Bill: My Top Ten Films

In commemoration of the latest decennial poll of the Greatest Movies of All Time from Sight & Sound magazine, I’m posting Top Ten lists on my blog from friends and readers. Feel free to send me yours.

Here’s the list I received from my friend Bill, an accomplished (and award-winning) filmmaker in their own right. Their assorted selections here (reaching from New York to Tokyo) have proven fascinating, and come together into a kaleidoscopic whole. I especially appreciate a Top Ten list that acknowledges a contribution from African cinema, and also my own views on Taxi Driver accord well with those given below.

Jag: Top Ten Films

In commemoration of the next decennial poll of the Greatest Movies of All Time from Sight & Sound magazine, I’m posting Top Ten lists on my blog from friends and readers. Feel free to send me yours.

Here’s the list I received from my friend Jag. His eclectic choices highlighted some movies unfamiliar to me, and his persuasive commendations make me want to sit down and watch each of them one by one, even the ones I already know. Cléo from 5 to 7 is aptly described as the masterpiece it is, and I heartily join his praise here. I particularly appreciate lists with a broad geographic base (this one stretches from Los Angeles to Tokyo), and enjoy finding any feature or idea that links the selections; here, I notice the interesting predominance of movies from very early in their directors’ careers.

Jurd: The 10 Greatest Movies of All Time

The British film magazine Sight and Sound conducts a famous decennial poll, among movie critics and directors, for the Greatest Films of All Time. The first poll was in 1952, and the next one will be released later this year. It’s probably the most prestigious and respected of all such lists, and is one of the places that beatified Citizen Kane as the greatest of all movies. (Famously, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo knocked Citizen Kane from its Number One spot in the last poll, in 2012.)

No one asked me for my vote for the Top Ten, but, to observe the 2022 poll, I’m giving my own choices here. The task turned out to be inordinately tricky; there’s a host of inspiring and transformative artists that I would want represented in a list of the best that cinema has to offer – far more than ten little slots can accommodate. For the most part, I’ve resorted to whittling down a list of my top directors, and selecting one movie to represent each; it’s not a perfect system, and I’m just as unhappy about what needs to be left out as what I’m proud to include. But what would be a better number? Would we be happier if we could list twenty movies? We’d still have to cut out a few greats. Would fifty do, or would that start to make the selection a little less special? (Forget about ranking; there’s no idea for grading movies in individual slots that has ever made sense to me.)

Do please send me your own Top Ten selections; I’m very interested to see and publish as many individual lists as I can.