4o3v2h

HBO went deep-niche with this Olivier Assayas mini-series that re-litigates not only his 1996 Maggie Cheung-starrer, but also his marriage to the actress. Assayas throws everything into this noisy stew-pot: Louis Feuillade's brilliant 1916 crime series LES VAMPIRES, a ing cast of some of 's best and brightest — Vincent Macaigne, Jeanne Balibar, Alex Descas, and Vincent Lacoste, among them — a score by Thurston Moore, the sexiest catsuit EVER! and, most importantly, film fandom. The production is exquisite and, although Assayas' screenplay is the epitome of self-indulgence, the entire series feels as sparkling as your first line of cocaine.

Fucking fabulous.

From the get-go, so desperate to misdirect its audience that one would have to have never seen a mystery/thriller of any kind to not know who the murderous nut job is. (Also doesn't help that the only version of this I could find looks like it was made with watercolor on a roll of toilet paper.) But, still, with all those problems this does move like a house on fire and manages, every once in a while, to dish up some real suspense.

Proving, always bring a baby to a sword fight.

Why is it that whenever I see a new film of James Franco's I can't quite get the taste of student project out of my mouth?

A very well made, morally repugnant piece of work.

A black comedy that, in moments, achieves a real pathos. MAMÁ ES BOBA focuses on a family of three who, through the intercession of a local television station, become the laughing stock of the city in which they live. The film's premise — that anyone who tries to prize innocence in the contemporary world is a moron — may seem a tad obvious, but when it's articulated through a boy who is mercilessly bullied at school, it's ramifications grown in severity. From early on, there are small surrealist intrusions into the story world that key us in to the fact that the this sees itself as a fable. A brilliant lead performance, by an amateur actress who ed away before this was even released, does much to sell this as a tragedy.

The kind of romantic roundelay of interlocking stories that Rohmer and Allen built careers on. In that way, this artificial construction plays like a throwback. It's all there: the educated characters that read books and speak in complete sentences, the chance encounters too numerous to ever be believed, the narration that links it all together and allows for some poetic introspection. But there are times when the shifts in relationship dynamics feel a bit too mathematical and one can imagine a dry erase board in the writer's room with the character interactions schematized. Still, it's a very handsome picture, with a talented cast, and its two hours pleasurably.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

I'll be forever grateful to the MIRROR showrunners for bleaching Will Poulter's hair. Long live BANDERSNATCH.

In this rom-com, Jack Lemmon is never anyone but Jack Lemmon and Catherine Deneuve is never anyone but Catherine Deneuve. In of their career trajectories they're both slumming. Despite the fact that most of the comedy here is musty (I doubt this even generated laughs back in 1969), and the couple it's trying to form seems beyond implausible, this still manages to keep one's interest. Particularly good are the color cinematography, the set design and the costuming and, even though the film is trying to make fun of the vaporous stylings of the hip and wealthy of the period, they sure make them look good.

Actresses adore going mad on film: Leigh, Rowlands, Adjani, Ullman, and Huppert have all triumphed at the challenge, exposing a terrifying vulnerability. Bulle Ogier's work here is on that level: a savage, emotional horror show.

Rivette balances the dramatic breakdown of a marriage, filled to the brim with acrimony, alongside the rehearsals of a Racine play being recorded by a camera crew, cutting back and forth between the two. Aiming at vérité in performance, but always showing his hand, he manages to convince us that the feelings of his characters are real, while all the time showing us the mechanics of directing and storytelling.

A spectacular piece of filmmaking: the camerawork and the editing are actually thrilling to watch. It's got style to burn: the velvety black and whites, a gorgeous cast decked out in hipster threads, the wide-screen compositions, and every formal element from the Nouvelle Vague playbook.

Three man/babies meet their match in a situation comedy with more than a touch of sincere feeling. This script and direction are by a woman, which must explain why it can serve up gender stereotypes for ridicule without ever losing its charm.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

Politics, from the other side. Government work as pitiless, soul-crushing labor. The film is propelled by two terrific performances, those of Olivier Gourmet and Michel Blanc, as two public servants who are forced to turn on a dime, selling out their consciences as the moment dictates. An extraordinarily well directed picture that takes a fairly dry script and, through staging, scoring, and cutting turns it into a taut thriller.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

Three fantastic lead performances (and Cornel Wilde). A very effective thriller that, in its final 15 minutes, ratchets up the suspense to nearly unbearable levels. No kidding.

Incredibly stupid. But still manages to be a good time.

To call the Southern Gothic a limited form is a kindness. For when it's off, as this film is in countless ways, it's formulaic and often risible, especially when it's meant to be at its most intense. Yet another Tennessee Williams rendition of his mad hot-house flower, but the stodgy direction does little to enliven what is a minor work that finds the playwright merely beating his usual dead horses.

I looked online and star Mason Thames is still only 17 years old.

Please check back in one year and I'll tell you what I really thought of this.

Alain Resnais, ably assisted by his scenarists Jean-Pierre Bacri and Agnès Jaoui, adapts a sprawling, experimental theater piece by Alan Ayckbourn. In it, the director toys with ideas of fate and chance, repeatedly forcing his characters to inhabit alternative lives in which one tiny change dictates enormous differences in outcome. For example, whether the lead character chooses to smoke a cigarette, or not, within the first five minutes, triggers a series of events that lead to dozens of possible outcomes: deaths, affairs, and marriages are shuffled about.

To make matters even more conceptual, Ayckbourn and Resnais choose to have two actors play all ten parts: Sabine Azéma portrays the six different women, Pierre Arditi the four different men. Aided only differences in styling — wigs and costumes, predominantly — the actors are tasked with using small bodily cues to individuate each person. Arditi is particularly good, his four men standing, speaking, walking, distinctly.

All of the myriad plot strands are played out in completely artificial environments, which read sometimes as well-articulated theater sets, sometimes as the elaborate kind used in classical studio pictures, replete with enormous cycloramas. The costumer often forces the characters into pastels, with the figures then placed in settings that often foreground a sense of desolation. It's not only that there are never more than two people visible, the skies are often gray. This formal division, between the sets and costumes, seems to mimic the film's repeated shifts from farce to tragedy.

An incredibly risky gambit. But if a viewer becomes excited by the concept this is a very rewarding five hours.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

Multiverse work: Nouvelle Vague edition.

The film in which Alain Resnais' Marvel Comics fandom and his friendship with Stan Lee are most apparent.

BANDERSNATCH: Nouvelle Vague edition.

No exaggeration: in this film, the lead character introduces himself at least two dozen times during the first half hour with the line, "My name is Angel." We get it. The mysterious stranger, who's arrived in a farming community to cleanse their earth of an insect infestation, is named Angel.

Impeccably photographed, beautifully scored, pretentious twaddle.

A film whose subject — a striving for the purity of love — and form — an extremely stylized minimalism — are perfectly matched. Beautiful, singular. The kind of movie on religious subjects that only the French make perfectly.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

Ladies, don't give them an inch. Or they'll take the whole...

Not a big swing and a miss, a huge swing and a miss.

Its goal is to tell the story of four families, from different countries, across five decades of history, with dozens of major characters and interconnecting plot lines theoretically held together by repeated musical motifs. Claude Lelouch, the director of over 50 faceless features (and A MAN AND A WOMAN), chose to paint this huge canvas over the five hours of a television mini-series. As was usual for these types of projects, a theatrical cut was also commissioned. So there is Lelouch, whose script was already overstuffed, assisted by two editors, having to cut this material by two hours. The resulting three is a narrative chaos, often relying on voiceover to cover gaps in its endless parade of cliché situations, culminating in a lengthy, unintentionally hilarious sequence that's meant to be both profound and moving.

This vulgar tapestry even mines the Holocaust for anecdotes. But these powerful early incidents eventually feel like a kind of emotional blackmail, as nothing that happens during the remaining two and a half hours has that kind of heft. Purportedly based on real stories there is not a single authentic moment in this thing, it's all frosting and no cake, and somewhere during the second of its three hours you start to get sick.

Nominated for Best Picture at the 1981 César Awards, although a French version of the Razzies would have been more appropriate.

Are you the kind of person who would read a negative review of this film and think, "They must just hate fun."? Well, if so, then you might actually find this entertaining.

My entire two stars are for the first episode which, at least, makes me think lovingly of Penelope Spheeris.

Went into this with the same low expectations I had for Ryan Murphy's Dahmer series. But whereas that turned out to be much better than I expected — there was subtext and meaning outside of the serial killer business — the depth here never materializes. This sleaze is skin deep.

I won't mention the artist Anne Truitt's extraordinary eloquence, even though her words come at us with a fiery precision. It's Jem Cohen who's really on display here, even though we never see him, and the little that we hear of his voice adds nothing to this profile. Rather, it's in the assembly of the material: the hundreds of detail views, the cutting of the voiceover, its arc, and the shift from black and white to color, that his own artist's voice is heard — triumphant in solidarity with that of his subject.

Carmen. I'm gonna say it. Not a nice person.

That blowjob is positively Proustian.

Divine is terrific in this exploitation inversion of Tennessee Williams' BABY DOLL. But I do think that Baby's birthday party outfit is way too matchy-matchy.

Alain Corneau mounts an Antonioni-like travelogue that follows a writer across India as he searches for an old friend who's vanished. This moves lethargically from one metaphysical conversation to another, with each new encounter offering us no answers. But the whole thing is of such a piece — the murky cinematography, the listless performances, the aimlessness, the melancholy, the Schubert — that it remains engrossing throughout.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

The fact that this takes place in the realm of memory — all golden sunlight and soft edges — is supposed to make us forget that every narrative beat is a cliché. These nostalgic, well-appointed, kid-starring period pictures were a dime-a-dozen in the 80s.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

Not an iota. Not a smidge. Not a dollop. Not a jot. Not a dot. Not a bit. Not a snip. Not an ounce. Not a drop.

Befittingly, this film, about two screenwriters at work on a new script, can lay claim to having an extraordinary one. It may feel like a lot of other movies about movies — DAY FOR NIGHT and TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN come to mind — but the film's movement, from witty comedy to sour melancholy, makes it feel both unique and substantial. It's a pity that such magnificent work, at least on the page, falls a bit flat on the screen. Blame the cheap production — the cinematography is particularly egregious — for hobbling this Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film.

Pascale Ferran's film of D.H. Lawrence's oft-adapted novel is well-appointed, intelligently staged, and sensitively performed. It's also a pleasure to see the story filtered through the sensibilities of a female director.

Nailing the narrative has never been the issue where CHATTERLY is concerned, it's a simple enough story. It's about getting the time and place right, and setting the characters down there in a manner that generates the most meaning. Ferran repeatedly underlines her characters' connections to the natural world, jettisoning most of the novel's references to the mines, to striking workers, and to poverty. The result is an adaption that seems more concerned with human behavior — sensual needs and wants — rather than about economic disparity. Her film stands against marriage, depicted as an institution against-nature, much as war and industry, all used to subjugate peoples.

Where the film really stumbles, however, is in its endless parade of medium shots that grow monotonous, the lack of visual ingenuity frustrating. It has little rhythm or grace, it just clunks along, incessantly relying on the fade-to-black, which makes this read like a work intended for television. I kept expecting each one to bring us to commercial.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

SPF is for pussies. This movie goes out to everyone who uses olive oil for tanning.

A farce whose plot is riddled with holes. But it wears its implausibilities like badges of honor and, when its comedy is morbid — and it often is — it actually feels fresh. As is usually the case with Dupontel, we sometimes get too many directorial pyrotechnics, which can prove to be exhausting, however, the brief running time, the numerous surprising cameos (Gaspar Noé?!), and the edginess of some of its narrative material keep it involving.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

Ten reasons to watch THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN (of literally hundreds):

1. It's the real reason The Beatles broke up.
2. Prequel to TRIANGLE OF SADNESS.
3. Best Christopher Lee Dracula outside of a Hammer picture.
4. Leonard Frey playing someone named Laurence Faggot.
5. Laurence Harvey doing a striptease while playing Hamlet.
6. Raquel Welch with a whip.
7. Cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth getting ready for CABARET.
8. The greatest art auction ever committed to film.
9. Very sexy Roman Polanski.
10. Even sexier Yul Brynner.

Couldn't recommend this fiasco more highly.

The persistent plaintive score, and that title, give me the impression I'm supposed to at least feel some sympathy for this picture's do-nothing protagonist. Sometimes (but not always), films about insufferable people can be, what's the word? Insufferable.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

You mean to tell me they couldn't have gotten Will Poulter to eat a nice, big, sloppy plate of spaghetti?

It's amazing how breezy this plays, considering the subject matter: a look at the inner workings of the French film industry during the German occupation. But LAISSEZ-ER is a film that doesn't erase war's horrors, rather, it relegates them to small, powerful background events. The script, however, is a bit unwieldy, its canvas too broad. It attempts a bifurcated storyline, splitting its attention during the first half between two protagonists, shoehorning too much into an already lengthy run time. This imposes a scattershot feel onto its narrative, which smartly demotes one of its leads to in the second half. An impressive production and, as is usual with Tavernier, a film whose camerawork is beyond reproach, impressive, intelligent, without ever grandstanding.

Bertrand Tavernier, ranked

It's a pity that Letterboxd hasn't split up the seasons of this as they're both such completely different works, with a severe drop in quality from the first to the second iteration.

FEUD S1: 4.5/5.0
As good as prestige television can be: inventive, hilarious, caustic, touching. And, most importantly, it never wears out its welcome.

FEUD S2: 2.5/5.0
The performances are the sole reason for visiting the second installment. Particularly great are Watts, Lane, Sevigny and Mantello. The problem is the writing, which is dreadful. Like its drunken protagonist, it's bloated, repetitious, and well past its prime.

50s sci-fi quackery where the monster is a woman who becomes assertive. Shop, girl, shop!

As savage an indictment of capitalism as one could imagine, and an elaborate production whose sole purpose appears to be the depiction of human suffering. Everything aspect of this is visually impressive: its lensing, costuming, design and direction. The script sometimes comes across as cartoonish — there are aspects of the novel which, when brought to the screen, don't quite work — but when this goes hard, and it often does, it's absolutely brutal.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

A Greta Gerwig approach to a John Hughes sitch. (Or is it Kevin Smith on Amy Heckerling duty?) Either way, it's a long 89 minutes.

A shamelessly manipulative family dramedy that's inventive, charming, and occasionally moving, but which stops just short of earning one's respect.

César Awards, Every Best Picture Nominee

This monkey's gone to heaven.

I'm not even going to pretend that I understood this — a film whose palette is all cement and old snow — but I recognize bold filmmaking when I see it.

Director and co-scenarist Matthew Rankin, who also plays one of the central roles, makes a contemporary film that wears its surrealism lightly, like a playful mask. But behind it is a profound work about storytelling, about identity, about communication. Although the narrative commits to chaos, there are any number of strands that pull us through the picture from its hilarious first act, to its labyrinthine second, and on to its mysterious and profoundly moving climax.

Buñuel is here. But so are Kaurismäki, Lynch, Allen, Kiarostami, Andersson, Maddin. Although Rankin has clearly learned from the greats, and their marks are all over his film, UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE remains spectacularly unique.

2024, best of

From that period in James Franco's career when he wasn't content to just queer bait, he also felt the need to align himself with the Ivy Leagues. This cringey vanity project is about as valuable as Franco's phantom Yale PhD.

WEST SIDE STORY by way of GOODFELLAS.

Nominated for 213 César Awards, this 17-and-a-half hour crime epic was obviously directed by someone who should lay off the Adderall.

Three hours into this documentary, one of its talking heads informs us that "torture is relative". And that might be all one needs to know about this lengthy compilation of many dozens of interviewees, all of them French nationals, who fought in their war against Algeria. The film presents all of its material free of any grounding context, either by providing background on the conflict, its history and origins, or about its own position regarding this undeclared war. And this not only makes the four hour running time a chore, but means that the work fails to educate, in 2025, anything but an already very knowledgeable, niche audience. The rest of us are stuck with unreliable witnesses who are left to ramble on, in certain cases, about things they didn't even see firsthand.

Bertrand Tavernier, ranked

Tried to make this list, of all the Spanish films I've ever seen, as accurate as possible. I tried to exclude international co-productions shot in Spain (such as any number of spaghetti Westerns). Their production is certainly important to the history of the medium in Spain, but I consider, for example, something like FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE to be an Italian film.

I also did not include films that Spain co-produced, but which were made in South American countries. So Buñuel's Mexican films are, just that, Mexican. It also does not include films shot by Spaniards in foreign countries (whether by someone well-known, like J.A. Bayona, or under-known, such as Isabel Coixet).

These are all the films I've seen which I consider "Spanish" and they have been watched with an eye towards learning about the scope of filmmaking in the country: rather than a look at the "great works" or the "best known" pictures. There's art here, there's trash. There are films that succeeded and others that most definitely did not.

• A House on Fire
• Undercover
• The Red Virgin
• I Am Nevenka
• The 47
• Saturn Return
• Jokes & Cigarettes
• Un amor
• The Blue Star
• Close Your Eyes

...plus 191 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Céline and Julie Go Boating
2. Out 1
3. Duelle
4. The Story of Marie and Julien
5. The Nun
6. L'Amour fou
7. La Belle Noiseuse
8. Le Pont du Nord
9. Up, Down, Fragile
10. Gang of Four

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

An accomplished and fascinating year by any standard but possibly its chief particularity is the manner in which documentary appears at its forefront.

• They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
• Midnight Cowboy
• Satyricon
• The Sorrow and the Pity
• Women in Love
• In the Year of the Pig
• The Unfaithful Wife
• Law and Order
• Kes
• Funeral Parade of Roses

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Bicycle Thieves
2. A Foreign Affair
3. La Terra Trema
4. Oliver Twist
5. Brighton Rock
6. Hamlet
7. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
8. , Year Zero
9. Fort Apache
10. Force of Evil

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

In my estimation the Buñuel tops the Bergman by the same tiny margin the Fosse tops the Coppola. A staggering year that, according to most, is the best of the decade. I, however, will always go with 1975.

1. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
2. Cries and Whispers
3. Cabaret
4. The Godfather
5. Aguirre, the Wrath of God
6. Roma
7. The Merchant of Four Seasons
8. What's Up, Doc?
9. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
10. The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Last Year at Marienbad
2. My American Uncle
3. Hiroshima Mon Amour
4. Night and Fog
5. Smoking / No Smoking
6. Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime
7. Stavisky...
8. Smoking
9. Mélo
10. Far from Vietnam

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Carlito's Way
2. The Piano
3. Short Cuts
4. Naked
5. Three Colours: Blue
6. Blue
7. The Age of Innocence
8. Smoking / No Smoking
9. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
10. The Nightmare Before Christmas

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Some great things, but I seriously think this may be the single weakest year in the history of world cinema.

1. Something Wild
2. Hannah and Her Sisters
3. Blue Velvet
4. The Green Ray
5. Manhunter
6. Sid and Nancy
7. Mona Lisa
8. Aliens
9. The Fly
10. Mélo

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Judge and the Assassin
2. A Sunday in the Country
3. Coup de Torchon
4. The Watchmaker of St. Paul
5. L.627
6. My Journey Through French Cinema
7. Safe Conduct
8. A Week's Vacation
9. Let Joy Reign Supreme
10. It All Starts Today

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Blue Velvet
2. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
3. The Elephant Man
4. Inland Empire
5. Twin Peaks: The Return
6. The Straight Story
7. Wild at Heart
8. Dune
9. Mulholland Drive
10. Eraserhead

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Zone of Interest
2. Past Lives
3. Oppenheimer
4. Close Your Eyes
5. Anatomy of a Fall
6. Perfect Days
7. Bottoms
8. Red Rooms
9. There's Still Tomorrow
10. Daaaaaalí!

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Zendaya has a one-two punch, but Fargeat's on top.

1. The Substance
2. Emilia Pérez
3. Flow
4. Nickel Boys
5. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
6. The Brutalist
7. Challengers
8. Longlegs
9. Hard Truths
10. Anora

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A ranking of the winners of the Palme d'Or, from 1949 to 2023. The first thirty or so films on this list are among the greatest ever made and their status as masterpieces so unequivocal that their ranking here is more than arbitrary. THE PIANO over THE THIRD MAN? LA DOLCE VITA over VIRIDIANA?

1. Blow-Up
2. The Piano
3. The Third Man
4. All That Jazz
5. Paris, Texas
6. Parasite
7. if....
8. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
9. Secrets & Lies
10. Winter Sleep

...plus 74 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I've got a few projects in mind for 2025: some easy, some difficult. Here goes:
1. some deep cuts & re-watches of Julien Duvivier
2. some deep cuts & re-watches of Michael Curtiz
3. re-watches of a dozen, or so, favorite Woody Allen films
4. more César Award Best Picture nominees
5. Madonna's entire filmography as an "actress"
Wish me luck.

1. Sinners
2. Black Bag
3. One of Them Days
4. Companion
5. Mickey 17

1. L'Argent
2. El Sur
3. Zelig
4. Le Bal
5. Sugar Cane Alley
6. of Endearment
7. Videodrome
8. Sans Soleil
9. Scarface
10. Star 80

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The king of casual.

1. Che: Part One
2. The Laundromat
3. Erin Brockovich
4. Contagion
5. Ocean's Eleven
6. sex, lies, and videotape
7. Black Bag
8. Bubble
9. Traffic
10. Out of Sight

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A handful of films so extraordinary they mark Julien Duvivier as a master, despite the fact that most of his lengthy career — which spanned silent to sound, the classical era to the contemporary — was spent churning out mediocrities.

1. The Red Head
2. Life Dances On
3. Panic
4. A Man's Neck
5. David Golder
6. Pépé le Moko
7. The End of the Day
8. Flesh and Fantasy
9. Anna Karenina
10. Deadlier Than the Male

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Polanski's neo-noir sits at the top of my list in what is a particularly strong year.

1. Chinatown
2. The Godfather Part II
3. Female Trouble
4. Céline and Julie Go Boating
5. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
6. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
7. The Conversation
8. Blazing Saddles
9. Martha
10. The Phantom of Liberty

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Yes, all three of the pictures Ken Russell released this year have made my list. My only "best of" year from the seventies that is made up primarily of films in English.

1. The Devils
2. The Last Picture Show
3. Harold and Maude
4. The French Connection
5. A New Leaf
6. Out 1
7. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
8. Klute
9. The Music Lovers
10. Death in Venice

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Crowd
2. The Seashell and the Clergyman
3. The Docks of New York
4. Spies
5. The Man Who Laughs
6. The Circus
7. The ion of Joan of Arc
8. Four Sons
9. The Wind
10. The Fall of the House of Usher

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

They each had careers that spanned the silent and the sound eras. They were each associated with a major movement in art history: Lang with German Expressionism, Buñuel with Surrealism. They each worked inside the studio system and outside of it and they both shot in various counties, making films in different languages. Based on the syllabus for a Comparative Directors course that I fashioned and taught at NYU in the Spring semester of 2007. The purpose of the course was both to argue for the auteur theory and against it: to, at best, introduce students to the idea that films are also authored by agencies outside of their director — such as national, cultural, and industrial influences.

• Metropolis
• The Milky Way
• Belle de Jour
• The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
• Liliom
• Destiny
• Wuthering Heights
• Un Chien Andalou
• L'Âge d'or
• Simon of the Desert

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Dodsworth
2. My Man Godfrey
3. Modern Times
4. Sabotage
5. Rose Hobart
6. Osaka Elegy
7. Fury
8. The Only Son
9. Camille
10. Sisters of the Gion

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every single film nominated for Best Picture at 's César Awards since their inception in 1976. Listed in reverse chronological order.

• Emilia Pérez
• Souleymane's Story
• The Count of Monte Cristo
• Marching Band
• Misericordia
• Anatomy of a Fall
• The Animal Kingdom
• All Your Faces
• The Goldman Case
• Junkyard Dog

...plus 260 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

When the films are this great, there really is no point in ranking them. That said, this top ten is pretty much the one I rattle off the top of my head whenever I'm asked.

• Nashville
• Persona
• The Long Day Closes
• Barry Lyndon
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Last Year at Marienbad
• All About Eve
• Vagabond
• Notorious

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Challenge for the month of March 2025. Eat 31 musicals. One a day. Or with the occasional musicals marathon. The order is up to you.

• Saturday Night Fever
• Victor/Victoria
• Corpse Bride
• Idlewild
• Hellzapoppin'
• Silk Stockings
• tick, tick... BOOM!
• Summer Stock
• Thoroughly Modern Millie
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch

...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The Coen Brothers gentle masterpiece — the one grace note in their filmography of comic horrors — tops the list in a very strong year. The top twenty here are all exceptional.

1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. The Great Beauty
3. Under the Skin
4. A Touch of Sin
5. Prisoners
6. The Counselor
7. Ida
8. Only Lovers Left Alive
9. The Wolf of Wall Street
10. Blue Jasmine

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

When the best film out of Hollywood is STRANGELOVE, something truly has changed in American movies. It sits on this list sandwiched between Demy's masterful deconstruction of the musical and Antonioni's elegy for our dying planet.

1. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
2. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
3. Red Desert
4. The Pawnbroker
5. The Visit
6. Marnie
7. My Fair Lady
8. The Train
9. The Soft Skin
10. I Am Cuba

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Rocky Horror Picture Show
• Moulin Rouge!
• One More Time with Feeling
• La La Land
• God Help the Girl
• Inside Llewyn Davis
• Hedwig and the Angry Inch
• Dancer in the Dark
• Topsy-Turvy
• The Hole

...plus 65 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A very, very strong year for American fare.

1. Strangers on a Train
2. A Streetcar Named Desire
3. Ace in the Hole
4. A Place in the Sun
5. An American in Paris
6. The Thing from Another World
7. Early Summer
8. Pool of London
9. Bellissima
10. The Browning Version

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

An awful lot of psycho freak-outs at the movies in 2006 and leading them off, of course, is David Lynch's most disturbing picture.

1. Inland Empire
2. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts
3. Pan's Labyrinth
4. Bamako
5. The Prestige
6. Some Widows of Noirmoutier
7. Monster House
8. Volver
9. Notes on a Scandal
10. Bug

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Yes, that’s right, it was the year that STAR WARS was released but, to my eyes, it’s an oddly weak one in the midst of an otherwise strong decade.

1. Suspiria
2. Annie Hall
3. Sorcerer
4. The Ascent
5. That Obscure Object of Desire
6. The Devil, Probably
7. 3 Women
8. The Lacemaker
9. 21 Up
10. Close Encounters of the Third Kind

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You'll forgive me for saying this, but 1933 was the shit.

1. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
2. Dinner at Eight
3. Gold Diggers of 1933
4. Pilgrimage
5. The Fatal Glass of Beer
6. Zero for Conduct
7. Baby Face
8. A Man's Neck
9. Heroes for Sale
10. The Bitter Tea of General Yen

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Gerry
2. The Son
3. City of God
4. Irreversible
5. Talk to Her
6. Punch-Drunk Love
7. Morvern Callar
8. The Hours
9. Spun
10. 25th Hour

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Secrets & Lies
2. Fargo
3. La Promesse
4. Breaking the Waves
5. Microcosmos
6. The Portrait of a Lady
7. Get on the Bus
8. Citizen Ruth
9. Jerry Maguire
10. Lone Star

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Dunkirk
2. Lady Bird
3. Phantom Thread
4. The Florida Project
5. Faces Places
6. The Rider
7. LA 92
8. mother!
9. Zama
10. Logan

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. All About Eve
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. The Apartment
4. How Green Was My Valley
5. The Silence of the Lambs
6. Annie Hall
7. Midnight Cowboy
8. Gone with the Wind
9. Moonlight
10. The Best Years of Our Lives

...plus 87 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Dead
2. Au Revoir les Enfants
3. Broadcast News
4. Where Is the Friend's House?
5. Walker
6. The Princess Bride
7. Radio Days
8. Raising Arizona
9. Full Metal Jacket
10. Wings of Desire

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Let's just call the top three here a tie.

1. How Green Was My Valley
2. Citizen Kane
3. Sullivan's Travels
4. The Little Foxes
5. Ball of Fire
6. The Maltese Falcon
7. The Lady Eve
8. The Devil and Miss Jones
9. Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
10. Hellzapoppin'

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Long Day Closes
2. Malcolm X
3. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
4. Unforgiven
5. Howards End
6. The Crying Game
7. Husbands and Wives
8. Hyenas
9. A Sense of History
10. Batman Returns

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. In the Mood for Love
2. Code Unknown
3. Requiem for a Dream
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
5. Amores Perros
6. Dancer in the Dark
7. You Can Count on Me
8. In Vanda's Room
9. Werckmeister Harmonies
10. The Gleaners and I

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not a single title in my top ten of this year's ranking is anything less than a masterpiece.

1. Blonde Venus
2. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
3. The Red Head
4. Trouble in Paradise
5. Scarface
6. Grand Hotel
7. The Dentist
8. The Music Box
9. Freaks
10. Shanghai Express

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Cold War
2. Hereditary
3. Widows
4. Roma
5. If Beale Street Could Talk
6. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
7. Transit
8. They Shall Not Grow Old
9. The Favourite
10. Burning

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Toni
2. The 39 Steps
3. A Tale of Two Cities
4. The Informer
5. Bride of Frankenstein
6. Alice Adams
7. A Night at the Opera
8. Mutiny on the Bounty
9. Broadway Melody of 1936

If it weren't for THE WIRE, he would be Baltimore's only claim to fame.

1. Female Trouble
2. Polyester
3. Desperate Living
4. Pink Flamingos
5. Serial Mom
6. Multiple Maniacs
7. Mondo Trasho
8. Eat Your Makeup
9. Hag in a Black Leather Jacket
10. Cry-Baby

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Satantango
2. Three Colours: White
3. Hoop Dreams
4. Pulp Fiction
5. Chungking Express
6. Ed Wood
7. Three Colours: Red
8. Crooklyn
9. To Live
10. Black Is… Black Ain’t

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. L'Âge d'or
2. Morocco
3. All Quiet on the Western Front
4. City Girl
5. À propos de Nice
6. The Blue Angel
7. Under the Roofs of Paris
8. That Night's Wife
9. Animal Crackers
10. Liliom

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A Buñuel short tops my list for this year, although the two Godard films (in positions 5 & 6) are, for me, the true defining releases of 1965. And, yes, DOCTOR ZHIVAGO is great.

1. Simon of the Desert
2. Juliet of the Spirits
3. The Shop on Main Street
4. Doctor Zhivago
5. Alphaville
6. Pierrot le Fou
7. Fists in the Pocket
8. Red Beard
9. Le Bonheur
10. Yoyo

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Malick's masterwork is an easy choice to top off my list of the best films of 1978.

1. Days of Heaven
2. Interiors
3. The Tree of Wooden Clogs
4. Dawn of the Dead
5. Gates of Heaven
6. Coming Home
7. The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
8. An Unmarried Woman
9. The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith
10. In a Year with 13 Moons

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Few writer/directors can boast a two decade run as boldly creative, not to mention prolific, as that of Woody Allen from 1973 through 1994.

1. Annie Hall
2. Hannah and Her Sisters
3. The Purple Rose of Cairo
4. Broadway Danny Rose
5. Husbands and Wives
6. Radio Days
7. Crimes and Misdemeanors
8. Interiors
9. Zelig
10. Manhattan

...plus 41 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Jackie Brown
2. Gummo
3. Boogie Nights
4. Train of Shadows
5. L.A. Confidential
6. Funny Games
7. Happy Together
8. Career Girls
9. Taste of Cherry
10. The Life of Jesus

...plus 19 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.