North by North West ( 1959 )
Goodfellas ( 1990 )
Full Metal Jacket ( 1987 )
Shane ( 1953 )
Sink the Bismark ( 1960 )
Taxi driver ( 1976 )
Ice Cold in Alex ( 1958 )
Monty Python and the Holy Grail ( 1975 )
Life of Brian ( 1979 )
The Dam Busters ( 1955 )
A Clockwork Orange/Stanley Kubrick (1971)
2001: A Space Odyssey/Stanley Kubrick (1968)
Barry Lyndon/Stanley Kubrick (1975)
Eyes Wide Shut/Stanley Kubrick (1999)
Aguirre, the Wrath of God/Werner Herzog (1972)
Stalker/Andrei Tarkovsky (1979)
The Seventh Seal/Ingmar Bergman (1957)
The Invisible Man/James Whale (1933)
No Country for Old Men/Joel & Ethan Coen (2007)
Blade Runner/Ridley Scott (1982)
Notable mentions:
Don't Look Now/Nicolas Roeg (1973)
Repulsion/Roman Polanski (1965)
The Pianist/Roman Polanski (2002)
Dreams/Akira Kurosawa (1990)
Before the Rain/Milcho Manchevski (1994)
F for Fake/Orson Welles (1973)
Citizen Kane/Orson Welles (1941)
Alphaville/Jean-Luc Godard (1965)
Rain Man/Barry Levinson (1988)
Papillon/Franklin J. Schaffner (1973)
Titanic
Saving Private Ryan
Amadeus
Schindler's List
The Godfather I, II, III
Skyfall
Casablanca
Apollo 13
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Red Violin
La Cité des Enfants Perdus
Amadeus
Diva
The Lion in Winter
Twelve Monkeys
Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan
2001: A Space Odyssey
Groundhog Day
The Name of the Rose
Excalibur
2 ~ The Pursuit of Happiness
3 ~ Hunger Games
4 ~ My Sister's Keeper
5 ~ The Notebook
6 ~ I Am Number Four
7 ~ Taken
8 ~ The Mortal Insturments
9 ~ X-Men
10 ~ 21/22 Jump Street
I am including two BBC productions. They are my favorites over the actual movies I have listed.
BBC's Pride and Prejudice (1995) TV Miniseries with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle
BBC's Downton Abbey (2010-2015) Masterpiece Theater TV Series PBS
Lord of Rings Trilogy
Sense and Sensibility(1995) with Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet
Ever After (1998)
The Quiet Man (1952)
My Fair Lady (1964)
Field of Dreams (1989)
A Christmas Carol (1951) Alastair Sim
Dave (1993)
1. Red River
2. Citizen Kane
3. Modern Times
4. Young Mr. Lincoln
5. Night of the Hunter
6. Sunset Boulevard
7. All About Eve
8. Bringing Up Baby
9. Shadow of a Doubt
10. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
Non-American:
1. La Grande Illusion
2. Journal d'un curé de campagne
3. Andrei Rublev
4. Ivan Groznyi I & II
5. Il Gattopardo
6. Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo
7. Ordet
8. Bronenosets Potyomkin
9. Stromboli
10. La Terra Trema
I wouldn't probably change these directors, but I might very well replace some of their films.
My list will be unusual, so pardon me for this preface. A few years ago it might have contained only prestigious titles, but then something happened. Movies started appearing around 2013, the odd one here, another there, that I not only appreciated for their artistry but that touched something deeper inside me. It sounds arrogant but some of these lists make me wonder if these people have ever watched a movie they cared about deeply - because I was like that until very recently and many of those titles I can't imagine actually caring much about, regardless of how well they may have been made. How does a person, after all, care deeply about mere artistry, mere nihilism?
Or maybe it's just me, I don't know. But my list, even though it contains what may sound like low-brow titles, is to be taken seriously. It's not a sign of trolling or dementia, but perhaps of a different view of beauty, or of a mind that tried to look for more than artistry and nihilism and found it in unusual places. With this caveat, here's my list, and none of these shall be Hollywood:
Edge of Tomorrow
Batman v Superman
The Dark Knight
Dark Knight Rises
Looper
That would be top five in no particular order. Some of them I've watched a dozen times within a couple of years and they hold up well. Hopefully in ten more years I can make a top-ten from movies of approximately that quality.
The rest of the list is mostly more prestigious-sounding, perhaps not something I'll be re-watching all the time but still great for a viewing or two:
Nymph()maniac vol 2, Director's Cut (vol 1 left me kind of cold)
Never Let Me Go
Leon the Professional
Insidious
Burn After Reading
1. Barry Lyndon
2. 2001: A Space Odyssey
3. Amadeus
4. A Man For All Seasons
5. The Spy Who Came In From The Cold
6. Becket
7. This Sporting Life
8. The Last Temptation of Christ
9. Mulholland Drive
10. Broken Flowers
1. A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick)
2. Apocalypse Now (1979, Francis Ford Coppola)
3. La pianiste (2001, Michael Haneke)
4. 2001: A Spacey Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
5. There Will Be Blood (2007, Paul Thomas Andersen)
6. Fitzcarraldo (1982, Werner Herzog)
7. The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Copoola)
8. Fanny och Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman)
9. Nic śmiesznego (1995, Marek Koterski)
10. Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch)
1. Sunrise (Murnau) Hah! cheating a bit here. But it's Murnau, and Murnau is The Most German Director, so it qualifies.
2 and 3. Die Nibelungen a.k.a. Siegfried and Kriemhilds Rache. (Lang)
4. Faust (Murnau)
5. Der letzte Mann (Murnau)
6. Nosferatu (Murnau)
7. Metropolis (Lang)
8. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (Wiene)
9. M (Lang)
10. Der blaue Engel (von Sternberg)
1. Il Gattopardo (Visconti)
2. Stromboli (Rossellini)
3. Senso (Visconti)
4. Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo (Pasolini)
5. La Terra Trema (Visconti)
6. Viaggio in Italia (Rossellini)
7. Ludwig (Visconti)
8. Ladri di Biciclette (de Sica)
9. Francesco, Giuliare di Dio (Rossellini)
10. Rocco e i suoi Fratelli (Visconti)
1. Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica)
Ondata di calore (Nelo Risi)
Giulietta degli spiriti (Federico Fellini)
Il secondo tragico Fantozzi (Luciano Salce)
Compagni di scuola (Carlo Verdone)
Il Sorpasso (Dino Risi)
I soliti ignoti (Monicelli)
La casa delle finestre che ridono (Pupi Avati)
Profondo rosso (Dario Argento)
C'era una volta il west (Sergio Leone)
1. La grande illusion (Renoir)
2. Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (Bresson)
3. Journal d'un curé de campagne (Bresson)
4. Pickpocket (Bresson)
5. Partie de campagne (Renoir)
6. La belle et la bête (Cocteau)
7. Madame de... (Ophuls)
8. Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (Bresson)
9. Les dames du Bois de Boulogne (Bresson)
10. La règle du jeu (Renoir)
After looking through this list I had to ask myself a question and I'm just curious how many are voting for a favorite that they feel belong with "the greatest films of all time" vs. how many are voting for "films they like to watch over and over like comfort food when they are home sick watching tv or with nothing to do on a Friday Night"?
I've seen probably 90% of the films mentioned and most I think are great films and belong on greatest films list for various reasons (box office, social or emotional impact, cinematic influence or some other criteria), but they aren't necessarily ones that I want to watch over and over when I'm lazing about which is more of what I think as a "favorite".
There are certain movies that if I'm channel surfing and I see are on I will stop and watch no matter what point in the movie it is and no matter what mood I'm in, but there's others that I think oh, wow that's a great, powerful movie, but I'm just not in the mood for that right now...
"Greatest" and "Favorite" for me, are one and the same, so there is no such distinction with my selections and lists. My criteria (not just film, but also Classical and all art), could be summed up as:
Accumulation of the degree and consistency of its emotional content, conceptual significance, and its ingenuity, within the time frame or space of the work of art.
With "time frame", I am referring to art such as cinema and music that are produced and assimilated within finite running times. With "space", I am referring to visual arts such as paintings that are produced and assimilated within finite spatial parameters.
It's a good question realdealblues - but for me, I'm always in the mood for the heavy stuff! Well, maybe not for Andrei Rublev every day. That's where I draw the line. But apart from that, I'll get the popcorn and soda on a Friday night and watch German silents, Italian neorealism, Bresson's minimalist spiritualism, Dreyer's spiritual boa constrictors, Japanese masters, all that stuff!
I have no issue throwing any of those movies in on a Friday night either, but I can't put something like Aguirre, The Wrath Of God on and then afterwards, watch it again Saturday and Sunday night as well. I especially love early silent German cinema but I don't that I could do that with M either, no matter how much I love Peter Lorre or Fritz Lang.
Dead Poets Society ( a must see!)
Modern Times - Charlie Chaplin
Amadeus
Red like the sky
To kill a Mockingbird
Metropolis
The Fall
King Kong
Hacksaw Bridge
The Godfather
No particular order here, just the first one that probably is one of my favs. and "Rosso come il cielo" also is an incredible italian film, based on a true story, that deserves his place one the top 10 in my opinion. Enjoy !ut:
1. Shane
2. Red River
3. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
4. My Darling Clementine
5. The Wild Bunch
6. The Naked Spur
7. Unforgiven
8. The Virginian (1929)
9. The Gunfighter (1950)
10. Fort Apache
Shane is excellent, and I consider The Wild Bunch the greatest of all Westerns. McCabe and Mrs Miller is among my favorites (great Leonard Cohen soundtrack too). Red River, My Darling Clementine, and Unforgiven are all among my favorite works of the genre.
North by Northwest (limiting myself to one Hitchcock)
The Assassination Bureau
Gremlins II
The Producers (the original)
Death on the Nile (Ustinov)
Ivan Grozny
The Lino in Winter (a mediaeval domestic drama starring rug-ged heroes with the motto "Carpet diem!")
Lawrence of Arabia? The Manchurian Candidate? Cabaret? The Ruling Class? Branagh's Hamlet? The Neverending Story? Hugo? The Lone Ranger? The Grand Budapest Hotel? Something else?
What fine taste in films the TC community has demonstrated! After taking the time to check out the choices in this thread, I am impressed that of the 75% of these I have myself seen, I agree that all are great movies that belong on “best ten” lists. Since my time in life is limited (I’m just older, not in bad health), I intend to use the remaining ones I haven’t seen as a guide to my viewing. Thanks to all who have posted here. You have done me a great service.
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