Month: September 2021

This Week in Rankings

Since the last update, my essay for the Criterion Collection edition of Johnnie To’s Throw Down was published, along with the disc itself. I reviewed Clint Eastwood’s Cry Macho, James Wan’s Malignant, and David Lowery’s The Green Knight at Seattle Screen Scene, and Benny Chan’s Raging Fire at The Chinese Cinema. I talked about Tsui Hark, specifically The Butterfly Murders, Green Snake, Peking Opera Blues, and The Blade, on the Optimism Vaccine podcast. Over at InReview Online I wrote about some festival films: at the New York Asian Film Festival (Keep Rolling, Hold Me Back, My Missing Valentine, and Hand-Rolled Cigarette); at Fantasia Fest (Pompo: The Cinephile and The 12 Day Tale of the Monster that Died in 8); and at the Toronto Film Festival (The Falls and One Second).

Also at Seattle Screen Scene, Mike and I completed our ten-year long Top Films of All-Time Project, while I published the 2021 version of my Top 100 Films list here at The End.

If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.

These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.

The Maltese Falcon (John Huston) – 5, 1941
Hair-Raising Hare (Chuck Jones) – 28, 1946
The Fair Haired Hare (Friz Freleng) – 34, 1951
The Super Snooper (Robert McKimson) – 35, 1952
Kiss Me Kate (George Sidney) – 1, 1953

Stupor Duck (Robert McKimson) – 37, 1956
Deduce, You Say (Chuck Jones) – 38, 1956
Bedevilled Rabbit (Robert McKimson) – 61, 1957
Knighty Knight Bugs (Friz Freleng) – 31, 1958
The Sword in the Stone (Wolfgang Reitherman) – 33, 1963

The Mystery of Chess Boxing (Joseph Kuo) – 34, 1979
Victory (John Huston) – 39, 1981
Young Sherlock Holmes (Barry Levinson) – 47, 1985
Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton) – 18, 1990
The Rocketeer (Joe Johnston) – 46, 1991

I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (Danny Cannon) – 58, 1998
The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin) – 8, 2000
Scream 3 (Wes Craven) – 30, 2000
Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic) – 46, 2001
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (Brad Silberling) – 49, 2004
Walk the Line (James Mangold) – 48, 2005

Evangelion: 1.11 You Are (Not) Alone (Anno Hideaki, et al) – 34, 2007
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg) – 35, 2008
Evangelion: 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance (Anno Hideaki, et al) – 37, 2009
Scream 4 (Wes Craven) – 30, 2011
Evangelion: 3.33 You Can (Not) Redo (Anno Hideaki, et al) – 28, 2012

Hold Me Back (Ohku Akiko) – 10, 2020
Keep Rolling (Lim Chung Man) – 17, 2020
My Missing Valentine (Chen Yu-hsun) – 25, 2020
One Second (Zhang Yimou) – 29, 2020
Hand Rolled Cigarette (Chan Kin-long) – 31, 2020
12 Day Tale of the Monster that Died in 8 (Iwai Shunji) – 34, 2020

Evangelion: 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time (Anno Hideaki, et al) – 3, 2021
The History of the Atlanta Falcons (Jon Bois) – 4, 2021
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (Kier-La Janisse) – 5, 2021
Can’t Get You Out of My Head (Adam Curtis) – 6, 2021
The Green Knight (David Lowery) – 7, 2021

The Falls (Chung Mong-hong) – 10, 2021
Old (M. Night Shyamalan) – 13, 2021
Cry Macho (Clint Eastwood) – 14, 2021
Malignant (James Wan) – 15, 2021
Pompo: the Cinephile (Hirao Takayuki) – 16, 2021

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (Destin Daniel Cretton) – 17, 2021
The Suicide Squad (James Gunn) – 18, 2021
Raging Fire (Benny Chan) – 21, 2021
Woodstock 99: Peace Love and Rage (Garret Price) – 24, 2021

A Top 100 Films of All-Time

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 is now 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 1024 films, which excluded films that made my Top Tens in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020.

1. Hellzapoppin’ (HC Potter, 1941)

2. Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)

3. Duvidha (Mani Kaul, 1973)

4. Renaldo & Clara (Bob Dylan, 1978)

5. His Motorbike, Her Island (Obayashi Nobuhiko, 1986)

6. Slacker (Richard Linklater, 1990)

7. Ballet (Frederick Wiseman, 1995)

8. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003)

9. Throw Down (Johnnie To, 2004)

10. Claire’s Camera (Hong Sangsoo, 2017)

11. New York, New York (Martin Scorsese, 1977)

12. Woodstock (Michael Wadleigh, 1970)

13. Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003)

14. Mr. Thank You (Shimizu Hiroshi, 1936)

15. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)

16. They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)

17. Predator (John McTiernan, 1987)

18. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969)

19. Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

20. Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)

21. The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Eric Rohmer, 2007)

22. Dishonored (Josef von Sternberg, 1931)

23. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974)

24. Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941)

25. My Night at Maud’s (Eric Rohmer, 1969)

26. Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1959)

27. A Matter of Interpretation (Lee Kwangkuk, 2014)

28. How Green was My Valley (John Ford, 1941)

29. Bye Bye Birdie (George Sidney, 1963)

30. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933)

31. Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion (Itō Shunya, 1972)

32. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)

33. The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami, 1999)

34. Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)

35. Blackhat (Michael Mann, 2015)

36. 24 Frames (Abbas Kiarostami, 2017)

37. Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936)

38. Judge Priest (John Ford, 1934)

39. M (Fritz Lang, 1931)

40. PTU (Johnnie To, 2003)

41. Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915)

42. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)

43. Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963)

44. Humanity and Paper Balloons (Yamanaka Sadao, 1937)

45. My Young Auntie (Lau Kar-leung, 1981)

46. Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton & John G. Blystone, 1923)

47. The Thin Man (WS Van Dyke, 1934)

48. My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964)

49. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles, 2018)

50. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)

51. Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965)

52. Vengeance! (Chang Cheh, 1970)

53. The Southerner (Jean Renoir, 1945)

54. My Heart is that Eternal Rose (Patrick Tam, 1989)

55. Two Lovers (James Gray, 2008)

56. On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1951)

57. Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)

58. The Miracle Fighters (Yuen Woo-ping, 1982)

59. Vampir-Caudecuc (Pere Portabella, 1973)

60. Rashomon (Kurosawa Akira, 1950)

61. Hoop Dreams (Steve James, 1994)

62. Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936)

63. The History of the Seattle Mariners (Jon Bois, 2020)

64. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello, 2019)

65. Crippled Avengers (Chang Cheh, 1978)

66. M. Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)

67. The Untold Story (Herman Yau, 1993)

68. Kamikaze Taxi (Herman Yau, 1993)

69. Earth (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930)

70. Pride and Prejudice (Andrew Davies, 1995)

71. The ‘Burbs (Joe Dante, 1989)

72. Wife of a Spy (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2020)

73. Office Space (Mike Judge, 1999)

74. The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, 2011)

75. Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

76. Park Row (Samuel Fuller, 1953)

77. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles, 2019)

78. Heathers (Michael Lehmann, 1988)

79. Unknown Pleasures (Jia Zhangke, 2002)

80. The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941)

81. The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)

82. The One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh, 1967)

83. 7 Women (John Ford, 1966)

84. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

85. Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami, 1997)

86. Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)

87. The Bad News Bears (MIchael Ritchie, 1976)

88. The Pirate (Vicente Minnelli, 1948)

89. Paterson (Paterson, 2016)

90. The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)

91. Brigadoon (Vincente MInnelli, 1954)

92. Grass (Hong Sangsoo, 2018)

93. Alexander Nevsky (Sergei Eisenstein, 1938)

94. Scarface (Brian De Palma, 1983)

95. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2008)

96. Sparrow (Johnnie To, 2008)

97. The Set-Up (Robert Wise, 1949)

98. Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1948)

99. The World (Jia Zhangke, 2004)

100. Madame de… (Marcel Ophuls, 1953)