Although I've contributed several times to Sight and Sound, I wasn't favored with a ballot for their recent much-discussed poll of the Greatest Films of All Time. Undeterred by this oversight, I proffer here my own Top Ten, along with - it being that doldrum time of year of post-festivity, and what with me being a habitual and compulsive ranker - a bunch of other cinematic lists.
. Performance (Roeg)
. Walkabout (Roeg)
. The Servant (Losey)
. Blow-Up (Antonioni)
. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Altman)
. Point Blank (Boorman)
. The Dream Life of Angels (Zonca)
. Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (Meyer)
. Taxi Driver (Scorsese)
. Bedazzled (Donen)
There’s a huge number of nearly-made-the Top Ten films, that list is at the bottom, but first, here's some slightly more unusual lists
ODD LITTLE MOVIES THAT AREN’T GREAT - THEY'RE SERIOUSLY FLAWED OR JUST DETERMINEDLY
MINOR - BUT THEY STAY WITH YOU, FOR WHATEVER REASON (COULD JUST BE ONE OR TWO SCENES,
A CHARACTER, A CONCEPT OR CONCEIT, OR EVEN A SHOT)
Charlie Bubbles
Le Grand Meaulnes
Diary of a Lonely Girl a.k.a. T.R. Baskin
Accident
Reflections in a Golden Eye
The President’s Analyst
Fahrenheit 451
Duel
Radio On
Dark Star
Hud
California Split
Getting Straight
The Homecoming
I Heart Huckabees
Career Girls
Mikey and Nicky
The Bed Sitting Room
Picnic
Taxi Zum Klo
La Grand Bouffe
Equus
Diary of a Mad Housewife
Natural Born Killers
Silent Running
Once Upon A Time in America
The Swimmer
Deep End
Oleanna
+ several films that I simply cannot place or find out what they are but distinctly remember from watching them on BBC2 late at night as a boy
GREAT / FAVORITE / SUPER-ENTERTAINING MOVIES THAT FEEL A BIT WORN OUT AND USED UP
THROUGH OVERWATCHING (BUT OF COURSE YOU’LL ALWAYS WATCH THEM AGAIN WHEN YOU CHANCE ON THEM ON THE TV)
The Godfather
The Godfather II
Chinatown
Blue Velvet
Goodfellas
The Conversation
Casino
Heathers
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Being John Malkovich
Sex Lies and Videotape
Blade Runner
Laurel and Hardy pushing the piano up the hill
Bonnie and Clyde
if….
Citzen Kane
Apocalypse Now
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Terminator
American Graffiti
Fargo
La Strada
The Birds
Amadeus
Psycho
Boogie Nights
Groundhog Day
Saturday Night Fever
Hard Day’s Night
Life Is Sweet
The King of Comedy
Alien
The Long Good Friday
Rear Window
2001 A Space Odyssey
Midnight Cowboy
The Graduate
Some Like It Hot
Network
Sense and Sensibility
After Hours
Sexy Beast
Cool Hand Luke
Sunset Boulevard
Annie Hall
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
The Bridge Over the River Kwai
Easy Rider
Get Carter
Pulp Fiction
Raging Bull
The Deer Hunter
Lawrence of Arabia
Kind Hearts and Coronets
A Taste of Honey
Broadway Danny Rose
Barbarella
The Producers
A Room with a View
Billy Liar
Tron
Wall Street
Days of Heaven
Escape from New York
The Silence of the Lambs
Lost in Translation
North by Northwest
Stalag 17
Alfie
Reality Bites
The Parallax View
Videodrome
The Long Goodbye
Dr Strangelove
Sideways
Morvern Callar
Glengarry Glen Ross
Dead Ringers
Slacker
Dazed and Confused
The Devil Wears Prada
A BIT BORING IF WE'RE HONEST
A Clockwork Orange
The Shining
Vertigo
Mean Streets
LIFE’S TOO SHORT
Godard
Fassbinder
Pasolini
Cassavetes
Fritz Lang
Bergman (well, the ones I've not seen, which is most of them)
Kurosawa
auteur manga
Nashville
GARBAGE (not a complete list)
M.A.S.H.
Short Cuts
Peterloo
A Quiet Passion
TIME OUT MOVIES
(movies of the 1980s and 1990s, when I lived in London and
would have looked at listings magazines, if not necessarily followed their
guidance – Time Out here is shorthand for a kind of well-reviewed quality or ‘art’
– rather often French – movie that “goes down well” at the time but leaves not a trace
in your heart or indeed memory. The problem here is not exactly being tasteful
or “upper middlebrow” - the Time Out film can be
garish, camp / kitsch, “visionary” as with some of the directors listed here for their complete or near-complete urrrv and who really cake it on the screen) (Time Out Films defined further here)
Betty Blue
Jesus of Montreal
Peter Greenaway (apart from The Draughtsman Contract)
Brazil (in fact the complete Gilliam uuurv apart from Jabberwocky)
Gas Food Lodging
Diva
How to Get A Head in Advertising
Wings of Desire (most Wenders really)
Thelma & Louise
Angel Heart
Santa Sangre
John Waters
The Piano
Danny Boyle
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Terence Davies
Almodovar, for the most part
Guy Ritchie
Derek Jarman apart from the early shorts
Nearly all Woody Allen after Annie Hall (apart from Radio Days and Broadway Danny Rose)
most Coen Bros
Spike Lee apart from Do the Right Thing
every other Mike Leigh
Jim Jarmusch for the most part
Lars Von Trier for the most part
Everything Nicolas Roeg did after the first 25 minutes of Eureka onwards
so so so many other films I trooped out to see in the 1980s and first half of 1990s and have simply
forgotten... I like to blame Time Out although I don't think I ever read the film section - it's just an association, not unlike a Peter Travers endorsement for the USA, but slightly more highbrow than that.... the kind of films they'd make a cover story maybe...
RECENTLY SEEN (relatively recently) AND WELL LIKED, BUT A BIT EARLY FOR ADMISSION TO ANY CANON
(an incomplete list)
Minari
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Parasite
Under the Skin
20th Century Women
There Will Be Blood
Souvenir
American Honey
Get Out
The Phantom Thread
Moonlight
Frances Ha-Ha
Emily the Criminal
The Master
Force Majeure
Hannah Takes the Stairs
We Are the Best
Let the Right One In
Joker
The Eternal Daughter
Tár
May December
CLASSICS RECENTLY SEEN BUT WITH SUCH A HEAD OF ADVANCE OVERHYPE THEY COULD ONLY UNDERWHELM JUST A BIT
Celine and Julie Go Boating
Westerns (nearly all)
screwball comedy (for the most part)
silent film
STAPLES OF YOUTH THAT STIR FONDNESS BEYOND ANY CONSIDERED ASSESSMENT OF WORTH
The Railway Children
Singin' in the Rain
West Side Story
High Society
Jaws
North West Frontier
It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World
Gigi
The King and I
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Jabberwocky
Bugsy Malone
the Inspector Clouseau films
movieifications of Britcoms - Porridge, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads
romcoms
Ken Russell's composers films
The Intern
RUNNERS UP FOR THE TOP 10
Gregory's Girl
Summer Hours
Old Joy
Synecdoche, New York
Deliverance
The Hustler
Playtime
Safe
Topsy-Turvy
The Third Man
Sweetie
An Angel at My Table
The Night of the Hunter
The Wild Bunch
The Wicker Man
Two Lane Blacktop
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid
Five Easy Pieces
La Jetee
London
The Manchurian Candidate
Seconds
Rosemary’s Baby
The Tin Drum
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Fat City
Les Enfants Terribles
Modern Times
Suspiria
Witchfinder General
Peeping Tom
The Knack (and how to Get It)
Last Year at Marienbad
The Apartment
Daisies
The Color of Pomegranetes
Valerie and Her World of Wonders
Don’t Look Back
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Bad Timing
Kes
Day for Night
Stalker
Solaris
M. Hulot’s Holiday
The 400 Blows
Beau Travail
Black Narcissus
The Tenant
Moulin Rouge (well, the first half hour or so)
The Sweet Hereafter
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Knife in the Water
Paper Moon
L’Atalante
Les Diaboliques
Fanny and Alexander
Adaptation
The Heartbreak Kid
Riff-Raff
Exotica
Satyricon
Withnail & I
Weekend
Trafic
Muriel's Wedding
A Private Function
The Likely Lads
Porridge
NO, I HAVE NOT SEEN
Jeanne Dielman
ON MY LIST
way too many
FACES + VOICES (a work in progress)
Piper Laurie
James Coburn
Denholm Elliott (voice especially)
Winona Ryder
Billie Whitelaw
William Daniels (voice especially)
Vanessa Redgrave (to large extent for Blow Up)
Peter Cook
Ann Prentiss
Paula Prentiss
Richard Burton (voice especially)
Eleanor Bron
Dirk Bogarde
Toni Colette (in Muriel's Wedding, Clockwatchers)
Jenny Agutter
Tilda Swinton
Penelope Wilton and her flickering eyelash thing
Kate Winslet
Richard Beckinsale
Greta Gerwig
2 comments:
I know what you mean about Time Out films and mostly agree with the verdict but Diva is wonderful film despite the Time Out taint, would make my top ten for sure. It also includes this incredibly beautiful Satiesque song https://youtu.be/wQnpAcW-Pi4 I can never get enough of.
Cheers,
Jim
You should definitely check out Godard’s 60s masterpieces (and all from his ouvre). Your top 10 betrays that you love this period, so Godard’s movies like weekend or la chinoise should give you big pleasure of the text, reference not coincidental (Godard’s was first movie director to see movie as text).
A sneaky question. If you had to choose one film from this list to take on desert island , what it will be? My bet is Performance, but Blow-Up could be contender also. Both are great. Roeg still seems underrated and he should be forever described as a brillant modernist director.
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