ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

I feel like making one of these threads. Maybe it's an ego thing! Maybe I want to create some content as I haven't done much on this site for a while. Anyway, I'm going to start my list of my top 25 films of all time. This list keeps changing and with each amazing film I watch it evolves into an updated list, which was last updated just this week.

I'll update it as and when I get round to it I expect.



25. The Conformist
24. Rome Open City
23. Le Trou
22. In the Mood for Love
21. Vertigo
20. Woman in the Dunes
19. Raging Bull
18. Nosferatu
17. Werckmeister Harmonies
16. Casablanca
15. Sansho Dayu
14. Stalker
13. Night of the Hunter
12. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
11. A Moment of Innocence
10. Three Colours Blue
9. 12 Angry Men
8. I am Cuba
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey
6. The Passion of Joan of Arc
5. Seven Samurai
4. Citizen Kane
3. Persona

What I wrote at the time:

Haven’t changed my opinion on this film. It’s the best from Bertolucci that I’ve seen. Mesmerising.

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

Cinematography aside, I was left cold by The Conformist, but I wouldn't mind revisiting it in the future.

Well, that's a huge aside as visuals are one of the most important parts of a film.

I can see why it may leave a viewer cold. It's essentially a film about treachery and bad traits. But I don't really let that bother me. I was just stunned by it's beauty and Jean-Louis Trintignant was so good. Come to think of it he's sublime in everything I've seen him in.

For what it's worth, I watched it a handful of years ago when I was still in my "story above all else" phase, so I imagine it would fare better with a rewatch. In regards to visuals, I think what I mainly value is what a film makes me feel. And visuals can certainly contribute to a film's feel, but it's not the only element which matters to me. Rather, I take several factors into account. For instance, I felt the recent Doctor Strange film had great visuals when I saw it in the theaters, but I still found the movie incredibly dull and boring.

The Conformist was a 10/10 for me when I watched it a while ago. Absolutely first-rate, and a very thoughtful and intelligent film. The kind you keep seeing more and more in on subsequent watches - many layers and lots of meaning.

Well, yeah. It's about conformism (duh) and it's still relevant (always will be) because conformists will always be around us.
Cool beans. Good to see you grew out of your "story above all else" phase.

The story is hardly an “aside” to a film, and arguably just as important as the visuals.
Wouldn’t you agree? Or do you feel the visuals should be placed above all else?

Depends on the movie and what the filmmaker set out to do.

I can agree with that, on a case by case basis. Or a film by film basis, as it were.

No. 24: 'Rome, Open City' (1945)

Directed by Roberto Rossellini

I was highly enthused when I watched this 3 years ago:

The abandonment scene is especially devastating. I have Rosellini's 'Post War Trilogy' on Blu Ray and while 'Paisan' and 'Germany Year Zero' are both very good films, 'Rome, Open City' is just that bit more emotive, raw and devastating. Truly brilliant film.

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

His post-war trilogy is definitely great. As much as I love Rome, Open City though, I'd probably give a slight edge to Paisan. However, as for anthologies in general, Soy Cuba remains the high water mark.

Yeah I can't think of a better anthology film than Soy Cuba either.

I only watched this a few weeks ago, so I'm hoping it is not here due to recency bias, but I was rather blown away by it. This is how I reviewed it:

Genuinely brilliant, gripping film.

Le Trou is really great.

No. 22: 'In the Mood for Love' (2000)

Directed by Wong Kar Wai.

Christopher Doyle's shimmering cinematography elevates this dreamy rainy nightscape of a film to amazing heights. It's one of the best this century and combines the framing of Ozu with the close ups and intimacy of Resnais' 'Hiroshima, mon Amour'. The melancholy nature of the story and pace somehow makes the film better. Stunning film.

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

I felt the same about The Conformist as SpelingError. I was mesmerized by the technical achievements, but overall, felt pretty disconnected to the rest of the film.

In the Mood for Love is a classic film.

ITMFL also has a great score


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1w4qnfux-o

This is the only one I’ve seen & enjoyed in your list so far.

Not much more can be written about this film that hasn't already, but I'll try. Hitchcock didn't invent any new genres but he sure came close. ‘North by Northwest’ gave a ready made template to the James Bond style action flick, and ‘Vertigo’ pushed the psychological drama genre yet further on. Jimmy Stewart intoxicated by the beautiful Kim Novak is something I can watch at any time. And it’s a film that has this mysterious eerie quality to it. The inspiration/homage that Vertigo oozes can still be seen today in films like ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ (Bi Gan) and ‘Suzhou River’ (Lou Ye) - both interms of style / colour scheme and in terms of the duality of a character (leading lady).

This is a great article on how Vertigo shaped the career of David Lynch:


https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/davi...tigo-influence


With stunning colours, outfits, and San Francisco almost playing a character itself, it’s a film that goes up and down my best of all time list. Sometimes it’s in my top 20, sometimes not. But it’s always close.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/c...RMXPRC/Vertigo

.................................................................................................... ......................................................................................


‘Woman in the Dunes’ is a masterpiece of cinema. The cinematography is amongst the most alluring and inventive of the 60s and it’s subject isn’t a million miles away from Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The tagline reads:

“An entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shovelling sand for them.”

This is what I had to say about it when I watched it for the first time a few years back:

I’m not entirely sure that is accurate but it’s a film that stays long in the memory

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

Vertigo is my favorite so far. I don't think it was in my last top 100 but it was close and has been in previous versions.

No. 19: ‘Raging Bull' (1980)

Directed by Martin Scorsese

For years I had considered Scorsese’s best films as Goodfellas, Casino etc. Then I was compelled to rewatch Raging Bull again. Whilst watching it, I was struck by how sincere and jaw dropping the performances are. This is de Niro’s best performance, nothing he has done comes close. Likewise Joe Pesci. I don’t normally go for biopic type films as they leave little room for true film-making creativity, but this is an exception because it’s an exceptional film. Scorsese’s best.

No. 18: ‘Nosferatu’ (1922)

Directed by F.W. Murnau

I didn’t have much to say about this film on first watch:

But it hasn’t left me since I watched it, and really has some striking visuals for a 101 year old film. It's creepy, bizarre and captivating. I can only imagine how audiences reacted all those years ago. In 1924, the German studio behind the film agreed to destroy all copies of Nosferatu, as part of a copyright infringement case pursued by Florence Balcombe, the widow of the Dracula author Bram Stoker. Murnau had changed the character's names to try and avoid a lawsuit, but it failed and he was sued. Fortunately, some copies in other countries still survived.

I haven’t seen Herzog’s remake yet but will be interesting to compare. The original is a true landmark in horror film.

Seeing Woman in the Dunes for the first time really had me excited - and it stormed into the upper ranks of my "best ever" rankings. I've been curious about Hiroshi Teshigahara's career ever since.

Without a doubt one of the greatest European films ever made. I was stunned when I forst watched it a few years back and had this to say:

A masterpiece.


Every scene in this film is perfect. Every cast member is perfect. The ending is perfect. It's probably a 10 out of 10 film and could be way higher. It was the film that got me interesed in film. Before I watched this as a youngster I'd wondered why people watched old movies when there were new more colourful films to watch. Such naivety.

It remains on of the finest classic films ever made.

The greatest film ever made IMO, though I appreciate your high praise for it nevertheless.
Basically what makes a film a masterpiece.
Yeah, this scene is so powerful it actually turned me into a cinephile overnight. I started watching other art movies because I wanted to find something that will make me feel just like that scene. I never found anything exactly like it. But on my journey, I found thousands of other amazing movies. You know what they say, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.
I do agree with the latter part but would you mind elaborating on what you mean by Tarkovsky-like values? Do you mean the general idea of sculpting in time? It's quite ambiguous and general these days, as people are happy to jump at any slow-moving film and call it Tarkovskian. But it's not as simple as that, I think. I think that there's a sort of philosophical and spiritual unity in Tarkovsky's movies that was rarely ever recreated. And, in all honesty, you can't really do that if you don't want to be called a Tarkovsky rip-off. Zvyagintsev's The Banishment is the closest to a Tarkovsky film anybody's ever got, and I call that film a Tarkovsky rip-off myself, even though I love it! Tarr, on the other hand, appears much more nihilistic than Tarkovsky. I think his idea of the world is that it's full of pain and suffering AND that there's nothing like God to redeem it. He still isn't 100% without hope, though because, as he said himself, if he was, he wouldn't be making films. Sure, he no longer is, but I think that's because he's pissed about the filmmaking principles of these days, about money, and all that jazz.
Yeah, there are many interpretations of Harmonies, but I think that, just like with Tarkovsky, Tarr never uses symbols. The basic idea is that a symbol means a particular thing. Once decrypted, it loses its power, as in "x" means poverty, "y" means "the main character", so "x*y" means the character's poverty. Done. I think that in that way filling your film with symbols is a pretty bad way of filmmaking.
I love how pragmatic Tarr is about the meaning of particular scenes. The interviewer asked him why the crowd stops after seeing the naked old man. Tarr's answer was that it was because there was a wall behind the old man, so they had nowhere else to go and had to return.
Well, the question here is: "Is it really out of tune?" or are other temperaments out of tune? The idea of the eponymous Werckmeister Harmonies is to have an equal temperament by making sure the intervals between all notes are just. I think Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier uses that idea, too. I'm not sure if it uses Werckmeister's mathematical temperament or some other equal temperament, though. And yes, it's quite ambiguous and unclear what the meaning of the Harmonies is in the context of the film. But it's hard to think about all that when you have these incredible images coupled with beautiful music. This is the kind of movie that hypnotizes me from the first minute and doesn't let go until the ending credits roll. As for its exact meaning? Maybe some things are better left as a mystery.

I find the same location bleakness in Tarr's films as I do in Stalker and The Mirror. Maybe Nostalghia too. The Turin Horse is probably more Tarkovskian in this respect than W Harmonies, but the sense of Isolation the characters are experiencing is exactly the feeling I get from many Tarkovsky films. The early bar shots are identical almost to the early shots in Stalker. Maybe I should have said tone./images and not values.

I loved The Banishment. Complete Tarkovsky rip off but yup, amazing.


Not much to disagree with. I find the whole music allegory to life thing absolutely genius like. That scene where the old fella explains it (basically why the title of the film is the title of the film) is beautifully poignant.

Words can't really do justice to how beautiful and tragic this film is. I fund it a struggle to write about it other than just throw it some superlatives and adjectives. It could be way higher up the list on another day. My review when I firsts aw it:


Similarly to the above - like most Tarkovsky films, it's difficult to write a review for Stalker. It's not unlike The Mirror in that it's a visual poem that needs experiencing rather than a narrative film that requires understanding. It's cerebral, ethereal, puzzling and hypnotic. Tarkovsky divided opinion and this in some ways could be the ultimate art house film. Is it about Tarkovsksy's views on the Soviet Union? A chilling prophecy on Nuclear accidents? Or just a philosophical attempt to unravel the meaning of life channelled via the original novel Roadside Picnic? I have absolutely no idea, I just enjoyed letting it interfere with my eyes and mind.


Probably one of the best looking films ever made, and one of the most memorable. Chilling too. My original review:

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

The Night of the Hunter is good but overrated. I've seen it twice and the cinematography sure slays. Stalker and Sansho the Bailiff are among all-time greats (actually, I've seen them twice, too).

Same sentiments. Mitchum is creepy in it, but the movie itself is only good, not great.
Sansho and Stalker are masterpieces

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

I think The Night of the Hunter is great, personally. Both Sansho the Bailiff and Stalker are masterpieces though.

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

I've seen 9 so far; some that are way overdue for a rewatch (Raging Bull and Night of the Hunter) and a good bunch that I watched within the last years and loved quite a bit. Great list.

Yes, I'm going to be that guy. The guy that jumps on the hype and gets with it. A recent review:


This film is incredible.

In 1990, Abbas Kiarostami made 'Close-Up', which is a re-enactment of the real life trial of the man who steals the identity of filmmaker Mohsen Makmhalbaf, using the real life people as actors.

6 years later, Makmhalbaf himself goes a step further and makes a film about the making of a film. In the 70s, Makmhalbaf got into an altercation with a policeman and was arrested for it. 20 years later he gets the real people involved in the incident (including himself obviously) to direct young actors playing younger versions of themselves and he then films that film being made. But the dialogue is so clever that Makmhalbaf blurs the lines of the documented incident, and the remaking of it. So much so that in the last 30 minutes of the film the viewer has to try and work out if they are seeing the film, the making of the film, or the making of the making of a film. This all culminates in a twist ending of sorts which may be part of the intended fictional film or part of reality as Makmhalbaf filmed it. It is ingenious film-making.

Critic Mike D'Angelo said "this film ends with the greatest final freeze-frame since The 400 Blows". Can't disagree.

An absolute masterpiece.

I've seen everything listed so far. Plenty of great choices. A Moment of Innocence was one of my Hall of Fame nominations, in fact. As expected, reactions to it were mixed, but I think it's perfect.

I know a couple of people here like it. For me, it's cinema in it's purest form. That sounds pretentious. But it just is.

One of my fave movies. Seen it several times.

I went into JD not knowing what to expect, other than it being long and slow. I found it endlessly fascinating watching this woman’s meticulously crafted daily rhythm come completely unraveled over the course of a day until its shocking end.
Great stuff.

Like I always say, a good movie is too short & a bad movie is too long. JD could even have been longer & I would still love it.

Into the Top 10:


One of the films I could say that changed the way I look at world cinema. My initial review when I watched it some years ago was:

Since then I appreciate it more and more as a true masterpiece. Kieslowski's perfectionist way of filmmaking was interesting too. Purchasing lots of different brands of sugar cubes until he found the one that sucked up the coffee in just the right amount of time etc.

There's a shot in this film that links the trilogy - Julie is carrying a box of WHITE wine, and she walks to the right of the screen and intersects a man in a BLUE sweater and a woman dressed in a RED coat, thus foreshadowing the trilogy of Blue white and Red. Kieslowski was a genius at ethereal, spiritual film and this will always be one of my favourites.

.................................................................................................... .................................................................................................



This film introduced me to 2 things primarily - how good single location films could be, and how good dialogue can get. Lumet's masterpiece is a stellar example of both these things and also how to get a viewer engrossed in morality and ethical dilemmas.

It's a really fantastic watch and also features top notch example of framing / blocking. How Lumet got all those actors to be perfect all of the time in such a hot sweaty room was nothing short of remarkable.

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

Two of my favorites as well

Re: ScarletLion's Top 25 films
 

Out of curiosity, did you make a list of movies beyond your Top 25? Even if you simply post the list. Whenever I get back into watching movies, I'd like more choices.



If you like "Woman in the Dunes", you should check out other movies of his. "The Face of Another" is really cool.

Yeah I have a top 150, I find the top 50 is more or less static but the rest are quite changeable. I suffer from recency bias too, so put things in my top 100 all the time. Then think a week later.......is that really good enough to be in the company of Welles, Tarkovsky, Hitchcock, Tarr, etc? So contemplate taking them out!

I've seen Face of Another, really great film.

I’d actually like to see your top 150 sometime.

I'll put it in this thread when I've finished the top 25. Cheers

'Soy Cuba' to give it the original title is a mesmerizing film directed by Mikhail Kalatozov that seems to flutter around my top 10 at various positions but it’s always in there. It’s possibly most famous for the astonishing long take shot in the funeral scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjuLkJ4m-mc

But the film is filled with this type of camerawork shot by the legendary DoP Sergey Urusevsky who worked on many of Kalatozov’s films.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOLVm_9UcRw

The film itself is structured in an anthology type of narrative that focuses on various people’s struggles in Cuba during pre-revolutionary times. Beautiful to look at and powerful in tone. One of the greats.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………


Kubrick’s greatest. It revolutionised cinema. From match cuts to music used to model making to space scenes to ridiculous techniques and a whole lot more. The definitive film about human existence? Maybe.

The technical production and thought that went into the shots is something else:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RGGK2uyJOw

A film I could watch at any point I think.

https://youtu.be/dOfUWo8ufpo

Excellent pairing.

6. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/d...4-jpg-20141016

Astonishing film, which I took way too long to get around to watching. Falconetti's performance has rightly gone down as one of the greatest ever (eyes, tears, facial movements), and although Dreyer's methods were supposedly harsh - it wouldn't have been the film it is if he hadn't used them. It's hard to find a fault with this film.

It’s also tragic what happened to Maria Falconetti in her last days.

5. Seven Samurai (1954)

https://filmantrop.no/blogg/wp-conte...i-1024x750.jpg

Peasants versus bandits versus Ronin. Possibly the greatest Japanese film of all time, Kurosawa’s sprawling three and a half hour epic features so many tropes, plot devices and themes commonly seen in today’s cinema, that it’s hard to overstate the influence of this film. The action sequences, dialogue and Toshiro Mifune’s performance combine to produce something truly special.

Kurosawa insisted that sets were built for battle scenes instead of using the studio’s land. Budgets went way over what Toho initially set out for the project, and they stopped production twice……..and each time they did, Kurosawa just downed tools and went fishing. He was confident that he had such a strong film in the making, and it has stood the test of time.

What happened to her?

She was mentally ill, escaped the war to south America but had a medical condition where she put on weight, she went on a self imposed crash diet that was basically a hunger strike, and took her own life. Died in her early 50s.

A pretty laborious choice perhaps but it’s for a reason. Easily one of the best films ever made, it’s a perfect storm of. From the age that Welles was when he made this (25), to the struggles of getting the film how he wanted, and the actual film itself and how influential it is. There are direct inspirations from Kane in all manner of more modern films from The Lighthouse, Coen Brothers films, Apocalypse Now and even Blade Runner 2049.

Some of the camera shots are not only jaw dropping for their time (1941) but have never been bettered. Then comes the reveal at the end of the film. It’s just a masterpiece.




Similarly, Persona is such a masterpiece that it has been paid homage to many many times, most notably perhaps by David Lynch in ‘Mulholland Drive’. Bergman’s masterpiece is at times confounding, but once the viewer settles into the rhythm of the film, it’s intoxicating in its’ beauty.

It’s a fairly ambiguous film in that it can be read as being about identity, self discovery, mental wellbeing, the chaos of life or about some of these things or a combination of things. Liv Ulmann and Bibbi Anderson’s performances are mesmerizing. Sven Nyqvist’s photography is so complimentary to the vision of Bergman that the result is one of those films that just has to be ‘experienced’.

Seen it a million times. Love it.

Metropolis is one of the most astonishing achievements in cinema. It might have been the blockbuster of its' day, and it really delivers. The set design, production qualities and imagination are really something else.

Fritz Lang's genius is on show right from the off. The city depicted in all it's futuristic glory with odd shaped buildings and transport in the sky that would later be paid homage to in films like Blade Runner. The film is prophetic as it is inspirational. At it's heart it's the story of human nature; with battles between the working class and the rulers. But it's also a tale of existentialism and ideologies.

The visuals are spellbinding, the story telling is brilliant. The ideas are incredible. Metropolis is a masterpiece.


.................................................................................................... ....................................


Come and See is a harsh film. It's an unforgettable experience. Many viewers say they can only watch it once, but I don't agree. The depth of field in the shots, the camerawork, the colours, the memorable framing make it a film that has to be devoured time and time again.

There has been much written about the way Elem Klimov directed Aleksei Kravchenko - pushing the young actor to the limits of his capabilities and mental state. Using live bullets that passed his head by centimetres, trying and failing to hypnotize Kravchenko so that he didn't bare the scars of the filming process Ethically dubious perhaps but without it, we don't get to see the greatest war film ever made. And what a loss to cinema that would have been. Come and See is so visceral. So heartbreakingly shocking and brilliant that it is the top of my list. Once in a while a film is so unforgettable that many of the images and themes remain lodged in your eyelids and brain.

The name of the film is derived from this quote in the bible:

"And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him".

Come and See is the greatest film ever made.

Thanks for reading.

Excellent list. Since you love Come and See, have you also seen The Ascent? It was directed by Klimov's wife and is also great.

I have yes. Feels like they were competing against each other! Two great films. And thanks.