2022 Sight & Sound Ballot Further Remarks First Draft

Incomplete first draft for Sight & Sound.

Not my ten favorite films (that would be too easy), but instead ten sui generis masterpieces that I adore and admire deeply: each of these films stands — or deserves to stand — as a monumental work in both the history of film and my relation to the medium.

I had to establish some ground rules: only one film per director, only films I had seen more than once.

Five films from Greater China (one from the mainland, one from Hong Kong, three from Taiwan), four films from France, and one film from South Korea/the infinite worlds that Hong Sang-soo occupies, which all seems right.

No American/English-language-only films, partly by accident and partly on purpose: maybe they'll make a resurgence for me in the next ten years, but this feels exactly true to my interests at the moment.

Impossible to name *all* of the omissions, but indulgent homage must be paid to the films and filmmakers I had to leave out. Not all (or most) of these are masterpieces, but all of them keep me wondering still and I can't imagine my cinephilia without these; think of it as a cracked self-portrait, full of unity and contradictions, which is what obsessive listmaking boils down to. Not including the filmmakers who I have chosen for my top ten, with many films in very recent memory, and in no particular order and grouping:

Mulholland Dr. (my favorite film) and Twin Peaks: The Return and David Lynch generally, Platform and the work of Jia Zhangke aka the most important filmmaker alive, Hollis Frampton's (nostalgia), Ozu Yasujirō's Late Spring, Max Ophuls's Letter From an Unknown Woman, Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse and much of Fritz Lang, Paul Vecchiali's Femmes Femmes...

Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Notorious, Lau Kar-leung's Dirty Ho and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Perceval le Gallois and all of Éric Rohmer, Chuck Jones's Duck Amuck, Sparrow among other choices from Johnnie To, Beijing Watermelon and so much of Ōbayashi Nobuhiko, Ousmane Sembène's Black Girl, Guru Dutt's Pyaasa, Mariano Llinás's La Flor, Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort, Abel Gance's Napoléon, Peter Watkins' Punishment Park, Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons, Bruce Baillie's All My Life, Li Han-hsiang's The Love Eterne, Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom, Todd Haynes's Carol, C.W. Winter and Anders Edström's The Works and Days, Bi Gan's Long Day's Journey Into Night, Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express and Anatahan...

Thom Andersen's Los Angeles Plays Itself, Christian Petzold's Transit, Peter Chan's Comrades: Almost a Love Story, Fei Mu's Spring in a Small Town, Marie-Claude Treilhou's Simone Barbès or Virtue, Adam Curtis's The Trap, Raúl Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon, Kurosawa Akira's Seven Samurai and High and Low, Ōshima Nagisa's Death by Hanging, Zhu Shengze's Present.Perfect., Jerzy Skolimowski's Le Départ, Matías Piñeiro's The Princess of France, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura, Huang Weikai's Disorder, Patrick Tam's Nomad, Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up and Like Someone in Love, Jon Bois's The Bob Emergency, Louis Feuillade's incomparably exciting Les Vampires and Tih-Minh, Lisandro Alonso's Jauja, Michael Snow's Wavelength, Nicolas Rey's differently Molussia, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century, Peter Kubelka's Arnulf Rainer, Pedro Costa's Horse Money...

Leo McCarey's Ruggles of Red Gap, Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness, Pietro Marcello's Martin Eden, Tsui Hark's Peking Opera Blues and Shanghai Blues, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's Manakamana, Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Serge Bozon's La France, Nadav Lapid's Synonyms, Miguel Gomes's Tabu, Mizoguchi Kenji's Sansho the Bailiff, Charles Laughton's The Night of the Hunter, Hu Bo's An Elephant Sitting Still, Nathaniel Dorsky's Arboretum Cycle, Satyajit Ray's Charulata, Jafar Panâhi & Mojtaba Mirtahmasb's This Is Not a Film, Alexandre Koberidze's What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, Ernie Gehr's Serene Velocity, Pierre Léon's L'Idiot, Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart, F.W. Murnau's Sunrise, Jean Renoir's The Rules of the Game, Claire Denis's Beau Travail and 35 Shots of Rum, Alex Ross Perry's Listen Up Philip and Her Smell, Roberto Rossellini's The Taking of Power by Louis XIV, D.W. Griffith's The Musketeers of Pig Alley, Marguerite Duras's India Song, Heat and Miami Vice and too much from Michael Mann, Eduardo Williams's The Human Surge, Naruse Mikio's Yearning, Anno Hideaki's Neon Genesis Evangelion finale...

François Truffaut's Two English Girls, Hal Hartley's Trust, Sammo Hung's Pedicab Driver, Wai Ka-fai's Too Many Ways to Be No. 1, Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, Vincente Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis, Jordan Belson's Allures, Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Cure, Morgan Fisher's Standard Gauge, Hamaguchi Ryūsuke's Asako I & II and Drive My Car, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud, along with the collective oeuvres of Jean-Luc Godard, John Ford, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Jacques Tourneur, Saïto Daïchi, Howard Hawks, Claude Chabrol, Luis Buñuel, Robert Bresson, John Woo, Takahata Isao, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Miyazaki Hayao...

Nobody's Daughter Haewon First Draft

Complete first draft for Cinema Guild.

Nobody’s Daughter Haewon: You Can’t Go Home Again Sean and Evan, thank you so much for incorporating me into this trio of pieces. As you both know, your Hong correspondences for both Seattle Screen Scene and MUBI Notebook were incredibly influential to me in my understanding of Hong, and it’s a daunting task to try to find my place within this great dynamic. I’ve always been a sap, especially for Hong, whose extensive reuse of motifs, techniques, and actors makes his body of work immensely warm and comforting (while never predictable) to me; indeed, my favorites are generally the ones that end on a happier resolution, where the pursuit of cinematic and narrative experimentation and the rush of romance are totally linked. But all three of these films, especially the one that I’m writing about, Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, end on more irresolute notes, where some form of miscomprehension or unfulfilled dream infuses the coda, even as they make grand use of his middle period humorousness. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, however, is something of an outlier compared to the other two films (though, notably, they are the only three films whose English titles mention a specific character). Those two are the key Jung Yumi works, using an ironclad structure and her innate expressiveness to convey comedy and convolutions alike, each pairing her with Lee Sunkyun and suggesting that Jung is a vivid projection of each character’s expectations and desires. But Haewon is played by the innately sad yet cagy Jung Eunchae —in her first of only a few Hong performances — and the film has perhaps the most amorphous structure that Hong has ever used, moving from encounter to encounter as Seongjoon, her past lover and the film’s other lead (played by Lee again), drifts in and out of the story. Apart from a series of Haewon’s diary entries that place the events of the film between March 21 and April 3, us Hongians are left free to sort out how the film operates. The opening of Nobody’s Daughter Haewon suggests a pivot for Hong: for seventeen minutes, it follows Haewon working through her relationship with her mother to an extent greater than any Hong protagonist thus far. This unfolds in two stages: a delightfully surreal dream where she essentially imagines that Jane Birkin (as herself) is her mother figure, and then an extended sequence where Haewon spends time with her actual mother before the latter moves to Canada. But while this unusual narrative element is firmly planted by the end of this section, the rest of the film barely invokes familial relationships, instead shifting back into the realm of fraught romance that the Jung films so thoroughly focus on. These relationships, however, aren’t nearly as clear as the love triangle of Oki’s Movie or the three suitors in Our Sunhi. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon instead moves in leaps in bounds: during the first section, Dongjoo, a bearded bookseller, attempts to flirt with her, then disappears from the film; Haewon and Seongjoon have several breakups and reunions; there is an entire section devoted to her quasi-meet-cute with Joongwon (Hong regular Kim Euisung), the strange professor from San Diego who is apparently rewriting a script for Martin Scorsese. The deeper the Hongian delves into Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, the stranger it becomes. The most obvious manifestation is the third dream sequence, the longest in any Hong film, which lasts more than thirty minutes and encompasses many of the above storylines. While the first and second function akin to those in other Hong films, as brief and absurd representations of the main characters’ desires, this one operates along thornier lines, and the correspondence of new characters — only Seongjoon and an old man (perennial Hong figure Gi Ju-bong) appear in the rest of the film — to Haewon’s state of mind is utterly ambiguous. Perhaps the clearest sign of this is the reappearance of Joongsik and Yeonjoo (repertory players Yoo Joonsang and Ye Jiwon, respectively), one of the main couples in Hong’s 2010 film Hahaha. Their situation, despite the breakthrough in their extramarital relationship in the denouement of that film, has mostly stayed the same: Joongsik still takes pills for depression and remains married, despite his vow to live with Yeonjoo. Their relationship is one of contentment, signaled by a conversation that, after briefly lapsing into disagreement, gently reconciles them, but it points to a certain sense of emotional stasis that Nobody’s Daughter Haewon embodies. In a sense, all three films share this trait: Oki’s Movie takes a retrospective view on the relationships and posits that artistic representation can only go so far; Our Sunhi offers literal liberation to its main character, but not her male suitors who wander in the shadow of her image. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, meanwhile, ends up with a much less apparent image of Haewon. It’s certainly not a coincidence that Joongsik and Yeonju’s conversation and an earlier, drunken dialogue between Seongjoon and his students at a Korean barbecue restaurant after Haewon has gone to the restroom, are two of only a handful of exchanges in Hong’s oeuvre that don’t involve the main protagonist. They both feature disagreements about the nature of her character, in direct contrast to the consensus formed in Our Sunhi. She is called aristocratic, and even her ethnicity — some characters say she’s mixed because of her taller stature — is called into question; these issues are not so much resolved as dropped in favor of other concerns. Haewon herself is only somewhat forthcoming. At the bookstore café that becomes one of the recurring settings across these odd sequences, she is told that she can pay as much as she’d like for the books. Her response is that “it’ll show who I am,” and in the second instance Joongwon responds that she should “pay enough not to show” herself. She nevertheless declines to do so, and that inability to communicate herself, even in situations that seem to demand it, manifests itself across her interactions. While she isn’t recessive in the manner of Yoo’s lead performances, she constantly deflects people’s attention to themselves or others, fatalistically noting to Seongjoon that “death resolves all” — she is seen reading Norbert Elias’s The Loneliness of the Dying, a bleakly funny sight gag in this context — and refraining from either confirming or denying the attributes that her screen partners ascribe to her. Her eyes, full of quiet determination, seem to indicate some sort of drive, but to what ends are kept inscrutable. The title of Nobody’s Daughter Haewon, then, could be taken in numerous directions: as an expression of abandonment; as a self-proclaimed divestment from ownership; as a recognition that none of these people know who Haewon is, least of all herself. The inclusion of Joongsik and Yeonju seems to suggest that the only way to understand Haewon is by invoking other Hong films — she and Seongjoon reconcile in the dream after both this encounter and her meeting with the old man, three presences that hearken back to past (and future) Hong films. But even that has its limits, especially because of their firm ensconcement inside the dream with no indication that the couple exists except in Hahaha and in Haewon’s imagination. Nobody’s Daughter Haewon ends with one of the most mysterious lines Hong has written: “Waking up, I realized he was the nice, old man from before.” Who “he” is and who the “nice, old man” is are left up the viewer to decide. The natural inclination is to assume that the former is Seongjoon — since the preceding scene was her reconciliation with him — and the latter is Joongwon, or perhaps Gi’s character, but what the statement actually means, in either a narrative, metaphoric, or even dream logic context, leaves the viewer hanging, and Haewon back where she started. Since this concludes with the dream sequence, the development or change in mindset afforded to other Hong protagonists, including Haewon herself with the Jane Birkin dream, is not granted. Instead, the thinking passes to the Hongians, who interpret all these little beats into something at least a little more legible and less mysterious. In that conversation between Joongsik and Yeonjoo, as they look at a flag, the latter observes that it allows them to see the wind, an observation the former reacts to with endearing amazement. Mid-period Hong, which is my favorite as well, can be said to operate in this same way: the reasons for these occurrences, for these romantic entanglements, for this structure, are fundamentally as difficult to truly understand as the wind is to see. What Hong offers is a means of giving a container to it, each experiment another daring way to witness how these elements, untethered from normal narrative methodology, collide with each other. Especially with the hazy canvas that Haewon provides, he finds more pathways in order to get closer to the truth of the situation. But that might be ascribing way too much overt purpose to a director so free in his own methodology. Evan, what do you think?

The Fabelmans First Draft

Complete first draft for In Review Online's best of 2022 feature.

For an oeuvre so relentlessly dedicated to (and associated with) a commercial cinema, full of thrills and cheers, Steven Spielberg’s fantastical and earthly worlds have always carried an undercurrent of pain. His latest film, The Fabelmans, a semi-autobiographical portrait of the artist as a young man, foregrounds this searing emotion across the two or three forces that have defined his mammoth shadow on the American film industry: his awe at the power of the moving image, his parents’ divorce, and his Jewish heritage. It’s certainly no mistake that The Fabelmans possesses only Spielberg’s fourth writing credit (shared with Tony Kushner), as his first three entries all rank among his most evidently personal and feed into their successor’s DNA: Close Encounters of the Third Kind, about a man who forsakes his family for a spectacular adventure; Poltergeist, concerning the spectral histories menacing a suburban home; and A.I. Artificial Intelligence, which brazenly mixes science-fiction fabulism with Oedipal reveries. A similar level of daring animates The Fabelmans, necessarily transforming what could be a nostalgic evocation of movie magic into something far knottier. Even something as simple as the trick that his stand-in Sammy Fabelman (an uncannily vivid Gabriel LaBelle) uses to simulate a grenade explosion is thrown into doubt by the discerning viewer, a question of whether the veteran director added a little something extra despite the air of amateurism. The opening scene, a recreation of Spielberg’s first experience in a movie theater — equal parts wonder and terror, more real than real — is followed by a scene of Sammy in bed, trying to calm himself with the dull thrum and green glow of an oscilloscope; much later, that sound and image will accompany the last moments of his grandmother, in sync with the pulse he can see in her veins immediately before she dies. Such privileged images and dramatically ironic touches help structure The Fabelmans, which could come across as neat were its gaze not so sprawling, were Spielberg not willing to dive down rabbit holes into his past (real or imagined). Case in point: two exhortations by near-mythic figures — in a film already dominated by Michelle Williams’s deliberately stylized performance as Sammy’s mercurial, otherworldly mother Mitzi — speak both in unison and at cross-purposes. Sammy’s lion tamer great-uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) stresses that the artist will be torn in two by art and family; John Ford (brilliantly embodied by David Lynch, in one of the greatest bits of stunt casting of the century) begins his abbreviated conversation with the budding director by exclaiming that the movie business will tear him in two. Two old hands, one justly described “the greatest film director who ever lived” (an appellation that movingly rings true for both the signifier and the signified) and the other a possibly real, possibly fictional perennial outsider; together they reach towards the balance of art and commerce that has provided Spielberg with some of his greatest successes and most vehement criticism. Boris’s warning becomes a test that gets applied to practically every scene to follow; Ford’s bitter reflection is left unaddressed but hangs in the air, even managing to render the jubilant ending and its sublime meta-joke with a slight foreboding, maybe even regret. Second-guessing and the unknown lie everywhere in The Fabelmans, so many little threads and insinuations that are ultimately unanswered. Burt Fabelman, as embodied by Paul Dano with ultimate poise, generosity, and sad fatalism as a counterbalance to Williams’s vivaciousness, is perhaps the most poignant figure of all. Sammy bases his greatest triumph, Escape to Nowhere, on his father’s war stories, something which the elder doesn’t comment on, instead choosing to throw himself headlong into his electronics and computers. In a relative paucity of screentime, Spielberg sketches out a storyline that comes within striking distance of The Magnificent Ambersons, capturing a genius ushering in the future which will have consequences both positive and negative. Sammy (and Spielberg) of course is no George Amberson Minafer, and there’s very little comeuppance that he deserves. But, despite the fact that Burt, not Mitzi, gets to bestow the final blessing on the genius in the making, it’s hard not to recall that his invention will one day help birth the systemic degradation of the industry his son has worked so hard to maintain. It is to The Fabelmans’s credit that such considerations are both text and subtext, that its ideas about creativity and the march of time are so hammered home amid an exhilarating and touching experience, that the most sobering and tragic ramifications appear only in hindsight, when looked upon from a distant vantage point. If that isn’t movie magic, what is?

Decade Top Tens 12/13/22

Films, Features, Mid-Lengths, Shorts

Ten Favorite Moving-Image Works

1. YI YI (Edward Yang)
2. MULHOLLAND DR. (David Lynch)
3. SANS SOLEIL (Chris Marker)
4. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (Orson Welles)
5. A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu)
6. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar-wai)
7. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang)
8. THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (Jacques Demy)
9. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton)
10. CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette)

2020s

1. DRIVE MY CAR (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
2. MEMORIA (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. WALK UP (Hong Sang-soo)
4. CAN'T GET YOU OUT OF MY HEAD: AN EMOTIONAL HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD (Adam Curtis)
5. PACIFICTION (Albert Serra)
6. THE NOVELIST'S FILM (Hong Sang-soo)
7. DAYS (Tsai Ming-liang)
8. THE WORKS AND DAYS (OF TAYOKO SHIOJIRI IN THE SHIOTANI BASIN) (C.W. Winter & Anders Edström)
9. WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY? (Alexandre Koberidze)
10. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)

2010s

1. LA FLOR (Mariano Llinás)
2. YOURSELF AND YOURS (Hong Sang-soo)
3. STRAY DOGS (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (David Lynch)
5. MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (Jia Zhangke)
6. MYSTERIES OF LISBON (Raúl Ruiz)
7. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (Abbas Kiarostami)
8. ASAKO I & II (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
9. THE DAY HE ARRIVES (Hong Sang-soo)
10. THE ASSASSIN (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

2000s

1. YI YI (Edward Yang)
2. MULHOLLAND DR. (David Lynch)
3. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar-wai)
4. GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. PLATFORM (Jia Zhangke)
6. CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (Ang Lee)
7. OXHIDE II (Liu Jiayin)
8. A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Steven Spielberg)
9. SPIRITED AWAY (Miyazaki Hayao)
10. SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

1990s

1. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang)
2. CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar-wai)
3. HEAT (Michael Mann)
4. THE HOLE (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. NEON GENESIS EVANGELION: "TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF." (Anno Hideaki)
6. COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY (Peter Chan)
7. TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (David Lynch)
8. TRUST (Hal Hartley)
9. MAHJONG (Edward Yang)
10. CLOSE-UP (Abbas Kiarostami)

1980s

1. SANS SOLEIL (Chris Marker)
2. L'ARGENT (Robert Bresson)
3. BLUE VELVET (David Lynch)
4. THE KILLER (John Woo)
5. A CITY OF SADNESS (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
6. BEIJING WATERMELON (Ōbayashi Nobuhiko)
7. PEKING OPERA BLUES (Tsui Hark)
8. PARIS, TEXAS (Wim Wenders)
9. MANHUNTER (Michael Mann)
10. STOP MAKING SENSE (Jonathan Demme)

1970s

1. A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu)
2. CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette)
3. OUT 1: NOLI ME TANGERE (Jacques Rivette)
4. THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (Jean Eustache)
5. PERCEVAL LE GALLOIS (Éric Rohmer)
6. FEMMES FEMMES (Paul Vecchiali)
7. INDIA SONG (Marguerite Duras)
8. ERASERHEAD (David Lynch)
9. (NOSTALGIA) (Hollis Frampton)
10. JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (Chantal Akerman)

1960s

1. THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (Jacques Demy)
2. LA JETÉE (Chris Marker)
3. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (Alain Resnais)
4. DRAGON INN (King Hu)
5. MURIEL, OR THE TIME OF RETURN (Alain Resnais)
6. GERTRUD (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
7. WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow)
8. HIGH AND LOW (Kurosawa Akira)
9. THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (Jacques Demy)
10. PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard)

1950s

1. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton)
2. VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock)
3. SEVEN SAMURAI (Kurosawa Akira)
4. DUCK AMUCK (Chuck Jones)
5. GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (Howard Hawks)
6. SANSHO THE BAILIFF (Mizoguchi Kenji)
7. RIO BRAVO (Howard Hawks)
8. A MAN ESCAPED (Robert Bresson)
9. TOKYO STORY (Ozu Yasujirō)
10. REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock)

1940s

1. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (Orson Welles)
2. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (Vincente Minnelli)
3. LATE SPRING (Ozu Yasujirō)
4. LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (Max Ophuls)
5. CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles)
6. HIS GIRL FRIDAY (Howard Hawks)
7. THE HEIRESS (William Wyler)
8. NOTORIOUS (Alfred Hitchcock)
9. SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN (Fei Mu)
10. THE BIG SLEEP (Howard Hawks)

1930s

1. ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (Howard Hawks)
2. THE RULES OF THE GAME (Jean Renoir)
3. THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (Fritz Lang)
4. RUGGLES OF RED GAP (Leo McCarey)
5. THE AWFUL TRUTH (Leo McCarey)
6. M (Fritz Lang)
7. SHANGHAI EXPRESS (Josef von Sternberg)
8. A DAY IN THE COUNTRY (Jean Renoir)
9. MOROCCO (Josef von Sternberg)
10. FURY (Fritz Lang)

1920s

1. SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (F.W. Murnau)
2. NAPOLÉON (Abel Gance)
3. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
4. SPIONE (Fritz Lang)
5. THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton)
6. GREED (Erich von Stroheim)
7. THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK (Josef von Sternberg)
8. DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (Fritz Lang)
9. SEVEN CHANCES (Buster Keaton)
10. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)

Pre-1920s

1. LES VAMPIRES (Louis Feuillade)
2. WORKERS LEAVING THE LUMIÈRE FACTORY IN LYON (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
3. TIH-MINH (Louis Feuillade)
4. FANTÔMAS (Louis Feuillade)
5. THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY (D.W. Griffith)
6. THE ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN AT LA CIOTAT STATION (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
7. THE SPRINKLER SPRINKLED (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
8. TUNNELING THE ENGLISH CHANNEL (Georges Méliès)
9. THE BLACK IMP (Georges Méliès)
10. A TRIP TO THE MOON (Georges Méliès)

---

Films Only

Ten Favorite Films

1. YI YI (Edward Yang)
2. MULHOLLAND DR. (David Lynch)
3. SANS SOLEIL (Chris Marker)
4. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (Orson Welles)
5. A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu)
6. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar-wai)
7. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang)
8. THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (Jacques Demy)
9. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton)
10. CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette)

2020s

1. DRIVE MY CAR (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
2. MEMORIA (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. WALK UP (Hong Sang-soo)
4. CAN'T GET YOU OUT OF MY HEAD: AN EMOTIONAL HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD (Adam Curtis)
5. PACIFICTION (Albert Serra)
6. THE NOVELIST'S FILM (Hong Sang-soo)
7. DAYS (Tsai Ming-liang)
8. THE WORKS AND DAYS (OF TAYOKO SHIOJIRI IN THE SHIOTANI BASIN) (C.W. Winter & Anders Edström)
9. WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY? (Alexandre Koberidze)
10. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)

2010s

1. LA FLOR (Mariano Llinás)
2. YOURSELF AND YOURS (Hong Sang-soo)
3. STRAY DOGS (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (David Lynch)
5. MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (Jia Zhangke)
6. MYSTERIES OF LISBON (Raúl Ruiz)
7. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (Abbas Kiarostami)
8. ASAKO I & II (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
9. THE DAY HE ARRIVES (Hong Sang-soo)
10. THE ASSASSIN (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

2000s

1. YI YI (Edward Yang)
2. MULHOLLAND DR. (David Lynch)
3. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar-wai)
4. GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. PLATFORM (Jia Zhangke)
6. CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (Ang Lee)
7. OXHIDE II (Liu Jiayin)
8. A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Steven Spielberg)
9. SPIRITED AWAY (Miyazaki Hayao)
10. SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

1990s

1. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang)
2. CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar-wai)
3. HEAT (Michael Mann)
4. THE HOLE (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY (Peter Chan)
6. TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (David Lynch)
7. TRUST (Hal Hartley)
8. MAHJONG (Edward Yang)
9. CLOSE-UP (Abbas Kiarostami)
10. DAYS OF BEING WILD (Wong Kar-wai)

1980s

1. SANS SOLEIL (Chris Marker)
2. L'ARGENT (Robert Bresson)
3. BLUE VELVET (David Lynch)
4. THE KILLER (John Woo)
5. A CITY OF SADNESS (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
6. BEIJING WATERMELON (Ōbayashi Nobuhiko)
7. PEKING OPERA BLUES (Tsui Hark)
8. PARIS, TEXAS (Wim Wenders)
9. MANHUNTER (Michael Mann)
10. STOP MAKING SENSE (Jonathan Demme)

1970s

1. A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu)
2. CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette)
3. OUT 1: NOLI ME TANGERE (Jacques Rivette)
4. THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (Jean Eustache)
5. PERCEVAL LE GALLOIS (Éric Rohmer)
6. FEMMES FEMMES (Paul Vecchiali)
7. INDIA SONG (Marguerite Duras)
8. ERASERHEAD (David Lynch)
9. (NOSTALGIA) (Hollis Frampton)
10. JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (Chantal Akerman)

1960s

1. THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (Jacques Demy)
2. LA JETÉE (Chris Marker)
3. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (Alain Resnais)
4. DRAGON INN (King Hu)
5. MURIEL, OR THE TIME OF RETURN (Alain Resnais)
6. GERTRUD (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
7. WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow)
8. HIGH AND LOW (Kurosawa Akira)
9. THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (Jacques Demy)
10. PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard)

1950s

1. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton)
2. VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock)
3. SEVEN SAMURAI (Kurosawa Akira)
4. DUCK AMUCK (Chuck Jones)
5. GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (Howard Hawks)
6. SANSHO THE BAILIFF (Mizoguchi Kenji)
7. RIO BRAVO (Howard Hawks)
8. A MAN ESCAPED (Robert Bresson)
9. TOKYO STORY (Ozu Yasujirō)
10. REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock)

1940s

1. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (Orson Welles)
2. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (Vincente Minnelli)
3. LATE SPRING (Ozu Yasujirō)
4. LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (Max Ophuls)
5. CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles)
6. HIS GIRL FRIDAY (Howard Hawks)
7. THE HEIRESS (William Wyler)
8. NOTORIOUS (Alfred Hitchcock)
9. SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN (Fei Mu)
10. THE BIG SLEEP (Howard Hawks)

1930s

1. ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (Howard Hawks)
2. THE RULES OF THE GAME (Jean Renoir)
3. THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (Fritz Lang)
4. RUGGLES OF RED GAP (Leo McCarey)
5. THE AWFUL TRUTH (Leo McCarey)
6. M (Fritz Lang)
7. SHANGHAI EXPRESS (Josef von Sternberg)
8. A DAY IN THE COUNTRY (Jean Renoir)
9. MOROCCO (Josef von Sternberg)
10. FURY (Fritz Lang)

1920s

1. SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (F.W. Murnau)
2. NAPOLÉON (Abel Gance)
3. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
4. SPIONE (Fritz Lang)
5. THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton)
6. GREED (Erich von Stroheim)
7. THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK (Josef von Sternberg)
8. DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (Fritz Lang)
9. SEVEN CHANCES (Buster Keaton)
10. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)

Pre-1920s

1. LES VAMPIRES (Louis Feuillade)
2. WORKERS LEAVING THE LUMIÈRE FACTORY IN LYON (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
3. TIH-MINH (Louis Feuillade)
4. FANTÔMAS (Louis Feuillade)
5. THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY (D.W. Griffith)
6. THE ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN AT LA CIOTAT STATION (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
7. THE SPRINKLER SPRINKLED (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
8. TUNNELING THE ENGLISH CHANNEL (Georges Méliès)
9. THE BLACK IMP (Georges Méliès)
10. A TRIP TO THE MOON (Georges Méliès)

---

Features Only

Ten Favorite Feature Films

1. YI YI (Edward Yang)
2. MULHOLLAND DR. (David Lynch)
3. SANS SOLEIL (Chris Marker)
4. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (Orson Welles)
5. A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu)
6. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar-wai)
7. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang)
8. THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (Jacques Demy)
9. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton)
10. CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette)

2020s

1. DRIVE MY CAR (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
2. MEMORIA (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. WALK UP (Hong Sang-soo)
4. CAN'T GET YOU OUT OF MY HEAD: AN EMOTIONAL HISTORY OF THE MODERN WORLD (Adam Curtis)
5. PACIFICTION (Albert Serra)
6. THE NOVELIST'S FILM (Hong Sang-soo)
7. DAYS (Tsai Ming-liang)
8. THE WORKS AND DAYS (OF TAYOKO SHIOJIRI IN THE SHIOTANI BASIN) (C.W. Winter & Anders Edström)
9. WHAT DO WE SEE WHEN WE LOOK AT THE SKY? (Alexandre Koberidze)
10. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)

2010s

1. LA FLOR (Mariano Llinás)
2. YOURSELF AND YOURS (Hong Sang-soo)
3. STRAY DOGS (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN (David Lynch)
5. MOUNTAINS MAY DEPART (Jia Zhangke)
6. MYSTERIES OF LISBON (Raúl Ruiz)
7. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (Abbas Kiarostami)
8. ASAKO I & II (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
9. THE DAY HE ARRIVES (Hong Sang-soo)
10. THE ASSASSIN (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

2000s

1. YI YI (Edward Yang)
2. MULHOLLAND DR. (David Lynch)
3. IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (Wong Kar-wai)
4. GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. PLATFORM (Jia Zhangke)
6. CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (Ang Lee)
7. OXHIDE II (Liu Jiayin)
8. A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Steven Spielberg)
9. SPIRITED AWAY (Miyazaki Hayao)
10. SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

1990s

1. A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (Edward Yang)
2. CHUNGKING EXPRESS (Wong Kar-wai)
3. HEAT (Michael Mann)
4. THE HOLE (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. COMRADES: ALMOST A LOVE STORY (Peter Chan)
6. TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (David Lynch)
7. TRUST (Hal Hartley)
8. MAHJONG (Edward Yang)
9. CLOSE-UP (Abbas Kiarostami)
10. DAYS OF BEING WILD (Wong Kar-wai)

1980s

1. SANS SOLEIL (Chris Marker)
2. L'ARGENT (Robert Bresson)
3. BLUE VELVET (David Lynch)
4. THE KILLER (John Woo)
5. A CITY OF SADNESS (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
6. BEIJING WATERMELON (Ōbayashi Nobuhiko)
7. PEKING OPERA BLUES (Tsui Hark)
8. PARIS, TEXAS (Wim Wenders)
9. MANHUNTER (Michael Mann)
10. STOP MAKING SENSE (Jonathan Demme)

1970s

1. A TOUCH OF ZEN (King Hu)
2. CÉLINE AND JULIE GO BOATING (Jacques Rivette)
3. OUT 1: NOLI ME TANGERE (Jacques Rivette)
4. THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (Jean Eustache)
5. PERCEVAL LE GALLOIS (Éric Rohmer)
6. FEMMES FEMMES (Paul Vecchiali)
7. INDIA SONG (Marguerite Duras)
8. ERASERHEAD (David Lynch)
9. JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES (Chantal Akerman)
10. DIRTY HO (Lau Kar-leung)

1960s

1. THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT (Jacques Demy)
2. LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD (Alain Resnais)
3. DRAGON INN (King Hu)
4. MURIEL, OR THE TIME OF RETURN (Alain Resnais)
5. GERTRUD (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
6. WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow)
7. HIGH AND LOW (Kurosawa Akira)
8. THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (Jacques Demy)
9. PIERROT LE FOU (Jean-Luc Godard)
10. THE LOVE ETERNE (Li Han-hsiang)

1950s

1. THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton)
2. VERTIGO (Alfred Hitchcock)
3. SEVEN SAMURAI (Kurosawa Akira)
4. GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES (Howard Hawks)
5. SANSHO THE BAILIFF (Mizoguchi Kenji)
6. RIO BRAVO (Howard Hawks)
7. TOKYO STORY (Ozu Yasujirō)
8. REAR WINDOW (Alfred Hitchcock)
9. A STAR IS BORN (George Cukor)
10. PYAASA (Guru Dutt)

1940s

1. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (Orson Welles)
2. MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (Vincente Minnelli)
3. LATE SPRING (Ozu Yasujirō)
4. LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN (Max Ophuls)
5. CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles)
6. HIS GIRL FRIDAY (Howard Hawks)
7. THE HEIRESS (William Wyler)
8. NOTORIOUS (Alfred Hitchcock)
9. SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN (Fei Mu)
10. THE BIG SLEEP (Howard Hawks)

1930s

1. ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (Howard Hawks)
2. THE RULES OF THE GAME (Jean Renoir)
3. THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (Fritz Lang)
4. RUGGLES OF RED GAP (Leo McCarey)
5. THE AWFUL TRUTH (Leo McCarey)
6. M (Fritz Lang)
7. SHANGHAI EXPRESS (Josef von Sternberg)
8. A DAY IN THE COUNTRY (Jean Renoir)
9. MOROCCO (Josef von Sternberg)
10. FURY (Fritz Lang)

1920s

1. SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (F.W. Murnau)
2. NAPOLÉON (Abel Gance)
3. THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
4. SPIONE (Fritz Lang)
5. THE GENERAL (Buster Keaton)
6. GREED (Erich von Stroheim)
7. THE DOCKS OF NEW YORK (Josef von Sternberg)
8. DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (Fritz Lang)
9. SEVEN CHANCES (Buster Keaton)
10. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)

Pre-1920s

1. LES VAMPIRES (Louis Feuillade)
2. TIH-MINH (Louis Feuillade)
3. FANTÔMAS (Louis Feuillade)
4. THE BIRTH OF A NATION (D.W. Griffith)

---

Mid-Lengths Only

Ten Favorite Mid-Length Films

1. WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow)
2. (NOSTALGIA) (Hollis Frampton)
3. NIGHT AND FOG (Alain Resnais)
4. ZORNS LEMMA (Michael Snow)
5. GRASS (Hong Sang-soo)
6. SURVIVING DESIRE (Hal Hartley)
7. SEVEN CHANCES (Buster Keaton)
8. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)
9. HILL OF FREEDOM (Hong Sang-soo)
10. IT FELT LIKE A KISS (Adam Curtis)

2020s

1. SECTION 1 (Jon Bois)
2. EARTHEARTHEARTH (Saïto Daïchi)
3. INTRODUCTION (Hong Sang-soo)
4. EVENTIDE (Sharon Lockhart)
5. THERE ARE NOT THIRTY-SIX WAYS OF SHOWING A MAN GETTING ON A HORSE. (Nicolás Zukerfeld)
6. EDUCATION (Steve McQueen)
7. FIRST TIME [THE TIME FOR ALL BUT SUNSET – VIOLET] (Nicolaas Schmidt)
8. RAMPART (Marko Grba Singh)
9. WILL-O'-THE-WISP (João Pedro Rodrigues)
10. ALEX WHEATLE (Steve McQueen)

2010s

1. GRASS (Hong Sang-soo)
2. HILL OF FREEDOM (Hong Sang-soo)
3. THE PRINCESS OF FRANCE (Matías Piñeiro)
4. NO NO SLEEP (Tsai Ming-liang)
5. ARAGANE (Oda Kaori)
6. CLAIRE'S CAMERA (Hong Sang-soo)
7. THE GRAND BIZARRE (Jodie Mack)
8. JOURNEY TO THE WEST (Tsai Ming-liang)
9. A WORLD WITHOUT WOMEN (Guillaume Brac)
10. CLASSICAL PERIOD (Ted Fendt)

2000s

1. IT FELT LIKE A KISS (Adam Curtis)
2. THE HAND (Wong Kar-wai)
3. DISORDER (Huang Weikai)
4. THROUGH THE FOREST (Jean-Paul Civeyrac)
5. L'IDIOT (Pierre Léon)
6. LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS (Hong Sang-soo)
7. PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND (John Gianvito)
8. LOOKING FOR TSAI (Patrik Eriksson & Erik Hemmendorff)
9. PETITE CONVERSATION FAMILIALE (Hélène Lapiower)
10. DONG (Jia Zhangke)

1990s

1. SURVIVING DESIRE (Hal Hartley)
2. U.S. GO HOME (Claire Denis)
3. LA VIE DES MORTS (Arnaud Desplechin)
4. THE MAMMALS OF VICTORIA (Stan Brakhage)
5. NITRATE KISSES (Barbara Hammer)
6. XIAO SHAN GOING HOME (Jia Zhangke)

1980s

1. STANDARD GAUGE (Morgan Fisher)
2. CONTACT (Alan Clarke)
3. LES SIÈGES DE L'ALCAZAR (Luc Moullet)
4. AMERICAN DREAMS (LOST AND FOUND) (James Benning)

1970s

1. (NOSTALGIA) (Hollis Frampton)
2. ZORNS LEMMA (Hollis Frampton)
3. THE HYPOTHESIS OF THE STOLEN PAINTING (Raúl Ruiz)
4. THE BENCH OF DESOLATION (Claude Chabrol)
5. POETIC JUSTICE (Hollis Frampton)
6. BERNICE BOBS HER HAIR (Joan Micklin Silver)
7. ITALIANAMERICAN (Martin Scorsese)
8. FROM THESE ROOTS (William Greaves)
9. LIZA WITH A Z (Bob Fosse)
10. THE INNER SCAR (Philippe Garrel)

1960s

1. WAVELENGTH (Michael Snow)
2. THE IMMORTAL STORY (Orson Welles)
3. NOT RECONCILED (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
4. BLACK GIRL (Ousmane Sembène)
5. THE WAR GAME (Peter Watkins)
6. SIMON OF THE DESERT (Luis Buñuel)
7. THE KOUMIKO MYSTERY (Chris Marker)
8. THE BRIG (Jonas Mekas)
9. THE TRIAL OF JOAN OF ARC (Robert Bresson)
10. PASAZERKA (Andrzej Munk)

1950s

1. NIGHT AND FOG (Alain Resnais)
2. STATUES ALSO DIE (Alain Resnais & Chris Marker & Ghislain Cloquet)
3. UNE SIMPLE HISTOIRE (Marcel Hanoun)

1940s

1. I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (Jacques Tourneur)
2. DETOUR (Edgar G. Ulmer)
3. THE LEOPARD MAN (Jacques Tourneur)

1930s

1. A DAY IN THE COUNTRY (Jean Renoir)
2. THE MASK OF FU MANCHU (Charles Brabin)

1920s

1. SEVEN CHANCES (Buster Keaton)
2. MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (Dziga Vertov)
3. SHERLOCK JR. (Buster Keaton)
4. THE SEASHELL AND THE CLERGYMAN (Germaine Dulac)
5. MÉNILMONTANT (Dimitri Kirshoff)

---

Shorts Only

Ten Favorite Short Films

1. LA JETÉE (Chris Marker)
2. DUCK AMUCK (Chuck Jones)
3. WORKERS LEAVING THE LUMIÈRE FACTORY IN LYON (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
4. (NOSTALGIA) (Hollis Frampton)
5. ALL MY LIFE (Bruce Baillie)
6. NIGHT AND FOG (Alain Resnais)
7. OUTER SPACE (Peter Tscherkassky)
8. THE HOUSE IS BLACK (Forough Farrokhzad)
9. MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid)
10. THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY (D.W. Griffith)

2010s

1. NO NO SLEEP (Tsai Ming-liang)
2. ENGRAM OF RETURNING (Saïto Daïchi)
3. ARBORETUM CYCLE (Nathaniel Dorsky)
4. TRANSFORMERS: THE PREMAKE (Kevin B. Lee)
5. LIST (Hong Sang-soo)
6. SHAKTI (Martín Rejtman)
7. THE HEDONISTS (Jia Zhangke)
8. REDEMPTION (Miguel Gomes)
9. LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE (Jodie Mack)
10. NIGHT WITHOUT DISTANCE (Lois Patiño)

2000s

1. THE HEART OF THE WORLD (Guy Maddin)
2. TREES OF SYNTAX, LEAVES OF AXIS (Saïto Daïchi)
3. ORIGINS OF THE 21ST CENTURY (Jean-Luc Godard)
4. THE FOLLOW (Wong Kar-wai)
5. THE SKYWALK IS GONE (Tsai Ming-liang)
6. LOST IN THE MOUNTAINS (Hong Sang-soo)
7. ( ) (Morgan Fisher)
8. CRY ME A RIVER (Jia Zhangke)
9. TEXTISM (Hirabayashi Isamu)
10. GREEN FUSE (Saïto Daïchi)

1990s

1. OUTER SPACE (Peter Tscherkassky)
2. JE VOUS SALUE, SARAJEVO (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. PREMONITIONS FOLLOWING AN EVIL DEED (David Lynch)
4. WHEN IT RAINS (Charles Burnett)
5. AMBITION (Hal Hartley)
6. BLACK ICE (Stan Brakhage)
7. AM MEER (Ute Aurand)
8. THE MAMMALS OF VICTORIA (Stan Brakhage)
9. THEORY OF ACHIEVEMENT (Hal Hartley)
10. JOY STREET (Suzan Pitt)

1980s

1. STANDARD GAUGE (Morgan Fisher)
2. NIGHT MUSIC (Stan Brakhage)
3. EXPECTATIONS (Edward Yang)
4. ORDERLY OR DISORDERLY (Abbas Kiarostami)
5. CAT LISTENING TO MUSIC (Chris Marker)
6. EIN BILD (Harun Farocki)
7. THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS (Stan Brakhage)
8. THE BIRTH OF MAGELLAN I: CADENZA I (Hollis Frampton)
9. EN RACHÂCHANT (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
10. NEW YORK STORY (Jackie Raynal)

1970s

1. (NOSTALGIA) (Hollis Frampton)
2. SERENE VELOCITY (Ernie Gehr)
3. POETIC JUSTICE (Hollis Frampton)
4. ASPARAGUS (Suzan Pitt)
5. CRITICAL MASS (Hollis Frampton)
6. ASSOCIATIONS (John Smith)
7. INTRODUCTION TO ARNOLD SCHOENBERG'S "ACCOMPANIMENT TO A CINEMATOGRAPHIC SCENE" (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
8. PROJECTION INSTRUCTIONS (Morgan Fisher)
9. LA SOUFRIÈRE (Werner Herzog)
10. WONG SINSAANG (Eddie Wong)

1960s

1. LA JETÉE (Chris Marker)
2. ALL MY LIFE (Bruce Baillie)
3. THE HOUSE IS BLACK (Forough Farrokhzad)
4. MOTHLIGHT (Stan Brakhage)
5. ALLURES (Jordan Belson)
6. DOG STAR MAN (Stan Brakhage)
7. ARNULF RAINER (Peter Kubelka)
8. COSMIC RAY (Bruce Conner)
9. THE NAIL CLIPPERS (Jean-Claude Carriére)
10. CASTRO STREET (Bruce Baillie)

1950s

1. DUCK AMUCK (Chuck Jones)
2. NIGHT AND FOG (Alain Resnais)
3. LE CHANT DU STYRÈNE (Alain Resnais)
4. DUCK DODGERS IN THE 24½TH CENTURY (Chuck Jones)
5. RABBIT SEASONING (Chuck Jones)
6. A MOVIE (Bruce Conner)
7. RABBIT OF SEVILLE (Chuck Jones)
8. PESCHERECCI (Vittorio De Seta)
9. SURFARARA (Vittorio De Seta)
10. OPERATION: RABBIT (Chuck Jones)

1940s

1. MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid)
2. FIREWORKS (Kenneth Anger)
3. RADIO DYNAMICS (Oskar Fischinger)

1930s

1. ROSE HOBART (Joseph Cornell)

1920s

1. UN CHIEN ANDALOU (Luis Buñuel)
2. RAIN (Joris Ivens & Mannus Franken)
3. MÉNILMONTANT (Dimitri Kirshoff)
4. BALLET MÉCHANIQUE (Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy)
5. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413, A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapich)
6. LIBERTY (Leo McCarey)
7. RECORD 957 (Germaine Dulac)
8. BRUMES D'AUTOMNE (Dimitri Kirshoff)
9. TOKYO MARCH (Kenji Mizoguchi)

Pre-1920s

1. WORKERS LEAVING THE LUMIÈRE FACTORY IN LYON (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
2. THE MUSKETEERS OF PIG ALLEY (D.W. Griffith)
3. THE ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN AT LA CIOTAT STATION (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
4. THE SPRINKLER SPRINKLED (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
5. TUNNELING THE ENGLISH CHANNEL (Georges Méliès)
6. THE BLACK IMP (Georges Méliès)
7. A TRIP TO THE MOON (Georges Méliès)
8. THE BABY’S MEAL (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
9. BOAT LEAVING THE PORT (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
10. THE UNCHANGING SEA (D.W. Griffith)

Top 100 12/13/22

The original incarnation of this list, which is now updated regularly, can be found here.

A text-only version of this list can be found here.

100. Paris, Texas (1984, Wim Wenders)

99. Sparrow (2008, Johnnie To)

98. The Rocking Horsemen (1992, Ōbayashi Nobuhiko)

97. A New Leaf (1971, Elaine May)

96. Cure (1997, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)

95. The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007, Adam Curtis)

94. Drive My Car (2021, Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)

93. Dirty Ho (1979, Lau Kar-leung)

92. All My Life (1966, Bruce Baillie)

91. Yearning (1964, Naruse Mikio)

90. Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)

89. Peking Opera Blues (1986, Tsui Hark)

88. The End of Evangelion (1997, Anno Hideaki)

87. Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975, Chantal Akerman)

86. The Day He Arrives (2011, Hong Sang-soo)

85. Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003, Thom Andersen)

84. Spione (1928, Fritz Lang)

83. Miami Vice (2006, Michael Mann)

82. The Love Eterne (1963, Li Han-hsiang)

81. Asako I & II (2018, Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)

80. Like Someone in Love (2012, Abbas Kiarostami)

79. Syndromes and a Century (2006, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

78. Ashes of Time (1994, Wong Kar-wai)

77. Pierrot le fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard)

76. Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)

75. The Heiress (1949, William Wyler)

74. Spirited Away (2001, Miyazaki Hayao)

73. Days of Being Wild (1990, Wong Kar-wai)

72. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964, Jacques Demy)

71. His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)

70. Close-Up (1990, Abbas Kiarostami)

69. Shanghai Express (1932, Josef von Sternberg)

68. Tokyo Story (1953, Ozu Yasujirō)

67. Beijing Watermelon (1989, Ōbayashi Nobuhiko)

66. (nostalgia) (1971, Hollis Frampton)

65. A City of Sadness (1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien)

64. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Spielberg)

63. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)

62. M (1931, Fritz Lang)

61. Mahjong (1996, Edward Yang)

60. The Awful Truth (1937, Leo McCarey)

59. Mysteries of Lisbon (2010, Raúl Ruiz)

58. Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch)

57. Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch)

56. High and Low (1963, Kurosawa Akira)

55. Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)

54. Oxhide II (2009, Liu Jiayin)

53. India Song (1975, Marguerite Duras)

52. Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)

51. Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow)

50. Trust (1990, Hal Hartley)

49. Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Mizoguchi Kenji)

48. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992, David Lynch)

47. Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996, Peter Chan)

46. Napoléon (1927, Abel Gance)

45. Mountains May Depart (2015, Jia Zhangke)

44. Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948, Max Ophuls)

43. Neon Genesis Evangelion: Take care of yourself. (1996, Anno Hideaki)

42. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, F.W. Murnau)

41. Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (1895, Louis & Auguste Lumière)

40. Gertrud (1964, Carl Theodor Dreyer)

39. Femmes Femmes (1974, Paul Vecchiali)

38. The Hole (1998, Tsai Ming-liang)

37. Les Vampires (1915, Louis Feuillade)

36. Heat (1995, Michael Mann)

35. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953, Howard Hawks)

34. Muriel, or the Time of Return (1963, Alain Resnais)

33. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933, Fritz Lang)

32. Twin Peaks: The Return (2017, David Lynch)

31. Ruggles of Red Gap (1935, Leo McCarey)

30. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Ang Lee)

29. Perceval le Gallois (1978, Éric Rohmer)

28. The Mother and the Whore (1973, Jean Eustache)

27. Stray Dogs (2013, Tsai Ming-liang)

26. Duck Amuck (1953, Chuck Jones)

25. Late Spring (1949, Ozu Yasujirō)

24. Dragon Inn (1966, King Hu)

23. Yourself and Yours (2016, Hong Sang-soo)

22. Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke)

21. Chungking Express (1994, Wong Kar-wai)

20. Last Year at Marienbad (1961, Alain Resnais)

19. La Flor (2018, Mariano Llinás)

18. The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)

17. La jetée (1962, Chris Marker)

16. Out 1: Noli me tangere (1971, Jacques Rivette)

15. Only Angels Have Wings (1939, Howard Hawks)

14. Seven Samurai (1954, Kurosawa Akira)

13. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)

12. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003, Tsai Ming-liang)

11. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

10. Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)

9. The Night of the Hunter (1954, Charles Laughton)

8. The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967, Jacques Demy)

7. A Brighter Summer Day (1991, Edward Yang)

6. In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)

5. A Touch of Zen (1971, King Hu)

4. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)

3. Sans soleil (1983, Chris Marker)

2. Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch)

1. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)