I had a quick look to see if I'd answered this question before on PC and, lo and behold,
I had! Rather foolishly, I said in that post that my top 10 "is probably going to remain consistent for a long time". Suffice to say that my current top 10, only two years later, is only 50% the same as the old one! Some of the differences result from new films I've seen in the intervening period, other films dropped off through a re-evaluation of my tastes and just watching them with a fresh set of eyes. I'm not going to say that this list below will be set in stone forever, because I see new and old films all the time and there's always a hidden masterpiece that's waiting to be seen/rediscovered, and my taste is constantly shaping and evolving, but it's a good estimate of where I'm at at the moment. Anyhoo, and without further ado, in reverse order:
10) A Brighter Summer Day (1991), dir. Edward Yang
At 3 hours 57 minutes, this is the longest film on this list by far, and also the hardest to find a good copy of (come on Criterion restoration!) As such, I was very lucky when it screened in London last year. (Indeed, it's one of only two films on this list that I've seen for the first time in a cinema, and this film truly deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible.) A novelistic portrayal of a Taiwanese family during the tumultuous 1960s,
ABSD contains everything! (Although, at four hours, one would expect as much.) Even though they're nothing alike in plot, the cultural property it reminds me the most of is
The Wire... if
The Wire were about Taiwanese child street gangs and love triangles and teenage romance. But they both contains the same thematic density and level of characterisations and sheer empathy for their respective situations, that the comparison isn't as glib as one might assume.
9) Cries and Whispers (1972), dir. Ingmar Bergman
In a twist from the last list, this might not be the bleakest film on here any more! This tale of Swedish sisterly love and hatred features Ingmar Bergman's trademark pessimism and some of the most astonishing cinematography of that, or any, era. Possible the most emotionally draining film ever, give or take #6.
8) The Shining (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick
The last list had
Dr. Strangelove, and I still love it to pieces, but I've realised that I think about
The Shining on a much more frequent basis. The only horror film to have truly scared me to the point of nightmares, it's a marvel in that, unlike traditional jump-scare horror, it tells you well in advance exactly what it's going to do, and yet you're still terrified. I've only seen it once, but so much of it has been seared into my retinas that I feel that it's always been a part of me. Much like the Overlook to Jack Torrance!
7) Psycho (1960), dir. Alfred Hitchcock
Mistakenly categorised as a horror, when it's rather a brilliant double-character study/thriller,
Psycho is Hitchcock's best by a country mile. It ratchets up the tension from the word go and never lets up for the entire run-time. The shower scene is, of course, magnificent, but everything that comes before and after it is just a joy to watch. And listen to! It contains possibly my favourite film score.
6) Night and Fog (1955), dir. Alan Resnais
Takes the crown away from
Cries and Whispers as most harrowing/depressing film on this list. Given that it's a Holocaust documentary, however, it makes sense. Made only 10 years after the end of WWII, its revelations about Nazi concentration camps told in only 40 minutes are still powerful and draining and harrowing all these years later. By no means an easy watch, nevertheless, I truly believe that it should be shown to as many people as possible.
5) Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), dir. F.W. Murnau
A silent film made just as talkies were becoming more popular,
Sunrise is the epitome of what cinema can do as a medium. It has pretty much everything you'd want in a film: laughs, tension, attempted murder, a psychedelic carnival, heartbreak, love, adultery, a shipping disaster… everything! And it's amazing how all of the special effects in 1927 hold up to this day.
4) WALL-E (2008), dir. Andrew Stanton
The only one of these films that I've seen in its first run in a cinema and instantly fallen head-over-heels in love with. To my money, it's the best romance, the best animation, the best sci-fi, and the best adventure film all rolled into one. Disney films don't make me cry, but this one has definitely come the closest. Every time I watch it I smile, laugh, gasp; it's just that good.
3) Fargo (1996), dir. Joel and Ethan Coen
Featuring the most fully-realised characters and setting that I can recall,
Fargo is the Coen brothers' masterwork. Contrasting small-town folksy humour with the pitch-black world of undercover crime, and mixing it all together with shitloads of snow and blood, it's a deliciously dark thriller which is shot, edited and acted with such precision that I wouldn't change a single thing about it.
2) High and Low (1963), dir. Akira Kurosawa
I'm not a big Kurosawa fan, on the whole.
Seven Samurai does very little for me; ditto
Rashomon. I actively dislike
Ikiru and
Kagemusha. I was about to write him off when I thought I'd give him one last chance. The result: a blistering chamber drama about ethics and morality; one of the most tense and high-speed sequences ever recorded on film; an intelligent and meditative police procedural; and a final segment that has to be seen to be believed. Any one of these elements would elevate
High and Low into the cinematic pantheon, but the fact that all four are present and cohere into of the most formally astonishing, breathtakingly paced and flat-out awesome films ever made is a testament to the 'greatness' of Kurosawa that I'd heretofore missed.
1) Dog Day Afternoon (1975), dir. Sidney Lumet
I liked
DDA a lot the first time I saw it. It didn't have the immediate 'holy fucking shit this film is incredible' reaction that I experienced after watching
Network, my previous 'best film of all time' (also directed by Sidney Lumet), but I liked it a lot. It was upon a second and third viewing that its brilliance becomes apparent. More than any other film in this list - or, quite frankly, more than any other film I've seen! - the characters and stories and settings and feelings and emotions and images don't feel like they've been written or directed or constructed. They just
are. I feel like the characters weren't 'acted' and their motivations weren't 'written' in advance; I feel like they're real people that just happened to be caught up in a bank robbery in 1975! I don't know how much sense that makes, but given that film-making is such a tremendous effort involving so many moving parts and pieces and people, making a narrative film that just
is (as opposed to filming a documentary which, even then, needs to make narrative/editing decisions about what to keep and what not to bring to the final film) is an incredibly satisfying thing to watch. Cinema shouldn't necessarily only be about hyperrealism and there are wonderful films that have been art directed to the hilt and ones where the situations are nothing like real life but resonate with us anyway. That being said, when you're watching something like
DDA, you just get completely transported into its world for two hours. A world that is like our own but not. Hopefully you come out the other side feeling something, experiencing something different from the norm. And that doesn't happen by accident; that's the power of cinema.
Oh, and the plot is that Al Pacino and friends rob a bank and things go very wrong, very quickly. Probably should have mentioned that rather than going on about the 'power of cinema' and other pretentious claptrap that normally sends me out in hives.
You can click the titles to bring up their IMDb pages: I'd definitely recommend all of them but appreciate that some of them may not be to everyone's tastes! Nipping at these films' heels in my affection are the films missing from the previous list, as well as
Nashville,
Imitation of Life,
PlayTime,
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,
Viridiana and
Once Upon a Time in the West.
