Highly regarded British movie magazine Sight And Sound have just released their once-every-decade "top 10 films" list. This is the famed list that resulted in Citizen Kane being widely considered the greatest film of all time for the last 5 decades. This years big upset is that for the first time since 1962, Kane has been dethroned, with Hitchcock's Vertigo taking its place. This has caused much uproar and discussion amongst the online film community. Having never particularly liked the work of Hitchcock, this ascension rankled me somewhat. But after further reading of differing opinions on the subject (especially a wonderful piece from Scott Tobias at the AV Club), I've come to view this list as an opportunity to remember the great wealth of films out there I need to check out. Also that I should perhaps reevaluate others with a set of older, more patient and mature eyes.
All this hubbub made me decide I need to set down my own top 10 films in stone, perhaps to reevaluate once yearly. I attempted to do something similar with a previous series here entitled "My 5 Favorite Films", the amount of entries being 4 serving as an indication as to the diligence with which I invested the endeavor. This is my fresh start on the subject, although I'm sure there will be holdovers from the previous attempt. I've selected these films based on the ineffable intersection of monumental initial impact and ongoing enjoyment. These pieces of motion picture art encapsulate that rarest of film experiences for me. The kind where my relationship with it emotionally, intellectually and aesthetically grows, deepens and evolves over a lifetime. These are the films I never grow tired of and always take something new away from when revisiting. The films I hold in the highest esteem and resonate most spiritually with me.
10. Night Of The Living Dead 1968 Directed By George Romero
Even 44 years on, this film throws off sparks with its horror-framed assessment of the political and racial schism internally boiling America alive. Its continuing relevance is a depressing testament to how little has truly changed in the intervening decades. It's also a masterful genre picture, replete with a claustrophobic setting, intense performances and nightmarish chiaroscuro lighting. Romero's cutting edge editing sets the pace with off kilter camera angles heightening the garish mood to nearly intolerable levels of bleakness and depravity. NOTLD is sacrosanct, a sacrament for horror aficionados. It was my baptism into the realm of complex, visceral horror. A beacon that lit the way for contemporary genre film to comment on current events more powerfully than any leaden prestige drama could dream to.
9. Barton Fink 1991 Directed By Joel Coen
Being a born, raised, lifelong Minnesotan gives one a fraternal insight to the work of the Coen Brothers. A celebrated institution among local, working class intellectuals, my parents brought me up on their subversive work. Seeing Millers Crossing and Barton Fink during their theatrical runs in my early teens had a profound effect on me, Fink especially. The juxtaposition between the harrowing and the hilarious that informs their best work is most prominently on display in Barton Fink. At turns unbearably, suffocatingly sad, then riotously funny, the alternating tones bleed into one another, blurring the line and obliterating the distinction. It's a parable about the tragic meaningless of creativity. A hollow, useless impulse in a world where disingenuous corporate titans and puffed up taste-makers profit off the hardships of working stiffs. A ghostly film set in a phantom hotel. An impenetrable essay lampooning "the life of the mind" and all who purport to practice it.
8. Frankenstein 1931 Directed By James Whale
Seeing Frankenstein for the first time as a six year old on a Saturday Night Horror Host show was the lightning strike that brought my cinephile brain to life. I'll never forget the impression the shocking laboratory birthing sequence at the beginning had on me. It was certainly a synapse firing event for my young mind. As much as I loved Karloff's Monster, I was equally taken by Colin Clive's central mad doctor. His gaunt, wounded presence injects the proceedings with just as much pathos as his tortured creation. Sure, Bride Of Frankenstein is more fun and has that lush Franz Waxman score, but the Gothic, shadowy severity of its forbear will always enthrall me more.
7. Heat 1995 Directed By Michael Mann
It was difficult to choose between Heat and Manhunter, but the magisterial, epic scope of the former just barely beat of the moody, internal malevolence of the latter. Heat is the quintessential film to get lost in. The bifurcated approach Mann takes in telling this cops and robbers tale pays off gigantic dividends as we shift perspectives and allegiances throughout, turning a simple police procedural into a sweeping love affair with the seedy L.A. underbelly. Pacino and DeNiro are magnificent and more than ably supported by a sprawling supporting cast at the top of their game. But the star of the show is Mann's dreamy, measured approach to presenting the story, His meticulous pacing and inventive music placement is indicative of his supreme confidence as an auteur.
6. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 1974 Directed By Tobe Hooper
I've written extensively on this film in the hallowed, hyperbolic pages of this blog, so I'll keep this brief. Pound for pound, TCM is the most lean, streamlined and powerful horror film ever made. There's not one once of fat on the film, not one wasted scene or throwaway line. It's also a stunningly shot avant garde art project with a mercurial, experimental score light years ahead of its time. Maybe the most American of horror films, it unmercifully sets about peeling your flesh and plucking your tender nerves. It is a full-volume beauty and terror art-roar from jarring start to abrupt finish.
5. Se7en 1995 Directed By David Fincher
One of the most perfectly shot, edited and scored films of all time. Its structural perfection is matched only by its thematic brilliance. Se7en impossibly also manages to be one of the most smartly cast and acted films ever. Really, there's nothing wrong with this film aside from perhaps being too oppressive, but given the subject matter, even that flaw becomes a resounding success. To me, Se7en will forever signify one of the last times I was literally shocked by what happened at the end of a film. Along with the entertainingly pulpy The Usual Suspects, Fincher's masterpiece is one of the last pre-internet milestones of audience manipulation. The surprise finale could never be pulled off as successfully today (never mind the downbeat ending getting past anxious studio heads) thanks to spoilerific websites trumpeting every cameo appearance and plot beat.
4. The Shining 1980 Directed By Stanley Kubrick
Whereas Se7en is one of the most perfectly shot, edited and scored films of all time, The Shining may well be THE most perfectly shot, edited and scored film of all time. Kubrick is, in my estimation (and in many others I assume), technically speaking, the greatest single film maker of all time. The reason I choose The Shining over say, Dr. Strangelove, is no doubt largely indebted to my horror bias. But there is some unknowable alchemy at play with this film that isn't present in his others. It's so hermetically sealed, the intimate scale making its stately, glacial pace unbearably intense. Kubrick's camera glides like a slow, evil eye through a haunted diorama. At the center is Nicholson's volcanic performance, probably my favorite male lead work ever. As a jaded horror fanatic, The Shining is the only film that still scares me and I've been watching it for 30 years of my life.
3. Taxi Driver 1976 Directed By Martin Scorsese
I wrote a piece on this film I'm quite proud of concerning my lifelong relationship with it and what I consider to be its lasting legacy. Given the recent midnight Dark Knight Rises Shooting incident, the malignant, selfish psychosis essayed so brilliantly in Taxi Driver is still thriving in unkempt corners of the American Male mind. Except the Bickle's of today have only to order their assault rifles and thousands of rounds of ammo online before heading out into the world to enact their despicable, self imagined "purpose". A cinema lovers wet dream, but also a prescient, uncomfortable examination of the aimless, unbalanced male and the explosive violence they're capable of perpetrating. A film that only becomes more relevant the older it gets.
2. The Passion Of The Christ 2004 Directed By Mel Gibson
Mel's unfortunate, highly public professional and personal meltdown aside, I can think of few films that have as reliably powerful an effect on me as his passion project. This is all the more impressive a feat when one considers I have no particular belief system or faith I ascribe to. I simply FEEL this film. I feel poured into it each time I watch it, as if into a living, liquid Caravaggio painting. I feel the devastation true believers feel, as when I wept communally next to a grandmother I was seated next to opening day. I feel abject terror toward the dark and light forces at play in the pictures text and toward what their horrifying battle could possibly portend for my potential immortal soul. The high frame rate it was shot at lends it a slow-motion-nightmare quality befitting of the biblical event it unflinchingly depicts. I believe the ancient world of this film like no other historical epic I've seen. It's the most tangible, visceral evocation of its kind. For more of my thoughts on the film, please read this piece I wrote back in January of 2011.
1. Natural Born Killers 1994 Directed By Oliver Stone
If Night of the Living Dead and Barton Fink were a couple of my early initiative experiences, Natural Born Killers was my final cinematic rite of passage. I saw it seven nights in a row its opening week in August of 1994, from Friday to Friday. It perfectly nailed the nihilistic zeitgeist I was feeling then at the dawn of the 24 hour news cycle. A dispassionate apathy toward atrocity overload that inexplicably has become a million times worse in the last 18 years. But it's the psychedelic pastiche I truly adore, the multiple film stocks employed in every scene, the frantic cutting and schizophrenic editing. It was the perfect palliative for a burgeoning cinephile with a short attention span. What Pink Floyd's The Wall or Mr Bungle's Disco Volante did for me musically, Natural Born Killers did for me for film. It broke down all established barriers for how I believed a narrative film could be presented and expanded my cinematic consciousness exponentially. Read this for a more detailed account of what this film means to me and my core group of friends who so permanently bonded over it.
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