Movie Roundup: (Two Kinds of) Football Overload Edition

Private Fears in Public Places - After liking Wild Grass so much, I decided I need to make more of an effort to see Alain Resnais movies (the only others I've seen are his first three features, the last of which was released almost 50 years ago). This is his second most recent film, and it's an adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn play featuring six interrelated characters and their romantic misadventures. As network narratives go, it's refreshingly low-key, not nearly as hyperbolically metaphysical as something like Magnolia or Crash. Instead, it manages to be whimsically depressing, a tonal mix one doesn't see very often (Roy Andersson's You, the Living comes to mind as a recent example). As the various characters try and fail to connect at pretty much any kind of level, not just romantically, we're not overwhelmed by the impossibility of human happiness: the film's simply too kooky and too pretty for that (the cinematography is by the omnipresent Eric Gautier (A Christmas Tale, Summer Hours), the kook comes largely from Sabine Azéma, the red-headed star of Wild Grass). The visual plan reflects this double effect: beautifully shot scenes of snow and strikingly designed sets that are themselves subdivided such that the characters are constantly separated and isolated by their physical environments. But those environments are aesthetically enjoyable enough, and the possibilities of their fictional world crazy enough, that their lives don't seem totally devoid of hope. The #6 film of 2006.


Dodsworth - Voyage in Italy has a rival in the "old married couple goes on vacation and falls apart" genre with this William Wyler film. Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton star as the couple, he a just retired automobile executive and she a housewife who wants to live a wild high class life in Europe. The two go on their adventure (Huston's adorable in his enthusiasm to see all the sights after a lifetime of work) and Chatterton almost immediately begins plotting classy infidelities. Well, at first she turns down David Niven, but as nobler (in title only) options become available to her, she becomes more available to them, if you know what I mean. Huston, heartbroken but understanding, gives his wife a chance to have some fun, expecting an eventual reunion. When that doesn't work, he falls for Irene Dunne Mary Astor, a divorcee who's pretty much perfect. It certainly isn't as transcendent a film as Voyage in Italy (what is?), but Huston in particular is marvelous, a fully-realized character and my favorite of his many great performances. The film is a bit unfair to Chatterton's character: she has the Betty Draper problem of how to make a spoiled, immature character sympathetic, or at least understandable. To Wyler and Chatterton's credit, it almost succeeds. The #2 film of 1936.


Underworld - The prototype gangster film from Josef von Sternberg stars George Bancroft as the enormous in size and mirth Bull Weed who adopts a professorial drunk named Rolls Royce and dates a girl named Feathers (the resemblance in setup and character names to Rio Bravo can be traced to the fact that Howard Hawks himself supposedly had a hand in this screenplay, it was also based on a story by frequent Hawks collaborator Ben Hecht). The centerpiece of a film is a delirious party in an even more delirious Sternbergian space where Weed, overcome with jealousy over Feathers, kills rival gangster and florist Buck Mulligan (the Joycean name can't be a coincidence). A prison break leads to a climax that would become all-too-familiar to fans of the gangster genre over the next 5-10 years, albeit one with an ending that could only come from Sternberg. The #3 film of 1927.


The Last Command - The least of the films in Criterion's Silent Sternberg boxset, but that's a very high standard. Legendary German silent film star Emil Jannings stars as a former Tsarist general who's been reduced to the life of a Hollywood extra a decade after the Revolution. The film opens with a hilarious and detailed look at the life of an extra in the 1920s, as the massive crowds are shoved from window to window to collect the various parts of their uniform: a character assembly line. The end of the film as well is a rare look at how films were made at the time (notice two cameras, one for the US version, one for the rest of the world). But the bulk of the movie is a flashback about the general's fall: how a Bolshevik spy (Evelyn Brent, Feathers in Underworld)) got close enough to assassinate him but fell in love instead, and their romance's tragic end as the Revolution ruins everything. With William Powell almost unrecognizable as another Bolshevik agent who ends up the director of the film Jannings is to be an extra in. The ending is totally far-fetched, ridiculous even, but Jannings and Sternberg make it work pretty much through sheer force of genius. The #5 film of 1928.


The Docks of New York - The third and greatest film in the Silent Josef von Sternberg set, I find it hard to write about this without just gushing a nonsensical stream of superlatives. George Bancroft stars as a stoker on a ship who, while on shore leave, rescues a girl who'd tried to kill herself by jumping in the water. He fishes her out and takes her to the local bar, where they spend the evening while he gets drunk, pushes people around, and tries to cheer her up. The obnoxious engineer of the stoker's ship causes trouble (he doesn't like the stoker, and does like the girl), leading to a robbery, a wedding and a murder (not necessarily in that order). LIke Japanese Girls at the Harbor, another silent film I saw recently and adored beyond all reason, the plot is the least interesting thing about this movie. While that film was beautifully composed, this movie is literally breathtaking. The opening 30 minutes is visual storytelling at its greatest, not just interesting compositions, or striking uses of shadows and light, or weirdly expressive set design, but instead in unifying all those things it seems to represent the core of what cinema is all about. Like FW Murnau's Sunrise, really the only film I can compare it with, it is the absolute peak of silent filmmaking, by which I mean the peak of any kind of filmmaking. The #1 film of 1928.


Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - A far cry from the world of Sternberg and silent film is this comic book adaptation by Edgar Wright in which Michael Cera must defeat his new girlfriend's exes in videogame-style combat. Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the girl, Ramona Flowers, and the exes include Brandon Routh, Jason Schwartzman and Ann from Arrested Development (her?). It's an amiable (ie Canadian) coming of age story, with tons of in-jokes for video game players in their 30s (Cera's world has a lot in common with Super Mario's). The ending doesn't entirely make sense, however, and apparently that's due to a major change from the book. In the film, Cera ends up teaming with his ex (the too cutely-named Knives Chau) to defeat Ramona's final ex (Schwartzman) which he's able to do because he's achieved self-actualization or something. But the way that Ramona's exes work as manifestation's of Cera's neuroses is both clever and unsatisfying, because it reduces Ramona herself (who you would think would have her own issues revealed and be overcome through ex combat) to a passive prize, Cera's goal instead of a fully realized character of her own. I know it's called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, but still, that kind of focus on the hero seems unnecessarily myopic, especially since his own exes, which dominant the periphery of the film, are basically dealt with by acknowledging that they exist. Bleh. Like Edgar Wright's last two films (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), this one is a lot uglier than it should be, though he did an excellent job framing and cutting the fight scenes, at least relative to the deplorable standard of contemporary Hollywood action films. Still, while I've enjoyed those last two films, I didn't rate them as highly as the consensus seems to. This one, with its subpar reviews, I enjoyed a lot more. Go figure.


There's Always Tomorrow - In a kind of companion film to the great All That Heaven Allows, Fred MacMurray plays a suburban businessman (a toy manufacturer) who is marginalized and ignored in his suburban home by his wife (Joan Bennett) and children and strikes up a friendship with an old co-worker, played by Barbara Stanwyck. His children discover the friendship and suspect hanky-panky, and their subsequent hostility and his wife's near-total obliviousness drives him to the edge of infidelity. It ends tragically, with pretty much everyone missing out on their last chance at happiness. It's one of the very best Douglas Sirk films: he manages to pack just as much power and emotion into his black and white images here as he does with lurid Technicolor in Heaven or Written on the Wind and the plot is more realistic and the characters more grounded than in his craziest melodramas (Magnificent Obsession, for example). The result very well may be a new favorite Sirk for me. The #2 film of 1956.


The Bitter Tea of General Yen - Another Barbara Stanwyck film, this time one of her early films directed by Frank Capra. She plays the pretty new fiancée of a missionary in China during the war with the Japanese. In the chaos around Shanghai, she's abducted by scary warlord General Yen, who attempts to woo her with his advanced civilization. Blinded by racism, albeit the condescending imperialist kind, she can only see him as barbarous. When one of the general's women is accused of spying, Stanwyck defends her, with disastrous results for all involved. It's a fun, twisted little movie, subverting all kinds of pieties and bigotries, left and right; it's Capra in one of his darkly comic moods. The #10 film of 1933.


Mr. Thank You - This is the second film by Hiroshi Shimizu I've seen. The first, Japanese Girls at the Harbor, became an instant favorite. I found its carefully composed, wall-worthy frames and elementally melodramatic plot were completely entrancing. While those compositions were classically beautiful, there's nary a static shot to be found in this one. It's the story of a ride over a mountain in a rickety bus, and of the people the driver, the titular Mr. Thank You, so named for the "arigato" he shouts to everyone he passes on the road, meets along the way. Plotwise, it's just as basic as Japanese Girls was; the story is essentially the same as Stagecoach, a structure that dates back at least to The Canterbury Tales. The characters include a mother accompanying her daughter to the city in order to sell her into prostitution (there's a Depression on and the family needs money, the daughter is resigned to her fate, but is having trouble appearing happy about it), a weirdly mustachioed older man who keeps trying to hit on the girl (a stand-in for capitalism or imperialism or some other -ism), a slightly older girl who seems experienced in the ways of being sold into prostitution, some eager-to-drink laborers, a Korean girl who's part of a road construction crew (it was daring at the time for Shimizu to acknowledge the existence of Koreans), and various other folks the bus passes by. While the camera in Japanese Girls is largely static, or at least always carefully framed, Mr. Thank You is in constant motion. The film's singular sequence is of a POV shot looking out the front of the bus moving towards people about to be passed in the middle of the road, followed by a dissolve to a POV shot looking out the rear of the bus at those same people (with a pleasant "Arigato!" from the driver). The elision is both economical and strangely beautiful: we pass through the people as if they are ghosts, which being images of people (and a way of life) long dead, they are. The #12 film of 1936.


Le cercle rouge - Jean-Pierre Melville's attempt at the heist movie to end all heist movies, it reminded me more of Once Upon a Time in the West than classics of the genre such as The Asphalt Jungle or Rififi in its attempted scope. However, where Once Upon is so expansive as to, eventually, encompass an entire civilization at its most hopeful beginning, Le cercle rouge is closed off, insular and tragic. It, more than any other Melville film I've seen, carries the weight of life after World War II: everyone, good and bad, seems to have had all the life sucked out of them. Their only escape from nihilism is work, cops and robbers alike. What separates Alain Delon, Gian Maria Volanté and Yves Montand (the three thieves) from Sterling Hayden and Sam Jaffe in The Asphalt Jungle is that Hayden and Jaffe have dreams. Their robbery is a means to an end, one last score then retirement to a horse farm, or some kind of future with a pretty girl. For the gang in Le cercle rouge, there is nothing else: no horses, no women. The chief of police drives this point home with his repeated lecture to the Spencer Tracy-like inspector on their trail: all men are guilty. It's terribly depressing, but nonetheless as riveting and tense and suspenseful as anything the genre has produced. The #4 film of 1970.


Fucking Åmål - That's "fucking" as an adjective, as in the teen girls who come of age in this film really fucking hate their town, Åmål. Agnes is the nerdy, friendless, relatively new in town girl who has a crush on Elin, blonde, popular and not especially bright. Through a series of painful misunderstandings, Elin and Agnes end up spending a romantic evening together, which Elin, fearing for her reputation quickly ignores. But she can't quite go back to her old life. Lessons are learned and kids grow up. While not a particularly new story, the specificity of the characters and performances elevate this above your standard teen flick. And director Lukas Moodysson uses an elegant, handheld indie style that captures the rough realism of the performances (not just from the main girls, but from the excellent supporting cast as well) and keeps the whole thing from feeling less generic than it really is. It's all very quite lovely, and all that realism pays off by making a wildly improbable ending far more emotionally satisfying than it has any right to be. The #10 film of 1998.

Professor David Huxley's Quiz Answered

Once a quarter, Dennis Cozzalio over at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule posts a lengthy yet always fascinating quiz for the movie-bloggy world. I've answered a few times in the past, but I've been absent from class for the last several months (this is not the first time in my life such a thing has occurred). Well, here are my answers, turned in late, naturally.

1) Classic film you most want to experience that has so far eluded you.

Well, it was those silent Josef von Sternbergs, but thanks to Criterion, that problem is solved. Now, I think I’d have to go with the full version of Jacques Rivette’s Out 1.

2) Greatest Criterion DVD/Blu-ray release ever

This is too hard, but I’ll go with the Six Moral Tales Boxset.

3) The Big Sleep or The Maltese Falcon?

The Big Sleep, without a doubt. Always Hawks over Huston.

4) Jason Bateman or Paul Rudd?

Bateman. Rudd could never have pulled off Teen Wolf Too.

5) Best mother/child (male or female) movie star combo

Gotta be Ingrid Bergman and Isabella Rossellini.

6) Who are the Robert Mitchums and Ida Lupinos among working movie actors? Do modern parallels to such masculine and no-nonsense feminine stars even exist? If not, why not?

Not really, at least not in Hollywood. Our stars are expected to be malleable and therapy-seeking.

7) Favorite Preston Sturges movie

The Lady Eve, followed closely by Unfaithfully Yours.

8) Odette Yustman or Mary Elizabeth Winstead?

Winstead. Mostly because I keep thinking she’s the daughter of Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead. Also, she's prettier.

9) Is there a movie that if you found out a partner or love interest loved (or didn't love) would qualify as a Relationship Deal Breaker?

Nope. Disagreement makes life interesting.

10) Favorite DVD commentary

The group commentary on Criterion’s Seven Samurai disc is pretty cool, with different experts each talking for 20 minutes or so. But Hunter S. Thompson babbling incoherently through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas sure is fun.


11) Movies most recently seen on DVD, Blu-ray and theatrically

DVD: Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu)
Blu-Ray: The World (Jia Zhangke)
Theatrically: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright)

12) Dirk Bogarde or Alan Bates?

Dirk is a great name, but Bates was in the Mel Gibson Hamlet. I’ll give the edge to Bates’s beard.

13) Favorite DVD extra

Jean-Pierre Gorin’s video essay on Pierrot le fou.

14) Brian De Palma’s Scarface— yes or no?

Nope. Hawks over DePalma as well.

15) Best comic moment from a horror film that is not a horror comedy (Young Frankenstein, Love At First Bite, et al.)

“It ‘tis the man himself!” – Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker's Dracula

16) Jane Birkin or Edwige Fenech?

Jane Birkin

17) Favorite Wong Kar-wai movie

Chungking Express

18) Best horrific moment from a comedy that is not a horror comedy

The girl and the cat in Satantango is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen.

19) From 2010, a specific example of what movies are doing right…

That Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme D’Or. I fully expected it to go to someone awful. This is almost, but not quite, mitigated by Sofia Coppola winning in Venice.

20) Ryan Reynolds or Chris Evans?

Ryan Reynolds, just for Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Place.

21) Speculate about the future of online film writing. What’s next?

Consensus-building and consolidation of the most-respected sites/writers. I doubt there will ever be much money in it, though.


22) Roger Livesey or David Farrar?

Livesey. His performances in Blimp and A Matter of Life and Death are better than Farrar’s in Narcissus and The Small Back Room. Though Farrar’s great in those movies. Anton Walbrook in The Red Shoes is the best P & P performance though.

23) Best father/child (male or female) movie star combo

Henry and Jane Fonda.

24) Favorite Freddie Francis movie (as Director)

Never seen one. He’s got some good DP credits though.

25) Bringing Up Baby or The Awful Truth?

Bringing Up Baby was the first screwball comedy I ever saw, flipping into the middle of it on TCM. I was hooked for life and it will always be my favorite.

26) Tina Fey or Kristen Wiig?

Tina Fey. I like Wiig, but find her recurring characters painfully unfunny.

27) Name a stylistically important director and the best film that would have never been made without his/her influence.

Well, Seven Samurai is my pick for the best film ever, and it would never have been made without the influence of John Ford on Akira Kurosawa.

28) Movie you’d most enjoy seeing remade and transplanted to a different culture (i.e. Yimou Zhang’s A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop.)

There should be more Kung Fu/Western crossovers, so how about Seven Men From Now set in medieval China?

29) Link to a picture/frame grab of a movie image that for you best illustrates bliss. Elaborate.

So many choices, but I’ll go with this one from the end of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Millennium Mambo of a film festival blanketed with snow.

30) With a tip of that hat to Glenn Kenny, think of a just-slightly-inadequate alternate title for a famous movie. (Examples from GK: Fan Fiction; Boudu Relieved From Cramping; The Mild Imprecation of the Cat People)

The Galoshes of Spokane.

RIP Claude Chabrol

Movie Roundup: Two Weekends Per Week Edition

What Price Hollywood? - An early version of the A Star is Born formula, directed by George Cukor (who would remake William Wellman's original Star in the 50s) and starring Constance Bennett as the girl who talks her way into an acting gig, becomes a big star and suffers the consequences. Lowell Sherman is occasionally quite good as the drunken director who gives her a shot. Filled with cool little inside-Hollywood details, in particular Bennett working all night to perfect her first line reading is a nice demonstration of the art of acting and just how hard it really is. For a great in-depth look at the film, check out the always awesome The Self-Styled Siren. The #12 film of 1932.


Theodora Goes Wild - Irene Dunne stars as the daughter of the most powerful family in a small New England town dominated by a cabal of repressed old ladies. She is also the anonymous author of a scandalous romance novel, one that every woman in town reads in private and denounces in public. Melvyn Douglas discovers her true identity and tries to get her to expose herself and publicly rebel. The plot gets more dizzying from there, with more personae for Dunne and Douglas, a teenage pregnancy and a visit from the governor. Less a hysterical screwball comedy than it is a fascinatingly complex one, its array of masked identities and social critiques are brilliantly discussed in James Harvey's Romantic Comedy in Hollywood. Dunne is terrific and Douglas is as serviceable as ever: he's basically just a blander Don Ameche. The #7 film of 1936.


Japanese Girls at the Harbor - I spent much of the time watching this silent film trying to figure out the plot, not because it's complicated (it isn't at all) but because it's so beautifully composed that I found myself still thinking about the images when I should have been reading the title cards. It's one of the prettiest films I've ever seen, classically Japanese and wholly different in look from the other film by director Hiroshi Shimizu I've seen (Mr. Thank You, which I'll get to in a later Roundup). The plot, as much as I could piece together, that is, concerns two girls, one of whom starts dating a low-level gangster. When they catch the gangster cheating, one girl shoots the cheatee and runs off to become a prostitute. Years later she meets the gangster again, who has now married her former friend. To be reductive, you could say it combines the best elements of Ozu (formal composition) with a Mizoguchi plot (prostitutes!) while expressing both directors humanistic generosity. But it's better than any of the 1930s films I've seen from either of those two greats. As elemental as Sunrise or The Docks of New York, it immediately joins those two among my favorite silent films. The #2 film of 1933.


Coney Island - A Fatty Arbuckle-Buster Keaton short that does about all you can with the "fat guy in a tight dress" comedy premise. It's has some fun playing with gender roles, I guess, but mostly it's only notable for the pre-star performance of Keaton, who steals the show. The #3 film of 1917.


Sundown - I managed to tivo a half dozen or so Gene Tierney movies during TCM's Gene Tierney Day in August (shouldn't every day be Gene Tierney Day?) and this is the first. It's a throughly entertaining Henry Hathaway African Adventure movie, if you can call a film that appears to have been made on three sets an adventure film. Tierney plays the daughter of a trader who gets mixed up in a branch of World War II in East Africa with Brits fighting Nazis (both sides want to arm the Masai, or something). Bruce Cabot's the star of the film, the leader of the English outpost possessed of a charmingly British benevolent imperialist point of view (think David Farrar in Black Narcissus). George Sanders plays his by-the-book superior and Harry Carey plays a craggly hunter. The #16 film of 1941.


China Girl - The next in the Tierney marathon (which will continue in future Roundups), this time she plays a half Chinese girl who bewitches George Montgomery's dashing photojournalist in another Henry Hathaway World War II film. Montgomery's trying to cover the Japanese invasion of China, Tierney's trying to help her dad talk about peace and teach children English, and Victor McLaglen and Lynn Bari are Japanese agents (but not actually Japanese, to be clear) trying to either co-opt or kill Montgomery. And the 9-year old Robert Blake (that really creepy guy from Lost Highway) plays Montgomery's child guide. The screenplay by Ben Hecht is tight, this is one of those films Spielberg and Lucas and Kasdan must have been thinking of when they wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark. The #11 film of 1942.


Petulia - I don't know much about Richard Lester. He directed some wacky comedies in Britain in the 1960s (A Hard Day's Night is the only one I've seen) and he directed the middle two Christopher Reeve Superman films. He also directed my mom's favorite Three Musketeers film. None of that is helpful preparation for this film, which feels like a culmination of 60s cinema. Like Blow-Up, it's an art movie set in a pop world, but unlike Antonioni's film, it adopts a free-wheeling candy-colored style that owes a lot to Godard but that Lester had used in A Hard Day's Night as well. It also features some quick associational cuts that immediately reminded me of Nicolas Roeg, who I was pleased to find out was this film's cinematographer. Plotwise, it's plays like a sequel to Breakfast at Tiffany's, with Julie Christie's title character playing the manic pixie of divorced doctor George C. Scott's dreams. Christie, though, is married to Richard Chamberlin's handsome rich guy who is also, of course, totally evil. Where Blake Edwards's Tiffany's film edited out all the darkness from the book, Lester manages to balance the whimsy with a whole lot of darkness, and the film is all the more heart-breaking for it. The road from this to Superman III has to be a great story. The #6 film of 1968.


The Big Parade - King Vidor's World War I epic was one of the most successful films of the silent era. It stars John Gilbert, most famous for his pairings with Greta Garbo and his squeaky-voiced failure to transition to talking pictures (which may very well be a myth). Gilbert plays a rich guy who signs up for the war, makes friends with a bartender and construction worker, falls in love with a French girl and goes to the trenches. The battle sequences are terrific, as harrowing and horrifying as anything we see now, almost 100 years later (The Pacific, for example, may be more graphically violent, but the emotional devastation isn't any more real). It's easy to see why Gilbert was so popular: he's totally charming and graceful in the comic sequences and very moving in the dramatic. I can't say he looks like he should have a very deep voice though. The #2 film of 1925.


The Phenix City Story - Reputed to be Phil Karlson's B movie masterpiece, and I'm not going to disagree with that. It's a recreation of the fight against corruption in a small Alabama town (seems the local military base uses the town as a rec center, replete with gambling halls and prostitutes) that opens with a lengthy news report on the reality of what we're about to see, featuring interviews with local citizens. The noirish documentary style is a pulpier version of the procedurals of the late 40s (Jules Dassin's The Naked City, Anthony Mann's T-Men, which also features a documentary opening sequence, as I recall), but with the nastiness of late 50s noir (Kiss Me Deadly, various Samuel Fuller films). More than those films, though, Karlson creates a palpable sense of a real community, albeit one dramatically at war with itself. Not the least interesting thing about the film is the way it obliquely deals with race: one of the heroes is black, and his daughter is one of the gangster's victims. The parallels between the criminal gang running the town and the KKK gangsterism of the era (which would become famous a decade later during the peak of the Civil Rights movement) are inescapable, but Karlson never draws attention to the issue. The equation of mob to mob is made elegantly and inarguably. The #7 film of 1955.


The Black Swan - The first part of a TCM-enabled Maureen O'Hara Pirate Movie Double Feature (the second part being a rewatch of Frank Borzage's The Spanish Main, which I enjoyed a lot more the second time around). Tyrone Power stars as a pirate who goes straight when his boss Captain Morgan (Laird Cregar) becomes the legitimate governor of Jamaica. Not that that helps him much in his romance with O'Hara, the former governor's hot daughter. Villainy comes in the form of an absurdly red-haired and -bearded George Sanders, a pirate who refuses to sell out to the man. Thomas Mitchell and Anthony Quinn also star in what adds up to a whole lot of fun, much more so than the other adaptation of a Rafael Sabatini novel I've seen, 1935's Captain Blood (despite that film's memorable combination of Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, Olivia DeHaviland and Michael Curtiz, for most of its run it's boring as hell), for which I'm going to credit screenwriter Ben Hecht. O'Hara and Sanders are as wonderful as ever here, and Power is at his Clooneyest. The #12 film of 1942.

My Top 600 Films of All-Time

Two years ago, I made a Top 150 Films of All-Time list. That wasn't enough, so last year, I came up with a Top 250. This year, I had to stop at 600. The idea of ranking 600 movies is, of course, ridiculous. But look, cool pictures!


1. Seven Samurai


2. Chungking Express


3. Casablanca


4. Singin' in the Rain


5. Annie Hall


6. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans


7. The Red Shoes


8. The Searchers


9. Days of Heaven


10. Duck Soup


11. The Rules of the Game


12. The Big Lebowski


13. Pierrot le fou


14. Manhattan


15. Playtime


16. Millennium Mambo


17. Touch of Evil


18. The New World


19. Bringing Up Baby


20. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg


21. The Shop Around the Corner


22. Miller's Crossing


23. Rear Window


24. Citizen Kane


25. Rio Bravo


26. All About Eve


27. Black Narcissus


28. A Woman is a Woman


29. Ugetsu


30. Vertigo


31. Stranger than Paradise


32. The Docks of New York


33. A Canterbury Tale


34. Mulholland Dr.


35. City Lights


36. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington


37. A Matter of Life and Death


38. North By Northwest


39. Stagecoach


40. The General


41. Ran


42. It's a Wonderful Life


43. Once Upon a Time in the West


44. The Quiet Man


45. Late Spring


46. M. Hulot's Holiday


47. Two-Lane Blacktop


48. The Big Sleep


49. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin


50. The Adventures of Robin Hood


51. Dead Man


52. Hard-Boiled


53. Make Way for Tomorrow


54. Tokyo Story


55. The Good, the Bad & the Ugly


56. Psycho


57. Three Colors: Blue


58. The Philadelphia Story


59. The Royal Tenenbaums


60. I Am Cuba


61. All That Jazz


62. Gone with the Wind


63. Zulu


64. Voyage in Italy


65. L'Eclisse


66. Morocco


67. The Wind That Shakes the Barley


68. Out of the Past


69. Punch-Drunk Love


70. House of Flying Daggers


71. Funny Face


72. Swing Time


73. Last Year at Marienbad


74. Dazed and Confused


75. Celine and Julie Go Boating


76. Pulp Fiction


77. The Godfather Part II


78. Andrei Rublev


79. Rushmore


80. Histoire(s) du cinema


81. Only Angels Have Wings


82. The Third Man


83. Apocalypse Now


84. Satantango


85. 2046


86. The Band Wagon


87. The Birds


88. Sherlock Jr


89. Au hasard Balthazar


90. Sans soleil


91. The Pirate


92. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon


93. The Lady Eve


94. Slacker


95. Fallen Angels


96. An American in Paris


97. Johnny Guitar


98. Miami Vice


99. My Night at Maud's


100. Japanese Girls at the Harbor


101. Raiders of the Lost Ark
102. 2001: A Space Odyssey
103. To Have and Have Not
104. 8 1/2
105. In a Lonely Place
106. Trouble in Paradise
107. Rashomon
108. Gunga Din
109. Day of Wrath
110. LA Story
111. Steamboat Bill Jr.
112. Young Mr. Lincoln
113. Jaws
114. Chimes at Midnight
115. Red River
116. The Lion in Winter
117. L'Atalante
118. Tabu
119. In the Mood for Love
120. Lola
121. Contempt
122. Double Indemnity
123. All That Heaven Allows
124. The Princess Bride
125. F For Fake


126. My Darling Clementine
127. Hiroshima, mon amour
128. Ivan the Terrible Part 1
129. Eyes Wide Shut
130. Fitzcarraldo
131. 7 Women
132. Cat People
133. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
134. Kill Bill Vol. 1
135. The Empire Strikes Back
136. Tropical Malady
137. Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
138. Intolerance
139. Hannah and Her Sisters
140. Boogie Nights
141. The Manchurian Candidate
142. The Battle of Algiers
143. Harvey
144. Unforgiven
145. Do the Right Thing
146. The Thin Red Line
147. Top Hat
148. M
149. Ikiru
150. L'Avventura


151. Dr. Strangelove
152. Chinatown
153. Battleship Potemkin
154. The Passion of Joan of Arc
155. Mean Streets
156. The Awful Truth
157. Trainspotting
158. A History of Violence
159. Lawrence of Arabia
160. There Will Be Blood
161. Airplane!
162. Dragon Inn
163. Charade
164. Rome, Open City
165. Taxi Driver
166. Heaven's Gate
167. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
168. The Life of Brian
169. Three Times
170. The Leopard
171. Shoot the Piano Player
172. Throne of Blood
173. The Lady from Shanghai
174. Don't Look Back
175. Kicking and Screaming


176. Oxhide II
177. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
178. Last Life in the Universe
179. The Godfather
180. Some Came Running
181. Kiss Me Deadly
182. Unfaithfully Yours
183. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
184. The Lady Vanishes
185. Ghost Dog
186. Ashes of Time
187. The Gang's All Here
188. The Seventh Seal
189. Pennies from Heaven
190. Shanghai Express
191. Sleeping Beauty
192. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
193. Inglourious Basterds
194. The Man with a Movie Camera
195. The Double Life of Veronique
196. Blow-Up
197. The World
198. Stromboli
199. The Wizard of Oz
200. Notorious


201. Ivan the Terrible Part 2
202. A Touch of Zen
203. Vampyr
204. Cranes Are Flying
205. His Girl Friday
206. Children of Paradise
207. WALL-E
208. Sansho the Bailiff
209. The Steel Helmet
210. The Last of the Mohicans
211. Ruggles of Red Gap
212. Big Night
213. Sunset Blvd.
214. Cabaret
215. Fantasia
216. Claire's Knee
217. The Outlaw Josey Wales
218. Yojimbo
219. Glengarry Glen Ross
220. Wild Grass
221. My Winnipeg
222. The Blue Angel
223. Written on the Wind
224. Taste of Cherry
225. Sita Sings the Blues


226. Park Row
227. Letter from an Unknown Woman
228. The Passenger
229. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
230. Hero
231. Walkabout
232. Early Summer
233. Jezebel
234. Some Like it Hot
235. Star Wars
236. Laura
237. Rosemary's Baby
238. Frankenstein
239. La Danse
240. Now, Voyager
241. Nights of Cabiria
242. A Christmas Tale
243. Underworld
244. The Green Ray
245. Still Life
246. Orlando
247. The Right Stuff
248. Zelig
249. Reservoir Dogs
250. Platoon


251. Paths of Glory
252. City Girl
253. Dangerous Liaisons
254. Kiss Me Kate
255. Alien
256. Fight Club
257. I'm Not There
258. Mogambo
259. Spirited Away
260. The Gold Rush
261. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
262. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
263. The Exterminating Angel
264. The Young Girls of Rochefort
265. The Great Escape
266. Don't Look Now
267. Scarlet Street
268. New Rose Hotel
269. Cleo from 5 To 7
270. Hallelujah, I'm a Bum
271. The Big Red One
272. Brief Encounter
273. Sanjuro
274. The 400 Blows
275. Madame de. . .


276. Six Degrees of Separation
277. The Matrix
278. The Naked Spur
279. Henry V (1989)
280. Anchorman
281. Days of Being Wild
282. Going My Way
283. Lost Highway
284. Night of the Living Dead
285. Metropolitan
286. Wagon Master
287. Kill Bill Vol. 2
288. Ratatouille
289. The River (1951)
290. Kings and Queen
291. The Atomic Café
292. Three Colors: Red
293. Le Samourai
294. Alexander Nevsky
295. Godzilla
296. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
297. Yi yi
298. Winchester '73
299. The Departed
300. The Road Warrior


301. Broken Blossoms
302. Syndromes and a Century
303. The Age of the Medici
304. Rebecca
305. The Palm Beach Story
306. This is Spinal Tap
307. Badlands
308. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
309. Ninotchka
310. On Dangerous Ground
311. Devil's Doorway
312. Platform
313. Stalker
314. They Were Expendable
315. The Tai Chi Master
316. Pickpocket
317. Twentieth Century
318. The Girl Can't Help It
319. Groundhog Day
320. The Long Goodbye
321. Quiz Show
322. Police Story
323. The Fellowship of the Ring
324. King Kong (1933)
325. The Killer


326. Night of the Hunter
327. The Purple Rose of Cairo
328. The Sword of Doom
329. There's Always Tomorrow
330. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
331. Scarface
332. Muriel
333. Amadeus
334. Hell in the Pacific
335. Meet Me in St. Louis
336. The Last Days of Disco
337. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
338. The Limits of Control
339. Under the Roofs of Paris
340. Midnight
341. Exiled
342. Detour
343. Breathless
344. Ghostbusters
345. The Maltese Falcon
346. The Scarlet Empress
347. The Wind Will Carry Us
348. Suspicion
349. The Grand Illusion
350. Age of Consent


351. Petulia
352. Come Drink With Me
353. New York, New York
354. Judge Priest
355. Once Upon a Time in China
356. Waterloo Bridge
357. Kind Hearts and Coronets
358. Leave Her to Heaven
359. High and Low
360. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
361. Dodsworth
362. Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
363. On the Waterfront
364. The Thing from Another World
365. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail
366. What Time is it There?
367. Kung Fu Hustle
368. Fantastic Mr. Fox
369. Happy Together
370. Gun Crazy
371. Nanook of the North
372. The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums
373. Three Comrades
374. The Blues Brothers
375. Tokyo Twilight


376. Drunken Master II
377. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
378. The Bells of St. Mary's
379. The Puppetmaster
380. The French Connection
381. Centre Stage
382. The Set-Up
383. My Own Private Idaho
384. Modern Times
385. Barry Lyndon
386. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. . . and Spring
387. Caddyshack
388. The Last Waltz
389. Ordet
390. Paisan
391. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
392. The English Patient
393. PTU
394. The Ox-Bow Incident
395. Week End
396. The Mission
397. Sleeper
398. Pi
399. Die Hard
400. The Best Years of Our Lives


401. The Shining
402. Mr. Arkadin
403. Harakiri
404. Bull Durham
405. 42nd Street
406. Archangel
407. Fort Apache
408. Mon Oncle
409. The Dawn Patrol
410. Barton Fink
411. Almost Famous
412. Seven Men From Now
413. Point Blank
414. Tokyo Chorus
415. Killer of Sheep
416. Man of the West
417. Our Daily Bread
418. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days . . .
419. Aguirre: The Wrath of God
420. Empire of the Sun
421. Pickup on South Street
422. I Walked with a Zombie
423. Starship Troopers
424. Destry Rides Again
425. Jackie Brown


426. How Green Was My Valley
427. Goodbye South, Goodbye
428. The Last Laugh
429. The Conformist
430. The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
431. April Story
432. Seventh Heaven
433. Princess Raccoon
434. Morvern Callar
435. Lola Montes
436. I Know Where I'm Going!
437. The Thin Man
438. Joe vs. the Volcano
439. Breakfast at Tiffany's
440. Orphans of the Storm
441. The 39 Steps
442. Summer Hours
443. Magnolia
444. Sabrina
445. Irma Vep
446. Gilda
447. Flight of the Red Balloon
448. Air Force
449. You, the Living
450. The Wild Bunch


451. The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk
452. It Happened One Night
453. The Big Heat
454. The Shanghai Gesture
455. Wee Willie Winkie
456. No Country for Old Men
457. Blissfully Yours
458. Fist of Legend
459. Heaven Can Wait (1943)
460. Love and Death
461. Like You Know it All
462. Grindhouse
463. The Killing
464. The Flowers of Shanghai
465. Shutter Island
466. Eccentricities of a Blond Hair Girl
467. Le Cercle rouge
468. Le Million
469. Nosferatu, the Vampyre
470. Le Jour se leve
471. American Graffiti
472. Red Cliff
473. Stolen Kisses
474. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
475. Lancelot du lac


476. The Tall T
477. 24 City
478. Baby Face
479. Donovan's Reef
480. True Romance
481. Masculin feminin
482. Predator
483. Bottle Rocket
484. Climates
485. The Sweet Smell of Success
486. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
487. Out of Africa
488. Shadow of a Doubt
489. Full Metal Jacket
490. Floating Weeds
491. Bend of the River
492. Anatomy of a Murder
493. Grizzly Man
494. Limelight
495. Red Dust
496. Fucking Åmål
497. Nashville
498. Run Lola Run
499. Shock Corridor
500. Blade Runner


501. Alice in Wonderland (1951)
502. A Bridge Too Far
503. Broadcast News
504. Early Spring
505. Magnificent Obsession
506. Reds
507. Private Fears in Public Places
508. Picnic at Hanging Rock
509. Thieves' Highway
510. Jour de fete
511. Army of Shadows
512. Brigadoon
513. True Heart Susie
514. Spring in a Small Town
515. A Letter to Three Wives
516. Café Lumiere
517. Patton
518. Stray Dog
519. Woodstock
520. La Strada
521. The Deer Hunter
522. Sisters of the Gion
523. Odd Man Out
524. Gates of Heaven
525. Before Sunrise


526. 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
527. Love Affair
528. Goodfellas
529. The Big Parade
530. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
531. Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior
532. I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
533. Existenz
534. Seven
535. A Time to Love and a Time to Die
536. Bigger Than Life
537. The Magnificent Ambersons
538. My Life to Live
539. The Devil is a Woman
540. The Phenix City Story
541. The Letter
542. To Be or Not To Be
543. The Tarnished Angels
544. The Hidden Fortress
545. Still Walking
546. The Black Stallion
547. Aliens
548. I Married a Witch
549. Every Man for Himself and God Against All
550. The Conversation


551. The Color of Pomegranates
552. The Asphalt Jungle
553. Bonnie and Clyde
554. Alphaville
555. After Life
556. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid
557. 3 Bad Men
558. Simon of the Desert
559. Monsieur Verdoux
560. The Story of a Cheat
561. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
562. I Love Melvin
563. The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
564. Fireworks
565. A Story of Floating Weeds
566. The Adventures of Prince Achmed
567. Othello
568. Europa '51
569. Night and the City
570. Animal House
571. A Clockwork Orange
572. The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
573. The Life of Oharu
574. The Last Command
575. Tout va bien


576. Ishtar
577. The Verdict
578. Waltz with Bashir
579. Wings
580. You Think You're the Prettiest but You Are the Sluttiest
581. Mirror
582. I Was Born But. . .
583. Greed
584. AI: Artificial Inteligence
585. Street of Shame
586. Earth
587. The Last Temptation of Christ
588. The Hitch-Hiker
589. The Jerk
590. My Blueberry Nights
591. Close-Up
592. Babes in Arms
593. The Iron Horse
594. Passion
595. The Spirit of the Beehive
596. The Last Emperor
597. Crimes and Misdemeanors
598. Solaris
599. Woman on the Beach (2006)
600. The Kid