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 446 films, which excluded films that made my Top Tens in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017.
1. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
2. Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938)
3. A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell & Emeric Presburger, 1944)
4. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
5. I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964)
6. Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985)
7. Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989)
8. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
9. The Matrix (Lana & Lilly Wachowski, 1999)
10. Kung Fu Hustle (Stephen Chow, 2004)
11. Histoire(s) du cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard, 1988-1998)
12. The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1969)
13. Lonesome (Paul Fejos, 1928)
14. Romancing in Thin Air (Johnnie To, 2012)
15. Heaven’s Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)
16. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962)
17. Applause (Rouben Mamoulian, 1929)
18. Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
19. I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)
20. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
21. La danse (Frederick Wiseman, 2009)
22. The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
23. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)
24. In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
25. Red Cliff (John Woo, 2008)
26. Don’t Look Back (DA Pennebaker, 1967)
27. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
28. Raining in the Mountain (King Hu, 1979)
29. Love Exposure (Sion Sono, 2008)
30. Japanese Girls at the Harbor (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1933)
31. The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
32. Starship Troopers (Paul Verhoeven, 1997)
33. One Week (Buster Keaton & Edward F. Cline, 1920)
34. A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)
35. How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941)
36. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
37. The Contract (Michael Hui, 1978)
38. The Bellboy (Jerry Lewis, 1960)
39. The Mirror (Jafar Panahi, 1997)
40. PTU (Johnnie To, 2003)
41. M. Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)
42. Throw Down (Johnnie To, 2004)
43. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
44. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
45. High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)
46. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
47. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson, 2004)
48. Bound for the Fields, the Mountains and the Seacoast (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1986)
49. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
50. Les amants du Pont-Neuf (Leos Carax, 1991)
51. To Live and Die in LA (William Friedkin, 1985)
52. The Mission (Johnnie To, 1999)
53. Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, Wolfgang Reitherman & Les Clark, 1959)
54. Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones, 1975)
55. Cat People (Jacques Tourneur, 1942)
56. Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
57. Seventh Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927)
58. Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1959)
59. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, 2001)
60. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
61. The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (Edwin S. Porter, 1906)
62. Choose Me (Alan Rudolph, 1984)
63. Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
64. Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks, 1939)
65. Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater, 1993)
66. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
67. The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey, 1937)
68. Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur, 1946)
69. Prospero’s Books (Peter Greenaway, 1991)
70. Under the Roofs of Paris (René Clair, 1930)
71. The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)
72. City Girl (FW Murnau, 1930)
73. L’Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
74. Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
75. It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez, 1966)
76. Night Across the Street (Raúl Ruiz, 2012)
77. Aliens (James Cameron, 1986)
78. Barton Fink (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1991)
79. The Rink (Charles Chaplin, 1916)
80. A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès, 1902)
81. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
82. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Isao Takahata, 2013)
83. The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper, 1971)
84. The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)
85. The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin, 1925)
86. The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)
87. The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)
88. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
89. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)
90. Awaara (Raj Kapoor, 1951)
91. Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
92. Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
93. When Harry Met Sally. . . (Rob Reiner, 1989)
94. The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925)
95. Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)
96. The Pan-American Exposition by Night (Edwin S. Porter, 1901)
97. The Fate of Lee Khan (King Hu, 1973)
98. The Missing Picture (Rithy Panh, 2013)
99. Airplane! (David Zucker, Jim Abrahams & Jerry Zucker, 1980)
100. Wolf Children (Mamoru Hosada, 2012)