Striving for the ‘third thought’ evaulation between my art-experience of the film and the inherent merit of the the film’s own expression, but whenever uncertain always heeding on the side of my experience over some hypothetical value. The meaning of life is buried in this list, I am certain.
1.Red Beard (Kurosawa)
2.400 Blows (Truffaut)
3.Chungking Express (Kar-Wai)
4.Before Sunset (Linklater)
5.Nights of Cabiria (Fellini)
6.Seven Samurai (Kurosawa)
7.The New World (Malick)
8.Dr Strangelove (Kubrick)
9. The Bicycle Thief (De Sica)
10.The Thin Red Line (Malick)
11.Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
12.La Dolce Vita (Fellini)
13.Dont Look Back (Pennebaker)
14.Do The Right Thing (Lee)
15.Annie Hall (Allen)
16.Before Sunrise (Linklater)
17.The Searchers (Ford)
18.Hiroshima Mon Amour (Renais)
19.Naked (Leigh)
20.Gerry (Van Sant)
21.When the Levees Broke (Lee)
22.Summertime (Lean)
23.Bloody Sunday (Greengrass)
24.Wages of Fear (Clouzot)
25.Little Children (Field)
26.The Double Life of Veronique (Kielowski)
27.Lost in Translation (Coppola, Sophia)
28.Days of Heaven (Malick)
29.In the Bedroom (Field)
30.Inland Empire (Lynch)
31.For All Mankind (Reinert)
32.The 25th Hour (Lee)
33.Schindler’s List (Spielberg)
34.Psycho (Hitchcock)
35.Touching the Void (Macdonald)
36.Wit (Nichols)
37.Death and the Maiden (Polanski)
38.Closer (Nichols)
39.Love and Death (Allen)
40.Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry)
41.Gosford Park (Altman)
42.Elephant (Van Sant)
43.Last Days (Van Sant)
44.Fritzcarraldo (Herzog)
45.Leaving Las Vegas (Figgis)
46.Silent Light (Reygadas)
47.Once (Carney)
48.Mulholland Dr (Lynch)
49.Amelie (Jeunet)
50.On the Waterfront (Kazan)
51.Eyes Wide Shut (Kubrick)
52.Pride and Prejudice (Wright)
53.Pulp Fiction (Tarantino)
54.American Movie (Smith)
55.Hard Eight (Anderson)
56.Picnic on Hanging Rock (Weir)
57.The Third Man (Reed)
58.The Ice Storm (Ang Lee)
59.Brief Encounter (Lean)
60.Yojimbo (Kurosawa)
61.Waking Life (Linklater)
62. Aguirre: Wrath of God (Herzog)
63.Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
64.Life of Brian (Jones)
65.Rear Window (Hitchcock)
66.Le Notti Bianche (Visconti)
67.Singing in the Rain (Donen/Kelly)
68.Bugsy (Levinson)
69.Reds (Betty)
70.Bottle Rocket (Anderson)
71.The Talented Mr Ripley (Minghella)
72.Punch-Drunk Love (Anderson)
73.Fargo (Coen)
74.Far From Heaven (Haynes)
75.Grizzly Man (Herzog)
76.Diabolique (Clouzot)
77.2001 A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
78.Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
79.Meet me in St Louis (Minelli)
80.The Grapes of Wrath (Ford)
81.Withnail & I (Robinson)
82.Trainspotting (Boyle)
83.Happy Together (Kar-Wai)
84.What Time is It There? (Tsai)
85.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Foreman)
86.My Night at Maud’s (Rohmer)
87.Night of the Hunter (Laughton)
88.The Seventh Seal (Bergman)
89.Last Waltz (Scorsese)
90.The Bridge Over the River Kwai (Lean)
91.Slacker (Linklater)
92.Dazed and Confused (Linklater)
93.Sideways (Payne)
94.Manhunter (Mann)
95.The Shining (Kubrick)
96.Crooklyn (Lee)
97.I’m Not There (Haynes)
98.The Remains of the Day (Ivory)
99.Red (Kieslowski)
100. Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog)
5 Comments
Notable absences are The Godfather series, Chinatown, Casablanca,Blade Runner and Citizen Kane none of which had any impact on me despite their sheen of adept storytelling.
I have not seen Coppola’s ‘The Conversation’, Welles ‘Touch of Evil’, many of the Leone spaghetti westerns, so that should be taken into consideration.
Tarkovsky, Kieslowski, Bergman and Godard do absolutely nothing for me, hence their omissions.
Interesting, the splitting of the Sunrise set… to make the whole thing look more objective mayhaps…
God, do you have any idea how impossible it would be for me to RANK my top 10, much less top 100? There’s a like nebulous cloud of regard I have for my fave flicks that needs to be sorted thru. Hmmm… but I DO want to do this.
Wow Mike. NIce list. Some oddballs in there like:
American Movie (is this the Karl Pilkington stand in?);
Death and the Maiden #34! Excellent, one of polanskis more overlooked films. But no CHINATOWN??? oi!
Eyes Wide Shut! (I plan to revisit this when the Eurocut comes out on DVD in October), I fluctuate between LOVING EWS and dismissing it, it seems a lot of people (myself included) are starting to really lean towards the former;
Natural Born Killers – Boy ick, ugh, Stone-bombast. Ya lost me there!
The Ice Storm – poetry on film. I love this film to death!
I also love the Tsai and wkw on the list. Nice.
When you get around to THE CONVERSATION, expect it to at least crack the top 20 on a single viewing!
(Good,bad,ugly over Once Upon a Time? We disagree on that one)
no I actually really thought about this as much as I could to rank according to my criteria… Before Sunrise is a solid 9.
Like I said before I am not striving to list the best made films… but that which I feel best documents a certain significance of being alive that rings true with me. I try whenever possible to offset my zeal with the value inherent in the film’s own expression, which may be a consequence of its socio-cultural sophistication, its weighty play with metaphor, its effort.
American Movie is a very naked representation of an idealist in corrosion, and it is fascinating on that level but it also happens to be hilarious and fascinating as a documentary due to the sheer inexhaustiblity of its unscripted gems of humour and pathos.
Natural Born Killers is too high, that is an oversight, but prior to me watching the film to death, it had a hypnotic effect over me, but my opinions have changed since then. the last 25 on the list are less codified.
I have not seen Once Upon a Time so I cannot say where it rates yet. and Chinatown is stellar genre without the meat hooks to draw me in. Then again, I have not seen the film for at least ten years.
I ressurect Kurt’s list from a thread on another blog…
1 Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968)
2 Chinatown (Polanski, 1974)
3 Conversation, The (Coppola, 1974)
4 Maltese Falcon, The (Huston, 1941)
5 Blue Velvet (Lynch, 1986)
6 L’Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
7 Alien (R. Scott, 1979)
8 Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975)
9 Aguirre: Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
10 Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
11 In the Mood For Love (Wong, 2000)
12 Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang, 1991)
13 Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Kubrick, 1964)
14 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)
15 Blade Runner (R. Scott, 1982)
16 Barry Lyndon (Kubrick, 1975)
17 Apocalypse Now (Coppola, (1979)
18 City of God (Meirelles, 2002)
19 400 Blows, The (Truffaut, 1959)
20 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)
21 Fargo (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1996)
22 Killer, The (Woo, 1989)
23 Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
24 Third Man, The (Reed, 1949)
25 Jaws (Spielberg, 1975)
26 Three Colours: Red (Kieslowski, 1994)
27 Carrie (De Palma, 1976)
28 Blow Up (Antonioni, 1966)
29 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)
30 Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
31 Fight Club (Fincher, 1999)
32 Das Boot (W/ Petersen, 1981)
33 M (Lang, 1931)
34 Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968)
35 Rashomon (Kurosawa, 1950)
36 King Kong (Cooper/Shoedsack, 1933)
37 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
38 Double Indemnity (Wilder, 1944)
39 Cabaret (Fosse, 1972)
40 Princess Mononoke (Miyazaki, 1997)
41 Godfather, The (Coppola, 1972)
42 Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The (Leone, 1966)
43 Hard Boiled (Woo, 1992)
44 Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
45 La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960)
46 Magnolia (Anderson, 1999)
47 Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
48 Brazil (Gilliam, 1985)
49 Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
50 Lord of the Rings, The: The Fellowship of the Ring (Jackson, 2001)
51 Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994)
52 Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg, 1981)
53 Patton (Schaffner, 1970)
54 Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922)
55 Grave of the Fireflies (Takahata, 1988)
56 Grand Illusion (Renoir, 1937)
57 Ghostbusters (Reitman, 1984)
58 General, The (Keaton/Bruckman, 1927)
59 Evil Dead II (Raimi, 1987)
60 Eternal Sunshine of theSpotless Mind (Gondry, 2004)
61 Die Hard (McTiernan, 1988)
62 Do the Right Thing (S Lee, 1989)
63 Seventh Seal, The (Bergman, 1957)
64 Shining, The (Kubrick, 1980)
65 Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly, 1952)
66 Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (Kershner, 1980)
67 Thin Red Line, The (Malick, 1998)
68 Searchers, The (Ford, 1956)
69 Robocop (Verhoeven, 1987)
70 Suspiria (Argento, 1977)
71 Thing, The (Carpenter, 1982)
72 Requiem for a Dream (Aranofsky, 2000)
73 Planet of the Apes (Schaffner, 1968)
74 Life of Brian (Jones, 1979)
75 Infernal Affairs (Lau, 2002)
76 Se7en (Fincher, 1995)
77 Terminator, The (Cameron, 1984)
78 This is Spinal Tap (Reiner, 1984)
79 Wizard of Oz, The (Fleming, 1939)
80 Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore, 1988)
81 Catch Me if You Can (Spielberg, 2002)
82 Children of Men (Cuarón, 2006)
83 Little Children (Field, 2006)
84 Dawn of the Dead (Romero, 1978)
85 An American Werewolf in London (Landis, 1981)
86 Badlands (Malick, 1973)
87 Miller’s Crossing (Coen, 1990)
88 Bonnie & Clyde (Penn, 1967)
89 Raging Bull (Scorsese, 1980)
90 Hustler, The (Rossen, 1961)
91 Glengarry Glenn Ross (Foley, 1992)
92 12 Angry Men (Lumet, 1957)
93 True Romance (Scott, 1993)
94 Trial, The (Welles, 1962)
95 Unforgiven (Eastwood, 1992)
96 Untouchables, The (De Palma, 1987)
97 Videodrome (Cronenberg, 1983)
98 Wings of Desire (Wenders, 1987)
99 Sweet Hereafter, The (Egoyan, 1997)
100 A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick, 1971)
Observations: I have not seen 3 of your top 5 films!
In the Mood for Love… good but not great.
Kubrick’s 2001 was an oversight on my part.
Magnolia… no way. I think it is a real mess, a masterful mess, but still a mess.
will have to see Aquirre… are you going to see the Herzog doc at TIFF?