50. Raging Bull (1980) - Martin Scorsese
I’m not sure there’s much new I can add to the discourse on Raging Bull. Long considered Scorsese’s masterpiece and on the very short list for best films of the 80s, it has even become a symbolic marking of the last hurrah for New Hollywood. The film succeeds against one very impressive obstacle, having an awful and irredeemable lead character. Jake LaMotta is an awful man, who could not help destroying his own life and alienating everyone around him. De Niro gives the method performance to end all others with his 60lb weight gain, but equally impressive is how much fighting training he put in. Scorsese makes each and every match a unique visual experience, focusing more on the inner machinations of LaMotta and less on presenting any sort of realism. After 9 viewings it still packs a punch, very much pun intended.
49. Intolerance (1916) - D.W. Griffith
If only someone accused D.W .Griffith of being a racist sooner we might have sped up the evolution of cinema by a few years. After topping everyone that came before him with the problematic Birth of a Nation, Griffith proceeded to top himself while reminding everyone he won’t stand for intolerance, at least among white people. What began as a simple story (later re-edited into The Mother and the Law), he knew he needed to go bigger and better to surpass Birth. Rather than expand his contemporary story about a mother who loses her baby to do-gooder reformers and a troubled husband at the hands of a frame, he simply added more stories. It is clear that his retelling of the crucifixion of Christ was largely left for the viewer to fill in the familiar blanks. The real meat of the film came from his Babylonian sequence. Over 100 years since, I’m still honestly amazed at the scale and scope of the film. So much detail went into those sets, and even after a half dozen viewings I still wonder how it was all done.
48. In the Mood for Love (2000) - Wong Kar-Wai
Time has been quite kind to Wong Kar-Wai’s first movie of the new millennium. It was hailed as one of the films of the decade immediately, and last year found itself cracking the top 10 on Sight and Sound’s poll. Well time to confess I’ve never “gotten” the film, at least until now. In fact up until this most recent re-watch I would have said this was my 4th favorite Wong film at best. Well search the rest of the list, my thoughts have changed. Perhaps it was the lack of “plot” that threw me off, but the more I watch it the more it puts me under the spell. It’s a heartbreaking film of two people that are just out of reach. A familiar theme for Wong who seems to have had a lifetime obsession with unrequited love. It doesn’t hurt that his two leads are some of the most attractive people to ever appear on film. That score though, and the cinematography, pre or post-color grading controversy it doesn’t matter. It’s so lovingly constructed and I just have to apologize for not figuring this out sooner.
47. They Live By Night (1949) - Nicholas Ray
Hollywood is loaded with potential what-ifs. How would James Dean’s career have gone if he didn’t die tragically young? Or what would have happened to Nicholas Ray’s film career if Howard Hughes didn’t take over RKO and shelve his debut for nearly two years? They Live by Night was doomed almost from the start, but unlike the New Mutants movie, this was actually great. He took nearly all the sensational elements from a lovers on the run movie, and distilled it just to the lovers. He paints his two doomed leads not as wild outlaws but as trapped victims of one too many bad breaks. Ray seems to go out of his way to hide any criminal activity, cutting one bank robbery from the script and shooting the other two entirely off camera. It made a huge impact over in Europe particularly with the directors who would start the French New Wave, which in turn would inspire Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde, bringing everything full circle. Ironically Cathy O’Donnell, who had perhaps the saddest eyes in Hollywood, was from Alabama and spent years getting rid of her thick southern accent before making this. Even the slightly cheesy prologue lets us know right up front, this isn’t a crime film but a romance, and it gets me every time.
46. Gone With the Wind (1939) - Victor Flemming/George Cukor/Sam Wood
Growing up I largely ignored classic movies. I knew of Casablanca and I knew my grandmother’s favorite movie was Gone With the Wind. I’m sure EVERYONE’s grandma’s favorite movie was Gone With the Wind, but can you blame them? Adjusted for inflation this is still the most successful film ever made, with a multiple year hype train which makes modern viral marketing pale in comparison. It was by far the biggest Hollywood production of its time, and frankly wouldn’t even come close to being topped until the 50s. Clark Gable descended from Mt. Olympus to step into Rhett Butler’s shoes, and to her dying day remained my grandmother’s all time favorite. Vivien Leigh beat out every other actress in the English speaking world for the role of a lifetime and boy did anyone ever nail a part. Perhaps my only gripe might be that Leslie Howard is no Clark Gable, how the hell is that the man you pine for? Sure Butterfly McQueen is obnoxious, but a couple minutes in a 3 ½ hour film is hardly going to ruin things. Like many films in our revisionist history it has had some degree of backlash largely from folks who never bothered watching it. Sure it romanticizes the hell out of the confederacy and gives the Union soldiers horns and pitchforks, that doesn’t mean you have to agree with their way of life. Just shut up and enjoy the movie, Yankee trash.
45. Do the Right Thing (1989) - Spike Lee
The more things change the more they stay the same. Spike Lee’s third film is noticeably dated in terms of its fashion and music but sadly just as relevant today in terms of police brutality. In fact in a post-Rodney King world or shit a post-George Floyd world Do the Right Thing is depressingly timely. We can have an awkward chuckle at the fact that this film went un-nominated for best picture when Driving Miss Daisy won, but the fact is this was bound to stick around. What makes Do the Right Thing still work isn’t so much the last act and the escalating incident that leads to a riot, but everything preceding it. Lee and Ernest Dickerson make a point to imbue every frame with something visually interesting. All these little parts of a whole that contribute to the bigger picture. How so many random, innocuous things can build up into something deadly. There is also an insistence on keeping every line of dialogue and exposition moving forward. He knows when to let the film breathe, when to ramp things up, and how to stack those layers throughout. After over 30 years it still is a decisive call to arms in a world where so little has changed.
44. La La Land (2016) - Damien Chazelle
Perhaps the two best American movies of the last decade happened to come out during the same season. Moonlight represented a new perspective and an encouragement for studios to back diverse voices. La La Land showed just what the studio system could produce when they give the right person money. Damien Chazelle used all the goodwill Whiplash gave him to make his dream musical. Justin Hurwitz delivers one of the all time great film scores here, and to be quite frank his music does a lot of heavy lifting, particularly in the last “what-if” montage. This is the type of movie that deserved all the Oscars, and nearly pulled it off if it weren’t for that pesky and very infamous screw up at the end. With a few years behind them I have to admit, I still prefer Chazelle’s film, but if you look around you’ll see Barry Jenkins isn’t too far behind. There was an exact moment, when Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling start floating in the Planetarium where I remembered exactly why I love movies so damn much.
There are many gateway pictures we see over the course of a lifetime. Sometimes they introduce you to a special filmmaker, sometimes a genre, other times a nation. I can say quite simply The Seventh Seal was my first Swedish film, or at least the first one I remember watching, but it introduced something far more important. This is one of those gateway films that assures you the old classic masters are just as worthwhile as they were decades earlier. For much of the world The Seventh Seal represented not just a breakthrough for Bergman, but what would become known as arthouse cinema in general. Movies tackling far more profound and philosophical themes than what traditional Hollywood pictures would get into. The reason 65+ years on Bergman’s film is still effective though is largely centered around how perfect everything is. Most of us remember the chess game with death, perhaps the plague ransacking the country, but there is also drunken humor, circus performers, random hijinks, and still it all fits into a little over 90 minutes. There were earlier good Bergman films but this kicked off a string of commercial and critical successes that launched him into the conversation as one of the top 10 directors in the world. For me anyways he’s probably in the top 3.
42. The Worst Person in the World (2021) - Joachim Trier
For better or worse, this was the only film from the 2020s I seriously considered for this list. Not saying the decade is off to a slow start, but we can admit that a global pandemic certainly slowed things down out of the gate. So why wouldn’t the best film of the current decade come out of Norway? Hollywood has long since given up while churning out legacy sequels no one asked for and endless franchise faire. Perhaps a few disastrous bombs and the current strikes might shake things up, but as long as folks like Joachim Trier keep making movies, cinema itself has a promising future. Renate Reinsve has also delivered my favorite performance in recent memory, and frankly I haven’t felt the feelings like that in a movie since the Before trilogy.
41. Tokyo Story (1953) - Yasujiro Ozu
What a cliche I am, saying this is Yasujiro Ozu’s best. For years I would point to Early Summer or even Good Morning as my favorite. Tokyo Story didn’t quite click with me, but a funny thing happened, and I got older. The reason it seems to inevitably become a favorite is because of how universal it is. The film is based on the also great Leo McCarey film Make Way for Tomorrow, but it transcends to a different level at the hands of Ozu. Plot threads in Ozu films can usually be summed up in a sentence, so in this movie two elderly parents travel to Tokyo to visit their children. While there, they find their kids have lives and jobs of their own and can’t necessarily be bothered to entertain them. It breaks your heart, but is filled with that simple and elegant style of his. The more I watch it the harder it resonates. Be nice to your parents folks, they won’t be around forever.
40. The Searchers (1956) - John Ford
Interesting that we live in a world where you almost have to apologize for liking a John Wayne film. Sure I can’t picture anyone else as Ethan Edwards, but this is John Ford at his absolute best, and the man did some great work. The Searchers was a salute to Monument Valley, and began a string of late career revisionist work. On the surface the natives are evil Comanches and we are rooting for the whites. Just underneath we see just how fucked up and racist our “hero” is. His allegiance to the Confederacy tells us more than we think. It isn’t his noble cause, it’s telling us the man is a god damn racist in his first scene. The fact that he could masquerade as the good guy for so long lets us know a lot about some rather backwards ideas in Hollywood. Not saying this is a true subversive ultra-liberal Western, but you can read it as such. Sure we can lament the fact that the famous Comanche war chief is played by the very white German Henry Brandon, but it lets us know in a sneaky way that the white guys are the villains when it comes to perpetuating violence. I could be reading too much into it, the movie is just fantastic and remains the best American made western, and Ford’s masterpiece.
39. The Maltese Falcon (1941) - John Huston
Every time I make a list like this I seem to forget something really obvious. Well despite looking over my checklist about 4,000 times and even revisiting John Huston’s directorial debut, I forgot to actually write it down. Well palm meet face, I would wager there will never be a top 100 movie list from yours truly without this gem. Folks might argue whether this was the first true film noir, but it doesn’t matter. It set up the private eye film as a staple of 1940s cinema and is one of several hits that established Humphrey Bogart as a legend. Despite being adapted twice before, this remains the definitive version of Dashiell Hammet’s book. I would argue the reason is that John Huston really didn’t fuck with it too much. A few things had to be cleaned up for the censors, but plot wise this certainly captures the spirit of Sam Spade. After a few successful screenplays, perhaps the most talented nepo-baby of them all, John Huston got to direct his first film, and like Orson Welles that same year, I don’t think he ever did better. This is one you can revisit a hundred times and love just as much. Truly without flaw.
38. The Manchurian Candidate (1962) - John Frankenheimer
There are some movies that leave you speechless after you watch them. John Frankenheimer’s Manchurian Candidate was one of them. What sets this apart is that even knowing the shock or twist of it, I am constantly roped back in. This is more than a twist ending, and to be honest I’m not even sure it’s that much of a twist. 24 years of watching it has maybe diminished the initial shock factor. How they constructed a shot that changes from a ladies garden party to a communist lecture on brain washing without cutting is still remarkable. Henry Silva is less Korean than I am, but it is Hollywood in 1962, they thought Obi Wan Kenobi was Arab. Different time man. Frankenheimer emerged as one of the major new filmmakers coming from the land of television. It beautifully sets up the loosening censorship and the experimental nature that Hollywood would go towards through the decade.
37. Ordinary People (1980) - Robert Redford
Most of us with some skin in the cinema game have movies on our watch lists. Occasionally a few of these seem like chores, stuff you gotta get through but aren’t necessarily looking forward to. It is tempting when looking through the list of best picture Oscar winners to see Ordinary People and want to skip it. Quite a few people watched it simply out of curiosity, after all what film could have possibly beaten Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull? Well this is maybe the 5th time I’ve watched Robert Redford’s directorial debut and every god damn time it gets me. I find myself a fragile emotional mess and wonder how it holds up so well. You can tell that Judith Guest (who wrote the novel it was adapted from) had actually seen a therapist because this movie gets depression better than every film before it. Sure I get a kick out of seeing what a town I worked in looked like 40 years ago, but it is mainly the astonishingly good performances. It might seem like a cliche but Pachelbel’s Canon is still possibly the finest piece of music ever written.
36. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) - David Lean
David Lean’s 1962 masterpiece was one of the first 5 classic films that got me hooked on cinema. An epic on a grand scale it is a remarkable film of a great director really getting to make the movie of his dreams. As many great passion projects it went ludicrously over budget and over schedule, but the final product was so worth it. Lean used his editing background to deliver perhaps the most iconic single edit in film history with our first shot of the desert. Peter O’Toole shockingly made his debut here, and despite a legendary career spanning decades, he was never better. There are certainly things about Lawrence that seem impossible today, from its location photography, pacing, practical battles, and the fact that so many non-Arabs are in the cast. However can you get a better Prince Feisal than Mr. Genuine Class himself Alec Guiness? It is the rare intersection of art and commerce that has made Lawrence endure. Perhaps it’s my own bias but I don’t think I even registered the first 6 times I saw this that there doesn’t appear to be a single female anywhere in the near 4 hour run time. Maurice Jarre contributes the most iconic music in a Hollywood epic since Max Steiner’s Gone with the Wind score.
35. City of God (2002) - Fernando Meirelles/Katia Lund
Sometimes a movie is a no-doubter right off the bat. I saw City of God in the theater, instantly thought it was the film of the year, and 20 years later it’s still sitting on my list. It might be a bit simplistic to say this is a Brazilian Goodfellas, but if Henry Hill were just some guy in the neighborhood it would check out. Rocket tells a story stretched from the 60s to early 80s of life in the “City of God” projects of Rio, and it’s just brilliant. Things move at a rapid pace and never do you feel lost or that there’s too much being thrown at you. Co-directors Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund are able to distill an entire subculture down into a two hour film. Seems a shame Lund didn’t make too many solo efforts after this because Meirelles’ later work never came close to this. Their powers combined though absolutely knocked it out of the park and what I would consider the single greatest South American movie ever made.
34. Psycho (1960) - Alfred Hitchcock
Whenever I put together the massive list of re-watches for a project like this I inevitably find myself with an absurd number of Alfred Hitchcock movies. Somehow knowing when it’s all over with Psycho will be the one left standing. It has been my favorite since the first viewing, and it still is. One of the few times the master of suspense seemed to delve head first into horror, it utilized his TV crew and a significantly smaller budget than usual. He shattered a few conventions and helped establish a few others. Screenwriter Joseph Stefano was clearly very into psychoanalysis at the time, and much of the psychology is Freud for dummies. He insisted on the exposition dump at the end which is one of the few misses this one makes. The rest of it is just a brilliant accumulation of details, twists, and shocks that still pack a punch. I can’t imagine another film I’d love to go back in time to see for the first time, knowing nothing. Anthony Perkins was so good as Norman Bates he never really escaped the role in his later years. You know you got something when entire generations are scared of taking a shower after watching this.
33. Sunset Boulevard (1950) - Billy Wilder
There are plenty of great movie battles we’ve had over the last century. Sometimes it’s stars, sometimes directors, but the best to debate are always the common theme-same year battles. Both Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve were in a hotly contested best picture race and both their older leading ladies were neck and neck for best actress. Judy Holiday played spoiler on both and won for Born Yesterday and Mankiewicz got the better of Wilder in the director and picture race. It’s hard to feel bad for Billy Wilder who has two best pictures/director combos himself, but he definitely made the better film in 1950. Sunset Boulevard begins like a great pulpy film noir and somehow morphs into one of the most cynical and bitter insider movies we’re likely to see. It is part Hollywood history lesson, part cautionary tale, and just so damn good. The script is damn near perfect, but the style is everything. So many deep focus compositions, so many classic images, and one of those famous closing lines even people who have never seen the movie before instantly recognize. I may have told this story before but this film will always remind me why my love of film is just a little different from others. My first day of Film and Society, which technically was my first college film course, arrived and I got there early. I met the teacher outside of class and struck up a general conversation. She said we would be watching Sunset Boulevard the first night and asked if I had seen it. I replied “Of course, several times, hasn’t everybody?” Well after attendance and syllabus things were done my teacher asked the now full class the same question if they had seen the movie. I was the only hand that was raised.
32. Seven Samurai (1954) - Akira Kurosawa
There are a number of classics that seem truly undeniable. Movies that are so good you know 5-10 minutes in that this one is something special. Quite a few of those movies are on this list, and Seven Samurai absolutely belongs in that conversation. The fact that it manages to stand out amongst a very impressive filmography is even more impressive. There are no shortage of great Kurosawa movies, but this was his best. It helped redefine and re-invigorate the samurai film, and spawned so many imitators. The entire epic is a masterclass in editing and proof positive that there are no great movies that are “too long”. Not sure if the credit is all due him, but it was one of the first historical Japanese films to incorporate some comic relief, perhaps not to the extent of Ford but certainly not the austere period films of the past. Summing up great action, class struggle, and his entire humanist philosophy, Seven Samurai speaks volumes.
31. Tree of Life (2011) - Terrence Malick
It is entirely possible Tree of Life would still be in my top 10 if Terence Malick never made another movie after it. After averaging a film a decade, he suddenly unlocked a cheat code with this and made as many movies in the 2010s as the forty years before. When Tree of Life ventures beyond the story and tackles outer space and the beginning of life I was transfixed in much the same way the final act of 2001 mesmerizes me. When we returned to the story and Emmanuel Lubezki’s camera that never ceases moving, I started to feel cheated. This exact same formula would pop up in his next four films and lose its impact. Watching Tree of Life for the first time I thought someone had achieved nirvana in cinematic form. I could say this is why I often have a reluctance to put newer films high on my list, it takes some time to decipher what the lasting impression was. Now however we can finally watch the expanded version with all of those Sean Penn scenes re-inserted, which can be more of a good thing or dead weight depending on who you ask. Whenever Malick is done making films for good, this will probably be remembered as the lynchpin for his career, where he seemed to figure it all out.
30. Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) - Carl Theodor Dreyer
Until his dying breath Carl Theodor Dreyer insisted his 1928 masterpiece was not an avant-garde art film but was populist cinema. There is little indication throughout his career that Dreyer could have made a popular film if he tried. Does it matter in the end? Of course not, this is a masterpiece and a remarkable bit of celluloid. Told almost entirely through close-ups and medium shots it has a few thousand more cuts than his later movies like Gertrud and Ordet. It’s hard to imagine the same person making these films. Despite the heavy influence of Soviet cinema, Eisenstein himself said this was more a collection of images than kino. Well it doesn’t matter how you describe it or what category it fits into, it’s simply one of the greatest works of art the 20th century produced. Smarter people than me have literally written books on Dreyer’s construction, style, and editing, so what can I add to the discourse? Suffice to say, no amount of style could carry a film that didn’t have a foundation of a compelling story and an all-time great performance anchoring the whole thing.
29. Napoléon (1927) - Abel Gance
God bless Kevin Brownlow. The man has been a silent film junkie for decades and has made it his life’s work to restore Abel Gance’s Napoleon to its original length as best he can. This task he has undertaken since 1969, only emerging with this full 5 ½ hour version a couple years ago. Simply put this full version wasn’t even available to me the last time I made this list, certainly not on blu-ray with an impressive audio commentary track. Like many pretentious silent films it is questionable which version is the “definitive” edition, but the BFI restoration is clearly the most complete in existence. So much innovation, so many wild chances, and it feels still like Gance was inventing a new medium as he went along. Staggering to think he meant for this to be the first of 6 movies on Napoleon. See kids, even in 1927 people were planning franchises before they even released the first movie. Luckily for us, Gance put a career’s worth of cinematic marvels into this single film. I look forward to being substantially unimpressed with Ridley Scott’s biopic due this year, I’m sure it will win 10 Oscars.
28. Goodfellas (1990) - Martin Scorsese
A decade ago I made what seemed like a bold choice to name this my favorite Scorsese film. That choice doesn’t quite seem so odd anymore, but over the last decade I began to wonder if my exuberance was justified. Maybe it doesn’t hold up as well as I thought, maybe it might not even make the list at all. Well by the time grown-up Henry Hill shows up, there was no doubt that this wasn’t going anywhere. Yeah it drives me absolutely insane that Karen’s rapey neighbor lets himself get pistol whipped without making any effort whatsoever to protect his face or fight back, but that is a minor gripe in an otherwise perfect film. Few movies ever move as quickly and are so compulsively rewatchable. It’s not necessarily that every viewing reveals more details and depth, it’s just that it’s so damn good why wouldn’t you want to return to it over and over again. This is cinematic comfort food, a big plate of lasagna if you will. It represents a perfection of craft from one of our greatest storytellers. Even Scorsese himself has dipped back into the same well to use those same techniques with Casino, The Departed, Wolf of Wall Street, and even The Irishman, hey when it ain’t broke right?
27. La Dolce Vita (1960) - Federico Fellini
Three Italian movies from 1960 are on this list. Visconti may have channeled the past, and Antonioni spoke for the time, but Fellini was out here in 2060. Narratively it was his last seemingly straight forward film for years, but its subject matter was made for today. A social circle where no one seems to ever do any work and a peripheral community that wants to follow every detail. This is the kind of chance you take after two Academy awards and a lot of money. La Dolce Vita is more of a collection of episodes than any straightforward story. Some speculate it is based on the creation myth, with each sequence representing a different day. There is something to that, because this does seem to be everything.
26. Blue Velvet (1986) - David Lynch
Can you believe the first time I watched this movie I didn’t love it because it wasn’t weird enough? It follows a long tradition of directors finding their voice/style. Sure Eraserhead established that Lynch was truly one of a kind, and Elephant Man brought some Academy attention. After the failure of Dune, Lynch seemed to find his footing, and the rest is history as they say. He helped give Kyle Maclaughlin another shot at stardom, while handing Dennis Hopper the role of a lifetime. Still blows my mind he got nominated that year….for Hoosiers. Oh well not the first time the Academy was clueless. All the markings of Twin Peaks are here, the strangeness, the surface normalcy, and some sweet Angelo Badalamenti music. Narratively speaking it remains Lynch’s best work, with the weirdness on the fringes and in the characters rather than just confusing everyone. Can anyone ever order a Heinekin without hearing Frank Booth in their head?
