Top 10 All-Time Films

Forget the top 10 of 2008! To offer a glimpse into the personal taste in movies of your humble reviewer, I present my Top 10 personal favorites. I don’t feel I have the right proclaim these as the 10 best films (just too subjective), but all the films listed below, I believe, are truly great. Each made a profound impact on me when I saw them and played a role in developing my love and appreciation for great movies.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
Kubrick’s, haunting, out of time masterpiece is both profoundly influential, yet impossible to duplicate. I’ve ranked it first as much for its daring as its artistry. Few other films dare to address the big, unanswerable questions: mankind’s place in an infinite universe; the existence of God; what it means to be human (and can a computer become more “human” than its flesh and bone operators). With this work, Kubrick is walking with Shakespeare and the ancient Greek dramatists as much as with contemporary film directors.

2. Citizen Kane (Welles)
This work by an arrogant, brilliant 26 year old is the dividing line between old movies and everything since. Wells seems to be opening new doors for the art form with every scene. However, “Kane” has become such a film school staple that many film buffs have forgotten a simple, but important point: “Kane” is not only historically significant, but it still works as a very entertaining movie-dramatic, often quite funny and profoundly moving.

3. Vertigo (Hitchcock)
Hitchcock’s greatest film is this intense, deeply personal masterpiece about the eternal battle of the sexes and our inability to force our own happiness. Perhaps the single greatest scene in film history is when Judy’s metamorphosis into Madeline is complete. The thousand different emotions on Judy/Madeline’s beautiful face (Kim Novak’s superb performance is woefully underrated) when she reappears before James Stewart never fails to overwhelm me.

4. Taxi Driver (Scorcese)
Scorcese’s Dante-like tour of Hell (Manhattan seen through the eyes of a deranged cab driver) is indeed a brutal, ugly film that is not for all tastes. However, few works of art have so accurately and brilliantly captured the damage that loneliness, the feeling of insignificance and the inability to connect with the opposite sex can have on the male psyche. Robert DeNiro’s performance as the unhinged Travis Bickle is one of the most powerful and frightening in film history.

5. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone)
First dismissed as a “spaghetti western” (though this once scorned genre is deservedly getting reevaluated), this haunting, funny and hugely entertaining film virtually reinvented the Western, as it placed the genre in strange, menacing new terrains and blurred the lines between good and evil. The film and its legendary score by Ennio Morricone are inseparable (arguably the greatest film score in history). Leone’s direction during the final 20 minutes, in which three men square off in the middle of a graveyard that seems to stretch out into infinity, is akin to watching Beethoven conduct.

6. *The Godfather (Coppola)
Not much else needs to be said by me about the great American epic about the seductiveness of power (and the dark side of Capitalism), or about the now legendary performances of Brando, Pacino and the entire cast. (*I almost listed The Godfather and The Godfather Part II as one film, as they are inseparable.)

7. The Conversation (Coppola)
It is mind boggling to me that Coppola filmed The Godfather Part II and this masterwork in the same year. It brilliantly meshes a superbly suspenseful thriller plot with a devastating character study of a lonely man (the great Gene Hackman) suffering from neurosis, paranoia and guilt over past deeds in his life. What exactly does he hear (do we hear) on that tape?

8. The Shining (Kubrick)
Like much of Kubrick’s work, this film was savaged when first released, yet time has been kind to it. It is now rightfully recognized as one of the greatest-and scariest-horror films ever made. It is also more akin to Kubrick’s masterwork 2001 than initially thought, as it addresses many big questions, such as man’s place in a universe of space and time beyond our control, while simultaneously scaring the crap out of you.

9. Eraserhead (Lynch)
I discovered this film in the perfect setting: as a midnight movie in a small theatre near downtown Philadelphia. No other work has come as close to actually capturing an actual dream/nightmare on film. It remains the best example of Lynch’s unique gift for finding horror in a seemingly mundane, ordinary existence. It is also underappreciated for being laugh out loud funny at times-few scenes are as creepy and downright hysterical at the same time as the infamous “dinner with the in-laws from hell” scene.

10. The Thin Blue Line (Morris)
I debated what to put in my tenth slot, yet how could I not honor a film that actually saved a man’s life? This amazing documentary works not only as a terrifying thriller (perfectly supported by a cold and frightening score by Phillip Glass), but documents the sad, but true account of how a drifter by the name of Randall Adams found himself wrongfully convicted for the murder of a Texas police officer-and came within just three days of being strapped into the electric chair. Morris’ film not only presents overwhelming evidence in support of Adams’ innocence, but, in a chilling moment, actually presents a confession by the true killer. If a state passed a law that required all potential jurors to watch this film before participating in a trial, I would support it. The film worked: Adams was exonerated soon after its release.

Ten honorable mentions (all of these I flirted with putting in my Top 10 and deserve mention):

Fargo (Coen)

Marat/Sade (Brook)

The Wizard of Oz (Fleming)

Deep Red (Argento)

Halloween (Carpenter)

Mulholland Dr. (Lynch)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Spielberg)

The French Connection (Friedkin)

The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah)

Rashomon (Kurosawa)

Wait, I can think of 10 more . . . .

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