Month: January 2018

Introduction

40. La Dolce Vita (1960) Dir. Federico Fellini, 180 mins.

Marking a watershed moment in the history of Italian cinema as neo-realism moved to a new art cinema, Last dolce vita is the story of a passive journalist’s week in Rome, and his search for both happiness and love that will never come as he declines into decadent sexual play. Also seen as a crucial turning point in the battle for freedom of expression against censorship. Buy

39. Casablanca (1942) Dir. Michael Curtiz, 102 mins.

Set during World War II, it focuses on Rick (Humphrey Bogart), a mysterious embittered man leading a lone existence who is confronted by his lost love, Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and finds his priorities starting to change. He becomes torn between his love for Ilsa and helping her and her Czech Resistance leader husband escape the Vichy-controlled Moroccan city. While Bogart, with his sardonic style and ambiguous screen image, is very much the hero of the piece, the film was Swedish actress Bergman’s first major Hollywood success and she provides probably her most memorable performance. The sustained close ups of her face, that show her striking beauty and fundamental nobility, explain what the narrative cannot, that she is virtuous in a way that the cynical Rick had not previously considered. An unlikely adaptation of a play never made, the production struggled through frequent script changes and an unknown ending until it was time to shoot the final scenes. Yet, by utilising familiar patterns in Hollywood narrative, an all-star supporting cast of European performers and the two compelling leads, Casablanca became the most popular of World War II movies and a romantically poignant classic. Watch

38. L’avventura (1960) Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 141 mins.

Helping to signal both the definitive demise of neo-realism and the arrival of new art cinema, L’Avventura was developed from a story by Antonioni about a young woman’s disappearance during a boating trip in the Mediterranean. During the subsequent search for her an attraction grows between her lover and her best friend (Monica Vitti). Shot entirely on location and beset by constant logistical and financial problems, the film was greeted with catcalls from sections of the audience at Cannes, but was passionately defended by a handful of critics and, with its innovative aesthetics, has gone on to be seen as one of the most influential films ever made. The appeal of the film was also enhanced, no doubt, by the dazzling performance of the then unknown Vitti. Watch

37. Fanny and Alexander (1982) Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 188 mins.

Bergman made a triumphant return to form, and to his roots, with this colourful, expansive family saga, that follows the well-to-do Ekdahls, and is set in turn of the century Uppsala. With a surprising amount of warmth and generosity. Watch

36. Breathless (1960) Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 90 mins.

Made with a cinema-verite style consciously opposed to the aesthetic of traditional French cinema, Breathless was one of the work’s that signalled the arrival of the New Wave and became the movement’s emblematic film. It is an anarchic and freewheeling story of a young petty criminal Michel Poiccard (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who, while searching for purpose in life, guns down a policeman and goes on the run with his seemingly naive American girlfriend, Patricia Franchini (Jean Seberg), until she betrays him. Godard’s debut feature managed to capture the cultural mood of the time and, as well as its intellectual and aesthetic resonances, it’s the radical challenge to conventional narrative, using jump cuts and extended long takes shot with hand held cameras, that make it one of the medium’s great artistic creations, able to be derivative of commercial cinema and yet, at the same time, truly original. Watch

35. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 110 mins.

Dreyer’s last silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc was shot in France with massive technical and financial resources and in conditions of great creative freedom. Having spent over a year researching Joan of Arc (played here by stage actress Renée Jeanne Falconetti), Dreyer forgoes medieval pageantry or Joan’s military exploits, instead using the records of the Rouen trial to focus on the spiritual and political conflicts of her last day as a captive of England. Instantly acclaimed by critics as a masterpiece (although it was a commercial failure), the film is probably most notable for the symbolic progression of close-up faces that reaches an apotheosis in the long sustained sequence of Joan’s interrogation against a menacing architectural backdrop. Despite French nationalists’ scepticism about whether a Danish person could be in charge of a film that centred on one of France’s most revered historical icons, it’s Dreyer’s brilliant direction, particularly the unconventional emphasis on the actors’ facial features, that along with Falconetti’s unforgettable performance, gives the film its immense emotional power. More…

34. The Seventh Seal (1957) Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 96 mins. 

A film that came to epitomize not just Scandinavian cinema but the European art movie in general, The Seventh Seal is a metaphysical allegory that follows a medieval knight (Max von Sydow), who, having returned from the Crusades, journeys across a plague-ridden landscape, and plays a game of chess with the personification of Death. One of the film’s that shifted Bergman’s focus from comedy to more serious themes, and elevated his status to preeminent cinematic artist. Watch

33. Alien (1979) Dir. Ridley Scott, 117 mins.

The crew of the commercial towing spaceship Nostromo are stalked and killed by a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature while on a return trip from Thedus to Earth. With brilliant aesthetic work that adds to the realism. Watch

32. Barry Lyndon (1975) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 184 mins.

The exploits of an 18th century Irish adventurer, Barry Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal). Kubrick turns Thackeray’s novel into a chilling theorem on the illusions of the Enlightenment and the ontological limits of the human condition. Watch

31. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) Dir. Sergio Leone, 161 mins.

The third of Leone’s ‘dollar’ films centres around three gunslingers competing to find a fortune in Confederate gold during the American Civil War. The combination of Clint Eastwood’s acting style and Leone’s brilliant direction. Watch

30. A Clockwork Orange (1971) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 136 mins.

Set in the future, the film concerns Alex (Malcolm McDowell), a charismatic, psychopathic delinquent whose pleasures are classical music, rape, and what he refers to as ‘the ultra-violence’. He spends his nights as the leader of a youth gang, that speaks an argot combining Russian and English word forms, and, as well fighting amongst themselves, commit robberies, assaulting anyone they find in the vicinity. Captured after a murder, the hooligan undergoes behavioural modification treatment designed to make him sick at the idea of violence. Managing, once again, to bring to life a world of ambiguity, Kubrick brilliantly combines flamboyant and inventive visuals with the choreography of violence to create a grotesque attack on utopian beliefs. Buy

29. Goodfellas (1990) Dir. Roman Polanski, 131 mins.

The satirical film follows the rise and fall of three gangsters, spanning three decades. The protagonist Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) admits, “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster.” Outstanding story telling from Scorsese and a great performance from Liotta that became an albatross for his career. Watch

28. Persona (1966) Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 85 mins.

The story revolves around a young nurse named Alma (Bibi Andersson) and her patient, well-known stage actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann), who has suddenly stopped speaking. They move to a cottage, where Alma cares for the traumatized Elisabet, confides in her and begins having trouble distinguishing herself from her patient. One of the most analysed films of all time, some will find it dated and others too ambiguous, but Bergman’s use of close-ups helps to exert a hypnotic intensity that along with the superb performances of the two female leads, propels Persona into the realm of cinematic genius. Watch

27. Come and See (1985) Dir. Elem Klimov, 140 mins.

Set during the German occupation of the Byelorussian SSR, the film follows a young boy as he witnesses the atrocities committed on the populace. An anti-war psychological horror that features a brilliant use of sound that enhances some of the most devastating imagery ever seen on film. Buy

26. Chinatown (1974) Dir. Roman Polanski, 131 mins.

Having left Poland and then made several quirky horror films for the European and U.S. markets, Polanski took a large stride forward with this revisionist work, set in Los Angeles in 1937, and inspired by the historical disputes over land and water rights that had raged in southern California during the 1910s and 20s. The film stars Jack Nicholson, in one of his finest roles as private investigator J.J. “Jake” Gittes, who is out of his depth in a world of political and sexual power and corruption. Watch

25. The Mirror (1975) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 106 mins.

Propelled by autobiographical reflections on Tarkovsky’s own childhood trauma, The Mirror unfolds as an organic flow of memories recalled by a dying poet (based on Tarkovsky’s absent father Arseny, who in reality outlived his son by three years) of key moments in his life both with respect to his immediate family as well as that of the Russian people as a whole during the tumultuous events of the twentieth century. Extremely experimental, the film uses an unconventional nonlinear structure featuring contemporary scenes combined with childhood memories and dreams that have a hallucinatory and rhythmic quality that speaks directly to the subconscious of the viewer. Although when released the film was considered an unfocused failure by some critics and the narrative incomprehensible by many cinema-goers, The Mirror has grown in reputation since to now be considered one of the most beautiful and poetic films ever made. More…

24. Taxi Driver (1976) Dir. Martin Scorsese, 113 mins.

Leading on from the critical acclaim of Mean Streets, Martin Scorsese continued further into the darker side of New York City with a film set soon after the Vietnam War. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) is a lonely and depressed young man and former Marine living in Manhattan who becomes a night time taxi driver in order to cope with his chronic insomnia. Bickle becomes attracted to a young woman (Cybill Shepherd), shows concern for a child prostitute (a disturbingly precocious turn from Jodie Foster), and becomes progressively more troubled over what he sees as the city’s filth and human scum. His compressed anger finally erupts into a rage focused simultaneously on Foster’s pimp and Shepherd’s boss, a political candidate. Brilliant and  controversially violent, the film features an alarming psychological atmosphere (enhanced by a jazzy and eerie music score by Bernard Hermann), a remarkable central performance from De Niro and established Scorsese as one of the great talents of the New Hollywood era. More…

23. Once Upon a Time in America (1984) Dir. Sergio Leone, 229 mins.

Sergio Leone was by far the most talented director of spaghetti westerns, but arguably his best film is this gangster epic that he made having earlier turned down the chance to direct The Godfather. The story chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City’s world of organised crime, particularly David “Noodles” Aaronson, initially a poor street kid struggling to survive in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the early 1920s. One of the few great Italian films of the 1980s, Once Upon a Time in America is visually stunning, violent and desperately sad. More…

22. The 400 Blows (1959) Dir. Francois Truffaut, 99 mins.

Reacting against the supposed formulaic and studio controlled mainstream films of the 1950s, outspoken Cahiers du Cinema critic, Francois Truffaut helped trigger the New Wave with a film revolving around an ordinary adolescent in Paris, Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) who is thought by his parents and teachers to be a trouble maker. His teacher singles him out for criticism and punishment, while his mother is cold and demanding, and frequently argues with her husband (Antoine’s stepfather). The 400 Blows has elements of autobiography as the precocious Truffaut was incarcerated as a teenager for failing to pay debts while in the film the young protagonist is jailed for stealing a typewriter. Showing an allegiance to the visual style of filmmakers such Renoir and Welles, Truffaut uses moving camera shots and long takes to create an open fluid mise-en-scene. However, it’s the performance of Leaud, who provides an intelligent yet innocent portrayal of the troubled but often humorous youth during his initiation into a callous adult world, that gives the film its brilliant pathos and is ultimately the key to its success. More…

21. Ran (1985) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 162 mins.

Made possible by more of the overseas funding that helped reignite Kurosawa’s career in the 1970s and 80s, Ran tells the story of the ageing Warlord Hidetora Ichimonji who makes the decision to retire from his position as head of his family faction and split his kingdom between his three sons. Tragedy follows amid a visual splendour that helped to reinforce Kurosawa’s reputation as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of the 20th century. More…

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Introduction

60. The Night of the Hunter (1955) Dir. Charles Laughton, 92 mins.

The plot focuses on a corrupt minister-turned-serial killer (Robert Mitchum) who attempts to charm an unsuspecting widow and steal $10,000 hidden by her executed husband. Watch

59. Battleship Potemkin (1925) Dir. Sergei M. Eisenstein, 75 mins.

Throughout the silent era Sergei Eisenstein attempted to harmonize his experiments with film aesthetic with the propaganda dictates of the Russian state. By presenting a dramatised version of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers, particularly the moving and shocking portrayal of the tsarist troops massacring innocents on the Odessa steps, he won sympathy and respect for the regime. More…

58. The Shining (1980) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 142 mins.

 The Shining is about Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the isolated historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. Wintering over with Jack is his wife Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) and young son Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd), who possesses “the shining”, an array of psychic abilities that allow Danny to see the hotel’s horrific past. Watch

57. Harakiri (1962) Dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 133 mins.

In this Japanese drama, set in the 17th century, samurai warriors fight each other in their search for a master in the wake of a Shogun-mandated decentralisation. A prospective victim is forced to perform the ritual with a wooden blade. His family tries to cover up his degrading demise. Watch

56. Mulholland Dr. (2001) Dir. David Lynch, 147 mins.

The film tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), newly arrived in Los Angeles, who meets and befriends an amnesiac hiding in her aunt’s apartment. Watch

55. Singin’ in the Rain (1952) Dir. Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 103 mins.

The film offers a comic depiction of Hollywood, and its transition from silent films to “talkies.” It stars Gene Kelly as a popular silent film star. More…

54. The Dark Knight (2008) Dir. Christopher Nolan, 152 mins.

The second of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy, that redefined the comic book movie, sees Batman (Christian Bale) joining forces with Police Lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) to combat a new criminal threat from the sinister Joker (Heath Ledger), a criminal mastermind who seeks to undermine the caped crusader and cause chaos in the city of Gotham.  Influenced more by crime dramas, such as Michael Mann’s Heat, rather than superhero movies of the past, the film features a terrific ensemble cast and a particularly outstanding performance by Ledger (who sadly died of a drugs overdose just months after filming was completed and won a posthumous Academy Award). While there are hugely entertaining and technically impressive action sequences, its the bold narrative, complex characterisation and stunning visual work that moves the film far beyond its comic book origins into the darker territory of haunting, tragic and sometimes even poetic art. More…

53. Stalker (1979) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 163 mins.

The film depicts an expedition led by a figure known as the “Stalker” (Aleksandr Kaidanovsky) to take his two clients, a melancholic writer (Anatoli Solonitsyn) seeking inspiration, and a professor (Nikolai Grinko) seeking scientific discovery, to a mysterious restricted site known simply as the “Zone,” where there is a room which supposedly has the ability to fulfil a person’s innermost desires. Watch

52. Touch of Evil (1958) Dir. Orson Welles, 95 mins.

Miguel Vargas (Charlton Heston) is a drug enforcement official in the Mexican government. While on honeymoon in the US a Mexican bomb explodes and he takes an interest in the investigation. While Welles famously had reservations about Heston playing a Mexican. Watch

51. Reservoir Dogs (1992) Dir. Quentin Tarantino, 99 mins.

It features Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, Chris Penn, Lawrence Tierney, Tim Roth, Tarantino, and criminal-turned-author Edward Bunker as members of a botched diamond heist. The film depicts the events before and after the heist. Watch

50. The Third man (1949) Dir. Carol Reed, 93 mins.

American pulp Western writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives seeking an old friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who has offered him the opportunity to work with him in Vienna after World War II. Striking visual work. Watch

49. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) Dir. Peter Jackson, 178 mins.

Before he got too carried away with CGI, New Zealander Peter Jackson got the balance just right in the first of his epic fantasy trilogy set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The film tells of the Dark Lord Sauron, who is seeking the One Ring, but its found its way to the young hobbit Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood). To defeat Sauron, Frodo must leave his simple life in the shire and join a quest with a fellowship that includes the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), his faithful friend Sam (Sean Astin) and the mysterious Strider (Viggo Mortenson). Remarkably well crafted and imagined, Jackson and his team create a visually rich mythical universe that’s on a scale that seemed impossible only a few years earlier. The film’s grandeur is enhanced by the sort of powerful emotional intensity and complex characterisation that is perhaps lost behind the ever growing story strands and huge effects in the follow up films. More…

48. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) Dir. Milos Forman, 133 mins.

Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), a recidivist criminal serving a short sentence for statutory rape is transferred to a mental institution for evaluation. Buy

47. The Decalogue (1989) Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, 550 mins.

It consists of ten one-hour films, each of which represents one of the Ten Commandments and explores possible meanings of the commandment within a fictional story set in modern Poland. Buy

46. City of God (2002) Dir. Fernando Meirelles, 130 mins.

With a plot loosely based on real events, the film depicts the growth of the slum gangs in the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio, with the closure of the film depicting the war between the drug dealer Li’l Zé and bus driver turned criminal Knockout Ned. With an authentically gritty feel, helped by the use of a mainly amateur cast from local favelas, and brilliant energised story telling, City of God is one of the most compelling studies of the irresistibility of criminality and violence for youths who have little in the way of life choices. While some critics denounced the visceral and shocking violence for being shot with entertainment in mind, it is never without purpose and few could argue that the film is not a remarkable technical achievement. More…

45. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 93 mins.

Showcasing Kubrick’s uncanny ability to mix drama and the grotesque, Dr. Strangelove is a sharp satire on Cold War paranoia and the pathology of sexual frustration. The story concerns an unhinged US Air Force general (Sterling Hayden) who orders a first strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. It also follows the President of the United States, his advisers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Royal Air Force (RAF) officer as they try to recall the bombers to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. It separately follows the crew of one B-52 bomber as they try to deliver their payload. Along with Hayden the film also features great work from George C. Scott and Peter Sellers, who plays three pivotal parts. A radical and provocative gamble, the film is one of Kubrick’s most brilliantly realised productions and still considered one of the greatest comedies ever made. More…

44. Schindler’s List (1993) Dir. Steven Spielberg, 195 mins.

Oskar Schindler (Liam Neesom), a German businessman saves the lives of more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. It’s a tremendous and charismatic performance from Neesom but that maybe actually bettered by Ralph Fiennes chilling portrayal of a German camp commandant. Watch

43. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) Dir. David Lean, 227 mins.

Winner of seven Oscars, Lean’s four hour epic depicts T. E. Lawrence’s experiences in Arabia during World War I, in particular his attacks on Aqaba and Damascus and his involvement in the Arab National Council. Propelled by a stunning central performance from Peter O’Toole (a virtual unknown at the time), the film shows Lawrence’s internal struggles with the violence of war and his divided allegiances between Britain and the Arabian desert tribes. With its mammoth scope, stunning cinematography and intelligent screenplay, Lawrence of Arabia remains one of the greatest and most influential films in the history of cinema. More…

42. Blue Velvet (1986) Dir. David Lynch, 120 mins.

Blue Velvet centres around a college student, Jeffrey Beaumont, who, upon returning from visiting his ill father in hospital, comes across a human ear in a grass field in his idealised hometown of Lumberton. Watch

41. Psycho (1960) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 109 mins.

Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), who is in hiding at a motel after embezzling from her employer, encounters the motel’s owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). Watch

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Introduction

80. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Dir. Frank Darabont, 142 mins.

An adaptation of Stephen King’s prison drama that follows banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) who is sentenced to life in Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murder of his wife and her lover, despite his claims of innocence. Over the following two decades, he befriends a fellow prisoner, Ellis “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), and becomes instrumental in a money laundering operation led by the prison warden Samuel Norton (Bob Gunton). A film that struggled at the box office but grew in reputation thanks to word of mouth. With Freeman’s superb narration and Robbins compelling performance.

79. Gladiator (2000) Dir. Ridley Scott, 155 mins.

Having redefined a number of genres (Horror – Alien, Sci-fi – Blade Runner and the road movie – Thelma and Louise) Ridley Scott turned his hand to reinvigorating the sword and sandal epic with a partial remake of 1964s The Fall of the Roman Empire. Russell Crowe stars as Hispano-Roman general Maximus Decimus Meridius, who is betrayed when Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix), the ambitious son of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris), murders his father and seizes the throne. Reduced to slavery, Maximus rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murders of his family and his emperor. Scott used the latest in computer-generated imagery to deliver a technical masterclass (particularly the visceral battle sequence in Germania) which not only won 5 Oscars but also helped rekindled interest in Roman and classical history. Among an excellent cast are terrific swansongs for Harris and Oliver Reed (who passed away before filming was complete). The level of violence and the historical anachronisms will annoy some but the striking imagery, Crowe’s powerful but yet soulful performance and a superb soundtrack from Hans Zimmer make Gladiator a monumental and thrillingly entertaining epic. More…

78. Satantango (1994) Dir. Bela Tarr, 450 mins.

This seven-hour European epic takes place in an abandoned Hungarian farm machinery plant. There live a small band of hobos who will do anything they can to leave the place. A series of events occurs, but the story presents those events from each of the different character’s viewpoints.

77. Miller’s Crossing (1990) Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen, 120 mins.

The plot concerns a power struggle between two rival gangs (led by Albert Finney and Jon Polito) and how the protagonist, Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne), plays both sides off against each other.

76. The Leopard (1963) Dir. Luchino Visconti, 187 mins.

The Leopard chronicles the fortunes of Prince Fabrizio Salina and his family during the unification of Italy in the 1860s.

75. Brazil (1985) Dir. Terry Gilliam, 94 mins.

Influenced by the surrealism of Fellini, Gilliam’s Orwellian sci-fi is set in a consumer driven dystopian world, in which there is an over reliance on whimsical and poorly maintained machines. It centres on Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), who lives in a small apartment and works in a mind numbing job while trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams.

74. The Deer Hunter (1978) Dir. Michael Cimino, 182 mins.

Co-written and directed by Mchael Cimino, The Deer Hunter is about a trio of Russian American steelworkers whose lives are changed forever after they fight in the Vietnam War. Features arresting and harrowing scenes.

73. Trainspotting (1996) Dir. Danny Boyle, 94 mins.

An adaptation of the novel by Irving Welsh, the film follows Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor), Spud (Ewan Bremner) and other heroin addicts in the late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh. After quitting heroin, Renton struggles to adjust to the sober lifestyle he no longer remembers.

72. Jaws (1975) Dir. Steven Spielberg, 124 mins.

In the story, a giant man-eating great white shark attacks beachgoers on Amity Island, a fictional New England summer resort town, prompting the local police chief (Roy Scheider) to hunt it with the help of a marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a professional shark hunter (Robert Shaw).

71. Days of Heaven (1978) Dir. Terrence Malick, 94 mins.

Set in 1916, it tells the story of Bill and Abby, lovers who travel to the Texas Panhandle to harvest crops for a wealthy farmer. Bill encourages Abby to claim the fortune of the dying farmer by tricking him into a false marriage. Visually stunning.

70. A Brighter Summer Day (1991) Dir. Edward Yang, 237 mins.

Set in Taiwan during the year 1960, a talented but self-centred student refuses to compromise his moral standards with anyone, teachers, friends, parents or girlfriend.

69. Sunset Blvd. (1950) Dir. Billy Wilder, 110 mins.

The film stars William Holden as an unsuccessful screenwriter and Gloria Swanson as a faded movie star who draws him into her fantasy world, in which she dreams of making a return to the screen.

68. Ikiru (1952) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 143 mins.

The film examines the struggles of a terminally ill Tokyo bureaucrat and his final quest for meaning.

67. Rear Window (1954) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 112 mins.

Laid up with a broken leg, photojournalist L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to his tiny, sweltering courtyard apartment. To pass the time between visits from his nurse (Thelma Ritter) and his fashion model girlfriend Lisa (Grace Kelly), the binocular-wielding Jeffries stares through the rear window of his apartment at the goings-on in the other apartments around his courtyard.

66. Spirited Away (2001) Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 125 mins.

The film follows a sullen ten-year-old girl who is in the process of moving to a new town, and chronicles her adventures in a world of spirits and monsters.

65. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) Dir. F.W. Murnau, 94 mins.

Thanks to the phenomenal success of German director Murnau’s The Last Laugh, he was invited to Hollywood by William Fox to make an expressionist film and given complete control on Sunrise. While the film is invariably described as silent cinema it was one of the first to be released and widely seen with a Fox Movietone sound-on-film music and effects track. Based on the Hermann Sudermann novel A Trip to Tilsit, it takes place in a colourful farming community, where people from the city regularly take their weekend holidays. Local farmer George O’Brien, happily married to Janet Gaynor, falls under the seductive spell of Margaret Livingston, a femme fatale from The City. He callously ignores his wife and child and strips his farm of its wealth on behalf of Livingston, but even this fails to satisfy her. Shot in Murnau’s accustomed manner, with elaborate stylised sets, complicated location shooting and experimental visual effects, the film’s costs far exceeded its earnings, but the poetic tale of sin and redemption overwhelmed critics with its beautiful visual aesthetics and continues to be regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. More…

64. In the Mood for Love (2000) Dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 98 mins.

Sensual and mood driven, the second part of Wong Kar-Wai’s informal trilogy (the others being Days of Being Wild and 2046), vividly recreates a Shanghaiese enclave in Hong Kong in 1962 and centres on two young couples who rent adjacent rooms in a cramped and crowded tenement. It’s a hypnotically beautiful and moving period peace exploring memory, tradition and the loneliness that comes from unrequited love and features a notably sympathetic performance from Tony Leung (who won best actor at Cannes). More…

63. Ugetsu (1953) Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 94 mins.

It is about a peasant farmer and potter who leaves his wife and young son during civil war, and is seduced by a spirit that threatens his life. A subplot involves his friend, who dreams of becoming a great samurai and achieves this at the unintended expense of his wife.

62. City Lights (1931) Dir. Charles Chaplin, 87 mins.

The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin’s Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl (Virginia Cherrill) and develops a turbulent friendship with an alcoholic millionaire (Harry Myers).

61. M (1931) Dir. Fritz Lang, 99 mins.

Set in 1930’s Berlin, the film revolves around the actions of a serial killer (Peter Lorre) who preys on children and the manhunt for him, conducted by both the police and the criminal underworld. Lorre’s performance caused a sensation.

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Introduction

100. The Gold Rush (1925) Dir. Charles Chaplin, 96 mins.

The Tramp (Charlie Chaplin) travels to Alaska to take part in the Gold Rush, but bad weather strands him in a remote cabin with a prospector who has found a large gold deposit. Watch

99. Pickpocket (1959) Dir. Robert Bresson, 75 mins.

A pickpocket, Kamal, is blamed by his wife for bringing misery to other families and as well as to their own home. Although, he has promised to reform himself, he cannot find another line of work which would bring him a living wage. One day, after a morning of picking pockets, Kamal finds a photograph of his wife in a man’s purse he had just stolen.

98. Grave of the Fireflies (1988) Dir. Isao Takahata, 89 mins.

Set in the city of Kobe, Japan, the film tells the story of two siblings, Seita and Setsuko, and their desperate struggle to survive during the final months of the Second World War. Harrowing animated drama from Studio Ghibli.

97. Paths of Glory (1957) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 87 mins.

Set during World War I, the film stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, the commanding officer of French soldiers who refuse to continue a suicidal attack. Dax attempts to defend them against a charge of cowardice in a court-martial.

96. Paris, Texas (1984) Dir. Wim Wenders, 147 mins.

The plot focuses on an amnesiac named Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) who, after mysteriously wandering out of the desert, attempts to reunite with his brother (Dean Stockwell) and seven-year-old son. After reconnecting with the son, Travis and the boy end up embarking on a voyage through the American Southwest to track down Travis’ long-missing wife (Kinski). Stanton excels in his first real lead role.

95. The Lives of Others (2006) Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 137 mins.

After a series of German comedies about the end of the East German socialist state, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (who was only 16 when the Berlin Wall fell) delivers a deeply unsettling thriller with a remarkably authentic feel. The film involves the monitoring of the cultural scene of East Berlin by agents of the Stasi, particularly Captain Wiesler (the outstanding Ulrich Mühe) who listens in to the lives of a playwright and his prominent actress lover. While the decision to make Wiesler the hero of the piece was criticised by some the film was mostly applauded in Germany and with its clever narrative, build up of suspense and emotional intensity it’s not hard to see why many believe it’s one of the very best films to come out of the country. More…

94. The General (1926) Dir. Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton, 103 mins.

Buster Keaton plays Johnnie Gray, a locomotive engineer. He returns to his hometown in Confederate Georgia to visit his fiance Annabelle Lee when the American Civil War breaks out.

93. Modern Times (1936) Dir. Charles Chaplin, 87 mins.

Modern Times is a silent comedy written and directed by Charlie Chaplin in which his iconic Little Tramp character struggles to survive in the modern, industrialised world.

92. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) Dir. Andrew Dominik, 160 mins.

An adaptation of Ron Hansen’s 1983 novel of the same name, Dominik’s ambitious revisionist western dramatises the relationship between James and Ford through the series of events that led up to the shooting of the legendary outlaw. Edited by Dominik to be “a dark, contemplative examination of fame and infamy,” the studio was initially opposed to his approach as they wanted more action. The writer/director had his way, backed by producers Brad Pitt and Ridley Scott. The film is full of fine performances, particularly by Pitt, who fits the bill as the charismatic and dangerous James but is just about overshadowed by an outstanding portrayal of Robert Ford by Casey Affleck. Along with the two brilliant lead performances, it’s the stunning visuals helped by Roger Deakins’s inventive cinematographic techniques, an emotive soundtrack from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis and a bold script from Dominik that come together to create a stylish mood piece with an epic sweep that explores the casual violence and harsh loneliness of the 19th century American west and the links between criminality and fame. More…

91. Late Spring (1949) Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 108 mins.

Chisu Ryu plays a middle-class widower with a marriageable daughter. Not wishing to see the girl resign herself to spinsterhood, Ryu pretends that he himself is about to be married. The game plan is to convince the daughter that they’ll be no room for her at home, thus forcing her to seek comfort and joy elsewhere.

90. The Right Stuff (1983) Dir. Philip Kaufman, 193 mins.

Adapted from Tom Wolfe’s best-selling 1979 book of the same name the film follows the Navy, Marine and Air Force test pilots who were involved in aeronautical research at Edwards Air Force Base, California, as well as the Mercury Seven, the military pilots who were selected to be the astronauts for Project Mercury, the first manned spaceflight by the United States. Sam Shepherd gives an iconic performance as Chuck Yeager.

89. Wings of Desire (1987) Dir. Wim Wenders, 128 mins.

The film is about invisible, immortal angels who populate Berlin and listen to the thoughts of its human inhabitants, comforting those who are in distress. One of the angels (Bruno Ganz), falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist (Solveig Dommartin). The angel chooses to become mortal so that he can experience human sensory pleasures and so that he can discover human love with the trapeze artist.

88. The Searchers (1956) Dir. John Ford, 119 mins.

After a break from the genre which had lasted six years, John Ford returned to the western with what many consider to be his masterpiece. The Searchers is Ford’s most psychological film and stars John Wayne, eliciting a monumental performance, as Ethan Edwards, a bitter middle-aged Civil War veteran, who spends seven years obsessively roaming the West to find his niece, who was abducted by Comanches, with Martin Pawley (Jeffrey Hunter), his adoptive nephew. Achingly poignant, it’s a film where Ford shows off his great skill for humanising the epic and finds a perfection in his measured and assured shooting style and his command of landscape as realised in his extraordinary vistas of his beloved Monument Valley. While reaction was a little muted on release, The Searchers has gone on to be acclaimed as Ford’s most important and influential film. More…

87. Some Like it Hot (1959) Dir. Billy Wilder, 120 mins.

Wilder’s classic comedy follows two musicians (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) who dress in drag in order to escape from mafia gangsters whom they witnessed commit a crime inspired by the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.

86. L’atalante (1934) Dir. Jean Vigo, 89 mins.

Jean Dasté stars as Jean, the captain of a river barge who lives with his new wife Juliette (Dita Parlo) on the barge, along with first mate Père Jules (Michel Simon) and the cabin boy (Louis Lefebvre).

85. Pather Panchali (1955) Dir. Satyajit Ray, 122 mins.

The first film in the Apu trilogy, Pather Panchali depicts the childhood of the protagonist Apu (Subir Banerjee) and his elder sister Durga (Uma Dasgupta) and the harsh village life of their poor family.

84. Wild Strawberries (1957) Dir. Ingmar Bergman, 91 mins.

This profound character study chronicles an automobile trip taken by an elderly medical professor (Victor Sjostrom) to accept an honorary degree. Incidents and conversations occurring during the journey are intermixed with dreams and memories as the old man comes to terms with the life he has lived. Acclaimed Swedish silent film director, Sjostrom gives a moving performance as the reflective old man.

83. Annie Hall (1977) Dir. Woody Allen, 93 mins.

A romantic comedy classic from a screenplay Allen co-wrote with Marshall Brickman. Produced by Allen’s manager, Charles H. Joffe, the film stars Allen as Alvy “Max” Singer, who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the film’s eponymous female lead, played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her.

82. Metropolis (1927) Dir. Fritz Lang, 153 mins.

The film is set in the massive, sprawling futuristic mega-city Metropolis, whose society is divided into two classes, one of planners and management, who live high above the Earth in luxurious skyscrapers, and one of workers, who live and toil underground.

81. No Country For Old Men (2007) Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen, 122 mins.

Faithfully adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, No Country for Old Men tells the story of an ordinary man (Josh Brolin) who, while out hunting, stumbles across the aftermath a drug deal gone awry and walks away with two million dollars in a briefcase. Soon he is being pursued by those who want the money back, including psychopathic hitman Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). While exploring similar ground, such as fate versus self determination, to their earlier crime films Blood Simple and particularly Fargo, the Coen Brothers move into even darker territory to deliver a landscaped based modern western with minimal dialogue and plenty of remorseless killing. Bardem’s chilling performance, the clever build up of suspense, stunning visual sequences and the serious tone (even with the marvellous deadpan humour) help make No Country for Old Men arguably the best of the Coens career so far. More…

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Introduction

120. Man With a Movie Camera (1929) Dir. Dziga Vertov, 68 mins.

Vertov’s filmic manifesto, produced by the studio VUFKU, presents a utopian image of urban life in the Soviet cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow and Odessa. Vertov proclaimed the film an experiment, and it is made without actors, intertitles, a script or sets, showing from dawn to dusk, Soviet citizens at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. A tour de force in theoretical cinema, the film is only a documentary by material and more a summary of the themes of the ‘kinoki’ movement, the image of the worker perfect as the machine and that of the filmmaker as socially as useful as the factory worker. The culmination of a decade of audacious and controversial work in non fiction filmmaking for Vertov, The Man With the Movie Camera is one of the of the most unusual works in cinema history and was seen as hopelessly out of date on release thanks to its utopian ideals around city living, but for those with an open mind to different filmmaking techniques it can be a memorable viewing experience. For all the criticism and its avant-garde ambitions, it is one of the few silent films that strongly conveys a sense of everyday life in Soviet Russia.

119. The Human Condition III: A Soldier’s Prayer (1961) Dir. Masaki Kobayashi, 190 mins.

After the Japanese defeat to the Russians in the last episode, Kaji, the Japanese soldier and humanist protagonist, leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines. An often harrowing drama.

118. Beauty and the Beast (1946) Dir. Jean Cocteau, 96 mins.

The plot of Cocteau’s film revolves around Belle’s father who is sentenced to death for picking a rose from Beast’s garden. Belle offers to go back to the Beast in her father’s place. Beast falls in love with her and proposes marriage on a nightly basis which she refuses. Belle eventually becomes more drawn to Beast, who tests her by letting her return home to her family and telling her that if she doesn’t return to him within a week, he will die of grief.

117. Solaris (1972) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 169 mins.

The film is a meditative psychological drama occurring mostly aboard a space station orbiting the fictional planet Solaris. The scientific mission has stalled because the skeleton crew of three scientists have fallen into separate emotional crises. Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to the Solaris space station to evaluate the situation only to encounter the same mysterious phenomena as the others.

116. Woman in the Dunes (1964) Dir. Hiroshi Teshigahara, 123 mins.

When entomologist Jumpei (Eiji Okada) travels to sand dunes on an expedition, he is met by a group of people who offer him a place to spend the night. They soon lead him to a house at the bottom of a sandpit. Upon climbing into the pit, he finds a young widow (Kyoko Kishida) living alone. Placed there by the villagers, her task is to dig sand out of the pit, not only so that they can avoid getting buried, but so that the locals can use it for construction.

115. On the Waterfront (1954) Dir. Elia Kazan, 108 mins.

The film focuses on union violence and corruption amongst longshoremen while detailing widespread corruption, extortion, and racketeering on the waterfronts of Hoboken, New Jersey. Marlon Brando makes a huge impact.

114. Jules and Jim (1962) Dir. Francois Truffaut, 105 mins.

Set around the time of World War I, it describes a tragic love triangle involving French Bohemian Jim (Henri Serre), his shy Austrian friend Jules (Oskar Werner), and Jules’s girlfriend and later wife Catherine (Jeanne Moreau).

113. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) Dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 94 mins.

The film revolves around an unlikely relationship which develops between an elderly woman and a Moroccan migrant worker in post-war Germany.

112. Aliens (1986) Dir. James Cameron, 137 mins.

The film follows Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) as she returns to the moon where her crew encountered the hostile Alien creature, this time accompanied by a unit of space marines. Much more of an action film than Ridley Scott’s original.

111. The Red Shoes (1948) Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 133 mins.

The film is about a ballerina who joins an established ballet company and becomes the lead dancer in a new ballet called The Red Shoes, itself based on the fairy tale “The Red Shoes” by Hans Christian Andersen.

110. Ordet (1955) Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer, 126 mins.

Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer examines the conflict between internalised personal faith and organised religion. Dreyer sets the drama in a conservative, super-pious Danish town, where widower Morten Borgen (Henrik Malberg), the father of three boys, cuts against the grain of the community with his constant heretical doubt.

109. The Thin Red Line (1998) Dir. Terrence Malick, 170 mins.

Based on the novel by James Jones, it tells a fictionalised version of the Battle of Mount Austen, which was part of the Guadalcanal Campaign in the Pacific Theatre of World War II. It portrays soldiers of C Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, played by Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, Nick Nolte, Elias Koteas and Ben Chaplin. Featuring a haunting soundtrack from Hans Zimmer.

108. Children of Paradise (1945) Dir. Marcel Carne, 190 mins.

Set against the Parisian theatre scene of the 1820s and 1830s, it tells the story of a beautiful courtesan, Garance, and the four men who love her in their own ways: a mime artist, an actor, a criminal and an aristocrat. Francois Truffaut stated that he would have given up all his films to have directed this one.

107. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 163 mins.

General Candy (Roger Livesey), who’s overseeing an English squad in 1943, is a veteran leader who doesn’t have the respect of the men he’s training and is considered out-of-touch with what’s needed to win the war. But it wasn’t always this way. Flashing back to his early career in the Boer War and World War I, we see a dashing young officer whose life has been shaped by three different women (all played by Deborah Kerr), and by a lasting friendship with a German soldier.

106. Shoah (1985) Dir. Claude Lanzmann, 503 mins.

Shoah is a French documentary about the Holocaust, directed by Claude Lanzmann. Over nine hours long and 11 years in the making, the film presents Lanzmann’s interviews with survivors, witnesses and perpetrators during visits to German Holocaust sites across Poland, including extermination camps.

105. Grand Illusion (1937) Dir. Jean Renoir, 114 mins.

The story concerns class relationships among a small group of French officers who are prisoners of war during World War I and are plotting an escape.

104. The Wizard of Oz (1939) Dir. Victor Fleming, 101 mins.

The Wizard of Oz stars legendary Judy Garland as Dorothy, an innocent farm girl whisked out of her mundane earthbound existence into a land of pure imagination. Dorothy’s journey in Oz will take her through emerald forests, yellow brick roads, and creepy castles, all with the help of some unusual but earnest song-happy friends.

103. Hiroshima mon amour (1959) Dir. Alain Resnais, 90 mins.

An extramarital affair between a Japanese architect and a French film maker recalls the horrors of the atomic bomb and the prospects for world peace.

102. Badlands (1973) Dir. Terrence Malick, 95 mins.

A young couple (Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek) goes on a Midwest crime spree in Terrence Malick’s hypnotically assured debut feature, based on the 1950s Starkweather-Fugate murders. Sheen does his best James Dean as a young man who feeling disenfranchised and having lost his job, takes up with a fifteen year old girl.

101. The Mother and the Whore (1973) Dir. Jean Eustache, 217 mins.

In this intense character study, irresponsible Parisian Leaud decides that he desperately needs a wife and so leaves his lover to propose to his ex-girlfriend. His self-absorbed pseudo-intellectual ramblings turn her off, and she turns him down. He meets a nurse who later involves herself with Leaud and his lover. One of just two feature film’s made by Eustache before his untimely death, The Mother and the Whore has real bite.

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Introduction

140. All About Eve (1950) Dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 138 mins.

The film stars Bette Davis as Margo Channing, a highly regarded but ageing Broadway star. Anne Baxter plays Eve Harrington, an ambitious young fan who insinuates herself into Channing’s life, ultimately threatening Channing’s career and her personal relationships.

139. The Battle of Algiers (1966) Dir. Gillo Pontecorvo, 121 mins.

The bulk of the film is shot in flashback, presented as the memories of Ali (Brahim Haggiag), a leading member of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale (FLN), when finally captured by the French in 1957.

138. The Last Laugh (1924) Dir. F.W. Murnau, 90 mins.

Fiercely proud of his job, Emil Jannings’s hotel doorman comports himself like a general in his resplendent costume, and is treated like royalty by his friends and neighbours. The hotel’s insensitive new manager, noting that Jannings seems winded after carrying several heavy pieces of luggage for a patron, decides that the old man is no longer up to his job demotes him to a restroom attendant.

137. 12 Monkeys (1995) Dir. Terry Gilliam, 129 mins.

Inspired by Chris Marker’s La Jetee, the film follows James Cole (Bruce Willis), a prisoner of the state in the year 2035 who can earn parole if he agrees to travel back in time and thwart a devastating plague. The virus has wiped out most of the Earth’s population and the remainder live underground because the air is poisonous. It’s a cerebral time travelling tale from Gilliam, with Willis at the peak of his powers.

136. Inception (2010) Dir. Christopher Nolan, 148 mins.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a professional thief who steals information by infiltrating the subconscious and is offered a chance to have his criminal history erased as payment for the implantation of another person’s idea into a target’s subconscious. DiCaprio holds the piece together even if Nolan does get frustratingly carried away with the effects in his dream structures.

135. The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Dir. Irvin Kershner, 127 mins.

Set three years after Star Wars, the Galactic Empire, under the leadership of the villainous Darth Vader and the Emperor, is in pursuit of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and the rest of the Rebel Alliance. While Vader relentlessly pursues Han Solo, Princess Leia Organa, and otheir companions, Luke studies the Force under Jedi Master Yoda preparing to go to aide of his friends. Arguably the best of the Star Wars franchise and featuring one of cinema’s most famous plot twists.

134. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) Dir. Steven Spielberg, 135 mins.

It tells the story of Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), an everyday blue-collar worker in Indiana, whose life changes after an encounter with an unidentified flying object (UFO). Made during Spielberg’s most fertile period.

133. Raise the Red Lantern (1991) Dir. Yimou Zhang, 125 mins.

Set in the 1920s, the film tells the story of a young woman who becomes one of the concubines of a wealthy man during the Warlord Era.

132. Nosferatu (1922) Dir. F.W. Murnau, 81 mins.

F. W. Murnau’s landmark vampire film begins in the Carpathian mountains, where real estate agent Hutter has arrived to close a sale with the reclusive Herr Orlok. Despite the feverish warnings of the local peasants, Hutter journeys to Orlok’s sinister castle and soon discovers that Orlok is no ordinary mortal.

131. Gone with the Wind (1939) Dir. Victor Fleming, 238 mins.

Set in the American South against the backdrop of the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, the film tells the story of Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), the strong-willed daughter of a Georgia plantation owner, from her romantic pursuit of Ashley Wilkes, who is married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton, to her marriage to Rhett Butler (Clark Gable).

130. Le samourai (1967) Dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 105 mins.

Living the sterile life necessary for a hitman, Alain Delon portrays an assassin’s last assignment, which leaves him under the surveillance of the police. Learning that his boss now has him marked for death, he must now try to take him out first. Stylish crime thriller.

129. Pierrot le fou (1965) Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 110 mins.

After abandoning his wife and infant daughter for the new babysitter, a woman he’d loved and lost several years earlier, an errant husband embarks on a haphazard road to tragedy. Right up there with Godard’s best work.

128. The Tree of Life (2011) Dir. Terrence Malick, 138 mins.

The film chronicles the origins and meaning of life by way of a middle-aged man’s childhood memories of his family living in 1950s Texas, interspersed with imagery of the origins of the known universe and the inception of life on Earth. Works best during the family drama.

127. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) Dir. Robert Altman, 120 mins.

In a small American frontier village, a stranger named McCabe (Warren Beatty) builds a brothel with the help of experienced madame Mrs. Miller (Julie Christie). The town soon prospers, and success brings the jealous, and potentially deadly, attentions of a wealthy mining company.

126. North by Northwest (1959) Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 136 mins.

North by Northwest is a tale of mistaken identity, with an innocent man (Cary Grant) pursued across the United States by agents of a mysterious organisation trying to prevent him from blocking their plan to smuggle out microfilm that contains government secrets.

125. Chungking Express (1994) Dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 98 mins.

The film consists of two stories told in sequence, each about a lovesick Hong Kong policeman mulling over his relationship with a woman. The first story stars Takeshi Kaneshiro as a cop obsessed with his breakup with a woman named May, and his encounter with a mysterious drug smuggler (Brigitte Lin). The second stars Tony Leung as a police officer roused from his gloom over the loss of his flight attendant girlfriend (Valerie Chow) by the attentions of a quirky snack bar worker (Faye Wong). It’s the relationship between Leung and Wong that really makes the film.

124. La jetee (1962) Dir. Chris Marker, 28 mins.

Constructed almost entirely from still photos, it tells the story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel.

123. The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) Dir. Victor Erice, 97 mins.

The film focuses on the young girl Ana and her fascination with the 1931 American horror film Frankenstein, as well as exploring her family life and schooling.

122. Fight Club (1999) Dir. David Fincher, 139 mins.

Edward Norton plays the unnamed protagonist, referred to as the narrator, who is discontented with his white-collar job. He forms a “fight club” with soap maker Tyler Durden, (Brad Pitt), and they are joined by men who also want to fight. The narrator becomes embroiled in a relationship with Durden and a dissolute woman, Marla Singer, (Helena Bonham Carter).

121. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) Dir. Frank Capra, 130 mins.

The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his dreams in order to help others, and whose imminent suicide on Christmas Eve brings about the intervention of his guardian angel, Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers). Clarence shows George all the lives he has touched and how different life in his community of Bedford Falls would be like if he had never been born.

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Introduction

160. Star Wars (1977) Dir. George Lucas, 121 mins.

Lucas’s space opera follows farmhand Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), who’s isolated life is disrupted when he inadvertently acquires two droids that possess architectural plot focuses on the Rebel Alliance, led by Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and its attempt to destroy the Galactic Empire’s space station, the Death Star. This conflict disrupts the isolated life of farmhand Luke Skywalker (Hamill), who inadvertently acquires two droids that possess stolen architectural plans for the Death Star.

159. Ivan’s Childhood (1962) Dir. Andrei Tarkovsky, 95 mins.

Ivan’s Childhood tells the story of orphan boy Ivan and his experiences during World War II.

158. Three Colors: Red (1994) Dir. Krzysztof Kieslowski, 99 mins.

A beautiful model named Valentine crosses paths with a retired judge, whose dog she runs over with her car. The lonely judge, she discovers, amuses himself by eavesdropping on all of his neighbours’ phone conversations. Near Valentine’s apartment lives a young man who aspires to be a judge and loves a woman who will betray him.

157. Fargo (1996) Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen, 98 mins.

Frances McDormand stars as a pregnant Minnesota police chief investigating roadside homicides that ensue after a desperate car salesman (William H. Macy) hires two criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife in order to extort a hefty ransom from his wealthy father-in-law (Harve Presnell). Some terrific dark humour.

156. The Conversation (1974) Dir. Francis Ford Coppola, 113 mins.

The plot revolves around a surveillance expert and the moral dilemma he faces when his recordings reveal a potential murder.

155. My Life to Live (1962) Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 85 mins.

Nana (Anna Karina), a beautiful Parisian in her early twenties, leaves her husband and infant son hoping to become an actress. Without money, beyond what she earns as a shopgirl, and unable to enter acting, she elects to earn better money as a prostitute.

154. Un Chien Andalou (1929) Dir. Luis Bunuel, 16 mins.

Un Chien Andalou has no plot in the conventional sense of the word. The chronology of the film is disjointed, jumping from the initial “once upon a time” to “eight years later” without the events or characters changing very much. It uses dream logic in narrative flow that can be described in terms of then-popular Freudian free association, presenting a series of tenuously related scenes. Bunuel and Salvador Dali combine.

153. Playtime (1967) Dir. Jacques Tati, 155 mins.

Mr. Hulot tries to function in an unrecognizable Paris of modernistic glass-and-steel skyscrapers.

152. Viridiana (1961) Dir. Luis Bunuel, 90 mins.

A woman visits her rich uncle before taking her vows as a nun. When he dies, he leaves his estate to her and his son. She becomes a nun and opens up the estate to house some wretched derelicts.

151. 12 Angry Men (1957) Dir. Sidney Lumet, 96 mins.

Directed by Sidney Lumet, this trial film tells the story of a jury made up of 12 men, as they deliberate the guilt or acquittal of a defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt, forcing the jurors to question their morals and values.

150. Das Boot (1981) Dir. Wolfgang Petersen, 149 mins.

An adaptation of Lothar-Günther Buchheim’s 1973 German novel of the same name, the film is set during World War II and tells the fictional story of U-96 and its crew. It depicts both the excitement of battle and the tedium of the fruitless hunt, and shows the men serving aboard U-boats as ordinary individuals with a desire to do their best for their comrades and their country.

149. Manhattan (1979) Dir. Woody Allen, 96 mins.

Allen co-stars as a twice-divorced 42-year-old comedy writer who dates a 17-year-old girl (Mariel Hemingway) but falls in love with his best friend’s (Michael Murphy) mistress (Diane Keaton). A love letter to cinema from Woody Allen.

148. Sansho the Bailiff (1954) Dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, 124 mins.

Based on a short story of the same name by Mori Ōgai, it follows two aristocratic children who are sold into slavery.

147. Full Metal Jacket (1987) Dir. Stanley Kubrick, 116 mins.

Its storyline follows a platoon of U.S. Marines through their training, primarily focusing on two privates, Joker and Pyle, who struggle to get through camp under their foul-mouthed drill instructor, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and the experiences of two of the platoon’s Marines in the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War.  Becomes somewhat disjointed when it reaches Vietnam but that’s probably to do with war being just that.

146. The Apartment (1960) Dir. Billy Wilder, 125 mins.

The film follows C. C. “Bud” Baxter (Lemmon), an insurance company clerk who permits his bosses to use his Upper West Side apartment to conduct extramarital affairs in hope of gaining a promotion. Simultaneously Bud pursues a relationship with elevator operator Fran Kubelik (MacLaine) – unaware she is having an affair with one of the apartment’s users (MacMurray).

145. American Beauty (1999) Dir. Sam Mendes, 122 mins.

Kevin Spacey stars as Lester Burnham, a 42-year-old advertising executive who has a midlife crisis when he becomes infatuated with his teenage daughter’s best friend, Angela (Mena Suvari).

144. The Big Lebowski (1998) Dir. Joel & Ethan Coen, 117 mins.

It stars Jeff Bridges as Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, a Los Angeles slacker and avid bowler. He is assaulted as a result of mistaken identity, after which The Dude learns that a millionaire also named Jeffrey Lebowski was the intended victim. The millionaire Lebowski’s trophy wife is kidnapped, and he commissions The Dude to deliver the ransom to secure her release.

143. The Wild Bunch (1969) Dir. Sam Peckinpah, 145 mins.

The Wild Bunch is a 1969 American epic Western film directed by Sam Peckinpah about an aging outlaw gang on the Texas–Mexico border, trying to exist in the changing modern world of 1913. The once controversial violence now seems tame by modern standards.

142. The Elephant Man (1980) Dir. David Lynch, 124 mins.

The Elephant Man is a 1980 American historical drama film about Joseph Merrick (whom the script calls John Merrick), a severely deformed man in late 19th century London.

141. Contempt (1963) Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 103 mins.

Contempt is the story of the end of a marriage. Camille (Brigitte Bardot) falls out of love with her husband Paul (Michel Piccoli) while he is rewriting the screenplay Odyssey by American producer Jeremiah Prokosch (Jack Palance). Just as the director of Prokosch’s film, Fritz Lang, says that The Odyssey is the story of individuals confronting their situations in a real world, Le Mépris itself is an examination of the position of the filmmaker in the commercial cinema.

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Introduction

180. My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 86 mins.

The film tells the charming story of the two young daughters (Satsuki and Mei) of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits, particularly Totoro, in postwar rural Japan.

179. Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) Dir. Bela Tarr, Agnes Hranitzky, 145 mins.

Shot in black-and-white and composed of thirty-nine languidly paced shots, the film describes the aimlessness and anomie of a small town on the Hungarian plain that falls under the influence of a sinister travelling circus.

178. Eraserhead (1977) Dir. David Lynch, 89 mins.

It tells the story of Henry Spencer (Nance), who is left to care for his grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial landscape. Throughout the film, Spencer experiences dreams or hallucinations, featuring his child and the Lady in the Radiator.

177. Napoleon (1927) Dir. Abel Gance, 330 mins.

The film begins in Brienne-le-Château with youthful Napoleon attending military school where he manages a snowball fight like a military campaign, yet he suffers the insults of other boys. It continues a decade later with scenes of the French Revolution and Napoleon’s presence at the periphery as a young army lieutenant. He returns to visit his family home in Corsica but politics shift against him and put him in mortal danger. He flees, taking his family to France. Serving as an officer of artillery in the Siege of Toulon, Napoleon’s genius for leadership is rewarded with a promotion to brigadier general. Jealous revolutionaries imprison Napoleon but then the political tide turns against the Revolution’s own leaders. Napoleon leaves prison, forming plans to invade Italy. He falls in love with the beautiful Joséphine de Beauharnais. The emergency government charges him with the task of protecting the National Assembly. Succeeding in this he is promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Interior, and he marries Joséphine. He takes control of the army which protects the French–Italian border, and propels it to victory in an invasion of Italy.

176. Day for Night (1973) Dir. Francois Truffaut, 115 mins.

The film details the making of a family drama called “Meet Pamela” about the tragedy that follows when a young French man introduces his parents to his new British wife.

175. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) Dir. Peter Jackson, 2001.

One of the most critically and commercially successful films of all time, the conclusion of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien trilogy sees the Dark Lord Sauron launching the final stages of his conquest of Middle-earth. While it’s epic fantasy with huge battles some of the action is undermined by the supernatural elements and many of the characters lost amongst the massive effects. Jackson also struggles to come up with one fitting ending and yet the film with its colossal scale, surprising detail and emotive soundtrack, remains a visually stunning and powerfully compelling triumph of large scale entertainment and a satisfying ending to a landmark achievement in studio film making. More…

174. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) Dir. Chantal Akerman, 201 mins.

In this experimental film about a middle-aged widow driven to desperation by the crushing boredom of making beds, cleaning bathtubs, cooking, dusting, and even just eating, the real-life time needed to make that bed or to cook is exactly the time used in the film — an effect which makes some viewers just as bored and restless as the widow, and which brings home the point of the film quite well.

173. Blow-Up (1966) Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 111 mins.

Blowup is a 1966 British-Italian mystery thriller film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni about a fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings, who believes he has unwittingly captured a murder on film.

172. Last Year at Marienbad (1961) Dir. Alain Renais, 94 mins.

Set in a palace in a park that has been converted into a luxury hotel, it stars Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi as a woman and a man who may have met the year before and may have contemplated or started an affair, with Sacha Pitoëff as a second man who may be the woman’s husband.

171. Happy Together (1997) Dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 96 mins.

Yiu-Fai and Po-Wing arrive in Argentina from Hong Kong and take to the road for a holiday. Something is wrong and their relationship goes adrift. A disillusioned Yiu-Fai starts working at a tango bar to save up for his trip home. When a beaten and bruised Po-Wing reappears, Yiu-Fai is empathetic but is unable to enter a more intimate relationship. Sometimes grim but never doll.

170. Fitzcarraldo (1982) Dir. Werner Herzog, 158 mins.

It portrays would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski), who has to pull a steamship over a steep hill in order to access a rich rubber territory.

169. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie (1972) Dir. Luis Bunuel, 102 mins.

The narrative concerns a group of upper middle class people attempting—despite continual interruptions—to dine together.

168. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Dir. Guillermo del Toro, 119 mins.

The film is set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and details the strange journeys of an imaginative young girl who may be the mythical princess of an underground kingdom.

167. Boyhood (2014) Dir. Richard Linklater, 163 mins.

Filmed from 2002 to 2013, Boyhood depicts the childhood and adolescence of Mason Evans Jr. (Coltrane) from ages six to eighteen as he grows up in Texas with divorced parents (Arquette and Hawke).

166. The Forgotten Ones (1950) Dir. Luis Bunuel, 85 mins.

The story concerns a gang of juvenile delinquents, whose sole redeeming quality is their apparent devotion to one another.

165. My Night at Maud’s (1969) Dir. Eric Rohmer, 110 mins.

Over the Christmas break in a French city, the film shows chance meetings and conversations between four single people, each knowing one of the other three.

164. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Dir. Michel Gondry, 108 mins.

The film uses nonlinear narration and neosurrealism to explore the nature of memory and romantic love.

163. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) Dir. Robert Bresson, 95 mins.

Believed to be inspired by a passage from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novel The Idiot, the film follows a donkey as he is given to various owners, most of whom treat him callously.

162. Nashville (1975) Dir. Robert Altman, 159 mins.

The film takes a snapshot of people involved in the country music and gospel music businesses in Nashville, Tennessee. The characters’ efforts to succeed or hold on to their success are interwoven with the efforts of a political operative and a local businessman to stage a concert rally before the state’s presidential primary for a populist outsider running for President of the United States on the Replacement Party ticket.

161. A Matter of Life and Death (1946) Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 104 mins.

Known as Stairway To Heaven in the US, the film follows Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven) a British Second World War Royal Air Force pilot trying to nurse a badly damaged and burning Lancaster bomber home after a mission in May 1945.

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Introduction

200. Let the Right One In (2008) Dir. Tomas Alfredson, 115 mins.

The story centres on the relationship between a 12-year-old boy, Oskar, and a vampire child, Eli.

199. Amarcord (1973) Dir. Federico Fellini, 123 mins.

Amarcord is a 1973 Italian comedy-drama film directed by Federico Fellini, a semi-autobiographical tale about Titta, an adolescent boy growing up among an eccentric cast of characters in the village of Borgo San Giuliano (situated near the ancient walls of Rimini) in 1930s Fascist Italy.

198. Nights of Cabiria (1957) Dir. Federico Fellini, 117 mins.

Based on a story by Fellini, the film is about a prostitute in Rome who searches for true love in vain.

197. L.A. Confidential (1997) Dir. Curtis Hanson, 138 mins.

The film tells the story of a group of LAPD officers in 1953, and the intersection of police corruption and Hollywood celebrity.

196. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 137 mins.

It is a cinematic rendition of the story of Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Saint Matthew, from the Nativity through the Resurrection.

195. The Great Dictator (1940) Dir. Charles Chaplin, 125 mins.

During World War I, a Jewish barber (Chaplin) in the army of Tomania saves the life of high-ranking officer Schultz (Reginald Gardiner). While Schultz survives the conflict unscathed, the barber is stricken with amnesia and bundled off to a hospital. Twenty years pass: Tomania has been taken over by dictator Adenoid Hynkel (Chaplin again) and his stooges Garbitsch (Henry Daniell) and Herring (Billy Gilbert).

194. High and Low (1963) Dir. Akira Kurosawa, 142 mins.

Toshirô Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in Akira Kurosawa’s highly influential High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku).

193. The Wages of Fear (1953) Dir. Henri-Georges Clouzot, 131 mins.

When an oil well owned by an American company catches fire, the company hires four European men, down on their luck, to drive two trucks over mountain dirt roads, loaded with nitroglycerine needed to extinguish the flames.

192. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Dir. Steven Spielberg, 115 mins.

It pits Indiana Jones (Ford) against a group of Nazis who are searching for the Ark of the Covenant, which Adolf Hitler believes will make his army invincible. Marvellously crafted action adventure tale.

191. Greed (1924) Dir. Erich von Stroheim, 239 mins.

The film tells the story of McTeague, a San Francisco dentist, who marries his best friend Schouler’s girlfriend Trina. Shortly after their engagement, Trina wins a lottery prize of $5,000, at that time a substantial sum. Schouler jealously informs the authorities that McTeague had been practicing dentistry without a license, and McTeague and Trina become impoverished.

190. Don’t Look Now (1973) Dir. Nicolas Roeg, 110 mins.

The film follows a husband and wife whose lives grow complicated after meeting two elderly sisters in Venice, one of whom is clairvoyant and claims to be in contact with their recently deceased daughter who is trying to warn them of impending danger.

189. The Maltese Falcon (1941) Dir. John Huston, 100 mins.

The story follows a San Francisco private detective and his dealings with three unscrupulous adventurers, all of whom are competing to obtain a jewel-encrusted falcon statuette.

188. Unforgiven (1992) Dir. Clint Eastwood, 131 mins.

The film portrays William Munny, an aging outlaw and killer who takes on one more job years after he had turned to farming. Revisionist western from Eastwood.

187. Oldboy (2003) Dir. Chan-Wook Park, 120 mins.

The film follows the story of one Oh Dae-Su, who is locked in a hotel room for 15 years without knowing his captor’s motives. When he is finally released, he is trapped in a web of conspiracy and violence.

186. Breaking the Waves (1996) Dir. Lars von Trier, 153 mins.

Set in the Scottish Highlands in the early 1970s, it is about an unusual young woman, Bess McNeill, and of the love she has for Jan, her husband, who asks her to have sex with other men when he becomes immobilized from a work accident. Devastating drama.

185. Close-Up (1990) Dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 90 mins.

The film tells the story of the real-life trial of a man who impersonated film-maker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, conning a family into believing they would star in his new film.

184. The Exterminating Angel (1962) Dir. Luis Bunuel, 95 mins.

A formal dinner party starts out normally enough. After the sophisticated guests retire to the host’s exquisite music room, they find that they cannot leave. Hours pass and then days, and as the time plods by, disturbing changes in the formerly-genteel guests occur.

183. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) Dir. Ang Lee, 120 mins.

In the early 19th century, martial arts master Li Mu Bai is about to retire and enter a life of meditation, though he quietly longs to avenge the death of his master, who was killed by Jade Fox.

182. A Prophet (2009) Dir. Jacques Audiard, 155 mins.

The film stars Tahar Rahim in the title role as an imprisoned petty criminal of Algerian origins who rises in the inmate hierarchy, becoming an assassin and drug trafficker as he initiates himself into the Corsican and then Muslim subcultures.

181. La Strada (1954) Dir. Federico Fellini, 108 mins.

The film portrays a naïve young woman (Giulietta Masina) bought from her mother by a brutish strongman (Anthony Quinn) who takes her with him on the road.

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