For what is now the fourth year in a row, I have made the poor decision to watch every movie nominated for Best Picture before the Oscars. As this year demonstrated, this is a tradition that brings with it plenty of pain, bad movies, and despair about the recognition of these bad movies. This year’s crop is especially fascinating for the disparity between its best honorees (spectacular and miraculous that they ended up in the conversation) and its worst (atrocious, despicable paeans to the kind of movie that gets lavished with praise nowadays), and is, as always, a reminder that these awards mean absolutely nothing. Let’s get into it:
Tier 4B: A Note on a War Crime
Tier 4B contains just one movie, which manages to stand out among its awful brethren to the degree of deserving an entirely separate sub-tier.
10: Don’t Look Up (Adam McKay)
Without question the worst of the worst, once-important filmmaker Adam McKay (of righteous Anchorman and Talladega Nights acclaim) continues his long, strange journey up his own ass with this bombastic celebration of his own genius, a crowning achievement in smug incompetence disguised as moral elevation. Don’t Look Up decides that the issue with climate change is that the general populace has not been yelled at about it by private jet-flying celebrities enough, and proceeds to fashion two and a half hours of shrill, obnoxious, one-note satire around the idea that it’s doing the lord’s work on this important issue. Its built-in defense against good-faith criticisms of its utter ineptitude at actually, y’know, being a movie is the bad-faith idea that anyone taking issue with its clumsy execution must disagree with its premise (which is, in its entirety: “climate change… someone should do something about that, huh?”). So allow me to state, clearly, the following: climate change is a massive issue, maybe our second most pressing one in the world today, behind of course “what is in the water in Hollywood that possessed so many well-respected people to think any of this was okay?”. The cherry on top is that this wretched fart of a movie, which decides to coast on nothing but its moral high ground, features one of the most sickening performances I’ve ever seen in Mark Rylance’s tech billionaire character, the joke of which is clearly just “Heh heh guys, this weirdo has autism! Isn’t that soooo funny?”. I can’t wait for the show to be over so this disgusting, infuriating screed can be lost to time like it deserves.
Tier 4A: *Fart Noises*
This is the tier where the regular old run-of-the-mill crapulence gets its due. There are two movies here, very aligned in quality (or lack thereof), and which I resent the Oscars for forcing me to watch. Or maybe I resent myself for it. These are dire times.
9: Belfast (Kenneth Branagh)
Set at the onset of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, Kenneth Branagh’s passion project is limp, painfully boring, and bafflingly unwilling to engage with its complex setting beyond the idea of “isn’t religion so silly?”. Mostly this is just standard coming of age fodder, painfully directed and performed, bathed in ugly digital black and white, constantly cutting to better movies only to brutally pull the rug out from under you and remind you what you’re watching. There are 40 Van Morrison songs in this and not one of them is used well. It blows, folks.
8: Coda (Sian Heder)
Similar to Don’t Look Up, the defense for this turgid crap is that it features several actual deaf people in significant roles. Also similar to Don’t Look Up, this hides the fact that this movie sucks butt, and actually has very little to say about its subject matter. Rather than meaningfully engaging with the subject of deafness at its center, Coda sets up a conflict in which the hearing main character has to hide her passion for – get this – music, because her deaf family (lol) doesn’t like music. BECAUSE THEY CAN’T HEAR IT. This is written, directed, and performed like a fake movie, which is because it is a fake movie. If this wins, which is looking like an actual possibility, it will be one of the worst winners of all time, and not enough people are making a big deal out of this. The most unremarkable movie in any way but in how spectacularly it falls on its face, almost playing like a parody of a movie that gets raves at Sundance. Being held up as a triumph of indie filmmaking and word of mouth when in reality it only has any buzz because Apple spent billions of dollars in ads to prop up its front of a streaming service. Let this thing die, please, and watch the genuinely insightful and well-made Sound of Metal instead.
Tier 3: The Ether
This tier contains 2 movies, both deeply forgettable for different reasons. One is bad with a lot going for it, and one is completely fine with absolutely nothing going for it. These are the two movies I keep forgetting I’ve seen.
7: Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro)
Here’s the one that’s bad with a lot going for it. Nightmare Alley is undeniably beautiful, featuring a compelling central turn from Bradley Cooper, and some searing visuals and ideas. It’s also monstrously overlong and weirdly hollow in the same way The Shape of Water was, but drawn out to a painful degree in a way that makes it harder to hide. Such a shame, because there’s so much here that works, but soooo much that simply doesn’t.
6: King Richard (Reinaldo Marcus Green)
A perfectly fine, by-the-numbers sports biopic that you’ve seen, give or take, five thousand times before. Will Smith is pretty good in it, but it’s not a great sign when your movie focusing on the behind-the-scenes rise of widely celebrated figures is far better when it’s focusing on said widely celebrated figures.
Tier 2: It’s Pretty Good!
Tier 2 contains one movie, which happens to be the season-long favorite to take the whole thing. I’m here to tell you the following: It’s pretty good!
5: The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
Almost frustratingly not-great, The Power of the Dog contains strong performances from its four central performers (Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee, all nominated), striking cinematography, and a banner score from one of the greatest working film composers (Jonny Greenwood). It never really combines those elements to reach the full potential of the sum of its parts, but that sum is astronomical, and the fact that it falls short isn’t really an indictment. If it ends up winning, it will be a perfectly fine winner, and also (I’m pretty sure) the only Best Picture winner to contain a graphic cattle castration scene.
Tier 1B: Oh Hell Yeah
There are, by my count, four movies in this years slate that are full-on masterpieces. I have decided to split them up, not to diminish the bottom two, but to underline the quality of the top two. So here’s the start of the good stuff:
4: Dune (Denis Villeneuve)
When I went into Dune, my expectations were on the floor. I was on record as a Villeneuve skeptic who disliked his Blade Runner movie and believed him to be too ephemeral in his strengths to handle long, overarching narratives. And then I left Dune ready to watch the next two and a half hours on the spot. This movie is a miracle, a nearly perfect sci-fi spectacle that wrangles its many threads into a coherent and emotionally involving whole. A stunning sensory experience wholly deserving of the praise and attention, a barnburner made within the demands of the studio system that breathes new life into big-budget filmmaking.
3: West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
Likewise, I had my doubts about Spielberg’s update of the original classic, a movie I adore. The first look gave a much more beige picture of the film than I would’ve liked based on the vibrancy of the original. Then he stepped up to the plate with his most vibrant and exciting film since… Juassic Park? Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Ever? This thing is just incredible. Absolutely captivating from the first frame to the last, perhaps an improvement over the original in kind of every way. The performances are stunning, in accordance with the movie’s spirit of reverence yet improvement. You forget that Spielberg has this talent in him, almost, but watching it actually play out feels like nobody else could’ve pulled it off. One of his very best films, and one of the highlights of the year.
Tier 1A: Oh HELL Yeah
This is the tier with the very best of the best, two films whose nominations I consider reasons for the continued existence of the academy. Everyone should see these movies, and their presence in this group makes it far more likely that people will.
2: Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
I’ve written at length about both this movie and how cool it is that it’s nominated. So I’ll just reiterate quickly that Ryusuke Hamaguchi, one of the most exciting voices in contemporary global cinema, made a stunning masterpiece that’s totally antithetical to everything the Oscars have ever been and it worked its way to a Best Picture nod by sheer virtue of being great. And because of this, more people will find his work, and he will have greater reign to do whatever he would like in the near future. And that, to me, is the true victory of these awards. Whatever crap is in the back half of this list, it’s all worth it if things like Drive My Car can get in the conversation.
1: Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)
25 years ago, Paul Thomas Anderson made Boogie Nights, a masterpiece of American cinema that still stands as one of the foremost examples of artistic genius you can produce from this country’s recent history. This past year, Anderson made Licorice Pizza, a masterpiece that provides evidence for the continued existence of brilliant Hollywood filmmaking. In between these two movies, he made 6 films, all of which are (guess what) masterpieces. Getting blessed with new Anderson feels too good to be true, and it just so happens that Licorice Pizza is another totally singular entry in his remarkable oeuvre. Light and fun yet resonant and satisfying, this is one of the best films of the year.
And so concludes the rundown of the best picture slate from 2021. Maybe next year will be the year I decide to stop doing this to myself.
Remember this? It’s been almost three months since the last installment of this ostensibly recurring series. At that pace, it will conclude at the very end of the year 2025. That’s pretty cool, I think, amazing that it times out to almost exactly the end of December. Anyway, hopefully it won’t come to that. It’s already sort of out of date as is. I can’t even imagine how bad that would get by then. So in the name of staving that off, here is the long-awaited second installment in the Movie Files Top 150 Movies of All Time Spectacular:
140– Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990)
The lowest of the four Lynch films on this list (almost five, Blue Velvet came closer than just about anything to making the cut), Wild at Heart was always the one I avoided. For some reason I had myself convinced that it didn’t have the nightmarish full-tilt insanity you would find in his more supernatural work, and as such wasn’t what I was looking for in a Lynch film. Upon actually watching it, this notion was quickly proved to be incorrect. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the stuff in Wild at Heart: pivotal Wizard of Oz-themed dream sequences, Nic Cage singing Elvis, Nic Cage’s snakeskin jacket, Nic Cage repeatedly explaining that his snakeskin jacket “is a symbol of (his) individuality, and (his) belief in personal freedom”, Willem Dafoe playing a perverted, psychotic criminal named Bobby Peru, Willem Dafoe’s perverted, psychotic criminal character’s mustache (below). The film controversially won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, in what stands out today the festival’s finest hour.
139– La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
Fellini takes an excessive amount of time (three hours) and goes to work just whaling on the excesses of celebrity culture and high society. For a movie without much of a plot, the three hours are put to good use, with the film following Marcello Mastroianni’s journalist around Rome as he looks in on one debauched display after another, the highs he gets from the nights melting into unforgiving days in which he’s forced to confront the unfulfilling nature of his lifestyle. It’s a draining experience by design, and one that manages to ring eerily true in its depiction of celebrity six decades on. The film cuts to a fundamental human truth about the predisposition towards artificiality that manages to render it impossibly timely. Also, by the way, a pretty breezy three hours.
138– A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)
I had an epiphany during A Better Tomorrow, action maestro John Woo’s breakout. Somewhere in the middle of the ludicrously stylized shootouts and cop-criminal interplay, it occurred to me that every movie should simply be this. There’s no reason why any movie should forgo scenes of Chow Yun-Fat lighting a cigarette with a 100 dollar bill while wearing sunglasses, or of Chow Yun-Fat gleefully setting up for a shootout in a restaurant in slo-mo while cantopop music plays, or of Chow Yun-Fat then executing said shootout on his own against like a dozen guys with ridiculously over-the-top violence and fake blood. There has never been a cooler movie, and there never will be. It’s time that the film industries of the globe band together and surrender all of their resources to John Woo, in acknowledgement that he is the only one who understands what cinema really is.
137– 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai, 2004)
I thought there were four Wong films on the list, but as it turns out, there are only three. Happy Together must’ve been another late-stage cut. Anyway, this is the first of three, but you won’t be seeing the other two for a loooooooooong time. 2046 is one of Wong’s more polarizing films, with some put off by the intense undercurrent of emotional desolation. It marks the final chapter of a trilogy, perhaps literal, perhaps simply thematic, that began with 1990’s Days of Being Wild and continued in 2000 with In the Mood for Love (although Wong now claims that his upcoming project, Blossoms Shanghai, will be the third part in the ITMFL/2046 trilogy, so who knows what’s going on anymore). Taking this in the initial context, it’s Wong’s most pessimistic film, tracking the end result of a progression from romantic volatility in Days to romantic repression in ITMFL to, finally, romantic unavailability. The film follows Tony Leung, in what might be the finest performance of the greatest actor to ever live, as a science fiction writer channeling his personal frustrations into his work. It oscillates between Leung’s loosely-gripped real world and his dreamlike visions of the titular year as he reflects on his past mistakes, forming a typical Wong rumination that’s far less grounded in reality than anything else he’s ever made. It’s also the last collaboration between Wong and visionary cinematographer Christopher Doyle, and a fitting send-off to cinema’s greatest creative partnership– the film is beautiful, with Doyle making the most of the futuristic landscapes to create some of his most hypnotically surreal work. For a certain stripe of Wong fans, which I count myself among, this is a straight-up delicacy, like watching the inside of his brain churn out art in real time.
136– The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
If ever a film has benefitted from becoming a myth, it’s this one. You hear stories as a kid, everyone does, and then those stories ferment in the impressionable, easily terrified minds of children and they take on new lives. And entire generations are raised in fear of demon children and spinning heads and whatever possibly overstated terrors one expects to find in this film, and it becomes The Scariest Movie Of All Time, and that means something. It’s now a rite of passage, a tradition partaken in by budding horror fans across the globe. Everyone sits there in the dark while those strings from your nightmares play over the opening title and it hits you that this is it, this is the be-all-end-all, the big one, the most notorious and frightening film ever made. Even if that doesn’t end up being the case, if there are bigger fish and scarier films, and there are, it doesn’t disappoint. Ever. Not in the slightest.
135– Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman, 1970)
In 1970, legendary filmmaker Robert Altman directed M*A*S*H, an American classic that spawned an even more classic TV show and earned several Oscar nominations. He also made a far, far better film, decidedly not an American classic that did not spawn a spinoff TV show based around Rene Auberjonois’ lunatic ornithologist or any of the other madcap avian activity that punctuates what is, from one perspective, a surrealist hellscape akin to Hitchcock’s The Birds. But what makes Brewster McCloud great is its wholehearted commitment to nonchalantness in the face of total insanity. It’s a fever dream with the explicit aim of being offbeat, rather than intentionally confusing or oppressively dark. It’s the kind of thing that’s hard to explain, that can only be felt, except if you were to show it to someone with the goal of making them feel it they would likely feel that you were insane.
134– Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2001)
Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien has had a career-long fixation on retrospection. The idea of being haunted by the past, of living in it, defines his body of work. 2001’s Millennium Mambo, set at the onset of the 21st century, manages to apply this conceit to a contemporary setting with a simple twist: the film is narrated by the main character from ten years in the future as she looks back on her life in the year 2000. It allows Hou to examine a period of time with a rare urgency while not sacrificing the lament and regret that mark the rest of his work. Sleepwalking through life while actively regretting your choices as you make them. One of Hou’s sharpest films, and possibly the one that lingers the most.
133- The Earrings of Madame de… (Max Ophuls, 1953)
Two notes on this underseen masterpiece:
For a while I had no idea why her last name wasn’t given in the title, and was intentionally blocked out in the movie. Then it hit me that it’s a commentary on her lack of identity and individuality in her married life, because this movie is completely committed to devastation to its very core and also perfect.
They really did just kinda have duels back then, huh? Like it was just a thing that could happen, and nobody could really do anything about it? Like “oh, did you hear what happened to Jacques? Yeah, dead, duel. Some guy parked his horse in his spot and he just couldn’t let it go.”
Watch this movie!
132- Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
For those unfamiliar with the work of Korean weirdo Hong Sang-soo, here’s a quick, overly deprecating, and unfairly simplistic explanation from a massive fan: all of his movies follow a person or group of people wandering around South Korea being sad and occasionally pausing to consume large quantities of alcohol. They all feature the same style and signature use of the zoom (well, all of them since like 2004, but that’s a digression from my promise of keeping it unfairly simplistic). He reuses the same actors frequently. Almost all of his films feature one character who is a film director. This character will tend to wander around being sad and consuming alcohol with exceptional commitment. They are never portrayed with anything other than total loathing. He is often labeled as simply making the same movie over and over again, which is false, but any attempts on my part to explain the importance of the minute differences from film to film would, perhaps rightly, get me labeled as insane. Woman on the Beach is one of my favorites of his films, both lacerating in the way his work can often be and possessing of the uniquely comforting vibes that only his very best movies manage to communicate. It’s kind of hard to talk about Hong in a vacuum, as so much of his work is best discussed within the context of his other work. But don’t worry. He’ll be here again.
131- If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
Jenkins, perhaps the most exciting contemporary American filmmaker, does Baldwin, perhaps the greatest American of the 20th century, and completely kills it. Beale Street inevitably suffered in the public eye due to the unfortunate task of having to follow Moonlight, which is a shame, because while it might not be better per se, it has stayed with me just as vividly if not more so. While Moonlight is a towering masterpiece about a lifetime within an unkind world, Beale Street is content to be a smaller, quieter movie about existing both within that world and away from it. Moonlight is a collection of moments, while this film feels like an extended look at one long one. As a result, we see Jenkins taking more time to breathe, to look around and examine the film’s world, give a sense of place and character that’s completely singular, not necessarily more intimate than Moonlight, but intimate in a different sense. This is a beautiful, compassionate, towering work of art in its own right, one of the very best films of the last few years.
As I write this, I am watching, for the third time, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. It’s one of the man’s greatest films, a gem that unifies decades of thematic fascination into a shattering repression of catharsis. The last time I made a ranking list on this subject, March 26th, Scorsese was a no-doubter for the top position. Now, eight long months later, his spot is legitimately threatened by a challenger who was among the most lauded on the initial iteration. In the time it took to reconsider the 1 spot, the rest of the list underwent dramatic changes, to the point where a rewrite was necessary. So without further ado- the bigger, better, vastly more representative Director Bonanza 2.0.
30- Krzysztof Kieslowski
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: Three Colors: Blue
Favorite Film: Blue
Best Moment: In The Double Life of Veronique, when the two Veroniques recognize each other. The ending of Red is up there, though.
Key addition since last list: The final two Three Colors films
Why he’s here: Kieslowski’s Three Colors trilogy is one of the finest of all time, even if the middle segment, White, doesn’t live up to the high bar set by bookends Blue and Red. The Double Life of Veronique further demonstrates the stylistic and thematic brilliance of those films, combining to make a run of singular brilliance from the late master. These are films that hit a specific itch, invoke their own mood, fill a purpose that no other director’s work can.
29- Kelly Reichardt
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: Wendy and Lucy
Favorite Film: Wendy and Lucy
Best Moment: If the ending of Wendy and Lucy doesn’t bring you to actual tears, you clearly have no soul.
Key Addition: Old Joy. Nah I’m kidding it’s Wendy and Lucy.
Why she’s here: I once said to someone that Reichardt does Bresson better than Bresson did. This definitely isn’t a one-to-one analogue: for one, Bresson’s brand of minimalism is far more urban than Reichardt’s rural transcendentalism, and you could argue that Bresson’s commitment to non-professional actors is more impressive than Reichardt’s use of, say, Michelle Williams. But while it’s not Bresson’s fault that he didn’t have access to the seemingly limitless talents of Michelle Williams, it is his fault that no performance in his work even enters the same ballpark as Williams in a Reichardt film is capable of. Reichardt sells her visions of American malaise with a naturalistic, almost hypnotic sheen, a style with no real point of comparison, even the jumping-off point I just used. The point remains that Reichardt is an all-time talent- even if what she’s doing really isn’t Bresson (it’s not), she’s operating at a higher level than even that iconic filmmaker ever was.
28- Jean Renoir
Last Ranking: 22
Best Film: Grand Illusion
Favorite Film: Grand Illusion
Best Moment: Grand Illusion‘s prison break
Key Addition: None
Why he’s here: Not only was the early French master a brilliant stylist, he was one of the greatest commentators on the human condition in cinematic history. His films are incisive social statements that, after decades and decades, remain universally relevant in what they have to say about class, race, and how we treat each other in general. The broad tone of Renoir’s work is sad, but not necessarily out of depressing plot mechanics: Renoir gestures at society’s ills and says “what a waste”. It’s really something to watch.
27- Dario Argento
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: Suspiria
Favorite Film: Inferno
Best Moment: The doll attack in Deep Red
Key Addition: Suspiria
Why he’s here: Bright colors, gonzo scores, gallons of fake blood. Nobody has ever made a horror movie quite like Dario Argento, the king of the Italian Giallo subgenre. The excess and gleeful insanity of an Argento film are distinctly their own thing, a wonderful combination of elements that collide to create lightning-in-a-bottle phantasmagorias. There’s no way to describe in words the sensory overload of a Goblin score, or the sensation of your eyes under assault by impossibly vivid reds and greens. When this guy was at his peak, his way of doing things was straight-up untouchable.
26- Nicholas Ray
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: In A Lonely Place
Favorite Film: It’s Lonely Place, but for the sake of avoiding monotony let’s say They Live By Night
Best Moment: Bogart’s “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me” from In A Lonely Place. Alternatively, any rodeo scene from The Lusty Men
Key Addition: In A Lonely Place
Why he’s here: Ray’s blend of poison-tongued cynicism and aching romanticism stands alone, in large part due to the fact that nobody from Ray’s era was at his level of pessimism. These are films that really sting, treatises on human despair and why it is that people can never seem to escape it. He was also just a ridiculous stylist, possessing a supernatural gift with both his camera and his actors. In A Lonely Place might be Bogart’s best work, and They Live By Night extracts a haunting performance from the otherwise-shaky Farley Granger. This seems like a common theme so far, but no one has ever made movies like this.
25- David Fincher
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: Zodiac
Favorite Film: Gone Girl
Best Moment: Brutal choice, but I think it’s Andrew Garfield’s climactic meltdown in The Social Network
Key Addition: Gone Girl
Why he’s here: A combination of familiarity (a stunning number of my favorite films of recent years) and genuine mastery of the form. Fincher has proven time and time again to be the king of the modern thriller movie- from Seven to Gone Girl, his distinctive style and directorial sensibilities lend themselves perfectly to sheer suspense. The substance of his work is debatable, but the fact that he’s among the best working pure technicians is not. Plus, what other kind of formalist can extract a performance from Ben Affleck as great as what he does in Gone Girl? Points deducted for inane and untrue recent comments on Orson Welles, however.
24- Sam Raimi
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: Evil Dead II
Favorite Film: Army of Darkness
Best Moment: “Groovy.”
Key Addition: Army of Darkness
Why he’s here: I think Raimi’s specific brand of genius is best encapsulated by Evil Dead II. No other film is as completely, off-the-walls insane as that one is, for my money. It’s a perfect blend of gleeful gore and pitch-black humor, carried off with the most insane confidence in itself I’ve ever seen committed to film. Raimi’s direction of it can best be described as “swaggering”, the work of someone endlessly happy to be doing what he’s doing and making the exact film he’s making. These are movies that never feel like they’re trying to please anyone besides their creator, and that “who cares” attitude towards anything resembling coherence or subtlety is endearing.
23- Robert Altman
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: McCabe and Mrs Miller
Favorite Film: Brewster McCloud
Best Moment: The ending of The Player
Key Addition: All of the above, but especially Brewster McCloud
Why he’s here: Altman is American cinema’s greatest outcast, a startlingly prolific filmmaker who never seemed to land within the mainstream. At his best (see: The Player), Altman’s work was actively malicious towards Hollywood, taking aim at the plastic nature of show business and the despicable self-righteousness of the people who perpetuate it. His work includes anti-westerns (McCabe and Mrs Miller), anti-war-movies (M*A*S*H), and anti-detective noirs (The Long Goodbye). Not only was he doing his own thing, he was aggressively doing his own thing, and he did it well.
22- Stanley Kubrick
Last Ranking: 10
Best Film: The Shining
Favorite Film: The Shining or Eyes Wide Shut
Best Moment: The opening of A Clockwork Orange
Key Addition: The Killing
Why he’s here: You know why. It’s Stanley Kubrick. Inarguably one of the best to ever do it, some would have you believe he’s the best. The work speaks for itself: Dr Strangelove, 2001, Barry Lyndon, Full Metal Jacket, Paths of Glory. Those in addition to the ones I’ve already named. He churned out masterpieces with an absurd success rate, delivered many of the most iconic films and moments of all time. Plus, Eyes Wide Shut is the greatest Christmas movie ever made.
21- Hayao Miyazaki
Last Ranking: 19
Best Film: Spirited Away
Favorite Film: Kiki’s Delivery Service
Best Moment: The climactic battle in Princess Mononoke
Key Addition: Porco Rosso
Why he’s here: Possibly the only person to fully understand the true boundaries (or lack thereof) of the medium of animation. Combine his wondrous visual style with his unique and heartwarming humanism, and you have a set of films that stands as nothing less than an example of the good in the word. This is the mind that created a dazzling army of magical creatures that he routinely uses as window dressing for larger work– it’s unnecessary stuff, but it’s there nonetheless. Miyazaki’s films are his attempts at improving the world through art, and he more or less succeeds.
20- Jean-Luc Godard
Last Ranking: 12
Best Film: Pierrot Le Fou
Favorite Film: Pierrot Le Fou
Best Moment: Vivre Sa Vie, pool hall
Key Addition: Une Femme est Une Femme
Why he’s here: The best of all the French New Wave filmmakers, Godard has been described as an iconoclast so many times that it’s formed the basis of his iconic status. His work has a disorienting yet breezy style, almost nihilistic yet simultaneously drunk on life. He sought to elevate B-Movie sleaze into legitimate art and pulled it off, inspiring a generation of other filmmakers in the process (you may have heard of Quentin Tarantino).
19- David Cronenberg
Last Ranking: 17
Best Film: The Fly
Favorite Film: Eastern Promises
Best Moment: William Hurt, A History of Violence: “HOW DO YOU FUCK THAT UP?”
Key Addition: Dead Ringers
Why he’s here: Cronenberg’s fascinations with evil, with humanity, and with how those two things complement each other fascinates me. The way he explores these fascinations, through a ridiculously bloody brand of body horror, has made him infamous. Not only does Cronenberg pile on the gore, he does so in a way designed to upset the viewer at a gut level and to make them think about what they’re seeing in the same place. The truths of interior human evil, revealed. With exploding heads!
18- Claire Denis
Last Ranking: 15
Best Film: Beau Travail
Favorite Film: US Go Home
Best Moment: Beau Travail, “Rhythm of the Night”
Key Addition: None
Why she’s here: Denis creates films that slow to a stop, forcing you to contemplate what’s in front of your eyes. Fortunately, what that is is beautiful– Beau Travail in particular has some of the most mesmerizing cinematography I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, it can also get real hard to watch (see: all of High Life). Regardless, Denis makes films that are guaranteed to stick with you, portraits of cosmic loneliness in which movement and lack thereof are the most important things. This is visual and aural hypnosis, a perfect use of everything the medium is capable of.
17- Joel and Ethan Coen
Last Ranking: 11
Best Film: No Country For Old Men
Favorite Film: The Big Lebowski
Best Moment: Ben Gazzara as Jackie Treehorn
Key addition: My most recent rewatch of No Country
Why they’re here: The batting average. Ignoring, for a minute, the level of quality of their top tier of films, it’s so rare to find anybody this prolific with this few misses. That’s especially impressive considering the uniform nature that should envelop their work, which is instead shockingly eclectic. They use the same actors, same technical contributors, write the same way, explore the same ground, over and over again. Yet the gulf between the desolate deathdream of No Country for Old Men and the spirited frenzy of Raising Arizona is massive. Look at two of their stories of tortured, hopelessly constricted, neurotic individuals: A Serious Man is an absurdist comedy while Barton Fink is a post-gothic thriller. And, most importantly, it’s all good as hell.
16- Ingmar Bergman
Last Ranking: 13
Best Film: Persona
Favorite Film: Wild Strawberries
Best Moment: Chess with death! Gotta be chess with death
Key Addition: Hour of the Wolf
Why he’s here: Patron saint of art films, cinematic austerity, and everyone who has ever refused to watch a foreign movie out of preconceived notions of guys dressed as death talking about God. It’s a justified reputation to some extent, but where Bergman soars is in the violations of this. The Seventh Seal, as many have pointed out, has fart jokes in it. Some of the stuff in Hour of the Wolf will give you nightmares. The Magician gets weird, man. But he’s also masterful in the stereotyped ways, and there’s nothing wrong with that– sometimes pitch-perfect arthouse stuff just hits the spot.
15- Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Last Ranking: 24
Best Film: The Red Shoes
Favorite Film: The Red Shoes
Best Moment: Marius Goring complimenting the technicolor in A Matter of Life and Death
Key Addition: A Matter of Life and Death
Why they’re here: Because of cinematographer Jack Cardiff, actually. Well, maybe not actually. But he played a big role. The key element of an Archers film is the look, the picturesque fairytale technicolor that serves as the backdrop for whatever rapturously told story they’ve zeroed in on. From here, they routinely go on to spin magic, creating some of the most indelible moments in cinematic history. Also, The Red Shoes is just the best movie there is.
14- Brian De Palma
Last Ranking: 23
Best Film: Blow Out
Favorite Film: Phantom of the Paradise
Best Moment: “Now that’s a scream.”
Key Addition: Phantom of the Paradise
Why he’s here: His at-large career of lurid trashterpieces is enough to merit inclusion: Scarface, Blow Out, The Untouchables, even, all brilliant thrillers and crime films from the master of the post-Hitchcock thriller (emphasis on “Hitchcock”). But De Palma’s greatest asset in my mind is the cult classic 1974 musical Phantom of the Paradise. Upstaged a year later by another rock-and-roll fantasy horror cult musical freakout by the name of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a film it is better than, Phantom instantly joined the annals of my absolute favorite films upon my first viewing. That film might have the biggest single impact of anything on this list, skyrocketing De Palma from the 20s to the lower teens.
13- Pedro Almodovar
Last Ranking: 5
Best Film: Talk To Her
Favorite Film: Pain and Glory
Best Moment: Last time I said the mirrored beginning and ending of Talk To Her, which is a strong call, but I think I’m leaning more towards the drugged-out post-screening Q&A in Pain and Glory
Key Addition: None
Why he’s here: “Melodrama” is a word that’s often (accurately) applied to the work of Pedro Almodovar, but I don’t think I find that quite fitting. The exteriors of his films are often showy, playing into the conventions of the term, but he also imbues them with an uncharacteristic tinge of sadness. What separates Almodovar from, say, Douglas Sirk (possibly the last name cut from this list, by the way) is the way he contrasts his searing insights with grinning exuberance. Never has sadness been as life-affirming as it is in these films.
12- Yasujiro Ozu
Last Ranking; N/A
Best Film: Tokyo Story
Favorite Film: Tokyo Story
Best Moment: Ending of Late Spring
Key Addition: Tokyo Story
Why he’s here: It’s kind of hard to describe, actually– what Ozu does with his films is so simple that it feels odd to label him a visionary, yet so idiosyncratic that some of those unfamiliar and familiar with his work alike question its efficacy. This could be the part where I go over the Patented Ozu Aesthetic, with its static cameras, facing-the-viewer dialogue, and establishing “pillow shots”, but as people smarter than myself have pointed out, overly scrutinizing these tics is to miss the point. What Ozu builds with his formally dressed narratives is nothing short of full-on emotional oblivion. This is evocative work– whether it’s driving at sadness, empathy, or introspection, an Ozu film can elicit this from its viewer. He manages to build to final acts of stunning focus and intensity, rendering his films completely indelible. And he does it in style: just because the item at the forefront of discussion of Ozu shouldn’t be his mechanics doesn’t mean I don’t want to take a second to absolutely fawn over him as a technician. I feel like I’ve said this a hundred times so far, and it remains hard to fully communicate the sentiment without just showing one of the films I’m talking about, but genuinely nobody has ever made movies like this, and I am obsessed with it. He was totally singular in his construction, and his astounding humanist storytelling is all the more alluring because of it.
11- John Cassavetes
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: Husbands
Favorite Film: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Best Moment: The scene with the parents in Minnie and Moskowitz
Key Addition: Husbands
Why he’s here: For oddly similar reasons to Ozu, actually– the simultaneous devastation and humanism of Cassavetes’s work is incredible to watch in much the same way. Now, this comparison makes it sound like I’ve never seen anything from either filmmaker; the two couldn’t really be more stylistically different, with Cassavetes opting for brutal, unflinching realism opposite Ozu’s stylized elegies. Cassavetes allowed himself to get much more raw than other filmmakers, a quality that resulted in some of the most deeply penetrating work of his era. His films can get hard to watch, in a way that makes them hard to take in in quick succession. But they’re incredible: searing, haunting stuff, at times feeling like he’s probing the adequacy of humans as a species. But it’s the optimism of his work that really gets me. Sure, these are bleak, depressing films, but there’s always a hard-to-pin-down undercurrent of genuine hope for and faith in human beings.
10- Bong Joon-Ho
Last Ranking: 21
Best Film: Parasite
Favorite Film: Parasite
Best Moment: Parasite‘s multitude of gargantuan setpieces have been repeatedly spoken for on this blog, so I’m gonna give a shoutout to the first monster attack scene in The Host, a scene so surreal yet poignant that it achieved the rare accomplishment of actually making me put myself in a horror scene: it feels like it’s absolutely something that could happen to you, and that’s uniquely terrifying.
Key Addition: Memories of Murder
Why he’s here: Surely the Cinderella Oscar darling and subsequent international sensation that is Bong Joon-Ho doesn’t need much of an introduction here, right? The proper content in this space is an affirmation that he really is deserving of all that, and uniformly so: Parasite may be his finest moment, but the likes of Memories of Murder, The Host, hell, even Okja are all masterpieces. The man routinely hits this blend of pure entertainment and dramatic resonance that’s totally unparalleled. It makes sense that Bong was really the biggest modern international filmmaker to break out in America. Who else makes movies that are this self-evidently great in this number of ways?
9- Orson Welles
Last Ranking: N/A
Best Film: Screw it. It’s The Lady From Shanghai
Favorite Film: Lady From Shanghai. Sometimes I wonder about the extent to which this category is worth keeping.
Best Moment: How about the opening tracking shot in Touch of Evil? Also a big fan of his concluding revelation of his true nature in F For Fake. Obligatory Kane mention for the scene where he finishes a negative review of his wife’s opera performance. Too much great stuff.
Key Addition: Lady From Shanghai
Why he’s here: If you subscribe to the conventional narrative, brought back into the spotlight by David Fincher’s latest effort, that Welles was a one-hit wonder who fell off after his momentous debut, then it’s my great pleasure to inform you that you’ve been fed a horrendous lie. Welles’ post-Citizen Kane career was fraught with studio interference and a lack of commercial success, sure, but what never dropped off was the absurdly high quality of his work. This was a man gifted with absolutely astonishing talent both in front of and behind the camera, who was somehow successfully painted by Hollywood as an obnoxious prodigy who flew too close to the sun. The work, however, speaks for itself, and it’s hard to argue with.
8- Alfred Hitchcock
Last Ranking: 4
Best Film: Vertigo
Favorite Film: Psycho
Best Moment: Too many iconic ones to not go with something completely random. How about, like, the scene in I Confess where they’re chasing a murder suspect and need a confirmation or denial from Montgomery Clift, who has to remain silent? That’s the stuff.
Key Addition: Rebecca
Why he’s here: Because of the consistency with which his movies are fun. Lesser or unknown Hitchcock can compel reverence and titillation in the face of any amount of fatigue, ubiquity, or oversaturation. It feels like a cop-out to say something along the lines of “it’s Alfred Hitchcock”, but come on. It’s Alfred Hitchcock. Not overrated, not remotely mundane. Just too good.
Bonus, unranked- Stan Brakhage
Why he’s here: This has to be both an explanation of why he’s here, as in on the list, and why he’s here, as in sandwiched unceremoniously as an honorable mention between the numbers eight and seven. The answer to the latter is simply that this is where it hit me that I should include him, and for the sake of cohesiveness I decided to just put him in chronologically. Brakhage demanded inclusion because he is, undeniably, one of my favorite filmmakers, but it’s also pretty much impossible to rank him among narrative filmmakers. It’s not exactly apples to oranges so much as it’s apples to moons of Jupiter. The typical superlatives have been eschewed because, uhh… well if you know, you know. It’s hard to describe Brakhage’s work, and it’s impossible to describe why I find it to be so good without sounding like a complete lunatic. Basically, for those uninitiated, Brakhage was an experimental filmmaker who specialized in what I have routinely referred to as nonsense color blobs. That is, I’m sure you will agree, an apt description–
Not all of them are quite as short as Eye Myth here, but that’s the general gist. Yet there’s something about these films that are so hypnotic, so compelling. Maybe it’s the illusion of movement you get in different places, maybe it’s the assortment of the colors. I don’t know why it is that some of his work stands out from the rest, or how much sense it makes to differentiate between them. But I do know that, for whatever reason, this stuff can be really, really good.
As I write this, my viewing of The Irishman that kicked off this post has been over for a month. I’ve revisited this from time to time to chip away at the writeups, getting up to this point, but I’m confronted by challenges. I’m miles from any sort of momentum or tone I was trying to build with the prior writing. I’m freaking out because I think I need to find a place for Michael Mann following viewings of Thief and Manhunter (this cursory reference will do, I guess). Inertia? Burnout? Yeah, all that– at some point it gets to a place where I’m writing different forms of the same auteurist set of ideas and praises.
So, to break up that monotony and to slide back into this post, I’m going to do something completely different: I’m going to take a minute to talk to you about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2.
It is rare, in the wide, godforsaken world of horror sequels, to run across a beast in a similar vein as Texas Chainsaw 2. The lunatic depravity of the first film is spun here into pitch-black humor and nightmares as bizarrely outlandish as the reality of those in the original. Instead of chilling, cheap realism, we’re treated to a chainsaw-wielding Dennis Hopper losing his mind. The first film’s Leatherface, a mindless, thoughtless creature of pure murderous intent, is transformed into something almost akin to a child– bloodthirsty, yes, sadistic, still, but imbued with almost… innocence? A sense of curiosity that maybe his life of cannibalism isn’t all there is. The film’s greatest trick is burying a tragic humanity within its gonzo carnival exterior. The choice poised by the Sawyer patriarch to a simpering leatherface, “sex or the saw”, is, of course, absolutely hilarious. But digging into it, it’s also heartbreaking: this is a person forced into a life of torture and murder and horror beyond comprehension as if it was just another family business. Any real life, real human emotion or experience, that could have possibly awaited him was instead demonized and presented as something foreign and terrifying. Texas Chainsaw 2 gets into what it really means to live by the saw, something far more impressive than you’d expect from a tossed-off sequel to an incomparable classic.
Why does this matter? To the theme of this post, to anything, really? It doesn’t. Anyway, on with the show.
7- Quentin Tarantino
Last Ranking: 3
Best Film: Pulp Fiction
Favorite Film: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Best Moment: Zero options that aren’t the climactic theater burning in Inglourious Basterds, perhaps the greatest single scene in the past two decades of American film
Key Addition: N/A
Why he’s here: The one-two punch of brilliant dialogue (not diminished by countless inferior imitators) and brilliant building of tension is unmatched by any other mainstream filmmaker of the modern era. Anyone with the industry cache to make a hangout movie at the scale of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a force for good, even if his unleashing of Robert Rodriguez onto the world is a negative.
6- David Lynch
Last Ranking: 8
Best Film: Mulholland Drive
Favorite Film: Eraserhead
Best Moment: In a filmography packed with indelible moments, it’s hard to pick one, but I’ll give a shoutout to the one that’s been bouncing around my head the most recently, which is Dean Stockwell’s Roy Orbison lipsyncing in Blue Velvet.
Key Addition: The entire Twin Peaks universe: the original run of the show, the unfairly maligned Fire Walk With Me, and the stunning The Return (I choose not to comment as to whether this is a movie or TV)
Why he’s here: the glorious weirdness coursing through Lynch’s work has long been tagged “Lynchian” and gleefully, erroneously identified as anything in film that borders on the supernatural, but there’s a very specific set of themes, motifs, and out-of-this-world ideas that populate the man’s oeuvre. The style makes for fantastic viewing experiences: I’ve seen Eraserhead four times now, a feat of blatant masochism made compelling only because of how much of a perverse joy the film is. But the key to Lynch, the piece of the puzzle that the endless pretenders to his gnarled throne can never find, is the way his films sink into the mind of the viewer and settle there for a long time. Sure, the ending of Twin Peaks: The Return is nonsense, but it’s nonsense that will be with me for the rest of my life.
5- Paul Thomas Anderson
Last Ranking: 7
Best Film: There Will Be Blood
Favorite Film: Boogie Nights
Best Moment: The New Year’s’ Eve scene in Boogie Nights
Key Addition: Magnolia
Why he’s here: 25 years, 8 films, 0 misses. Each PTA film is uniquely stunning, forming a progression of ideas and techniques that indicates the work of a remarkable natural talent the likes of which we haven’t seen in Hollywood since Welles. The balance of singular cinematic prowess and raw emotionality present in everything he’s made since Boogie Nights makes him one of our most incredible working filmmakers, someone whose work lends itself to endless rewatches and whose next step is eagerly awaited.
4- Akira Kurosawa
Last Ranking: 9
Best film, favorite film, key addition, greatest movie ever made: Ran
Best Moment: The castle battle sequence (behind the scenes of which shown above) in Ran
Why he’s here: Every time I find myself mulling over the question of who the greatest filmmaker of all time is, I tend to land on Kurosawa. Sometimes I’ll falter, and entertain the idea of an Ozu or a Hitchcock or a Scorsese taking the spot. And then whenever the next time I watch a Kurosawa film is, I get my mind back on the right track and recognize the folly of my fleeting opinion. The man was simply the best there ever was: so energetic in his storytelling, so vivid in his imagery, so human in his characterizations. Whether it’s the adrenaline of samurai-action fare such as Seven Samurai, the heartbreaking sincerity of Ikiru, the epic grandeur of Ran, or the electric crime thriller elements of something like High and Low, there’s always something to marvel at in his films. Take High and Low, a taut crime procedural propelled by a life-and-death storyline. When I say that every single shot in the film is composed with an immaculate sense of positioning, I mean all of them. Every time someone moves or a group of people congregate, they’re arranged in a visually striking way that compels awed reverence that almost distracts from the story at hand. Or Ran, Kurosawa’s take on Shakespeare’s King Lear, a film I believe with full conviction to be the greatest ever made. Not only does this trim a lot of the Edgar/Edmund fat that populates the play, it manages to translate the visceral pain and sorrow of the source material that makes it one of the greatest works of literature ever produced. Not only does the beating heart of the play remain stunningly intact in a way seen in no other Shakespeare adaptation, the visuals of the film are simply breathtaking, managing to elevate it into something wholly its own. I could go film-by-film and break down everything that makes Kurosawa’s work so varied and special, but it would take far too long. So suffice it to say that this is a body of work that represents a complete cinema. Everything in film that makes the medium so dynamic and wonderful can be found in these movies.
3- Wong Kar-Wai
Last Ranking: 6
Best Film: In the Mood for Love
Favorite Film: Chungking Express
Best Moment: The ending of Fallen Angels: the motorcycle shot, the voiceover, all beautiful, and then the pan up to natural sunlight, punctuating a film bathed in artifice and neon? Gets me every time.
Key Addition: 2046
Why he’s here: Nobody’s individual style is better than Wong’s. All the hallmarks of his work– the slo-mo, the alluringly unnatural lighting, the voiceovers, the music use– gel together to create a series of films that resonate with a feeling that’s impossible to put into words. I’m convinced that there is no one who has ever lived who’s been as understanding of the human soul as Wong Kar-Wai, which is what gives his films their heart. Which is an added bonus: let’s be real here, the real draw of a Wong film is how cool they all look. Even with no subtitles or any understanding of the language spoken, these films are still probably something else to watch. And they’re so in line visually with Wong’s fascinations that they still probably communicate the same tones of loneliness and oddly comforting ennui.
2- Martin Scorsese
Last Ranking: 1
Best Film: Goodfellas
Favorite Film: Goodfellas
Best Moment: Leonardo DiCaprio’s drugged-out dash home in The Wolf of Wall Street is the freshest in my mind, so I’ll go with that
Key Addition: The Age of Innocence
Why he’s here: with the prior unquestionable #1 on this list, this section feels like it should read as a condemnation, an explanation of a fall from grace. In reality, there’s been no lessening of my opinion of Scorsese: I still view him as a titanic cinematic figure, a brilliant craftsman and a straight-up saintly presence in the world of film preservation. He’s a crusader in the fight to save the soul of cinema from the encroachment of the monotonous blockbuster. A voice for the distribution and promotion of films from countries with less-than-established film industries. And he’s one of our best working filmmakers in his own right: for anyone who thinks he only makes gangster movies, I’d advise checking out Age of Innocence, that thing is astonishing.
1- John Carpenter
Last Ranking: 2
Best Film: Halloween
Favorite Film: Big Trouble in Little China
Best Moment: Hmm. Let’s call it the scene in Prince of Darkness where the guy explodes into bugs while telling everyone else to “pray for death”. I like that one.
Key Addition: Honestly, the key thing in the last few months with Carpenter was rewatching most of his films, sometimes repeatedly. But I also did see Escape From L.A., which I think cemented for me the idea that even when one of his films isn’t, how you say, “good”, it’s still astonishingly entertaining (this is not true of the bland Village of the Damned, which isn’t really bad so much as it is uninteresting: you can feel his lack of enjoyment with the project). Oh and Body Bags, Body Bags completely rips.
Why he’s here: Rewatch value? Enjoyability? There’s a quality to his films that extracts from me a total obsession, but I’m not sure it’s anything that simple. There are a solid dozen Carpenter flicks I can put on at any moment and have an absolute blast with. There are a handful that I count among my favorite films. There’s one (Big Trouble in Little China) that probably stands as my favorite movie of all time. His more outright horror movies are seasonal necessities for me (getting through October feels incomplete without the uniquely chilling atmosphere of Halloween). The best example of his brilliance is honestly evident in something like Christine: an adaptation of a C-list Stephen King novel with a story revolving around a murderous car. It shouldn’t work, yet it manages a narrative brilliance and emotional core that elevates it into a masterpiece. His gifts in the more traditional realm are outweighed by his ability to create absolutely demented atmospheres and images. I’ve discussed Halloween, but that excludes the lightning-in-a-bottle ghost story The Fog, the oppressive paranoia of The Thing, the Lovecraftian nightmares of In the Mouth of Madness. I still have yet to namecheck They Live, a careening, disillusioned, outstanding political allegory about a group of capitalist aliens who have taken over the world, and Assault on Precinct 13, a gritty zombie movie that happens to not feature or mention any zombies. I love all of these. These are films embodying cinema as a propulsive force. Life not so much refracted through a fantastical lens, but reformed and reshaped in a recognizable but alien depiction of our world as a magical, terrifying alternate reality.
There is no way to end this but to play it out with the worst song in recorded history:
You could argue that there’s no more iconic director than Alfred Hitchcock. The films he’s made have endured and stood the test of time, and the presence in cinematic history of the man himself is unparalleled. I mean who else is so instantly recognizable based just on their silhouette? I, personally, have seen 17 Hitchcock movies, which ties Martin Scorsese for the most of any director, 2 ahead of runner-up John Carpenter. However, unlike those other 2, I’ve only scratched the surface of Hitch’s massive catalogue: he completed 55 feature films in his career, spanning across six decades, two countries, and both the silent and sound eras. Keeping in mind the breadth of that resume, ranking a selection of 17 of his films feels somewhat foolish. But I’m doing it anyway. Crucial blindspots remain, such as The Lady Vanishes, Frenzy, and both versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much, but 17 is still a lot of movies, so prepare for a long post.
17- Sabotage (1936)
Not to be confused with 1942’s Saboteur, which, by all accounts, is far better. It’s not that Sabotage is “bad” so much as it is deeply, deeply middling. There’s nothing remotely special about this movie for the majority of its runtime, with one notable exception. The film’s climactic sequence, in which a child unknowingly transports a ticking bomb, is a signature Hitchcock suspense scene. It’s extra remarkable against the background of the exceptionally bland rest of the film, which concerns a woman whose husband is, unbeknownst to her, a member of a terrorist group. It’s only 77 minutes, which makes it a perfectly palatable completionist watch, and that central sequence alone makes it worth your while, but when the greatest legacy of a Hitchcock film is an excerpt from it making an appearance in Inglourious Basterds (the voiceover with Samuel L. Jackson explaining how flammable the film is features a clip of a child being refused entry to a bus because he’s carrying film), it’s not exactly major.
16- To Catch a Thief (1955)
Everything from here on out is at least pretty good, which is really a remarkable track record. To Catch a Thief, Hitchcock’s final collaboration with Grace Kelly, isn’t much of a substantial film, but it’s a light and breezy effort that basically serves as a vehicle for cinematographer Robert Burks and costume designer Edith Head, allowing them both to luxuriate in the film’s European vistas and beaches. It’s a fun if forgettable watch- everyone is clearly having fun making it, and as a result it gains a laid-back vibe that separates it from most Hitchcock work while remaining firmly within his universe. This isn’t a big swing for the fences in the slightest, it feels like it was basically designed to occupy this exact spot on a list like this. A “minor” work that indicates why it is that Hitch is one of the best there ever was.
15- The Lodger (1927)
Technically this is called The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, but that’s dumb. Nobody calls it that. It’s like calling Evil Dead 2 “Dead by Dawn”: if you encounter anyone who does it, run. Anyway the movie itself is good. He’s still clearly getting some stuff worked out, but there are flashes of brilliance: the shot of Ivor Novello pacing back and forth shot through a glass ceiling jumps to mind, as does the decision not to let the audience know whether or not our main character is a murderer for almost the entire film. Hitchcock considered this his first proper film. He had several other silents under his belt by this point, but this was the first one to actually see release, and the only one of his silents that has really held up as a canonical part of his work. It’s easy to see why- it’s remarkably compelling, and Novello’s central performance as a possible serial killer is excellent. It even features Hitchcock’s first cameo.
14- Spellbound (1945)
Mostly remembered today for its iconic Dali-designed dream sequence (above), Spellbound has a lot more to offer than its reputation suggests. Gregory Peck plays a might-be-murderer in the vein of the central figure of The Lodger, with an added twist: he can’t remember anything. Ingrid Bergman plays a psychoanalyst who falls in love with him and attempts to figure out the truth. You can practically feel Hitchcock’s excitement for the psychoanalysis plotline, it lines up with so many career-long fascinations. He’s visually on point as well- the film’s signature moment occurs in the finale, in which the camera is placed in a POV shot behind a gun panning back and forth. Plus, the aforementioned dream sequence looks great, even if Hitchcock had to deny Dali some of his requests. In Hitchcock/Truffaut, he recollects the inception of the scene, and having to explain to the iconic surrealist that he could not, in fact, pour live ants all over Ingrid Bergman. Ants or no ants, the scene works, and the film is better for it. Added bonus: the mental hospital setting of Mel Brooks’s Hitchcock sendup High Anxiety is a reference to Spellbound.
13- Dial M for Murder (1954)
Dial M has largely avoided reckoning with its status as mid-tier Hitchcock by virtue of possessing the coolest, most iconic title of all his films. It’s definitely a good film, elevated to near-greatness by its attempted murder sequence at around the midpoint. Psycho‘s iconic moment where the viewer finds themselves rooting for the car to sink into the swamp is extended to the point where every hitch in the murder attempt causes the intensity to jump up. Ray Milland’s performance stands out, as does the hallucinatory scene of Grace Kelly’s trial. The big knock on Dial M is its extreme staginess, which is a valid criticism. It was adapted from a play, and the 3D photography doesn’t do nearly enough to cover that up. But the moments when this soars, it really soars. And it all builds to Hitchcock’s greatest final shot (with all due respect to Psycho), of a man elegantly combing his mustache.
12- Notorious (1946)
Everyone seems to like this one more than I do. Maybe I owe it a rewatch, I haven’t seen it in a while, but I was not as impressed as most people seem to be. There’s a large subset of people, notably including Roger Ebert, who consider this one of Hitchcock’s greatest achievements, if not his single best film. Needless to say, I just don’t get it. That’s not to say Notorious is anything to sneeze at. The two central performances, from Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman, are excellent, even if the whole thing gets stolen out from under them by Claude Rains as soon as he shows up. I will give this one extreme points for the fact that the romance angle works better than a lot of his other films- Grant’s jaded character is just incredible to watch, and Bergman’s work is straight-up heartbreaking. I’m actually liking it more as I’m writing it up. I think I’ll move it above Dial M. Congratulations, Notorious. It’s a really good movie, it’s just that everything above it is a great movie.
11- I Confess (1953)
If I had to pick Hitchcock’s most underrated film, I would land on I Confess with little hesitation. It follows an absolutely insane plot: a priest (played by Montgomery Clift) becomes the prime suspect in a murder case, but he was the recipient of the confession of the real murderer. His principles won’t allow him to violate the rules of his position and tell others what he knows, so he gets in deeper and deeper trouble. It’s a brilliant idea, and Clift plays the anguish and tribulations of his character perfectly. The MVPs, however, are Anne Baxter and Karl Malden, both outstanding as, respectively, Clift’s character’s love interest who serves as the primary link between him and the murder, and an inspector who is convinced of Clift’s guilt. There are some undeniable issues, such as the ridiculous developments the plot takes (Maude Lebowski would disapprove) and the fact that the French title, which translates to “The Law of Silence”, is way cooler. But overall this is a fascinating watch. It’s done with a bizarre, operatic flow that makes it feel like you’re not watching a Hitchcock film, and reminded me at times of the regal progression of Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence. Hitch goes nuts with the camerawork here too. He employs a lot of exceptionally creative movement and compositions, and it all comes together to make one of his most visually interesting films. This is a must-watch.
10- Rope (1948)
Hitchcock considered Rope a failed experiment. God knows why. The film is incredible, and its status as a gimmick movie is undeserved. The gimmick, of course, is that it’s all done so as to resemble one continuous shot, 66 years before Birdman, and while that’s undeniably the element that stands out the most, it’s a barnburner below a surface level. The story features two men who strangle a friend and then invite a group of people, including said friend’s fiancee, over for a dinner party with the body stashed in a chest on which they serve dinner. It’s psychotic. And it’s a perfectly Hitchcockian confrontation of the “perfect murder” concept, one of his most explicit takes on it. Jimmy Stewart does some of his best work as the professor who may have inspired the men to their crime, and John Dall is wonderfully menacing as the lead murderer. Farley Granger, who plays his accomplice, is, uh… he’s really good in Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night from the same year. Overall Rope is basically the sum of its parts, which is a high compliment considering the strength of those parts.
9- The 39 Steps (1935)
Hitchcock at his most spectacularly British. This is the inception of his “wrong man” story, which he would hone to perfection in later films, ultimately culminating in North by Northwest. Phrasing it like that is technically true, but it also feels unfair to The 39 Steps, which is a great movie in its own right. Brilliantly entertaining, with Robert Donat giving one of the most underrated performances in Hitchcock’s oeuvre, and that’s not even touching on the rapid-fire 30’s British dialogue. It’s interesting in its novelty to watch, yes, but also in how much fun it is. It’s rare to see an early work that has its senses of humor, suspense, and purpose this developed. I doubt it yields much if you’re not a Hitchcock fan, but if you are it’s an absolute delight.
8- Strangers on a Train (1951)
Murder! Trains! Tennis! They all collide in Hitchcock’s 1951 classic, that features the single most intense game of tennis there has ever been. Also a murder at an amusement park, a finale aboard a carousel, and a shot of a murder reflected in a pair of glasses on the ground. It feels like Hitchcock was just throwing whatever at the screen and it was all working. Farley Granger steps up his performance from Rope, Robert Walker is simply astounding (see Vincente Minnelli’s excellent film The Clock for an extremely different side of Walker, one of history’s most underrated actors, that’ll make you even more impressed by his psychopathic turn here). There’s not much else to say about this, one of Hitchcock’s most iconic films, besides the obvious fact that it absolutely rules. We’re in the really good stuff now.
7- The Birds (1963)
The mark of a great film is its ability to stay with you. By that metric, The Birds has a claim to the title of Hitch’s finest moment. Not because it’ll keep you up at night, or occupy your every waking thought. No, the way The Birds sinks into your skin is far more sinister. The Birds stays with you because after you see it, it’ll be at the forefront of your mind every damn time you see a bird.
6- North by Northwest
Yeah yeah cropduster scene whatever, for my money the best part of North by Northwest is Thornhill’s “I’ve got a job, a secretary, a mother, two ex-wives, and several bartenders that depend upon me, and I don’t intend to disappoint them all by getting myself slightly killed” speech. The best line in all of non-Psycho Hitch. Anyway, if you’re looking for a straight-up good time, I doubt you can do any better on this list. Sheer adrenaline, punctuated by rapid fire action setpieces and witty dialogue. It’s a classic for a reason, one of Hitchcock’s most sprawling and expansive films. Cary Grant, in the best performance of his career, runs around the country trying not to get killed for 2 hours, and it’s cinema. That’s the whole movie, and Hitchcock makes it work through sheer power of sustained excellence.
5- Shadow of a Doubt
Shadow of a Doubt is often cited as Hitchcock’s favorite of his own films, and it’s easy to see why. His favorite topic, murder, is given perhaps his most comprehensive treatment. He really digs into the psychology behind human perception of murder, simultaneously criticizing and exploiting human fascination with the subject all while probing into why it’s so sensationalized. Theresa Wright is amazing in the lead role, but this is the Joseph Cotten show above all else. He’s menacing to the point of terror, yet also creepily persuasive. This is the best iteration of Hitchcock’s is-he-or-isn’t-he potential killer, in no small part due to Cotten’s career best work. It’s pretty standard Hitchcock murder stuff, but carried out with such confidence and bravado that gives way to absolutely brilliant filmmaking. Endlessly spellbinding in its construction and its themes, this might be the quintessential Hitchcock text if you want to really get at what he was going for his whole career.
4- Rebecca (1940)
The first two thirds of Rebecca, Hitchcock’s lone Best Picture winner, reach the levels of complete mastery of Vertigo and Psycho. It’s a uniquely compelling psychodrama, probing deep beneath the surface of its broken characters and coming back up terrified. It features the most stunning cinematography of all Hitchcock’s films, and one of the most instantly unforgettable characters in Mrs Danvers. What’s most impressive is the imposing image of our title figure, kept entirely off screen but constantly imposing upon the story. Laurence Olivier is incredible, doing the character’s extremely specific type of haunted so well that when the twist comes, it’s a shock, but a believable one. Joan Fontaine brings an energy that completes it- she plays her role with such unimpeachable innocence that gradually gives way to being defeated and terrified. It’s absolutely incredible, even though the third act detour into the inquest is nowhere near the rest of it. But that’s all forgotten once this rolls to its finale, which borders on straight-up horror. Part of the reason I don’t get the celebration of Notorious is that Rebecca is, to me, everything people would have you believe the former film is: the masterpiece that usually gets forgotten in favor of Psycho, Vertigo, Rear Window, and North by Northwest. It’s just astonishing. It’s also a level of messed up (at least for its time) that makes me stunned yet extremely grateful that the Academy went for it, alongside the likes of Silence of the Lambs and Parasite. Which, I guess, speaks to just how great it is.
3- Rear Window
Arguably Hitchcock’s greatest trick is keeping the camera localized entirely within the apartment for the duration of Rear Window. Not only does it impose the requisite claustrophobia, it conflates the audience with the film’s voyeuristic protagonist, thereby immediately doing Hitchcock’s work for him. If voyeurism was his foremost obsession (over murder), then this, rather than Shadow of a Doubt, is the Rosetta Stone for his filmography. It’s an ode to the joys and perils of watching people, a gleefully paranoid odyssey that takes place within an area of a few square feet. It’s the ultimate rebuttal to the disappointingly pervasive claim that Stewart was a bad actor, moreso even than Vertigo. Grace Kelly also does her best work with Hitchcock, acting as a perfect foil to Stewart’s character. And while it may not have the action of North by Northwest or the horror of Psycho, it’s among the most entertaining films in his body of work. There’s really been nothing quite like this before or since, it’s a completely singular work of art and a watershed moment for Hitchcock, who promptly embarked on possibly his most fruitful creative era.
2- Psycho (1960)
Eternally my favorite Hitchcock film, far and away the one I’ve watched the most, and still a film I routinely can’t believe really exists. Everything about it is so perfect. The most straight-up impeccable thriller there has ever been, so formally faultless that it’s almost offensive that they kept making movies in the same vein. The conviction with which he pulled it off just amazes me- the skill required to spectacularly dispatch your central character halfway through and maintain the same level of control over the story is beyond me. But what will always stick with me is how effective it remains despite having fully seeped into pop culture: my first viewing of it was a massive moment for me and my affinity for movies. It absolutely blew me away the first time I saw it, and that reverence comes out every single time I rewatch it. It’s one of those that reminds me why I love film, and that’s pretty invaluable.
1- Vertigo (1958)
It was never going to not be Vertigo. It’s a film that’s been called one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces so many times that repeating it gets to be boring, but that doesn’t make it any less true. It has that raw power that only the best films have, like every second of it is a gift to the planet and it knows it. It’s been sitting rightfully atop the Sight and Sound poll for eight years now, which is enough time that it’s really begun to be thought of as the greatest film of all time. While I’m not sure I’d go all the way to number one, I can confidently say that Vertigo sits in my all-time top 10, which makes it hard to discuss without making it out to be a purely religious experience. Honestly? That’s fitting. Hushed awe really is the only tone for Vertigo, which has become impossible to view outside the prism of its greatness yet does not fold under pressure. As much as I love Psycho, as tempting as it is to pull a hyper-contrarian take like Rebecca out, this is Hitchcock’s greatest achievement.
It’s entirely possible that there’s no better track record in recent cinematic history than Paul Thomas Anderson’s, and just because that’s been said a million times doesn’t mean it isn’t true. 8 films over the last 24 years, and not one of them is less than “very good”. And most of them end up falling in the “masterpiece” range. How has he pulled it off? How is it possible that I went into the last few of his movies saying to myself “maybe this is the one that won’t be great” and it never happened? The answer is simple: talent. From his first feature in 1996, PTA has displayed a level of pure skill behind the camera and with his actors on par with the greatest filmmakers in history. He’s become one of the most exciting working directors- these rankings are subject to change whenever in the (hopefully near) he releases his next film. But for now, here are all 8 of his feature films, ranked.
8- Hard Eight (1996)
Something has to be last. On this list, as on most such lists, it’s PTA’s 1996 debut, one of his shortest and smallest in scope, and certainly his messiest. It’s his only film that never feels like it knows exactly what it’s doing, and there are moments where you can tell he just wanted to show off. But those moments can be as glorious as the rest of the showy moments in his filmography: it’s clear he had his skill in constructing long takes from the very beginning. This is an indispensable film in Anderson’s body of work for three reasons: 1 is that it’s his first, and those are always fun to watch to see where it all started. 2 is that it’s the initial appearance of one of his central themes, which is oddball outcasts finding solace in a morally gray group of other misfits. He would expand on this concept spectacularly the next year in Boogie Nights, before cruelly inverting it a decade and a half later with The Master. The third reason this can’t be ignored is that it’s actually a really good movie. The performances are brilliant: Philip Baker Hall has never been better (save maybe for Seinfeld) as the sorrowful, pensive center of the film, Gwyneth Paltrow and John C Reilly impress in supporting roles, and Samuel L Jackson is outstanding as always. There are barely any moments where this plays like a first film. It carries itself with immense confidence and backs it up with high-quality execution. It’s as sleek and entertaining as the best of his work, only occasionally faltering or losing its footing. However, those occasions sink Hard Eight into the eighth spot on this list, restoring the poetic justice of The Hateful Eight being in last on the Tarantino list before Once Upon a Time in Hollywood blew that whole thing up.
7- Inherent Vice (2014)
Inherent Vice is probably the most “love it or hate it” work of Anderson’s career. Personally, I love it, although (as you can tell by the placement) not as much as some of its most dedicated believers. To attempt to describe the plot would be impossible and useless, as it’s not of much concern to anyone watching the film. This is a movie that you have to get swept up in the mood of or get left behind. Joaquin Phoenix does typically tremendous work as confused and perennially stoned PI Doc Sportello, who’s surrounded by a cast of bizarre and wildly entertaining characters who serve only to further complicate things. Highlights include Josh Brolin’s uptight and angry cop Bigfoot Bjornsen, whose weed-eating meltdown in the final scenes might just be the best moment in the whole thing, as well as Martin Short as a certifiably insane dentist and Katherine Waterson as Sportello’s ex-girlfriend who seems to be at the center of the whole thing. This is dense, impossible to follow, and just absolutely delightful to watch. Cinematographer Robert Elswit does possibly his best ever work, creating an early-70s L.A. that fits the world of the film perfectly. This is a singular experience like nothing else on this list, and it has to get major points for that. I can see it sliding up higher on repeat viewings. If you haven’t seen this one, just don’t go in expecting a standard crime yarn and you’ll be fine.
6- The Master (2012)
It just doesn’t feel right to have something as great as The Master this low on this list. But, like I’ve said, this is an atypical filmography to sort through. The selling point here is that it features the greatest performances in the careers of two of the greatest modern actors: Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman have never topped their grandstanding yet deeply emotionally wounded roles in this film. The scene that stands out the most from The Master is the famed “processing”, which is pretty much just those two talking back and forth. It’s among the best things PTA has ever filmed. The rest of it isn’t half bad either, although I’d be hard pressed to explain what exactly that is. It’s a story of power dynamics, of control, of the need for a sense of belonging, all of which have come up at other points in Anderson’s work (Phantom Thread, There Will Be Blood, literally all of it, respectively). But this feels darker and more unsettlingly off than any of those. Anderson loves to train his camera on broken individuals, but rarely does he depict people this messed up. This is an intoxicating attempt to get behind the psychology of cult membership, but it’s also designed to make the viewer confront their own inner workings. The actions depicted within are alien and disturbing, but Anderson’s goal is to make you wonder if you could ever fall for something like this. Lancaster Dodd is a con artist, a fraud, but you end up wondering if he has a point in his musings on our relationship to society. The Master is PTA’s hardest film to watch, both in that it’s not particularly fast paced and it’s darker thematically than almost anything else he’s done. This is a movie that’s designed to stick with you, which it undeniably does.
5- Phantom Thread (2017)
I understand the gravity of this statement, given the two previous entries that I’ve gone over, but I do believe the following to be true: Phantom Thread is Paul Thomas Anderson’s weirdest film. It’s grounded firmly within the real world, yes, but there’s an otherworldly quality to the way the characters behave and the conclusions they end up reaching about their lives. When this wraps up, nothing especially strange has happened, yet you’re left wondering what on earth you just watched. It builds up a world of intricate exactitude and then begins to slowly wither it away, culminating in a film that defies easy categorization in its constant self-upheaval- it’s not a comedy, although it’s quite funny at times and inhabits a reality of decided absurdity. For those reasons, it’s not a drama, despite the dramatic machinations at play. And it’s definitely, in my opinion, not a romance, despite the fact that it charts the rise, fall, and rebuilding of a romantic relationship. The overall statement doesn’t hit until the very end, and it recontextualizes the entire film to reflect a perverse yet oddly endearing view of reality. I guarantee you, it’s more fun than I’m making it sound. No period piece outside of The Favourite has a right to be this entertaining, but how many of them feature Daniel Day-Lewis in the mode he’s in here? There isn’t much else to say about DDL, in this or in general, but he hasn’t been this elegant since The Age of Innocence and he hasn’t snapped this well since There Will Be Blood. A winning combination. Vicky Krieps hangs with him the entire way, and Lesley Manville steals every scene she’s in. It’s also secretly a horror movie- the driving in this is agony-inducing.
4- Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
When Uncut Gems was unleashed upon the world in December of last year, there was a collective wave of thought that “woah, Adam Sandler can act“. While it’s great to see this finally recognized, and it’s great that people liked Gems so much, it’s mildly frustrating, because a lot of us already knew that. 2002, 17 whole years before Howard Ratner, brought the first glimpse of Sandler crossing over from generational comedic talent to generational dramatic talent. Yes, there’s an argument to be made that he’s just playing a Sandler character here, but in this film he’s tasked with embodying an existential melancholy foreign to the likes of The Waterboy. This movie hits on an emotional level that wouldn’t be possible without Sandler’s positively brilliant work, and while he may have surpassed this performance in Uncut Gems, this role shouldn’t be forgotten. Outside of that, the rest of the movie is pretty astonishing too. There’s an ethereal, dreamlike feel to it, to the point where the rage feels adequately subdued due to uselessness and the ecstasy is similarly reined in due to a feeling that it can’t last. Punch-Drunk Love offers up a man devoid of any reason to feel emotion and then gives him one. It watches him work to capitalize on the first shot he’s ever been given to make something out of his life, and it ends up the warmest and most cathartic thing in PTA’s work. OH and remember that thing I said earlier about Philip Seymour Hoffman never being better than in The Master? That’s still true, but shoutout to his profanity-laced revelation of a role in this. He’s only in two or three scenes, but take a look at this:
3- Magnolia (1999)
Magnolia is impossible to describe, but so are Inherent Vice, The Master, and Phantom Thread, and I’ve managed some writing on them, so let’s see. First off, this is a massive film. I’m not even talking about the 189-minute runtime or the gargantuan cast of characters, I’m talking about the broader philosophical aspirations of Magnolia. At times it can feel like it’s lost track of what it’s trying to say and is just vaguely galavanting around shouting “LONELINESS” and “INTERCONNECTEDNESS”, but that’s also really the point. This has points it wants to make, but it never allows them to become the whole movie. The characters and their lives and struggles come first, and through them we see what Anderson’s gesturing at. Three hours is a long time to fill if you’re trying to make a moral lecture about the insanity of human interaction, but it whizzes by when it’s more of an attempt to depict such a concept rather than make a statement on it. That’s really what Magnolia is- it’s a translation of the vast highs and lows of human follies and triumphs to the screen. It’s remarkable that Anderson manages to pull it off: it could’ve been unwatchable nonsense like Crash (the Best Picture winner, not the Cronenberg one) or marred by its pretentiousness like The Tree of Life (I do like this one, but it’s so damn high on itself that I’m not as in love with it as everyone else is). His talent as a filmmaker makes Magnolia not only in defiance of its sky-high aspirations but genuinely affecting. Plaudits for this also go heavily to the ensemble cast. Every actor is outstanding in their own way. It’s hard to pick a best performance, well, actually, it’s Tom Cruise, but maybe my favorite after removing him from the equation is Melora Walters. She sells the overwhelming brokenness better than anyone else, and every time she’s on the screen she’s equally heartbreaking and compelling to watch. Or is John C Reilly the MVP? This is the best of his early-career dramatic outings, all of which are underrated, but none of which are as memorable as this one. Or is it an obvious answer, like eternal acting gods Julianne Moore and Philip Seymour Hoffman? I know I’ve said this about a lot of these movies, but there’s no other cinematic experience that feels like watching Magnolia. It’s a bona fide masterpiece, and it can’t crack the top 2 on this list.
2- Boogie Nights (1997)
Boogie Nights has required a reputation as “the porn movie”. And yes, it is the porn movie, but it’s also about family, and about finding acceptance. The real porn… was the friends we made along the way. It’s also a brilliant stylistic showcase for Anderson, who pulls out all the stops and creates his showiest film. The first of PTA’s “big” movies (pun very much intended), followed immediately by the even more ambitious Magnolia. This, like that film, is broad in scope and in character count, and it leaves none of them behind. Every person here gets their moment, their interior conflict, their depth. Everything here is expanded upon to the point of an abundance of riches. When the bombast cools off and the second half rolls around, it makes sure we watch everyone hit their low point before starting them on the path towards redemption. As always, the performances are terrific, but the standout is Burt Reynolds as porn producer Jack Horner. It’s an unbelievable and unforgettable turn, one that almost overshadows the career work done by familiar names such as Moore, Hoffman, and Reilly, as well as Mark Wahlberg, who would only match this level of performance once again (The Departed). For a movie made so notorious by its subject matter, it’s a shock how human it is. It’s my favorite PTA film, and it contains my favorite PTA scene:
Impossible to hear Sister Christian or Jessie’s Girl the same way after that. Or watch Spider-Man 2.
1- There Will Be Blood (2007)
Recently it occurred to me that I remember very few plot details from There Will Be Blood, despite the fact that I’ve seen it multiple times and consider it maybe the defining masterpiece of 21st century American film. I then realized that this was yet another mark of the genius of this movie: most of the details of the plot are pretty much totally inconsequential and yet you still come away getting exactly the point the movie wants you to get. It’s like The Wolf of Wall Street in that regard: the oversaturation is the point. The sensual assault is the point. This is a movie that wants to hit you over the head with what it’s saying because it’s talking about things that bypass the realm of subtlety. This is as astonishing a portrait of individual greed as has ever graced the screen, and it really needs to rub in the evil of its central figure simply because he’s a figure that so relishes in rubbing it in. Blood drips excess because it needs you to emerge from the viewing experience exhausted, because it wants to drain you as if it’s Daniel Plainview and you’re oil-rich land. Nothing is left in Plainview’s path of destruction, not even his own humanity. You could argue Blood as a horror movie, because the monster at its center is terrifying enough. Sure, it helps that Day-Lewis turns in literally the greatest performance in film history, but the ambition of the story alone creates a larger-than life figure. Daniel Plainview is a seminal character in American fiction: he’s the 21st century Charles Foster Kane or Jay Gatsby, only without any sheen of high society. There Will Be Blood is an unforgettable accomplishment- from Jonny Greenwood’s world-altering score to Robert Elswit’s haunting cinematography. Every so often I find myself thinking about it, about random scenes. Maybe it’s Day-Lewis screaming about abandoning his child or about drainage (DRRRRRAAAAAAIIIIIIIINNNAAAAAAAGGGE), or maybe it’s something quieter, like those wordless opening 15 minutes. Either way, There Will Be Blood is hard to shake, and it’s Paul Thomas Anderson’s greatest masterpiece.
That thing I did the other day (day? week? month? what is time anymore) going through my favorite films of all time was a lot of fun for me to do, so I’m just going to keep going in that vein and rank my personal favorite directors. Will it be 52 directors, like it was for films? No. It shall be 24. Why 24? Look man I don’t know that’s just how many I wanted to write about. So here. Here are some directors I really like, plus their best film, my favorite of their films, the best moment in one of their films, and why they rule. Enjoy.
24- Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Best film: The Red Shoes
Favorite film: The Red Shoes. That’s just why they’re here.
Best moment: The titular ballet sequence in, you guessed it, Black Narcissus. No, wait. That was in Red Shoes too.
Why they rule: I deliberated for a while (like 45 seconds) on whether or not the archers deserved a spot on this list. This is due to the somewhat inconvenient fact that I have only seen two of their films, Black Narcissus and, uh, what was the name of the other one? Anyway, the reason they are here is that both of those films just happen to be complete masterpieces (although one is more so than the other), and I’m in love with their style. Jack Cardiff’s glorious technicolor cinematography combined with absolutely brilliant writing, ingenious characters, and gut wrenching emotionality makes them an easy sell to me. I’m constantly wanting to watch more of their stuff. And seriously, look at this. From 1947. This is a Jack Cardiff appreciation post now.
Unfair. And those are all from the one that ISN’T an earth-shattering super-masterpiece. Just a regular masterpiece.
23- Brian De Palma
Best film: Blow Out
Favorite film: Blow Out
Best moment: “Now that’s a scream”. From Blow Out.
Why he rules: Blow Out. I’m not even kidding. De Palma is not on this list if it isn’t for the absolute legendary film that is Blow Out. Now, if I had just seen Blow Out, he also wouldn’t be here. It helps that his greatest achievement and one of the greatest achievements is buttressed in his filmography by the likes of Scarface, The Untouchables, and Carrie. The style and sheer cool that exudes from these films is ridiculous. Robert De Niro’s indelible Al Capone. Carrie’s prom meltdown. Just everything about Pacino in Scarface. The amount of iconic stuff in De Palma’s films is unparalleled, even from movies that are not Blow Out.
22- Jean Renoir
Best film: You know what? With all due respect to his consensus masterpiece The Rules of the Game, Grand Illusion is better.
Favorite film: Grand Illusion.
Best moment: Either the prison break in Grand Illusion or the very final scene in A Day in the Country.
Why he rules: Renoir’s films are both deeply affecting and continually relevant in terms of social commentary. His recurring themes are some of my favorite to talk about- the irrational division that runs through his work is his reaction to what he viewed as a society that bred it. Each of his films can be read as a rallying cry against conformity. They’re beautifully shot, immaculately performed, and decidedly austere punk rock. His masterpieces leave you absolutely reeling, struggling to fully comprehend the greatness of what you’ve seen. Absolutely singular.
21- Bong Joon-Ho
Best film: Parasite
Favorite film: So, so, sorry Okja, but it’s Parasite. Gee, the fact that this is the fourth straight one in which they were both the same is really undermining the point I wanted to make about how indisputably great The Red Shoes is.
Best moment: Parasite’s peach sequence. Although I have to give a shoutout to the scene Snowpiercer in which Chris Evans, through sobs, talks about how great babies taste. Cinema.
Why he rules: Oh I’m sorry, did I write Bong Joon-Ho? I meant to write FOUR TIME ACADEMY AWARD WINNER BONG JOON-HO. If you want proof of Bong’s greatness, go watch his Oscar speeches. See what a great and likable person he is. Then go watch one of his angry, dark, oppressively sad masterpieces. Impressive duality. Anyway, Bong’s four (FOUR!) Oscar wins couldn’t have happened to a more interesting or deserving director. His tone hopping and genre defying films are unlike anything. They’ll make you laugh, they’ll make you cry, they’ll instill you with both raw societal dread and the sensation of watching a truly flawless work of art. And come on. How can you not love someone who says things like “Perhaps this is something the western audience could also take part in” when talking about subtitles. Plus, his preferred movie seat choice is back middle, which is objectively correct. What a god.
20- Francis Ford Coppola
Best film: uuuuuuggggghhhhhh. Apocalypse Now.
Favorite film: The Godfather
Best moment: Ooh. Going against the balcony scene in The Conversation feels wrong, but there’s absolutely no other answer besides the climax of The Godfather, in which Michael’s murders of his opponents are intercut with a scene of him baptizing Connie’s child.
Why he rules: The greatest run in cinematic history? Churning out The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather 2, and Apocalypse Now back-to-back-to-back-to-back is the kind of unfathomable and unmatched achievement that earns FFC a place among the all time greats, even if he’s done little to nothing since to back up that placement. That 70s streak produced four of the greatest films in American history, and ones that I adore. Special shoutout to The Conversation, easily the weakest of the four masterworks, for containing my single favorite theme in cinematic history.
19- Hayao Miyazaki
Best film: Spirited Away
Favorite film: Spirited Away
Best moment: Princess Mononoke’s climactic battle is stunning.
Why he rules: The very best at what he does (yeah present tense, don’t try to tell me he’s retired). Miyazaki is anime’s most well-known director for good reason. His films can be uplifting, like the sublime Kiki’s Delivery Service, or devastating, like the brilliant Princess Mononoke. Or they can be remarkable, unbelievable combinations of the two, like in his masterpiece Spirited Away. Angry and wonderful simultaneously, Miyazaki’s work is is incredible, that of a truly complete artist. One of the true visionaries, and the rare one who, you get the sense, executes his vision to its full extent.
18- Steven Spielberg
Best film: Schindler’s List
Favorite film: Jurassic Park, or maybe Catch Me If You Can. Or, you know, Jaws.
Best moment: Saving Private Ryan’s opening D-Day sequence is rightfully legendary. The rest of the movie is also great, even if the ending is dumb.
Why he rules: I feel like Spielberg is one of the biggest reasons for my love of film. Loving Jurassic Park when I was younger was one of the first times I truly loved a movie. Seeing things like Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan when I had started to realize my movie obsession further cemented it. Stuff like Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can makes for great recent first watches I can never believe I hadn’t seen sooner. Spielberg’s work is immortal, it’s universal, and the thing that gets lost in his celebrity is that he’s brilliant.
17- David Cronenberg
Best film: The Fly, right? Objectively, I think yes, but Videodrome feels so much like the quintessential Cronenberg to the point where it deserves a mention here.
Favorite film: Eastern Promises
Best moment: That bath house fight in Eastern Promises. That’s a type of filmmaking I had never seen before and haven’t since.
Why he rules: Yeah, he looks like the type of weirdo who makes this type of movie. Cronenberg’s films are aggressively visceral, marked by an obsession with flesh, bloodshed, humanity, and how these all connect. These are tough films to watch and tough films to analyze, but they are so rich and so entertaining. The Fly is an absolute masterpiece of horror that also happens to be an operatic melodrama (which he did turn into an opera). Videodrome is gross as hell, but the whole point is that it’s gross as hell, it’s a commentary on being gross as hell. A Cronenberg film is levels of meta upon meta, it’s deeply layered and imbued with meaning. These are not films for everyone, but they are beautiful in a perverse, broken way.
16- Yorgos Lanthimos
Best film: The Lobster
Favorite film: The Lobster
Best moment: I can’t pick one single moment from The Lobster, although the ending is pretty ridiculously great, or from The Favourite, so my pick is from The Killing of a Sacred Deer. It’s the scene where Colin Farrell blindfolds himself and lets fate decide the solution to his problem.
Why he rules: Lanthimos is an unclassifiable weirdo who makes unclassifiable weirdo movies. They’re so shot through with uncomfortable and dark humor, pervasive melancholy, and such a singular oddity that they’re easy to love if you like weird movies, which I do. A Yorgos film is a strange occurrence. They’re brilliant mood pieces that relate to no mood known to man. They’re just remarkable. In certain instances, nothing hits the spot quite like Lanthimos’ work. Plus, the man made The Lobster, one of my absolute favorite films.
15- Claire Denis
Best film: Beau Travail
Favorite film: U.S. Go Home
Best moment: THIS IS THE RHYTHM OF THE NIGHT.
For real let’s talk about this freaking scene. This has no business being as masterful as it is. It’s just Denis Lavant dancing ridiculously, to a bad song, in a way that goes completely contrary to the slow and serious tone of the film. And yet it works. It’s absolutely unforgettable. It’s a perfect ending to a perfect film.
Why she rules: Denis is a definite artiste, a filmmaker whose work is so difficult and inaccessible that it really does make sense that she isn’t widely popular. But oh my god is she great. Her films are ones that refuse to leave your mind. Their deliberate pacing and decidedly bleak ideology makes them hard to watch, but at the close of one it feels as if you’ve gone through a legitimately religious experience. Her films are so well made, so well acted, and so utterly brilliant. She’s one of the absolute greatest working directors, and her newfound collaboration with Robert Pattinson is a dream pairing. I can’t wait for that next one.
14- Wes Anderson
Best film: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Favorite film: Ooh. Grand Budapest, I think.
Best moment: “Nobody move. Everybody’s under arrest”.
Why he rules: Oh man the style. Nobody ever has been more committed to his or her idiom than Wes Anderson, and it is wonderful. Wes’s films are so highly stylized that even the ones that aren’t very good (hello, Darjeeling Limited) are still watchable and even enjoyable. His cabal of actors are always perfectly suited for the material, the visual perfection is always spot on, and the films are always funny. These are just pure cinematic sugar. They’re fun and wonderful and just great. I don’t get people who don’t like them. Who cares if it’s the same movie over and over again? It’s a fantastic one. I cannot wait for The French Dispatch.
13- Ingmar Bergman
Best film: Persona, but oh man is Wild Strawberries close.
Favorite film: Wild Strawberries, but oh man is Persona close.
Best moment: The opening of The Seventh Seal. Few things are more iconic or just cooler than Max Von Sydow playing chess with death.
Why he rules: Maybe history’s most prodigiously talented filmmaker, Bergman has not one but two films (the ones listed above in best and favorite films) that have legitimate claims to the title of greatest of all time. They’re always fascinating, always flawlessly made, and always unforgettable. A Bergman film is searing and indelible like nothing else. They earn their reputation for heaviness, sure, but that absolutely isn’t a bad thing. Also, the thing nobody ever talks about with Bergman? The humor. The Seventh Seal, the very image of impenetrable foreign film, is actually pretty funny. Bleak and philosophically dense, yes, but fart jokes!
12- Jean-Luc Godard
Best film: Breathless. Duh.
Favorite film: Pierrot le Fou
Best moment: It has to be a dance sequence. Vivre Sa Vie’s pool hall scene is a contender, but although it’s a weaker film, Bande a Part gets the win for the Madison scene.
Why he rules: Pretentious? The most. Obnoxious? Oh totally. Genius? One hundred percent. If Bergman’s films are the stereotype of boring foreign films, Godard represents the stereotype of weird arty nonsense, of French films just being people smoking cigarettes, of whatever. It’s hard to talk about why I love Godard without sounding like I’m just buying into the image, but the films really are the image. They’re entertaining, they’re breezy, they’re as fun to watch as they are brilliant in their casualness. The lightness with which Godard characters throw around philosophy is the same attitude with which Godard himself does. It’s rare to see a filmmaker who so philosophizes through his characters. Godard’s worldview is so omnipresent in his work that it’s impossible not to fall for the blend of style and substance, even if the style really is the substance.
11- The Coen Brothers
Best film: Fargo
Favorite film: The Big Lebowksi
Best moment: “What’s the most you’ve ever lost on a coin toss?”
Why they rule: I have seen 14 films by Joel and Ethan Coen and there isn’t one that I would describe as anything less than great. Yes, I haven’t hit the bad stuff, still no Intolerable Cruelty or Ladykillers, but I genuinely love the ones I’ve seen. This includes, by the way, Hail, Caesar!, which is a genuinely fantastic film that people hate because they hate fun. And the highs are so incredibly high: Big Lebowski, No Country, and Fargo are stone cold classics. A Serious Man is almost among that group. Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, and Barton Fink are incredible. Add in the fact that the lower level stuff is tremendous and you have one of the most balanced and consistently great filmographies ever.
10- Stanley Kubrick
Best film: 2001: A Space Odyssey
Favorite film: The Shining
Best moment: It doesn’t get much better than the opening of A Clockwork Orange. The slow pull back, the eerie voiceover narration, the industrially hellish score. It’s the most flawless moment from a career full of them.
Why he rules: There’s not much to say about Kubrick that hasn’t already been said. He’s the greatest visual stylist ever. He was a purveyor of epic narratives that fall into a genre entirely of his own making. His films are experiences, every one of them. They’re also entertaining, impeccably made, and obviously remarkably influential, in addition to possessing a totally marvelous atmosphere that is paralleled by nothing else in existence. It’s Kubrick. What more can I possibly say?
9- Akira Kurosawa
Best film: High and Low (caveat: I have yet to carve out three and a half hours for Seven Samurai. Soon.)
Favorite film: Ikiru
Best moment: Ikiru. In the snow.
Why he rules: A master entertainer, flawless craftsman, and general eternal legend, Kurosawa’s influence can be found in a few things. Like, for instance, every western and also Star Wars. The samurai stuff is all ridiculously fun, and yet it’s beaten by the remarkable contemporarily-set work he turned out on occasion. Ikiru and High and Low are the two best of the films I’ve seen by a lot (and this is no small statement considering how incredible Rashomon is). These are stunning achievements, ones with brilliant social commentary, gripping emotional stakes, and perfect craft. Every single frame of High and Low is an impeccable composition. There’s no point in Ikiru where it’s anything less than fully heartbreaking or wonderfully triumphant, often at the same time. Kurosawa’s work can range from testaments to the human spirit to super entertaining samurai thrillers, and it’s all wonderful.
8- David Lynch
Best film: Mulholland Dr.
Favorite film: Muholland Dr.
Best moment: Mulholland Dr.’s dumpster hobo! No but for real it’s Dennis Hopper’s first appearance in Blue Velvet.
Why he rules: The weirdest of the weirdos on this list by far. Not just in terms of the films, although Eraserhead alone would take that title. Lynch is a bona fide strange man, this is clear if you’ve ever seen him talk. Or if you’ve seen the delightful short recently dropped on Netflix, What Did Jack Do?. Lynch’s absurdity is half of why he’s so brilliant, the other is simply how good he is. He’s formally brilliant, and a perfectly tailored writer for furthering the purpose of his oddness. All of his craft is geared towards this end, towards making sure that this weirdness is supported by good enough quality to stand on. He has endless imitators, but he’s the only person who can fully nail his style.
7- Paul Thomas Anderson
Best film: There Will Be Blood
Favorite film: Boogie Nights
Best moment: I. DRINK. YOUR. MILKSHAKE.
Why he rules: A perfect hybrid of technical brilliance and skill with his actors, PTA is one of our great modern talents, and this is evident in every one of his films. They’re all bold works of art, totally unique and trailblazing originals that feature totally different reasons for their greatness. He’s versatile, with work ranging from sprawling epics to tiny character studies. He’s consistent, turning out masterpiece after masterpiece. He’s important, having made some of the most notable films of his age. And the movies themselves are compulsively watchable as much as they’re able to be studied and analyzed. He’s just relentlessly brilliant. Seriously, who else could’ve made Phantom Thread work as well as it does? Maybe just Scorsese? Maybe not even him?
6- Wong Kar-Wai
Best film: In the Mood for Love
Favorite film: Chungking Express
Best moment: I have no idea how many times on this blog I’ve talked about my love of the ending of Fallen Angels, so this may sounds repetitive, but it’s that.
Why he rules: A totally singular stylist whose films also contain more substance than most other filmmakers could ever dream of. If this list has made nothing else clear, it should’ve indicated that I love directors with unique styles, and Wong is among the very best of the bunch. Bold colors, liberal use of slo mo, Christopher Doyle’s all-time-greatest cinematography, totally unique use of music. It all combines in Wong’s films to create works of melancholy and daring hope, stories that still pop into my mind at random moments. Wong’s work lingers like nobody else’s, and to call that his defining characteristic does a disservice to how wonderful the films are to actually watch.
5- Pedro Almodovar
Best film: Talk to Her
Favorite film: All About my Mother or Pain and Glory
Best moment: The bookending opera scenes in Talk to Her. Technically two moments, but who cares.
Why he rules: Style! Almodovar’s bold and bombastic nature is a breath of fresh air in every one of his films. They’re amazing to watch: they can range in scope from tragic to life affirming, usually spanning the entire spectrum in one film. Talk to Her is one of the greatest films of the 21st century, and Pain and Glory is one of the most religious experiences I’ve ever had in a movie theater. He also displays a remarkable skill with his actors, although it helps that he works with talents as brilliant as the likes of Penelope Cruz and Antonio Banderas (ROBBED of that Oscar for Pain and Glory). At the end of the day, a film by Almodovar instills a feeling in me like no other, and that’s invaluable.
4- Alfred Hitchcock
Best film: Vertigo
Favorite film: Psycho
Best moment: Come on. Shower scene.
Why he rules: The master of suspense. The first horror director. Hitchcock is incredible because he made films that remain more entertaining and well done than everything that followed. His work is so well known that he’s become the largest household name of any filmmaker from his era. He’s an icon. A legend. An image of the straw man of Old Movies. And deservingly so. The films are remarkable. When he was at the top of his game he was untouchable. Vertigo, Psycho, Rear Window These are strokes of absolute genius. Enduring classics that set the tone for everyone who decided to follow in Hitch’s footsteps. And they are just so fun to watch.
3- Quentin Tarantino
Best film: Pulp Fiction
Favorite film: Pulp Fiction
Best moment: Speaking of scenes I’ve no doubt run into the ground on this blog:
Why he rules: For someone who so shamelessly and openly steals from what has come before him, Tarantino has a way of making his work feel fresh. This is also the case considering he keeps recycling the same basic ideas and styles. This is not a complaint- the man has his niche, he knows he’s great when he’s in it, and he just churns out remarkable entertainment that conveniently doubles as high art under the surface of pulp. He has made films that have been absolutely formative experiences for my love of movies, and ones that I continue to love and watch obsessively. I can’t wait for whatever the hell film number 10 ends up being, as long as it isn’t Star Trek.
2- John Carpenter
Best film: Halloween
Favorite film: CUE THE GODAWFULL MUSIC.
That is the song that plays over the closing credits of Big Trouble in Little China, sung by the Coup De Villes, horror cinema’s greatest rock band (nope. Sorry. Goblin. Can’t believe there was an actual answer). The Coup de Villes were made up of Carpenter himself, Nick Castle (who played Michael Myers in the original Halloween, and Tommy Lee Wallace (who directed, among other things, the legendarily insane Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the possibly nonexistent sequel to Carpenter’s Vampires). All very talented people. Who suck as a band.
Best moment: Oh man. Is it the blood test in The Thing? Is it the ending of The Thing? Is it the ending of In the Mouth of Madness? Is it the dream/vision in Prince of Darkness? It’s actually Roddy Piper’s iconic They Live declaration:
Why he rules: The films of John Carpenter may not exactly be Bergman. There are more sophisticated directors to love. But there are exactly zero who are more entertaining. Every Carpenter film is a relentless good time, whether it’s a horror movie, an action film, or whatever on earth Big Trouble in Little China is. They’re also uniformly well made, well acted, yada yada he’s incredible. I could regurgitate the stuff I’ve said about the formal excellence of every other filmmaker on this list, and it’d all be true, but there’s something about that that’s just unfitting of the master of horror. Carpenter is a king among men, a consistently awesome filmmaker who also happens to compose the (fantastic) scores to his films. Seriously, the only thing as impressive as making Halloween is making Halloween and creating the iconic theme.
1- Martin Scorsese
Best film: Goodfellas
Favorite film (of all time): Goodfellas
Best moment: It really bothers me that there’s no way to type the opening to Harry Nilsson’s “Jump into the fire”.
Why he rules: So we come to the end of the list. A foregone conclusion. The king of cinema. The greatest living filmmaker. The greatest American director of all time. A man who, in addition to creating countless classics, has worked tirelessly to preserve and restore obscure films from around the world. But none of that even matters for the purpose of this exercise. Martin Scorsese made Goodfellas, which is why he’s at the top of this list. The other stuff just solidifies something that I’m not trying to measure here: the combination of endless range, masterpiece after masterpiece, and devotion to the art form makes Martin Scorsese, simply put, the King of Movies. And not one that has to choose between being king for a day or schmuck for a lifetime. An icon deserving of his stature. A living legend who’s still putting out some of the best work we’ve seen from him. The greatest ever.
So, since it’s been a while since I’ve written anything, and it’s good to have something of a distraction at this point, so I was trying to think of something expansive and original and whatnot to write. Considered doing a March Madness style directors tournament, but got snagged on the fact that I would have no idea how to do that. So I’m just going to rank, extremely unscientifically, what I think at this point are my 52 favorite movies. Or, really, just 52 movies I really really really like. It’s 52 because… uh… because that’s the number… of weeks in a year… or something. Yeah it’s that. Not that it was originally 50 and I got a while in and then I remembered 2 absolutely critical exclusions. That didn’t happen.
52- They Live (John Carpenter, 1988)
The MVP: The line “I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum/
Why I love it: Because it’s completely insane. It stars a professional wrestler, it features some of the cheesiest, greatest one-liners in history, and it spends most of its runtime in giddy high gear, disobeying rational laws of storytelling and charging forward at an absolute breakneck pace of total lunacy, pausing for the occasional six minute fistfight scene. Watching people react to the ending is maybe the second funniest experience of my life, behind watching the ending for the first time.
51- Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-Wai, 1995)
The MVP: The song “Only You” by the Flying Pickets, which plays over the final scene.
Why I love it: Look, I love the whole thing, that’s why it’s on this list, but I’m just going to use this time to talk about the ending, which is maybe my single favorite ending ever. The above song, Christopher Doyle’s cinematography, the heartbreaking rational endpoint of the story, inasmuch as there even is a story. It all washes together to create one of the most bittersweet moments in cinematic history. It’s a moment that reminds me why I love movies. And to think that the crux holding it all together is a song that, on its own, is actually quite bad.
50- Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie, 2019)
The MVP: Sandler.
Why I love it: Beginning with a note that there are like 4 films from 2019 on this list, which may be recency bias but I don’t care. It’s my list and I happen to think that last year was an all-time year for movies. Anyway, Uncut Gems. This is a hard watch, one so brutally anxiety-inducing and abrasive that it shouldn’t find its way onto a list like this. But oh my god is it so fun. It’s a nonstop thrill ride, with original concepts and brilliant performances that create a film so unlike anything else that it’s intoxicating. It also gave us “This is how I win”, among several other infinitely usable lines. Plus, it’s a rare Sandler dramatic performance, maybe even better than the one in Punch Drunk Love (also appearing on this list).
49- Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1989)
The MVP: Jiji, the greatest cat in cinematic history. LOOK AT THIS GOOD BOY.
Why I love it: Well besides the cat, it’s just an absolute joy to watch. An almost oppressively optimistic and life-affirming film. Anyone with any preconceived notions about anime who skips this one is missing out (and I say this as someone who just watches the movies and avoids the shows. Just open your minds, people).
48- Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
The MVP: uhhh… hard to pick one for this one. Such a multi-faceted film. Mahershala Ali? Naomie Harris? I’m saying Barry Jenkins, but there’s so many things working to make this one work.
Why I love it: In my opinion, the greatest American film of the 21st century. All apologies to There Will Be Blood and any 21st century American films I actually ranked ahead of this one, but this is one of the top 10 films ever made. It’s beautiful, haunting, well shot and performed, with an unforgettably effecting story. A totally unique and singular experience.
47- Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
The MVP: It is Tom Cruise.
Why I love it: Kubrick’s final film is one of his most absolutely bonkers and one of his best, and he handles the many eccentricities with brilliance. It’s distinctly his film, but it also feels more ethereal and otherworldly than his other work. It’s almost tempting to compare it to Lynch or Cronenberg, but that’s not really fair. Eyes Wide Shut is its own thing, something bizarre and miraculous and incomparable. It’s also the greatest Christmas movie of all time.
46- In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)
The MVP: Both leads, Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung. Also cinematographer Christopher Doyle. This is where I shout out all those people on this list, and I can list more than 1 MVP because I made the rules.
Why I love it: It’s objectively Wong’s best film, and a strong contender for the greatest of all time. It’s flawless, one of the most formally perfect films in existence. It’s never anything less than the quintessential display of Wong’s style, and one of the prime examples of the idea that style over substance doesn’t necessarily mean no substance. It’s maybe cinema’s greatest love story, in that it isn’t really a love story at all. Unforgettable.
45- Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)
The MVP: Brad Pitt.
Why I love it: I think I’ve talked about my love for the Out of Time scene on here enough, right? No? One more time.
Besides that, it’s one of Tarantino’s oddest films, in that it just kind of meanders around. Nothing happens, and that’s okay. It’s enough to just exist and watch these characters exist in this time and this place. And when it gets full, typical Tarantino-y, it does it all the way, and it’s amazing.
44- Punch Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)
The MVP: Adam Sandler, who I believe will somehow end up with the most appearances in this section.
Why I love it: Punch Drunk Love is not a typical Adam Sandler film. This is a Paul Thomas Anderson film first and foremost, but it definitely recognizes that it stars Adam Sandler. This is different from PTA’s other features: grand sweeping epics, intense character studies, two and a half hour plus runtimes, none of that is here. Instead we’re given this small, odd duck of a film, one that’s so personal and so human in the most aching and yet satisfying way possible.
43- Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho, 2019)
The MVP: God of cinema himself, Bong Joon-Ho.
Why I love it: A pure masterpiece of astounding vision and perfect execution, and one that manages to hold up on second viewing after you know all the twists and have built it up in your head as the pinnacle of all movies. This winning best picture was one of the most absolutely ecstatic moments I can remember. I will maintain my blog policy of not saying too much about this movie, ostensibly to avoid spoiling it but really because there’s nothing to say. It speaks for itself.
42- The Exorcist (William Friedkin, 1973)
The MVP: Mercedes McCambridge, whose unforgettable demon voice makes the movie. But shout out and RIP to Max Von Sydow.
Why I love it: A formative horror experience for me, which is not a unique experience. There’s a universality to the brilliance of The Exorcist. Any fan of the genre views it as gospel. Also contains the defining set of cinematic stairs. Screw you, Joker, you worthless piece of trash pretender to the throne. Bow down to the master. The power of Christ compels you. Anyway I feel bad I spent most of this blurb talking about freaking Joker, so I’ll just close by saying that The Exorcist is maybe the greatest horror movie in history.
(Joker will not be appearing on this list, in case you had any doubt).
41- Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
The MVP: I didn’t count Bogart’s performances among the very best ever until my most recent watch of the film. I do now. It’s him.
Why I love it: Because it’s Casablanca. The platonic ideal of a perfect film is just that. Just one of the absolute best.
40- The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)
The MVP: Olivia Colman. Or Horatio the duck.
Why I love it: I saw this in theaters when it first came out in my efforts to watch all the best picture nominees of that year. Nothing could have possibly prepared me for how much I loved it. It’s hilarious, tragic, enthralling, fascinating, all at once. A cocktail of madcap ridiculousness and flawless craft. It also holds up on repeat viewings shockingly well for something that gets so much power from the shock of how ridiculous it is. I’ve seen it 3 times now. Side note- the song that plays over the end credits is the harpsichord version of Elton John’s “Skyline Pigeon”. I didn’t realize that until my third viewing.
39- The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)
The MVP: Essie Davis, who gives one of the all time horror performances which is rarely lauded as such.
Why I love it: I’ve expressed my view that this is the defining horror masterpiece of our time. A generational terror, and one that conjures up such in inventive ways. The horror in The Babadook doesn’t come from jump scares, it comes from dread soaked in the overwhelming sorrow and angst that runs through the film. Original and far more terrifying than its title would have you believe.
38- The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)
The MVP: Aaron Sorkin.
Why I love it: It’s hard to make a movie that defines its cultural moment as much as The Social Network does. It’s also hard to make a movie this entertaining and infinitely rewatchable. Combine them both into one movie, and you have something that grows more horrifyingly prescient by the day and remains exactly as fun to watch. A masterpiece.
37- Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodovar, 2019)
The MVP: Antonio Banderas.
Why I love it: I want to live in the feeling I had when I left the theater after Pain and Glory. Being a cinephile means, to me, chasing feelings. There’s the stunned awe of witnessing an all-time masterpiece like Apocalypse Now or Persona. There’s the fear of the best horror movies. There’s the pins-and-needles sensation I got in the final act of Uncut Gems. But there’s no other movie that has made me feel this content, this purely happy. I don’t know why exactly it did- maybe it’s my love of Almodovar, maybe it’s Banderas’s all-time performance, maybe it was just a product of the right thing hitting at the right time. I don’t question it. All I know is that this is what a movie should be.
36- Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino, 2003/2004)
The MVP: Could there be any answer other than Uma Thurman?
Why I love it: First of all, it’s one movie. It doesn’t work unless you watch it all at once. Second, the experience of watching it all at once is the answer. It’s four hours of every genre and style crammed into one tremendous sensory overload, made by the most talented movie geek there is. It’s wall-to-wall awesome, full of twists and turns and raw entertainment and brilliant performances. My go to choice for midnight viewing. Sorry, Eraserhead.
35- The Fog (John Carpenter, 1980)
The MVP: Cinematographer Dean Cundey, whose shots of the ocean in this film are like crack cocaine to me.
Why I love it: Pure B-movie fun from one of my absolute favorite directors, complete with ghost pirates, the previously mentioned ocean shots, and so many moments you can lean over to whoever you’re watching with and go “That’s the fog”. A perfect movie.
34- Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
The MVP: The hobo, right?
Why I love it: It’s Lynch’s great masterpiece, a work of such staggering complexity and layer upon layer of Lynchian weirdness, under a sleek exterior and massive scope. It’s impossible not to spend hours mulling over Mulholland Drive after you finish it: I saw it over a year ago and it still takes up a lot of my thoughts. This is unbelievable to watch, it’s almost easy to get turned off by the sheer amount that’s happening just under the surface. It’s elusive, and hard to fully convey through writing. Watch it and it’ll be clear what I’m talking about.
33- The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2006)
The MVP: Nicholson.
Why I love it: Yeah, it’s not anything particularly groundbreaking or special by Scorsese’s standards, but oh my god it is so fun. Pure entertainment, propped up at every turn by strong work from its director, the script, and the actors. This got Mark Wahlberg nominated for an Oscar and he deserved it. Also, I’ve seen people take aim and Nicholson’s performance in this film, which I can only respond to with an awed head shake and angry inquiry of “what the hell?”.
32- Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
The MVP: This section is the most fun for the Ghibli stuff because I can use it to shout out whatever supporting animal/creature in the movie I like the most. Here I’m going with the small rodents, which can be seen in the above image just above her shoulder.
Why I love it: Another Miyazaki film, another instance of emotional mastery. In Spirited Away, there’s the pure joy I mentioned earlier, but there’s a melancholy washing over it. There’s fear. There’s uncertainty. This is a film that is comforting similar to Kiki’s Delivery Service, but in a different way. This puts the pain at the forefront as opposed to the exuberance. This is a joyous film, but it’s also one that hurts. Something special and unique, a world so inventive and lived in it’s hard not to get lost in it. One of the great wonders in the history of film.
31- Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
The MVP: Let’s go with a bit of a more abstract one and call it the sensation of watching something so plausibly the greatest film ever made.
Why I love it: the above sensation. I talked in the Pain and Glory write up about movies and the feelings they provide, and this one hits one of the most defining cinematic emotions hard. It’s so obviously something so great that it makes you want to pause it to take a breath, to survey what you’re experiencing. Vertigo is rightly one of the most daunting presences in cinematic history, and you get the sense of that while watching it. It’s a religious experience.
30- Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984)
The MVP: To even jokingly say the big suit would be offensive to David Byrne, the most convincing MVP of any film on this list.
Why I love it: Look, obviously this is a masterpiece in construction that redefined the concert film and still stands as the bar for that genre, but I love it for the music. It’s the perfect shrine to the music of the Talking Heads, a total encapsulation of their energy and weirdness. The big suit, the lamp, the words projected on the screens, it all comes together to make the most thorough document of what makes them such a great band.
29- Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
The MVP: Mia Farrow.
Why I love it: The great slow burn, morphing from domestic drama to full blown horror so gradually that the line between the two often gets blurred, and it exists as both genres at once. Farrow’s performance is one of the best ever exercises in paranoia, and the film mounts with tension as she falls more and more into her convictions. A film so enveloping that you don’t fully realize how incredible what you’re watching is until it’s finished. Unshakable.
28- U.S. Go Home (Claire Denis, 1994)
The MVP: The great Gregoire Colin, who is maybe even better here than in Beau Travail.
Why I love it: This is my favorite of Denis’ films for a reason I’ve never really been able to put my finger on. Yes, it’s 100% perfect, but so is Beau Travail, and that one goes above and beyond, soaring into disorienting levels of greatness. This one is lighter, it’s less bold, less aggressively masterful. It’s only 66 minutes long, it’s a freaking TV movie. So why am I so drawn to it? Because the ratty, dejected nature of the film seeps through to its characters, creating one of the most unforgettable portraits of searching for your place in the world. Maybe the greatest coming of age film. It’s also the only one here that you can just find in full on youtube, in case anyone is interested. This is a film of isolation and confusion, one that has serious concerns about what it means to be isolated and confused. This wouldn’t exactly be my pick for the greatest film of all time, but like, if I got to the afterlife, and was asked what the greatest film ever is and it was this? I wouldn’t be mad I got it wrong and was damned for all of eternity. I could see that. Man, I went really long on this one, huh? This is an odd film, and one that I feel very strongly about, in a confused way.
27- All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar, 1999)
The MVP: Cecilia Roth.
Why I love it: A lot of what I said about Kiki’s Delivery Service, but imbued with the brilliant and offbeat style of Pedro Almodovar, who I’ve already stated is one of my favorite filmmakers. This is a movie about triumph, about pulling out of mutual adversity, that also serves as a continually devastating character study. It’s Almodovar’s greatest love letter to women, which he certainly has plenty of. It’s maybe his most wholly enjoyable film to watch, yet not without its share of emotional ups and downs.
26- Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999)
The MVP: Malkovich.
Why I love it: Gleefully and gloriously weird from beginning to end. A jumble of identity crises, self-loathing, high-concept sci-fi, the New Jersey Turnpike, and superfluous chimpanzees (seriously, what significance did that thing have on the plot?). Plus, the best performance from the great John Malkovich, which may sound weird considering he plays himself. It’s not, he’s brilliant. Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich.
25- It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014)
The MVP: that tall dude iteration of the demon that shows up in the hallway in that scene. You know the one.
Why I love it: It’s a perfect horror concept executed perfectly. Every idea baked into the central premise is fully explored, and the ambiguity of the central threat means that there is no safe place. The variety of horror coming at you is infinite, because there’s never a single moment of possible safety. It’s suffocating. Paced perfectly and held up by the strong work from its cast, the most intriguing invention is in the visual style achieved by Mitchell and cinematographer Mike Gioulakis, one of the most underrated currently working cinematographers.
24- Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
The MVP: The xenomorph itself.
Why I love it: I’ve been over this a lot on this blog. Alien is the perfect fusion of sci-fi and horror, created with matchless discipline. It builds and builds over the first half and then drops you into hell along with its characters. This uses the inherent spookiness of space to its advantage, it’s both infinite and inescapable. They’re trapped in there with it, and so are you. Perfect movie.
23- The Before Trilogy (Richard Linklater, 1995-2013)
The MVP: It has to be both Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. You can’t have one performance without the other.
Why I love it: I’m not going to argue that this is one film, like I did with Kill Bill. This only works because it’s three different films. Three separate snapshots of three moments in time, in the relationship between two people. It’s maybe the greatest feat of long form storytelling accomplished in cinematic history, with the real time differences between shoots providing each film with a unique worldview. They’re brilliant in their simplicity, it’s just two people walking around and talking. And yet it’s a flawless (the group dinner/whatever scene in Midnight didn’t happen) series of movies. Plus, Sunset boasts maybe the best ending ever.
22- Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
The MVP: Anna Karina, although Belmondo more than holds his own.
Why I love it: Godard unleashed, allowed to practice his rejection of narrative structure and disregard for convention in striking primary colors. This is the epitome of his breezy philosophical waxings mixed with unconventional style. He has, like the title suggests, gone crazy, throwing off whatever was still holding him to convention and creating this gloriously fun monstrosity that never loses its frantic cool even when staring down its own chilling narcissism.
21- Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)
The MVP: the titular carnival, which somehow manages to be exactly as creepy as the plot requires from a distance. Absolutely makes the atmosphere, which makes the movie.
Why I love it: An atmosphere unlike any other horror movie runs through Carnival of Souls. It’s genuinely creepy, and it’s ridiculously fun to partake in the creepiness. There’s no sense of the film being made on a shoestring budget, and it’s not even that it’s unsettling for its time. It’s genuinely eerie to watch, and astonishingly entertaining.
20- Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa, 1952)
The MVP: Takashi Shimura.
Why I love it: My favorite of Kurosawa’s films because of how heartbreaking it is. The central character is one of film’s great tragic heroes, and to watch him realize what a tragedy he is is something matched in few other films. The scene pictured above, in which he fully comes to terms with his life, is one of the very best scenes ever shot.
19- Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957)
The MVP: Giulietta Masina.
Why I love it: My go-to pick for the greatest film of all time. Nights of Cabiria is more tightly narratively wound than some of Fellini’s more famous films, but it’s a great example of why he’s such a canonically acknowledged director. Masina pulls off one of the greatest ever performances, fully nailing one of the most tragic yet triumphant characters ever put to screen. It left me wondering, as it immediately finished, if it was the best film ever. It hasn’t left me since. I think now I can definitively say yes.
18- Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
The MVP: Anthony Perkins. That grin at the end is all the explanation you need.
Why I love it: Remember for the Casablanca blurb how I just said “Because it’s Casablanca”? This is here because it’s Psycho. It’s ingrained into every horror or thriller film that followed it, and yet it still remains fresh and rewatchable. A classic is a classic for a reason.
17- Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007)
The MVP: oooh. Gyllenhaal. But all three leads give incredible performances.
Why I love it: It begins as a standard serial killer thriller and morphs into something more sinister. It’s the descent into madness of three men, a portrait of people who let obsession consume them. The film’s tagline, “There’s more than one way to lose your life to a killer”, is one of the best ever because it sums up its central conceit so well. What happens when things just don’t go like they’re supposed to in the movies? Probably Fincher’s best work.
16- The Meaning of Life (Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones, 1983)
The MVP: The long-armed “Find the Fish” guy.
Why I love it: My personal favorite of the Python movies because of its continually relevant exasperation. This film presents itself with the great questions of philosophy and human existence, and shrugs it off, defaulting to the simplest possible answer. And it’s hilarious. Just start to finish, not one misplaced joke or bit that doesn’t land (with the possible exception of the crimson permanent assurance, which goes on for too long). Plus, some of the best musical numbers of all time. Here’s looking at you, “Every Sperm is Sacred”.
15- The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
The MVP: Jack Cardiff. To think that people even tried doing cinematography after he mastered it in 1948 is baffling.
Why I love it: Because it’s flawless. Two hours and fourteen minutes and not a single wasted second or off line of dialogue. A clinic in advanced storytelling, both through its exceptionally strong script and brilliant visual choices. This is a startlingly perfect achievement, one of the great accomplishments if only in that it leaves me without words to describe its excellence.
Why I love it: I’d wager that this is the film on this list I’ve seen the most times. And with good cause- it manages to get even better on every viewing. Tarantino’s most perfectly tense film- the 30-minute basement scene is one of the best in his oeuvre, a perfect balance of the film’s brilliant dark humor and sobering brilliance. They also kill Hitler, in satisfactorily gory and overdone fashion. It just might be his masterpiece.
13- Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
The MVP: It is, unfortunately, Woody Allen.
Why I love it: Despite the fact that its creator, star, and subject is, uh, problematic to say the very least, it’s impossible to resist the quirky charms of this movie. It’s pretentious and violently strange, but that’s what makes it work. Its defiance of easy categorization is its defining characteristic. It’s a film as uncomfortable as its central figure, an awkward and small film that makes itself so endearing through its abundance of humor and charisma. This one calls me to revisit it every so often, and I always find myself amazed at just how plain good it is.
12- Blow Out (Brian De Palma, 1981)
The MVP: Travolta, although a shoutout to sound mixer James Tanenbaum is in order. A film about sound design needs good sound design, and he nailed it.
Why I love it: A perfectly made thriller with an absolutely devastating emotional impact. I was not prepared for Blow Out when I first watched it, and maybe that’s why it has stuck with me so much. It’s haunting and unshakable, with brilliant work from Travolta (Quentin Tarantino liked this movie so much that he made the call to cast him in Pulp Fiction) as well as John Lithgow as the sinister, psychotic villain. By turns entertaining and brutal, Blow Out is a brilliant beast.
11- The Big Lebowski (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998)
The MVP: John Goodman. Bridges is phenomenal, but Goodman’s over the top intensity is an absolute sight to behold.
Why I love it: The funniest film ever made, in my opinion. Another one that seemingly gets better on every watch, the Coens’ comedy classic is nonstop hilarity. Until it isn’t. It can handle the tonal shifts because the people who made it are such geniuses, and it all wraps itself up in a brilliant bittersweet finale. It’s perplexing, it’s offbeat as hell, and it’s way weirder than anything this mainstream has a right to be. And it’s wonderful because of it. Quick shoutout to the Ben Gazzara scene, too. I always forget that Ben Gazzara is in this movie and then that scene happens and it’s BEN GAZZARA and it rules. I love this movie.
10- L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)
The MVP: Russell Crowe.
Why I love it: Every time I go back to L.A. Confidential, I’m surprised at how well-made and endlessly entertaining it is. One of the very best scripts there is, combined with talented actors and assured direction. One of my favorite ever stories, and it’s an absolute joy to watch it be retold. Feels fresh and new every single time.
9- Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1997)
The MVP: Burt Reynolds
Why I love it: Anderson is one of the greatest working talents, and this is him at his rawest and most wide open. This is the work of a young genius, an emotionally and structurally rich tapestry that’s so much more than just “the porn movie”. Don’t get me wrong, it’s totally the porn movie, but to refer to it as that is to diminish the work done here. Every performance is great- Wahlberg, Reynolds, Julianne Moore, William H Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C Reilly, Don Cheadle. This is a much darker and vaster film than you would think based on its reputation.
8- Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)
The MVP: Faye Dunaway.
Why I love it: Distressingly prescient. Becoming more and more of a chilling reality each day. What was once an outlandish parody is now disturbingly commonplace. Plus, it’s hilarious. One of the best screenplays ever, plus every actor is giving their all. Including the ones who are only in it for one scene and managed Oscar wins and nominations from it. Scary and funny like nothing else.
7- Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
The MVP: Quentin Tarantino.
Why I love it: It’s an audacious experiment in structure and writing, in subject matter and in what you can get the moviegoing public to consume and like. Despite all the wannabes and pretenders in the 25+ years since it came out, nothing has paralleled it. Remarkably entertaining and rewatchable.
6- The Shining (Stanley Kubrick, 1980)
The MVP: Jack Nicholson
Why I love it: Horrifying and impossible to grasp, The Shining is my favorite horror movie of all time. Attractive derangement from Nicholson combines with pure terror from Shelley Duvall, all within the confines of Kubrick’s perfectly constructed claustrophobic hell. The ultimate horror film in every possible way, right down to the guy in the bear suit at the end doing… well you know what he’s doing.
5- The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
The MVP: Shirley MacLaine
Why I love it: “Shut up and deal”. The platonic ideal of the romantic comedy, as well as one of the most thoroughly likable classic hollywood films. This is a film that walks the line between pure joy and unfiltered sadness so precariously that it could be called the most bittersweet movie of all time. Overall it stands as one of the most delightful movies ever made, and one that I feel should be common knowledge at the same level as the likes of Citizen Kane and Casablanca.
4- Chungking Express (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994)
The MVP: That shot that happens every so often where the main characters move in slo-mo while everyone else is sped up. The best.
Why I love it: In the Mood for Love may be Wong Kar-Wai’s best film, but this is my personal favorite. It’s odd and fun and just generally an ebullient joy to watch. An deceptive exercise in almost pure style, this one ends up packing a gigantic emotional punch. Chungking is wonderful from start to finish, an invitation to enter the world of these characters, to feel their sadnesses and joys and anxieties. Singular and indescribable, this is a film that’s meant a lot to me since the first time I saw it.
3- The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)
The MVP: Colin Farrell
Why I love it: Lanthimos’ deeply off style lends itself perfectly to this deeply off story, set in a deeply off world with deeply off characters. This is as hilarious as it is heartbreaking, a gut punch with killer comedic bits. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s unforgettable, haunting, a uniquely searing madness that makes you just sit and contemplate your whole existence. On the surface it may resist any attempts at easy understanding, but it burrows into your skull until you acknowledge it. Something I’ll never quite let go.
2- Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986)
The MVP: Kurt Russell
Why I love it: Big Trouble is wildly entertaining, surprisingly emotional, and completely bonkers at a rare level. This spans every genre under the sun, inverting tropes and defying expectations as it goes along. I can never get tired of this film, never regret choosing to watch it over any of the hundreds of movies on my watchlist. Pure fun in the most surprising ways possible.
1- Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)
The MVP: Ray Liotta, specifically the laugh. And the delivery of the line “Now take me to jail”.
Why I love it: Why does anyone love their favorite movie? Goodfellas was a cinematic awakening for me, a critical moment in my love of film unlike any other. In the intervening dozens of times I’ve watched it, it loses none of the shine, the technical excellence, the endless entertainment. This is a film where everything clicks. Everything works to create a truly perfect work of art, that just happens to have a massive popular appeal simply because it’s so good. Goodfellas is the movie I’ve cited as my favorite for so long it’s almost lost meaning. But every single time I watch it, I’m reminded of just how fantastic it is, why I love it as much as I do. Goodfellas is a film that’s a part of me, that I can always take refuge in and enjoy. That’s the power of a favorite movie.
Over the last few months, John Carpenter has rapidly become one of my favorite directors. Prior to last halloween, I had only seen two of his films. Then I watched The Fog and ventured into a rabbit hole of horror, action, and Kurt Russell. 10 movies later, I have surrendered to my natural impulses and ranked them all before I’ve finished his entire body of work (which I intend to do rapidly and will update this accordingly). So far, of all the movies of his I’ve seen, exactly zero are anywhere close to bad, and- to some degree- I love all of these. So enjoy as I attempt to fashion a coherent list out of these incredible movies.
12- Dark Star (1974)
I have a really big soft spot for Dark Star, Carpenter’s ugly, half-baked debut. Objectively speaking, it’s almost definitely a bad movie, and as such I really can’t justify putting it higher simply to prove a point. But MAN it is JUST SO WEIRD. Carpenter and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon (who would go on to write a little film called Alien) fashion an utterly bizarre response to the cultural craze for space movies. Pictured above is the alien antagonist of the film (quite obviously massively superior to the equivalent creature in O’Bannon’s later masterwork), and yes, it is a red beach ball with feet. It wreaks havoc on the titular ship, which basically amounts to mildly annoying the bored crew until they kill it. Then the movie just proceeds on to the next thing. There’s no real plot so much as there is a collection of ideas, reminiscent a bit of the Monty Python movies. There’s a talking bomb with an existential crisis (truly one of the best characters in Carpenter’s vast oeuvre), O’Bannon himself plays a member of the crew who’s not supposed to be there (outstandingly, I might add), and there’s a pervasive malaise that haunts over the whole thing and distinguishes it from its contemporaries. It’s also ridiculously quotable (“Now it’s time to go sleepy-bye, you worthless piece of garbage”, “How are the Dodgers doing”, “Teach it… p h e n o m e n o l o g y“). At least, it is if you have a terrible sense of humor and an extreme dedication to randomly quoting movies. Also, Benson, Arizona, the film’s theme song, is impossible to fully drive from your head. There’s just so much here to obsess over, and it’s a massive shame that it hasn’t become the cult classic it deserves to be. I love it so much. If only it were better.
11- Escape From New York (1981)
Here’s a controversial ranking. Like I said, I love all of these, it’s just that this is one of the ones I love least. It certainly gets points for being the coolest conceptually: the idea of Manhattan being turned into a maximum security prison is a fascinating idea (and one that is expanded upon sufficiently in this film without ever going overboard), and Snake Plissken’s (Kurt Russell) quest is constructed for maximum tension. The film maintains a truly intense atmosphere despite its total insanity: this is a film where Isaac Hayes, playing the “Duke of New York”, drives around in a car with chandeliers on its hood, and Donald Pleasance plays the President of the United States with a British accent- and somehow makes it work. Everyone performs with the required aplomb. Lee Van Cleef (!) menaces around the screen in the style that built him a career. Harry Dean Stanton (!!!!!) applies his trademark neuroticism to great effect. And of course there’s Kurt Russell. Russell’s Snake Plissken (what a name) is one of his most iconic characters (although in my opinion he’s the weakest of his three Carpenter antiheroes, behind Burton and MacReady). The film’s top selling point, however, is how fully fleshed out the world of New York is. The song “Everybody’s Coming to New York”, sung early on with delirious and ironic glee by a group of prisoners, exemplifies this: it shows how these people live, their need for entertainment, their thoughts on their current situation, and how much time they have on their hands to effectively craft a theme song for their prison state. Escape From New York is excellent, so why is it so low? The other films on this list just happen to be more excellent.
10- They Live (1988)
What could’ve been a ridiculous B-movie with a ridiculous premise, starring a pro wrestler, and featuring some of the cheesiest one liners ever put to film is… actually just that. Except that ridiculous premise is translated into still-relevant social commentary, said pro wrestler gives an amazing performance, and the one liners are AWESOME (“all out of bubblegum” gets all the attention, and deservedly so, but don’t sleep on “life’s a bitch, and she’s back in heat”). There are many things that make They Live work: several specific scenes still stand out, such as the epic six-minute back alley brawl scene between Roddy Piper and Keith David, and the scene where Piper puts the glasses on for the first time. Although not a particularly subtle movie, its frustration with the world and the way the system works makes it fascinating to watch today. It’s told with the economy of time and efficiency of storytelling and exposition that Carpenter is better at than anyone ever. Plus, it all concludes with the absolute funniest five or so seconds of possibly any movie (or at least any horror/horror adjacent movie).
(It’s worth noting that this is the only movie on this list that I’ve gotten blocked on twitter by an idiot over. 10/10 would do again.)
9- In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
The final chapter of Carpenter’s “Apocalypse Trilogy” is its weakest, although it isn’t by any means a weak film. It features a brilliant Sam Neill as an insurance investigator drawn into a web of paranormal occurrences surrounding the disappearance of a massively popular horror author. This writer, named Sutter Cane, has been known to create work that drives its readers insane, and his latest could have potentially disastrous ramifications. Your mileage on In the Mouth of Madness will vary- it’s one of the most polarizing Carpenter films. In my mind, it all comes down to how you feel about the “Did I ever tell you my favorite color was blue?” scene:
If you find the scene to be ridiculous and nonsensical, you may not like the film (although it does work better in context). If you (correctly) find it to be brilliant, demonstrating the power of Cane in an original visually inventive way, you’ll love this movie. As you should. The rapid deterioration of the plot into total lunacy (literally) is something to behold, the acting is excellent, and it’s scary! Really, honestly scary! The guy on the bike! The inescapable portal back to Hobb’s End! The scenes at the church! It’s all so good. Also, the final scene is just unbelievable. Carpenter’s films routinely have great last scenes or shots, and this is absolutely no exception.
8- Starman (1984)
Starman is completely unlike any other film on this list, which is both its greatest strength and most unavoidable weakness. Carpenter here is outside of his comfort zone, abandoning high-concept scifi/action/horror for… well it’s a high concept scifi film, but not in any sort of recognizable way beyond the premise. It concerns an alien (Jeff Bridges, excellent) who comes to earth and takes the form of the recently deceased husband of a woman (Karen Allen, equally if not more excellent), who he then essentially holds captive and forces her to drive him to Arizona so he can get back home. Along the way, however, she finds herself drawn to him. Maybe it’s because of his total foreignness, or maybe she’s just working through her grief. It’s probably both. The film is a rich examination into this character and her inner workings, and ends up as an indelible meditation on loss that just happens to be a solidly cheesy 80s movie. But it’s not as egregiously offensive as say, Big Trouble in Little China (much much higher on this list) in the 80s cheese department, and once you strip away the thin layer of dairy there’s an emotional goldmine in Starman.
7- The Fog (1980)
This one’s a personal favorite of mine, and it does hurt not to be able to rank it higher. The Fog is just under 90 minutes of pure B-horror glory, elevated to something brilliant by Carpenter’s mastery. The visual prowess of cinematographer Dean Cundey (specifically the shots of the ocean) combined with Carpenter’s horror direction at its peak create an experience that, although not altogether unique, is relentlessly entertaining and pretty scary. The genius lies in the monsters, however. The ghost pirates terrorizing the residents of Antonio Bay are kept deliberately shrouded in the titular fog, and it creates a truly spooky film. Plus there’s a fascinating political subtext and one of the greatest final shots in existence. Overall there are far greater films on this list, but there are few that are just this good.
6- Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Most of Carpenter’s films have an element of fun. It’s not exactly that they’re lighthearted films- take Halloween or The Thing, both deeply serious films that are elevated to exhilarating by their total insanity. There is none of that in Assault on Precinct 13. This is a disturbingly down-to-earth film filled with brutal violence. From the moment you witness the nonchalant shooting of a little girl, you recognize that this is not your typical John Carpenter movie. Ostensibly an action film (based off a western, which gives it some of those qualities), this comes closer to a horror movie in a lot of ways. The gang members invading the eponymous police precinct resemble zombies in the way that they just keep coming, laying waste to their target with no regard for their own well-being. This is a gritty, bleak movie, and a lot of its excellence lies in the ability of Carpenter to communicate that. The deft handling of racial tension here is impressive, especially for 1976. It’s clearly a political statement, yet like most of Carpenter’s work, it can be reveled in without paying any mind to that subtext. The acting is impressive, the direction is stellar (especially once the characters are trapped in a single location for the back half of the film), and the runtime (91 minutes) is tight enough that it never drags. Also, one of the prisoners is played by Tony Burton, best known for his pained plea to “throw the damn towel” in Rocky IV (well, really his entire role in those movies, but there’s no moment more memorable than that).
5- Prince of Darkness (1987)
Scarier than any movie about a cylinder of goo that is also Satan has any right to be. You read that correctly- Prince of Darkness is about a priest who finds a giant jar of sludge in the basement of a church and, using the help of a world-renowned professor and his students, determines that it contains the devil himself. Then the Satan Goo starts attacking and possessing people, and the students find themselves trapped inside the church, fighting for their lives. Why are they trapped inside the church, you may ask? Well that’s because a group of seemingly schizophrenic homeless people are waiting outside, ready to kill anyone who tries to leave. Also their leader is played by Alice Cooper. This movie rules. Dennis Dun, Wang in Big Trouble in Little China, brings the charisma of that role to this one, firing off witty one liners (“Anyone ever tell you you could pass for Asian?”) to provide some much-needed comic relief in the face of impending doom. This is a film where insects crawl out of people’s bodies, people are stabbed with bicycle parts, and characters are transformed into subhuman monsters before our eyes. It’s a truly frightening and upsetting film, and a total masterpiece in a way that nobody but John Carpenter could accomplish.
4- Christine (1983)
This film is an oddity in Carpenter’s body of work, as it isn’t really his story. It’s a Stephen King adaptation, and as such King’s fingerprints are all over it. The characters are King characters, the premise is a King premise, and the themes are King themes. Yet none of it would work without Carpenter. It may be King’s story, but it’s Carpenter’s film. One of the two major things that shocked me about Christine was just how much Carpenter put into it: the direction has a million little subtleties and minor decisions that make it work. In fact, it might be his best-directed film. The other major thing that shocked me about Christine? It’s a masterpiece. It could’ve been a run of the mill early-80s King adaptation, a cheesy story about a haunted car that goes around killing people. It could’ve easily done that. But instead it’s a brilliant odyssey of teenage anger and human self-destruction. These characters are real people who go through real changes and experience real emotion. This movie is profound, it’s raw, it makes you feel more than a movie about an evil car has any right to. This is an incredible film, and one of the best Stephen King adaptations ever.
3- Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
We come now to my personal favorite film of Carpenter’s. Big Trouble in Little China is the Carpenter-iest of all Carpenter movies, the midnight movie-est of all midnight movies, the craziest of all crazy movies. To attempt to describe the plot would be insanity, so in the spirit of the film, here I go: Jack Burton (Kurt Russell, in his greatest role), a trucker, takes some time to gamble with his friend Wang (Dennis Dun, also his greatest role). Jack wins big, and Wang tells him that he can only get him his money if Jack goes with him to pick up his fiancee from the airport. At the airport, Wang’s fiancee is kidnapped by a gang, which prompts Jack and Wang to go looking for her with the aid of a lawyer, Gracie Law (Kim Cattrall, in her greatest role), which leads to a bizarre web of Chinese magic and the struggle by ghost wizard (?) Lo Pan (James Hong, in his greatest role) to regain his mortal form. Aided by a tour bus driver (Victor Wong, take a wild guess where this ranks among his roles) and several others of various usefulness, Jack, Wang, and Gracie face off against seemingly unstoppable magicians and whatever the hell this thing is:
Big Trouble in Little China is an action movie, it’s a comedy (the cut back to Jack out cold on the ground during the climactic fight scene is gold), it’s kind of a horror film (see above), it’s a love story (“You’re not even going to kiss her?” “Nope.”). It’s a busy movie, and with a runtime of an hour and 39 minutes, the fact that it never gets too busy is impressive. Big Trouble is unlike anything you’ve ever seen. It’s nonstop fun that also functions as glorious, expectation-subverting art. No frame of this movie could be replaced, nothing could be added, nothing could be cut. This is a movie that became one of my all-time favorites as soon as the credits rolled. This is a movie that will remind anyone who loves movies exactly why they do. This is a movie that I’m going to go watch again right now.
2- The Thing (1982)
Carpenter never shied away from single-setting movies. Assault on Precinct 13 and Prince of Darkness are both great examples of that. But no film of his (or maybe of anyone’s) invokes as much paralyzing claustrophobia as The Thing. Everything is designed to make you feel as utterly hopeless as possible: the antarctic setting, the unpredictability of the monster, the viscerally upsetting body horror. You feel the fear of the characters so much because the film gives you no choice- anyone could be the thing. This movie famously did terrible upon its release, both in terms of box office and critical reception. A lot of that is attributable to a movie that came out 2 weeks prior: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The film found a following over the years, and has now come to be seen as a classic. The Thing is scary, it’s disturbing, it’s indelible. It sears itself into your brain through unforgettable imagery and a sense of pervasive futility that you can’t quite shake. It also features the greatest of Carpenter’s many great endings. On another note, antarctic researchers watch this film routinely, which is a level of masochism that I would never dream of, despite how much I love this film.
1- Halloween (1978)
“Everyone’s entitled to one good scare.”
These words are spoken by Carpenter regular Charles Cyphers early in Halloween, John Carpenter’s best film. Both the film and its director eventually blow well past one, as the seminal horror film shocks until its conclusion and Carpenter didn’t slow down in its wake (although he would never experience another success as great as this one). Halloween builds something extraordinary from ordinary circumstances: its now-iconic villain is just a guy in a plain white mask, its heroine was then-unknown actress Jaime Lee Curtis, and its premise of “guy goes around killing teenagers” is pretty simple. So why did it become a stone cold classic and touchpoint for generations of lesser re-imaginings and ripoffs (hello, original Friday the 13th)? It’s so good. Just so, so good. Every moment is creepy and electric, every scare works, it’s infinitely entertaining and rewatchable. It’s the definitive watch for an entire season, it has come to define an entire holiday. It may not have actually created the slasher subgenre, but for all intents and purposes it did. It’s an achievement that no number of sequels and reboots can possibly dull. It’s John Carpenter’s crowning moment, and as such it’s an essential piece of cinematic history.
Today, August 17th, is the 76th birthday of one of the greatest actors of all time. His career spans his early work with Martin Scorsese in the 70s to his more recent supporting turns in David O. Russell’s films. His roles have become iconic- lines, scenes, and moments have become so indelible that they’ve etched themselves into popular culture permanently. He needs no introduction, and yet I’ve given him one anyway because that’s just how great of an actor he is. So here are the top ten performances of the one and only Robert De Niro.
10- Jackie Brown (1997)
My initial feelings on De Niro’s role as Louis Gara in Jackie Brown (and the movie in general) were lukewarm. the further removed I get from it, however, the more I appreciate it. In ways similar to Casino (not on this list. That movie sucks.), Jackie Brown features De Niro in an against-type performance. His character here is more timid than you typically get from him. Louis is a unique character in the film for that reason. Every other character is a typically Tarantino-esque, suave, smooth talker that’s always thinking ahead. Louis is pretty much a loser. He’s responsible for many of the best and most shocking moments in the film (parking lot scene, above) that don’t belong to Samuel L Jackson’s character. He’s a welcome presence in the film, and an interesting part of De Niro’s career.
9- The Godfather part II (1974)
If the thing that sets the first Godfather movie apart is the presence of Marlon Brando, the thing that helps its sequel is De Niro (in the same role, fittingly enough). He won his first Oscar for his portrayal of Vito Corleone in his younger years. The most impressive thing about this part, in my opinion at least, is that almost all of his lines are in Italian. Additionally, he does a truly excellent job of maintaining the character that Brando established in the first film. Whenever he’s on screen, the film revolves around him. It takes skill to build on such an iconic character and make it your own, and that’s what De Niro does here.
8- The Untouchables (1987)
Enthusiasms, enthusiasms. What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? That would be De Niro’s brilliantly over the top performance as Al Capone in Brian De Palma’s crime classic. He’s unfortunately not in the film that much, but when he is the quality skyrockets. Which is saying a lot considering how great it is. De Niro delivers every line with an insane bravado that completely makes the movie and creates several classic scenes (I wanna go there in the middle of the night AND PISS ON HIS ASHES, etc.). There may be more nuanced performances in De Niro’s filmography, but I’m not sure if there are any that are this fun.
7- Mean Streets (1973)
Harvey Keitel may be the star of Scorsese’s early masterwork Mean Streets, but De Niro steals the film with this completely bonkers turn. Here he plays a lunatic that doesn’t quite resemble his later roles in The King of Comedy and The Untouchables, but possesses an air of sheer madness that might make you think he’d make a good Joker. This film served as the starting point for his career and a stunning breeding ground for talent (David Proval, Richie Aprile on The Sopranos, is here, as is David Carradine) that remains fascinating to watch today, especially because of De Niro.
6- The Deer hunter (1978)
The Deer Hunter is a staggering, massive, emotional epic that is sure to resonate deeply with any viewer. Everyone here is in top form. Christopher Walken gives his best performance ever (the Pulp Fiction fan in me hates to say that, as does the Annie Hall fan in me), John Savage is tremendously and impeccably broken, and Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep. De Niro is the center of it all. He’s responsible for the most intense moments the film has to offer (russian roulette with more bullets), some of the most resonant (his return home from the war), and some of the saddest (NICKYYYY). He displays a brilliant range over the course of one film. He undergoes one of the greatest transformations in cinematic history (maybe even the second best in the movie). It’s an epic performance that perfectly suits the epic film.
5- Cape Fear (1991)
Never in his career has De Niro simply been this scary. He brings a palpable menace to every scene, even when he’s being outwardly friendly. His scene with Juliette Lewis, where he poses as her drama teacher, is one of the best scenes of his career. The above scene in the movie theater is a classic. He’s the second best thing about one of the best remakes in cinematic history (the best being the Simpsons episode that parodies it, obviously). He simultaneously oozes evil and charisma in a way he’s never typically done. Similar to the way he expands upon Brando’s Don Corleone in Godfather 2, he builds his own character on top of Robert Mitchum’s in the original.
4- Goodfellas (1990)
That is all.
3- The King of Comedy (1983)
There are elements of Travis Bickle in Rupert Pupkin, De Niro’s unhinged title character. In fact, it could be said that he’s the anti-Bickle. Whereas Bickle’s worldview is dark and nihilistic, Pupkin is an eternal and relentless optimist and opportunist. Bickle’s obsession is with (as he sees it) making the world a better place, Pupkin sees the world as a perfect place already: he wrongly views it as a world where anyone, himself included, can make it. In this way, The King of Comedy is maybe a more cynical film than Taxi Driver. It’s occurring to me that this would be better as a full-length post, so I’m gonna stop for now. De Niro absolutely owns in this movie, and that’s really all there is to it.
2- Raging Bull (1980)
In Raging Bull, De Niro creates a character so repulsive and awful that it’s incredible just how empathetic you become with him. We revel in LaMotta’s victories and suffer with his lows. De Niro creates a character with so much depth, but whose only emotion at all times is rage. This is what drives his every action, his every explosion, his every fight. Raging Bull is a boxing movie in two ways- there’s the actual boxing, and there’s LaMotta’s tragic and constant fight with everyone in his life. De Niro here is a person who is constantly fighting, that’s his nature, that’s all he can do. And De Niro does it so well that it completely makes the movie.
1- Taxi Driver
When I started this post, it occurred to me that I’d have to pick between Raging Bull and Taxi Driver for the top spot. I thought I’d go with Raging Bull, but when I thought about it, I decided that Taxi Driver was the true number one. Travis Bickle is one of the greatest characters in the history of American fiction, and he couldn’t have been without De Niro (who improvised his most iconic scene). This role singlehandedly created an entirely new character archetype- “God’s lonely man”, which has been seen in the likes of last year’s terrific First Reformed and Jake Gyllenhaal’s character in Nightcrawler. But nobody (although Gyllenhaal and Hawke are both fantastic) has pulled it off quite like De Niro. His insanity here is not below the surface and malicious, it’s well-intended and right there for the world to see. This is a man who has nothing to lose. This is a character of unbridled depth and a performance of unparalleled skill. This is De Niro’s greatest contribution to film, to art, and to the world as a whole. Decades later, it’s the crowning achievement of one of the best careers in film history.
His films are brutally violent and insanely profane. His influences are mainly films that the average person has never heard of, and he borrows from every last one of them. His dialogue-driven films stand out in an era when box office titans are comprised of explosions and chase scenes (although Tarantino can do that well, too). A major component of his body of work is including songs that nobody’s ever heard of. He shouldn’t have any sort of mass following.
Yet he does. He’s one of the only auteur directors that still drives people to the theater in droves. And with good reason. His films are flashy and alluring, he attracts major talent (Samuel L. Jackson, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, etc.), and he’s just a straight-up cinematic genius. All of the aforementioned songs nobody has heard never of immediately become super popular. Individual moments, lines, and images from his filmography have become imbedded into popular culture. He deserves his fame simply because he’s just that good. He’s so good, in fact, that he’s never made a bad film. And that is where we begin in this ranking of all 9 Quentin Tarantino films. (Only counting directed films, so no True Romance or From Dusk Till Dawn. Kill Bill counts as one film. Spoilers ahead).
9- The Hateful Eight
Again, there’s no bad Tarantino film. There’s a bad half of one, however. The first half of The Hateful Eight serves one purpose, and it’s to get all of its characters into one place. That’s it. That’s half of a close to three hour movie. Now, that’s not to say that the first half is a total failure. It looks fantastic, and it’s incredibly well acted, especially on behalf of Samuel L Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Bruce Dern. The reason that the movie itself isn’t bad is the second half. From the halfway point on, The Hateful Eight is so great that you almost forget how slow the first half is. Characters die at an alarming rate and every death comes out of nowhere. The tension built up in the first half pays off big time as everything comes to a head in a masterwork of tension. Most importantly, it’s an essentially Tarantinoesque film. It’s very dialogue driven and features almost all of his recurring actors, such as Jackson, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, and Zoe Bell, among others. And Ennio freakin’ Morricone did the score! But still, something had to be last.
8- Death Proof
It is perhaps my most unpopular opinion on Tarantino’s films that Death Proof is actually really good. It’s especially good for what it is, which is an intentionally cheap and sleazy tribute to the grindhouse movies of the seventies. And it works absolutely perfectly as that. It’s sleazy as hell and twice as gritty. It’s brutally violent and super cheap (which, again, is by design). It all comes together perfectly as a brilliant storm of pure cinematic bliss. The key to the whole thing, however, is Kurt Russell in one of his career best performances. His psychotic Stuntman Mike is one of the greatest villains in the Tarantino canon, and he’s the reason that what otherwise wouldn’t work works. It’s one of the greatest performances in all of Tarantino’s movies, and it’s so much fun (but also really guilt-inspiring) to watch him exact works of sheer evil and psychosis spanning both parts of the movie, the only thing tying both acts together. Both car scenes are masterful. The first, at the conclusion of the first half, is a brilliant scene, combining Tarantinoesque tension and elements of slasher horror to create something so brutal yet so utterly fantastic. The second, the climactic chase scene that runs for pretty much the entire fourth quarter of the film, is a work of pure technical precision. Tarantino directs the chase masterfully, and it’s fun to see him work outside of his typical comfort zone in trying (and succeeding) to craft an action sequence. Death Proof is not without its shortcomings, though. The third quarter of the film is just kinda nothing, and the premise really limits what it can be by design. Not a masterpiece, but it’s truly great and likely his most underrated film.
7- Jackie Brown
Tarantino’s films are their own genre, but yet they all seem to pay tribute to others. Reservoir Dogs is a heist movie, Pulp Fiction is an homage to the titular works, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight are westerns, Inglourious Basterds is a war movie, Kill Bill is like 19 different ones and Death Proof is a grindhouse film. Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s contribution to the early-70s blaxploitation genre, even going so far as to cast the biggest star of the movement in the title role. Pam Grier is phenomenal, but Jackie Brown (the film) is complicated enough that she’s not really the main character. Samuel L Jackson’s charismatic gun nut Ordell Robbie steals the show, Robert DeNiro’s (!) depraved, burnt-out Louis and Bridget Fonda’s sardonic Melanie play major roles, and Michael Keaton’s agent Ray Nicolette is… there. And of course, there’s Robert Forster (who earned Jackie Brown’s only oscar nomination for this role) as bail bondsman Max Cherry, who delivers the fifth best performance in this movie. The issue with this film isn’t that there’s too much going on, it’s that it isn’t handled well. Tarantino is adapting here, from Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch. Watching Jackie Brown, it’s visible that it’s not entirely his work. It’s definitely a Tarantino film, but it’s not all there. Nevertheless, Jackie Brown can be fantastic at times. Jackson’s car-trunk assassination of one of his henchmen is a stellar scene, and his AK-47 monologue is so much fun. The plot is delightfully twisty and complex, and it has the vague feel of an Ocean’s 11-type heist thriller. It runs a little long and, unlike Pulp Fiction (which shares the runtime down to the minute), feels like it. Jackie Brown falls short of masterpiece status, but it’s still pretty great.
6- Django Unchained
We’re in the truly great stuff now. Everything from this point on, including Django, is a masterpiece, and it’s ridiculous that a film of this quality, a film that features Christoph Waltz as a bounty hunting dentist, falls on the bottom half of this list. Jamie Foxx’s fantastic lead role as the title character is overshadowed by some of the best performances in any Tarantino movie, on behalf of Waltz, Samuel L Jackson, and Leonardo DiCaprio (more on that one in a little bit). It’s a brilliant redemption story, and it contains one of the finest (and bloodiest) scenes in Tarantino’s filmography in the Candieland Massacre. It’s nothing short of an epic, something that might’ve been made by Sergio Leone or David Lean if they were buried in the pet sematary and came back more disturbed and violent. It’s also far more exhilarating and fun than any movie about slavery has any right to be, in kind of an Inglourious Basterds-type way. As for DiCaprio’s role, it’s one of his career best and it’s a shame he wasn’t even nominated for an oscar for it. His vindictive plantation owner, Calvin Candie, is nothing short of terrifying as he menaces over every single frame he’s in with conniving faux-properness. Django’s quest is probably the most compelling Tarantino has ever crafted, as the audience is with him all the way in the quest to find his wife. Django Unchained comes together in the kind of way that all of Tarantino’s best films do, and it’s certainly one of them.
5- Kill Bill
It’s one film. This is not negotiable. It’s one story and Vol. 2 picks up at the conclusion of Vol.1. It works best as a complete, glorious, 4-hour whole. The Bride is the second best Tarantino character (the best has yet to come on this list), and she’s played with masterful determination and sorrow by Uma Thurman. None of the main villains aren’t fleshed out (especially the eponymous one). In a feat incredibly rare for something of its length, not a single scene feels out of place. The house of blue leaves scene is one of my absolute favorite scenes in cinematic history, and Bill’s death is one of the greatest death scenes ever constructed. It’s a first-order epic, and everyone either loves or hates it. I’m a full-on devotee to the “love” side. It spans pretty much every genre, zigzagging from a Samurai film to anime to a western to a sort of exploitation horror-type thing (the box). The cliffhanger at the end of volume 1 is one of the best, and it’s scientifically impossible to watch it without immediately watching volume 2 (trust me, I know science and stuff). It’s impeccable, awesome, and brilliant. It’s the film that Quentin Tarantino would make if given an infinite budget and access to any actor he could want. How Thurman and David Carradine didn’t get oscar consideration baffles me.
4- Reservoir Dogs
Where it all started. Reservoir Dogs launched a half-dozen careers (including QT’s), revitalized a couple more (Harvey Keitel and Lawrence Tierney) and firmly entrenched itself into cinematic history. It’s one of the all time greatest independent films, and it’s an independent film to its very core (although it doesn’t really feel like it). It’s so famously low-budget that the iconic suits were provided for free by a crime film fan and the other clothes worn by the characters were the actors’ own. There’s so many iconic scenes, such as the opening diner scene (Like a Virgin and Steve Buscemi’s tipping monologue in the same scene), the slow-mo opening credits scene (one of the greatest opening credits sequences ever) and of course, that one. Michael Madsen’s psychotic lunatic torturing a cop to Stealer’s Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle with You is many things, including the greatest needle drop ever, possibly Tarantino’s finest scene, and the beginning of one of the greatest filmmaking careers of the modern era because, let’s face it, without it the film wouldn’t have been as big of a success. Reservoir Dogs is another one that just comes together perfectly, combining stellar performances, spectacular writing, and tension that you can cut with a knife on every single watch. Reservoir Dogs is a pop culture landmark and a cinematic masterwork, and it doesn’t even manage to crack Quentin Tarantino’s top 3 films.
3- Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood
Tarantino’s latest is one of his absolute best, which is odd considering how much it diverges from his other work. It’s far less urgent and tense, it progresses slowly, and it takes a far more humane and tender approach to its characters. (What could be construable as spoilers approaching) Its revisionism is done with glee, similar to Basterds and Django, but there’s a softer edge to it. These characters, for all of their outward projections of toughness and machismo, care about each other. But yet for all of Hollywood’s rarities, it couldn’t have been made by anyone else. It meanders and often stands still, but it contains sequences of tension unparalleled even in his own filmography. The Spahn Ranch sequence is one of his absolute best- it felt to me reminiscent of Basterds’ basement bar scene. And the climax is as shocking, violent, and brilliant as anything he’s ever done. Overall, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is essential Tarantino. It’s a completely unforgettable masterpiece. The further removed I am from my first viewing, the more I feel that this placement is right. Who knows? After further viewings, it might be even higher.
This was unbelievably close to taking the top spot. It’s another one of Tarantino’s latter-career revisionist history epics, an oddly specific genre he would return to for Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight (and, as it turns out, Once Upon a time in Hollywood). Basterds seems to get better with every rewatch, as every one of the aspects that makes it great holds up. Brad Pitt is at his best, Michael Fassbender is ridiculous in his two or three (not so brief) scenes, Christoph Waltz (duh) turns in an all time performance, and god it’s so much fun to watch Hitler’s skin slide off of his head. The climactic theater scene is incredible and it’s still not the best scene in the film. The half hour basement bar scene is possibly the greatest thing Tarantino has ever done, and it’s a masterclass in screenwriting, acting, and tension (soooo much tension). It’s so much fun, brilliant on a technical level, and unexpectedly funny (Hugo. Stiglitz.). It’s worth noting that Mike Myers is in it, and also Winston Churchill is played by Rod Taylor, who happens to be the male lead in Hitchcock’s The Birds (this isn’t necessary information, I just want as many people to know as possible). And now the time has come to talk about Waltz. His Nazi Hans Landa is disarmingly courteous and sophisticated, and he views his work as just that: work. He’s conniving, he’s terrifying, and worst of all- he’s charming. He’s Tarantino’s greatest character, period. He’s an all time great villain, and the secret to the whole thing. The opening scene at the farmhouse is one of the best acted ever, and it would work as a short film on an oscar-worthy level. Inglourious Basterds is perfect. It just might be Tarantino’s masterpiece.
1- Pulp Fiction
Shocker, right? There’s a reason that Pulp Fiction is consistently hailed as Tarantino’s masterpiece, and it’s that it’s simply one of the greatest films ever made. Endlessly rewatchable and quotable, Pulp Fiction is another one that has totally ingrained itself into pop culture. It features one of the all time best death scenes (Aw man, I shot Marvin in the face), is absolutely hilarious, (He hid this uncomfortable hunk of metal up his ass…, also Marvin’s aforementioned demise). It’s Christopher Walken at his absolute best, if only for one scene (similar to his role in Annie Hall). Harvey Keitel is at a similar best in his iconic turn as The Wolf. Any number of scenes have become iconic, from the jackrabbit slim’s twist contest to the scene in Brent’s apartment (try to pick a favorite between “SAY WHAT AGAIN” and “ENGLISH, MOTHERF***ER”). Bruce Willis is in peak form, as are (obviously) Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta. The final scene in the diner stands out as one of the most well-written in all of Tarantino’s films. Don’t even get me started on the theory that the briefcase contains Marsellus Wallace’s soul. There’s too much to talk about with Pulp Fiction and most of it has been said already, so suffice it to say that it’s a masterwork that works ceaselessly throughout its entire runtime. As close as Inglourious Basterds may be, this is the obvious number one. In the 25 years since its release, Tarantino has never topped it, nor has anyone else (with the exception of maybe Barry Jenkins with Moonlight). Tarantino’s career is as illustrious as anyone’s, and this is the film that epitomizes that. I’ve been writing for two hours now, so if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go home and have a heart attack.
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The Movie Files 