Carné) does not come up more often on best films ever lists as it certainly is one of these.
    Also on my top five list is Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou). It is based on the novella by Su Tong – definitely worth reading any of his work. Lyrical, powerful, shocking – and the movie lives up to this.

    1. Children of Paradise is indeed one of world cinema’s great treasures and widely available via Criterion, but sadly a 3+ hour epic love triangle set in the 19th-century world of French theater (promoted as the “French Gone with the Wind,” although it’s much, much better than that) is not everyone’s idea of a good time.

  21. The Sight & Sound poll results is one of the great resources for cinephiles, and I recommend checking out lists from your favorite critics and directors.

    As for Rog, he seems to go overboard on his recent favorites; it was once Crash and according to his blog post it’s now Synecdoche, NY and Tree of Life.

    For those not on the Citizen Kane bandwagon yet, I’d actually recommend Ebert’s dense and informative audio commentary. In the never-ending battle of Rear Window versus Vertigo, both are perfect, but V has the added virtue of being bonkers.

    Jerry, your list is more idiosyncratic and thus more interesting to me. To the Ozu love-fest, I would recommend his silent I Was Born, But… and his last film of melancholy grace, An Autumn Afternoon. His entire filmography is like a collection of tributaries flowing into a single, sublime river.

    1. As for my own actual list, it changes day to day but usually includes some of the following 20:

      •Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
      •Duck Soup (1933)
      •L’Atalante (1934)
      •The Rules of the Game (1939)
      •His Girl Friday (1941)
      •Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
      •Tokyo Story (1953)
      •Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
      •Il Posto (1961)
      •A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
      •Playtime (1967)
      •High School (1968)
      •Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
      •Life of Brian (1979)
      •Tampopo (1985)
      •The Fly (1986)
      •A Moment of Innocence (1996)
      •Rushmore (1998)
      •Millennium Actress (2001)
      •Primer (2004)

      1. If one of your movie choices was The Fly you should check out Altered States. It’s weird but fun.

  22. “ZULU” it was directed by blacklisted American screenwriter Cy Endfield.
    What a great and inspiring film.

    1. Yet another personnel note. I when to junior high school with the son of blacklisted Hollywood screen writer Paul Jarrico.

      1. Hasn’t some under-worked nerd reduced the 6 degrees of separation to 4, due to the interweb?

        I knew a man who met Trotsky; that makes WEIT subscribers a 3 (or is it a 4?).

  23. OK, I admit it, I posted before reading other comments. So thrilled to see Raise the Red Lantern mentioned already!

    As for why Citizen Kane consistently makes “greatest films” lists – it has to do with what cinema was before and what it became after because of the film. The story telling, the use of fade outs, deep focus, the use of visual allegory. I do believe it stands alone as a great film, but if you watch what came before and contemporaneously you appreciate better what it means to cinema.

    I think the same is true for authors, -Hemingway comes to mind. Many read Hemingway and cannot understand why he is so revered, because they haven’t slogged through Dreiser and Henry James to get to him. I still think his short stories stand alone as great works but like Welles a bit of context adds more appreciation.

    2. I’ve been reading avidly since early childhood, and I still remember when I read For Whom the Bell Tolls in Italian translation, when I was 13, as the first time I consciously realized that I had just read a beautiful work of art.

      1. +100. For WHom the Bell Tolls is one of the most moving books I’ve ever read. But I think, for most people, you’d need to be an adult to appreciate it (hats off to you for appreciating it as a youth!). Some knowledge of mid-20th century history really helps as well!

  24. Ones I remember immediately: Babette’s Feast, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Like Water for Chocolate, A Year in Provence, A Room with a View, Atanarjuat…

    1. I’m not sure I have a favourite film, and I’m not sure I’d include Atanarjuat even if I tried to make a list, but I’m glad to see it mentioned. Let me second the recommendation to see it for those who haven’t. However, some of the behaviour may well be incomprehensible to qallunaat without briefing. (I have an Inuit friend, so I’ve learned many things from her.) Things like how Inuit approach punishment, ethics, family and such may be difficult. Nevertheless it is visually stunning and very haunting as a legend goes. And the film makers make almost no concession to us qallunaat either in terms of style, attitude or even length …

    1. Aw heck. I know there will be some I missed. But anyway. 13 is it?

      Castle in the Sky
      Brazil
      Titus
      Fargo
      City of God
      Priscilla Queen of the Desert
      Alien
      Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
      Watership Down
      Wonder Boys
      Gattaca
      Silence of the Lambs
      Inception

  26. I’ll throw out a couple.

    1) Patton: great movie, always seemed “not right” seeing George C. Scott in other roles after that.

    2) Fifth Element: not sure if I am serious about this one, the movie certainly isn’t, but it is pretty great fun. Does that count? I am sure that all involved had a blast making the film.

    1. The Fifth Element? Also on my longer list. Sumptuous, if flawed. Lost out to Léon as my favourite Luc Besson film.

      /@

    2. If you like The Fifth Element, you might enjoy hearing the “Wilhelm screams” by clicking on the links in my comment on this thread.

  28. Uh…

    Like my lists of the best books or albums these always change. But today’s list is:

    Pulp Fiction
    Fargo
    Goodfellas
    Chinatown
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
    Dr Strangelove
    Seven Samurai
    Amelie
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    The Grapes of Wrath

    Worst movie by a country mile: Inception

      1. Ant: We agree! Wow. I lived Inception a lot too. Great concept, well executed.

  29. If my enjoyment in watching a movie many times counts for anything, Casablanca, Groundhog Day, and Dr. Strangelove would all make my list.

    1. Groundhog Day! Yes! Way underrated. It deasl with the idea seriously as well as humorously. Bravo.

  31. Yes, “The Big Lebowski” is a serious omission. As is “Contact” and “First Contact”. Two “objectively” great films. I did a study; double blind placebo, the works….

    1. “double blind”? Does that mean you listened to the movies blindfolded? 😉

      I’m with you on Contact; I was wondering why no one on this science-oriented website had mentioned Carl Sagan’s novel. I think director Robert Zemeckis did a terrific job of telling an exciting story with emotionally involving characters and dramatic plot twists and turns. I’m not going to try and rank it somewhere in a list of all-time great films; I’ll just say that I’ve liked it enough to own the Blu-ray and I’ve watched it more than once.

      While not a great film, I’ve watched the rom-com Crossing Delancey more than once. There are some really funny moments in this film and some great acting (yeah, I know it’s a rom-com, but this one was an exception for me).

      Another movie I liked was The Commitments, about an Irish start-up band in Dublin whose manager envisions them as the “Saviors of Soul”. They are a hot-headed, argumentative bunch who nearly fall apart more than once but do eventually get a gig in an Irish pub, and when they do, look out — the music (Mustang Sally, Chain of Fools, etc) is terrific, the lead singer (13 yrs old at the time of the movie) has a voice that’s totally unexpected, and the 3 girls in the band are sensational (visually as well as sonically). I could say more about the movie but that would spoil the plot for those who might wish to watch it…

  32. “Les enfants du paradis” is way above any other film I have seen.

  33. What, no Satyajit Ray (the Apu Trilogy, The Home and the World, Charulata, The Music Room just to name a few brilliant ones)?! Completely agree with Kurosawa’s Ikiru.

  34. I guess I don’t like either your taste or Ebert’s.

    I found “Citizen Kane” to be boring. I would put both “The Trouble with Harry” and “North by Northwest” well ahead of “Vertigo” for my Hitchcock preferences. I only watch “2001” on TV, and it was so boring that I turned it off before it was even half-way through.

    I didn’t like “Chinatown” at all, and I’m not a big fan of “The Wizard of Oz.”

    Apart from being non-objective, I wonder how much of film taste is cultural. I grew up in Australia, where many people liked “The Trouble with Harry”. When I came to the USA, I found that most people had never even heard of it.

    1. “The Trouble with Harry,” is also available in 16.9 HD.

      I have to say that it is a revelation seeing old movies like this in HD.

  35. In no particular order:
    Way Out West, Yojimbo, The 400 Blows, The Conversation, Metropolis, Frankenstein (original), Young Frankenstein, The Ladykillers, M, Five Easy Pieces.

  37. I always get brain freeze when asked about my favorite/best movie list. Probably should get a list of all the movies ever made and take a marker to it just to remember what I’ve seen. But two movies I never have a problem remembering are “Ruby in Paradise” and “Even the Rain” (“Tambien la Lluvia”). “Ruby” is very slow and simple, but I fell in love with the Ruby character – a young woman finding her way in the world with a mind open to what her life presents her. “Rain” is Spanish and layers the stories of a Spanish film crew shooting a film in the Bolivian highlands about Columbus (to save money) with the outbreak of the Cochabamba water wars. The historical contrasts and the multidimentional roles of all the characters are complex and intriguing.
    And then at my peril I also have to mention “Mamma Mia”. I can’t help it! On a cold winter day I have to put it on just to remind myself that it’s warm somewhere and life can be goofy and fun. It’s just so obvious that no one is taking this seriously. I’m sure everyone involved in the film got on the phone with each other and said let’s all go to Greece and have a great vacation hamming it up. The utter delight the actors are having in their outlandishness somehow resets my brain.
    I do agree with Jerry. I thought that “Tree of Life” was dreadful – so pretentious. Too bad because “Days of Heaven” was so fantastic!

  39. Looks like my top 10 will be the most low-brow so far:

    Life of Brian
    Holy Grail
    Dr Strangelove
    This is Spinal Tap
    Love and Death
    Alien
    Aliens
    Terminator
    Zulu
    Mulholland Drive

    Surprised there’s been no Lynch on the list so far. Mulholland drive is worth it for the a capella version of “Crying” in Spanish alone.

    Sorry about having two Cameron films in.

    1. Wasn’t Love and Death the Woody Allen movie where in the future he finds an old VW bug hidden in a cave and it cranks right over when he starts it up? Great sight gag, I still remember it.

        1. I’m not a Woody Allen fan either, but I did think the VW bit was funny and it has apparently stuck in my memory.

  40. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

    Keanu Reeves should have gotten an Oscar for that.

  41. Melancholia for Art Movie, Charade (older version) for Romantic Thriller, Pan’s Labyrinth for Fantasy.

    It seems to me that without categories, we’re comparing apples to oranges, or Charles Dickens to Henry James — which is ‘better’.

    Oh, and kudos to you JC, for standing out against ‘Tree of Life’. One word — ‘walkouts’!

  42. I agree that The Tree of Life was horrible. Here’s my list:

    2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
    A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
    Brazil (Gilliam)
    Memento (Nolan)
    In The Name of the Father (Sheridan)
    Irreversible (Noe)
    Fargo (Coens)
    In Bruges (McDonagh)
    Chinatown (Polanski)
    Annie Hall (Allen)

  43. Ebert’s list seems the usual list of “serious” and IMO tedious, films. I will say I like Citizen Kane and Vertigo was okay.

    my favorite movies (aka those I will stop what I’m doing and watch if they’re on) in no particular order?

    Fifth Element
    Die Hard
    Star Wars (unfucked with by Lucas)
    Duck Soup (and pretty much anything by the Marx Brothers)
    High Plains Drifter
    Some Like it Hot
    Casablanca
    Heaven and Earth (Japanese samurai epic)

    I want to be entertained and a subtle message or no message at all, not to be preached to.

    1. Die Hard is on my longer list.

      Agree with Duck Soup for the best Marx Brothers film.

      I’ll have to check out Heaven and Earth.

      /@

      1. If “Heaven and Earth” is what I think it is, it’s more historically accurate, e.g., it’s about a series of little wars fought by two Samurai lords. It’s not Yojimbo or Harakiri. If I’m thinking of the right movie, I liked it anyway.

  44. Greats lists … Sad thing is that so many of you young pups have not seen many of these films on the big screen. If anything remotely good comes up on such in your town, go see it no matter how big your flattie is. Some times it makes an enormous difference in one’s perception of a film. For starters, my list would include all the films which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for the past forty years or so and, of course, their runner ups. Try Ballad of Narayama, Woman in the Dunes, the Samurai trilogy (If you want to see good martial arts movies, the Japanese have them hands own. Chinese kung fu movies are fun acrobatics, but little more.) etc., on for size. How about Dersu Uzula also? Then, there’s the Criterion collection. Anything but the formulaic Hollywood garbage prevalent today … Someone mentioned Raise the Red Lantern, damn, don’t see it if you’re already having a bad day. And, while we’re talking about films that will trigger psychotic episodes, try the French film Irreversible.

    1. When I first moved to Boston I used to go see films all the time and saw most of the film fest offerings. One Saturday I was spending making bread I got a call from a pollster who wanted to know about my movie viewing habits. I thought why not. First questions: how many movies do you see in a week/month?, how many first run v. second movies… Then she starts asking me about particular movies, none of which I had seen or wanted to see. She was getting quite upset and I was puzzled until I realized not ONE of the movies I had seen was a Hollywood film. I said so and she persisted for another two questions and then ended the call.

      I just don’t see why it is so difficult to understand the concept “a good story well told.” Then what do I expect from an industry that thinks the writer is the least important person involved in the craft?

    2. Ah! Dersu Uzala! I’d recommend that. I was astonished (though why in retrospect) to see how Canadian Siberia actually looks. No tigers left here though.

  45. 1984 (Radford)
    12 Angry Men (Lumet)
    The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont)
    Amadeus (Forman)
    Fargo (Coen)
    Citizen Kane (Welles)
    To Kill A Mockingbird (Mulligan)
    Inherit the Wind (Kramer)
    Becket (Glenville)
    The Third Man (Reed)
    Seize the Day (Cook)

    1. 12 Angry Men definitely deserves consideration. By the way, it is also available in HD, in which even black and white is scintillating.

      1. Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll have to look for it in HD. I’m gettin close to wanting a blu-ray player. I really loved the cinematography in that movie. It would be great to see it on the big screen. It’s unfortunate that the original print was destroyed in a fire.

        1. I have to confess that I downloaded it from the web from one of the file sharing services. Unfortunately, that option is now severely restricted due to the shutdown of Megaupload and the arrest of its executives. As a consequence, several of the other such services have discontinued file sharing and those that remain are unsuitable for downloading HD movies because of slow downloads or long waiting times between downloads (most films on those services were divided into several files). The only remaining possibility is BTTorrent, which has become much faster as more people are using it with the disappearance of the file sharing services.

      2. Of course, nowadays the actions by the protagonist in 12 Angry Men would be considered, rightfully so, juror misconduct.

        Just sayin’.

        1. How true. In the Scott Peterson case, one of the jurors was kicked off the jury during deliberations for allegedly being obstructive to the other jurors. Translation: like Henry Fonda (or Jack Lemmon in the made for TV remake), he wasn’t buying the prosecutor’s depiction of events.

    2. Becket is one of my favorite historical dramas. Though somewhat dated, it’s still remarkably entertaining and very well-written. Unfortunately, very few historical dramas are made like it anymore.

  46. My list is short. The one perfect film. Dialog so tight you could not add nor subtract a single word:

    Kill Bill 2

    Groundhog Day is a close second. Am I right or am I right? I’m right … right?

  48. Very hard to give favourites & so variable & personal (mine change), still these might be on my list today –
    Top Hat (or maybe Swing Time)
    Terminator
    The Company of Wolves
    Macbeth (Welles’s original version with Scottish accents)
    Quatermass & the Pit
    Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur)
    Contagion (just seen it & really liked it)
    The Day After Tomorrow (“It’s all going horribly wrong in an implausible way!”)
    The Way to the Stars
    Them!

    At least that comes to mind now!

    1. Them!!

      I’ll have to add that; not so sure about Night of the Demon.

      I already had Quatermass and the Pit on my longer list.

      /@

    2. The Way to the Stars (1945) is one of my favorites. As far as other war movies I’d add J’Accuse (Abel Gance) & Rome, Open City (Fellini was one of the writers.) As well, I’m still a sucker for CasaBlanca & for personal reasons, Sahara.

      There are too many good movies to choose from, but I like Harvey, 8 1/2, the trippy Juliet of the Spirits, the Third Man, Ozu’s I was Born, But. There are so many others that are worth watching.

    3. Appears to be also known as “Five Million Years to Earth.” Not a bad Sci Fi flic.

  49. How could Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice not make your lists is totally beyond me!
    Please name any other movie with better cinamatography, acting, and soundtrack (the screenplay is not bad either) and I will eat my hat.

  52. There is a movie that I always leave off my lists of great movies because it does not appear to have the artistic achievement equal to directors like Kuprick or Kurosawa. Yet the movie has had an emotional lock on my memory that never fades. And the movie is:
    To Kill a Mockingbird!

      1. Did you notice (given some of the themes on this site) the slight change to one of the lines to make it less controversial or something? Scout says in the book and the movie that Atticus told her that to kill a mockingbird was a sin. In the book, there’s an additional (something to the effect of) she regarded this as unusual since Atticus never called anything else a sin.

  53. I like both lists and I actually like Tree of Life also, but then I like semi-experimental films, still I prefer Days of Heaven from Malik.

    Suspiria (Argento)
    Hail Mary (Godard)
    That Most Important Thing: Love (Zulawski)
    Window Water Baby Moving (Brakhage)
    Successive Slidings of Pleasure (Robbe-Grillet)
    Nostalgia (Tarkovsky)
    Blood for Dracula (Morrissey)
    Images of the World and the Inscription of War (Farocki)
    L’ Intrus (Denis)
    The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski)

      1. I don’t know if Mr. David T. has commented here before but Prof. Coyne puts all first time commentors in moderation.

        1. I’ve commented on many other posts before but perhaps my email address was lost?

          I wondered if I said something offensive in another page, but I couldn’t think of what it was (at least nothing recent).

      1. I think one of my main problems with the Dekalog is that I’ve only seen it in the crummy Kino DVD edition, whereas I’ve seen the wonderful bluray of Veronique.

        Getting back to the actual movies, I think the Dekalog is very good, but it seemed cold and distant (no doubt on purpose), Veronique on the other hand seems something closer to my preference for visuals over story.

  54. Any votes for Un cœur en hiver? One of the funniest movies in which nothing happens. The set-up; Emmanuelle Béart, one of the most beautiful women on the planet, spends 2 hours of screen time explaining how she wants to be Daniel Auteuil’s lover. In the end, well you can guess – a very long, very slow, very French shaggy dog story.

  55. I would not call “Tree of Life” dreadful – it is much worse than that. I think “Dekalog” belongs on the list – Ebert dropped it because under the new rules it would count as ten films – and take up the entire list. I find it hard to pick just ten films. I think the absence of comedies from these lists makes them irrelevant. “Some Like It Hot” is as close to a perfect movie as I have ever seen. “Ikiru” is also close to perfection.

    1. Agreed. It is very difficult for me to express how terrible Tree of Life is.

  56. I like a lot of films, and some of them have been mentioned. Here are some others that I think are worth watching:

    The big country (starring Gregory Peck)

    FernGully, The Last Rainforest

    Shane

    Moby Dick

    Anything by Charlie Chaplain

    Once upon a time in the west

    Powder

    Gladiator

    Man without a star

    Lonely are the brave

    Harvey

    It happened one night

    Charade

    The Pink Panther Strikes Again

    The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

    Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein 🙂

    1. Glad to see Harvey get mentioned. And also re. comedies and since this website is all about cats from time to time, Cat Ballou does not seem to have been mentioned. Great cast, irreverence to religion, and in a great pairing with Stubby Kaye, the last performance of Nat King Cole.

  57. Here’s a few more:

    The Unbearable Lightness of Being
    Jean de Florette
    The Piano Teacher
    Trois Couleurs
    Gladiator
    Good Fellas
    The 400 Blows

      1. Bravo! I’ve been waiting for that one. Also by him, just as good: Virgin Spring.

  58. The Way to the Stars – toth to Dominic.
    Top Hat – you feel it has to be there somewhere
    The Godfather I and II (as one)
    Aguirre Wrath of God – OK with that
    Raging Bull – OK again but with Scorsese how do you whittle it down to one
    Amadeus – personal fave – can’t leave it out
    Pan’s Labyrinth
    I feel Ingmar Bergman ought to be here somewhere – I’ll go with the Seventh Seal for now
    Metropolis – how far ahead of his time was THAT?
    Dangerous Liaisons – beautifully put together
    and.. oh i give up

    Close runners
    Nosferatu – the original – pretty creep effort
    Lynch – I’ll go for Eraserhead for sheer paranoid weirdness
    MP and the Holy Grail

    Can’t honestly put LOTR in this list, much as I enjoyed it.

    Tinker Tailor – the original – can I count that as a film – pretty please? It is only the greatest fictional thing I have ever seen on TV. Except for the Singing Detective. And I Claudius.

  59. At least what I consider one of the worst movies ever made, “Night of the Hunter,” isn’t on anybody’s list so far. This movie has a cult following which, apparently, has greatly pumped up its rating over at IMBD. Awful, simply dreadful.

    1. Oh yeah, I forgot to include the indisputably great noir fairy tale Night of the Hunter. Thanks for reminding me!

      1. Well, it takes all kinds I guess. That’s what makes horse races.

        On a personal note, a million years ago, I got into a pickup touch football game along with one of the actors in the film, Billy Chapin. He was kind of a sad case as his last appearance was in the entertainment world was in 1958 when he was all of 15. Pretty tough when one’s career is over at age 15. As it turns out, both he and his sister, Lauren, whose career in the movies lasted rather longer, were sexually abused by their father, which resulted in years of drugs for them. A very sad story all around.

    2. Nope, the worst movie ever made is a horror film called “Mr. Jingles”. Absolutely terrible. If you can believe it, the camera (camcorder?)is actually out of focus for most of this film, but if you keep watching, you’ll find that that’s just a minor quibble. I’m laughing as I write this, it was that bad.

  60. An interesting thing is that several of the lists above have appended the names of the directors to the names of the films, but none of them have given the names of the writers.

    In the above I only spotted one writer mentioned by name, but many directors and actors.

    Says it all, really.

    (Obviously in some cases the director wrote it too).

    1. If it went through any studio system, chances are that many changes happened to the script between final draft and shooting, plus the director, editor, and studio usually have the prerogative to make changes as they see fit. Richard Corliss’s book Talking Picture emphasizes the screenwriter’s role in moviemaking, but otherwise, for quite legitimate and practical reasons, even if the initial idea comes from a screenwriter, he or she could rarely be considered the “author” of a finished film more than the director or performers.

      1. “Actors? Schmucks. Screenwriters? Schmucks with Underwoods.” [Jack Warner]

        “Did you hear about the actress who was so dumb, she slept with a writer?” [Anonymous]

        “Who do I have to fuck to get off this movie?” [Added for context]

  61. Mr. Coyne, I was surprised that you chose “Y Tu Mama Tambien” as one of the best films ever made. When I finished watching it for the first time (some years ago), I was kinda taken aback by its style (But it had a cultish following–a “cult hit” for short). It’s like reading a Henry Miller novel really–but there’s something in it that bothered me. The movie, despite its roguish qualities, is really bathed in sentimentality. And sentimentality, in art, is a crime.

    Episode upon episode, the viewer is bombarded with hints and overtones that sex is superficial, and living life on abandon is great nausea. But of course it is–the director intended it to be–he overloads the film with these episodes (oh, the leif motif!) so that the ideas get stuck in our minds. This is called hard-boiled sentimentality. Do you not smell Buddhistic pessimism in all of these?

    To illustrate my point, I recommend that you watch “Chungking Express” by director Wong Kar-Wai (I hope I get his name correct). Now that’s a film for the person who loves life, a person who is a true “Hellene” :), a person who is not afraid of possibilities because therein lies the sweetness of life.

  62. A few more:

    It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

    Svengali (1931)

    Blade Runner

    Westworld

    Titanic (pretty much any version)

    The day the Earth stood still

      2. The difference between the theatrical release and the directors cut taught me how just a few discretionary changes can make the difference between an average film and a masterpiece.

    3. Bladerunner, hell yeah!

      Westworld. Thumbs up for mentioning that one. I watched it recently on DVD with my son and it reminded me of just how awesome Yul Brynner was as the sinister robotic gunslinger. I just bought it on Blu-Ray.

      Vaal

    4. Finally, someone lists Blade Runner, which I consider to be the finest SciFi flim of all time.

      I might as well nominate The Razor’s Edge (since no one else has), the Bill Murray remake, which not only proved that he could play a serious part, but do it extremely well. The scene with him burning his books to stay warm is one of those moments that reveals a basic truth of life. Great film!

      1. I’d enjoyed the original (when I was a teenager and looking into eastern religions before putting them in the same bucket as Xtianity), but found the Bill Murray version hugely tedious – couldn’t see anything original or different in it (would have believed it was a shot-for-shot copy), and Murray went through the motions without even bothering to act.

        He was great in Ghostbusters and Groundhog Day (movies that I have never been able to resist watching to the end) but lamely pretentious in TRE, I thought.

        I could put a list of faves here (including The Fifth Element
        Terminator I&II
        Amadeus
        The Third Man
        Life of Brian
        The African Queen
        Casablanca
        Twelve Monkeys
        Back to the Future I-III
        Blade Runner (any version)
        Alien + Aliens
        Baraka
        The Pillow Book),
        but haven’t seen most of the arty European and Asian films that have been mentioned.

      1. “What did you expect? “Welcome, sonny”? “Make yourself at home”? “Marry my daughter”? You’ve got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.”

    2. Better then “High Noon”? Not hardly.

      Another personnel note, one of the actors in the movie was a man named Bob Wilke, who was the guy that Grace Kelly shot in the back. Wilke was a character actor who usually played heavies and downright mean guys. My dad played golf with him a couple of times and said he was one of the nicest guys one would ever want to meet, totally different from the parts he played.

  65. A top 100 might be possible, but the top 10 varies on a daily (even hourly) basis . . . however:
    I can’t imagine a list without Bunuel – Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie would be my choice but The Exterminating Angel and Un Chien Andalou are possibles
    The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi)feminist classic and Toshiro Mifune
    Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder) as someone said above, just perfect
    Monty Python’s Life of Brian (Terry Jones) ‘I’m not the Messiah’
    Pillow Book (Peter Greenaway) complex, poetic, sexy, and a wonderful soundtrack
    Rope (Hitchcock) masterly demonstration of pure cinema
    Infernal Affairs (Wai-Kung Lau) hard-boiled policier with a flawless plot and great characters
    Murmur of the Heart (Louis Malle) scandalous fun
    The Passenger (Antonioni) if only for the endless discussions about how the final shot (a tribute to the opening of Touch of Evil) was made
    My Neighbour Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki) for the fabulous cat-bus obviously. But I want my own Totoro

    1. I have to mention another Studio Ghibli anime, Pom Poko which was recently appallingly badly remade by Hollywood. The climactic scene when the raccoon dogs ‘fly’ by inflating their testicles has to be seen . . .

  66. In no particular order.

    the Treasure of Sierra Madre, 12 Angry Men, The Life of Brian, Casablanca, Clockwork Orange, Citizen Kane, Apocalypse Now, Zulu, Lawrence of Arabia.

    Shame on you all for not mentioning this film, the original one with Spencer Tracy, Inherit the Wind.

  68. Vertigo is one of Hitchcock’s worst movies. Jimmy Stewart falling madly in love with a woman he just met makes no sense to me. Aocalypse Now is okay but not ten best. Citizen Kane is boring. 2001 is dated and boring.
    What’s wrong with comedies? Anybody ever see It’s A Mad Mad World?

    1. How about Rutherless People? The opening animated titles were clever and inspired.

    2. Actually, the funniest movie I ever saw was “Network,” a satire that totally eviscerated network television.

      1. I rather think that Vertigo is not about love, but about obsession, rather like Wuthering Heights. If you’ve ever been stalked, you’ll know it’s very real and frightening because of its inexplicability.

  70. My list includes “No Country for Old Men”, “Mulholland Drive”, and “Raiders of the Lost Ark” – a diverse array, but all superior for their class of cinema.

    1. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was something of a satire on Hollywood serials of the 1930s like Flash Gordon and Superman, complete with cliffhangers.

  72. These four have remained constant for me over the years . . .
    A Clockwork Orange
    Aguirre, Wrath of God
    Deliverance
    Taxi Driver

    1. Cannot beat Taxi Driver. (Try watching it with a french dub)

      Jaws is another fave of mine

    2. I should add Sorcerer by William Friedkin (I liked the French original Wages of Fear by Clouzot, but not nearly as much as this remake). It has a perfect ending.

      1. And the sound track to Sorcerer by Tangerine Dream is a favourite of mine.

        When my car got broken into and the CD player was stolen the only thing I really missed was that CD which was in it at the time.

  73. I think the the two best westerns are “Valdez is coming”, from the Elmore Leonard novel. The movie is better than the book, though I enjoyed both. The other is Rio Bravo with John Wayne. The screenplay was by Leigh Brackett, a favorite si-fi authoress. It contains every single cliche found in western movies.

    “The Gods must be crazy” is my favorite comedy. I has comedy at a number of levels and can be enjoyed by everyone, at least in part. It starts out like a National Geographic special for the first five minutes or so. I have actually seen patrons get up and walk out of the theater during this segment.

    1. Some of Brackett’s sf novels were rather like Westerns. Travelling around California, Nevada and Arizona, you can easily imagine her Martian cities.

      She also wrote some mean crime novels.

      /@

    2. Another personnel note. I went to grammar school for 2 years with one of the actors in Rio Bravo, Ricky Nelson. Another sad story as he died in a plane crash in the 1960s leaving behind a wife and two children.

    3. I have to say that I preferred El Dorado to Rio Bravo, mainly because Robert Mitchum was a better actor then Dean Martin.

  74. Dark City

    Man Bites Dog

    A Clockwork Orange

    2001: A Space Odyssey

    Fifth Element (the opera scene was classic)

    The Hidden

    Jacob’s Ladder

    Leon The Professional

    Groundhog Day

    Zombieland

    Time Bandits

    Blazing Saddles

    Twelve Monkeys

    Alien

    Marx Brothers – Duck Soup

    The Name of the Rose

    V For Vendetta

    Law Abiding Citizen

    1. Ooh, quite a few in common there.

      Dark City is a small gem.

      And two films with Natalie Portman! ❤ And two with Bruce Willis…

      /@

      2. Actually, those of steve’s list I’ve seen I like too. So I’ll probably take a look on the others.

    2. I like that list, Steve 🙂

      For me, I would add:

      Labyrinth
      Dark Crystal
      Constantine
      Die Hard 4
      Minority Report
      Serenity
      Captain America (that took me a little by surprise)
      Hot Fuzz
      Spirited Away
      Princess Mononoke
      Scott Pilgrim
      Eagle Eye
      Stigmata

      …and my one absolutely guilty pleasure:

      Crank (and its sequel)

      Then again, I enjoyed the old Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and the whole Harry Potter series, so I might just be a bit mainstream… ish.

  75. Just additions:

    Sunset Boulevard (Wilder)
    A Touch of Evil (Welles)
    The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)
    The Stunt Man (Rush)

    And then, because it speaks to me in myriad ways:

    Sideways (Payne)

      1. Kansas City Confidential is a fine film, but that’s with John Payne. Sideways was directed by Andrew Payne.

  76. Always tough to single out a top ten group of films, but here it goes:

    Metropolis, The Seven Samurai, Double Indemnity, The Cat’s Meow, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, Sullivan’s Travels, Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia, Goodfellows, Citizen Kane and Amadeus,

    1. The Treasure of Sierra Madre – excellent pick – maybe may favourite Bogart film.

  77. Ok, I could go all ex-film-school grad arty. Instead I just have a list of great flicks that have lasting impact (at least on me) and that have always rewarded upon viewing them again:

    Jaws (The movie that made me, and a generation, want to become film-makers)

    Alien

    Bladerunner

    Taxi Driver

    The Third Man

    The Exorcist

    7Th Voyage Of Sinbad

    Invasion of the Body Snatchers (0ld and 78 remake)

    Young Frankenstein

    The Incredibles

    It’s A Wonderful Life

    Superman (Chris Reeves)

    King Kong (original)

    Vaal.

  78. For starters, on the positive list, I suggest “Dead Poets Society” and “The Outsiders.”

  79. Lots of excellent movies!

    One you may not have come across is “The Hedgehog” A French movie based on the equally wonderful novel “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery. Beautiful and heartbraking.

    1. I got this from the library (read the book last year); not really top 10 material, but strongly recommended – a quiet little film about a reclusive rebarbative concierge and a neurotic alienated suicide-obsessed 12-year old girl doesn’t sound promising, but it is made with great wit, is literate and features several cats in supporting roles.

    1. La strada! This film is amazing. I don’t know how Fellini pulled this out, so moving, suspended between gritty realism and lyrical fairytale.

  81. The only two start-to-finish perfect movies I’ve seen are both by Tarkovsky: The Mirror and Stalker. The former is probably my favorite work of art across all genres, and certainly the pinnacle of the great Russian tradition of existentially significant illnesses.

    Some other movies I love are: In the Mood for Love and its sister 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai), Aguirre, The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog), Satantango (Bela Tarr), Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa), and Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky).

    I’ve only been watching movies seriously for about a year and a half, and I tend to watch slowly, that is, I don’t watch movies all that often, and I tend to linger on the ones I do watch, so this isn’t a broadly informed list. The Tarkovsky films are films I expect to still see in my top ten in 40 years when I’m properly well-watched, or something along those lines. The others are films that could potentially make a top ten made at such a time.

    This reminds me that I need to watch Ugetsu. I’ve been putting it off too long.

    1. In the Mood for Love – awesome pick – one of the best movies I’ve seen that’s been made in the last 20 years.

      1. Oh definitely yes. Every single moment of that film is achingly gorgeous. Wong Kar-Wai is so good at exploring strange rituals in relationships, and this film is the pinnacle of that, if only because the scenario is so… normal, at least relative to his other films.

        Have you seen 2046? The more I think about/watch the two, the more clear it becomes to me that neither can be properly understood without thinking about the other. I do think ITMFL is the superior of the two, but not by much, at this point.

    2. For some odd reason and I can’t explain it, but Stalker was slightly boring to me, I find this really strange because I adore Mirror and Nostalgia (so I know the type of pace Tarkovskly uses, I’ve seen his others too). Anyways, I’ll second Mirror for being an almost perfect film.

  82. I looked through the first 45 comments and was surprised that there was no mention of my (probably) favorite movie of the last 10 years: The secret in their eyes.

    I understand that they are doing an American remake, and I urge film lovers to try and see the original first. If the remake even comes close it should be amazing.

  83. In general I’m fond of filmmakers who were very popular with the public back in the day and only later critics began praising them, sometimes to the point of shifting the public’s opinion about them, making them look more arty or elitist when they didn’t seek that status. Three of these are García Berlanga, Truffaut and Eastwood.

    As a contrast, full-time art academia folks like Buñuel or Godard just come across as pretentious. And the worst of all are directors like Bertolucci whose greatest dream is to be part of this group.

  84. Since there’s some disagreement, Silence of the Lambs (scary). Schindler’s List (drama), Casablanca (classic) and The Music Man (musical)

  85. Wot? No The Life of Brian? Funniest film ever?

    George Harrison stepped in at the last minute when EMI, I think it was, withdrew finance. Because “he wanted to see what the film was like”. Terry Gilliam called it the dearest ever cinema ticket.

  86. top 20 – you decide the order:

    To Kill A Mockingbird
    On the Wterfront
    Last Picture Show
    5 Easy Pieces
    Silence of the Lambs
    American Graffiti
    Taxi Driver
    Deer Hunter
    ET
    Full Metal Jacket
    Malcolm X
    Annie Hall
    Ordinary People
    Midnight Cowboy
    The Graduate
    Godfather 1 & 2
    Lawrence of Arabia
    12 Angry Men
    Schindler’s List
    West Side Story

  87. Another oldie but goodie, “Call Northside 777,” maybe Jimmy Stewart’s best effort.

  88. Another oldie, “Suddenly.” This is best know for the outstanding performance of Frank Sinatra, probably the best of his career, as a professional hit man hired to assassinate the president. Sinatra was so good in this movie that he never again would accept a part as a heavy, thinking that it would typecast him and hurt his singing career. In addition the performance as the sheriff of Suddenly of Sterling Hayden was probably the best of his career. They really played off each other.

    1. As for Sterling Hayden, I always thought his Col. Jack T. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove was brilliant. Sellers is great too (but his best role was in Being There).

  89. Top 10 favorites:

    Rosemary’s Baby (Polanski)
    Alien (Scott)
    Bedazzled (Donen)
    Rachel, Rachel (Newman)
    Fargo (Cohen brothers)
    The Beguiled (Siegel)
    The Dancer Upstairs (Malkovich)
    Lolita (Lyne)
    The Life of Brian (Jones)
    To Kill A Mockingbird (Mulligan)

    1. 1. It’s the Coen brothers.

      2. I like the take of Mad Magazine, Rosemary’s Booboo.

  90. The Coen Brothers turn up a lot in these lists; I still think that their first was the best – Blood Simple. Southern Gothic film noir. The opening monologue: something like: “They say folks in Russia do things together, share in common. Down here in Texas, we do things different.” You know it’s not going to be good!

    Asked why the film was so-called, a Coen brother quoted Dashiel Hammett, as I recall. DH was asked what his novels were about. He replied, “Blood, simple.”

  91. OK, I’m probably risking my life here, but a flick I’ve seen at least a dozen times, and like it better with each viewing is “Joe vs. the Volcano”.

    (quickly dives into nearest foxhole to await inevitable bombardment)

  92. Haven’t seen all the recommendations, but what about Touching the Void, the drama/doc? Two memorable scenes: how does the mountaineer with a broken leg escape from a ledge 150 feet down a crevasse (and he does)? The funniest black joke; when the same man, convinced he is about to die, can’t get the song-worm Brown girl in the ring out of his head. “Is this really it?”, he thinks in his despair.

  93. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie)
    Anything with Paulie Shore
    KISS meets the Phantom of the Park
    …

    What?

    (OK, I was kidding…except for the KISS movie)

  94. Okay my list will be different then Ebert’s although I do trust him on most movie reviews. My top ten are:
    1. Shindler’s List
    2. The Dark Knight
    3. One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
    4. Avatar
    5. Pulp Fiction
    6. Fargo
    7. No country for old Men
    8 Inglourious Basterds
    9.The Departed
    10.2001 A space Odyssey

  95. A few favorites that haven’t appeared in the comments (in no particular order)

    Animal House
    My Favorite Year
    Quiz Show
    Body Heat
    Toy Story 3

  96. How about a polite request to Jerry to put up a post on top 10 atheist/secular/anti-religious/pro-science movies?

  97. Blade Runner (Scott)
    2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
    Spirited Away (Miyazaki)
    Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
    Good Fellows (Scorsese)
    The Killing Fields (Joffé)
    Graveyard of the Fireflies (Takahata)
    Akira (Otomo)
    Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Python 6)
    Annie Hall (Allen)
    Harry Potter 3 (Cuarón), 5, 6, and both 7’s (Yates)
    Star Wars – the original version (Lucas)
    Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino)

    Note: These are subject to change if I think of something else I’ve forgotten.

  98. Well, I’ll just say upfront that I refuse to watch any movie directed by Polanski. He’s a child rapist no less than many catholic priests – about which this community is often rightly exercised. But Polanski is different somehow (he makes entertaining movies, so I guess somehow that makes up for it all). Thank you, no.

    2 movies I like (for the same reasons), and which were quite helpful to me when I was coming of age in the deep south:

    12 Angry Men
    Imitation of Life

    1. I can sympathize with your feelings about Polanski, and this is an interesting ethical dilemma I like presenting to people. But I simply cannot dismiss “The Pianist” from my list of brilliant, moving films. It’s there, and it is what it is, no matter what Polanski is.

  99. There are so many wonderful movies that a consistent top ten list is impossible; here are two memorable films no one else has listed.

    Runaway Train: Kurosawa is one of the scriptwriters; Eric Roberts, Jon Voight and others show they can act. A prison breakout movie with a serious theme, visually and aurally wonderful.

    Jesus of Montreal: I saw this just once, decades ago. Some actors perform a passion play. Reality begins to reflect the play.

  100. Sorry but these are all blockbuster gore/war and horror!
    What about Humour?
    What about Compassion?

    My favourite is Robin Williams in… (drum rolls)… ‘Patch Adams’

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