It is time once again for a Top 100 Films of All-Time list. As I’ve done for the last few years, the first ten spots on the list comprise a hypothetical Sight & Sound-style ballot. We had an on-going project related to this on The George Sanders Show, that will now be based at Seattle Screen Scene. This top ten is presented here in chronological order. The remaining 90 films were randomly selected from a consideration set of 1400 films, which excluded films that made my Top Tens in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016.
1. Duck Soup (Leo McCarey, 1933)
2. Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945)
3. The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
4. The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1968)
5. A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971)
6. Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
7. Wheels on Meals (Sammo Hung, 1984)
8. Broadcast News (James L. Brooks, 1987)
9. Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch, 1992)
10. Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, 1995)
11. Trouble in Mind (Alan Rudolph, 1985)
12. Bullitt (Peter Yates, 1968)
13. Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
14. Wings (William Wellman, 1927)
15. Three Crowns of the Sailor (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)
16. The Nutty Professor (Jerry Lewis, 1963)
17. Ivan the Terrible Part 2 (Sergei Eisenstein, 1958)
18. Faust (FW Murnau, 1926)
19. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (Albert Lewin, 1951)
20. Hearts of the World (DW Griffith, 1918)
21. Resident Evil: Retribution (Paul WS Anderson, 2012)
22. The 7th Victim (Mark Robson, 1943)
23. Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)
24. Happy Go Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008)
25. Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest, 1996)
26. The Infernal Cakewalk (Georges Méliès, 1903)
27. I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck, 2016)
28. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992)
29. Dream of the Red Chamber (Li Han-hsiang, 1977)
30. Le bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965)
31. A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)
32. LA Story (Mick Jackson, 1991)
33. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
34. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
35. Sisters of the Gion (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1936)
36. Happy Hour (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2015)
37. Carnival in Flanders (Jacques Feyder, 1935)
38. Isn’t Life Wonderful (DW Griffith, 1924)
39. Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
40. Sanshiro Sugata (Akira Kurosawa, 1943)
41. The Butterfly Murders (Tsui Hark, 1979)
42. The Letter (William Wyler, 1940)
43. The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, 2011)
44. Gone in 60 Seconds (HB Halicki, 1974)
45. Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
46. Week End (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968)
47. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-laing, 2003)
48. The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1928)
49. Throw Down (Johnnie To, 2004)
50. One AM (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
51. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
52. Animal House (John Landis, 1978)
53. Red River (Howard Hawks, 1948)
54. Don’t Look Back (DA Pennebaker, 1967)
55. Fucking Åmål (Lukas Moodysson, 1998)
56. The Big Road (Sun Yu, 1935)
57. Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1988)
58. L’Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
59. Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965)
60. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005)
61. Street Scene (King Vidor, 1931)
62. Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)
63. Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (FW Murnau, 1931)
64. Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)
65. Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950)
66. Pauline at the Beach (Eric Rohmer, 1983)
67. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
68. The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)
69. The Chess Players (Satyajit Ray, 1977)
70. The Road Warrior (George Miller, 1981)
71. Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1962)
72. Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1968)
73. Easter Parade (Charles Walters, 1948)
74. Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)
75. Napoléon (Abel Gance, 1927)
76. Election (Johnnie To, 2005)
77. Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
78. Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1945)
79. Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey, 1932)
80. The Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee, 1972)
81. The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951)
82. The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928)
83. Oxhide (Liu Jiayin, 2005)
84. Two for the Road (Stanley Donen, 1967)
85. I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)
86. China Girl (Henry Hathaway, 1942)
87. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2006)
88. Follow the Fleet (Mark Sandrich, 1936)
89. When Harry Met Sally. . . (Rob Reiner, 1989)
90. The Front Page (Lewis Milestone, 1931)
91. The Red and the White (Mikló Jancsó, 1967)
92. Clueless (Amy Heckerling, 1995)
93. Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)
94. Man of Aran (Robert Flaherty, 1934)
95. Nomad (Patrick Tam, 1982)
96. Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)
97. Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
98. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
99. 7 Women (John Ford, 1966)
100. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)
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