New List In Progress

It’s the time of year once again for the making of all-time top films lists. Here’s my starting point, my 1,362 favorite/best/greatest/whatever films as of this moment in time. Eventually, they will be in some kind of order that is not alphabetical.

8 1/2
2046
12 Monkeys
127 Hours
2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
2001: A Space Odyssey
24 City
24 Hour Party People
3 Bad Men
3 Godfathers
35 Shots of Rum
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days . . .
42nd Street
49th Parallel
6istynin9
7 Women
8 Diagram Pole Fighter
8 Women
A Better Tomorrow
A Better Tomorrow 2
A Bridge Too Far
A Brief History of Time
A Bucket of Blood
A Canterbury Tale
A Christmas Tale
A Clockwork Orange
A Corner in Wheat
A Farewell to Arms
A Few Good Men
A Fish Called Wanda
A Fistful of Dollars
A Hard Day’s Night
A History of Violence
A Letter to Three Wives
A Life Less Ordinary
A Man Escaped
A Married Woman
A Matter of Life and Death
A Night to Remember
À nous la liberté
A Perfect World
A Prairie Home Companion
A Room with a View
A Scanner Darkly
A Serious Man
A Star is Born (1937)
A Star is Born (1954)
A Story of Floating Weeds
A Time to Love and a Time to Die
A Touch of Zen
A Trip to the Moon
A Walk in the Sun
A Woman is a Woman
Ace in the Hole
Adam’s Rib
Adaptation
Advise and Consent
After Hours
After Life
Age of Consent
Aguirre: The Wrath of God
AI: Artificial Intelligence
Air Force
Airplane!
Akira
Alexander Nevsky
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Alice in Wonderland (1951)
Alien
Alien 3
Aliens
All About Eve
All About Lily Chou-chou
All for the Winner
All Men Are Brothers
All Quiet on the Western Front
All That Heaven Allows
All That Jazz
All the President’s Men
Almost Famous
Alphaville
Amadeus
Amelie
American Graffiti
An Affair to Remember
An American in Paris
An Autumn Afternoon
An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge
Anatomy of a Murder
Anchorman
Andrei Rublev
Angel Face
Angels with Dirty Faces
Animal Crackers
Animal House
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
April Story
Archangel
Armageddon
Army of Darkness
Army of Shadows
Around a Small Mountain
Artists and Models
As Tears Go By
Ashes and Diamonds
Ashes of Time
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Au hasard Balthazar
Babes in Arms
Babette’s Feast
Baby Face
Back to the Future
Bad Day at Black Rock
Bad Lieutenant
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Badlands
Ball of Fire
Bambi
Bananas
Band of Outsiders
Barbarella
Barry Lyndon
Barton Fink
Batman
Batman Returns
Battleground
Battleship Potemkin
Beau Geste
Beautiful Girls
Beauty and the Beast (1946)
Beetlejuice
Before Sunrise
Before the Rain
Being There
Belle de jour
Bend of the River
Beverly Hills Cop
Bicycle Thieves
Big Night
Bigger Than Life
Bitter Victory
Black Hawk Down
Black Narcissus
Black Swan (2010)
Blade Runner
Blast of Silence
Blissfully Yours
Blonde Venus
Blood Simple
Blow-Up
Blue Velvet
Bluebeard
Boarding Gate
Bob le flambeur
Bob Roberts
Bonjour Tristesse
Bonnie and Clyde
Boogie Nights
Born Yesterday
Bottle Rocket
Boudu Saved from Drowning
Bound
Bound for Glory
Bowling for Columbine
Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Brazil
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Breathless
Brick
Brief Encounter
Brigadoon
Bright Star
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Bringing Up Baby
Broadcast News
Broken Blossoms
Brothers Five
Buffalo ’66
Bull Durham
Bullitt
Bunny Lake is Missing
Burden of Dreams
Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
Cabaret
Cabin Boy
Cabin in the Sky
Caddyshack
Café Lumiere
Carlos
Carnival of Souls
Carrie
Cartesius
Casablanca
Cat People
Catch Me If You Can
Catch-22
Caught
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Celine and Julie Go Boating
Centre Stage
Certified Copy
Charade
Cheyenne Autumn
Chikamatsu monogatari
Children of Paradise
Chimes at Midnight
China Girl
Chinatown
Chop Shop
Chungking Express
Citizen Kane
City Girl
City Lights
City of God
City of Lost Children
City on Fire
Claire’s Knee
Clash By Night
Cleo from 5 To 7
Clerks
Climates
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Close-Up
Closely Watched Trains
Clue
Clueless
Come and See
Come Drink With Me
Conan the Barbarian
Contempt
Cool Hand Luke
Cops
Cradle Will Rock
Cranes Are Flying
Cries and Whispers
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Crippled Avengers
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Cruel Intentions
Crumb
Culloden
Curse of the Cat People
Dangerous Liaisons
Dark Journey
Das Boot
Dave Chappelle’s Block Party
Dawn of the Dead
Day and Night
Day for Night
Day of Wrath
Days of Being Wild
Days of Heaven
Dazed and Confused
Dead Man
Dead Poets Society
Deception
Deliverance
Dersu Uzala
Design for Living
Desperado
Destry Rides Again
Detour
Devil’s Doorway
Dial M for Murder
Diary of a Country Priest
Dick Tracy
Die Hard
Dirty Dancing
Dirty Harry
Do the Right Thing
DOA
Dodsworth
Dog Day Afternoon
Don’t Look Back
Don’t Look Now
Donovan’s Reef
Double Indemnity
Down By Law
Down with Love
Dr. Strangelove
Dr. Zhivago
Drag Me to Hell
Dragon Inn
Dreams
Drugstore Cowboy
Drums Along the Mohawk
Drunken Master
Drunken Master II
Duck Soup
E. T. The Extra-Terrestrial
Early Spring
Early Summer
Earth
Easter Parade
Easy Living
Eat Drink Man Woman
Eccentricities of a Blonde-Haired Girl
Ecstasy
Ed Wood
Edvard Munch
Edward Scissorhands
Eight Men Out
El Dorado
El Mariachi
Election (1999)
Election (2005)
Election 2
Elena et les hommes
Empire of the Sun
Enter the Dragon
Equinox Flower
Escape from New York
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Europa ’51
Every Man for Himself and God Against All
Evil Dead II
Excalibur
Executive Suite
Exiled
Existenz
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Exotica
Eyes Wide Shut
F For Fake
Fallen Angel
Fallen Angels
Family Plot
Fantasia
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fantastic Planet
Fargo
Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Father of the Bride (1951)
Faust
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Field of Dreams
Fight Club
Fireworks
Fist of Legend
Fitzcarraldo
Five Fingers of Death
Fixed Bayonets!
Flags of Our Fathers
Flight of the Red Balloon
Floating Weeds
Flying Leathernecks
Footlight Parade
Footloose
For a Few Dollars More
Forbidden Planet
Force of Evil
Fort Apache
Forty Guns
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Frankenstein
Frenzy
Friday Night
From Dusk Til Dawn
From Russia with Love
Fucking Åmål
Full Metal Jacket
Funny Face
Fury
Gates of Heaven
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Gertrud
Ghost Dog
Ghostbusters
Giant
Gilda
Gimme Shelter
Give a Girl a Break
Glengarry Glen Ross
Glory
God of Gamblers
God of Gamblers 2
Godzilla (1954)
Going My Way
Golddiggers of 1933
Goldfinger
Gone with the Wind
Good Morning
Good Night and Good Luck
Goodbye South, Goodbye
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Goodfellas
Greed
Gremlins
Grindhouse
Grizzly Man
Grosse Point Blank
Groundhog Day
Gun Crazy
Gunga Din
Hahaha
Hallelujah, I’m a Bum
Halloween
Hamlet (1948)
Hamlet (1990)
Hangmen Also Die!
Hannah and Her Sisters
Happiness is a Warm Blanket
Happy Gilmore
Happy Together
Happy-Go-Lucky
Harakiri
Hard Eight
Hard-Boiled
Harlan County, USA
Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone
Harvey
Hatari!
Häxan
He Got Game
He Walked By Night
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
Heat
Heathers
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Heaven’s Gate
Heavenly Creatures
Hell in the Pacific
Hell is for Heroes
Henri Langlois: Phantom of the Cinematheque
Henry V (1989)
Hero
Heroes of the East
High and Low
High Plains Drifter
Hiroshima, mon amour
His Girl Friday
His Kind of Woman
Histoire(s) du cinema
History is Made at Night
Holiday
Holiday Affair
Hoop Dreams
Hoosiers
Horror of Dracula
House of Bamboo
House of Flying Daggers
How Green Was My Valley
Howard’s End
Howl’s Moving Castle
Humanity and Paper Balloons
Hunger
I Am Cuba
I am Love
I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
I Know Where I’m Going!
I Love Melvin
I Married a Witch
I Walked with a Zombie
I Was Born But. . .
I Wish I Knew
I’m Not There
If I Should Fall from Grace
Ikiru
Imitation of Life
In a Lonely Place
In the Mood for Love
In the Name of the Father
Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom
Infernal Affairs
Inglourious Basterds
Inland Empire
Intolerance
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Irma Vep
Ishtar
It Happened One Night
It Should Happen To You
It’s a Gift
It’s a Wonderful Life
It’s a Wonderful World
It’s Always Fair Weather
Ivan the Terrible Part 1
Ivan the Terrible Part 2
Jackie Brown
Japanese Girls at the Harbor
Jason and the Argonauts
Jaws
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Jezebel
JFK
Joe vs. the Volcano
Johnny Guitar
Jour de fete
Judge Priest
Judgement at Nuremburg
Jules and Jim
Jurassic Park
Kagemusha
Kameradschaft
Kicking and Screaming
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Kill!
Killer of Sheep
Killer’s Kiss
Kind Hearts and Coronets
King Kong (1933)
King Kong (2005)
King of Kings (1961)
Kings and Queen
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Kiss Me Deadly
Kiss Me Kate
Kundun
Kung Fu Cult Master
Kung Fu Hustle
L’Argent (1928)
L’Atalante
L’Avventura
L’Eclisse
La Chinoise
La Collectioneuse
La Commune (Paris, 1871)
La Danse
La Dolce Vita
La Notte
LA Story
La Strada
Ladyhawke
Lancelot du lac
Land of the Pharaohs
Last Hurrah for Chivalry
Last Life in the Universe
Last Year at Marienbad
Late Autumn
Late Spring
Laura
Lawrence of Arabia
Le Cercle rouge
Le Jour se leve
Le Million
Le Procès de Jeanne d’Arc
Le Samourai
Leave Her to Heaven
Leaves from Satan’s Book
Legendary Weapons of China
Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
Les Vampires
Less than Zero
Lethal Weapon
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Lifeboat
Lifeline
Like You Know it All
Limelight
Little Caesar
Lola
Lola Montes
Lolita
Lone Star
Los Angeles Plays Itself
Lost Highway
Louisiana Story
Love Affair
Love and Death
Love in the Afternoon
Love Me Tonight
M
M. Hulot’s Holiday
Macbeth
Mad Detective
Madame Bovary
Madame de. . .
Made in USA
Magnificent Obsession
Magnolia
Make Way for Tomorrow
Malcolm X
Mamma Roma
Man Hunt
Man of the West
Manhattan
Manhunter
Marathon Man
Marnie
Mars Attacks!
Mary Poppins
Masculin feminin
MASH
Masque of the Red Death
Master and Commander
Matinee
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Me & You & Everyone We Know
Mean Streets
Meek’s Cutoff
Meet Joe Black
Meet Me in St. Louis
Menace II Society
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
Meshes of the Afternoon
Metropolis
Metropolitan
Miami Vice
Midnight
Midnight in Paris
Midnight Mary
Midnight Run
Mildred Pierce
Millennium Mambo
Miller’s Crossing
Ministry of Fear
Minority Report
Mirror
Mission: Impossible
Modern Times
Mogambo
Mon Oncle
Monkey Business (1931)
Monkey Business (1952)
Monsieur Verdoux
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Moonfleet
Moonrise
Moonstruck
Morocco
Morvern Callar
Mother Joan of the Angels
Moulin Rouge!
Mr. Arkadin
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mudhoney
Mulholland Dr.
Munich
Murder By Contract
Muriel
Mutual Appreciation
My Blueberry Nights
My Darling Clementine
My Fair Lady
My Life to Live
My Night at Maud’s
My Own Private Idaho
My Sister Eileen
My Winnipeg
My Young Auntie
Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
Mystery Train
Nanook of the North
Nashville
New Rose Hotel
New York, New York
Night and the City
Night of the Hunter
Night of the Living Dead
Night on Earth
Night Train to Minuch
Nightfall
Nights of Cabiria
Ninotchka
No Country for Old Men
No Greater Glory
No Man of Her Own
No Way Out
North By Northwest
Nosferatu, the Vampyre
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
Nothing Sacred
Notorious
Now, Voyager
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
October
Odd Man Out
Office Space
Oki’s Movie
On Dangerous Ground
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
On the Town
On the Waterfront
Once
Once Upon a Time in America
Once Upon a Time in China
Once Upon a Time in the West
Once Were Warriors
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
One Week
One, Two, Three
Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior
Only Angels Have Wings
Ordet
Orlando
Ornamental Hairpin
Orphans of the Storm
Othello
Our Daily Bread
Our Hospitality
Out of Africa
Out of Sight
Out of the Past
Oxhide II
Paisan
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
Pandora’s Box
Paprika
Paranoid Park
Paris, Texas
Park Row
Party Girl (1958)
Party Girl (1995)
Passing Fancy
Passion
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
Paths of Glory
Patton
PCU
Peeping Tom
Pennies from Heaven
Pepe le Moko
Persona
Petulia
Pi
Pickpocket
Pickup on South Street
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Pierrot le fou
Pinocchio
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Platform
Platoon
Play it Again, Sam
Playtime
Pleasantville
Point Blank
Police Story
Police Story 2
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
Popeye
Portrait of Jennie
Predator
Presumed Innocent
Pretty in Pink
Princess Mononoke
Princess Raccoon
Private Fears in Public Places
Psycho
PTU
Pulp Fiction
Pump Up the Volume
Punch-Drunk Love
Purple Rain
Quiz Show
Rachel Getting Married
Radio Days
Raging Bull
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raise the Red Lantern
Raising Arizona
Ran
Rancho Notorious
Rashomon
Ratatouille
Reality Bites
Rear Window
Rebecca
Rebel without a Cause
Rebels of the Neon God
Red Cliff
Red Dust
Red River
Red Rock West
Red-Headed Woman
Reds
Regeneration
Remember the Night
Repulsion
Rescue Dawn
Reservoir Dogs
Reversal of Fortune
Ride the High Country
Rififi
Rio Bravo
Rio Grande
RoboCop
Roger & Me
Roman Holiday
Rome, Open City
Romeo + Juliet
Ronin
Rope
Rosemary’s Baby
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Round Midnight
Rounders
Roxanne
Ruggles of Red Gap
Run Lola Run
Run of the Arrow
Rushmore
Russian Ark
Sabrina
Safety Last
Salvador
Samson and Delilah
Samurai Rebellion
Sands of Iwo Jima
Sanjuro
Sans soleil
Sanshiro Sugata
Sansho the Bailiff
Satantango
Say Anything. . .
Scandal Sheet
Scarface
Scarlet Street
Scream
Searching for Bobby Fischer
Sense and Sensibility
Senso
Serenity
Serpico
Seven
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Seven Chances
Seven Men From Now
Seven Samurai
Seventh Heaven
Shadow of a Doubt
Shadowlands
Shall We Dance
Shampoo
Shanghai Express
Shaolin Soccer
She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
She’s Gotta Have It
Sherlock Jr
Shock Corridor
Shogun Assassin
Shoot the Piano Player
Shutter Island
Signs
Silence of the Lambs
Silverado
Simon of the Desert
Simple Men
Sin City
Singin’ in the Rain
Singles
Sisters of the Gion
Sita Sings the Blues
Six Degrees of Separation
Sixteen Candles
Slacker
Slap Shot
Sleeper
Sleeping Beauty
Sleuth (1972)
Smoke
Sneakers
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Socrates
Solaris
Some Came Running
Some Kind of Wonderful
Some Like it Hot
South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
Southland Tales
Sparrow
Spartacus
Spirit of the Beehive
Spirited Away
Spring in a Small Town
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. . . and Spring
St. Martin’s Lane
Stagecoach
Stalker
Stand and Deliver
Stand By Me
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Star Wars
Starship Troopers
Steamboat ‘Round the Bend
Steamboat Bill Jr.
Still Life
Still Walking
Stolen Kisses
Stranger than Paradise
Strangers on a Train
Stray Dog
Street Angel (1928)
Street of Shame
Strictly Ballroom
Stromboli
Sullivan’s Travels
Summer Hours
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
Sunset Blvd.
Supercop
Superman
Superman Returns
Susan Slept Here
Susperia
Suspicion
Sweet and Lowdown
Swing Time
Swingers
Sword of the Beast
Syndromes and a Century
T-Men
Tabu: A Story of the South Seas
Talk to Her
Tarzan, the Ape Man
Taste of Cherry
Taxi Driver
Tea and Sympathy
That Hamilton Woman
That’s Entertainment!
That’s Entertainment! Part III
The ‘High Sign’
The 25th Hour
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
The 39 Steps
The 40 Year Old Virgin
The 400 Blows
The 7th Victim
The Abyss
The Actress
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
The Adventures of Prince Achmed
The Adventures of Robin Hood
The Affairs of Dobie Gillis
The African Queen
The Age of Innocence
The Age of the Medici
The Apartment
The Asphalt Jungle
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
The Atomic Café
The Aviator’s Wife
The Awful Truth
The Bad News Bears
The Bad Sleep Well
The Band Wagon
The Bank Dick
The Barefoot Contessa
The Battle of Algiers
The Bells of St. Mary’s
The Best Years of Our Lives
The Big Clock
The Big Combo
The Big Heat
The Big Lebowski
The Big Parade
The Big Red One
The Big Sky
The Big Sleep
The Birds
The Bitter Tea of General Yen
The Black Book
The Black Stallion
The Black Swan
The Blair Witch Project
The Blue Angel
The Blue Dahlia
The Blues Brothers
The Breakfast Club
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Cheat
The China Syndrome
The Circus
The Clock
The Color of Money
The Color of Pomegranates
The Conformist
The Conversation
The Cowboys
The Crying Game
The Darjeeling Limited
The Dawn Patrol
The Day the Earth Stood Still
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
The Deer Hunter
The Departed
The Devil and Daniel Webster
The Devil is a Woman
The Dirty Dozen
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
The Docks of New York
The Double Life of Veronique
The Eagle Shooting Heroes
The Empire Strikes Back
The End of Summer
The English Patient
The Exterminating Angel
The Far Country
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Five Deadly Venoms
The Flowers of Shanghai
The Fly
The Fountainhead
The French Connection
The Friends of Eddie Coyle
The Front Page
The Furies
The Gang’s All Here
The Gay Divorcee
The General
The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
The Girl Can’t Help It
The Glass Key
The Goat
The Godfather
The Godfather Part II
The Godfather Part III
The Gold Rush
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly
The Graduate
The Grand Illusion
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Dictator
The Great Escape
The Green Ray
The Heartbreak Kid
The Hidden Fortress
The Hitch-Hiker
The Horse Soldiers
The Host
The Hudsucker Proxy
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
The Hunt for Red October
The Hurt Locker
The Hustler
The Illusionist (2010)
The Immigrant
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Incredibles
The Indian Epic
The Insider
The Invisble Man
The Iron Giant
The Iron Horse
The Jerk
The Karate Kid
The Karate Kid Part II
The Kid
The Killer
The Killers
The Killing
The King and I
The King of Kings (1927)
The Lady Eve
The Lady from Shanghai
The Lady Vanishes
The Ladykillers (1955)
The Last Command
The Last Days of Disco
The Last Detail
The Last Emperor
The Last Laugh
The Last of the Mohicans
The Last Picture Show
The Last Seduction
The Last Temptation of Christ
The Last Waltz
The Lavender Hill Mob
The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk
The Leopard
The Leopard Man
The Letter
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
The Life of Brian
The Life of Oharu
The Limits of Control
The Lineup
The Lion in Winter
The Living Daylights
The Long Goodbye
The Long Voyage Home
The Longest Day
The Loyal 47 Ronin
The Lusty Men
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Maltese Falcon
The Man from Laramie
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Man Who Wasn’t There
The Man with a Movie Camera
The Manchurian Candidate
The Mark of Zorro
The Marquise of O
The Masseurs and a Woman
The Matrix
The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail
The Merry Widow (1934)
The Milagro Beanfield War
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek
The Mission (1986)
The Mission (1999)
The Moon is Blue
The Mortal Storm
The Most Dangerous Game
The Mummy (1932)
The Musketeers of Pig Alley
The Naked City
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad
The Naked Kiss
The Naked Prey
The Naked Spur
The Name of the Rose
The Narrow Margin
The Natural
The Navigator
The New World
The Nightmare Before Christmas
The One-Armed Swordsman
The Others
The Outlaw Josey Wales
The Ox-Bow Incident
The Palm Beach Story
The Pan-American Exposition by Night
The Paper Chase
The Parallax View
The Passenger
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Phenix City Story
The Philadelphia Story
The Pirate
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Play House
The Player
The Power of Kangwon Province
The Princess Bride
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
The Proposition
The Protector
The Prowler
The Public Enemy
The Puppetmaster
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Quick and the Dead
The Quiet American
The Quiet Man
The Red Balloon
The Red Shoes
The Right Stuff
The River (1951)
The River’s Edge
The Road Home
The Road Warrior
The Roaring Twenties
The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
The Royal Tenenbaums
The Rules of the Game
The Savage Innocents
The Scarlet Empress
The Searchers
The Secret Beyond the Door
The Secret of Kells
The Secret of NIMH
The Set-Up
The Seventh Seal
The Shanghai Gesture
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shining
The Shop Around the Corner
The Shopworn Angel
The Sign of the Cross
The Sleeping Beauty
The Small Back Room
The Social Network
The Sorrow and the Pity
The Spirit of the Beehive
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The Steel Helmet
The Sting
The Story of a Cheat
The Story of GI Joe
The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums
The Stranger
The Strawberry Blonde
The Sweet Smell of Success
The Sword of Doom
The Tai Chi Master
The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
The Tale of Zatoichi
The Talented Mr. Ripley
The Tales of Hoffman
The Tall T
The Tall Target
The Tarnished Angels
The Terminator
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
The Thief of Baghdad
The Thin Blue Line
The Thin Man
The Thin Red Line
The Thing
The Thing from Another World
The Third Man
The Three Ages
The Train
The Treasure of the Sierra madre
The Tree of Life
The Trial (1962)
The Trouble with Harry
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
The Untouchables
The Verdict
The Wages of Fear
The War Game
The Warriors (1979)
The Water Margin
The Wild Bunch
The Wild Child
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
The Wind Will Carry Us
The Wizard of Oz
The Woman in the Window
The World
The World of Henry Orient
The Young Girls of Rochefort
The Zero Effect
There Will Be Blood
There’s Always Tomorrow
There’s Something About Mary
They Live By Night
They Were Expendable
Thieves’ Highway
This Gun for Hire
This is Spinal Tap
Thomas Mao
Three Amigos
Three Colors: Blue
Three Colors: Red
Three Colors: White
Three Comrades
Three Kings
Three Times
Throne of Blood
Throw Mamma from the Train
Thunderball
Tight Spot
Time Bandits
Time Regained
To Be or Not To Be
To Catch a Thief
To Have and Have Not
To Live and Die in LA
Tokyo Chorus
Tokyo Drifter
Tokyo Story
Tokyo Twilight
Top Gun
Top Hat
Topaz
Topsy-Turvy
Torn Curtain
Total Recall
Touch of Evil
Tout va bien
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Toy Story 3
Track of the Cat
Trading Places
Trainspotting
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
Tropical Malady
Trouble in Paradise
True Grit (2010)
True Heart Susie
True Romance
Trust
Twentieth Century
Two Lovers
Two Rode Together
Two-Lane Blacktop
Ugetsu
Unbreakable
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Under Capricorn
Under the Roofs of Paris
Underworld
Underworld, USA
Unfaithfully Yours
Unforgiven
Unknown Pleasures
Up
Vampyr
Vanilla Sky
Vengeance
Vera Cruz
Vertigo
Viridiana
Voyage in Italy
Wagon Master
Wait Until Dark
Waiting for Guffman
Wake Island
Waking Life
Walkabout
Wall Street
WALL-E
Wallace & Grommit: The Wrong Trousers
Waltz with Bashir
WarGames
Waterloo Bridge
Way Down East
Wayne’s World
Wee Willie Winkie
Week End
West Side Story
Wet Hot American Summer
What Price Hollywood?
What Time is it There?
What’s Up, Tiger Lily?
When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
When Harry Met Sally. . .
When We Were Kings
Where the Sidewalk Ends
While the City Sleeps
White Dog
White Heat
White Hunter, Black Heart
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who’s that Knocking at My Door?
Wild Boys of the Road
Wild Grass
Wild Reeds
Wild Strawberries
Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Winchester ’73
Wings
Wings of Desire
Withnail & I
Witness for the Prosecution
Woman in the Dunes
Woman on the Beach (2006)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
Wonder Boys
Woodstock
Written By
Written on the Wind
Y tu mama tambien
Yang Kwei-fei
Yi yi
Yojimbo
Yolanda and the Thief
You Only Live Once
You Only Live Twice
You Think You’re the Prettiest but You Are the Sluttiest
You, the Living
Young Mr. Lincoln
Zelig
Zéro de conduite
Zhou Yu’s Train
Zodiac
Zoolander
Zulu

Quick Thoughts on The Tree of Life



Finally got to see this this afternoon, at the Grand Cinema in Tacoma.  My audience was fairly annoying, but not as bad as what I’ve been hearing.  Only a couple people walked out.  We were the youngest people in attendance (2:30 on a Sunday, that’s not that surprising).  There wasn’t any inappropriate noise for the most part, though I swear I heard someone listening to a radio while Jack was stealing the neglige.  Everyone got up immediately, chuckling and baffled, at the end of the film, breaking the spell of the soundtrack (nature noises, followed by piano and then some other bit of music).  I couldn’t move until the film shut off.


There are spoilers here, though I can’t imagine this is a film that can be spoiled.

As the film begins, a series of dualisms are set up (Grace/Nature, Mother/Father, natural world/modern architecture) but I think the film concludes by eliminating those oppositions and embracing a whole.  This plays out in Jack’s reconciliation with his father and in his seeing the cloudscape reflected in the skyscraper.  It’s the final image of the film: a bridge spanning water.

Water is a vitally important image in Malick’s last three films.  It is time and interconnectedness.  It is Pocahontas’s mother/god, its the eternity that life struggles to conquer in the ghostly final image of The Thin Red Line.  The eponymous tree here I thought was really beautiful, haunting the film like a cousin of the monoliths of 2001.  The imagery isn’t particularly obscure, but as always with Malick, it is utterly sincere.  


The editing is like nothing we see, or have seen, possibly going back to Soviet montage.  The film is rightfully praised for the beauty of its individual images, but the way Malick builds meaning and such profound emotion out of such brief images, as often as not of inhuman elements is remarkable.  It’s the editing that makes the film Transcendentalist more than anything else: trees and clouds and rivers are imbued with soul through montage.

I don’t know if Penn is dead or not at the end, I suspect not.  I see the “afterlife” as his vision of what the afterlife will be like, when he’ll be reuniting with his loved ones.  Fundamentally, the film isn’t all that different from Lost, is it?



For some reason I thought the brother that died had killed himself.  Did anyone else get that impression, or did it spring entirely out of my own mind?  

I can’t think of a better film to pair this with than Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.


There’s a repeated shot up through a canyon that looks like the canyon in 127 Hours.  That, in turn, reminds one of the caves in Uncle Boonmee and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  Something in the zeitgeist?  The weird thing is that the womb image here is not a cave, but a house floating in water, with the child passing through the door and swimming up to the air at birth (and rebirth).


There’s a long section, after we see the creation of the universe (all of which is prelude to the birth of Sean Penn) where we see Penn as an infant.  His earliest memories, flashes of images and sensations and emotions that has instantly become one of my all-time favorite movie sequences.  I’ve never seen a film that so captured memory, in all its incompleteness and fragmentation and sentiment and beauty.



Really all of the musical sequences with Pitt are fantastic: stopping in the midst of yelling at your kids to freak out about Brahms?  Jack watching as his Father loses himself in Bach, finally sitting next to him in one of their rare moments of closeness.  Most importantly, when his middle son is playing guitar and he begins to accompany him on piano.  He’s so proud of the one son, while the other is heartbroken that he’ll never share that connection with his father.

I think Pitt played him great, but his character is so well-conceived.  He’s certainly got his faults, but you feel the struggle of a whole generation of men who came of age in depression and war trying to not only survive the peacetime but raise children who’ve never known struggle and don’t understand why their thoroughly traumatized parents are so emotionally distant.  It’s sympathetic to him in a way we very rarely are.


One of my favorite single images, representative of the film in both its beauty and its at times almost comical on-the-noseness: a newly formed galaxy, framed by more distant galaxies, forming a God’s Eye.  Malick can get away with that kind of thing because of his sincerity.  There aren’t enough honest artists out there these days.

Movie Roundup: Chinese Lightning Edition

The Mission – Maybe Johnnie To’s best movie, the first part of a thematic trilogy with the equally great Exiled and the pretty good Vengeance.  All three are about a group of hired killers who, for the sake of honor, find themselves at war with their boss.  There’s a shoot out in an empty mall (which looks like the same mall as the one in the climax of Jackie Chan’s Police Story) that’s a perfect distillation of To’s style: complex but comprehensible geography, Leone-like stillness, Woo-like cool.  The #3 film of 1999.
 
Election – Simon Yam and the other Tony Leung compete to be the leader of the local gang.  This first of two films relates the present day organized crime gangs (triads) to their history as anti-Manchu insurrectionist groups.  The sequel demonstrates the ways in which Hong Kong’s gangs are regulated and manipulated by both the local police and the mainland Chinese government.  Johnnie To strips all the pomp out of The Godfather and mixes it into an action movie.  The #5 film of 2005.
 
A Hero Never Dies – Tweaking a favorite John Woo trope, Johnnie To pits two superhuman hitmen against each other and they find they have more in common than their bosses’ rivalries should allow.  Woo plays it straight, with Catholic notions about the duality of man.  To nods to Weekend at Bernie’s.  The #25 film of 1998.
 
 
 
 
The 14 Amazons – After all the men of the Yang family are wiped out by insurrectionists, the women take up arms against the villainous army.  Along the way, a bridge is shattered (inspiring Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) and they rebuild it out of people.  It was a big hit on its release: people always like to see women fighting.  Action director Ching Siu Tung went on to direct as well, he did Swordsman II and the action choreography in Zhang Yimou’s 2000s epics.  The #17 film of 1972.
 
My Young Auntie – Kara Hui stars in a comic Lau Kar Leung film.  She’s the titular auntie  who inherits an estate and tries to keep it from being stolen by her dead husband’s evil brother.  She’s intrigued and terrified by the modern world, mocked by her nephew (Hsiao Ho) and his friends but everyone joins together to beat up the bad guys in the end.  It’s the best of Lau’s comedies, but I like him better when he’s serious.  The #5 film of 1981.
 
The Lady Hermit – Cheng Pei-pei is the kung fu master hiding out while she recovers from her last battle with her archenemy.  A young man and woman discover her identity and the three of them work on some new kung fu moves and a love triangle.  Eventually, everyone fights the bad guy.  Cheng is as great as ever, and Shih Szu as the young woman who idolizes her is pretty adorable, but Lo Lieh is relatively bland as the male lead.  Better than the other two films by Meng Hua Ho I’ve seen (Vengeance is a Golden Blade and Shaolin Handlock) but none of them really stand out as great.  The #15 film of 1971.
 

 
God of Gamblers – Chow Yun-fat is the coolest guy in the world, the best gambler ever who looks fantastic in a tuxedo.  In the midst of preparing to defeat a bad guy in a gambling showdown, he falls down a hill and hits his head on a rock.  When small-time hustler Andy Lau (so young as to be nearly unrecognizable) finds him, he’s got amnesia and has mentally regressed to a child.  Lau discovers his gambling talents and begins to exploit him, but when Chow’s old acquaintances discover him, he and Lau have to find a way to get his brain back in working order (apparently never having seen the episode of Charles in Charge where a blow to the head changes Charles into his evil alternate personality “Chaz”.)  In the end, Chow is back to his awesome self.  The first film in a long running series of sequels and parodies, it’s easy to see why it’s so popular: Chow’s awesomeness mixed with director Wong Jing’s lowest common denominator humor is nearly irresistible.  The #13 film of 1989.

Top 100 Albums of All-Time

#
Artist
Album
1 The Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs
2 Bob Dylan Bringing it All Back Home
3 The Beatles The Beatles (White Album)
4 Bob Dylan Love and Theft
5 Miles Davis Kind of Blue
6 The Clash London Calling
7 The Pogues If I Should Fall From Grace With God
8 Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
9 Weezer Pinkerton
10 Beck Odelay
11 The Beatles Abbey Road
12 The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground & Nico
13 Radiohead OK Computer
14 The Beach Boys Pet Sounds
15 Sonic Youth Daydream Nation
16 Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street
17 Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde
18 The Beatles Revolver
19 Neil Young & Crazy Horse Rust Never Sleeps
20 Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
21 Fleetwood Mac Rumours
22 Parliament Mothership Connection
23 Bob Dylan Blood on the Tracks
24 The Pogues Rum, Sodomy & the Lash
25 Leonard Cohen The Songs of Leonard Cohen
26 Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers
27 Pavement Slanted & Enchanted
28 Bob Dylan Highway 61 Revisited
29 Led Zeppelin IV
30 The Jimi Hendrix Experience Are You Experienced?
31 Joni Mitchell Blue
32 David Bowie The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust
33 Neil Young Everybody Knows This is Nowhere
34 Tom Waits Rain Dogs
35 Nirvana Nevermind
36 Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
37 Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
38 Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
39 Bjork Debut
40 Rolling Stones Let it Bleed
41 Yo La Tengo Electr-o-pura
42 The Pixies Doolittle
43 Paul Simon Graceland
44 Frank Sinatra In the Wee Small Hours
45 Radiohead Kid A
46 Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream
47 Amy Winehouse Back To Black
48 Bob Dylan The Basement Tapes
49 The Pixies Surfer Rosa
50 The Grateful Dead American Beauty
51 Rolling Stones Beggar’s Banquet
52 Neil Young After the Goldrush
53 Miles Davis Birth of the Cool
54 Morphine Cure for Pain
55 White Stripes Get Behind Me Satan
56 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
57 Lou Reed Berlin
58 Jeff Buckley Grace
59 Radiohead Amnesiac
60 Led Zeppelin Houses of the Holy
61 The Pogues Red Roses for Me
62 Nirvana In Utero
63 PJ Harvey Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
64 Van Morrison Astral Weeks
65 Lou Reed Transformer
66 Tom Waits Mule Variations
67 Michael Jackson Thriller
68 Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
69 They Might Be Giants Flood
70 The Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
71 Violent Femmes Violent Femmes
72 Dave Brubeck Time Out
73 Leonard Cohen I’m Your Man
74 David Bowie Hunky Dory
75 Prince Purple Rain
76 Sufjan Stevens Illinois
77 Ornette Coleman Free Jazz
78 Leonard Cohen Various Positions
79 The Beatles Let it Be
80 Cannonball Adderly Somethin’ Else
81 Brian Eno Here Come the Warm Jets
82 Yo La Tengo And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
83 Neko Case Furnace Room Lullaby
84 Charles Mingus Mingus Plays Piano
85 Rush Moving Pictures
86 Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica
87 Stephen Malkmus Stephen Malkmus
88 NWA Straight Outta Compton
89 PJ Harvey To Bring You My Love
90 The Velvet Underground The Velvet Underground
91 Frank Sinatra Songs for Swingin’ Lovers
92 The Clash Sandinista!
93 Wilco Being There
94 Elvis Costello My Aim Is True
95 The National High Violet
96 Tom Waits The Heart of Saturday Night
97 LCD Soundsystem This is Happening
98 Devo Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
99 Bjork Homogenic
100 Yo La Tengo I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One

Movie Roundup: Crime Movie Lightning Round Edition

Lightning strikes again.
Phantom Lady – Wrong man noir from Robert Siodmak.  A man is imprisoned for murder and his only alibi is a woman with a crazy hat.  His faithful assistant (Ella Raines) must find her before he gets executed.  Franchot Tone, the best friend, tries to help, or does he??  Elisha Cook almost steals the show as a horny drummer.  Suitably weird.  The #14 film of 1944.
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry – George Sanders playing against type brilliantly as a hen-pecked brother of a couple of crazy sisters in another Siodmak noir.  When he meets Ella Raines he plots his escape from his dreary family and small town, with noirish results.  The ending doesn’t work at all, and is even more obviously tacked on than that of a certain Fritz Lang film, but before that we’re treated to a pretty crazy quilt of murder, new England provincialism and insinuated incest.  The #19 film of 1945.
Shockproof – A film noir written by Samuel Fuller and directed by Douglas Sirk.  You wouldn’t think those two sensibilities would go together, but they share an interest in superheated emotion and wild plotting (I would love to see a Fuller Magnificent Obsession, or a Sirk Naked Kiss).  Anyway, Cornel Wilde plays a parole officer (named Griff, naturally) who falls for his parolee, a gangster’s girl.  He gets her a job taking care of his blind mom, she plots to escape and run off with her boyfriend, while stringing Griff along.  It’s not really shocking, nor does it prove anything, but there’s enough there to chew on, if not to the standard of either man’s greatest films.  The #15 film of 1949.
Gone in 60 Seconds – The car chase movie was perfected in 1974, but for some inexplicable reason, people keep making them.  Entirely independent, written, produced, directed by and starring Toby Halicki and a Mustang Mach 1.  The first half of the film is a vague plot about a gang of car thieves stealing a ridiculous amount of cars in a short period of time.  There’s little in the way of acting and most of the dialogue is in post-recorded voiceover.  The second half is a 45 minute car chase that’s just about the greatest thing in the history of the automobile.  Pure cinema.  The #6 film of 1974.
City of Fear – Big disappointment after how much I loved Murder By Contract, also directed by Irving Lerner, especially given the swell title.  It’s a procedural, Cold War panic kind of thing, with Vince Edwards as an escaped convict packing radioactive cobalt that’s slowly killing him and may kill all of Los Angeles if he isn’t found.  Sometimes people in movies are dumb and it makes me sad and bored.  I suspect Lerner is not a wizard.  The #16 film of 1959.

Movie Roundup: 2010 Lightning Round Edition

Still way behind, so I’m going to try to get through these even more quickly than usual.  I wrote some longer bits for Metro Classics a few weeks ago, about some BIlly Wilder films, a Powell & Pressburger and a scary samurai movie.
Easy A – A perfectly charming teen comedy.  Emma Stone is great, Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson plays idealized parents.  The social commentary isn’t particularly incisive, though it does hint at the scary Puritanism of the current generation (The Scarlet Letter doesn’t adapt as well to high school as Emma did, but better than Taming of the Shrew).  This movie makes me feel old: for once, I identified more with the parents than the kids.  The #25 film of 2010.
Restrepo – A fine film as a slice of a year in the life of soldiers defending a remote outpost in Afghanistan, but it lacks the narrative structure or context to make it interesting on anything more than the most mundane, day-to-day level.  These guys deserve a story.  The #43 film of 2010.
The Illusionist – Sylvain Chomet’s animated realization of a Jacques Tati script.  A young girl tags along an aging vaudeville magician, brightening his life and that of his very depressed coworkers.  She grows up and moves on, he stays alone.  Not in the class of Tati’s own films, it’s more sweet and sad than anything else I’ve seen of his.  Brilliant and profound though they are, they never aspire to this kind of sentimentality.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  Lovely score, I think Chomet’s animation style is a bit too grotesque.  The #11 film of 2010.
Never Let Me Go – One of those sci-fi films that doesn’t work for me because it’s on the border between believable fiction and wild fantasy.  Like Children of Men, say, I can’t see how the world it creates would ever actually happen, which lessens the drama tremendously.  If the scientific breakthrough that forms the core of the film’s premise were to ever actually happen, I see no way that the world would deal with it in the way the film posits it would (and also forms the foundation for its assertions about society and human nature), certainly not in the timeframe the film allows it.  Absent that firm basis, the film plays more as moody sulkiness and pretty images than anything truly interesting or insightful.  Also not believable: that anyone would pick Keira Knightley over Carey Mulligan.  The #31 film of 2010.
Machete – Robert Rodriguez spinning his wheels.  It’s fun, and kind of funny, but mostly it’s exactly what you expect it to be.  Planet Terror and Once Upon a Time in Mexico did the same thing, but with more style and creativity.  The #39 film of 2010.
Kick Ass – Watchmen without the self-importance, and also without the ambition.  It’s fine.  The #38 film of 2010.
Summer Wars – Nifty anime from the guy who did The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, though this isn’t quite that good.  Weird vision of the internet as a Paprika-style dreamworld almost overwhelms the emotional moments: the family-bonding and coming of age romanticism.  Girl was more heartfelt and grounded, if even more fantastical.  The #25 film of 2009.
Unstoppable – I don’t know if Tony Scott is a genius, but this as as good as the contemporary American action film gets.  Modest and focused where the Bays and Nolans are bloated and chaotic, the film does exactly what it tells you its going to do, with a minimum of fuss.  Not so the visual style, of course, but Scott’s peripatetic camera and editing don’t distract me too much.  I need to watch the rest of his recent films, there’s a big gap between this and Crimson Tide.  The #29 film of 2010.

Movie Roundup: Welcome DFAs Edition

 

The Heartbreak Kid – Is to The Graduate what Two-Lane Blacktop is to Easy Rider: a much darker, more realistic, less populist version of the same basic idea.  Charles Grodin plays a young sporting goods salesman who goes to Miami on his honeymoon and meets Cybill Shepherd, who is everything his new wife is not.  When his wife gets a horrible sunburn, he pursues Shepherd relentlessly, ends his marriage and follows her to Minnesota.  Director Elaine May balances the comedy with the very real cruelty and desperation in Grodin’s character, his breakup scene with his wife is as black as cringe humor gets.  The #5 film of 1972.

 

The Prowler – A film noir from Joseph Losey, in which Van Heflin plays a cop called out to investigate a peeping tom.  He falls in love with the woman placing the call (Evelyn Keyes) and plots to murder her husband as the two begin an affair.  They get away with it, except Keyes’s pregnancy threatens to give away the crime.  Set in only a few iconic locations (Heflin’s spare apartment, a ghost town) and with the husband a constant presence over the radio in the early scenes (he’s a DJ or something), Losey creates one of the blackest noirs I’ve seen, and Heflin’s cop is one of the genre’s scariest protagonists.  The #16 film of 1951.

Ministry of Fear – A wartime film noir from Fritz Lang, though the plot seems a more natural fit for Alfred Hitchcock.  Ray Milland plays a nice guy recently let out of a mental hospital who gets himself involved in a Nazi spy ring and finds himself framed for murder.  He skulks about avoiding the cops and the bad guys while making friends with a pretty girl and every once in a while wondering if he’s crazy or not.  The wrong man setup and the plot convolutions are Hitchcock’s natural territory, but Lang brings more serious bleakness and less comedy to the material.  It’s not as good as Lang’s similar Man Hunt from a couple years earlier, but it has a better ending than the other Lang noir from 1944, the otherwise solid The Woman in the Window.  The #9 film of 1944.

The Marquise of O – Thanks to a couple of sales at amazon.uk, I find myself owning almost every Eric Rohmer film on DVD.  But I haven’t gone on a Rohmer-watching rampage.  Not because I don’t want to see them all, but rather because I want to savor them and parcel them out slowly over the rest of my life.  Watching them all in a few months would just feel wrong, given what the films are like: their decidedly unrushed pace, the value they place in a contemplative approach to life.  This was his first feature after finishing his series of Six Moral Tales with 1972’s Love in the Afternoon (he appears to have been making a TV series in the interim) and it’s a rare Rohmer film that’s not part of a larger series.  Based on a German novel, it’s about a young high-born widow in a war-torn country who appears to have become pregnant without knowing why.  It turns out Bruno Ganz took advantage of her while she was passed out after a battle.  Ganz is desperately trying to get her and her family to let him marry her, but they just think he’s weird to be in so much of a hurry.  When her pregnancy becomes obvious, her family throws her out, despite her protestations of innocence.  Only Rohmer could get us to believe in the romanticism of it all and actually root for Ganz to get the girl and live happily ever after.  The #4 film of 1976.

 

La Commune (Paris 1871) – A massive film from Peter Watkins that recreates the events of the Paris Commune on a big soundstage with barebones sets and covers it like an extended live from the scene news report.  Using modern media techniques to mirror the press of the past and deconstruct the media of the present, our guides for much of the film are two reports from “Commune TV” who interview various Parisian citizens, soldiers, rich and poor women, government and Commune officials, etc, all with a stridently pro-Commune POV (these are contrasted with mainstream news programs that give the establishment line on the events).  The Commune was a democratic socialist revolt that established, for a short time, a new government within Paris.  Why and how the Commune failed is the major subject of the film, as are its big successes (secular public education, the right of women to vote, wage equality between genders and such) and we see it all play out in granular detail over the film’s four hour running time.  But more than just a history lesson, the film repeatedly loops the Commune into the issues of the present, not just in the media, but in many of the same concerns of feminism and anti-capitalism that are on-going and seemingly never-ending.  The most wondrous moment of the film is when we realize that a group of actors we’ve been watching stating their grievances and opinions in character for hours have suddenly started talking about themselves and their own beliefs, and how the experience of just being in the film has made them see their world in a new way.

Best of lists are strange things, and my own don’t aspire to any claim of objectivity, but are instead my own favorites and films I like to watch again and again and their order changes with my mood and my age.  I’ve really never made a claim as to what is the greatest film of all-time, I don’t think such a thing is possible.  When asked, I always say Seven Samurai because that’s usually my favorite.  But there are lots of possible answers for me, and lots more reasonable answers for other people.  It wouldn’t be my choice, but if someone told me La Commune was the greatest film of all-time, I wouldn’t argue with them.  I’d say “Yeah, I can see that.”  But for me right now, it’s the #4 film of 2000.