Timothy Aaron-Styles

Timothy Aaron-Styles is a graduate of Georgia State University's film school; has worked in film in New York and Atlanta; has taught, lectured and published on cinema; has written several screenplays and scripts.

With the exception of Citizen Kane, the best film ever made, all other listings are in random order.

Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941)
Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love(Mira Nair, 1996)
Ava and Gabriel(Felix DeRooy, 1990)
Seven Samurai(Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
8½(Federico Fellini, 1963)
Sankofa(Haile Gerima, 1993)
The Magnificent Ambersons(Orson Welles, 1942)
Quilombo(Carlos Diegues, 1984)
The Godfather(Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
Star Wars(George Lucas, 1977)

Honorable mentions: The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), City Lights (Charlie Chaplin, 1931), Dreams (Akira Kurosawa, 1996), Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975), The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985), Nothing but a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964), Ran (Akira Kurosawa, 1985), Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992), Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), Lumumba (Raoul Peck, 2000), Beloved (Jonathan Demme, 1998) and The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962).

Barry Adamson

As a member of seminal bands Magazine and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Barry Adamson's soundtrack and composer credits include David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997), Michel Blanc's Mauvaise passe (1999), Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994) and Kevin McCarthy's The Rouge Shoes (2004). He has released eight solo albums, including Moss Side Story (1989), Oedipus Schmoedipus (1996), King of Notting Hill (2002) and Stranger on the Sofa (2006). He is currently making a short film and finishing a book he began as a short in a recent publication, London Noir. Visit www.barryadamson.com for more information.

(in no specific order)

Irréversible(Gaspar Noé, 2002)
L'Humanité(Bruno Dumont, 1999)
À ma soeur!(Catherine Breillat, 2001)
I Only Want You to Love Me(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976)
Seul contre tous(Gaspar Noé, 1998)
Wake in Fright(Ted Kotcheff, 1971)
Taxi Driver(Martin Scorsese, 1976)
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
La Peau douce(François Truffaut, 1964)
Psycho(Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

Atom Burke

Atom Burke is a videographer, documentarian, artist and film lover (in no particular order, like the films that follow).

The Last Picture Show(Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
Harold and Maude(Hal Ashby, 1971)
Wings of Desire(Wim Wenders, 1987)
The Royal Tennenbaums(Wes Anderson, 2001)
F for Fake(Orson Welles, 1975)
Network(Sidney Lumet, 1976)
2001: A Space Odyssey(Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
The Seventh Seal(Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Koyaanisqatsi(Godfrey Reggio, 1982)
Brazil(Terry Gilliam, 1985)

Also: Powaqqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1988) and Baraka (Ron Fricke, 1992). Ten years ago this list would have had Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979), but that one fell off. I also might consider (reconsider?) Wizard of Oz at some point in my life.

Kenneth Camachois

Kenneth Camachois is an English PhD student at the University of South Carolina, where he is also a professor and film critic. His main areas of academic interest include looking at the ways sequential ordering in film and literature affects our understanding of artistic works.

Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941)

Dynamic on all levels, from content to form. Our most influential work.

The Godfather(Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

An indisputable strong attempt to wrestle film within a strictly American context.

Schindler's List(Steven Spielberg, 1994)

Masterful and heartfelt handling of a topic far too large for most films to handle without postmodernist escape clauses. The work of the makers of this film is akin to walking on the edge of a knife.

Casablanca(Michael Curtiz, 1942)

Debatably the best film from the studio production system; daring, moving and influential, while existing entirely as a machined product. A marvel.

Lawrence of Arabia(David Lean, 1962)

A film of intensely moving scope and directorial control and perfection. My thought when I hear 'masterpiece'.

The Godfather, Part II(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

A bold and difficult extension of an American collapse without fault.

The Searchers(John Ford, 1956)

Ford's best film, marrying the opportune idealism of the American West with the problem of necessary violence in its most lasting and iconic form.

Seven Samurai(Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

Epic and moving, beautifully controlled and kinetic.

La Dolce Vita(Federico Fellini, 1959)

One of the few films capable of taking the disillusionment of an individual and connecting to not only a generation, but also individuals that follow it. Truly amazing.

The Graduate(Mike Nichols, 1967)

One of the other films capable of doing the above. Signals a turning point in the possibilities of genre film.

Eric Carpenter

Eric Carpenter is a graduate student studying film at Emory University.

(revised list, in preferential order)

The Searchers(John Ford, 1956)
Nashville(Robert Altman, 1975)
Meet Me in St Louis(Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
Viaggio in Italia(Roberto Rossellini, 1953)
Rio Bravo(Howard Hawks, 1959)
French CanCan(Jean Renoir, 1955)
Au Hasard, Balthazar(Robert Bresson, 1966)
Trouble in Paradise(Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
Under Capricorn(Alfred Hitchcock, 1949)
Wagon Master(John Ford, 1950)

See also Eric's previous list: Nov-Dec 2002

Inguk Cha

Inguk Cha is a film student from RMIT, Melbourne.

(in no particular order)

Journal d'un curé de campagne(Robert Bresson, 1950)

A story that portrays the suffering of an artist.

Un Condamné à mort s'est échappé(Robert Bresson, 1956)

Did Hitchcock better than Hitchcock.

Good Men, Good Women(Hou Hsiou-hsien, 1995)

How personal and cultural history, experiences, environments influence ones choice.

Three Times(Hou Hsiou-hsien, 2005)

A film about language. The language of love, the languages of art...

La Gueule ouverte(Maurice Pialat, 1974)

The fleeting moments that seem inhumane are in actual fact very human.

A Woman Under the Influence(John Cassavetes, 1974)

Like Dostoevsky, seems to know the deepest parts of our hearts.

Andrei Rublev(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)

A film where time, space and the environment are the co protagonists.

Mirror(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974)

Cinema that is independent, that can stand on its own two feet. A cinema that references only life.

L'Eclisse(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)

When you love the idea of love.

Tokyo Story(Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)

Ahead of its time. Timeless.

Kim Dorman

Kim Dorman is a writer and bookseller living in Austin, Texas.

(in no particular order)

Four Faces West(Alfred E. Green, 1948)
On Dangerous Ground(Nicholas Ray, 1952)
All That Heaven Allows(Douglas Sirk, 1955)
El Bruto(Luis Buñuel, 1952)
Shadow of a Doubt(Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)
The Southerner(Jean Renoir, 1945)
Jeux interdits(René Clément, 1952)
The River's Edge(Allan Dwan, 1957)
Small Deaths(Lynne Ramsay, 1996)
The Postman(Satyajit Ray, 1961)

These are the films I've been living with lately, each one a continual surprise. Of course, my final Top Ten would include Ozu, Ford, Tarkovsky, Chaplin, Keaton, Murnau, Dreyer, Bresson, Kurosawa, Mizoguchi and Bergman. But that's eleven.

Michael Dow

Michael Vincent Dow is a PhD candidate at New York University currently working on a dissertation about cartoons.

(My favourite Americans, in non-specific order)

Way Out West(James W. Horne, 1937)

Impeccable surrealist Laurel and Hardy comedy.

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

The contrast between the musical numbers “The Boy Next Door” and “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” is one of cinema’s starkest. Judy Garland’s performance is a tour de force of quiet desperation.

Detour(Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

A man’s fate is his character…

Sleepy-Time Tom(Joseph Hanna and William Barbera, 1951)

A “Tom & Jerry” cartoon: masterful anthropomorphic pantomime. With its depictions of transgressive violence and suburban anxieties, the “Tom & Jerry” series is shamefully undervalued.

Who’s Minding the Store?(Frank Tashlin, 1963)

Tashlin may have been America’s greatest visualist, while Jerry Lewis embodied the dark, gooey insides of the modern American “male”.

Seconds(John Frankenheimer, 1966)

Sirkian science fiction.

Report(Bruce Conner, 1967)

Historiographic avant-garde.

Head(Bob Rafelson, 1968)

The anti-A Hard Day’s Night, a trance film for 12-year olds, a pop nihilist manifesto. Great songs.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre(Tobe Hooper, 1974)

Seeing is believing.

Three Women(Robert Altman, 1977)

The fall-out of first-wave feminism, seen through the lens of an inquisitive American master.

Anna Duggan

Anna Duggan is a part-time film studies student and full time student of life. She currently writes film musings for www.londonlostandfound.com and www.britmovie.co.uk. She loves films where nothing happens and has a passion for social realism and little known gems.

(in no particular order, apart from the top three, and chosen by heart rather than head)

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning(Karel Reisz, 1960)
Local Hero(Bill Forsyth, 1983)
Wonderland(Michael Winterbottom, 1999)
The Philadelphia Story(George Cukor, 1940)
De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté(Jacques Audiard, 2005)
Before Sunrise(Richard Linklater, 1995)
Three Colours: Red(Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)
Taxi Driver(Martin Scorsese, 1976)
In the Mood for Love(Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)
Annie Hall(Woody Allen, 1977)

Honorable mentions: The entire filmography of Ken Loach, who is by far my favourite director. I gave up trying to pick one film above all others. Proof (Jocelyn Moorhouse, 1991) and Made in Hong Kong (Fruit Chan, 1997) were close runners. Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986) and The Doberman Gang (Byron Chudnow, 1972), for purely sentimental reasons.

Angel González

Angel González is 36 and lives in Asturias, Spain. He is a chemist by profession and a film lover in all sincerity.

(in chronological order)

It's a Wonderful Life(Frank Capra, 1946)
The Third Man(Carol Reed, 1949)
The River(Jean Renoir, 1951)
The Quiet Man(John Ford, 1952)
Tokyo Story(Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Rio Bravo(Howard Hawks, 1959)
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly(Sergio Leone, 1966)
Dersu Uzala(Akira Kurosawa, 1974)
Pale Rider(Clint Eastwood, 1985)

Top five runners-up: Unconquered (Cecil B. DeMille, 1947), To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan, 1962), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Billy Wilder, 1970), Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994), L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997).

Dan Kamandi

Dan Kamandi is a film student at the University of Kansas. He's interning for a commercial company and currently writing a screenplay, hoping to break into the film industry.

The Masque of the Red Death(Roger Corman, 1964)

Roger Corman and Vincent Price in the finest mood dish fit for a king an independent studio ever produced on Gothic horror. For my money it even trumped anything the major studios put out.

The Elephant Man(David Lynch, 1980)

If this film doesn't hit you in the gut you simply ain't livin'. Beautiful black & white photography and an industrial nightmare-scape set design contribute to a Lynchian trip through hell, and believe it or not, redemption.

The Big Lebowski(Joel Coen, 1998)

Sadly underrated. An underground cult phenom.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels(Guy Ritchie, 1998)

Yeah it robbed some inspiration from Pulp Fiction but the Brits can make a freakin' crime movie. And this is the cream of the crop.

Cat People(Jacques Tourneur, 1942)

Awesome psychological horror period piece by the mythical producer Val Lewton. Ditch everything you've ever learnt about the traditional scary movie. This one makes 'em all look silly and it doesn't even spill a drop of blood.

Blow Out(Brian De Palma, 1981)

The champion of the '70s political paranoid thrillers. And about half a dozen other genres all rolled up into one great cheesy enchilada by auteur De Palma.

Hidden Agenda(Ken Loach, 1990)

Ken Loach's masterpiece on the underclass' struggle against oppression.

Narc(Joe Carnahan, 2002)

Riveting depiction of an honest man caught up in the grit and grime of law enforcement. Blows your mind similar to what happens in the film.

The Wanderers(Philip Kaufman, 1979)

You wanna talk about a coming of age film? John Hughes can go fly a kite.

United 93(Paul Greengrass, 2006)

The best film about 9-11 I've seen yet. And I've seen World Trade Center (Oliver Stone, 2006). Bring Kleenex.

Martha P. Nochimson

Martha P. Nochimson's latest book is Screen Couple Chemistry: The Power of 2 (University of Texas Press, 2002), a study of the surprising complication of Hollywood's portrait of intimacy by certain configurations of star images. She is now at work on a book about gangster films in Hollywood and Hong Kong.

(revised list, in chronological order)

Gold Diggers of 1933(Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)
The Thin Man(W. S. Van Dyke, 1934)
Top Hat(Mark Sandrich, 1935)
Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941)
Umberto D.(Vittorio De Sica, 1952)
Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Eraserhead(David Lynch, 1977)
Once Upon a Time in America(Sergio Leone, 1984)
The Mission(Johnnie To, 1999)
In the Mood For Love(Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)

See also Martha's previous list: May 2000

Robert Smyth

Robert Smyth wrote for Nation Review and other newspapers in the 1970s and '80s, predominantly on rock music and pop culture. He declined Richard Neville's invitation to write for the short-lived The Living Daylights magazine, after which Neville refused to speak to him (an unlooked-for bonus). In 1974 he hitch-hiked from Melbourne to Sydney to see a screening of Jules and Jim at Sydney University, leaving at dawn and arriving at 7.45 pm, with 15 minutes to spare.

(revised list)

Au Hasard, Balthazar(Robert Bresson, 1966)

Bresson's symbolism is not subtle, and could so easily descend into bathos. But through its complete sincerity and refusal to beg compassion for the two souls at its centre, his great film reaches its destination in stillness, silence and profound grace.

Blow-Up(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)

The only one of Antonioni’s films in which things actually happen, and where terminal boredom doesn't eventually set in. And thrilling in the '60s, because it was who, and where, we wanted to be.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser(Werner Herzog, 1974)

Fathoms-deep into the intimate detail of consciousness, Herzog shows life as viscerally woven from dreams within dreams. The external world, which he depicts in images of breathless beauty, seems an invention of memory and imagination.

Fahrenheit 451(François Truffaut, 1965)

Stunning evocation of an artificial future. Truffaut had difficulties with English (and with Oskar Werner) but the texture, tone and colour of his most undervalued film are unique, and its redemptive denouement grows more salutary by the year.

Jules et Jim(François Truffaut, 1962)

Unchallengeable as cinema's most lyrical hymn to life. In every sunlit frame lies the terrible transience of love, youth and happiness, the shadow of decay and death. Truffaut's masterpiece, still and forever the greatest film ever made.

The Ladykillers(Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)

Sublime, acidic fable. Every black, disquieting, hilarious moment distills the rare spirit that made Ealing such an enchanted forest in the bleak British '50s.

Les Vacances de M. Hulot(Jacques Tati, 1953)

Massively nostalgic: surely no-one could watch this without becoming a child again. Tati's paean to gentility is the last great silent film – what sound there is seems to come to our ears filtered and ossified by the insistent erosion of time.

To Kill a Mockingbird(Robert Mulligan, 1962)

Wonderfully evocative, touching and decent. Even the occasional flirtation with base melodrama does no damage to its resilient spirit. One of the rare instances of a film achieving equality with its literary source.

Wild Strawberries(Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

As though in spite of himself, Bergman allows sentiment to corrode his studied and distant view of life, just as his aged protagonist discovers that a life of seeming achievement may in fact be fatally chimerical and empty.

Withnail and I(Bruce Robinson, 1986)

Comedy sown thick with the seeds of tragedy; elegiac, bitter and by its ending uplifting and depressing at the same time. Also uncannily true to the flyblown spirit of the late '60s and early '70s.

See also Robert's previous list: Oct-Dec 2004

Dan Sully

Dan Sully is a young promo director working in London. He has worked with artists such as Jehst and Tommy Evans.

(revised list)

Au Hasard, Balthazar(Robert Bresson, 1966)
All or Nothing(Mike Leigh, 2002)
Happy Together(Wong Kar-Wai, 1997)
Punch-Drunk Love(P.T. Anderson, 2002)
Surviving Desire(Hal Hartley, 1991)
The Adjuster(Atom Egoyan, 1991)
Days of Heaven(Terrence Malick, 1978)
Hana-Bi(Takeshi Kitano, 1997)
Nostalghia(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983)
Songs From The Second Floor(Roy Andersson, 2000)

Films that would have made it on another day, had I been in a different mood: The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992), Time of The Gypsies (Emir Kusturica, 1988), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), Man Bites Dog (Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel & Benoît Poelvoorde, 1992).

See also Dan's previous list: Dec 2000-Jan 2001

Mark Wilde

A student in his senior year at Truman State University, Mark Wilde is uncertain about his future although film is his main (and sadly unpursued) passion. He says: “My problem is that I am poor and have never had the money for a camera nor written a screenplay because I think solely in terms of images, thus my film writing ends up with no dialogue and ends up being more akin to prose poetry”.

(revised list, in preferential order)

Dersu Uzala(Akira Kurosawa, 1974)

Nature.

Solaris(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)

Memory.

Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)

Art.

Winter Light(Ingmar Bergman, 1962)

God.

The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, 1957)

Death.

Ikiru(Akira Kurosawa, 1952)

Humanity.

Dog Star Man(Stan Brakhage, 1962-64)

Consciousness.

Fantasia(Ben Sharpsteen, et al, 1940)

Music.

La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc(Carl Dreyer, 1928)

Tragedy.

Modern Times(Charles Chaplin, 1936)

Comedy.

Special mentions: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974), Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976), The Element of Crime (Lars von Trier, 1984), The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004).

See also Mark's previous list: Oct-Dec 2005

Brian Yecies

Brian Yecies is Lecturer of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Wollongong. He researches cinema in colonial Korea and post-colonial South Korea, and secretly wishes someday to be part of a new wave of mockumentary filmmaking.

(in no particular order)

Raising Arizona(Joel Coen, 1987)
A Fistful of Dynamite(Sergio Leone, 1971)
Where the Buffalo Roam(Art Linson, 1980)
Old Boy(Park Chan-wook, 2003)
Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance(Park Chan-wook, 2002)
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence(Nagisa Oshima, 1983)
Diamonds(Menahem Golan, 1975)
Punch-Drunk Love(P.T. Anderson, 2002)
Things Change(David Mamet, 1988)
Forgotten Silver(Costa Botes & Peter Jackson, 1995)

Special mentions: Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999), L'Année Dernière à Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1962), The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998), 1941 (Steven Spielberg, 1979), Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999).

Ricardo Alfán

Ricardo Alfán is from Mexico City. He is not formally a cinema student, studying biotechnological engineering instead, but has been reading, watching and loving cinema since he was 14.

Saló(Pier Paolo Paosilini, 1975)

Daring, strong, a marvelous fusion of Sade, Alighieri and fascism.

The Seventh Seal(Ingmar Bergman, 1956)

A terrific reflection on life and the possibility of nothingness after death. Bergman is absolutely the best director of all time.

8½(Federico Fellini, 1963)

This film shows the infinite possibilities of cinematographic creation.

A Short Film About Killing(Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1987)

Kieslowski, as most of the Polish directors, creates an intelligent story in all ways.

Je vous salue, Marie(Jean-Luc Godard, 1984)

One of his most polemical films.

Faust(Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1926)

Far beyond being a cornerstone in German literature and folklore, Faust is a masterpiece of Expressionism.

Aguirre, The Wrath of God(Werner Herzog, 1979)

Everything that comes from Herzog is art.

The Idiots(Lars von Trier, 1998)

First film of Dogme 95. Technically simple, almost amateur, but delightfully brilliant. The more of an idiot you are, the happier you live.

Eraserhead(David Lynch, 1977)

Amazing, avant-garde.

Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)

“The Last Supper” scene and Handel’s music make for a great satire of Catholicism.

BaHang

BaHang is a slacker from Hong Kong, an enthusiastic IMDB voter and a taxi driver wandering outside the world of cinema.

(in no particular order)

Tokyo Story(Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
Roma (Federico Fellini, 1972)
Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)
Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
L'Année dernière à Marienbad(Alain Resnais, 1961)
Persona(Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
Centre Stage(Stanley Kwan, 1992)
Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)
Ugetsu Monogatari(Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Il Posto(Ermanno Olmi, 1961)

Andrew Clark

Andrew Clark used to work in the movies, but doesn't anymore. A Top Ten list straight from his gut:

The Wizard of Oz(Victor Fleming, 1939)
McCabe and Mrs Miller(Robert Altman, 1971)
The Man Who Fell to Earth(Nicholas Roeg, 1976)
The Godfather(Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
The Godfather, Part II(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
8½(Federico Fellini, 1963)
The Best Years of Our Lives(William Wyler, 1946)
Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941)
My Darling Clementine(John Ford, 1946)
Ugetsu Monogatari(Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)

A lot of these movies have to do with family or home or work and the problems of being a man, subjects important to me. Citizen Kane is a virtuoso display of fun things to do with a camera and a microphone. My Darling Clementine contains an unforgettable portrayal of self-loathing by Victor Mature and is photographically elegant and stunning.

Matthew Clayfield

Matthew Clayfield maintains a weblog in which he writes extensively about film and his own filmmaking.

(revised list)

Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
Sans soleil (Chris Marker, 1983)
Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, 1974)
Barry Lyndon(Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie(John Cassavetes, 1976)
Shoah(Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
The Falls(Peter Greenaway, 1980)
Cries and Whispers(Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
New Rose Hotel(Abel Ferrara, 1999)

Honorable mentions: Un condamné à mort s'est échappé (Bresson, 1956), The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles, 1942), Metropolis (Lang, 1927), Motion Painting No. 1 (Fischinger, 1947), Contempt (Godard, 1963).

See also Matthew's previous lists: Apr–June 2004      Apr–June 2005

Anthony Coleman

Anthony Coleman is a composer/keyboardist from New York City whose music is constantly informed by his repressed desire to be a filmmaker.

Belle de Jour(Luis Buñuel, 1967)

The juxtaposition of time levels. The play between real and imagined time. A music made completely out of bells and horse hooves.

La Règle du jeu(Jean Renoir, 1939)

The illusion of the casual, constantly belied by devastatingly observed moments of pitiless focus. And the scene with the mechanical organ...

Touch of Evil(Orson Welles, 1958)

The sound design alone makes this a masterpiece. And then there's the baroque seediness, the delirious cast, the score, Russell Metty ... everything

The Big Heat(Fritz Lang, 1953)

"Keep the coffee hot, Hugo" indeed!

Detour(Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

Surrealism emerging out of the everyday. The inchoate given its voice. Poetry... and the antihero's a pianist!

Weekend(Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

My life was changed by seeing this when I was 12 years old, when it came out. All the events seem to be either too long or too short, which somehow makes them all perfect.

L'Avventura(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)

"She says there's no success like failure. And failure's no success at all"

The Wind Will Carry Us(Abbas Kiarostami, 1999)

He encourages me to keep the faith. To believe that not everything has been said. To think about how the return to narrative forms can be informed by all of the radical work that was done in the past. To continue to explore the mise en abîme.

Autumn Afternoon(Yasujiro Ozu, 1962)

How can something made up of such seemingly trivial moments be so perfectly observed?

Strangers on a Train(Alfred Hitchcock, 1951)

Maybe it's not his greatest, but the long cross-cutting scene with the tennis match is an unmatchable piece of rhythmic composition.

And this list is incomplete without Sirk, Fuller, Ford...and I'm mourning Imamura.

David Ehrenstein

David Ehrenstein is the author of Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-2000 (Harper, 2000), The Scorsese Picture (Birch Lane Press, 1992) and Film: The Front Line 1984 (Arden Press, 1984). His essays have appeared in Film Comment and Film Quarterly. He participated in the roundtable discussion “Obscure Objects of Desire” with Raymond Durgnat and Jonathan Rosenbaum in Film Comment (July–August 1978). Visit www.ehrensteinland.com.

(revised list)

Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train(Patrice Chéreau, 1998)
8½(Federico Fellini, 1963)
The Night of the Hunter(Charles Laughton, 1955)
La Commune (de Paris, 1871)(Peter Watkins, 2000)
Un condamné à mort s'est échappé(Robert Bresson, 1956)
Lola Montès(Max Ophuls, 1955)
The Red Shoes(Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1949)
Duelle(Jacques Rivette, 1976)
La Cicatrice intérieure(Philippe Garrel, 1972)
Che cosa sono le nuvole?(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)

See also David's previous lists: Jul–Aug 2002      Apr–June 2004

Jessica Felrice

Jessica Felrice received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Cinema Studies from New York University. She is 29 and lives in New York City.

(in no particular order)

Vivre sa Vie(Jean-Luc Godard, 1962)

When I was younger I found identification in regard to the present tense of my life; now my identification is with time passed and time lost.

Celine et Julie vont en bateau(Jacques Rivette, 1974)

Narratively fascinating and resonant to me as a female spectator. This film instils hope in the idea of a female-directed gaze; accomplishing this with much visual pleasure.

Viaggio in Italia(Roberto Rossellini, 1954)

Heartbreakingly warm yet fatalist. Modernist yet classical.

Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Madeleine, Judy, whatever her name is; she is the ultimate blank screen onto which desire can be projected.

Les Quatre cents coup(François Truffaut, 1959)

My favourite adolescence-as-perserverance (and survival) film.

Black Narcissus(Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Beautiful saturated coluor and intriguing female archetypes.

The Age of Innocence(Michael Scorsese, 1993)

Beautiful saturated colour, one of the best scores ever; a film about stillness and time passed.

Rosemary's Baby(Roman Polanski, 1968)

A new favourite. For me it is the most completely enjoyable, fantastic and coherent film about the fears and horrors of motherhood and pregnancy.

Millennium Mambo(Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)

I love Vicky like I love Vivre sa Vie's Nana.

Mouchette(Robert Bresson, 1967)

Dead-on in terms of tone and character, yet it depicts a transcendence in suffering.

I struggled to leave out: Nuit et brouillard (Alain Resnais, 1955) - not always an appropriate re-watch. Other runners up: Ms .45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981) - BEFORE Lady Vengeance; Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973) - my earliest favourite, and my latest - L'Intrus (Claire Denis, 2005).

Anthony Foglia

Anthony Foglia is a no-budget videomaker, struggling online writer and obsessive collector of obscure films on video. He is currently working on a book titled, “The New Cinema.”

(in no particular order)

Branded to Kill(Seijun Suzuki, 1967)
Sins of the Fleshapoids(Mike Kuchar, 1965)
Lucifer Rising(Kenneth Anger, 1972)
Inferno(Dario Argento, 1980)
The Flower Thief(Ron Rice, 1960)
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!(Russ Meyer, 1965)
Shock Corridor(Samuel Fuller, 1963)
All That Heaven Allows(Douglas Sirk, 1955)
Vivian(Bruce Conner, 1965)
Blood Feast(Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1963)

Isobel Knowles

Isobel Knowles is an Australian artist and animator and plays in Architecture in Helsinki.

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg(Jacques Demy, 1964)
Une Femme est une Femme(Jean-Luc Godard, 1961)
Mulholland Drive(David Lynch, 2001)
Punch-Drunk Love(P.T. Anderson, 2002)
Pretty in Pink(John Hughes, 1986)
Branded to Kill(Seijun Suzuki, 1967)
Sin City(Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez, 2005)
Spirited Away(Hayao Miyazaki, 2002)
Playtime(Jacques Tati, 1967)
The Dark Crystal(Jim Henson, 1982)

Hwanhee Lee

Hwanhee Lee has written for Senses of Cinema.

(revised list, in no particular order)

Days of Heaven(Terrence Malick, 1978)
Tokyo Story(Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
Barry Lyndon(Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
L'Argent(Robert Bresson, 1983)
Funny Face(Stanley Donen, 1957)
L'Enfant sauvage(François Truffaut, 1969)
To Live(Zhang Yimou, 1994)
It's a Wonderful Life(Frank Capra, 1946)
Ikiru(Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
Groundhog Day(Harold Ramis, 1993)

See also Hwanhee's previous list: Mar-Apr 2003

Nathan Lee

Nathan Lee reviews movies for The New York Times and is a contributing editor to Film Comment.

Amor(Robert Beavers, 1980)

Sublime economy.

Au Hasard Balthazar(Robert Bresson, 1966)

I like animals.

Crash(David Cronenberg, 1996)

Inexhaustible.

The Docks of New York(Josef von Sternberg, 1928)

The light…

Duelle(Jacques Rivette, 1976)

En (avant) garde!

Flowers of Shanghai(Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998)

The inscrutable Asian love child of Vertigo and Barry Lyndon.

North by Northwest(Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)

The genius of the system.

Pootie Tang(Louis C.K., 2001)

I’ve seen it twenty times.

Rio Bravo(Howard Hawks, 1959)

Purple light in the canyon.

Sauve qui peut (la vie)(Jean-Luc Godard, 1980)

Or Le Petit soldat or Alphaville or 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle or France/tour/detour/deux/enfants or Histoire(s) du cinéma or Allemagne 90 neuf zéro or JLG/JLG or Notre Musique.

Plus: the films of Andy Warhol, 1963-1966.

Nils Lian

Nils Lian is a 20 year old film student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and a Chilephile.

(in no particular order)

2001: A Space Odyssey(Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
L'Année dernière à Marienbad(Alain Resnais, 1961)
8½(Federico Fellini, 1963)
Mon Oncle(Jacques Tati, 1958)
Songs from the Second Floor(Roy Andersson, 2000)
Jules et Jim(François Truffaut, 1962)
Happiness(Todd Solondz, 1998)
La Notte(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961)
Rashômon(Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
Eternity and a Day(Theo Angelopoulos, 1998)

Special mentions: Jakten (Erik Løchen, 1959), North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959), Eraserhead (David Lynch, 1977), Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979), The Fearless Vampire Killers (Roman Polanski, 1967).

Christian McCrea

Christian McCrea is completing a PhD in Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne. He has published and presented works on film history, shock cinema, pornography, anime, computer games, new media, the occult, the cinematic threat, film philosophy and many other things he doesn't understand.

Making "The Shining"(Vivian Kubrick, 1980)

Now secured forever as a DVD extra to the notoriously detached film, Vivian Kubrick catalogues the emotional and physical abuse that her husband and Nicholson pour onto Shelley Duvall. Her systematic breakdown and the intensity of their sexually-marked scorn gives the darkness in the film a breathtaking clarity.

The Duellists(Ridley Scott, 1977)

Although Scott has since done immeasurable harm to cinema, nothing can approach the instant where the clouds break with streaming light, and Harvey Keitel knows he has absolutely become his character. A few seconds long, but indisputably epochal.

Sorcerer(William Friedkin, 1977)

Largely interpreted as a re-imagining of Wages of Fear, Sorcerer's glaring continuity errors and an uneven musical score cannot mar the sheer force that the film exudes. The horrors of production are visible on the deteriorating face of the impossibly macho Roy Schneider.

Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed(Lotte Reineger, 1926)

The sensation of shadow puppetry produced some fine films in the 20^th century's infancy, but Charlotte Reineger produced a work that was true to all the mediums on which it drew - film, animation, theatre and fashion. Animation rarely pursues the senses as vividly as it did here.

Der Lauf der Dinge(Peter Fischli and David Weiss, 1987)

Half an hour of pure amazement; film dragged kicking and screaming in science's wake, set on fire, doused with acid, spun in a centrifuge and spat out as ash. A sequence of physical reactions and motions that border on the meditative.

Vampire's Kiss(Robert Bierman, 1989)

A berserk trainwreck of a film, putting a pre-Scientology Nicholas Cage into the role of a delusional serial rapist and probable vampire. The misogyny implicit in the character can only be described as vast and terrifying in an otherwise witty black comedy. Nicely bridges the executive comedies of the '80s with the loner tragedies of the '90s, both of which usually starred a Jeff or Beau ... Bridges.

Excalibur(John Boorman, 1981)

A deeply unpopular film for good reason, but the excesses of film culture and the odd commingling of nepotism and corrupt production meant that the resultant film is permeated with a dense emotionality. Boorman's most excessive films are his most brilliant, the subtlety in Excalibur killed an entire film genre, surpassing the equally weird Zardoz and Emerald Forest in its monastic devotion to facial tics and character mania.

Cobra Verde(Werner "Fucking" Herzog, 1987)

"Who are these women? They are our future murderesses." Since it is unclear whether or not Herzog can be killed by conventional weapons (see: recently shot in the stomach during a BBC interview, interrupted with only "it does not hurt much."), it bears avoiding his wrath and including him in any film canon. Kinski is exploded, melted down and spread onto celluloid. Unhinged and delicate in ways that the epics Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre cannot afford to be.

The Exterminating Angel(Luis Buñuel, 1962)

During filming, Buñuel smeared honey on the hands of the actors to make them uncomfortable. That, alone, is enough.

The Changeling(Peter Medak, 1980)

Perhaps a sentimental favourite, but in many ways a more frightening film than The Exorcist, on whose coattails it quite plainly rode into existence. George C. Scott himself appears close to death in bizarrely paced research sequences that produce no narrative. Under the right conditions, this is one of the most emotionally devastating films ever made, at other times completely forgettable. Therefore: brilliant.

An honorary mention must go to The Snowman by Dianne Jackson in 1982, based on Raymond Briggs' illustrated book. If you maintain emotional ballast during its 26 minutes, then report to the nearest police station. You are clearly a serial killer. Also: The Story of Ricki; The Ipcress File; Winter Light; The Tenderness of Wolves; Young Torless; Notre Musique; most things directed by, starring, in reference to or rhyming with, Werner "Fucking" Herzog.

Gene McHugh

Gene McHugh is a graduate of NYU's film program and currently earns a living editing video. He lives in Washington, DC.

Last Summer(Frank Perry, 1968)
Martin(George A. Romero, 1977)
Celine et Julie vont en bateau(Jacques Rivette, 1974)
Gummo(Harmony Korine, 1997)
The New World(Terrence Malick, 2005)
Flesh(Paul Morrisey, 1968)
House(Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)
Edvard Munch(Peter Watkins, 1976)
Carrie(Brian De Palma, 1976)
Bully(Larry Clark, 2001)

Honorable Mentions: Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001) and The Peanut Butter Solution (Michael Rubbo, 1985).

Miljenko Skoknic

Miljenko Skoknic comes from Chile and currently attends the MFA in Cinema at San Francisco State University. His secret desire is to shoot a movie with a crappy camera and say it's HD (and have non-tech viewers buying it). He also writes for the Chilean film journal La Fuga.

(in Fibonacci order)

0. The Top of the Whale(Raúl Ruiz, 1982)

When communist millionaire Narcisso Cambos (Fernando Bordeu) finds his getaway home a mess, he throws the best multilingual fit ever.

1. House by the Cemetery(Lucio Fulci, 1981)

When the little boy warns Mom not to go to the house by the cemetery because a photograph tells him so, well...it's cinema at its most condensed.

1. Seeking Asylum(Marco Ferreri, 1979)

When kindergarten teacher Benigni takes his pupils, unannounced, on a field trip to visit their parents at a local factory has to be the greatest mise en abîme of late capitalism EVER.

2. La Grande Bouffe(Marco Ferreri, 1973)

Mastroianni dies the saddest screen death since the Godfather III.

3. My Neighbor Totoro(Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)

If only we learned to take care of the Earth, we'd live like this, dancing with the spirits of the forest and hitching rides on Catbuses.

5. Viridiana(Luis Buñuel, 1961)

Charity in crisis.

8. Lost Highway(David Lynch, 1997)

I've seen the cell phone scene with Robert Blake happen in real life (really, I swear).

13. Branded to Kill(Seijun Suzuki, 1967)

I've never wanted more badly to throw out the window all I know about films than when the gangster tosses a tiny molotov inside a huge bunker, and we immediately cut to the whole massive structure aflame like the Great London Fire.

21. Alphaville(Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

- Qu'est-ce qui transforme la nuit en lumière?

- La poésie.

34. Conversation Piece(Luchino Visconti, 1974)

The most enigmatically photographed film ever made. Its images will lie dormant in your mind until you're old, locked in a home, and suddenly it will all come back to you.

These films are imperfect, but they contain the flame that keeps films alive and trembling. New modes of cinematic expressions are hidden in the formal murkiness of these movies; on the other hand, I also take pride in finding lesser films awesome and indispensable.

Not to be forgotten: Tarkovsky, Chaplin, Malick, Scorsese, Fellini, Vigo, Murnau, Lang, Powell (and Pressburger), Beresford, Ford, Hitchcock, Fassbinder, Antonioni, Donen, Melville, Kazan, Welles, Penn, Miyazaki, Altman, Peckinpah, Spielberg, Godard, Griffith, Coppola, Lean, Szabó, Sirk, Kalatozov, Kubrick, Ray, Wilder, Clouzot, Keaton, Wyler, Aronofsky, Chabrol, Cocteau, Roeg, Forman, Laughton, Huston, Zhang, Herzog, Hawks, Sluizer, Morris, Wenders, etc. etc…

Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.

- Ingmar Bergman

Peter Tonguette

Peter Tonguette has written on film for a variety of publications, including Senses of Cinema, The Film Journal, Bright Lights Film Journal, and 24fps Magazine.

For this revision, I have limited myself to one film per director.

(revised list, in alphabetical order)

Chimes at Midnight(Orson Welles, 1965)
Le beau mariage(Eric Rohmer, 1982)
Bringing Up Baby(Howard Hawks, 1938)
Darling Lili(Blake Edwards, 1970)
The Human Factor(Otto Preminger, 1979)
The Leopard(Luchino Visconti, 1963)
My Son John(Leo McCarey, 1952)
Rear Window(Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
Stars in My Crown(Jacques Tourneur, 1950)
The Sun Shines Bright(John Ford, 1953)

See also Peter's previous lists: Jul–Sept 2004      Jan–Feb 2003

Tero Vainio

Tero Vainio is a film critic for the daily newspaper Kaleva in Finland.

What I'm looking for above all is Vision with a capital ‘V’. Here's a sample of some of the best:

Days of Heaven(Terrence Malick, 1978)
In the Mood for Love(Wong Kar-wai, 2000)
Three Colours: Red(Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1994)
The Elephant Man(David Lynch, 1980)
Black Narcissus(Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
Ashes and Diamonds(Andrzej Wajda, 1958)
A Blonde in Love(Milos Forman, 1965)
The Conversation(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Four Friends(Arthur Penn, 1981)
The Sweet Hereafter(Atom Egoyan, 1997)

Jared Demick

Jared Demick is a passionate lover of cinema in all its forms and is currently studying film.

Here's my personal and totally subjective list:

Casablanca(Michael Curtiz)

All the attributes of Hollywood, none of the flaws.

The Sweet Hereafter(Atom Egoyan, 1997)

A devastating examination of grief and the ways in which we come to terms with tragedy.

Paris, Texas(Wim Wenders, 1983)

A touching story of reconciling with one's past and the greatest movie about the American road ever (and it was made by a German).

The Piano(Jane Campion, 1993)

A story of intense passion and aching loneliness filled with tangible images of savage beauty.

Raging Bull(Martin Scorsese, 1980)

Shouldn't this be on everyone's list?

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)

A heartbreaking portrayal of how society crushes the individual.

Blazing Saddles(Mel Brooks, 1974)

Crude, but intelligent. Infectiously fun yet morally outraged. In a movie Hollywood wouldn't have the guts to make anymore, Brooks takes aim at racism and the silliness of movie conventions.

8½(Federico Fellini, 1963)

An ode to the possibilities of cinema.

Before Sunrise/Before Sunset(Richard Linklater, 1995 and 2004)

A pair of unpretentious and life-affirming films that investigate the joys of connecting with another human being and the cruelties of fate.

Ikiru(Akira Kurosawa, 1952)

An inspiring tale of courage in the face of death.

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is the Top Ten editor for Senses of Cinema. Library worker bee by day, she was the founding editor of FIEND Magazine (2003-2006), has had her music journalism appear in print publications in both Australia and the UK and is completing her Masters in Cinema Studies at Melbourne's LaTrobe University.

(in no particular order)

A Pure Formality(Giuseppe Tornatore, 1994)

The film that not only proves Polanksi is as impressive in front of the camera as he is behind it, it also is owed perhaps the Greatest Debt of All by American thrillers and horror films from The Sixth Sense onwards.

Valley of the Dolls(Mark Robson, 1967)

This ludicrously psychedelic she-binge epic in all of its glorious lurid colour punches my eyes in the guts every time.

Dellamorte Dellamore(Michele Soavi, 1994)

My favourite Italian zombie film - a big call, but picks off where Fulci's The Beyond left me secretly wanting more…

Beauty #2(Andy Warhol, 1965)

Edie Sedgwick crystallizes time.

Epidemic(Lars von Trier, 1987)

A toss up between this and - at least - the second Riget and the documentary, The Five Obstructions. Damn his diabolically enchanting perversity!

Night of Fear(Terry Bourke, 1972)

Hard to pick a favourite Australian horror film because from Body Melt to Wolf Creek, it's just something that we do darned well. This is the infamous Terry Bourke's finest offering, a frenzy of saturated violence and one of the best gimmicks the genre has offered to this day.

Kind Hearts and Coronets(Robert Hamer, 1949)

The only thing better than Alec Guinness playing an unhinged character in an Ealing comedy is Alec Guinness playing multiple unhinged characters in an Ealing comedy. My never-fail comfort film, and possibly the darkest of the lot.

Alice(Jan Svankmajer, 1988)

Fairy tale as political metaphor rarely is used with such a perfect rhythm of restraint and aggression as Svankmajer manages, and that his films are so beautiful makes it impossible for him not to have a significant place in this list. Alice defaults as my favourite simply because it was the first Svankmajer I saw (thus the one with the most impact), but of course both Faust, Little Otik and a generous handful of shorts also get big claps.

Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers(Dwight H. Little, 1988)

The best American horror film since its heyday in the 1970s. Few people outside of fan circles saw it after the postmodern frenzy that was the third of the franchise, but this movie indicates that the dominance of psychoanalysis over horror criticism is not to be as readily assumed as it has in the past.

Mothlight(Stan Brakhage, 1963)

Dear friends,
Please form an orderly queue and view this film. Those that get it - tea and sandwiches are currently on offer. Those that don't - sorry, but I think it's time we see other people…

There is, of course, the seemingly obligatory mention of could-have-beens: mine would include (but not be limited to) Fuller's Shock Corridor, Koster's Harvey, Lang's Dr Mabuse's Testament, the remakes of both Willard and The Hills Have Eyes (both spectacularly superior films in and of themselves, and certainly in comparison to their predecessors), Curtiz's Mildred Pierce, Welles' The Trial, Anderson's Session 9, Greenaway's 26 Bathrooms, Antonioni's Blow Up, Greg McLean's Wolf Creek, Fellini's 8 1/2, Argento's Stendhal Syndrome and Deep Red, Polanski's Repulsion and finally my favourite Betty Boop cartoon, Betty In Blunderland.

Clifford Hilo

Clifford Hilo is 21. He lives in San Diego and he wants to party like the half-Filipino part of Prince.

Bloodsport(Newt Arnold, 1988)

With Jean Claude Van Damme (or Best of The Best). Because I grew up in America, I was always jealous that I never grew up in Hong Kong for the full Bruce Lee chop-socky feel.

The Purple Rose of Cairo(Woody Allen, 1985)

The girl I first fell in love with showed this movie to me on a leather couch. “Hit it, Arturo!”

Mouchette(Robert Bresson, 1967)

My favourite scene in this film is the bumper car sequence. Ah, agony and ecstasy at the same time.

Take Care of My Cat(Jae-Eun Jeong, 2001)

This movie is so underappreciated. Jeong comes closer to Ozu than Hou Hsiao-hsien ever will.

Gummo(Harmony Korine 1997)

The best scene ever: lifting silverware to Madonna's Like a Prayer. A dirty limerick poem.

Nashville(Robert Altman, 1975)

I woke up very early one morning to watch this very long movie, and by the end, I believed in American movies.

The Pornographers(Shohei Imamura, 1966)

Whenever you think the Japanese might be a little too daffy, just remember that Imamura set the standards.

La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc(Carl Dreyer, 1928)

When I watched this movie, it was like watching my favorite Smiths song put to pictures.

All That Heaven Allows(Douglas Sirk, 1955)

My favourite scene is when you can see Jane Wyman's reflection on her new television. I don't know about you, lady, but TVs were pretty damn nice to have back then.

Roseanne(Television series, 1988 - 1997)

The television series - it's not a movie, whatever. I don't care. So what if it's not Berlin Alexanderplatz or Dekalogue! It's just the best damned American sitcom ever created.

Others: Batman: The Animated Series, Tom and Jerry cartoons, Vive L'amour, Mat i Syn, Next of Kin. Lots of others.

Ian Kay

Ian Kay recently completed an MA in the Media Arts at Emerson College.

We all know and love the big European and Asian directors and some of the more ‘artful’ English language directors (Hitchcock, Kubrick). But let's not forget some of the other wonderful characters and stories… those that have emerged from Hollywood, then and now.

42nd Street(Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
Barton Fink(Coen Brothers, 1991)
Bombshell(Victor Fleming, 1933)
Casino(Martin Scorsese, 1995)
Fight Club(David Fincher, 1999)
Libeled Lady(Jack Conway, 1936)
Scarface(Howard Hawks, 1932)
The Thin Man(W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)
To Be or Not to Be(Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
Winchester '73(Anthony Mann, 1950)

Josue Lopez

Josue Lopez is a 17-year-old student, writer, musician, and cinema enthusiast from Los Angeles, California.

(in alphabetical order)

L’avventura(Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
Cet Obscur Objet du Désir(Luis Buñuel, 1977)
Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941)
La Dolce Vita(Federico Fellini, 1960)
Pather Panchali(Satyajit Ray, 1955)
Sciuscià(Vittorio De Sica, 1946)
Shoah(Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
The Third Man(Carol Reed, 1949)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre(John Huston, 1948)
Mirror(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)

Ah, cinema. Despite my disapproval of list-making and film-ranking, I cannot deny that I have done much of both in my day. Let me first express my grief from not including the works of Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Bresson, Bertolucci, Griffith, Renoir, Truffaut, Allen, Eisenstein, Altman, Chaplin, Murnau, Keaton, Kieslowski, Kiarostami, Herzog, Lang, Godard, Wenders, Fassbinder and Tati; ten films is indeed a severe limitation. As for the films I did mention, I admittedly included no terribly obscure titles. Regardless of any future changes to the list, I can confidently say that each of these ten films embodies my criteria for a great work of cinema.

David MacGregor

David MacGregor is a frustrated public servant/film aficionado who spends an inordinate amount of time day-dreaming. Currently resides in Gatineau, QC.

Making a top ten list is an arduous, albeit pleasant, process. The following ten films have had a lasting impact.

(in no particular order)

Apocalypse Now Redux(Francis Ford Coppola, 1979/2001)
Akira(Katsuhiro Ôtomo, 1988)
Seven Samurai(Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
Ran(Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
Princess Mononoke(Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
Empire Strikes Back(Irvin Kershner, 1980)
THX 1138(George Lucas, 1971)
The Big Lebowski(Joel Coen, 1998)
Close Encounters of the Third Kind(Steven Spielberg, 1977)
Rushmore(Wes Anderson, 1998)

No list would be complete without including the collected works of Terrence Malick, Wes Anderson, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Kitano Takeshi, Suzuki Seijun, Miyazaki Hayao, Misumi Kenji, and Kurosawa Akira. I would add the Lone Wolf and Cub series, Fukasaku Kinji's Yakuza Papers series, Hanzo the Razor series, the Star Wars original trilogy and a million other films. Vive le cinema!

Lucas McNelly

Lucas McNelly runs the film collective 'd press Productions' and has been reviewing films in various forms for five years. Several of his recent reviews have appeared in The Wissahickon and are archived on his blog.

Dekalog(Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1989)
Casablanca(Michael Curtiz, 1942)
Scenes From a Marriage(Ingmar Bergman, 1973)
Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941)
The Godfather, Part II(Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Metropolis(Fritz Lang, 1927)
Les Enfants du Paradise(Marcel Carne, 1945)
Rear Window(Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)
Annie Hall(Woody Allen, 1977)
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb(Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

Eli Rarey

Eli Rarey is a film student at the University of Southern California, studying directing. He is also a writer and actor.

(in no particular order)

The Yellow Submarine(George Dunning, 1968)
Lawrence of Arabia(David Lean, 1962)
Touch of Evil(Orson Welles, 1958)
Andrei Rublev(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969)
Les Parapluies de Cherbourg(Jacques Demy, 1964)
Blue(Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1993)
Empire of the Sun(Steven Spielberg, 1987)
Fight Club(David Fincher, 1999)
Wild at Heart(David Lynch, 1990)
The Wizard of Oz(Victor Fleming, 1939)

Also let us not forget Wong Kar-Wai and The Goonies on DVD with cast commentary, an entirely different film to the original.

William Schmalz

William Schmalz is a Californian architect and long-time serious student of film.

(in approximate order of preference)

2001: A Space Odyssey(Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

The film that taught me that movies could be art.

The Wild Bunch(Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

The Great American Movie? Maybe.

North by Northwest(Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)

Demonstrates that a film can be enormously entertaining AND deeply profound.

Citizen Kane(Orson Welles, 1941)

Yes, it is great cinema, but it's also a lot of fun.

The Godfather(Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

The best Oscar-winning best picture ever.

Rear Window(Alfred Hitchcock, 1954)

The closest thing to a perfect film.

Once Upon a Time in the West(Sergio Leone, 1969)

No one used the wide screen better than Leone here.

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb(Stanley Kubrick, 1963)

Another film that is close to perfection – not a single frame that doesn't belong.

Days of Heaven(Terrence Malick, 1978)

See it in 70mm and you will know why I put it here.

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

One of the most joyous of films, but it still makes me cry whenever I see it.

On another day, any of these films could have made the list: The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa); Psycho (Hitchcock); Chinatown (Roman Polanski); The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford); Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir); Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks); Vertigo (Hitchcock). Unfortunately there's no room for so many other greats: Casablanca (Curtiz); Playtime (Tati); The Deer Hunter (Cimino); The Seventh Seal (Bergman); The Third Man (Reed); The Treasure of Sierra Madre (Huston); The Battle of Algiers (Pontecorvo); The Conversation (Coppola).

Cameron Stallones

Cameron Stallones is a filmmaker and writer in Los Angeles. He is pursuing a career in film archiving, and has worked with the Center for Visual Music on the new Oskar Fischinger: Ten Films DVD.

As I sat down to attempt to make this list, I decided to do it quickly and with as much honesty and gut reaction as I could (I have a tendency to try to round out these lists with diversity that might not accurately portray my feelings). I was rather disturbed with the results: a list almost entirely American, and almost entirely from the 1970s. An indisputably great time for cinema, but this list is not at all what I would have predicted it to be. Looking back at it, however, I do feel that it accurately portrays the things I like most about cinema. They seem to be in some sort of order, but I'll be darned if I can figure out what it is.

Mean Streets(Martin Scorsese, 1973)
Manhattan(Woody Allen , 1979)
Medium Cool(Haskell Wexler, 1969)
Sherman's March(Ross Mckelwee, 1986)
Tokyo Drifter(Seijun Suzuki, 1966)
Archangel(Guy Maddin, 1990)
Nashville(Robert Altman, 1975)
2001: A Space Odyssey(Stanley Kubrik, 1968)
Andrei Rublev(Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
8½(Federico Fellini, 1963)

Gene Tagliabue

Gene Tagliabue, 25, recently finished studying Sustainability Science and Cultural Studies at the Australian National University and enjoys making short films in his spare time.

(in no particular order)

Festen(Thomas Vinterberg, 1998)

The victim of abuse is cast out by the rest of the family for threatening their myth of loving solidarity. There's just enough absurdist humor to make this tragic situation bearable.

Kiss Me Deadly(Robert Aldrich, 1955)

I limited myself to one classic noir and nearly chose Gun Crazy or T-Men instead.

Lilja 4-ever(Lukas Moodysson, 2002)

An exhausting experience.

Videodrome(David Cronenberg, 1983)

Max Renn's body responds violently to the forces of society, technology and the unconscious mind and is far from a natural given.

Ma nuit chez Maud(Eric Rohmer, 1969)

My favourite “realist” director. I could have chosen almost any of his Six Moral Tales.

Pursued(Raoul Walsh, 1947)

Capturing the Friedmans(Andrew Jarecki, 2003)

It Happened One Night(Frank Capra, 1934)

Imitation of Life(Douglas Sirk, 1959)

In the Bedroom(Todd Field, 2001)

I tried to choose movies that really pack an emotional punch, which is why there's so much trauma and melodrama in many of them. Other titles that nearly made the cut include Hud (Martin Ritt, 1963), The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973), Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946) and Sunrise (F. W. Murnau, 1927).

Jeremy Waters

Jeremy Waters, 19, is a bum and movie lover from Utah.

(in alphabetical order unless otherwise noted)

Dekalog(Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1988)
Crimes and Misdemeanors(Woody Allen, 1989)
The Seventh Seal(Ingmar Bergman, 1957)
Il Giardino dei Finzi-Contini(Vittorio de Sica, 1970)
L'Histoire d'Adèle H.(François Truffaut, 1975)
My Dinner With Andre(Louis Malle, 1981)
Ma Nuit Chez Maud(Eric Rohmer, 1969)
La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc(Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
Picnic at Hanging Rock(Peter Weir, 1975)
Rashomon(Akira Kurosawa, 1950)

Not to be forgotten: Tarkovsky, Chaplin, Malick, Scorsese, Fellini, Vigo, Murnau, Lang, Powell (and Pressburger), Beresford, Ford, Hitchcock, Fassbinder, Antonioni, Donen, Melville, Kazan, Welles, Penn, Miyazaki, Altman, Peckinpah, Spielberg, Godard, Griffith, Coppola, Lean, Szabó, Sirk, Kalatozov, Kubrick, Ray, Wilder, Clouzot, Keaton, Wyler, Aronofsky, Chabrol, Cocteau, Roeg, Forman, Laughton, Huston, Zhang, Herzog, Hawks, Sluizer, Morris, Wenders, etc. etc…

Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to pour emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.

– Ingmar Bergman

Daisuke Akasaka

Daisuke Akasaka is a film critic who runs a cineclub in Tokyo and the website “New Century New Cinema”. Co-publications include Manoel de Oliveira and Portuguese Cinema (E/M Books).

(in no particular order)

Die Nordkalotte(Peter Nestler, 1991)

Probably Nestler knows perfect frame kills sound. He is the greatest image-sound filmmaker.

Northern Song(Koichi Onishi, 1997)

A man returns to his native town in Hokkaido. The most beautiful and neglected of Japanese films in the 1990s. B/W fix shots, mise en scène, direct sounds are all splendid.

Der Tod des Empedokles(Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, 1987)

This film has two climaxes, like Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958). I take this one instead of Hitchcock's film.

Rite of Spring(Manoel de Oliveira, 1963)
Viaggio in Italia(Roberto Rossellini, 1953)
Two Rode Together(John Ford, 1961)
The Wedding March(Erich von Stroheim, 1928)
Talking to Strangers(Rob Tregenza, 1988)

Draw the Line of Flight(Kunitoshi Manda, 1984)

One of the greatest independent Japanese films of the 1980s (another is maybe Vertigo College by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (1981)). Shot on Super 8 and an unforgettable pure action film, but tragically it's lost.

King Lear(Jean-Luc Godard, 1987)

The most playful, cosmic, enjoyable representative of the Nouvelle Vague (shot in English).

I should add too The River (Jean Renoir, 1951), On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1951), Our Century (Artavazd Pelechian, 1983/90), There was a Father (Yasujiro Ozu, 1942), O Sangue (Pedro Costa, 1991), Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1954), Noroit (Jacques Rivette, 1977), Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973), Kochiyama Soshun (Sadao Yamanaka, 1936), Salome (Carmelo Bene, 1972), Branded to Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967), Today We Live (Howard Hawks, 1933), Too Late the Hero (Robert Aldrich, 1970) ... and too many more ...

Dennis Brehme

Dennis Brehme is a full-time technical translator and an instructor in the Lifelong Learning program of Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, where he teaches adults film appreciation as well as art history.

OK, here is my list of the TEN BEST FILMS, which I've seen over and over again because they have made a big difference in my life.

(in preferential order)

Sunset Boulevard(Billy Wilder, 1950)

Perfect in every detail, it's THE movie about Hollywood.

The Blue Angel(Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

The classic drama of a teacher's downfall, the best of Germany's Golden Age.

12 Angry Men(Sidney Lumet, 1957)

Riveting all the way, with great acting and dialogue.

Brief Encounter(David Lean, 1945)

Quite simply, the best love story ever told, with great use of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto.

Lawrence of Arabia(David Lean, 1962)

The epic of all epics, with unforgettable images of the desert.

Psycho(Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)

The inimitable suspense story, with an unforgettable score by Bernard Herrmann.

Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

Flawless colour photography accompanied by Herrmann's most haunting score.

The Nun's Story(Fred Zinnemann, 1959)

Great acting by everyone involved, wonderful art direction, music and cinematography.

The Counterfeit Traitor(George Seaton, 1962)

William Holden has never been better. It's the most realistic espionage movie, and based on fact!

Paths of Glory(Stanley Kubrick, 1957)

The best anti-war movie ever made produced by Kirk Douglas, who gives an unforgettable performance.

As you can see, quite a few are very well-known, whereas others are not. Although I keep watching many movies, none made after 1962 are on the list, as I'm turned off by today's excessive violence, crude language and lack of an interesting plot with good dialogue. The technical side (cinematography, sound, special effects, stunt work, action scenes) has never been better, though.

Josh Cheung

Josh Cheung, 25, recently completed a Master's Degree in Film at Nanjing Normal University, China, and has arrived in Vancouver for further education in Media.

Most people choose one film per director here. I can't help doing the same, but each director on this list has made more than the one film I love, especially Hitchcock, Bergman, Wilder, Hawks, Dreyer and Fellini.

(in preferential order)

Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Persona(Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
The Apartment(Billy Wilder, 1960)
La Passion de Jeanne D'Arc(Carl Dreyer, 1928)
Rififi(Jules Dassin, 1955)
His Girl Friday(Howard Hawks, 1940)
To Be or Not to Be(Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
Ballad of a Soldier(Grigori Chukhrai, 1959)
Le Notti di Cabiria(Federico Fellini, 1957)
Singin' in the Rain(Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly, 1952)

Deserving no less praise: Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958); Sunrise (F. W. Murnau, 1927); Ladri di Biciclette (Vittorio de Sica, 1948); L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962); Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974).

Eliot Churbuck

Eliot Churbuck is a Freshman Film Student at New York University.

(in preferential order)

Ordet(Carl Dreyer, 1954)

A film that changed the way I look at Cinema and even my own faith.

The Apu Trilogy(Satyajit Ray, 1955-59)

Cinematic bliss. No one film in the trilogy is superior to another.

Raise the Red Lantern(Zhang Yimou, 1991)

So engaging that it's almost unbearable.

L'Emploi du temps(Laurent Cantet, 2001)

Quite simply a masterful character study. The last shots had me reeling.

Rocco and His Brothers(Luchino Visconti, 1960)

Achieves a moving, operatic power.

Suspiria(Dario Argento, 1976)

An orgasmic feast for the senses.

Night and the City(Jules Dassin, 1950)

A pitch black, apocolyptic nightmare.

Le Cercle rouge(Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)

Who knew minimalism could be so damn suave?

Sanshô dayû(Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)

A searing tragedy. Poetry of epic proportions.

Le Rayon vert(Eric Rohmer, 1986)

The ending transcends the very notion of film.

Couldn't live without ... Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman, 1973), Le Souffle au coeur (Louis Malle, 1971), La Maman et la putain (Jean Eustache, 1973), Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai, 1991), Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997).

1000 apologies to Bresson, Leigh, Cassavetes, Fuller, the Dardenne brothers, Kim Ki-Duk, Imamura, Sirk, Ozu, Lang, Chaplin, Olmi and Pasolini.

David Church

David Church graduated from Western Washington University in 2005. He is currently pursuing graduate work in cinema studies at San Francisco State University. Aside from contributing to Senses of Cinema, his academic work has also been published in Disability Studies Quarterly and Offscreen.

Top ten films. Or rather, top ten filmmakers with a favourite work by each.

(in no particular order)

A Clockwork Orange(Stanley Kubrick, 1971)

(Also: everything from his 1964-1987 period)

Mulholland Drive(David Lynch, 2001)

(Also: Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), Eraserhead (1976), Lost Highway (1997))

Videodrome(David Cronenberg, 1982)

(Also: eXistenZ (1999), Dead Ringers (1988), Naked Lunch (1991))

A Zed and Two Noughts(Peter Greenaway, 1985)

(Also: Belly of an Architect (1987), Drowning by Numbers (1988))

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

(Also: Stroszek (1977), Nosferatu (1979), Even Dwarfs Started Small (1971))

Barton Fink(Joel Coen, 1991)

(Also: The Big Lebowski (1998), Miller's Crossing (1990), Fargo (1995), Raising Arizona (1987))

Brazil(Terry Gilliam, 1985)

(Also: 12 Monkeys (1995), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998), Time Bandits (1981))

Europa(Lars von Trier, 1991)

(Also: Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), The Element of Crime (1984))

The Saddest Music in the World(Guy Maddin, 2003)

(Also: Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1988), Careful (1992), The Heart of the World (2000))

Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie(Luis Buñuel, 1972)

(Also: Un Chien andalou (1928), L'Âge d'or (1930), The Exterminating Angel (1962))

This list admittedly falls into the comfortable trap of auteurism, largely because of the unique aesthetics possessed by many of these filmmakers. They all share an affinity for the fantastic, irrational, darkly comic, and surreal - although it may not be present in every film.

Numerous filmmakers escaped this list (for equally numerous reasons), but have all contributed greatly to my own personal and academic appreciation of film, and deserve honorable mention alongside their finest work: Dario Argento (Tenebrae, 1982), Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, 1990), Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo, 1971), Julie Taymor (Titus, 1999), Alfred Hitchcock (Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960)), Woody Allen (Stardust Memories, 1980), Wes Anderson (Rushmore, 1998), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal, 1957), Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, 1982), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (City of Lost Children, 1995), Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1974), Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now, 1979), Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, 1999), Wong Kar-wai (Fallen Angels, 1995), Todd Solondz (Happiness, 1998).

Rodrigo de Castro

Rodrigo de Castro is a social science student living in Brazil who would like to be a movie director and to spend long hours studying the art of cinema.

(in preferential order)

Ladri di Biciclette(Vittorio de Sica, 1948)

Simple, sensible, real, heartbreaking. A child, a bycicle, a father and then a masterpiece.

La Grande Illusion(Jean Renoir, 1937)

A pre-WWII movie that discusses the boundaries of each side in the war. Beside that, a great and beautiful movie.

Annie Hall(Woody Allen, 1977)

I put this movie is this position because Woody Allen is my favourite director, who treats complex questions with laughter.

Vertigo(Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

The most personal movie made by Hitchcock, and his best too.

Roma, città aperta(Roberto Rossellini, 1945)

This is another great Italian film. It deserves first place in many lists, considering the difficulty in shooting it.

Brief Encounter(David Lean, 1945)

A simple story of two ordinary lovers performed by two non-star actors, but it is more heartbreaking than Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).

Amarcord(Federico Fellini, 1974)

Is there a more beautiful movie about memories?

They Don't Wear Black Tie(Leon H