Movie tweets to April 15, 2024 (4 of 4)

 

Youth in Fury (1960) – Shinoda meshes personal and political agonies and corruptions in visually and behaviorally super-charged fashion

 

Fair Play (2023) – Domont’s toxicity-laced drama is inevitably too slick, but more than amply engrossing, provocative and debate-friendly

 

The Burning Crucible (1923) – Mozzhukhin’s love story exhibits a startlingly wide-ranging facility, with some major expressionist highlights

 

24 Hour Party People (2002) – Winterbottom predominantly keeps things busily and noisily superficial and celebratory, and why quibble?…

 

Anna and the Wolves (1973) – the laceratingly clear-sighted Saura rips into the malevolent self-preservation of the decadent bourgeoisie

 

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (2022) – de Clermont-Tonnere’s version has its actorly & other strengths, while seeming generally over-romanticized

 

Un homme et une femme (1966) – Lelouch’s film remains pleasing, as much for its myriad of peculiarities as for the charisma-heavy romance

 

Time Indefinite (1993) – one of McElwee’s best, its ramshackle personal history charmingly (if not so profoundly) contextualized & annotated

 

 King Lavra (1950) – Zeman’s early short film is full of richness and subtlety, in the service of a satisfyingly dark and weird premise

 

Benediction (2021) – at its strongest, Davies’ immersion in Sassoon inspires some of his most ravishingly touching cinematic reveries

 

The Gauntlet (1977) – an image-tweaking highlight of 70’s Eastwood, enormously entertaining even at its most heavy-duty implausible

 

Employment Offer (1982) – Eustache’s last (and so inherently tragic-feeling) film; a pointed, whip-smart fable of modern dehumanization

 

The Christmas Tree (1969) – Young’s blend of atomic-age portent and tragic quasi-fairy-tale is a peculiarly displaced, yet haunting creation

 

L’auberge espagnole (2002) – Klapisch’s easy-viewing “Europudding” is super-well-sustained, if not particularly progressive, entertainment

 

Berlin Express (1948) – Tourneur’s drama has immense historical interest, although it’s more tonally & narratively uneven than his best work

 

El Conde (2023) – Larrain’s distinctly weird but for the most part elegantly witty expression of the inter-connected persistence of evil

 

The Whole Shootin’ Match (1978) – Pennell sustains a shambling low-budget charm, but it can only carry the overly loose narrative so far

 

The Heroic Trio (1993) – To’s action film is cheerily vivacious & stylishly cast, but murkily articulated and executed in any number of ways

 

Forty Guns (1957) – one enjoys the many elements of full-on Fullerism, although it doesn’t cohere as tightly as his very best works

 

EO (2022) – Skolimowski achieves a mesmerizing meeting of inherent inscrutability (animal and human alike) and rapturous presentness

 

Murders in the Zoo (1933) – Sutherland more than delivers on the zoo murders, and on the zoo all-round, so that’s all that matters!

 

The Book of Mary (1985) – Mieville’s beautiful short film gracefully contrasts the freedom of youth and the limiting parameters of adulthood

 

Believe in Me (1971) – Hagmann’s study of escalating drug abuse connects at numerous points, but ultimately feels unsatisfyingly abbreviated

 

Nous (2021) – Diop’s spellbinding documentary, entirely reflecting her wondrous spanning of imaginative boldness and infinite patience

 

The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916) – Wong’s drama elicits substantial, pilgrimage-like respect, even in its narratively mysterious surviving form

 

The House that Jack Built (2018) – von Trier’s cosmic provocation applies breathtaking proficiency to mental and moral-capacity-evading ends

 

The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961) – Guest’s catastrophic drama is a solid present-day reference point, when not offputtingly abrasive

 

Election (2005) – To’s slyly allegorical drama is proficient throughout, but it’s indelibly elevated by its calmly ruthless final stretch

 

St. Ives (1976) – Thompson’s actor-squandering concoction is superficially well-furbished, but dramatically and psychologically mostly inert

 

Gold Brick (2023) – Rozan’s corporate revenge flick is likeable enough, although far too breezy  and over-simplified to carry any real bite

 

Knock on any Door (1949) – Ray’s message-laden drama has him rather too hemmed in, but is moderately striking in all kinds of secondary ways

 

Je vous salue, Marie (1985) – Godard’s luminously enthralling creation, at times amusingly quasi-obvious, at others far transcending that

 

The Seven Year Itch (1955) – one of Wilder’s all-round least impressive efforts, actually barely tolerable in its single-track obsessiveness

 

Insomnia (2002) – Nolan’s plainest film improves in theory on many aspects of the (overpraised) original, with mixed benefits in practice

 

L’aventure, c’est l’aventure (1972) – Lelouch’s buddy romp is pretty silly, but it’s certainly hardworking and often laugh-out-loud funny

 

M3GAN (2022) – Johnstone provides few real surprises, but it’s a well-designed, effectively zeitgeist-channeling piece all the same

 

The Hell Ship (1923) – Sjostrom’s drama has much of interest, but lacks the implied concentrated intensity and spectacle of its title

 

Street Smart (1987) – Schatzberg’s drama sure has its moments, but is too slickly polished for its themes and milieu to fully reverberate

 

All Monsters Attack (1969) – Honda’s bright and cheerful deployment of Monster Island’s inhabitants as, basically, de facto life coaches!

 

Stillwater (2021) – McCarthy’s cross-cultural hodgepodge goes down easy, but doesn’t convince in most respects, much less morally stimulate

 

Violent City (1970) – Sollima’s above-average Bronson vehicle, its terse tone, extended set-pieces and winding narrative well under control

 

Birth (1994) – one values Glazer’s trauma-laced behavioural mystery more for its intriguing parts than for the slightly disappointing whole

 

Fires on the Plain (1959) – Ichikawa’s wrenching, concentrated vision of suffering and disorientation, absent any traces of wartime glory

 

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023) – Anderson’s super-polished miniature is (of course) formally dazzling, and an all-round pleasure

 

Picpus (1943) – Pottier’s Maigret mystery is dotted with well-turned characterizations, although you’re mostly just trying to keep up

 

Dead & Buried (1981) – Sherman delivers some well-judged creepiness and oddity, although the premise is ultimately somewhat over-stretched

 

Sambizanga (1972) – Maldoror’s vital dawn-of-the-revolution film, drawing as fully on intimate rituals and joys as on structural injustices

 

Till (2022) – Chukwu’s dignified telling is as moving as one hopes for, although one remains aware of narrative and tonal roads not taken

 

The Sleeping Car Murders (1965) – Costa-Gavras’ plushly well-cast early thriller is an atypically politics-free zone, but done with style

 

The Girl from Monday (2005) – Hartley’s super-lo-fi treatment of grandiosely high-concept material wears surprisingly, defiantly well

 

Invention for Destruction (1958) – Zeman’s all-but-perfectly pitched meshing of ever-tangible threat and delightfully retro artificiality

 

All my Puny Sorrows (2021) – McGowan’s conventionally respectful adaptation, too timid & under-energized on matters of death & life alike

 

The Garden of Delights (1970) – Saura’s mordant study of traumatic family dynamics, executed with austerely wry, disorienting elegance

 

Q (1982) – Cohen and Moriarty’s expansively eccentric conviction easily power through the film’s copious rough edges and omissions

 

Everything Goes Wrong (1961) – Suzuki’s fluently issue-crammed chronicle of disaffected youth makes for a most dynamic seventy-one minutes

 

A Thousand and One (2023) – Rockwell’s episodic drama becomes steadily more expectation-evading, to more than respectable cumulative effect

 

Cecile est morte! (1944) – Tourneur’s Maigret film is well-plotted and solidly executed, but substantially unmemorable all the same

 

Byzantium (2012) – Jordan’s plotting is overdone even by vampire mythology standards, but the overall mix is improbably entertaining

 

The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971) – the wan Hitchcockian echoes only slightly elevate Martino’s under-engaging, zest-challenged giallo

 

Call Jane (2022) – Nagy’s film could hardly fail to be of interest, but is far more bland and cursory than the charged material deserves

 

Love New and Old (1961) – Shinoda’s meeting of generational, romantic and stylistic conflicts becomes steadily more persuasive and complex

 

Two Evil Eyes (1990) – Argento’s freewheelingly possessed creation wins out over Romero’s more straightforward comeuppance narrative

 

Black River (1957) – Kobayashi’s potent immersion into the dankly virtue-strangling landscape of post-war desperation, corruption & venality

 

Censor (2021) – Bailey-Bond’s film, if a little overrated, draws with imaginative exactitude on video-nasty history, aesthetic and paranoia

 

The Big Fix (1978) – Kagan’s breezily complicated drama goes down easily enough, even while pushing the curdled idealism a bit too heavily

 

The Son of the White Mare (1981) – Jankovics’ limit-busting animation is visually astounding, without likely evoking much engaged passion

 

Q Planes (1939) – Whelan’s fast-talking drama seems endearingly proto-Bondian in various ways, elevated by the invaluable Richardson

 

The Girl Without Hands (2016) – Laudenbach’s convention-rejecting animation is beautifully evocative, and often amusingly earthy too

 

Billion Dollar Brain (1967) – the third Harry Palmer movie has a modest amount of snap, with notes of future Russell-ian expansiveness

 

ABC Africa (2001) – Kiarostami’s film makes consistently unexpected and pleasing choices, while gently questioning its own ethical soundness

 

Countess Dracula (1971) – Sasdy’s uninteresting, horror-and-fun-starved Hammer horror, its plotting and characterization threadbare

 

Kill Boksoon (2023) – Byun’s sleek concoction is relatively imaginative and impressive, but elicits little in the way of deeper engagement

 

Watch on the Rhine (1943) – the material’s basic strength comes through despite Shumlin’s often stiff, not particularly clear-headed filming

 

Diary for my Father and Mother (1990) – Meszaros’ deeply personal trilogy closure, seeped in a nation’s injustices & thwarted possibilities

 

Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) – Baker’s drama would rank only as forgettably adequate, if not for the fascinatingly unsettling Monroe

 

Dorian Gray in the Mirror… (1984) – another weirdly arresting Ottinger mega-fantasia, (relatively!) grounded in satirical tabloid media

 

Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (1978) – Kotcheff’s silly brew is at best mildly funny, in a low-flavor, bland-diet kind of way

 

La pupille (2022) – Rohrwacher’s short film deftly laces its sweetly eccentric tale with strands of tangible poverty and deprivation

 

The Risk (1960) – the Boultings’ knowingly drab treatment of big subject matter at least taps the constrained, fearful Britain of its time

 

The Dust of Time (2008) – Angelopoulos’ late work  is rather labored and uneasy, but conveys the heavy, shifting toll of exile and upheaval

 

Safe in Hell (1931) – Wellman’s horny melodrama punches through various modes of seaminess, arriving at a not-too-cloying ultimate virtue

 

The Wild Goose Lake (2019) – Diao’s drama sustains a terrific amped-up fatalism, with too many visual and other highpoints to keep track of

 

Once is Not Enough (1975) – Green’s studiously unenjoyable Susann adaptation lacks any kind of creative grace notes or self-awareness

 

The Falls (2021) – Chung’s family-oriented but thematically wide-ranging, sleekly elegant expression of Covid-driven recalibration

 

Track of the Cat (1954) – Wellman’s overstated yet somehow indelible meeting of tensions & settings, domestic toxicity seeping into the snow

 

Meetin’ WA (1986) – Godard’s enjoyably bemused exchange with Allen; framed, edited and supplemented with an array of digressive mischief

 

Hook, Line and Sinker (1969) – Marshall’s last film ranks among the more drained and depressed of Lewis’s comedies, or maybe of anyone’s

 

Searching for Ingmar Bergman (2018) – von Trotta’s survey teems with great, personal material, albeit without breaking too much new ground

 

Black Caesar (1973) – Cohen’s drama has its gleefully ragged aspects of course, but also much cultural and social despair-tinged potency

 

Night Train (2007) – Diao’s fine modern quasi-noir tracks the desperate human detritus of a physically and systemically crushing society

 

Ziegfeld Girl (1941) – Leonard/Berkeley’s musical has plenty going on, with some intermittent snap, but seldom rises to a very great height

 

Egomania: Island Without Hope (1986) – Schlingensief drinks with lusty insatiability from the turbulent reservoir of cinematic vampirism

 

A Star is Born (1954) – Cukor’s grand classic sits at some kind of Hollywoodian apex, its two great stars electrifyingly impactful

 

Inside (2023) – Katsoupis’ sumptuously visualized film nails its wrecking-ball-type pleasures, not least Dafoe’s magnificent self-trashing

 

Another Man, Another Chance (1977) – an unfairly forgotten epic, teeming with memorable scenes, notwithstanding various Lelouchian oddities

 

subUrbia (1996) – Linklater’s feel for underachieving lives & communities is peerless, even when applied to increasingly overwound material

 

Elvira Madigan (1967) – the unchallenging prettiness of Widerberg’s doomed rebellion keeps you mainly at an emotionally unvarying distance

 

Belfast (2021) – Branagh’s quasi-memoir adheres steadfastly, sometimes clumsily, to clapped-out notions of important and stirring filmmaking

                       

Four Around the Woman (1921) – an early Langian vision of class-crossing crime and desire, limited by a lumbering central narrative

 

The Mosquito Coast (1986) – Weir’s adaptation supports a lively merits-of-book-to-film dialogue, while mostly failing on its own terms

 

Jungle Holocaust (1977) – much about the film is sketchy or dubious, but Deodato often enough sustains a brutal, overwhelming immediacy

 

Tesla (2020) – Almereyda’s film, only notionally functional as biography, largely succeeds in expressing its subject’s near-cosmic otherness

 

Aar Paar (1954) – Dutt’s film isn’t particularly distinctive in any respect, but solidly delivers the expected genre-spanning ups and downs

 

From the Journals of Jean Seberg (1995) – Rappaport’s flat-out fascinating, tragically haunted memoriam, analysis, extrapolation, and more

 

The Hunt (1966) – Saura’s heat, guns and booze-saturated early drama is an indelible study of end-of-its-tether masculinity quasi-friendship

 

Nope (2022) – Peele’s most simply conceived film to date in some ways, but also his most expansively well-textured and allusively executed

 

Rockers (1978) – Bafaloukos’ force-of-nature ride through Jamaican culture & hustle leaves one wanting more in most respects, but never mind

 

The Fan (1981) – Bianchi marshals enough Bacall-centric Broadway glitz and chatter to make the unimaginative slasher stuff almost tolerable

 

La Habanera (1937) – Sirk’s energetic blend of exoticism, marriage melodrama and scientific threat hardly indicates the lush glories to come

 

Air (2023) – Affleck makes it all as comfortable as, well, an old shoe; dramatic tension and revelation not really being the focus here

 

The Sinner (1951) – Forst’s then-scandalous melodrama has a few flashes of racy inspiration, but more often feels oddly under-engaged

 

Crash (1996) – with time, Cronenberg’s highly singular film seems not so much provocative as almost quaintly, desperately one-track-minded

 

A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die (1972) – inherently rather basic stuff, but Valerii keeps it tight and mean and physically well-realized

 

The Cathedral (2021) – D’Ambrose’s unique distillation of complex family history engages most stimulatingly with the vicissitudes of memory

 

Our Marriage (1962) – Shinoda’s concise drama incorporates a satisfying range of socially- and financially-conscious exploration and tension

 

The Funhouse (1981) – Hooper doesn’t provide the strongest thematic or emotional core, but he certainly keeps the eyes amply occupied

 

The Thick-Walled Room (1956) – an exactingly major, seemingly all-seeing Kobayashi excavation of lingeringly politicized post-war injustice

 

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022) – Poitras’ moving tapestry of experience, centered on Goldin’s almost unprocessably meaningful life

 

L’argent des autres (1978) – de Chalonge satisfyingly, if not always too excitingly, navigates the film’s financial and ethical complexities

 

Friendship’s Death (1987) – the physical restrictions of Wollen’s film spawn conceptual multitudes, and a haunting predictive eloquence

 

Dumbo (1941) – not the only Disney classic in which one goes through the banal bits for the sake of the near-inexplicably strange ones

 

Infinity Pool (2023) – Cronenberg’s serially rebooting, joylessly disorienting creation crafts a whole new kind of grueling pitilessness

 

Kuroneko (1968) – Shindo’s meeting of real and spirit worlds ranks among the most consistently striking of cinematic ghost stories

 

Poetic Justice (1993) – Singleton’s loosely-conceived drama maintains a likeably varied energy, but seldom feels very sturdy or credible

 

Mahogany (1975) – Gordy’s fashion-world opus lacks for both design and craftsmanship, partially compensated for by Ross and the bling

 

All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) – Berger’s handling is sufficiently vivid to surmount various aspects of excess and over-familiarity

 

High Noon (1952) – Zinnemann’s Western is dramatically far thinner and its allegory far less penetrating than its inflated reputation

 

Women (1985) – Kwan’s chronicle of bumpy relationships goes down very easily, but is recurringly laced with a keen sense of pain and anxiety

 

Lord Jim (1965) – notwithstanding the layered Conradian intentions, Brooks allows inauthentically exotic adventurism to swamp all else

 

The Troubles We’ve Seen (1994) – Ophuls’ underseen, at times stimulatingly peculiar study remains near-inexhaustibly fascinating & relevant

 

From Noon Till Three (1976) – perhaps Bronson’s most genial star outing, at the centre of Gilroy’s charming pitting of myth and reality

 

The Box (2021) – Vigas’ penetratingly sparsely-crafted exploration of economic exploitation’s ever-renewing societal and psychic toll

 

She Done Him Wrong (1933) – West’s one-track otherness isn’t particularly well-facilitated by the stodgy clutter of Sherman’s melodrama

 

Sweet Hours (1982) – one of Saura’s less satisfying films, its interrogation of memory overly labored and its psychology superficial

 

The Phenix City Story (1955) – Karlson’s earnest classic hardly avoids artifice & over-simplification, but still brutally connects at times

 

Martin Eden (2019) – Marcello’s near-thrilling adaptation, propelled by ceaseless intellectual and cinematic vitality and engagement

 

Capricorn One (1978) – Hyams short-changes the concept’s darker possibilities and implications, but delivers some lively writing and casting

 

Hit the Road (2021) – the varied serio-comedy of Panahi’s resourcefully simple set up gradually accumulates in cosmic & earthly implication

 

The Small Back Room (1949) – Powell/Pressburger’s customarily alert drama has some memorable set-pieces, but a rather rushed-feeling finale

 

The Invisible Frame (2009) – Beatt’s simple concept fruitfully represents & reflects on the persistence of a superficially-erased history 

 

Doppelganger (1969) – the film has lots of typically likeable Gerry Anderson trappings, but falls narratively and conceptually short

 

The Funeral (1984) – Itami’s painstaking, drolly ambiguous examination of ritual and ceremony is perhaps his most well-calibrated work

 

On a Clear Day… (1970) – Minnelli mostly fails to marshal the problematic material, and yet much about the film is stubbornly beguiling

 

Vortex (2021) – Noe’s is an imposing & gripping creation, although always conditioned by its aesthetically & sociologically rarified choices

 

Look Back in Anger (1958) – Richardson’s is one of the more faded of the “angry young man” cycle, now seeming drably contrived and flailing

 

Night Across the Street (2012) – one willingly submits to the masterly unmappable contours of Ruiz’s warmly finality-embracing late film

 

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) – Mamoulian’s fine filming has some sensational inventiveness and an acute sense of unbalanced carnality

 

52 Pick Up (1986) – Frankenheimer handles the sleazy manipulations with some expertise, but that only makes it all even less enjoyable

 

Someone Behind the Door (1971) – Gessner’s small-scale study in psychological manipulation doesn’t excite too much, convinces even less

 

Reality (2023) – Satter’s project is a near-perfect meshing of form and content, engaging as a human story, damning as a political one

 

Un homme de trop (1967) – Costa-Gavras provides much ambitious action and confrontation, and yet the cumulative impact is strangely flat

 

Starship Troopers (1997) – the astounding technical prowess of Verhoeven’s fantasy supports a mind-boggling array of historical resonances

 

The Blazing Sun (1954) – Chahine’s intense melodrama rapidly becomes over-extended, however empathetically rooted in sociological outrage

 

Dead for a Dollar (2022) – Hill’s old-style, overly synthetic-feeling Western hardly matters much, but it’s done with pleasing know-how

 

The Sinful Nuns of Saint Valentine (1974) – Grieco’s competent but gusto-lacking effort doesn’t even much seem to relish the sinning nuns

 

The Fantasist (1986) – Hardy’s up-and-down Irish drama does best when sinking into boozy eccentricity and abundant sexual repression

 

Youth of the Beast (1963) – Suzuki gives the film some major visual pop, despite the constraints of a fairly standard gangland narrative

 

Cryptozoo (2021) – Shaw’s transporting flight of fancy tempers its unbroken inventiveness with consistently adult seriousness of purpose

 

The Outlaw and his Wife (1918) – Sjostrom’s film grips and impresses, without fully cinematically tapping the rebellious passion at its core

 

Se7en (1995) – Fincher may overdo the portents of lurking hell, but even on repeat viewings, the film leaves you genuinely chilled & shaken

 

The Second Awakening of Christa Klages (1978) – Trotta’s progressive openness ventilates a potentially confining crime drama framework

 

Rye Lane (2023) – Allen-Miller’s other-side-of-London romance is likeable enough, but too synthetic to tap anything approximating realism

 

The War of the Gargantuans (1966) – Honda’s monster movie tramples through its shakily-crafted motions in consistently listless fashion

 

Last Night at the Alamo (1983) – Pennell’s often raucously funny, deeply lived-in examination of low-level Texas myths and realities

 

Les grandes manoeuvres (1955) – Clair is on pretty sharp directional form, but the material feels underexamined in various regards

 

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) – Kosinski’s movie taps and somewhat reinvigorates old-fashioned mechanics with grand, defiantly superficial style

 

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1971) – Herzog, at his unnervingly daring peak, feels as ever-present as the film’s unforgettably immersive imagery

 

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) – Cameron oversees some terrifically muscular sequences, with some unimportant other stuff in between

 

A Flame at the Pier (1962) – Shinoda’s able if seldom too surprising, hopelessness-suffused drama, a Japanese On the Waterfront of sorts

 

You People (2023) – Barris’ unconvincing culture-clash comedy is disappointingly shallow, providing only sporadic laughs and little bite

 

Martin Roumagnac (1946) – Lacombe’s should-have-been-incendiary pairing of Dietrich and Gabin too often falls flat, if not outright botched

 

Valley Girl (1983) – Coolidge’s film holds up best when affectionately observing the central culture clash; otherwise it’s pretty sketchy

 

Madame X: an Absolute Ruler (1978) – Ottinger’s at times heavy-sailing odyssey does gradually elicit a sense of rewired, liberated delight

 

Nightmare Alley (2021) – del Toro’s inertly handsome but hemmed-in remake never seems remotely necessary, or very coherent on its own terms

 

Sissi – the Fateful Years of an Empress (1957) – Marischka moves the story on, but doesn’t expand the series much in tonal or other respects

 

Dick Tracy (1990) – Beatty’s peculiar take on the old-time material doesn’t really cohere, but provides all kinds of quirky pleasures

 

The Inheritance (1962) – a secondary Kobayashi drama, rather overdoing the tangled venality, but working well as a sleekly cynical yarn

 

The Eternal Daughter (2022) – Hogg’s small but effective film draws out the lurking eeriness and trauma folded within memory and creativity

 

Mr. Majestyk (1974) – a Bronson highlight (he just wants to get the melons picked!), expertly shaped, seasoned and visualized by Fleischer

 

A Closed Book (2009) – one of Ruiz’s more conceptually accessible films, for both lustily enjoyable better and rather rushed-feeling worse

 

The Suspect (1944) – Siodmak’s drama is elegantly and crisply executed in all departments, leading to a nicely modulated conclusion

 

Petite maman (2021) – Sciamma’s lingering, elevating film applies her finely-honed cinematic poise to a potentially eerily simple premise

 

China Doll (1958) – Borzage sustains the story’s idealistic core, albeit one highly dependent on superficial exoticism and rickety plotting

 

Bubble Bath (1980) – Kovasznai’s one-of-a-kind animation admits few visual constraints, while suggesting a primal desperation at its core

 

Brannigan (1975) – Hickox bludgeons noisily through the Duke-goes-to-the-UK set-up with an impressive absence of any higher ambition

 

Donbass (2018) – straddling documentary and satire, Loznitsa’s can’t-look-away film is shocking, disorienting and idealism-draining

 

Last Summer (1969) – Perry’s film ultimately amounts to less than one hopes for, given its languidly effective, vulnerability-laced build-up

 

Bad Luck Banging… (2021) – yet another astounding Jude creation, exhilarating even as it fairly comprehensively drains and depresses

 

Thirteen Women (1932) – Archainbaud’s drama has several creepy, resentment-charged moments, standing out from a rushed overall narrative

 

Full Moon in New York (1989) – one only wishes that Kwan’s delicately wide-angle study of intertwining female experience had been longer

 

Lord Shango (1975) – the mythology feels somewhat arbitrary, but Marsh and the performers sustain a feeling of anxious, bare-bones intensity

 

The Tsugua Diairies (2021) – Fazendeiro and Gomes craft a near-ideal Covid-era balance of languid torpor and small-scale boundary-pushing

 

The River’s Edge (1957) – Dwan’s fine little thriller is visually and narratively vivid at every turn, seeped in resentment and distrust

 

Ingrid Caven: Music and Voice (2012) – Bonello’s highly restrained recording of an often electrifyingly challenging, unbound performance

 

30 is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia (1968) – McGrath’s variable film certainly works hard, sporadically capturing Moore at his multi-faceted best

 

Petition (2009) – Zhao’s must-see record of perseverance against institutional brutality and corruption rings a dark global warning bell

 

Coonskin (1974) – Bakshi’s exuberantly stereotype-embracing, disconcertingly aesthetically coherent odyssey evokes a crazily mixed response

 

A Taxing Woman Returns (1988) – Itami’s sequel is spirited enough on its own terms, but adds little to the first film’s themes and devices

 

Saludos Amigos (1942) – Disney’s complacent South American-themed portmanteau is at least less grating than might have been anticipated

 

The Load (2018) – Glavonic’s tight concept allows haunting glimpses of even a quasi-abstract war’s physical and existential disorientations

 

The Harder they Fall (1956) – Robson and the cast punch home some strong moments, within a nicely venal, if overly calculated narrative

 

Mountains of the Moon (1990) – Rafelson’s drama holds attention well enough, but seldom feels very inspired, or historically reliable

 

The Killer Nun (1979) – Berruti is no Borowczyk, no Argento, etc., but cobbles together an adequately frantic mishmash of sex and trauma

 

Babylon (2022) – Chazelle’s crazy epic is wildly variable in quality, tone, watchability, finesse, you name it, but well, it’s not nothing…

 

Mother Joan of the Angels (1961) – Kawalerowicz’s chillingly well-calibrated vision leaves few points of earthly or spiritual certainty

 

I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987) – Rozema’s landmark Toronto film treads lightly, but with hugely pleasurable, lingering impact

 

The Fall of the House of Usher (1928) – Epstein’s hauntingly inspired silent telling sustains a heightened sense of near-inevitability

 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2021) – Showalter slogs through the material in just about the least imaginative, most irrelevant manner available

 

Attention, les enfants regardant (1978) – Leroy’s drama is seldom surprising but completely watchable, not least for its use of Delon

 

Impulse (1990) – the Locke/Russell pairing, intriguing in concept, yields an all-round unattractive, psychologically shallow drama

 

Mothra vs. Godzilla (1964) – Honda oversees a more urgent narrative than many series entries, aided by some pleasingly whimsical touches

 

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) – Miller’s improbably successful, narratively and visually sumptuous fusion of form and content

 

Two Men and a Wardrobe (1957) – Polanski’s eerily well-done short is a bitterly comic take on a cruel world’s thwarting of hope and optimism

 

Carbon Copy (1981) – Schultz’s lumpy satire, biting at times and cringe-inducing at others, at least evades being watched with indifference

 

Laocoon & Sons (1975) – Ottinger/Blumenschein’s playfully ruthless reconfiguration of cinematic structure and pleasure as we’ve known it

 

Licorice Pizza (2021) – Anderson applies his immense facility to deceptively light ends, richly flavored with unforced behavioral mysteries

 

Love Circle (1969) – Griffi’s ambiguously psychosexual complications maintain interest despite elements of stodginess and familiarity

 

Criminal Passion (1994) – Deitch ensures a general gender parity in matters of eroticism and messy psychology, but not too much else of note

 

Titanic (1943) – Selpin’s filming generally hits the requisite dramatic marks, while heavily emphasizing the capitalistic culpability angle

 

Empire of Light (2022) – Mendes’ astonishingly, bottomlessly deficient drama at least offers a few points of vague nostalgic recognition

 

The Ballad of Orin (1977) – Shinoda’s chronicle tempers its potential over-pristineness with a touching sensitivity to vulnerability

 

Grace Quigley (1984) – a few moments of relative emotional authenticity aside, Harvey leadenly squanders Hepburn & the blackly comic premise

 

Genocide (1968) – even making copious allowances, Nihonmatsu’s speedily ramshackle apocalypse opus fails to unnerve to the intended degree

 

The Harder they Fall (2021) – Samuel’s never-dull Western is too emotionlessly stylized to impress as meaningful genre revisionism/refresh

 

El vampire negro (1953) – Barreto’s ambitious, atmospheric “M”-channeling drama achieves much of interest, despite its recurring patchiness

 

An Awkward Sexual Adventure (2012) – Garrity’s comedy is no overlooked masterpiece, but has enough good-natured raunch to inhabit its title

 

The Police are Blundering in the Dark (1975) – Colombo’s poorly-integrated killer flick blunders also, albeit mainly in the sleazy light

 

Hustle (2022) – Zager’s movie works consistently well on its own propulsive terms, but a bit more analytical cynicism wouldn’t have hurt

 

A Garibaldian in the Convent (1942) – De Sica’s early film is lively and varied, while trivial in its treatment of enmity and death

 

Blaze (1989) – Shelton simplifies the personal and political alike almost to the point of idiocy, but Newman at least puts on a good show

 

So Sweet…So Perverse (1969) – Lenzi’s unimaginative narrative never acquires much steam, leaving one subsiding on scraps of forced decadence

 

House of Gucci (2021) – Scott’s movie is at best handsomely dull and often grating, with most of the actors at or near their all-time worst

 

Le navire Night (1979) – one of Duras’ most sumptuous works; a film formed of pervasive absence and lack, and yet of sumptuous immediacy

 

Shortbus (2006) – one ultimately feels a bit underserved by Mitchell’s film, despite its wondrous connectivity and celebratory energy

 

Sissi – the Young Empress (1956) – Marischka’s sequel reshuffles the first film’s elements, while boosting the humanity-eroding pageantry

 

The Northman (2022) – Eggers’ film is generally impressive, but allows wanton over-aestheticization to overwhelm most other considerations

 

Fanny (1932) – the second in the Pagnol trilogy often feels dawdling and histrionic, but one inevitably submits to its emotional high points

 

Chameleon Street (1989) – Harris’ remarkably nimble, provocative one-off – a scintillating character study loaded with broader implications

 

Godzilla vs. Gigan (1972) – Fukuda’s poorly-executed, largely fun-starved entry in the series, any potential resonances by now flaccid

 

No Time to Die (2021) – Fukunaga’s handsomely fluid Bond film, as restrained and variedly seasoned as can likely be expected from the series

 

Carmen Falls in Love (1952) – Kinoshita’s high-pitched sequel, marked by bizarre directorial choices, rapidly exhausts the viewer

 

Dream Lover (1993) – Kazan’s suspicion-heavy but tone-deficient drama hardly infiltrates one’s subsequent dreams, waking or otherwise

 

Pale Flower (1964) – Shinoda’s crime drama may be slightly over-venerated, but maintains a sleekly unflappable mood of existential remove

 

Black Panther Wakanda Forever (2022) – Coogler’s sequel offers much forgettably high-end grandeur, seasoned with persuasive melancholy

 

Ned Kelly (1970) – Richardson’s telling is respectable but seldom too imaginative, not least in its literal-minded squandering of Jagger

 

Beauty and the Beast (2014) – Gans’ wantonly over-prettified telling is serviceable enough, but devoid of much emotional connection

 

Key Largo (1948) – Huston and the cast keep things expertly crackling within a confining set-up, with Bogart at his nuanced, watchful best

 

Diary for my Lovers (1987) – Meszaros’ full, constantly shifting sequel makes for heavier viewing than its predecessor (not inaptly though)

 

The Horse Soldiers (1959) – Ford’s drama, soaked in the unbearable frictions of civil war, falls somewhat short in too many key respects

 

Lost Illusions (2021) – Giannoli’s tremendously well-orchestrated, slyly prophetic Balzac adaptation sweeps one along, almost to a fault

 

The Seven-Ups (1973) – D’Antoni’s drama is a respectable French Connection adjunct, with generally comparable high-points and limitations

 

The Best Years of a Life (2019) – whatever its weaknesses, Lelouch’s nostalgic reunion is a staggering pleasure for suitably aged cinephiles

 

Safety Last! (1923) – the nerve-wracking climax remains the clear highlight of Lloyd’s crisply performed & presented, yet uninvolving comedy

 

Rouge (1987) – Kwan’s culturally contrasting ghost story is utterly beguiling in all respects, beautifully inhabited by its actors

 

Rachel, Rachel (1968) – Newman elevates the recessive (but choicely acted) material with surprisingly, even morbidly tough-minded direction

 

The Worst Person in the World (2021) – Trier’s fine character study achieves a high degree of imaginative, unforced verisimilitude

 

The Day of the Dolphin (1973) – one happily submits to the playful core of Nichols’ film; not as much to the rushed sub-Pakula melodrama

 

The Grief of Others (2015) – Wang’s sensitive, creatively bold drama achieves an unusual, sometimes eccentricity-tinged authenticity

 

Two-Faced Woman (1941) – Garbo’s last film lives down to its minor reputation, the star ill at ease under Cukor’s ineffective direction

 

Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors (2000) – Hong’s formal mastery astutely facilitates his smoothly acute study of morphing exploitation

 

And Now Miguel (1953) – the simple focus of Krumgold’s scenically empathetic quasi-documentary feels rather ominously fragile in retrospect

 

Heller Wahn (1983) – von Trotta’s study of symbiotic female friendship is overly calculated at times, but laceratingly indicting at its best

 

What’s Up, Doc? (1972) – Bogdanovich’s film perhaps gets more classically cherishable as time goes on, and I’d say it gets funnier too

 

La verite (2019) – a graceful relatively minor Kore-eda film overall, immensely elevated by impeccably cineaste-friendly attributes

 

One Way Passage (1932) – Garnett’s fatalistic romance is limited by over-concision, but the absence-defined ending lingers in one’s mind

 

Parallel Mothers (2021) – one of Almodovar’s most richly echoing films, a multi-faceted joy to watch even when almost too tragic to bear

 

The Mind Benders (1963) – Dearden’s unshowy approach to a sci-fi-type premise builds promisingly enough, but then talkily fizzles out

 

Circumstance (2011) – Kesharvaz’s film feels overly calculated and compressed at times, but rings sadly, outrage-inducingly true as a whole

 

The Blue Knight (1973) – Butler’s arrestingly-cast drama, though plainly limited by network TV parameters, hits the mark pretty solidly

 

A Taxing Woman (1987) – Itami shows off his well-honed genre smarts and narrative prowess, applied to unusual (and quite educational) ends

 

He Laughed Last (1956) – Edwards’ peculiarly plotted early film doesn’t generate much laughter, maybe a mildly intrigued sense of blankness

 

Aferim! (2015) – Jude’s staggeringly well-realized historical recreation, its unflinching engagement often verbally and morally draining

 

Presenting Lily Mars (1943) – Taurog’s inspiration-challenged, often misjudged Garland vehicle at least offers a few musical highlights

 

Pink Floyd: the Wall (1982) – Parker and Scarfe bludgeon more than they seduce, likely leaving you in no hurry to ever hear the album again

 

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972) – nothing about Miraglia’s colorfully tangled gallop through plot points and murders cuts very deeply

 

Last Night in Soho (2021) – Wright’s colorful, nerve-janglingly propulsive (if inherently hollow) fantasia, packed with incidental pleasures

 

The Marked Eyes (1964) – Hossein’s drama doesn’t have much to it beyond the two central women, but adequately sustains its evasive moodiness

 

Lost Highway (1997) – Lynch’s brilliantly uncrackable and disturbed enigma, his structural and expressive mastery at their near-zenith

 

Wild Geese (1953) – Toyoda’s poignant tale of exploitation, marked by a deeply sympathetic sense of economic and emotional insecurity

 

The Woman King (2022) – Prince-Bythewood’s drama impresses as celebration of community, but too often falls short in much the same old ways

 

Extreme Private Eros (1974) – Hara’s essay film achieves a rare sense of unscrubbed, ideology- and convention-defying self-exploration

 

Cat People (1982) – Schrader’s fascinating if of course amply debatable remake viscerally pulsates with deviant sexuality and desire

 

Brainwashed (1960) – Oswald’s well-structured, physically and psychologically hemmed-in drama expertly maintains its slow-burning tension

 

Scarborough (2021) – even in its missteps, Nakhai and Williamson’s often heartbreakingly well-done social document grips and instructs

 

Marius (1931) – Pagnol’s inevitability-heavy tale yields the kind of film you find lodged in the memory, even if you’ve never seen it before

 

Amateur (1994) – the Hartley well started running dry pretty early on, with little sense of purpose or revelation to the attitudinizing

 

In the Name of the Italian People (1971) – Risi’s punchily enjoyable, optimism-challenged contrasting of personal and societal moralities

 

Sharp Stick (2022) – Dunham’s film might have been conceived as an exercise, largely successfully achieved, in redeeming a dubious premise

 

Love at Sea (1964) – Gilles’ poignantly searching little film glows with the love of Paris, of cinema, of its own sweet ephemerality

 

American Mary (2012) – despite inevitable excesses, the Soskas enjoyably maintain the governing icky/sexy/life-choice-affirming vibe

 

Beautiful Days (1955) – Kobayashi’s absorbing tale of intertwined lives, marked by existential & monetary post-war challenge & compromise

 

The Last Duel (2021) – Scott’s overdone, inauthentic artificiality is far less structurally and thematically provocative than intended

 

Arrebato (1979) – Zulueta’s wildly singular must-see work may possess a lifetime’s worth of vision, creative blood, and unifying conviction

 

Everyone Says I Love You (1996) – Allen’s baggy musical easily passes the time, but mostly strikes you as a clumsy, magic-deprived letdown

 

Waxworks (1924) – Leni’s silent semi-horror film has its stodgy passages, but also some lasting expressionist highlights (the Ripper!)

 

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) – a solidly flavourful and nuanced telling, especially in its darker and more grotesque aspects

 

Carmen Comes Home (1951) – narratively trifling stuff even by Kinoshita’s frequent standards, but of mild interest as a color milestone

 

Frantic (1988) – among Polanski’s more minor exercises, but with good suspense mechanics, and ample points of tonal and visual interest

 

A Quiet Place to Kill (1970) – Lenzi’s paranoid drama offers standard-issue plotting, scenery, and somnambulant acting (especially Baker)

 

Mass (2021) – Kranz’s fine-tuned, astutely-judged  film is barely equal to the wasteland it surveys, but then that’s largely the point

 

Kill! (1968) – Okamoto’s somewhat overly-prolonged Samurai opus is stylishly sustained, but keeps within its knowingly derivative limits

 

Goodfellas (1990) – Scorsese’s overly affectionate, under-contextualized show of force frustrates about as much as it muscularly dazzles

 

Endless Desire (1958) – a fairly straightforward crime narrative for Imamura, but bitingly well-done at every cynically grasping turn

 

Don’t Worry Darling (2022) – Wilde doesn’t fully realize on the intriguing material, but enlivens the movie in various satisfyingly odd ways

 

Paper Moon (1973) – Bogdanovich’s period piece nicely hits all its intended marks, although Tatum O’Neal’s Oscar now looks wildly generous

 

Cinema Paradiso (1988) – Tornatore’s extended version makes for mostly soft viewing, peddling the most unanalytical, affectless nostalgia

 

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) – Minnelli’s classic is marvelously sustained, not least for the persistent veins of threat and disruption

 

In the Aisles (2018) – Stuber patiently and astutely explores the workplace as one’s primary structuring reality and point of connection

 

The Naked Truth (1957) – the darkly satiric concept and high-potential casting deserve livelier and sharper direction than Zampi can muster

 

Drive My Car (2021) – Hamaguchi’s extraordinarily rich and satisfying exploration of the creation of meaning and connection in art and life

 

99 and 44/100% Dead (1974) – one of Frankenheimer’s dullest and most perplexing failures, misjudged whether assessed as satire or otherwise

 

Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989) – Ottinger’s mash-up of grand artificiality and sumptuous travelogue is improbably and winningly nurturing

 

The Appaloosa (1966) – Furie’s shambling border drama is pretty minor, when not cringeworthy, but Brando’s low-key masochism makes the show

 

Wondrous Boccaccio (2015) – the well-seasoned Tavianis’ delicately shaded anthology ultimately lands rather too fleetingly and familiarly

 

A Place in the Sun (1951) – Stevens’ tragic romance still penetrates, particularly in its doomed longing to transcend class and privilege

 

Bergman Island (2021) – Hansen-Love’s film provides constant stimulations and pleasures, but doesn’t connect as intimately as her best work

 

The Boys from Brazil (1978) – Schaffner’s heavy-handedness doesn’t do much to engender a real sense of threat, but it has its moments

 

Tampopo (1985) – Itami’s peppy novelty, propelled by quasi-Bunuelian structural fluidity and amusingly low-stakes Western-genre riffing

 

Jewel Robbery (1932) – Dieterle’s concise diversion sustains its air of cheerful high-life amorality (aided by the laced cigarettes!)

 

Night and Day (2008) – happily hanging out in Paris, Hong wanders smoothly through emotional, legal and other existentially liminal states

 

Written on the Wind (1956) – Sirk’s amazing compositions and jagged psychological structures may leave one feeling personally destabilized

 

Transit (2018) – in a work of crystalline poise, Petzold reinflates classic romantic structures with eerily contemporary anxieties & threats

 

The Sting (1973) – Hill’s Oscar-winner is a handsome but largely empty ride, declining to tap any possible profundity in its reality-bending

 

Summer Night…(1986) – offers passages of Wertmuller at her lyrical best, outweighed by exhausting dollops of her multi-faceted worst

 

Hell’s Angels on Wheels (1967) – Rush’s film has a few raucously amusing moments, but not much in the way of penetrating perspective

 

Prayers for the Stolen (2021) – Huezo’s wrenching drama crafts an almost unbearably convincing sense of endemic threat and thwarted beauty

 

Alice in Wonderland (1951) – Disney’s version is too peculiar and literal to sustain the wonder, but has some sweetly trippy highpoints

 

Godard mon amour (2017) – Hazanavicius somehow converts aging film buff catnip into improbably well-functioning character-based comedy

 

Wattstax (1973) – Stuart skillfully places the concert in its complex social context (but, if anything, there’s not enough of the music!)

 

The Green, Green Grass of Home (1982) – Hou’s early film is a thoroughly winning human document, notable for its environmental concern

 

The Set-Up (1949) – one of Wise’s most satisfying pictures, dense in bleakly amused human observation and incisive cinematic smarts

 

I Do Not Care if…(2018) – a film of sensational, morphing relevance, driven by Jude’s torrential cinematic energy and intellectual dexterity

 

Summer Stock (1950) – Walters oversees some lasting peaks of the musical genre, pushing through a framework of extreme ramshackle corniness

 

Outland (1981) – Hyams executes the misconceived High-Noon-in-space concept in tonally dour, visually drab, all-round unstimulating fashion

 

Hunter in the Dark (1979) – an epically layered, fragility-laced narrative, overseen by Gosha with impressively varying compositional flair

 

Amsterdam (2022) – Russell’s unfairly ignored film is staggeringly flawed for sure, yet fascinating in its ambition, choices and resonances

 

Golden Eyes (1968) – Fukuda’s follow-up to Ironfinger doesn’t quite match the original’s peppily twisting energy, but it’s enough to get by

 

Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986) – Mazursky’s facile comedy, largely disconnected from the real world, is a clear marker of decline

 

A Day in Court (1954) – Steno’s linked vignettes are brightly enough done, laced with an acerbic sense of the system’s puffed-up absurdities

 

West Side Story (2021) – the all-round craftsmanship astounds, & the film does have some bite, while bearing too little contemporary urgency

 

Death Walks on High Heels (1971) – by the standards of such twisting, tilltating thrillers, Ercoli handles it all with nice, nasty zippiness

 

Heart of Midnight (1988) – Chapman’s tinny-feeling journey through sleaze and trauma falls short visually, and on just about every level

 

The Baker’s Wife (1938) – Pagnol’s affectionate, leisurely observation feels over-indulgently uncritical now, but not without its rewards

 

The Menu (2022) – Mylod’s elegantly dark comedy is imaginative and well-handled, although all too easy to swallow, digest and move on from

 

Baaz (1953) – Dutt’s tale of female-led rebellion is stirring enough, despite much cursory storytelling and frequently rickety visualization

 

Jungle Fever (1991) – Lee’s over-extended drama is deeply, even wantonly, flawed, and also of course mesmerizingly stimulating and riveting

 

Goodbye CP (1972) – Hara’s documentary observes cerebral palsy with sympathetic realism, unsentimentally demanding the viewer’s observance

 

Red Rocket (2021) – Baker’s sympathetically disreputable, sociologically exacting high-concept comedy is grandly entertaining throughout

 

Spring Dreams (1960) – Kinoshita’s tragi-farce covers a lot of narrative, tonal and thematic ground, none of it completely satisfactorily

 

Aria (1987) – a somewhat goofy anthology project, hardly conducive to opera appreciation, but with ample variety and general panache

 

Sissi (1955) – Marischka’s opulent romance doesn’t challenge or critique on any level, but draws well on the young Schneider’s happy energy

 

The Inheritance (2020) – drawing on respectfully tended cultural and local roots, Asili crafts a thrillingly tangible form of presentness

 

The Castle of Sand (1974) – Nomura’s for a while seemingly overly-sprawling investigation yields a final stretch of considerable grandeur

 

Digging for Fire (2015) – Swanberg’s tale of marital renewal finds room for actors and situations to breathe, despite much over-tidiness

 

Prison (1949) – Bergman’s self-reflective hell-on-earth drama is somewhat over-extended, but always mesmerizingly ambitious and committed

 

White Noise (2022) – Baumbach’s stylistically all-stops-out existential investigation is improbably satisfying, even in its odder aspects

 

Sincerity (1953) – the title barely captures the well-worked weepiness quotient of Kobayashi’s class-conscious story of personal awakening

 

The Garden (1990) – Jarman’s astounding film feels torn from all corners of a despairing, furious, ecstatic, helplessly expressive psyche

 

The Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970) – after a zippy initial opening up, Lumet respectably works through Williams’ toxicity-infused play

 

Deception (2021) – Desplechin’s Roth adaptation is often exquisite, but by its nature eschews the rapturous tumbling energy of his best work

 

Woman of Straw (1964) – Dearden’s drama trudges through its suspense-starved plot with unaccountable dourness, the actors not helping much

 

La flor (2018) – astonishingly enough, Llinas’ staggering creation stimulates and rewards in generous proportion to its ultra-epic length

 

The Mad Miss Manton (1938) – Jason’s ponderous comedy-mystery doesn’t do much with its stars, and is sadly short on inspired madness

 

Diary for my Children (1984) – Meszaros’ absorbing personal and social document, exploring self-determination in the face of regimentation

 

The Molly Maguires (1970) – Ritt’s physically imposing, brute-force drama, righteously drawing on the eternal exploitation of the powerless

 

Great Freedom (2021) – Meise’s absorbing, moving, narratively and psychologically provocative study of institutionalization and its toll

 

Lonelyhearts (1958) – Donehue’s drama isn’t fully achieved, but has some eloquently searching patches, & the mesmerizingly vulnerable Clift

 

In Between Days (2006) – Kim’s intimate, unprettified study of immigrant experience channels some quietly mundane, too-seldom-told truths

 

To Sir, With Love (1967) – Clavell papers over the patchily underdone narrative with a thin veneer of dignity and social conscience

 

My Worst Nightmare (2011) – when not gratingly predictable, Fontaine’s comedic meeting of opposites is unconvincing and underdeveloped

 

Jabberwocky (1977) – the silly comedy often only gets in the way of Gilliam’s impressively detailed visual and logistical imagination

 

The Moon in the Gutter (1983) – Beineix generates some strangely lingering images & moments, notwithstanding the rather heavygoing narrative

 

The Maltese Falcon (1941) – the classic status of Huston’s debut is a little generous, notwithstanding some cracking presences and exchanges

 

Court (2014) – Tamhane’s depressingly well-done, class-attuned dissection of India’s grindingly unfit-for-modern-purposes judicial system

 

American Guerilla in the Philippines (1950) – Lang’s relentless, atypically sun-baked chronicle of entrapment and existential isolation

 

H Story (2001) – Suwa’s reflection on representation and engagement is never uninteresting, but most beguiling when at its loosest

 

The Killer Elite (1975) – Peckinpah’s lumpy drama is disarmingly rambling and eccentric in some respects, murky and disengaged in others

 

Seven Women, Seven Sins (1986) – an energetic themed anthology of satisfyingly varying peculiarity, if expectedly limited overall coherence

 

A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929) – Asquith’s silent film blends social comedy and stark thriller with sustained skill and imaginative fluidity

 

Psychokinesis (2018) – Yeon’s silly quasi-superhero movie, far inferior to his Train to Busan, is mostly just a cursory waste of resources

 

The Computer wore Tennis Shoes (1969) – a weak, low-conviction Disney entry that achieves little on its own terms, let alone anyone else’s

 

Where does your Hidden Smile Lie? (2001) – Costa’s mesmerizing, often revelatory study of the tetchily exacting journey toward sublimity

 

Foxy Brown (1974) – the opening credits and the occasional defiant flourish aside, Hill’s stilted effort doesn’t provide much to savor

 

And the Ship Sails On (1983) – Fellini’s spectacle sadly lacks much ongoing relevance, whatever one’s taste for its grand artificiality

 

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) – Lean’s epic now seems more calculated and less seeped in madness than the popular memory maintains

 

Scarred Hearts (2016) – Jude’s robust, empathetic chronicle of illness and slow decline, worthy of the defiant life force at its centre

 

In the Good Old Summertime (1949) – Leonard’s pleasant enough but distinctly underpowered (musically and otherwise) Garland vehicle

 

The French Dispatch (2021) – Anderson’s oddly Greenaway-evoking creation is almost oppressively breathtaking, only fitfully passion-forming

 

Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) – d’Amato’s slack supernatural shocker ultimately acquires some kind of shape, but never amounts to much

 

A Chorus Line (1985) – Attenborough doesn’t do so badly, but the material inherently and stiffly resists any worthwhile cinematic treatment

 

Shozo, a Cat and Two Women (1956) – the climactic stubborn bleakness of Toyoda’s comedy surmounts its trifling and over-protracted aspects

 

Rifkin’s Festival (2020) – another minimal-effort, lost-in-the-past Allen work, playing more engagingly than it might have (but not by much)

 

Death Laid an Egg (1968) – Questi’s must be one of the most chicken-centric movies ever, and is quite a heady mix even aside from that

 

Silent Britain (2006) – Thompson/Sweet’s survey is enormously informative and persuasive, no matter its tonal and scholarly shortcomings

 

Eye in the Labyrinth (1972) – Caiano’s horror mystery keeps things lively and modestly unpredictable, but the overall effect is a bit thin

 

Crimes of the Future (2022) – Cronenberg’s amazing, implication-heavy film, if perhaps overly hermetic, astounds and chills throughout

 

Stolen Desire (1958) – Imamura’s full-to-bursting debut has a striking, ribald energy and an enjoyably pragmatic view of human behaviour

 

Trust (1990) – Hartley’s bumpy journey toward self-actualization is one of his best-realized works, while hardly evoking deep affection

 

The Portrait (1948) – Kinoshita’s genial drama isn’t a major work, but packs a varied range of human dynamics into its brief running time

 

Mogul Mowgli (2021) – Tariq and Ahmed’s case history draws on rich, sometimes harrowing layers of personal and cultural past and present

 

Sword of the Beast (1965) – Gosha sets out the tangled motivations, allegiances and inner burdens with admirable, body-count-heavy clarity

 

Quartet (1981) – Ivory’s film is well-modulated and artfully withholding, but you mostly watch with a feeling of blankly respectful distance

 

Une Parisienne (1957) – Boisrond’s slightly-better-than-average Bardot-showcasing comedy at least doesn’t dawdle (except when ogling…)

 

Relic (2020) – James’ use of horror devices and tropes ultimately yields a remarkable representation of fraught generational bonding

 

Godzilla vs. Hedorah (1971) – a bright and zippy, environmentally-charged entry in the series, worth it for the groovy opening credits alone

 

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) – Spielberg’s film seems at times oddly simple, yet at others near-crazy in its conceptual grandeur

 

Ironfinger (1965) – Fukuda’s gadget-heavy, jauntily location-hopping quasi-Bond concoction is well-done in its unimportantly breezy fashion

 

Candyman (2021) – DaCosta stylishly maintains a pointed sense of multi-faceted contemporary relevance, even as narrative overload sets in

 

Summer Interlude (1951) – Bergman’s early-ish work is totally involving on its own terms, and dotted with glimpses of the heights to come

 

The Fugitive (1993) – Davis’ stretched drama benefits from sustained logistical prowess, and the patina of single-minded intelligence

 

Sisters of the Gion (1936) – one of Mizoguchi’s most concentrated, thorough and lacerating studies of engrained societal exploitation

 

Beans (2020) – despite various points of excessive tidiness, Deer’s melding of the personal and political is instructionally empathetic 

 

Il bell’Antonio (1960) – Bolognini and Pasolini’s impeccably crafted subversion of patriarchal structures, assumptions and hypocrisies

 

The Intern (2015) – Meyers does pretty well by the appealing concept, even if sentimentality and idealism gradually pushes out most else

 

A Street of Love and Hate (1959) – Oshima develops the fable-like core premise with incisively unsentimental clarity and social awareness

 

Glass Onion (2022) – there’s much pleasure in Johnson’s super-well-worked creation, although of course not so much broader implication

 

Shall We Go to Your Place…(1973) - Hallstrom’s well-observed hook-up journal is as much fun as any of his (far) more polished later works

 

Gorky Park (1983) – Apted’s drama doesn’t spark any great reaction, but then, national joylessness and drabness seem to be largely the point

 

Douce violence (1962) – Pecas’ sex drama has a few diverting, sadism-laced sequences, but for the most part it’s undistinguished stuff

 

4.44 Last Day on Earth (2011) – a near-perfect vessel for Ferrara’s tumultuously restless existential questing and experiential gleaning

 

Stakeout (1958) – Nomura’s impressive film, built on a top-notch suspenseful set-up, steers in surprisingly quiet, humane directions

 

The Sparks Brothers (2021) – Wright’s utterly enjoyable, eye-opening survey, well balanced between explication and wryly reverent distance

 

The Hired Hand (1971) – Fonda’s finely-crafted, often superbly visualized Western, its unshowy realism tinted by a sense of predestination 

 

The Home and the World (1984) – Ray’s blending of personal & political is somewhat over-isolated, but executed with exquisite, seasoned care

 

For Me and My Gal (1942) – Berkeley’s relatively unshowy, expertly-controlled musical contrasts vaudeville strivings and wartime upheavals

 

Karaoke Girl (2013) – Vichit-Vadakan’s perhaps overly discreet but absorbing chronicle of young female migration, adaptation and illusion

 

Wavelength (1967) – Snow’s (not boring!) landmark marries the infallibly all-seeing & the tangibly hands-on, even with traces of wry humour

 

Gabrielle (2005) – Chereau’s audaciously inspired dissection of marriage as personal and social construct is a success on every level

 

Don’t Play Us Cheap (1972) – van Peebles’ wildly iconoclastic, utterly resistance-busting celebration of Black resilience and joyousness

 

Lili Marleen (1981) – even if not among Fassbinder’s best, an enthralling mesh of Nazi-era ambiguities (of actions, motivations, impacts…)

 

Thunderbolt (1929) – Sternberg partially reworks the silent Underworld in a more stylistically restrained, still meatily enjoyable manner

 

Theo & Hugo… (2016) – Martineau/Ducastel’s quite winning nocturnal mini-odyssey spans unbound carnality, giddy idealism, stark realities

 

All About Eve (1950) – Mankiewicz’s breathtaking dialogue still sweeps one along, but at an elegantly-maintained, well-upholstered distance

 

No Place Like Home (2006) – Henzell’s likeable if bumpily-assembled Jamaican odyssey, contrasting manufactured illusions and lived realities

 

THX 1138 (1971) – Lucas’ debut has a conventional overall trajectory, but an astounding wealth of well-worked social & technological detail

 

The Movement of Things (1985) – Serra’s near-revelatory, deeply-present observance of (surely imperiled) lives, rhythms and rituals

 

The League of Gentlemen (1960) – Dearden’s fairly standard heist film, mildly elevated by military affectations & a few disreputable edges

 

Pulse (2001) – perhaps Kurosawa’s most lastingly threatening vision, evading simple explication, but ultimately chillingly all-encompassing

 

Easter Parade (1948) – Walters’ musical is bright and tuneful, but the plotting and much else are perfunctory even by genre standards

                                                                

Jeanne (2019) – the inexhaustibly shifting Dumont expands the corpus of Jeanne d’Arc cinema in startlingly diverse and elevating fashion

 

Madame Claude (1977) – Jaeckin’s mixture of soft core and skullduggery has plenty of intriguing raw elements, but limited overall spark

 

Zeros and Ones (2021) – Ferrara more or less viably positions the pandemic-era as a murkily causation- and coherence-dissolving meltdown

 

Emotion (1966) – Obayashi’s wildly energetic early short film exudes the joy of collaborative cinema-making, at a giddy moment in time

 

A Different Image (1982) – Larkin’s lightly expressed but steel-willed, wide-angle assertion of Black woman as self-determined subject

 

The Snow Flurry (1959) – Kinoshita’s sensitive but not particularly notable, structurally over-extended study of loss and its long aftermath

 

Limbo (2020) – Sharrock’s deadpan premise and remote setting inherently entails a somewhat one-note (but consistently appealing) movie

 

The Demon (1978) – Nomura’s sad, incisive treatment of scalding family dynamics, rooted in parental inadequacy and financial hopelessness

 

In the Family (2011) – the naturalism of Wang’s patient story-telling sometimes wavers a bit, but overall it wears its length intelligently

 

The Witches (1967) – a pleasingly odd anthology, most notable for Pasolini’s segment and for a highly uncharacteristic Clint Eastwood!

 

The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) – McDonagh’s well-acted, considerate (if generally overpraised) movie ably works its odd central premise

 

Battleship Potemkin (1925) – Eisenstein’s tangibly powerful cinema still reverberates, even if as a cinematic road not often now traveled

 

Evil Under the Sun (1982) – Hamilton’s pedestrian mystery doesn’t even film the sun with style, let alone sink intelligently into the evil

 

Spiritual Kung Fu (1978) – much of Wei Lo’s fluctuating, often goofy actioner is simply Jackie Chan on display, so that’s good enough!

 

Let Them All Talk (2020) – Soderbergh expertly sustains a lightly intelligent air, showcasing actors and locations with equal aplomb

 

Son of Godzilla (1967) – Fukuda’s peppy entry in the series has some colourful monster action and a passable patina of “serious” science

 

Collective: Unconscious (2016) – a strongly-conceived, no-weak-link compilation film; Baldwin’s segment particularly lingers in the mind

 

This Can’t Happen Here (1950) – Bergman’s lurching allegorical thriller may be his most peculiarly misconceived and unrewarding work

 

The Humans (2021) – Karem’s strong filming of his genre-expanding existential investigation, done with tremendous visual & spatial assurance

 

The Scar (1976) – Kieslowski’s politically and existentially provocative film, set in the draining shadow of runaway industrialization

 

Love Jones (1997) – much about Witcher’s film remains irresistible (that soundtrack!), although the minor classic status is a bit overstated

 

Assassination (1964) – Shinoda’s narrative complexity and shifting technique draw (largely productively) on Japan’s draining modern history

 

Zola (2020) – Bravo realizes the oddball material with an imaginatively optimal combination of discipline, reflection and digression

 

Breakfast for Two (1937) – Santell’s comedy doesn’t really hang together, but has a few choice sequences, and the actors, and the dog!

 

I Wish I Knew (2010) – Jia’s typically graceful engagement with Shanghai, as cinematic myth, as visual wonder, as often-brutal lived reality

 

March or Die (1977) – Richards’ French Foreign Legion drama is a peculiar, if often impressively realized, meshing of moods and registers

 

Light Years Away (1981) – Tanner’s scenic, eccentric contrivance is hardly his most meaningful work, but it’s oddly cherishable even so

 

Carry on Regardless (1961) – a barely carrying-on early series entry, mostly just one under-developed, flatly handled bit after another

 

The Happiest Girl in the World (2009) – Jude’s irresistible set-up facilitates a poignant character study amid ample deadpan humour

 

The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) – Crichton oversees a most highly-functioning comic machine, in which realities are only passingly glimpsed

 

Chez Jolie Coiffure (2018) – Mbakam’s well-observed study of displaced community, insecurity and struggle never far beneath the surface

 

Tracks (1976) – arguably Jaglom’s most impactful film, his trademark conviviality yielding to reality-bending Vietnam-era paranoia

 

Passion (1982) – a work of stunning, ever-pivoting Godardian craft, crackling with disillusionment at its own visual sumptuousness

 

The Criminal (1960) – a highly superior crime drama, elevated through Losey’s dynamic feel for space, behavior, and broader implication                             

 

Cargo 200 (2007) – Balabanov’s missive from a cesspit-like Russia, all the more depressing for its formidable creative and formal strengths

 

Moontide (1942) – Mayo’s memorably-cast coastal romance doesn’t generally excel, but sustains an often lovely mood of threatened aspiration

 

Barrage (2017) – Schroeder’s largely unexceptional tale of tentative reconciliation, at its strongest when tapping into underlying traumas

 

Russian Roulette (1975) – Lombardo finds small ways to rise above the general pedestrianism, delivering a striking downtown Vancouver climax

 

Santa Sangre (1989) – Jodorowsky, in full showman mode, never crafts a dull scene, nor (luridness aside) a particularly penetrating one

 

Stereo (1969) – Cronenberg’s early film explores a bracingly strange, droll, cerebral and concept-heavy (if not yet fully navigated) space

 

Merci pour le chocolat (2000) – among Chabrol’s thinner works, notwithstanding its elegant toying with familial definitions and boundaries

 

The Crowd Roars (1932) – Hawks’ early racing car movie delivers well enough on the action, but is under-developed in most key respects

 

I Saw the Devil (2010) – Kim’s extended showdown is never dull, but it’s unedifyingly driven by relentless contrivance and wanton nastiness

 

Cooley High (1975) – Schultz’s engaging slice of life, focusing less on big laughs and set-ups than on challenged character and community

 

Tenue de Soiree (1986) – one submits to Blier’s aggressively assumption-baiting farce with amazement, and at least some form of respect

 

The Story of a Three Day Pass (1967) – the matchless Van Peebles channels Black experience, identity and insecurity with undiminished verve

 

Afternoon (2015) – a small delight, with Tsai’s unhurried formal simplicity facilitating a funny, revealing portrait of mutual dependency

 

Native Son (1951) – Chenal’s adaptation sustains a strong vein of brutalized authenticity, notwithstanding structural and other weaknesses

 

Bright Future (2002) – Kurosawa’s evasively ambiguous parable of modern directionless is hauntingly effective, with an oddly beautiful core

 

Radio On (1979) – Petit’s movie engages in unique (albeit heavily Wenders-enthused) manner with a fraying Britain’s bottomless confusions

 

You Will Die at Twenty (2019) – Alala’s absorbingly imagined and realized expression of mystical indoctrination and its consequences

 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) – Neame’s mannered drama excessively prioritizes Smith’s performance, over almost all else of interest

 

I Want to Go Home (1989) – Resnais’ peculiar mix of elements and references is ultimately rewarding, if often rather grating along the way

 

The Harvey Girls (1946) – Sidney delivers a few lasting musical highlights, without seemingly trying to impose much stylistic or tonal unity

 

Happy Hour (2015) – one could almost limitlessly observe Hamaguchi’s painstakingly realized world, continually reconsidering & recalibrating

 

Drive, He Said (1971) – Nicholson’s absorbing directorial debut draws acutely and imaginatively on its people, place and social context

 

Daratt (2006) – Haroun acutely sifts the complexities of revenge and reconciliation through suspensefully intertwining characterizations

 

The Love Bug (1968) – Stevenson’s blithely disbelief-suspending, solidly-staged bit of silliness holds up better than might be expected

 

The Wonder (2022) – Lelio’s carefully considered adaptation is mostly satisfying, without transcending its inherent literary artificiality

 

Le jour se leve (1939) – Carne’s fatalistic landmark, with Gabin at his best, retains its exquisitely crafted, societally pessimistic grip

 

Rare Beasts (2019) – Piper’s distinctively intelligently debut provides a coherently off-kilter take on life & love & the whole f-ing thing

 

Benilde or the Virgin Mother (1975) – one of de Oliveira’s most accessible films, crafting an enthralling space of mystery and inquiry

 

The Father (2020) – Zeller crafts one of the most indelible recent actor-driven films, formally remarkable and at times sadly frightening

 

The Return of Ringo (1965) – Tessari’s crisply conceived and relishingly executed reboot/sequel improves on its flatter predecessor

 

Cop (1988) – the strained and grotesque aspects of the central narrative rather undermine Harris’ spiky facility with character and mood

 

Les dragueurs (1959) – Mocky offsets the relentless skirt-chasing with sometimes poignant casting and sufficient emotional flavour

 

C’mon C’mon (2021) – despite (or because of) its empathetic strengths, Mills’ under-involving film often feels like enforced therapy

 

Silence (1971) – Shinoda’s pained chronicle of faith and persecution engages no less fully and directly than Scorsese’s later telling

 

Voyage of Time (2016) – a somewhat typically unsatisfying latter-day Mallick, ravishing the eye more fully than the ear or intellect

 

Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968) – Sato throws in enough incident, spectacle and topical charge to surmount the often shaky execution

 

Minari (2020) – Chung’s film is rather too formulaic (not least Youn’s Oscar-bait character), but has an attentively pleasantly way about it

 

Marriage in the Shadows (1947) – whatever its deficiencies, Maetzig’s melodrama carries an immense, even overpowering historical immediacy

 

Green Card (1990) – Weir’s comedy eschews any hints of significance, but the well-matched actors and sustained amiability put it across

 

A Night Full of Rain (1978) – Wertmuller’s tone-deaf study of a turbulent relationship makes for monotonously unrewarding viewing 

 

Everything Everywhere all at Once (2022) – the Daniels’ imaginative tour de force is overwhelmingly impressive, and underwhelmingly trite

 

Night and Fog in Japan (1960) – Oshima’s dissection of complacency & culpability, at once intellectually exacting & cinematically liberating

 

Siberia (2019) – despite its unyielding and unreadable aspects, Ferrara’s odyssey sustains a strangely moving sense of questing penance

 

White Paradise (1924) – Lamac’s silent melodrama moves through various modes with appealing, if not always perfectly controlled, enthusiasm

 

French Exit (2020) – Jacobs’ oddity doesn’t ultimately amount to that much, but is sufficiently unpredictable and consistently likeable

 

Ai no corrida (1976) – at once emptying & exhilarating, Oshima’s is one of cinema’s most sustained studies of extreme, desperate sexuality

 

Sitting Ducks (1980) – Jaglom’s amiable but entirely unpersuasive comedy feels largely lazy and trivial in the wake of his preceding Tracks

 

Change of Life (1966) – an evocative study of personal and economic fragility, if the slightly more mannered of Rocha’s two fine early works

 

Summer of Soul (2021) – an animating gift from the archival gods, more than satisfactorily curated and contextualized by Questlove

 

Santa Claus (1959) – Cardona’s dawdling, distanced-feeling celebration does have the occasional touching or pleasingly whimsical moment

 

The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson (2015) – Temple pulls out a few too many visual stops at times, but Wilko is unmatchable value for money

 

The Most Beautiful Wife (1970) – a potentially rich and bitingly comic battle of the sexes, handled rather too straightforwardly by Damiani

 

Sylvie’s Love (2020) – Ashe’s period romance doesn’t hit any huge heights, but is unassumingly and progressively pleasurable throughout

 

Night of the Bloody Apes (1969) – Cordona’s aggressively poor, barely-even-trying monster rampage doesn’t get the simplest thing right

 

A Stranger Among Us (1992) – Lumet’s well-honed judgment deserts him for long stretches here, with unconvincing, if not eye-rolling, results

 

An Old Gangster’s Molls (1927) – Innemann’s silent comedy, forgivably overstuffed at times, motors along in happily try-anything style

 

The Good Nurse (2022) – Lindholm’s overly tidy and linear drama is fairly well-attuned to human fragility, but distinctly short on surprises

 

The Debut (1977) – Van Brakel’s vital, even-handed study of a transgressive relationship, deeply attuned to youthful impulse and sensation

 

Fourteen (2019) – Sallitt’s film feels truthful & lived-in at every turn, with a beautifully crafted sense of personal shifts & evolutions

 

Les abysses (1963) – Papatakis doesn’t so much depict as ferally seep us in the madness-inducing wretchedness of domestic power structures

 

Falling in Love (1984) – Grosbard’s reticent drama is immeasurably lifted by, and utterly rewatchable for, the astounding star pairing

 

To Joy (1950) – Bergman’s early film has its conventional aspects, but its emotional core is often ruthlessly unsentimental and surprising

 

Worth (2020) – Colangelo’s empathetic treatment is more than respectable, but (probably inevitably) skips over much substance and complexity

 

Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970) – Perry’s study is artfully excruciating on several levels, with an oddly haunting sense of futility

 

Angels Wear White (2017) – Qu’s incisively sad, hope-challenged film thoroughly dissects the commodification and exploitation of young women

 

High Sierra (1941) – Walsh’s classic of contrasting spaces, registers and moralities; a near-peak for Bogart, and for cinematic canines

 

Time and Judgement (1988) – Shabazz’s deeply personal, expressive journey through Black history, its prophecies seeming partly poignant now

 

A Man for All Seasons (1966) – Zinnemann’s unstirringly respectable study of principle gains modest resonance in an age of alternative facts

 

This is Not a Burial…(2019) – Mosese’s tale of resistance, suffused in steely urgency, deeply of (yet unconstricted by) its time and place

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) – Spielberg’s vision elicits lasting affection, for all its rigged build-up and pumped-up wonder

 

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) – the short-story format rather limits the possibilities of Hamaguchi’s patiently immersive explorations

 

Decision at Sundown (1957) – a second-tier Boetticher/Scott Western, perhaps most notable for its expectation-defying final moments

 

Train to Busan (2016) – Yeon’s isn’t the most thematically rich of zombie flicks, but hardly makes a wrong move on its own propulsive terms

 

Saturday Night and Sunday… (1960) – Reisz’s enduring blast of futile anger in the face of the inevitable, with Finney a mesmerizing centre

 

The Milk of Sorrow (2009) – Llosa’s small miracle of a film provides countless penetrating moments, underpinned by lingering trauma

 

Lovin’ Molly (1974) – a lesser-known but likeable Lumet work, charting the gently transgressive structures underlying small-scale lives

 

The Perfect Candidate (2019) – Al-Mansour’s study in determination hardly lacks for sharp truths, but unfolds a bit too tidily and brightly

 

Lights of New York (1928) – Foy’s early talkie holds up respectably enough, occasionally pushing (modestly) past the merely workmanlike

 

Blind Chance (1987) – reaching far above gimmickry, Kieslowski pessimistically surveys and analyzes Poland’s corroding complexities

 

Hell in the Pacific (1968) – Boorman and two ideally committed stars generate a satisfyingly propulsive, muscularly executed enigma

 

The Third Murder (2017) – the courtroom genre isn’t best suited to Koreeda’s skills, rendering the reflective ambiguities overly artificial

 

A Safe Place (1971) – Jaglom’s peculiar debut at least intrigues as a formal and tonal experiment, with flashes of greater magic 

 

Ils (2006) – Moreau/Palud’s supposedly fact-based terror exercise feels thin and fake, seldom jolting in its rhythms, tactics or reveals

 

The Clock (1945) – Minnelli’s utterly captivating, highly idealistic but wisely nuanced romance, with Garland at her most transfixing

 

Creepy (2016) – not Kurosawa’s most persuasive or resonantly implicative narrative, but of course compulsively watchable all the same

 

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966) – Edwards’ conceptually amazing comedy is among his richest and most penetratingly-realized

 

The Photograph (1986) – Papatakis’ tense, stark fable, propelled by the futile dreaming of the relentlessly toiling, marginalized exile

 

Let Me Die a Woman (1977) – Wishman’s peculiar “documentary,” in its way sincere and progressive, while also helplessly stilted and prurient

 

About Endlessness (2019) – Andersson applies his weird but apparently inexhaustible aesthetic to all that obscures our sense of possibility

 

Ace in the Hole (1951) – Wilder’s conceptually evergreen film is a frequent logistical knock-out, but stumbles over the climactic turnaround

 

Porto of my Childhood (2001) – de Oliveira’s alchemical film of memory and loss, at once alluringly accessible and uncommunicably personal

 

Boom (1968) – the hectoring heaviness of Losey’s notorious, exotically disembodied spectacle perhaps makes it too easily dismissible overall

 

Jeanette (2017) – Dumont’s often (no surprise) quirky instincts create an oddly productive tension with the film’s visual & narrative purity

 

The Visitors (1972) – the film is effective enough on its own coarsely sparse terms, but one would strain to find Kazan’s signature on it

 

Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love (2008) – an eye- & ear-filling, if inevitably selective, spotlight on a towering performer & presence

 

Discontent (1916) – Weber & Siegler’s compact morality tale is pretty straightforward, but crisply and often amusingly observed & executed

 

Grigris (2013) – Haroun’s story of urban survival beautifully explores modern dualities, yielding a strongly communal, woman-driven outcome

 

The Innocents (1961) – a work of polished distance and artful ambiguity, but quivering with deeply-felt corruption-induced anxiety

 

Mass Appeal (1984) – Jordan’s study of generational Catholic church conflict is far too glib and bland for anything to stick or penetrate

 

All Screwed Up (1974) – among Wertmuller’s best films, its teeming untidiness expressing modern life’s ceaseless traps and shortfalls

 

News of the World (2020) – Greengrass’ drama is rather conventionally impressive, but with no shortage of biting contemporary resonance

 

Berlin-Alexanderplatz (1931) – Jutzi’s potently condensed version provides great comparative viewing, with sensational on-location shooting

 

Malcolm X (1992) – Lee’s vital, daring epic is still high-impact viewing, its relevance and urgency shifting but perpetually undiminished

 

Les amities particulieres (1964) – within its constraints, Delannoy’s study of idealized same-sex love is relatively direct and moving

 

Night Raiders (2021) – Goulet injects some cultural and conceptual distinctiveness, but not enough to transcend familiar dystopian weariness

 

Brother Carl (1971) – for all its weaknesses, Sontag’s tale of dysfunction and transcendence has a strangely lingering cumulative effect

 

Saint Maud (2019) – Glass’s anxiety-ridden modern horror is smartly crafted throughout, with  more than a few flat-out awesome moves 

 

Godzilla: King of the Monsters! (1956) – a capably straight-faced Americanization, but thematically & tonally diluted from Honda’s original

 

The World to Come (2020) – Fastvold’s film is strong in all respects, with great attention to behavioural, visual and structural detail

 

Girl at the Window (1961) – Emmer’s undersung, structurally memorable, culturally astute chronicle accumulates surprising existential weight

 

Green Ice (1981) – Day’s would-be drama leaves about as little impact as cinematically possible, aided by utterly lazy lead performances

 

Gang War in Milan (1973) – Lenzi keeps the high-activity narrative moving, but it’s almost entirely as generic & surprise-free as its title

 

Apollo 10 ½ (2022) – Linklater’s dream-laced, reference-packed family memoir makes for utterly (arguably excessively) captivating viewing

 

J’accuse (1938) – Gance’s bombastically imagined film fascinates and compels, even as it marches on into simplistic self-congratulation

 

Appropriate Behavior (2014) – Akhavan’s well-judged, quite wide-ranging comedy, propelled by a pleasing sense of multi-faceted exploration

 

The Green Years (1963) – Rocha’s wondrous, socially-grounded delicacy ultimately yields to a shocking, almost Bressonian conclusion

 

Promising Young Woman (2020) – Fennell’s astute and stimulating film nails its strategies, even if one has a few reservations about them

 

The Mansion of Madness (1973) – Moctezuma’s chaotic drama provides some bizarre grandeur, with great dollops of interspersed clumsiness

 

Someone to Love (1987) – essential viewing for Frishberg and Welles, whatever one’s assessment of Jaglom’s formal and tonal mannerisms

 

Nazarin (1959) – Bunuel’s remarkably sustained, slyly balanced allegory, albeit perhaps not among his most vibrantly pleasurable works

 

The Green Knight (2021) – Lowery’s telling is structurally and visually captivating at its best, rising above some relative dull patches

 

The Sun’s Burial (1960) – Oshima’s early exercise in socially conscious nihilism, visually and narratively arresting at every corrosive turn

 

Domino (2019) – De Palma’s thrilling cinematic skills aren’t snuffed out yet, but have seldom felt as callously or indifferently deployed

 

The Sicilian Connection (1972) – Baldi’s drug-trade procedural is solid enough, in a mostly unexciting, sometimes haphazard-feeling way

 

In the Cut (2003) – Campion’s riskily vivid, darkly sexy genre piece pulsates with unconventional stylings, resonances and emphases

 

Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937) – Yamanaka’s deceptive study of community and honour lingers not least for its climactic cheerlessness

 

Nomadland (2020) – Zhao’s film is a virtuous but overly fragmented and depoliticized window on an admittedly barely explicable world

 

The Hero (1966) – Ray’s study of a disaffected film star is engrossingly detailed, while illustrating his work’s occasional insularity

 

One More Time with Feeling (2016) – Dominik is a worthy (if inevitably rather submissive) chronicler of Cave’s personal & artistic evolution

 

The Scarlet Letter (1973) – Wenders’ not entirely successful version does vividly draw on America’s formative hypocrisies and contradictions

 

Causeway (2022) – Neugebauer’s small-scale but overly calculated, straightforwardly acted drama doesn’t amount to much on any level

 

Thirst (1949) – a structurally and psychologically challenging Bergman, perhaps his strongest early film, infested with existential crisis

 

She Hate Me (2004) – Lee’s messy film doesn’t really pull its diverse elements into shape, but it’s oddly engaging and (mostly) rewarding

 

Cemetery without Crosses (1969) – Hossein’s bleak Western largely realizes the title’s haunting promise, although not without some strain

 

Let Him Go (2020) – Bezucha’s well-cast journey into familial nightmare largely sustains a fine line between sensitivity and grotesqueness

 

A Woman Like Eve (1979) – Van Brakel’s shockingly under-celebrated film comprehensively questions prevailing social and sexual assumptions

 

The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) – Iannucci’s wonderfully canny, affirmative adaptation is consistent light-footed pleasure

 

Do Bigha Zamin (1953) – Roy’s drama of fruitless striving increasingly impresses and chills as its full clarity of purpose becomes apparent

 

Shoplifters of the World (2021) – remove the Smiths and Kijak’s engaging little movie wouldn’t amount to much, but hey, you don’t need to!

 

Ceiling (1962) – Chytilova’s early short film has her uniquely recognizable sense of play, with its underlying interrogative seriousness

 

Fat Man and Little Boy (1989) – Joffe’s drama falls oddly flat, half-heartedly ticking off the minimum narrative and moral ingredients

 

Gloria Mundi (1976) – Papatakis’ almost frighteningly high-pitched drama of art and politics, savagely contemptuous of bourgeois pretensions

 

Alex Wheatle (2020) – an absorbing personal & social history, albeit probably the least relatively imposing of the wondrous Small Axe series

 

Pinocchio (1940) – Disney’s objectively bizarre classic holds the panderingly sweet & the deeply sinister in eternally finely-honed balance

 

To the Ends of the Earth (2019) – Kurosawa’s beguiling, observant odyssey charts a culture-crossing path to (relative) female empowerment

 

The Sea Gull (1968) – Lumet’s Chekhov adaptation is worthy and absorbing, while lacking much individual cinematic identity or presence

 

Woman on the Beach (2006) – Hong effects a unique marriage of straightforwardness and mystery, mesmerizing in every shift and detail

 

Firepower (1979) – Winner’s action romp is comprehensively misjudged and overdone from start to end, with clueless use of its high-end cast

 

Thelma (2017) – Trier’s attraction to such fanciful material is rather unclear throughout, despite his evident skill and thoughtfulness

 

Tea and Sympathy (1956) – Minnelli’s study of non-conformity as threat and disruption is, at least, richly analyzable in its hemmed-in-ness

 

DNA (2020) – Maiwenn’s examination of origins & becoming is fairly modest, but much lifted by well-observed ,conflict-ridden family dynamics

 

The Learning Tree (1969) – one might have forgotten the extent of bitterness, suffering and sin folded into Parks’ bucolically-titled drama

 

Boris sans Beatrice (2016) – Cote’s slyly-sculptured, sometimes inscrutably playful deployment of class- and power-based narratives

 

The Grasshopper (1970) – Paris’ never-dull chronicle of ups & downs bumpily combines relative progressiveness with much shallow contrivance

 

24 City (2008) – the perhaps all-seeing Jia once again arranges personal and collective story arcs into mysteriously beautiful formation

 

The Haunted House (1921) – Keaton’s short lets loose a truly impressive volume of gags, without rivaling his most coherent or elevated work

 

Leto (2018) – Serebrennikov’s inspired, vital dive into the 80’s Soviet rock scene is a galvanizing historical/cultural perspective-changer

 

The Swimmer (1968) – the intriguing concept and Lancaster’s poignant presence generally surmount Perry’s frequently overdone direction

 

In Search of Famine (1981) – Sen’s richly ambitious engagement with the moral complexities and obligations of historical filmmaking

 

Bronco Bullfrog (1970) – an appealing if mostly minor exploration of low-option lives, elevated by Platts-Mills’ taciturn romantic fatalism

 

After the Storm (2016) – Koreeda’s reflection on becoming & being is as finely calibrated as usual, but modest both in conception & impact

 

Five Graves to Cairo (1943) – Wilder’s under-sung early work effectively navigates its tense, morally-charged physical and narrative space

 

Still Life (2006) – Jia’s astounding marshaling of an almost incomprehensible modern history, a work of vast (& at times playful) witnessing

 

Candy (1968) – Marquand’s colourful comic odyssey hardly forms a satisfying whole, but at least you’re never waiting long for the next thing

 

The Halt (2019) – Diaz’s deeply relevant vision of darkness is relatively accommodating in some ways, overwhelmingly forbidding in others

 

Absolution (1978) – Page/Shaffer’s study of Catholic school manipulation and anguish is capably enough handled, while in no way excelling

 

Visit, or Memories and Confessions (1982) – de Oliveira’s long-hidden, poignantly tranquil document gracefully combines testimony & reverie

 

Island in the Sun (1957) – Rossen’s lushly race-anxiety-infused colonial melodrama is, at least, almost infinitely susceptible to analysis

 

Stray (2020) – Lo provides ample empathetic pleasure for dog-centric viewers; the returns for others are likely a little more limited

 

The Absent-Minded Professor (1961) – Stevenson’s comedy holds up pleasantly enough, while hardly putting the core concept to optimal use

 

Homo Sapiens (2016) – the terrible beauty of Geyrhalter’s witnessing of abandonment and decay acts as memorial, indictment and premonition

 

An Unmarried Woman (1978) – Mazursky’s appealingly lived-in film has some idealized and overdone aspects, but contains much that connects

 

Alcarras (2022) – Simon explores threatened physical & emotional topographies with equally memorable, socially-charged assurance & finesse

 

Honor Among Lovers (1931) – a fine, lesser-known example of Arzner’s pioneering intelligence, focusing on personal and professional ethics

 

Mind Game (2004) – Yuasa’s wildly unbound (and yet so delectably delicate and psychologically loaded) animation is an absolute trippy rush

 

The Great Escape (1963) – Sturges’ drama has too much cursory storytelling and characterization to remotely merit its classic status

 

New Order (2020) – Franco’s high-intensity vision is harrowingly accomplished at times, and productively debatable overall at the very least

 

Alex and the Gypsy (1976) – Korty’s bumpy romance makes one aggressively inexplicable choice after another, with keenly unenjoyable results

 

Sunset (2018) – Nemes’ outstandingly unpredictable study of historical turbulence, often hypnotically unprecedented both in style & content

 

The Westerner (1940) – Wyler’s well-balanced, forgivably history-bending, often memorably visualized drama, boosted by peak star charisma

 

I’m Your Man (2021) – Schrader’s lightly comic investigation is enjoyable viewing, while mostly skimming over its broader implications

 

The Lost Man (1969) – Aurthur’s drama is spirited enough when channeling righteous anger and action, but dissipates toward the end

 

Tom of Finland (2017) – Karukoski’s biopic is solid stuff, although less formally and visually daring than the subject might have allowed

 

The Squeeze (1977) – Apted and the actors squeeze plenty out of the material, while tending to the prevailing disreputable atmosphere

 

Epicentro (2020) – Sauper’s musings get a little strained at times, but even so help render his study of Cuba constantly fresh & unexpected

 

Park Row (1952) – one of Fuller’s most vital films, propelled by a passionate fusion of form, content, and directorial identification

 

As Tears go By (1988) – brasher than Wong’s later works, but dotted with early signs of his irresistible, searching lightness of spirit

 

Let’s Make Love (1960) – Cukor’s over-extended comedy endures better than it should, mostly of course for its sensational Monroe moments

 

Flee (2021) – Rasmussen’s considered use of animation both (necessarily) conceals and penetrates, yielding a rich, forceful testimony

 

Deadly Strangers (1975) – Hayers’ low-finesse thriller isn’t exactly dull, but labors heavily on its way to its epically predictable “twist”

 

State Funeral (2019) – viewed in an age of right-wing cults, Loznitsa’s magnificent assembly almost plays as warning-laden horror-comedy

 

Stagecoach (1939) – a lasting pleasure (albeit an easy one), with Ford’s multi-faceted finesse surmounting various less elevated aspects

 

Apples (2020) – Nikou’s wry, composed comedy falls prey to a sense of diminishing returns, despite its potentially sinister intimations

 

Twisted Nerve (1968) – Boulting’s manipulatively nasty drama works well enough overall, frequent eye-rolling pretensions notwithstanding

 

Ripley’s Game (2002) – Cavani’s is perhaps not in the top rank of Highsmith films, but it’s a well-judged, elegant yarn on its own terms

 

Convoy (1978) – Peckinpah’s messy spectacle, not without a certain brute-force beauty, gains oddly in resonance in warped Trumpian times

 

Cette maison (2022) – Charles’ oddly haunting, if not entirely stumble-free, meeting of commemoration & speculation, tragedy & celebration

 

The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916) – Weber’s costume drama is certainly notable, but lacks the penetrating quality of her best surviving works

 

A Woman’s Life (2016) – Brise’s somberly hypnotic, finely etched study of a vibrant life force slowly ground down by patriarchal lies

 

The Sundowners (1960) – Zinnemann’s blandly episodic drama has little feel for the country, even less for the itinerant lives within it

 

The Words and Days…(2020) – Edstrom/Winter’s quietly paradigm-shifting study, transporting largely in proportion to its eight-hour duration

 

Executive Suite (1954) – Wise’s business world machinations still strike the occasional chord, when not reduced to mere speechifying

 

Judgement (1999) – Park’s drolly morality- and identity-questioning, apocalypse-tinged short film is as satisfying as much of his major work

 

Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979) – Silver deftly explores an unusual central dynamic, drawing out the joy and pain of romantic preoccupation

 

Lingui (2021) – Haroun’s drama is hardly lacking in interest or impact, but feels less fully developed and immediate than his best work

 

A Taste of Honey (1961) – Richardson’s drama lurches around rather grotesquely, seldom now seeming very emotionally or socially truthful

 

Senorita (2011) – Sandoval crafts a compellingly honest human document, despite a recurring feeling of excessive narrative artifice

 

Nightmare Alley (1947) – Goulding’s floridly eventful drama doesn’t quite fully realize its various dark potentialities (hence, remake!)

 

Uppercase Print (2020) – another super-stimulating Jude work, its implications by no means consigned to the (almost hilariously drab) past

 

The Tamarind Seed (1974) – Edwards executes the seldom-surprising, dispassionately-acted material with counterproductively distanced skill

 

Repentance (1984) – Abuladze’s satire isn’t without its heavygoing aspects, but carries overall a laceratingly imaginative, possessed force

 

Comanche Station (1960) – the terrific Boetticher-Scott series culminates at its most starkly minimal and, ultimately, near-transcendent

 

The African Desperate (2022) – Syms’ fiercely intelligent and singular experiential blast is surely one of the strongest recent debuts

 

Yoshiwara (1937) – Ophuls’ culture-spanning romance has its uneasily dated aspects, but the fragile, doomed delight at its centre endures

 

The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019) – Capotondi’s take on art world ambiguities is elegantly if rather too archly done; the cast certainly helps

 

Lumiere (1976) – Moreau’s elegant study of friendship among female actors, its form elegantly open-ended, as light always slowly shifts

 

Shiva Baby (2020) – Seligman satisfyingly infiltrates a fairly standard set-up with multiple strands of dread and anxiety, even of terror

 

Is Paris Burning? (1966) – Clement’s rather bland epic dissipates its energy across star-laden vignettes, lacking sufficient overall force 

 

Love Affair (1994) – Caron’s remake is overdone in some ways, hardly done at all in others, far too dependent on its theoretical star power

 

Godzilla Raids Again (1955) – Oda’s sequel builds rather weakly and diffusively on the original, leaving a mostly deflated aftertaste

 

Old (2021) – the material mostly fizzles in Shyamalan’s heavy hands, yielding little suspense, tonal variation, or intellectual stimulation

 

Tauw (1970) – Sembene’s short (yet immense) film summarizes a nation’s devastating absence of social infrastructure & individual possibility

 

Lucky Life (2010) – Chung’s measured reflection on loss and endurance perhaps isn’t a major work, but leaves a gently haunting aftermath

 

Rabindranath Tagore (1961) – Ray’s too often just superficially informative summary illustrates the occasional limitations of his craft

 

Still Processing (2020) – relative to its brief running time, Romvari’s deeply personal film is astoundingly wide-ranging and fulfilling

 

L’inhumaine (1924) – L’Herbier’s silent classic is a feast of eye-filling design, narrative audacity and instinctive cinematic know-how

 

Urgh! A Music War (1981) – or indeed Whoa!, as Burbridge races through the highlights (Klaus Nomi, Steel Pulse) and the forgettable alike

 

Un homme qui dort (1974) – Perec/Queysanne’s study of withdrawal holds alienation and engagement in singularly heightened equilibrium

 

Men (2022) – Garland’s distinctive expression of trauma and reconciliation has its elements of weirdo, take it or leave it tour-de-force

 

Layer Cake (1968) – Wajda’s big-question-crammed short comedy is certainly energetic, although the ultimate impact is fairly fleeting

 

I Care a Lot (2019) – Blakeson disappointingly squanders a terrifying real-life premise with tedious gangster crap and other excesses

 

Bezhin Meadow (1937) – the fragmented remains of Eisenstein’s lost film suggest both forceful inspiration and aesthetic repetition

 

Falling (2020) – Mortensen works small, satisfying variations on largely familiar territory, occasionally unlocking something unnerving

 

The Prostitutes of Lyon Speak (1975) – Roussopoulos’s minimally intermediated record is both sociologically specific and bleakly timeless

 

Heat and Dust (1983) – Ivory’s ambitious film is (to say the least) interesting on all levels, but makes an oddly limited cumulative impact

 

A Bagful of Fleas (1962) – Chytilova’s early short film is a bubbling, limitation-busting assertion of feminine experience and perspective

 

King Richard (2021) – Green’s film doesn’t total to much more than the sum of its biographical parts, but it’s warmly likeable throughout

 

En cas de malheur (1958) – a somewhat peculiarly judged Autant-Lara drama, but near-compulsive viewing if only for the Bardot-Gabin teaming

 

Lilting (2014) – Khaou’s study of loss and acceptance is modestly scaled, but with a delicately impactful emotional and cultural breadth

 

One Day Before the Rainy Season (1971) – Kaul’s masterly tale of longing & separation sustains a quite extraordinary formal & tonal delicacy

 

The Devil all the Time (2020) – Campos delivers little more than an indigestibly lurid absurdity, marked by extensive actorly slumming

 

Mandabi (1968) – Sembene’s all-seeing study of a society overwhelmed by need and incapacity leaves one astounded, drained and humbled

 

Lair of the White Worm (1988) – Russell puts across his creation, about as absurd as England itself, with magnificently disarming conviction

 

A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) – Ozu’s beautiful tale of absence and acceptance lies among the most precisely eloquent of silent films

 

Emily the Criminal (2022) – Ford’s film is absorbing at its most socially grounded, dropping off a bit as the dramatic stakes escalate

 

Ticket of no Return (1979) – Ottinger’s wondrously outré, boozy fantasy of female self-expression, built on serious social underpinnings

 

The Changeling (1980) – Medak and Scott give the dubious narrative a solid veneer of class, but it’s inherently beneath them (and us)

 

Thanos and Despina (1967) – Papatakis’ unbound quasi-romance becomes a scorching Grecian microcosm, madness & liberation all but inseparable

 

Supernova (2020) – Macqueen’s relationship study is respectably touching, but it’s a small film in every respect (barring the title)

 

Boyfriend in Sight (1954) – Berlanga’s peppy youth-in-revolt comedy gradually reveals a quite expansively skeptical satirical bite

 

Sound of Metal (2019) – Marder’s film is often technically and empathetically enthralling, even if in some ways too conventionally shaped

 

The Wasps are Here (1978) – much of Pathiraja’s study is fairly elemental, but with ample fine points of visual and sociological observation

 

Dune (2021) – Villeneuve’s control and judgment increasingly impress as the film escalates, and moves past the initial hollow grandeur

 

La piscine (1969) – Deray’s abiding if modestly over-venerated, languidly gleaming drama, elevated by shards of masculine vulnerability

 

High Season (1987) – Peploe’s tonal and thematic mix doesn’t fully cohere or rise, but one appreciates the rather odd nature of its ambition

 

La revue des revues (1927) – the (mostly mild) interest value of the recorded performances barely surmounts the narrative & visual flatness

 

Tenet (2020) – a long string of expensively fleeting virtues, rendered mostly off-putting through Nolan’s humourless self-absorption

 

L’uomo senza memoria (1974) – Tessari’s amnesia-driven drama falls short in too many respects, but has its blood-spattering high points

 

The Hard Stop (2015) – Amponsah’s humanely outraged film, a deeply and vividly personal perspective on a gapingly unjust national wound

 

Signs of Life (1968) – Herzog’s feature debut remains haunting, for the stubborn, parched beauty of its vision of symbolic self-obliteration

 

Catherine Called Birdy (2022) – Dunham’s chirpy, nice-looking film is so thinly tethered to reality that it might as well be set on the moon

 

Kuhle Wampe (1932) – Brecht/Dudow’s engagement with societal shortfall exerts a sensationally confident intellectual and cinematic grip

 

Mommie Dearest (1981) – a major failure by Perry, with little sense of analytical prowess, critical distance, or basic wit and imagination

 

Visions of Eight (1973) – a variable, seldom entirely bland, seldom transcendent Olympic anthology: Zetterling’s segment probably takes gold

 

Miss Juneteenth (2020) – Peoples’ film is a pleasing observance of regrets and economic realities, but too constrained to hit major heights

 

All my Good Countrymen (1969) – Jasny’s beautifully measured, accumulatingly indicting study of ideology-ruptured lives, land and community

 

Motherless Brooklyn (2019) – Norton’s adaptation must have had terrific potential, but much of it ends up heavy-footed and flavourless

 

La bestia debe morir (1952) – Barreto’s drama is more propulsive and less piercing than Chabrol’s (overall superior filming) of the material

 

Spencer (2021) – Larrain holds mystery, deconstruction, wish fulfilment, psychological horror, fantasy and more in mesmerizing equilibrium

 

Maso et Miso vont en bateau (1975) – a sensational collective repositioning of a jaw-droppingly misogyny- and complacency-riddled TV show

 

Stardust Memories (1980) – Allen’s elegantly self-examining comedy now seems to foretell the receding creative horizons of his later years

 

A Pistol for Ringo (1965) – Tessari’s briskly twisting drama largely lacks the edge, dazzle or subtext of the Italian Western highpoints

 

The Nest (2020) – Durkin’s excavation of familial rot provides some classic throwback-type pleasures, its time and place perfectly judged

 

The Bank Dick (1940) – Fields’ brilliant, oddly lonely brand of otherness hits its zenith in Cline’s irresistible, reality-bending vehicle

 

The Children Act (2017) – Eyre’s film leaves a fairly reticent impression, despite much thematic interest, and the indispensable Thompson

 

May Morning (1970) – Liberatore’s authenticity-stressing university chronicle ends up as a peculiar, but not unseductive, time capsule

 

Blonde (2022) – Dominik’s project makes for overly heavy viewing, obscuring its resourceful playing with image-making and representation

 

Devi (1960) – Ray’s tale of idolatory and delusion makes a rather remotely cloistered impact, despite elements of implied social criticism

 

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) – Lumet’s last film is a near-inspired drama of unraveling, propelled by some crackerjack acting

 

The Masseurs and a Woman (1938) – Shimizu’s unusual study possesses an exquisite sense of vulnerability, longing and pervasive absence

 

Education (2020) – one of the smaller-scale Small Axe films, and one of the most straightforwardly moving, outrage-provoking and inspiring

 

Borsalino (1970) – Deray’s eventful period gangster film never acquires sufficient heft or character, rather limiting its two great stars

 

Greed (2019) – Winterbottom’s satiric skewering of capitalist excess is over-stuffed and ungainly, but knowingly and mostly fruitfully so

 

Death Rides a Horse (1967) – notwithstanding Morricone’s all-out score, Sollima’s intense revenge Western falls in the middle of the pack

 

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) – Coen’s reading is at the very least respectable, with various points of visual and actorly excellence

 

Wedding Ring (1950) – Kinoshita’s tale of suppressed attraction is sensitively done, but the overall trajectory is fairly commonplace

 

Maeve (1981) – Murphy’s amazing film, impacting equally as historical record, intimate portrait and philosophical/political reflection

 

Faro Document 1979 (1979) – Bergman’s island record, rather conventional in some ways, but marked by the personal depth of his engagement

 

Black Bear (2020) – Levine dives into creativity and human connection in all their wondrous, sexy, destabilizing, addictive slipperiness

 

Help! (1965) – the musical numbers aside, the Beatles (maybe excepting Ringo) end up rather lost amid Lester’s distancing inventiveness

 

A Season in France (2017) – Haroun’s fine study of crushing immigrant experience, suffused with the sadness of squandered human capacity

 

The Pirate (1948) – not Minnelli’s warmest or most psychologically acute film, yet near rapture-inducing in its ravishing artificiality

 

France (2021) – Dumont’s productively alluring semi-satire holds superficial transparency and conditioned inscrutability in fine balance

 

A Bridge too Far (1977) – Attenborough’s most watchable film embeds impressive set-pieces within broader strategic and moral failure

 

Francisca (1981) – a major example of de Oliveira’s fluidly rigorous sense of cinema, singularly blending interiority and expansiveness

 

The Day of the Jackal (1973) – Zinnemann’s largely empty suspense film, propelled by a near-bottomless succession of show-me moments

 

The Trouble with Being Born (2020) – Wollner’s haunting “anti-Pinocchio” is a deeply-considered meditation on identity and morality

 

5 Fingers (1952) – the indispensable Mason aside, Mankiewicz’s blandly authenticity-seeking espionage drama offers little of particular note

 

Dziga and his Brothers (2002) – Tsymbal’s too-brief overview goes little beyond scratching the (albeit abidingly thrilling) surface

 

Paris Blues (1961) – Ritt’s horribly overwritten drama has the actors mostly at their worst, and even short-changes you on Ellington’s music

 

Bardo (2022) – for all that’s stubborn, trifling and grotesque about Inarritu’s greedy opus, it holds the attention, and rewards it

 

Dracula (1979) – a few visual flourishes aside, Badham ticks off the requisite plot elements in dutifully dull, at times barely-alive manner

 

L’atelier (2017) – Cantet’s massively watchable drama stimulates & disturbs, even while leaving a sense of incompleteness & over-idealism

 

Suspense (1913) – Weber’s brief but highly assured prototypical woman-in-peril film remains both narratively and cinematically riveting

 

Isabella (2020) – Pineiro’s brief running time contains multitudes of gracefully ambiguous camaraderie and competition, creativity and doubt

 

Arabesque (1966) – Donen’s relentlessly superficial caper, almost poignantly inadequate in its “Hitchcockian” aspirations and contrivances

 

Freak Orlando (1981) – Ottinger’s super-queered spectacle elicits much conceptual admiration, but often feels like being lost at the circus

 

Lucky Lady (1975) – Donen gets bogged down in hollow spectacle, allowing too little sense of

overall purpose, style or (least of all) fun

 

Rien a foutre (2021) – Lecoustre and Marre’s astutely tuned-in workplace study, convincingly laced with contemporary existential drift

 

Buchanan Rides Alone (1958) – probably the shallowest & weakest of the Boetticher/Scott Westerns, narratively cluttered & tonally uncertain

 

Labyrinth of Cinema (2019) – Obayashi’s exuberantly singular last film unceasingly (albeit weirdly) reboots, extends & interrogates itself

 

A Kind of Loving (1962) – in their enjoyably desultory way, Schlesinger’s human dynamics now feel over-stylized, & ultimately overly hopeful

 

There is No Evil (2020) – Rasoulof’s film has impressive moral force, while not entirely avoiding narrative and tonal predictability

 

Catch-22 (1970) – Nichols’ film is a frequent logistical marvel, in the cause of confoundingly insufficient intellectual or comedic purpose

 

Poulet au vinaigre (1985) – far from Chabrol’s best work, dawdling in some respects and rushing through others, for a lumpy overall impact

 

The Lady from Shanghai (1948) – Welles’ indelibly peculiar drama, alluring in all respects, ranks among his most fully-realized notions

 

The Swimmers (2022) – however based in reality, El Hosaini’s glossily calculated treatment feels unconvincingly and unmovingly synthetic

 

The World of Suzie Wong (1960) – the copious travelogue virtues aside, Quine’s flat drama now hardly seems worth seriously critiquing

 

Suburban Birds (2018) – Qiu’s pensively charming, gently time-bending exploration of China’s ever-evolving denaturization and distanciation

 

Bone (1972) – Cohen’s daringly inspired debut startles, exposes, challenges and destabilizes at every relishingly visualized turn 

 

Riders of Justice (2020) – Jensen’s super-enjoyable saga goes robustly over-the-top, while seeming improbably thoughtful on multiple levels

 

The Daughter of Dawn (1920) – Myles’ indigenous drama is largely unshowy storytelling, but enormously buoyed by collaborative authenticity

 

Wolf’s Hole (1987) – Chytilova gives the generic material some visual and allegorical vitality, but it still falls far below her capacities

 

Gunn (1967) – Edwards’ film version systematically undercuts & weirdifies its genre mechanics, even as it discharges them with polished cool

 

Feast (2021) – Leyendekker’s formally & stylistically formidable film engages its real-life source material with startling adventurousness

 

Love and Bullets (1979) – Rosenberg’s low-excitement action film has some nice scenery, but not enough love (or even enough bullets)

 

A Girl Missing (2019) – Fukada crafts an alluring narrative and surrounding structural mystery, although the ultimate impact is fairly muted

 

Paths of Glory (1957) – a flawed but inescapable reference point in the cinema of wartime morality, indelible at its most Kubrickian

 

Dear Comrades! (2020) – Konchalovsky’s strong film overemphasizes personal over collective experience, but stimulates at every turn

 

Flower Drum Song (1961) – Koster’s constrained film does well enough by the music and choreography, but much else is dated and/or debatable

 

La vallee fantome (1987) – another bracingly unpredictable, thematically & geographically expansive reverie from the sadly undersung Tanner

 

Cross of Iron (1977) – Peckinpah’s war drama lacks the precision of his best work, but steadily grows in smoldering, sickened forcefulness

 

Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022) – Bhansali’s scrubbed and idealized telling has amply winning heart-in-the-right-place momentum and charisma

 

The Razor’s Edge (1946) – Goulding’s uninspired adaptation prioritizes tedious melodrama over the supposedly central philosophical inquiry

 

Barbara (2017) – Amalric’s bewitching exercise in evocation and representation, at once scintillatingly present and elegantly elusive

 

The First Time (1969) – Neilson’s horny-teenagers/Jackie-Bisset flick isn’t so bad on its own terms, but they’re not the most elevated terms

 

Wife of a Spy (2020) – Kurosawa’s delectable historical drama gradually eliminates almost any points of personal or national certainty

 

Plaza Suite (1971) – Hiller’s overly faithful filming of Neil Simon’s play is, at best, little more than a tolerably dated museum exhibit

 

Emporte-moi (1999) – Pool’s warm film is rather thin at times, but benefits from its various points of cultural and personal specificity

 

Twentieth Century (1934) – an ever-reliable, grandly acted pleasure, even if not quite equaling the depth and range of Hawks’ greatest works

 

Hive (2021) – the film has inherent anthropological interest, but Basholli’s narrative and cinematic instincts are overly superficial

 

The Lion in Winter (1968) – Harvey’s mostly heavy-footed filming of Goldman’s endlessly twisting archness gets tedious long before the end

 

Beanpole (2019) – Balagov’s arrestingly visualized, trauma-suffused study of post-war adjustment, marked by startling psychology & behaviour

 

The Song Remains the Same (1976) – an often eccentric, overreaching but have-to-see-once-if-you-care-at-all-about-Led Zeppelin concert movie

 

Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) – Zbanic’s propulsive narrative bears witness to an almost unbearable weight of moral and individual failure

 

Cry Terror! (1958) – Stone’s hard-driving thriller has plenty of great sequences, and a cracking cast, but ultimately disappoints a bit

 

Apparition (2012) – Sandoval’s small but haunting study sets out the futility of idealized religion in the face of political brutality

 

The Naked Edge (1961) – a sad use of Cooper in his last film, cast adrift by Anderson’s cluelessly over-emphatic notion of suspense

 

Decision to Leave (2022) – Park’s best film to date occupies and ventilates its chosen genre with staggering control and imaginative panache

 

Cold Sweat (1970) – Young’s no-nonsense drama is at least cleanly done, benefiting mightily from a bizarrely classy cast (Liv Ullmann!)

 

IP5… (1992) – a mostly uncomfortable, mysticism-tinged amalgam of disparate elements, embodying the ebbing of Beineix’s creative energy

 

Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) – not Ford’s emotionally or thematically richest film, but one filled with ravishingly painterly compositions

 

The Swarm (2020) – Philippot’s well-ordered but limited quasi-horror falls rather short, whether narratively, thematically or emotionally

 

Grand Prix (1966) – Frankenheimer oversees a solid all-stops-out spectacle, seasoned with a requisite amount of melodrama and inner turmoil

 

The Body Remembers…(2019) – Hepburn and Tailfeathers’ deceptively simple film surveys a riveting myriad of personal and cultural imbalances

 

Still Life (1974) – Saless’ moving, unadorned examination of institutional indifference to small lives is resonant even in its limitations

 

Boiling Point (2021) – Barantini’s movie is super-entertaining, even if it feels more like a bunch of flashy appetizers than a balanced meal

 

Todo un caballero (1947) – Delgado’s modestly refreshing film places its central courtroom drama in laconically amused, reflective context

 

The Couch Trip (1986) – Ritchie’s shoddy comedy is a head-shaking low point for most concerned, the genial Akroyd partially excepted

 

La viaccia (1961) – Bolognini’s undernoted film, the central romance gradually overshadowed by a pessimistic dissection of venal capitalism

 

The Midnight Sky (2020) – Clooney’s end-of-the-world drama intrigues for its melancholy recessiveness, despite some exasperating elements

 

Be Pretty and Shut Up! (1976) - Seyrig’s likably inelegant, sometimes eccentrically assembled testimonies remain amply worthwhile overall

 

The Last Face (2016) – Penn attempts an ambitious fusion of registers and intents, but mostly only undermines the film’s primary strengths

 

Godzilla (1954) – Honda’s cheesy mayhem is diverting enough, but it’s the persistent nuclear-age anxiety and moroseness that lingers

 

Dog (2022) – Tatum/Carolin’s movie is supple enough, but with few narrative or sociological surprises, and even fewer emotional ones

 

The Confrontation (1969) – with almost Demy-evoking fluidity, Jancso challengingly represents a fraught modern history of corroded idealism

 

Harry & Son (1984) – Newman’s story of age and anxiety maintains a warm amiability, at the cost of pulling its social and emotional punches

 

La grande bouffe (1973) – Ferreri’s opera of imploding potency carries a weird, determined majesty, even if of a mostly alienating timbre

 

Ammonite (2020) – Lee’s drama feels overly dour at times, but grips for its alertness to class complexities & its multi-faceted physicality

 

Enthusiasm (1930) – Vertov’s escalating submissiveness in the face of industrial fervour seems tragically infused now with pending decline

 

Just Mercy (2019) – whatever its points of over-familiarity, Cretton’s focused study is frequently enormously and righteously moving

 

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) – Lang’s massively enjoyable final film brings classic intrigues & threats into a new technological age

 

Cry Macho (2021) – Eastwood knowingly undermines the apparent road thriller premise, taking things slow and small and rather sweet

 

Property is no Longer a Theft (1973) – Petri’s acidicly unbending deconstruction of capitalism grows more discouragingly relevant overall

 

Chinese Boxes (1984) – Petit’s tersely-expressed, often amusingly withholding drama, built around layers of narrative and moral absence

 

Falbalas (1945) – Becker deftly evokes the setting in all its hectically layered complexity, even as the narrative becomes a bit overwrought

 

Possessor (2020) – Cronenberg’s creepy premise makes for rather narrow, but quite thematically fruitful, emotionally pained viewing

 

Zero Focus (1961) – Nomura’s rather too flatly revelation-heavy investigation is at least quite moving in its melancholy arrival point

 

Thirst Street (2017) – Silver’s amusing, unpredictable cross-cultural study of personal unraveling makes a satisfying if modest impression

 

Letter from Paris (1976) – Borowczyk’s noisily deglamorized portrait may be sort of a one-joke movie, but in its way a life-affirming one

 

After Yang (2022) – Kogonoda’s is among the most suggestively delicate of high-concept futuristic films, sometimes to a wistful fault

 

Poem of the Sea (1958) – Solntseva’s painterly but probing film constantly elevates and surprises, transcending its ideological constraints

 

Extremities (1986) – Young’s film of Mastrosimone’s play provides too little serious examination, but is certainly nerve-jangling at times

 

The Whip and the Body (1963) – Bava’s horror film well sustains its mood of heavy foreboding, supplemented by flashes of relishing sadism

 

Wendy (2020) – Zeitlin’s expansively imaginative sensibility is highly appealing, even if the film is often as confounding as it is magical

 

Come Have Coffee with Us (1970) – Lattuada’s musty, predictably under-examined sex comedy never works up much narrative or erotic energy

 

First Cow (2019) – Reichardt’s small treasure of a film, told with her customary all-round finesse and exquisite attention to detail

 

The Dybbuk (1937) – one submits willingly (if not always without difficulty) to Waszynski’s exacting stylistic, mythic and tonal severity

 

The Card Counter (2021) – one of Schrader’s major works, constantly surprising, yet suffused in lonely, quasi-ritualistic inevitability

 

The Holy Man (1965) – Ray’s minor tale of exploitation and gullibility is rather overdone in some ways and under-developed in others

 

Who is Bernard Tapie? (2001) – Zenovich places packaged biography within an ambiguously self-revealing (or self-mythologizing?) framework

 

Swept Away (1974) – Wertmuller’s most prettily streamlined, drainingly single-minded film wears down the viewer as fully as the characters

 

She Dies Tomorrow (2020) – Seimetz’s fascinatingly supple and allusive creation accommodates dread and wonder, defeat and transcendence

 

Hermoso ideal (1948) – Galindo’s melodrama creaks plenty, but briskly covers an impressive span of cultural and geographic territory

 

A Bread Factory, Part Two (2018) – Wang’s second part ramps up the peculiarities, but the cumulative result is nourishingly mind-filling

 

The Big Gundown (1966) – Sollima’s money-in-the-bank Western, powered by well-conceived stand-offs, twists and contrasting moralities

 

Elvis (2022) – Luhrmann’s frequently mystifying labors leave one feeling distanced and short-changed at best, actively hostile at worst

 

Downpour (1972) – Beizai’s vital snapshot of a lost-in-time Iran teems with creative zest, ranging from kookiness to existential despair

 

Light of Day (1987) – a rather flat Schrader oddity , not that strong on either the aspirational rock life nor the conflicting real one

 

In Spring (1929) – Kaufman’s all-seeing survey of Ukraine’s seasonal rebirth remains transportingly fresh, gracefully engaged, vital viewing

 

The Hunt (2020) – Zobel keeps things snappy and adequately inventive, but the vein of would-be satiric commentary is mostly eye-rolling

 

The Mercenary (1968) – a sweepingly confident Western, propelled by frenetic revolutionary fervour, but lacking the bite of Corbucci’s best

 

Waves (2019) – Shults’ emotionally ambitious drama has its problematic aspects, but even so is mostly quite shimmeringly compelling

 

What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) – Dallamano’s conventionally nasty scenario eventually runs out of narrative & psychological momentum

 

In the Earth (2021) – Wheatley blends science and myth with resourceful panache, generating a surprisingly coherent-feeling experience

 

Where to? (1957) – Nasser’s anthropologically valuable story of poverty, its authenticity-seeped modesty both endearing and limiting

 

Eye of the Needle (1981) – Marquand’s all-round expertise and a fascinating Sutherland consistently lift a potentially leaden thriller

 

Dutch Wife in the Desert (1967) – Yamatoya’s jazzy, oddly pleasing hitman flick busts through narrative, thematic and tonal expectations

 

Shirley (2020) – Decker’s darkly eccentric quasi-fantasia confirms her huge artistic vibrancy, although the film isn’t ideal in various ways

 

The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) – Hu again makes kick-ass, if not transcendent, use of colourfully confined narrative and physical space

 

A Bread Factory, Part One (2018) – Wang’s empathetic scope and odd humor wins one over, despite various stilted or unpersuasive aspects

 

Blind Venus (1941) – Gance’s undoubtedly sincere but convoluted and dated melodrama, best when busily surrendering to dreamy absurdity

 

Tribute (1980) – a mostly eye-rolling extravaganza of sentimental excess and overacting, overseen by Clark with no finesse whatsoever

 

Blue Film Woman (1968) – the stylistic peak of Kan’s chronicle is probably the opening credits; what follows leaves one largely indifferent

 

X (2022) – West works his enjoyably disreputable horror movie premise to the max, incorporating an unusual meeting of creepiness and longing

 

The Shadow Within (1970) – a secondary Nomura film, but illustrating his customarily skillful spanning of genres, moods and concerns

 

Guest of Honour (2019) – perhaps Egoyan’s smoothest and best recent movie, despite much that’s over-elaborate or just impenetrably peculiar

 

Walpurgis Night (1935) – Edgren’s overstuffed melodrama races (not unrevealingly) through everything from abortion to the Foreign Legion!

 

The Return of the Soldier (1982) – Bridges’ unremarkable heritage project, elevated by its strong cast and multi-faceted class consciousness

 

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) – Pasolini’s deeply socially connective, dialectical witnessing of classic revolutionary myth

 

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) – the movie is funny, well-conceived and even kinda sweet in parts, but the formula rapidly stretches thin

 

Companeros (1970) – Corbucci’s revolution-charged Western, even if familiar in many respects, is never dull, plain or under-invested

 

The Party (2017) – Potter’s overwound contrivance goes down more than easily, but doesn’t hit any great heights, satirical or otherwise

 

Hotel des Invalides (1952) – Franju’s observance of imperial grandiosity and human toll may belong among cinema’s most staggering 22 minutes

 

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) – Sharpe’s freshly imaginative treatment makes for bright, if hardly very analytical, viewing

 

Bandini (1963) – Roy’s strong wronged-woman melodrama is empathetic and progressively charged, although not without its rickety aspects

 

New Year’s Day (1989) – Jaglom’s peculiar, untidy-seeming instincts do succeed in creating a distinct tonal and cinematic space of sorts

 

Fruit of Paradise (1970) – Chytilova’s aggressively inventive fantasia of self-discovery & resistance, exuberantly rooted in founding myths

 

1917 (2019) – for the most part, Mendes’ rather absurdly polished, pacey compression alienates & obscures as much as it compels & reveals

 

Crossfire (1947) – Dmytryk’s intriguingly structured, often potent thriller, unusually rich in memorable characterizations and interactions

 

This Much I Know to Be True (2022) – Dominik’s outstandingly-crafted performance film, seemingly all but psychically synced to its subjects

 

La visita (1963) – beneath a cringe-inducing romantic mismatch, Pietrangeli dexterously opens up layers of compromise and self-recognition

 

Chan is Missing (1982) – Wang’s film remains satisfyingly fresh and amusing, observationally and in its cultural and philosophical musings

 

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) – Argento’s precariously stylish killer mystery, capped by some spectacularly twisted psychology

 

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017) – Fiennes’ portrait is surprisingly candid at times, while preserving Jones’ uncrackable otherness

 

Flunky, Work Hard! (1931) – Naruse’s brief early study of economic insecurity, deftly anchoring its comedy within a broader desperation

 

Kajillionaire (2020) – by far July’s most appealing movie to date, its imaginative whimsy yielding a surprising kind of mini-perfection

 

A bout de souffle (1960) – one might respond forever to Godard’s inexhaustible film, whether in words or celluloid or gestures or dreams

 

The House of the Devil (2009) – West pulls off some very well-done suspense and switches of tone, but one ultimately just wishes for more

 

Night Train Murders (1975) – Lado’s dispiriting Virgin Spring appropriation is half-hearted even in its sleaziness, let alone anything else

 

Rocks (2019) – Gavron’s method yields some moments of uncommonly energetic authenticity, rather overshadowing the notional narrative

 

Devdas (1955) – Roy’s epic of caste-enforced separation and lifelong suffering, much of its impact lying in unsparing accumulation

 

The Lost Daughter (2021) – Gyllenhaal’s strong if slightly overly-structured debut, distinguished by its unusual complexity of character

 

The Virgin Spring (1960) – Bergman’s work of fearsome contrasts and conflicts, its unsettling mastery bordering on ruthless exploitation

 

Night Falls on Manhattan (1997) – a second-tier Lumet at best, its moral shadings undermined by overly compressed and linear plotting

 

Papa les petits bateaux (1971) – Kaplan’s stylistically and tonally exaggerated woman-takes-charge comedy rather wears out its welcome

 

The Great Buster (2018) – Bogdanovich’s rightly affectionate Keaton tribute is expertly and informatively curated and appealingly organized

 

The Victory of Women (1946) – not among Mizoguchi’s most emotionally galvanizing works, but utterly instructive even at its most didactic

 

The Batman (2022) – Reeves’ joyless take on the material is strongly done on its own preoccupied terms, if hardly a must-see at this point

 

Two Weeks in September (1967) – Bourguignon’s Bardot-adoring romantic travelogue is nicely pitched, but ultimately not very consequential

 

Talk Radio (1988) – the battering nihilism of Stone’s empty film distinctly misconstrues the medium’s real strategic insidiousness

 

Uptown Saturday Night (1974) – it’s fun to see Poitier in a looser vein, exercising a convivial, if forgivably haphazard directorial hand

 

Psychomagic, a Healing Art (2019) – Jodorowksy’s genially-presented case studies are often oddly touching, if at best only semi-persuasive

 

Dodsworth (1936) – one of Wyler’s more lasting films, for its steady contrasting of attitudes, cultures, and capacities for personal growth

 

Sun Children (2020) – Majidi’s overdone street-kid yarn packs in all manner of colour & social interest, but increasingly loses its bearings

 

if….(1968) – Anderson’s extraordinary survey of British inadequacy and structural porousness remains as ruthlessly unprecedented as ever

 

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005) – Park’s drama eventually attains a near-grandeur equal to its sometimes rather distancing craft

 

Breezy (1973) – Eastwood shapes the somewhat risky material into a sensitively flavorful time capsule, run through with middle-aged anxiety

 

Celeste (1980) – Adlon’s study of devotion and interdependence constitutes a narrow but finely delineated dramatic and cinematic space

 

Crime of Passion (1956) – Oswald’s drama doesn’t entirely come together, but exercises some pull through its idiosyncratic tonal choices

 

Titane (2021) – the startlingly expressive, vulnerable physicality of Ducournau’s work makes much of cinema seem, well, staid by comparison

 

David and Lisa (1962) – Perry’s solicitous observation of fragile coping mechanisms surmounts the film’s various under-developed aspects

 

Beloved Sisters (2014) – Graf’s impeccably sustained, multi-faceted historical extrapolation, rich in compelling personal and social detail

 

The Nickel Ride (1974) – Mulligan emphasizes anxious character study over crime drama, with satisfyingly flavorful, albeit modest, results

 

Afternoon (2007) – Schanelec’s family portrait constructs a somehow (if ambiguously) perfect lattice from lassitude and ephemerality

 

Saboteur (1942) – one of Hitchcock’s more cursory works overall, but well-stocked with engaging peculiarities and striking characterizations

 

The Metamorphosis of Birds (2020) – Vasconcelos’ family memoir sustains a wondrously searching sense of connectivity and receptivity

 

Eye of the Devil (1966) – ritualistic horror claptrap, made all the more unpalatable by Thompson’s humorlessly bombastic direction

 

Collective (2019) – Nanau’s immensely, often chillingly implication-heavy uncovering of modern-faced endemic corruption and inadequacy

 

A Little Night Music (1977) – Prince’s disappointing rendering of Sondheim’s sublime musical, a glumly static, jarringly miscast affair

 

Tigrero: a Film that Was Never Made (1994) – Kaurismaki’s laconically pleasing, absence-haunted meeting of worlds, cultures and maestros

 

It Happened One Night (1934) – Capra’s classic works a treat of course, while lacking the acuity and finesse of the genre’s very best

 

RRR (2022) – you think of Jeanne Dielman, and then Rajamouli’s boisterously digitized, sadism-laden myth-making would be, like, the opposite

 

The Family Way (1966) – the Boultings’ comedy now plays like a catalogue of socially-imposed dysfunction, suppression and lurking anger

 

The Wild Pear Tree (2018) – Ceylan’s exacting cross-generational negotiation of the spiritual and material might just be his greatest work

 

Man on a Swing (1974) – Perry’s police drama is often tonally interesting, but the central histrionics pan out rather underwhelmingly

 

The Woman Next Door (1981) – a relatively minor Truffaut work overall, and yet enrichened at every turn by his empathetic resourcefulness

 

Niagara (1953) – Hathaway turns in some memorably imposing images of Monroe and the falls, but much of the rest is highly unremarkable

 

Fever Dream (2021) – Llosa has spellbinding capacities, but the material here is ultimately far less permeating than her Milk of Sorrow

 

Life at the Top (1965) – Kotcheff solidly extends the original’s tone & themes, although with a recurring sense of going through the motions

 

Honeyland (2019) – the film’s huge effectiveness as implication-heavy narrative somewhat works against that as instructive realism

 

Sparkle (1976) – O’Steen’s showbiz saga is overstuffed and/or sketchy at times, but has lots of sweetness and crystalline musicality

 

The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion (1992) – with brash ruthlessness, Itami (rather chillingly ill-fatedly) nails the parasitical shitheads

 

The Big Steal (1949) – Siegel’s cracking early work plays and shifts and morally realigns while driving surely and sleekly ahead 

 

Undine (2020) – Petzold invests himself in a somewhat lame narrative, albeit skillfully positioned both emotionally and historically

 

Beat Girl (1960) – Greville’s wide-eyed mash-up of milieus and cultures teems with odd sociological interest, knowingly and otherwise

 

Dead Pigs (2018) – Yan’s likeable if familiar satire of contemporary China’s excesses and contrasts is ultimately a bit too reconciliatory

 

Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) – Davis’ irresistible, attitude-seeped drama provides an energetic mini-microcosm of urban Black culture

 

Inspecteur Lavardin (1986) – Chabrol makes it difficult to know where sly manipulation meets indifference, but it’s something to contemplate

 

The Mummy (1932) – Freund’s famous piece of creepy mythology has worn a bit thin by now, despite ample visual and mythological paddings

 

Argentina, 1985 (2022) – the strengths and limitations of Mitre’s treatment manifest largely as expected, but it’s a solid work even so

 

The Pink Panther (1963) – a potentially dull romp, elevated as much by some gorgeous Edwards scene-making as by the embryonic Clouseau

 

A Hidden Life (2019) – an (ever-timely) narrative of principled resistance, well-served by Malick’s perpetually questioning sensuousness

 

Pressure (1976) – Ove’s landmark film, as authentically revealing in its messy over-ambition as in its dramatization of relentless prejudice

 

Eros (2004) – Wong’s segment is the captivating highpoint; Antonioni’s is cherishable if overstated; Soderbergh’s is a bit of a throwaway

 

Black Widow (1954) – Johnson’s winding mystery is an adequate time-filler, while lacking in much vigor, bite or culminating surprise

 

What Do We See…? (2021) – Koberidze’s meditative movie gently tunes into infinite possibilities, while marked by a certain central avoidance

 

Hotel (1967) – it’s no Airport (!), but Quine keeps the pieces (albeit of varying interest & broader relevance) glossily & smoothly purring

 

La ultima pelicula (2013) – Martin/Peranson’s “last movie” is as beautifully, critically, wittily mind-bending as that appellation deserves

 

Nationtime – Gary (1972) – Greaves’ convention record is a mind-changingly vital, if imperfect record of emerging will and consciousness

 

The Professional (1981) – Lautner’s politically skeptical, proficient but not too noteworthy Belmondo-outsavvies-them-all action vehicle

 

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) – Sturges’ rip-roaring classic keeps things pumping in inspired, if reinforcingly sentimental fashion

 

Athena (2022) – Gavras’ application of astounding technical virtuosity to alienatingly flawed content represents a modern pinnacle of sorts

 

The Servant (1963) – a dominatingly cerebral Losey/Pinter achievement, but one that now feels sociologically and cinematically distant

 

Corpus Christ (2019) – Komasa’s modern-day religious parable fuses the beatific and the feral with invigorating style and self-belief

 

Space is the Place (1974) – Coney’s wow-quality Sun Ra fantasia has one well-shod foot in the then-present, the other in the trippy beyond

 

Portrait d’une jeune fille…(1994) – Akerman’s lovely yet grave study of character in formation, a dance of indelibility and transience

 

The Hurricane (1937) – some expressive prison suffering aside, not too Fordian a Ford film, but with amply muscular conflict & destruction

 

My Little Sister (2020) – even at its most necessarily harrowing, Chuat and Reymond’s film maintains its cultural and behavioral freshness

 

Luv (1967) – Donner’s awful, brain-hurting film allows only the vaguest glimpses of how bitingly well the material may have worked on stage

 

The Lure (2015) – Smoczynska’s blissfully kooky but not unserious mermaid-themed quasi-musical, propelled by female desire and sexuality

 

Rage (1972) – Scott’s drama is most tonally and visually striking in its early stages, with interest waning as the revenge mechanics gear up

 

White Wedding (1989) – Brisseau’s tale of shocking attraction walks a fine line between compelling provocation & unconvincing arbitrariness

 

7 Men from Now (1956) – Boetticher frames a tightly anguished story of honor & venality against overwhelming, not-yet-conquered landscapes

 

CODA (2021) – Heder deploys many of the standard weaknesses of sentimentally formulaic moviemaking, but it adequately connects regardless

 

Paris vu par…(1965) – one of the best of the 60’s anthology films, with no real weak links; Rouch’s segment is perhaps the most penetrating

 

Sorry We Missed You (2019) – Loach’s pace and compression limit the sense of realism, but the thesis is as wrenchingly galvanizing as ever

 

Raining in the Mountain (1979) – Hu’s epic doesn’t rival A Touch of Zen, but provides stirringly mysticism-tinged colour and confrontation

 

Terminal USA (1993) – as per the title, Moritsugu’s uproariously cliché-splattering hour-long evisceration doesn’t leave much in place

 

Ghost of Yotsuya, Part Two (1949) – Kinoshita’s rushed, villainy-heavy conclusion doesn’t deliver on the first part’s intensifying promise

 

The Glorias (2020) – Taymor’s shake-up of the biographic form is engagingly enjoyable,

despite (or in part because of) its flaws and oddities

 

Katzelmacher (1969) – Fassbinder’s quasi-deadpan-comedy of cheerless lives builds to a strange kind of minimalist, marooned grandeur

 

The Nightingale (2018) – Kent marshals the hyper-dramatic elements with unnervingly dark and forceful, socially eviscerating sense of purpose

 

The Automobile (1971) – Giannetti’s lightly poignant film feels too slight both as character study (notwithstanding Magnani) and moral tale

 

Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983) – a loose, rather creatively under-nourished Jaglom romance, as the scope of his work starts to narrow

 

The Count of the Old Town (1935) – Adolphson’s comic slice of Stockholm life doesn’t offer much beyond jovial eccentricity and local colour

 

Deep Water (2022) – Lyne maintains a handsomely seductive, implication-heavy mood, but much about the film seems oddly under-developed

 

La boulangere de Monceau (1963) – Rohmer’s short film pulsates with the charmed sense of an astounding artist commencing his life’s work

 

Swallow (2019) – Mirabella-Davis’s film is effective, if artificial-feeling, for much of its length, although not ultimately very persuasive

 

Autostop rosso sangue (1977) – Campanile’s unabashedly venal road movie makes for sleazily compulsive, if spiritually draining viewing

 

Boogie Woogie (2009) – Ward’s plushly-cast art-world satire has its moments, but for the most part plays out too obviously and monotonously

 

Late Chrysanthemums (1954) – Naruse’s very fine study of contrasting post-war fates and economic stability, studded with unusual detail

 

Being the Ricardos (2021) – Sorkin’s relentlessly overstuffed (and centrally miscast) movie only sporadically hits a productive stride

 

The Basilisks (1963) – Wertmuller’s study of small-town dynamics is a bit over-insistent, but well-attuned to social and existential stasis

 

Flames (2017) – Throwell and Decker’s provocatively ambiguous self-exposure is a spikily and surprisingly elevating, creation-saturated trip

 

Prefab Story (1979) – Chytilova’s immersion into eye-hurting, identity-sapping would-be modernity, navigated with fantastic, swerving energy

 

Fearless (1993) – Weir’s film is visually and behaviorally riveting, even if ultimately rather too heavy on free-floating mysticism

 

Ghost of Yotsuya, Part One (1949) – Kinoshita’s drama is suffused in escalating pressure and anguish, building to a well-judged cliffhanger

 

The King of Staten Island (2020) – no doubt fated to stand as the emblematic Pete Davidson movie, but it’s adroitly unexceptional otherwise

 

La voglia matta (1962) – Salce’s lively, quite well-sustained, ultimately desolation-tinged comedy of escalating middle-aged humiliation

 

Frankie (2019) – Sachs’ knowingly incomplete-feeling yet often exquisite, precisely inhabited tour through internal and external landscapes

 

Charles and Lucie (1979) – Kaplan’s broad comedy of mishap and resulting renewal is appealingly unvarnished, but hardly very major stuff

 

Annie (1982) – a pretty consistently enjoyable, nicely cast adaptation, with Huston at the very least avoiding the most likely pitfalls

 

Las Hurdes (1933) – Bunuel’s study of utter dispossession establishes the utter conceptual clarity and seriousness of his wondrous cinema

 

Kimi (2022) – Soderbergh applies his formidable technical know-how to an effectively-conceived, very much of-the-moment tech thriller

 

Black Orpheus (1959) – Camus’ film endures less as myth or sociology than as a seldom-equaled explosion of sustained colour, rhythm & motion

 

The Assignment (2016) – under the absurd circumstances, Hill and the cast execute the mission with admirable straight-faced intensity

 

Il merlo maschio (1970) – Campanile’s sex comedy is a shameless morass of insecurity and objectification, but fairly inventive about it

 

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) – Lin’s slick drama mildly subverts cultural stereotypes, while also jettisoning much flavor and plausibility

 

Take Aim at the Police Van (1960) –  Suzuki delivers complications worthy of that title in lean, no-nonsense, sleaze-seasoned style

 

Don’t Look Up (2021) – McKay’s satire is impressively conceived & controlled, although an ensuing sense of emptiness is all but inevitable

 

The Mill on the Po (1949) – Lattuada’s (sometimes overly) forceful contrasting of personal and collective drama yields some major highpoints

 

Ford vs. Ferrari (2019) – as technically impressive a vehicle as expected, aside from lacking any worthwhile spiritual or thematic engine

 

End of the Game (1975) – Schell’s existentially-charged crime drama doesn’t fully come off, but contains sufficient diverting oddities

 

Dangerous Game (1993) – for all the off-putting excess, Ferrara taps a grippingly intense, confessional sense of cinematic insatiability

 

Le bonheur (1965) – one of Varda’s most disturbingly beautiful works, contrasting socially-rooted pleasures with radical challenges to them

 

Red, White and Blue (2020) – McQueen’s involving study is a bit more conventional and less complexly textured than the best of Small Axe

 

Stromboli (1950) – Rossellini’s meeting of truths & artifices, its predominant visual barrenness yielding extraordinary underlying fullness

 

Kate Plays Christine (2016) – Greene’s investigation consistently intrigues, even as it establishes all too well its own ultimate inadequacy

 

Illustrious Corpses (1976) – if not Rosi’s finest film, perhaps his most emblematic; meticulously controlled and broadly indicting

 

Old Enough (1984) – Silver’s study of a class-crossing youthful friendship has enough truth and freshness to surmount its bumpy elements

 

Osaka Elegy (1936) – Mizoguchi digs into societal gender-based injustice with a breathtaking, ultimately near-defiant lack of sentimentality

 

tick, tick…BOOM! (2021) – Miranda provides sufficient performative highpoints to get through the overdone and/or repetitive passages

 

Diamonds of the Night (1964) – Nemec’s tight concept yields a terrifyingly virtuosic tapestry of experience, memory, and imagining

 

Dark Waters (2019) – Haynes’ uncharacteristic but very fine and humane, politically and morally relevant, sometimes Pakula-evoking drama

 

The Judge and the Assassin (1976) – Tavernier’s subtle yet often boldly surprising navigation through personal and collective morality

 

Teknolust (2002) – Leeson’s oddly overlooked high-concept film is a tonal and visual delight, light-footedly stimulating at every turn

 

L’ecole des facteurs (1947) – the kick-off to Tati’s indelible body of work, his behavioral mastery and cinematic precision already intact

 

The Sky is Everywhere (2022) – the suboptimal material pushes Decker toward multiple excesses, not that she doesn’t do it with major flair

 

Aparajito (1956) – Ray’s second film remains a key reference point, holding large and small things in impeccable, attentive equilibrium

 

Ray & Liz (2018) – Billingham’s laugh-or-you’ll-cry riveting, unsentimentally close-up observation of desperate parental inadequacy

 

The Murri Affair (1974) – Bolognini’s broadly satisfying historical drama, spiced by social tensions and ambiguously decadent implication

 

Working Girls (1986) – Borden’s revelatory workplace study, dense in character and incident, every moment fully inhabited and informed

 

Entranced Earth (1967) – Rocha’s fiery, restless vision encompasses pride & self-loathing, tapping a history of failed, out-matched idealism

 

Pig (2021) – Sarnoski works some amusing and adroit variations on vigilante-type structures, although it’s overdone in multiple respects

 

La cigarette (1919) – Dulac’s tender yet ominous story of melancholy misunderstanding, with notable use of contrasting perspectives

 

White Riot (2019) – Shah’s Rock Against Racism movie pleasingly tracks a progressive piece of drop-in-the-ever-troubled-ocean history

 

Lucky Luciano (1973) – Rosi’s artfully constructed, often unexpectedly indirect study, heavy in disillusioned political implication 

 

Babymother (1998) – Henriques’ slice of Black British life has an engaging general vibe & energy, but too often feels overstuffed & sketchy

 

Passing Fancy (1933) – Ozu’s cherishable silent film applies his customary visual delicacy to a story of initially deceptive simplicity

 

Pieces of a Woman (2020) – Mundruczo finds some unusually bracing perspectives on a wrenching physical and psychological experience

 

Doctor Glas (1968) – Zetterling’s fascinatingly unconventional, visually aggressive contrasting of a poised outer and a turbulent inner life

 

Dawson City, Frozen Time (2016) – Morrison’s merging of actual and dream histories utterly absorbs, if more as reverie than film scholarship

 

Les novices (1970) – a thin, under-invested Bardot comedy, with little sign of Chabrol’s reported shadow-directing, but the dog is great

 

Deal of the Century (1983) – Friedkin’s uncertain quasi-satire hardly lives up to its title, although in some respects it ages fairly well

 

I vitelloni (1953) – Fellini’s pessimistic study of hindered masculinity ages more gracefully than many of his grander subsequent works

 

The Power of the Dog (2021) – Campion’s seasoned powers are on full display, even if the film is a little less deft than her finest work

 

Port of Call (1948) – Bergman’s socially-critical drama, suffused in working-class physicality, typifies his sturdy, if narrower, early work

 

Seberg (2019) – Andrews’ well-intended but disappointing study is a lot of missed opportunities, including an atypically dull Stewart

 

Despair (1978) – Fassbinder dazzlingly orchestrates the enigma, but it’s one of his most conventionally tricky, somewhat sealed-off films

 

Ready to Wear (1994) – hardly Altman’s most major film, but it’s enormous fun, with reality and artifice persuasively inter-mingled

 

The Hellbenders (1967) – Corbucci’s vivid, incident-packed Western is no masterpiece, but enjoyably gleams with crazed, committed venality

 

One Night in Miami (2020) – King’s too-smooth drama has no shortage of isolated strengths, but never transcends its inherent limitations

 

Pillars of Society (1935) – Sirk’s early drama has its peculiarities, but bites with relish into small-town stuffiness and hypocrisy

 

The Ghost of Peter Sellers (2018) – Medak’s memoir provides irresistible cinema-geek pleasures, along with some seasoned poignancy

 

Dodes’ka-den (1970) – Kurosawa’s chronicle contrasts the naturalistic and the expressionist, its impact ranging from diffident to absorbing

 

Sharky’s Machine (1981) – Reynolds’ rather uncertainly-handled action drama manages an occasional flash of individuality, not too much more

 

La verité (1960) – an engrossing Bardot-centered courtroom drama, but impacting more straightforwardly than Clouzot presumably intended

 

In the Heights (2021) – Chu’s over-calculating musical, vibrantly uplifting in theory, displays a disappointingly bland form of proficiency

 

Nice and Friendly (1922) – a woodenly-executed, low-effort/low-reward Chaplin short, even allowing for the limited underlying ambition

 

The Traitor (2019) – one of veteran Bellocchio’s most classically enthralling works, darkly interrogating relative honour and morality

 

The Mutations (1974) – Cardiff’s bizarre spectacle tempers its rampant absurdity with heavy elements of misplaced-seeming authenticity

 

The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) – Hong’s fine early work, often playfully structured, but colored by dissatisfaction and misconnection

 

El Dorado (1967) – a deep abiding pleasure for Hawksian connoisseurs, brimming with perfectly pitched exchanges, shadings and fallibilities

 

Genus Pan (2020) – not Diaz’s strongest work, and yet an audacious expression of the chaos and carnage flowing from human desperation

 

That Uncertain Feeling (1941) – a happily peculiar, psychosexually infiltrated application of the high-functioning Lubitsch “touch”

 

Rodin (2017) – Doillon’s study withholds much, all the better to evoke the difficult contours of creativity, and attendant personal detritus

 

Jaws (1975) – Spielberg’s first huge hit barely seems dated, its impeccable technique supported by an alert sense of character and place

 

The Cool Lakes of Death (1982) – Van Brakel’s committed chronicle of repression and self-discovery largely achieves its epic ambitions

 

Modesty Blaise (1966) – beneath its rather heavy concept of stylishness, Losey’s movie primarily talks to and (one hopes) entertains itself

 

Earwig (2021) – Hadzihailovic’s highly singular vision, penetratingly present & utterly displaced, voyages toward the strangest of closures

 

Damn Yankees (1958) – Donen/Abbott’s irresistible musical has some distinctive texture, and fabulous (if barely integrated) Fosse routines

 

And then we Danced (2019) – Akin’s film is narratively fairly predictable, but has plenty of sociological colour and observational flair

 

Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971) – Mutrux’s lassitude-heavy study of marginal lives is a peculiar, only fitfully effective category hybrid

 

Of Freaks and Men (1998) – Balabanov is a wondrously imaginative & controlled director, but the film often makes for near-loathsome viewing

 

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) – beneath its light conventionality, Hitchcock’s atypical comedy casts a fascinated eye on twisted marital dynamics

 

The Human Voice (2020) – Almodovar’s high-panache, mega-designed short film expertly expands its constrained physical and thematic space

 

The Music Man (1962) – it’s pleasing to revisit Willson’s material once in a while, even in DaCosta’s deficiency-strewn filming of it

 

Penance (2012) – Kurosawa’s long, often rather peculiar, but thoroughly satisfying tale, a series of studies in relative power and capacity

 

A Doll’s House (1973) – Losey’s approach to Ibsen’s play hardly lacks compensations, but is far from ideal, flubbing some key moments

 

Letters Home (1986) – Akerman’s lovely film, based on Sylvia Plath’s correspondence, its theatricality facilitating as much as it constrains

 

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) – a classic anguished noir set-up, evidencing throughout Preminger’s masterly control of tone, mood and pace

 

Introduction (2021) – the objective “smallness” of Hong’s film somehow allows almost limitless-feeling structural & observational capacity

 

Hands Across the Table (1935) – Leisen’s delicate comedy has some lovely scenes (and Lombard!), although gets a little plainer as it goes on

 

Vitalina Varela (2019) – Costa’s masterwork is a stunning communion of physical & spiritual states, of limitless light & intimate darkness

 

The Parallax View (1974) – among Pakula’s most lasting films, brilliantly placing genre heroics in outmatched, implication-heavy perspective

 

Katalin Varga (2009) – more sparely linear than Strickland’s later work, but marked by elements of comparably near-chilling authority

 

Guess who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) – Kramer’s trumped-up concoction is hardly lasting cinema, but at least it’s not like watching nothing

 

Another Round (2020) – Vinterberg ensures the premise goes down easily, although rather constrained both as social and psychological study

 

How Green was My Valley? (1941) – Ford’s gorgeous Welsh family drama is moving and meaningful, for all its idealizations and simplifications

 

L’homme fidele (2018) – Garrel’s slight but elegant, amusingly ambiguous exercise in emotional, sexual and psychological architecture

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) – a shallow, unexciting Bond effort, valueless except as a shrine to the dated and objectionable

 

Un jeu brutal (1983) – Brisseau is weirdly successful at making his film’s grotesque contrivances feel almost profound and elevating

 

Little Man, What Now? (1934) – Borzage’s soulful but socially-critical, perfectly pitched and acted story of young love’s financial struggle

 

A Hero (2021) – Farhadi’s finely-tuned work does evoke the sense of a recurring template, but one of seemingly inexhaustible adaptability 

 

What’s New Pussycat? (1965) – Donner’s antic comedy, seldom actually funny, is at least conceptually interesting, in a hollowing kind of way

 

Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2019) – Dumont’s exercise in all-out apocalypse-heralding weirding is an improbably worthy Quinquin follow-up

 

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970) – Billington’s often very funny wide-angle satire, forged in uneasily far-seeing datedness

 

Bye Bye Africa (1999) – Haroun’s engrossing (if perhaps over-calculated) film explores (and enacts) cinema as facilitator and destroyer

 

Three Cases of Murder (1955) – a seemingly mismatched and yet, in its variety and intermittent eccentricity, unexpectedly satisfying trilogy

 

Notturno (2020) – Rosi’s almost heartbreaking act of witnessing excavates humanity and strange beauty from within unimaginable chaos

 

Unfaithfully Yours (1948) – Sturges’ expertly conceived and structured comedy, perhaps as often disconcerting or chilling as it is funny

 

Blood of my Blood (2015) – Bellocchio’s sort-of nutty and yet rather masterfully executed angle on abiding governing perversion & corruption

 

The Homecoming (1973) – Hall’s valuable filming of Pinter’s sensational play, imposingly attuned to all its biting multi-faceted turbulence

 

Come and See (1985) – Klimov’s chilling, stand-alone vision, from the comprehension-dissolving boundary of wartime extremity & grotesqueness

 

The Cardinal (1963) – Preminger’s study of personal and institutional Catholicism is strong and wide-ranging (while hardly exhaustive)

 

The Hand of God (2021) – Sorrentino’s winning memory film is full of impressive showmanship, while seldom connecting very meaningfully

 

Born Yesterday (1950) – Cukor’s adaptation, constrained and stagy and dated in any number of ways, happily retains its central charm

 

Les miserables (2019) – Ly’s all-seeing, draining sociological survey is almost too cinematically exciting and sleek for its own deeper good

 

Coma (1978) – Crichton’s paranoid thriller is enjoyably well-conceived, and buoyed by its famously compromised “feminist” sensibility

 

The Lover (1992) – for all its care and handsomeness, Annaud’s adaptation too often feels emotionally and intellectually undercharged

 

The Broken Butterfly (1919) – Tourneur’s rediscovered silent melodrama has some lovely, pastoral elements, amid much mega-dated contrivance

 

Eureka (2000) – Aoyama’s pilgrimage-like drama contains much of impressive allure, even if it doesn’t entirely justify its epic length

 

The Boston Strangler (1968) – Fleischer impressively varies the approach, pace & tone, without generating commensurate impact or revelation

 

The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) – a slight, fanciful premise, but one explored by Takahata with an exquisitely sustained delicacy

 

Old Boyfriends (1979) – Tewksbury’s semi-comedic identity puzzle has, at the least, an intriguing structure and some striking tonal shifts

 

The Velvet Underground (2021) – Haynes dazzlingly establishes the group’s miraculously transporting singularity; any caveats are minor

 

The White Sheik (1952) – Fellini’s early, endearingly fantasy-propelled comedy, elevated by outbursts of broader energy and ambition

 

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) – reliably easy-pleasure viewing, alertly charting the varied terrain of teenage self-mythologizing

 

The Night of Counting the Tears (1969) – Salam’s grandly singular film stands almost as unyieldingly outside time as its subject matter

 

The Assistant (2019) – Green examines the self-perpetuating, belittling wasteland of office culture with rare, smartly excruciating focus

 

Uski Roti (1970) – Kaul’s time-fragmenting, quietly existentially-charged study of distantly joined lives, spent fruitlessly waiting

 

The Trip to Greece (2020) – Winterbottom again adjusts the ridiculously satisfying formula just about as much as needed, so I’m all good!

 

Costa Azzurra (1959) – Sala’s sun-baked French Riviera comedy examines its own dated attitudes just enough to attain marginal respectability

 

Strange Culture (2007) – Leeson’s flexible investigative form skillfully illuminates and interrogates a startling real-life incident

 

Pirosmani (1969) – Shengelaia’s visually ravishing, studiously unconventional study of the Georgian artist is a small, immersive revelation

 

Chained for Life (2018) – Schimberg’s fascinating spanning of ideas & registers is never less than respect-inducing, often rather dazzling

 

The Long Farewell (1971) – Muratova’s wonderfully layered and attentive family portrait pulsates with intimations of ambition and constraint

 

Passing (2021) – Hall’s film has its debatable aspects, but there’s not a moment that doesn’t hold one’s aesthetic and thematic attention

 

On purge bebe (1931) – Renoir’s efficient, often highly theatrical laxative-driven farce plays a bit puzzlingly now, but not unenjoyably

 

Prizzi’s Honor (1985) – Huston’s late film at times seems cunningly and darkly wry, at others merely incomprehensibly and impenetrably blank

 

Berenice (1954) – Rohmer’s unadorned early short film is probably his most overtly horror-like, even vampiric study of attraction

 

Bombshell (2019) – Roach’s underwhelmingly efficient movie dangles a plethora of synthetic amusements, to overly bland and toothless ends

 

Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) – Fassbinder’s observance of movie-set disorder & torpor as exotically desolate, laughlessly comic wonderment

 

City Hall (2020) – Wiseman’s epic portrait of the city as aspiration and reality is grandly (if sometimes a bit hagiographically) satisfying

 

Il moralista (1959) – Bianchi’s comedy takes a few titillatingly satiric punches at censorious hypocrisy,  but is mostly just messy

 

…Two Girls in Love (1995) – Maggenti’s progressive romance isn’t particularly sophisticated overall, but certainly maintains a winning charm

 

The Artful Penetration of Barbara (1969) – Brass’s never-a-dull-moment London grab-bag throbs with sexed-up curiosity and engagement

 

Lovesong (2016) – Kim’s astutely-observed study of female friendship and its parameters is a pleasure, although restrained to a fault

 

Love in the Rain (1975) – Jeong’s romantic comedy draws only modest variations on a familiar premise, muting the class-driven implications

 

The Voyeurs (2021) – Mohan exploits some time-honoured cinematic mechanisms fairly effectively, but the impact rapidly diminishes

 

La vie du Christ (1906) – Guy’s simple but bustling history embodies the uncynical wonder of very early film, especially in its final scene

 

Trouble in Mind (1985) – for all its sometimes inspired oddities, Rudolph’s strangified modern noir leaves a rather flat overall impression

 

High and Low (1963) – one of Kurosawa’s finest films repositions a wrenching personal drama as a window on societal inequality & instability

 

Richard Jewell (2019) – Eastwood allows in too much cheap stuff and clutter, but the central study of overwhelmed decency is finely observed

 

Sunyeo (1979) – Kim’s tale of injury, striving and temptation isn’t perhaps his most piercing work, but engages spikily with conventions

 

His House (2020) – Weekes flirts with run-of-the-mill horror, transcended through compellingly unique articulations of displaced otherness

 

Music in Darkness (1948) – Bergman’s study of life without sight slowly transcends apparent predictability, in small ways and in larger ones

 

Chocolate Babies (1996) – Winter’s raucous slice of queer community is an exuberantly serious assault on conformity and complacency

 

Home from the Hill (1960) – Minnelli brings the narrative’s sensational primal melodrama to rivetingly visualized, deeply felt fruition

 

Amnesia (2015) – it’s good to see Schroeder still at it, but this meeting of disparate elements never fully coalesces or penetrates

 

I Walk the Line (1970) – Frankenheimer’s southern potboiler is under-developed in most respects, although hardly dull (if only for the cast)

 

Ste. Anne (2021) – Vermette’s film pulsates with openness to a land, a culture, to the inexhaustible seductiveness of cinematic exploration

 

The Return of Bulldog Drummond (1934) – Summers’ shakily get-the-job-done drama remains of modest interest for its time capsule elements

 

Un dimanche a la campagne (1984) – Tavernier’s skillfully recessive film is finely done, if relatively overrated among his very varied works

 

Freud (1962) – Huston’s impressively conceived if over-schematic project carries at times the feel of a preoccupied private tutorial

 

The Whistlers (2019) – Porumboiu delivers plausibly generic crime thriller pleasures, while also bending them with playfully astute rigour

 

From Here to Eternity (1953) – Zinnemann’s drama, potentially a compromised sprawl, displays an improbable array of individual strengths

 

Swimming out Till the Sea turns Blue (2020) – the great Jia places modern Chinese literature in warmly-evoked historical & cultural context

 

FTA (1972) – however rough-edged, Parker’s record of Fonda/Sutherland’s idealistic roadshow still hits diversely meaningful targets

 

On connait le chanson (1997) – Resnais provides endless formal pleasure, while remaining true to thwarted, weighed-down human experience

 

Kitty (1945) – not Leisen’s most substantial work, but with some sublime moments within the accomplished, often amusing superficiality

 

Mekong Hotel (2012) – Apichatpong’s brief, entirely beguiling hybrid of the startling and soothing, the placid now and the loaded then

 

Film (1965) – Beckett/Schneider’s short work hardly satisfies; what’s most debatable perhaps is the exact fashion in which it alienates

 

Annette (2021) – Carax’s intense, self-extrapolating opus is awe-inspiring at its best, easily surmounting various less persuasive aspects

 

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) – Arkush’s happily Ramone-heavy (yeh!) extravaganza, with empowerment mostly winning out over ogling

 

Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) – Bong pretty much hits the ground running, with an amusingly shifting, lightly ethically-seeded narrative

 

Tevya (1939) – Schwartz’s filming of the Fiddler source material holds up well, risks of over-flavoring held in check by defiant stoicism

 

Bacurau (2019) – Mendonca Filho and Dornelles challengingly reposition nasty genre material in mostly compelling, culturally resonant ways

 

Ride Lonesome (1959) – another impeccable Boetticher/Scott contrast of condensed (yet richly-felt) tension and limitlessly open backdrops

 

I Was at Home, But…(2020) – Schanelec’s film holds sharply observed human truths in equilibrium with scintillating cinematic mysteries

 

A Bigger Splash (1973) – Hazan’s unprecedented, alluring David Hockney-centered reverie occupies all kinds of mysterious intersections

 

Success is the Best Revenge (1984) – Skolimowski’s deeply personal, lumpy yet possibly quasi-magnificent expression of exile and engagement

 

A Walk with Love and Death (1969) – Huston’s chronicle of purity in the midst of national nightmare sustains a fragile, doomed conviction

 

Manakamana (2013) – Spray/Velez’s film exemplifies structured denial as a route into somewhat rarified cinematic and sociological pleasures

 

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943) – Sturges’ pacey ingenuity coexists with too much repetition and indifference to real character

 

Azor (2021) – Fontana’s intelligently restrained, class-sensitive craftmanship dissects a society’s calculated moral and structural erosion

 

Farewell, my Lovely (1975) – Richards’ retro project is solid enough, but is tonally too unvarying, never feeling particularly vital

 

Irma Vep (1996) – Assayas’ captivatingly singular film about a film spans quasi-documentary, pointed satire, and wondrous abstraction

 

Sylvia Scarlett (1935) – Cukor’s remarkable comedy is as “queer” in its tone & structure as in the title character’s unfussy gender-fluidity

 

Agnes par Varda (2019) – only Varda could make a 90-year-old’s wander through the past feel like such a brightly forward-looking affirmation

 

The Alphabet Murders (1965) – Tashlin’s unconventional approach to Agatha Christie is more of a shaky peculiarity than anything else

 

Preparations to be Together… (2020) – Horvat places a classic modern-day enigma within acutely-observed social and personal realities

 

Three Women (1924) – Lubitsch’s melodrama provides ample evidence of the fabled “touch,” albeit applied here to often strained material

 

Spirited Away (2001) – for me anyway, this is Miyazaki’s most fully-inhabited, humorously singular, completely enthralling feast of a movie

 

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) – Hancock’s drama is intriguingly evasive, navigating between sweetness and multi-faceted threat

 

A Woman’s Revenge (2012) – as its fierce central concept becomes clear, Gomes’ ethically considered theatricality grows greatly in power

 

It Should Happen to You (1954) – Cukor’s fame-for-fame’s-sake comedy has plenty of bright spots, although the satirical bite is restrained

 

Prime Time (2021) – Piatek’s drama isn’t that interesting as a narrative, but more so for its gradually-revealed vein of societal pessimism

 

Morituri (1965) – aided by the mercurial Brando, Wicki’s drama intermittently makes the prevailing murkiness into a moral and visual virtue

 

Clemency (2019) – Chukwu disinters the ritualistic machinery of death and its accumulating existential toll with draining brilliance

 

The Bandit (1946) – the initial atmospheric starkness and social grounding of Lattuada’s drama rather extravagantly dissipates as it goes on

 

Escape to Victory (1981) – Huston’s strange project, wildly fanciful and revisionist, but played mostly straight, to the point of dourness

 

The Nude Princess (1976) – Canavari affects a degree of political consciousness, but the movie is defined primarily by lewd exhibitionism

 

The Wedding Guest (2018) – Winterbottom’s injection of noirish plotting & terseness into an India/Pakistan travelogue comes off pretty well

 

El fantasma del convento (1934) – de Fuentes’ mysterious tale is atmospherically creepy, but narratively and thematically rather limited

 

Lovers Rock (2020) – McQueen’s elevating immersion into the joy of gathering, laced with the threats and irritants against which it rises

 

The Guerilla Fighter (1968) – Sen’s frustration-ridden political drama is a fascinating reference point, in its omissions & inclusions alike

 

Jojo Rabbit (2019) – Waititi’s Nazi comedy may be less dreadful than expected, but it’s hard to see the point or virtue of any of it

 

Los tallos amorgos (1956) – the strengths of Ayala’s sweatily noirish exercise in guilt & manipulation outweigh the over-emphatic weaknesses

 

Skin Deep (1989) – much underrated late Edwards rewardingly revisits “10” territory, studded with immaculate, desperation-fueled set-ups

 

About Some Meaningless Events (1974) – Derkaoui’s vivid, punchy, if work-in-progress-feeling political and cultural temperature-taking

 

Ingrid Goes West (2017) – Spicer’s film has its predictable aspects, but nicely channels a certain strand of contemporary desperation

 

Quai des Orfevres (1947) – Clouzot’s drama is a highly superior, atmospherically balanced marvel of characterization, incident & implication

 

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990) – Ivory’s adaptation is carefully delineated to a fault, but crafts a moving portrait of quiet capitulation

 

Charles, Dead or Alive (1969) – Tanner’s wryly amusing study of rebellion, studded with personal, political and philosophical inquiry

 

Color out of Space (2019) – Stanley’s triumphant return is a crazed yet held-together spectacle of comprehensive destabilization & breakdown

 

I’ll Give a Million (1935) – Camerini’s consistently lively if not quite screwball-pace comedy, served with not-too-biting social critique

 

Children of a Lesser God (1986) – Haines provides some respectable observation and debate, along with much under-energized sogginess

 

Daughters of Darkness (1971) – Kumel’s uniquely-pitched vampire film embeds its chilly genre moves within greater psychological mysteries

 

Beirut (2018) – Anderson delivers the pictorial values and the requisite sense of chaos, but it’s all far more basic than the history merits

 

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1954) – Becker’s colourful but mostly trite spectacle leaves its venal backdrop almost entirely unexamined

 

Color Adjustment (1992) – Riggs’ study of prime-time representation is a bit dated and hardly comprehensive, but full of shrewd reflection

 

Jeff (1969) – Herman’s concise double-cross gangster flick is pretty standard Delon fare, leavened with just a few eccentric touches

 

Queen & Slim (2019) – it’s not hard to reel off excesses in Matsoukas’ narrative & mythologizing, and yet the film rises and connects

 

Snow Trail (1947) – Taniguchi’s never-a-dull-moment (if elemental and ultimately oddly sentimental) escape-through-the-mountains drama

 

Special Effects (1984) – Cohen has a great core concept, but his race-to-the-finish-line approach doesn’t explore it very resonantly

 

Tomka and his Friends (1977) – Keko’s study of childhood during wartime charms and informs, despite a feeling of artistic tunnel vision

 

Nurse (2013) – Aarniokoski at least brings some style to the sleazy lameness, and especially to the bloody climactic high-absurdity mayhem

 

No Blood Relation (1932) – Naruse’s silent film is compulsive story-telling, if more visually and emotionally insistent than his finest work

 

The United States vs. Billie Holliday (2021) – Daniels’ wastefully unilluminating treatment verges on being a fuzzy one-note trudge

 

A Woman in the Wall (1969) – Park’s concentrated relationship-triangle drama is decently (even if not that memorably) positioned and crafted

 

Ad Astra (2019) – Gray’s introspective drama starts off tonally and visually strong, but the overall design ultimately feels insufficient

 

La sonate a Kreutzer (1956) – Rohmer’s jittery early work hardly matches his later serene assurance, but teems with historical interest

 

The Slugger’s Wife (1985) – one can vaguely see the possibility of a passable movie, but Ashby barely seems interested in drawing it out

 

The Howl (1970) – Brass’s sex-and-violence-stained odyssey bleeds brain-frying creative energy, earning an exhausted form of respect

 

Diane (2018) – Jones’ remarkable film masters the rhythms and textures of modest lives, and the existentially-charged complexity within

 

A Ship to India (1947) – Bergman’s semi-Bergmanish early melodrama blends noir-inflected romance with desperately toxic family dynamics

 

The Delta (1996) – Sachs’ early film is sociologically and behaviourally fascinating, although leaves a questionable final impression

 

El camino (1963) – Mariscal’s funny, tolerantly varied study of narrowly-defined lives is a consistent delight, if seldom too surprising

 

Little Women (2019) – Gerwig’s enormously skillful adaptation is a real elevating delight, even if perhaps too virtuously scrubbed in parts

 

I Was Born, But…(1932) – Ozu’s silent film is a fully-realized, subtly-observed delight, feeling entirely unconstrained by the lack of sound

 

Marvin & Tige (1983) – Weston’s pretty basic, sentimental story of an unlikely friendship, considerably elevated by Cassavetes’ presence

 

Gods of the Plague (1970) – Fassbinder’s assured but exploratory-feeling, noir-influenced early work, suffused in lassitudinous implication

 

The Story of Lovers Rock (2011) – in charmingly unpolished fashion, Shabazz’s cultural history steadily indicts an exclusionary mainstream

 

Throne of Blood (1957) – Kurosawa’s adaptation is often visually galvanizing, yet never completely banishes a sense of arbitrariness

 

The 40-Year-Old Version (2020) – Blank’s movie has much that’s engagingly authentic, mixed in with a few too many phony beats and set-ups

 

A Man and a Gisaeng (1969) – Shim/Shin’s brassy comedy intrigues for its gender-crossing moves, although it’s ultimately pretty conservative

 

Alice (1990) – Allen’s movie falls mostly flat both as character study and as magic-infused reverie, leaving just secondary compensations

 

Douce (1943) – among Autant-Lara’s most darkly sumptuously works, its romantic longings infested with bitterly class-based realities

 

The Mustang (2019) – de Clermont-Tonnerre’s study is narratively and metaphorically unsurprising, but scenically and sociologically winning

 

The Working Class Goes To Heaven (1972) – Petri’s fire-breathing drama of workplace action sees dehumanization & delusion in all directions

 

Puffball (2007) – Roeg’s last film plainly doesn’t touch his peak, but is intriguingly suffused in female biology, conflicts and affinities

 

Intermezzo (1936) – Molander’s pained love story only mildly satisfies at best, before ultimately entirely sinking into a melodramatic swamp

 

It Comes at Night (2017) – Shults’ minor but well-controlled threat- and mistrust-heavy drama benefits somewhat from Covid-era resonance

 

Lucia (1968) – Solas’ expressively & narratively bold (to a fault) trilogy pries open the painful intimate crevices of revolutionary change

 

Pale Rider (1985) – Eastwood delivers expertly-honed, righteously-fueled pleasures, notwithstanding mythological and egotistical excesses

 

Detective Story (1951) – Wyler’s practiced theatricality and actor-shuffling can hardly withstand the damaged intensity at the centre

 

An Easy Girl (2019) – Zlotowski’s pleasurable chronicle deftly represents female sexuality, alert to the ambiguities of choice and power

 

Black Girl (1972) – Davis’s modest but far-reaching family drama opens up wrenching layers of societally-imposed compromise and regret

 

The Color of Lies (1999) – one of Chabrol’s strongest and gravest late films, a sustained reflection on morality and accountability

 

To Each His Own (1946) – Leisen’s warm skill & de Havilland’s steady presence almost serve to completely extinguish one’s sense of absurdity

 

Before we Vanish (2017) – Kurosawa retains a great feel for metaphorically loaded concepts, but this lands more lightly than his best works

 

How to Steal a Million (1966) – handsomely unimportant Wyler fluff, even by the long-established standards of handsomely unimportant fluff

 

Raja (2003) – Doillon’s oddly persuasive study of turbulent obsession channels the distorting complacency of male colonial privilege

 

Full of Life (1956) – Quine’s slice of pregnant life lightly distinguishes itself through its ethnic flavour and range of thematic interests

 

Merveilles a Montfermeil (2019) – Balibar’s film sustains a kind of klutzy disorientation that viably probes progressive ideals & quicksands

 

Airport 1975 (1974) – Smight’s sequel has little of the original’s sprawling appeal and sporadic human interest, but it’s not dull anyway

 

Countryman (1982) – Jobson juxtaposes traditional, mythic & nastily contemporary notions of Jamaica, with lumpy but mostly appealing results

 

The Lion has Wings (1939) – the idealism is of course overdone, but it’s thoroughly interesting when considered in its historical context

 

Ash is Purest White (2018) – Jia’s work is limitlessly interesting, despite an increasing sense of sociological and thematic familiarity

 

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) – Kramer’s epic is generally as gratingly over-insistent as that tiring title, rarely actually funny

 

L’enfer (1994) – Chabrol’s more quotidian but still expertly unnerving adjunct to Clouzot’s legendary unfinished version of the material

 

Remember the Night (1940) – Leisen’s lovely romantic fancy walks a touching, perfectly-played line between discovery and predestination

 

Family Romance, LLC (2019) – an easy treasure trove of modern ambiguities and poignancies, observed by Herzog with unusual self-effacement

 

10 Rillington Place (1971) – Fleischer’s ideally cast dramatization is an almost unbearably sad and creepy study in calculated malevolence

 

Le bal des folles (2021) – Laurent’s study of oppression is rather too stately & quasi-spiritual to fully realize its potent subject matter

 

Sebastian (1968) – Greene’s fizzily diversion-laden codebreaking yarn tempers its general nonchalance with shards of deeper implication

 

Rafiki (2018) – Kahiu’s Kenyan same-sex romance isn’t particularly sophisticated in many respects, but its very existence brings joy

 

The Wild One (1953) – Benedek’s once-disruptive drama retains shards of cultural significance, but feels under-achieved on its own terms

 

Joint Security Area (2000) – Park’s border-set drama grips through its bold-strokes occupation of political, geographical & narrative space

 

Murder at the Vanities (1934) – a silly hybrid of over-the-top musical revue and backstage mayhem, energetically held together by Leisen

 

Young Ahmed (2019) – both in what it includes and excludes, the Dardennes’ too-brief study of radicalized youth seldom feels ideally judged

 

The Andromeda Strain (1971) – Wise sets out the high-concept notions with admiring subservience, injecting an occasional overdone flourish

 

Marianne & Julianne (1981) – von Trotta’s study of turbulent sisterhood is an expertly practiced occupying of rather familiar thematic space

 

The Grass is Greener (1960) – Donen’s monied dud has a few passingly charming notions, but few signs of any life worth giving a damn about

 

A Silent Voice: the Movie (2016) – Yamada’s astonishingly impressive study of teenage pain & connection surely ranks with the best of anime

 

The Lady Eve (1941) – Sturges’ classic comedy is full of glorious notions & moments, shrouding a certain absence of central emotional truth

 

Oxygene (2021) – Aja’s accomplished but still rather deadening film never transcends the sum of its parts, which get flightier as it goes on

 

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) – Yates’ excellent study of crime-world dependency and betrayal, a bleak tapestry of subtly tragic ironies

 

A Portuguesa (2019) – Gomes’ extraordinarily subtle exploration of a reflective female-written world sustained within a reckless male one

 

The Tall T (1957) – Boetticher’s incisive, expertly shaped Western, infiltrated with manifold questionings of frontier masculinity

 

Une semaine de vacances (1980) – Tavernier’s restrained but exceptionally smart and satisfying examination of youthful existential crisis

 

Once a Thief (1965) – Nelson’s relevance-aspiring crime drama has sufficient flavour and oddity to transcend utter conventionality

 

Somniloquies (2017) – corporeal solidity blurrily yields to ascendantly transgressive dreams, with destabilizing, boundary-crossing effects

 

In Name Only (1939) – Cromwell’s love vs. avarice melodrama isn’t particularly notable, but Lombard gives it a touchingly delicate centre

 

Center Stage (1996) – Kwan’s entrancingly well-judged intertwining of textured historical evocation & multi-faceted present-day perspective

 

Greaser’s Palace (1972) – Downey’s blissfully whacked-out allegorical grabbag is startlingly (if not completely explicably) fulfilling!

 

Wasp Network (2019) – Assayas’ intelligently expansive film both simplifies and obscures, appositely to the political chaos it charts

 

They Were Expendable (1945) – among Ford’s most complexly moving pictures, for its recurring offsetting of heroism with absence and loss

 

Red Moon Tide (2020) – Patino’s folk-tale-like reverie, in some ways localized simplicity itself, culminates in gorgeously eruptive imagery

 

The Dirty Dozen (1967) – Aldrich’s eye-poppingly-cast drama provides some dumb good fun, when it’s not in one way or another repulsive

 

The Hedonists (2016) – Jia’s tragi-comic short film (which you truly wish were longer) observes the bewildering transition to new paradigms

 

Shoes (1916) – Weber’s tough, observant social document, frankly surveying the reality of poverty, and underlying dreams of better lives

 

Rosa Luxemburg (1986) – von Trotta’s study conveys a moving empathy for the wearying toll of resistance, but too often falls rather flat

 

The Sugarland Express (1974) – Spielberg overplays things a bit, but is well attuned to the multi-level, quasi-prophetic (O.J.?) dynamics

 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) – Sciamma’s instant classic places some absolutely electric moments within a near-swoon-inducing whole

 

The Marrying Kind (1952) – Cukor’s episodic marriage chronicle leavens its deft comedy with convincing economic and behavioral anxiety

 

De l’autre cote (2002) – Akerman’s border study identifies much parched, plaintive beauty, and contrasting institutionalized ugliness

 

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1968) – hard to look away from Huston’s drama, even (or especially) at its most adventurously questionable

 

Infinite Football (2018) – Porumboiu wryly positions a futility-marked conversation to accommodate social glimpses & philosophical shadings

 

Midnight (1939) – Leisen’s exemplary comedy seems virtually to float on air (expensively accessorized, eloquently twist-laden air, that is)

 

Les equilibristes (1991) – Papatakis’ unprecedented, destabilizing journey through possibility and destruction, love and exploitation

 

Shivers (1975) – Cronenberg’s early work has its ragged aspects, but they don’t much impede its central visceral and allegorical potency

 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) – Heller likely makes the material as rewardingly & artfully multi-faceted as reasonably possible

 

Vendetta of a Samurai (1952) – Mori’s suspensefully legend-debunking perspective provides an intriguingly disillusioned genre counterpoint

 

Stripes (1981) – Reitman’s pallid creation provides familiarly under-examined ideological reassurance and few enduring comic highlights

 

Deadly Sweet (1967) – Brass’ cursorily plotted response to Blow-Up is impressively stylistically rapacious, but with scattershot results

 

Princess Cyd (2017) – Cone’s study of gradually accumulating awareness & sensation has a slender, but warmly & pleasurably inhabited frame

 

Paracelsus (1943) – Pabst’s rather histrionic but not unthoughtful drama stands in interesting relationship to its Nazi production context

 

Bowfinger (1999) – Oz’s pleasantly imagined and performed comedy is engaging enough, even if not often particularly funny (the dog aside)

 

Adoption (1975) – Meszaros’ unadorned but highly illuminating study of the wrenchingly shifting line between female freedom and constraint

 

Knives Out (2019) – Johnson’s satisfyingly intricate, misdirection-heavy whodunit, seasoned with a barbed take on privilege and entitlement

 

The Mission (1986) – Joffe arouses suitable anti-colonial and -doctrinal disgust, for all his film’s exoticism-seeking and other excesses

 

Siren of the Tropics (1927) – Etievant/Nalpas’ dated melodrama endures as an imperfect (but better than nothing) Josephine Baker showcase

 

Return of the Prodigal Son (1967) – Schorm’s study of disaffection is one of the Czech New Wave’s major, most lastingly questioning works

 

Welcome to New York (2014) – Ferrara, in relatively straightforward mode, relishingly sinks his teeth into the super-well-suited material

 

A Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955) – Zeman’s prettily-imagined, gently pedagogically-driven voyage through the glories of evolution

 

The Mauritanian (2021) – Macdonald’s drama is always solid and intelligent, if only occasionally moving past relative conventionality

 

The Crimes of Petiot (1973) – Madrid’s serial-killer flick, potentially preoccupied and trauma-inducing, mostly just feels flat and drained

 

Recorder: the Marion Stokes Project (2019) – Wolf’s intriguing study in intertwined vision and eccentricity, perspicacity and passivity

 

It Rains on our Love (1946) – Bergman’s early, socially-critical film is lastingly frank & intimate, even if overelaborate in some respects

 

Black is…Black ain’t (1994) – Riggs’ urgently visionary final work stands as a moving and ambitious memorial, however incompletely realized

 

La parmigiana (1963) – Pietrangeli’s open-minded chronicle of a young woman, smoothly contrasting relative moralities and states of freedom

 

A Quiet Place (2018) – Krasinski’s tight, creepy drama sits at the safe end of the horror spectrum, but still works well in most respects

 

I grandi magazzini (1939) – Camerini’s bustling comedy-drama is mostly light stuff, elevated by its acute sense of workplace power relations

 

They All Laughed (1981) – Bogdanovich’s connection-heavy comedy has a limited sweetness and panache, but feels strangely hollow and absented

 

The American Soldier (1970) – a decadent Fassbinder highlight: a displaced film noir skewering the allure & cluelessness of American swagger

 

Gemini Man (2019) – a total success, assuming Lee’s ambition was to sublimate himself in coldly alienating, concept-squandering nonsense

 

Huis-clos (1954) – Audry’s cinematic “opening up” is utterly worth seeing, even if it dilutes the force of Sartre’s text in key respects

 

Fear of a Black Hat (1993) – Cundieff’s affectionately undiluted rap mockumentary holds up well, not least the sharp musical parodies

 

Our Lady of the Turks (1968) – Bene’s fragmented expression of (I think) history’s traumatic legacy makes for difficult, withholding viewing

 

A Story of Children and Film (2013) – Cousins pleasurably, and sometimes relishingly, combines the personal and the wide-rangingly pedagogic

 

Secrets of a Soul (1926) – Pabst’s “psychoanalytical film” seems staidly over-literal now, but it remains fascinating in its ambition

 

No Sudden Move (2021) – Soderbergh’s drama never really breaks out, but becomes more satisfying as the scope expands & the twists accumulate

 

Crime and Passion (1976) – one can glimpse something complexly multi-faceted and darkly-charged, but Passer rather lets it get away from him

 

The Accidental Tourist (1988) – a few shallow diversions (mostly the dog) aside, Kasdan’s adaptation is somnolent and barely sufferable

 

Scattered Clouds (1967) – Naruse’s sweetly melancholy last film patiently explores gradations of conflict, regret and mutual understanding

 

The Vast of Night (2019) – Patterson’s retro-flavoured sci-fier is best when sinking into time and place, falling somewhat short plot-wise

 

Assunta Spina (1948) – Mattoli marshals classic melodrama both as a vehicle for and a social investigation of Magnani’s piercing affect

 

The Pickle (1993) – Mazursky’s satire has flashes of his warmth and skill, but overall seems like a severe lapse in judgment and inspiration

 

Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977) – a major, underseen Duras work: an investigation of a woman, and an investigation into investigations of women

 

White Boy Rick (2018) – Demange’s low-life odyssey, forgettable for much of the way, eventually reaches ethically stimulating territory

 

The Sign of Venus (1955) – Risi’s comedy has a notably sad but stoic female-driven core, surrounded by a gallery of flawed masculinity

 

Fear X (2003) – Winding Refn’s tale of loss and obsession doesn’t rank as much more than a curiosity, but a very skillfully calibrated one

 

Black Jesus (1968) – Zurlini overemphasizes white perspectives, but crafts a compelling, politically-charged study of principled suffering

 

Triple Frontier (2019) – Chandor expands with assurance into an old-fashioned adventure yarn; it’s a shame it all matters so little

 

Remontons les Champs-Elysees (1938) – Guitry’s priapic history lesson distorts & trivializes, yet not without a certain galloping grandeur

 

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) – Murphy’s monster hit now plays very blandly, virtually all potentially sharp edges smoothed down to nothing

 

Yeong-ja in her prime (1975) – beneath the often brash pace and expression, Kim sets out a sympathetic and socially-revealing case history

 

Butter on the Latch (2013) – Decker’s first feature is enthralling both as psychological puzzle & as unfamiliar anthropological observation

 

Michael (1924) – Dreyer’s fascinating silent film finds a strange ultimate transcendence within recurring disappointment and exploitation

 

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020) – Wolfe’s film is awkward in various ways, but preserves the central glory and agony of Wilson’s work

 

12 + 1 (1969) – an Italian “twelve chairs” romp, offering adequate variety and diversion (Sharon Tate!), but hardly satisfying overall

 

Conceiving Ada (1997) – Leeson’s high-concept cross-century female conversation impresses, but isn’t the overall equal of her Teknolust

 

Torna! (1954) – best approached from a Matarazzo-centric worldview, whereby the echoing of past films becomes a rather endearing strength

 

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) – Gilroy (no Peter Strickland) scores some mild satirical points, but shows little flair for the giallo-type stuff

 

Comment ca va (1976) – Godard and Mieville delve exactingly, yet not hopelessly, into the latent oppressiveness of mass communication

 

48 Hrs. (1983) – Hill’s early distinctiveness is utterly lost in this brain-hurtingly banal stuff; even Murphy only provides minimal uplift

 

A Broken Drum (1949) – Kinoshita’s busy drama of family conflicts has some adroit moments, amid an often overly clunky overall framework

 

NOTFILM (2015) – Lipman’s careful explication of the 1965 Beckett/Keaton short as a locus of connections, complexities and reflections

 

Black Peter (1964) – in its deadpan observation of teenage directionlessness, Forman’s debut is among his funniest & most distinctive works

 

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) – Jarmusch’s impeccably executed compilation, dotted with cool contrasts, correspondences and intimations

 

Mon pere avait raison (1936) – one of Guitry’s more intriguing films, for its probing of life passages and generational expectations

 

Dragged Across Concrete (2019) – in its weaving between forcefulness and evasiveness, Zahler’s drama approaches a blunt conceptual grandeur

 

Transgression (1974) – Kim’s probing take on monastic life is always arresting, often disorienting, somehow fusing irreverence and devotion

 

Slacker (1990) – with super-impressive use of limited resources, Linklater achieves a weirdly beguiling, philosophically loaded quasi-stasis

 

The Lower Depths (1957) – Kurosawa’s sense of desperate community leavens one of his most tough-minded, expressively heightened works

 

Louder than Bombs (2015) – for all its care and technical skill, Trier’s family drama feels disappointingly artificial and unmoving

 

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) – with eccentric courtliness, Zeman’s fantasy pointedly insists on narrative and formal variation 

 

Scanners (1981) – although hardly dull, it’s one of Cronenberg’s less penetrating early films, its themes and concepts rather too dispersed

 

You Only Live Once (1937) – Lang’s classic doomed-lovers thriller finds moments of fragile loveliness within a largely pitiless society

 

Take Me Somewhere Nice (2019) – Sendijarevic’s amused but mindful cross-border journey makes some easy moves, & several boldly resonant ones

 

Guru, the Mad Monk (1970) – Milligan’s extreme mismatching of style and content achieves a most artless form of deadened coherence

 

Abouna (2002) – Haroun’s mostly easygoing but quietly pleasing chronicle of preoccupying absences and unconventionally happy presences

 

The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956) – for all its simplifications and contrivances, Quine’s film skips brightly through mildly unusual territory

 

The Fall of the American Empire (2018) – it’s easy enough to warm to Arcand’s ambition and sympathies, despite the movie’s copious obstacles

 

The Volunteer (1944) – only Powell and Pressburger would have made a military recruiting film that’s so whimsically and humanely engaging

 

The Swindle (1997) – Chabrol’s elegantly unimportant con man/woman drama is certainly skillful in its way, but it’s not much of a way

 

Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) – Mazursky’s highly appealing quasi-memoir is warmly dexterous throughout, within its knowing limits

 

Zombi Child (2019) – Bonello’s prodigous meeting of spiritual and national myths, of supernatural and personal confinements and escapes

 

Daydreams (1922) – episodic (and incompletely-surviving) Keaton short includes a few sublime moments amid a rather downbeat overall scheme

 

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) – Kim’s dissection of familial damage makes for memorable, if hermetically constrained, cinematic architecture

 

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) – one might regard Polanski’s classic as a painfully intimate film within a sillier (but full-bloodedly handled) one

 

Loveless (2017) – Zvyagintsev’s calculated film punches a range of outrage-inducing buttons in expertly imposing, socially-critical fashion

 

Duck Soup (1933) – McCarey’s (let’s say) conceptually interesting Marx Brothers classic aggressively evades any kind of capsule summary

 

The Disciple (2020) – Tamhane’s painstaking study of artistic struggle, both illuminatingly hermetic and (a bit too smoothly) universal

 

Season of the Witch (1972) – Romero’s atypical but successful film, driven as much by sharp-tongued social critique as by horror mechanisms

 

Boat People (1982) – Hui’s pumped-up Vietnamese drama constitutes a problematically interesting blend of witness-bearing and artifice

 

No Man of Her Own (1950) – Leisen’s fateful noir-tinged melodrama is finely-handled, but thinner than his or Stanwyck’s greatest works  

 

Roubaix, une lumiere (2019) – Desplechin’s police drama, in no way limited by genre, rich in observance of place, chance and causation

 

A Song is Born (1948) – Hawks’ remake of his own Ball of Fire has far less energy & heart, notwithstanding various musical compensations

 

Double Edge (1992) – Kollek’s Israel-Palestine survey remains dispiritingly relevant, for all its unimpressive manipulation & sensationalism

 

Our Dancing Daughters (1928) – Beaumont’s silent contains lots of fizzy interaction, but with a surprising amount of cautionary perspective

 

Mia madre (2015) – Moretti’s observance of art and death gently satisfies, but doesn’t quite attain its sought-for revelatory synthesis

 

The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) – Huston’s amused, relaxed-feeling mystery, decorated with enjoyable if inconsequential trickery

 

The Lighthouse (2006) – Saakyan’s hypnotic study of life in war feels entirely real and rooted, and yet intensely imagined and painted

 

Modern Times (1936) – Chaplin’s instincts and affinities now often appear dated or hollow, but the moments of dexterous grace remain

 

Parasite (2019) – Bong’s film has elements of thematic and narrative inspiration, although it’s the initial exposition that engrosses most

 

Butley (1974) – Pinter barely “opens up” Gray’s play, but punches home the desperately lonely flailing underlying the bitter hectoring

 

Growing Up (1983) – Chen’s pleasant study of childhood is cleanly and crisply observed, while never penetrating to the extent of Hou or Yang

 

Loving Vincent (2017) – overall, a limitation-transcending expression of adoration for Van Gogh as artist, myth, transformer of sight itself

 

Phffft (1954) – Robson’s often dire, mechanically single-minded sex comedy at least has the odd lively exchange, and a nice dancing scene

 

The Paradine Case (1947) – a relative Hitchcock failure, its prevailing stiffness and propriety stifling the erotic obsession at its centre

 

The White Tiger (2021) – Bahrani unfortunately steers the culturally rich material perilously close to being a patchy, meandering slog

 

St. Louis Blues (1929) – Murphy’s showcase for Bessie Smith, as a zone of heavy lament within a happily hedonistic all-black world

 

Synonyms (2019) – Lapid comes at his themes with major intellectual resourcefulness, but it’s all a bit more fun in theory than practice

 

The Unforgiven (1960) – Huston’s tortured Western, its relish at a glimpsed American dream gradually devastated by lies, blood and prejudice

 

Plaisir d’amour (1991) – Kaplan’s comedy punctures smug male self-entitlement in elegantly varied, if not ultimately too revelatory fashion

 

Love on the Run (1936) – Van Dyke’s indifferently scripted and cursorily executed comedy, only intermittently elevated by star quality

 

3 Faces (2018) – Panahi’s meditation on confinement, transgression and continuance is an enveloping meeting of pleasure and profundity

 

The Witch who Came from the Sea (1976) – Cimber’s ill-fated-sexuality-studded film navigates pretty well between shock and poignancy

 

Naussica of the Valley of the Wind (1984) – Miyazaki’s debut is thematically engaging, but often crude and cluttered by his later standards

 

Stage Struck (1958) – Lumet’s creaky drama doesn’t really hold up, but provides plenty of incidental, time capsule-type amusements

 

Based on a True Story (2017) – Polanski expertly expands the parameters of the familiar core premise, but the ultimate impact is a bit light

 

Penny Serenade (1941) – it’s hard to warm to Stevens’ essentially coldly deterministic view of adult happiness, despite its strengths

 

La captive (2000) – Akerman’s study of thwarted male control over female narratives is formally seductive and strangely, tragically comic

 

Strangers when we Meet (1960) – Quine’s most enduring film, every scene channeling the period’s strange marriage of affluence & suppression

 

Joker (2019) – Phillips’ film is horribly effective, even impressive, in parts, but its would-be vision is laboured and vague at best

 

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) – Schlondorff/von Trotta’s drama impresses and informs, yet doesn’t fully land its ultimate punches

 

Staying Alive (1983) – Stallone’s thinly flashy, entirely unpersuasive sequel lacks any of the original’s relative sociological interest

 

Dollar (1938) – Molander’s arch comedy of interrelated couples is frequently grating, its commentary on values and priorities falling flat

 

Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014) – the extraordinary Decker weaves a sensuously full cinematic space, and then startlingly deconstructs it

 

The Wayward Girl (1959) – Karlmar beautifully observes evolving female sexuality & sensibility, but the film overall comes up a little short

 

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) – King’s absorbing, if imperfect, historical missive, from one era of calculated oppression to another

 

Road to Sampo (1975) – Lee’s film evolves from a wintry, absurdist comedy into a delicately poignant study of compromises and transitions

 

Hustlers (2019) – Scafaria’s film never feels really vital, notwithstanding its prioritizing of empathy & social awareness over exploitation

 

Women of Ryazan (1927) – Preobrazhenskaya observes rural community in all its hypocrisy, offset by a strong closing declaration of purpose

 

The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983) – Eyre/McEwan’s marvelously subtle, way under-appreciated personal, political and historical temperature-taking

 

Le mariage de Chiffon (1942) – Autant-Lara’s romantic confection is able enough on its own terms, but they’re distinctly complacent ones

 

It Felt Like Love (2013) – Hittmann’s extraordinarily tuned-in study of chaotic teenage sexuality, haunting both as cinema & social document

 

Nest of Vipers (1978) – Cervi’s period drama of intertwined desires is rather too tentative and underdeveloped to stir up much interest

 

Mangrove (2020) – McQueen absorbingly evokes time and place and the texture of threatened community, although pushes a bit too hard at times

 

The Cremator (1969) – Herz’s utterly ensnaring study of spiritual degradation and manipulation is impeccable in every twisted detail

 

The Lighthouse (2019) – Eggers’ possessed, often rollickingly hilarious, perfectly pitched vision of corroding identity and sanity

 

Dos monjes (1934) – Oro’s film lingers for its starkly pained, boldly expressed framing story, more than the rather florid melodrama within

 

The Killing Floor (1984) – Duke’s revealing piece of social & racial history makes for committed, if in various ways rather bare-bones filmmaking

 

March of Fools (1975) – Ha’s fascinating portrait of youth; spanning low comedy, tragedy, philosophical inquiry & militarized homoeroticism

 

The Great Pretender (2018) – Silver’s relationship study may be a small film, but smartly ventilated by mysterious glimpses of a bigger one

 

Scandal in Sorrento (1955) – Risi’s sun-baked, sex-propelled comedy is certainly handsome enough, but it’s mostly mechanical and trifling

 

The Last Seduction (1994) – Dahl’s shrewd and stylish manipulation doesn’t penetrate that deeply, but Fiorentino is a presence for the ages

 

O Ebrio (1946) – de Abreu’s film has patches of near-unhinged storytelling & uncertain handling, but an overriding conviction & sincerity

 

Honey Boy (2019) – the film has its familiar aspects, but also much authentic-feeling hurt & strange magic, beautifully modulated by Har’el

 

Vivre ensemble (1973) – Karina’s underseen, observantly personal, unpredictable directorial debut, vital to fully appreciating her legend

 

The Fly (1986) – a more conventionally audience-friendly Cronenberg film no doubt, but made with wittily top-quality control and calibration

 

Il maestro di Vigevano (1963) – Petri’s put-upon comedy is bitterly but sympathetically alert to class-based subjugation & infantilization

 

The 50 Year Argument (2014) – Scorsese’s most self-effacing work is a respectfully rarified immersion into engagement and contemplation

 

La souriante Madame Beudet (1923) – Dulac’s contrasting of a woman’s inner and external lives is a searing, much undersung silent classic

 

Time (2020) – Bradley’s film is as wide & deep & precise yet ungraspable as its title, closely personal and inherently, tragically political

 

Chung Kuo (1972) – Antonioni’s voyage to China is a humbly serene, deeply fascinated observation of (and self-acknowledgement of) otherness

 

Dressed to Kill (1980) – De Palma’s often sumptuous atrocity might simultaneously have you holding your breath and rolling your eyes

 

Intimate Lighting (1965) – the (then) radicalism of Passer’s film lies in its very uninsistence, its impact at once evasive and lingering

 

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) – Talbot’s small miracle of a film captivates with each deeply-experienced, searching frame

 

Eva (1948) – Molander’s Bergman-written, death-dogged life chronicle is grippingly ambitious & assured, even if not consistently persuasive

 

The Day I Will Never Forget (2002) – a record of a terrible act, calmly placed by Longinotto within its self-perpetuating cultural context

 

Ici et ailleurs (1976) – the Dziga Vertov’s group’s from-a-distance reflection on Palestine, shot through with a sense of rueful limitation

 

London Fields (2018) – Cullen’s flashy adaptation has a rudimentary, diversionary skill, but feels persistently distanced and incomplete

 

Les espions (1957) – Clouzot’s initially cluttered-seeming drama gradually reveals itself as a sharp vision of pervasive threat and anxiety

 

Archangel (1990) – Maddin’s obsessively exacting aesthetic impresses & sometimes seduces, even as it remains largely distant & unyielding

 

Hotel du Nord (1938) – Carne’s emblematically idealistic, helplessly enveloping marriage of romantic fatalism and bustling proletarianism

 

Black and Blue (2019) – Taylor’s police drama has terrific momentum, laced with more than sufficient outrage-inducing social content

 

The Insect Woman (1972) – Kim’s delectable film holds a rather astounding number of themes and twists in darkly amused equilibrium

 

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) – Hackford’s drama is at least somewhat personal-feeling in its recurring clunkiness and misogyny

 

Loves of a Blonde (1965) – if only in its understated unpredictability and humour, Forman’s study remains an endearing assertion of freedom

 

Starlet (2012) – Baker’s thoroughly winning modern fairy tale of sorts, laced with deadpan comedy and clear-sighted social observation

 

Army (1944) – Kinoshita’s episodic portrayal of Japanese lives molded by past and looming wars, notable now mainly for historical reference

 

Mank (2020) – Fincher’s pristinely-crafted film sounds in theory like a movie lover’s dream, but only intermittently connects or rouses

 

Diabolo menthe (1977) – the light touch of Kurys’ journey through teenage sisterhood shouldn’t obscure its range and quiet radicalism

 

The Brave (1997) – Depp doesn’t really justify the sad premise, but well-sustains a tone of doomed stoicism, sprinkled with varied oddities

 

Fools in the Mountains (1957) – Carlmar’s comedy has its bright aspects, but wears out its mistaken identity concept long before the end

 

The Twentieth Century (2019) – Rankin’s blissfully inventive, goofily inspiring vision of Canada’s definitional conflicts and confusions

 

Le nouveau testament (1936) – Guitry’s comedy is skillfully loquacious, but the life lessons (such as they are) barely register now

 

8 Million Ways to Die (1986) – Ashby’s crime thriller is flat and fuzzy stuff, lacking much critical perspective or notable creative energy

 

Ankur (1974) – with quiet fortitude, Benegal lays out the moral decay that underlies rural India’s tradition- and caste-driven structures

 

Sweet Country (2017) – Thornton’s (just a bit too) virtuosically-gripping case history of sparse yet already defilement-sodden society

 

Medea (1969) – an often-disorienting but bewitching, stunningly-designed telling, feeling almost as if directly dreamed onscreen by Pasolini

 

The Doctor (1991) – Haines’ taste-of-my-own-medicine drama may be more primally affecting than it objectively deserves, but what can you do?

 

Chains (1949) – Matarazzo’s drama is at its anxiety-stirring best when tightening the screws; less so in the (inevitably) liberating finale

 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019) – Linklater’s tale of regeneration often plays a bit flatly, but opens up winningly in the home stretch

 

Humain, trop humain (1974) – Malle’s now near-nostalgic observance of factory production is inherently but insufficiently political

 

Five Days One Summer (1982) – Zinnemann’s last film has much genuine, sometimes haunting, grandeur, but an overly restrained narrative core

 

Nana (1926) – a too-often dull silent Renoir, at its best at its most nakedly suffering, but damaged by Hessling’s unalluring presence

 

God’s Own Country (2017) – Lee’s engrossingly authentic-feeling, frank study, electrically attuned both to the scenic and the intimate

 

I Live in Fear (1955) – Kurosawa’s atomic-age drama is among his more low-key, brooding works, gripping for its central existential clarity

 

Phantom Love (2007) – Menkes’ astounding fusion of lived and imagined experience, of pain and rapture, resistance and transcendence

 

Dosuni (1963) – Park’s lightly-handled but meaningful chronicle of a determined young woman in an economically strained, hustling society

 

Sword of Trust (2019) – Shelton’s comedy becomes narratively over-stretched, but her relaxed way with interactions really shines at times

 

Thomasine & Bushrod (1974) – Parks’ enjoyable outlaw drama keeps things mostly loose and variable, with lightly norm-challenging results

 

Capitaine Conan (1996) – Tavernier’s artfully disorienting war film reverberates with astounding incident, implication and moral complexity

 

Hallelujah (1929) – Vidor’s all-black musical drama reaches numerous expressive heights, amid its largely unceasing anthropological interest

 

The Ornithologist (2016) – Rodrigues’ exceptional cinematic offering, a pilgrimage deep into nature & unnature, self-discovery & self-loss

 

Dancing Lady (1933) – Leonard’s musical skips along in snappily blissful implausibility, propelled by effortlessly elevating star quality

 

Soigne ta droite (1987) – a relative knockabout comedy from Godard, its virtues requiring (to me anyway) rather strenuous excavation efforts

 

Wait Until Dark (1967) – despite Hepburn’s touching centre, Young’s luridly over-elaborate exercise in terror is ugly and unappealing

 

Pain and Glory (2019) – Almodovar hardly challenges us now, but his cinema has become a painterly oasis of gracefully preoccupied serenity

 

The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) – an atypically straightforward Wilder exercise, executed with empathetic skill within its narrow parameters

 

Scarlet Diva (2000) – Argento’s quasi-self-portrait confesses, pleads and evades in an aggressively ambiguous, enjoyably in-your-face manner

 

Images (1972) – the spell of Altman’s breakdown movie lies less in its conceptual elaborations than in its physical immediacy and detail

 

The Daughters of Fire (2018) – Carri’s film lustily embraces pornographic elements, while bracingly complicating the mechanics and the gaze

 

Dead of Night (1945) – an ever-irresistible anthology, skipping through its flatter passages to culminate in pull-all-the-stops-out style

 

TGM the Liberator (1990) – Chytilova’s one-of-a-kind career ends with a lively but far from subversive, reconciliatory-feeling documentary

 

Blessed Event (1932) – Del Ruth’s newspaper drama has a fabulous line in fast-talking cynicism, dotted with surprisingly raw moments

 

Ema (2019) – Larrain’s fabulously seductive, fiery chronicle offers an almost frustratingly irresistible alchemy of giving and withholding

 

Accident (1967) – Losey/Pinter’s film may be the polished, implication-heavy apex of a certain (ultimately unproductive) cinematic strain

 

Castle in the Sky (1986) – Miyazaki’s wildly imaginative spectacle is fairly exhilarating, although not among his emotionally fullest works

 

The Red Kimono (1925) – Lang and Davenport’s highly sympathetic, quite cinematically engaging study of a woman’s shame and redemption

 

Non-Fiction (2018) – Assayas’ film deploys a super-smoothly retrograde approach to surveying the cutting-edge, or maybe it’s vice versa

 

Hell and High Water (1954) – one of Fuller’s less impactful films delivers fairly standard drama and crudely dated characterizations

 

Women Without Men (2009) – Neshat and Azari’s rather peculiar tale of lost possibilities is far from perfect, but maintains a glassy allure

 

Humanoids from the Deep (1979) – the monsters are OK, but Peeters allows the surrounding narrative and quasi-themes to mostly unravel

 

Staying Vertical (2016) – for every element of earthy rootedness, Guiraudie’s strange self-discovery odyssey throws in a bizarro provocation

 

Green for Danger (1947) – Gilliat’s whodunit rattles happily along, propelled by doses of comedy, romantic frustration and wartime paranoia

 

Malmkrog (2020) – Puiu’s brain-flooding film, a shiftingly doom-ridden comedy powered by imposing aesthetic and intellectual seriousness

 

Lawyer Man (1932) – Dieterle’s steadily unremarkable Powell vehicle breezes through a lifetime’s worth of ups, downs & degrees of cynicism

 

Casa de lava (1994) – Costa’s challenging, disorienting, lingering-in-the-mind expression of colonialism’s accursedly tangled complexities 

 

Only Two Can Play (1962) – Gilliat’s smutty comedy somewhat endures as a duly depressing window on its repressed, class-driven milieu

 

Climax (2018) – Noe comes on like a depraved Busby Berkeley, going from exuberant high to wrenching low with get-out-of-my-fucking way elan

 

The True Story of Jesse James (1957) – a solid telling, amply studded by Ray with arresting moments and stunning widescreen compositions

 

My Twentieth Century (1989) – Enyedi’s wide-angle historical fantasy thirsts after greatness, but its devices are too often twee or tiresome

 

The Velvet Vampire (1971) – Rothman’s (perhaps artfully) unpolished film works savvy, ideologically-charged variations on the vampire genre

 

J’accuse (2019) – Polanski’s examination of duty in the face of institutional resistance, executed with undiminished fluency and acuity

 

Black and Tan (1929) – Murphy’s short film preserves some classic Duke Ellington moments within an oddly disorienting comedy-to-tragedy arc

 

Ex Drummer (2007) – Mortier’s movie bites out its own sick-times-whimsical sorta-category, for unenjoyable yet damnably stimulating viewing

 

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) – one of Ophuls’ loveliest films, drawing on cinema’s inherent play of permanence and transience

 

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018) – one concludes Bi’s dream-noirish, boundary-transcending odyssey feeling transported, even transformed

 

The Balcony (1963) – Strick’s adaptation is a largely effective, memorably-cast artificiality, even if rather drained of its core power

 

Un jour Pina m’a demande (1983) – Akerman captures the expressive majesty of Bausch’s work, and its almost scary, destabilizing power

 

St. Louis Blues (1958) – the film is limited in all the usual Hollywood ways (and then some), but shines for its unique cast and musicality

 

Antigone (2019) – Deraspe’s excitingly tuned-in repurposing of Greek mythology, as a tragic study in complexities of immigrant assimilation

 

The Driller Killer (1979) – beneath the notorious “nasty” bits, a bracing early dip into the teeth-bared obsessive well of Ferrara’s cinema

 

Sicilia! (1999) – it’s an eternal Huillet/Straub mystery, how such precisely grounded calibration yields something close to bountifulness

 

Shoulder Arms (1918) – Chaplin’s enjoyably patchy, sometimes bleak-streaked soldier comedy aims both high and low, ending in dreamy idealism

 

Madeline’s Madeline (2018) – Decker’s amazing film, a delicately honey-gathering bee that pollinates the flower at the heart of creation

 

La francaise et l’amour (1960) – a love-at-all-ages anthology, with seven directors working in a uniformly unexertingly pleasant register

 

Saturn 3 (1980) – Donen provides a few striking visuals, and the cast is worth something, but the sense of possibility rapidly dissipates

 

Supermarkt (1974) – Klick’s in-your-face film works both as escalating crime drama and as exploration of social boundaries and affinities

 

Judy (2019) – Goold’s movie is one of conventional and not particularly exciting strengths, largely including Zellweger’s performance

 

Diabolique (1955) – Clouzot’s narrative trap, lubricated with humour, cruelty & transgression, barely rusts with time, however often visited

 

Clockwatchers (1997) – Sprecher’s enjoyably lingering film, starting as fairly easy parody, gradually takes on greater existential weight

 

Bicycle Thieves (1948) – De Sica’s film still holds truths, but they lie as much around its edges as in its limitingly structured centre

 

The White Crow (2018) – Fiennes’ time-shifting portrayal of Nureyev is finely-crafted in all respects, perhaps a bit counter-productively

 

When the Buckwheat Blooms (1968) – Lee’s epically-contoured tale of desire and separation is a restrained, often melancholy pleasure

 

Perfect (1985) – Bridges undermines his film’s plausible ambitions through persistent over-simplification and lack of critical distance

 

Vladimir et Rosa (1971) – Godard & Gorin’s mind-filling, often humorous, not-too-didactic engagement with representation in turbulent times

 

The Farewell (2019) – Wang’s charmingly light but well-considered film studies the loss & regret inherent in personal & societal evolution

 

I Am Waiting (1957) – Kurahawa’s noir-ish romance has little depth, but much capable low-life distraction and tapping of heavy emotion

 

Lolita (1997) – Lyne’s adaptation often feels like a rather distanced, academic achievement, although elevated in its climactic bereftness

 

Faisons un reve… (1936) – a knowingly minor Guitry set-up, but with a few stylistic flourishes and resistance-crushing performance moments

 

Rebecca (2020) – Wheatley’s scenically well-imagined version is certainly watchable, but doesn’t hang together particularly strongly

 

La prise de pouvoir par Louis XVI (1966) – Rossellini’s brilliantly-controlled, ever-relevant examination of ritualized image-making & power

 

Field Niggas (2015) – Allah’s deeply personal & respectful engagement with Harlem street life is immediate & timeless, beautiful & appalling

 

Passe ton bac d’abord (1977) – with unmatched empathetic clarity, Pialat dissects socially-determined, aspiration-stifling teenage lives

 

The Hot Stuff (1981) – Vadim’s bland caper doesn’t have much going for it, beyond a few glimmers of engagement with art world practices

 

Tormento (1950) – Matarazzo’s story of separation & suffering is rather less artful & fully developed than his other Sanson/Nazzari dramas

 

Never Really Sometimes Always (2020) – the amazing Hittman’s surface minimalism conveys enormous and sobering personal and social complexity

 

The Little Match Girl (1928) – Renoir’s early short film encompasses both observant emotional poignancy and exuberant visual experimentation

 

In Fabric (2018) – in Strickland’s hands, potentially trite horror notions acquire extraordinary, blackly amused multi-dimensional ceremony

 

The Two of Us (1967) – Berri’s balanced study of wartime relocation, crammed with behavioural pleasures and darkly pointed undertones

 

Housekeeping (1987) – Forsyth’s adaptation often seems defined as much by its absences as its premises, to mixed if quietly endearing effect

 

Why Does Herr R Run Amok? (1970) – Fassbinder and Fengler’s film may be among the most pitiless and withholding of (sort of) comedies

 

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019) – perhaps Tarantino’s most visually and conceptually assured fantasia, teeming with tangible pleasures

 

The Hidden Fortress (1958) – it’s hard to rate the film as highly as many do, even while bowing to Kurosawa’s inventiveness and assurance

 

Husbands and Wives (1992) – Allen’s often anguished relationship chronicle is overdone in any number of ways, but connects even so

 

The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine (1931) – Gosho’s comedy (with jazz!) of a put-upon writer is a bit misshapen, but sprightly handled overall

 

The Man who Killed Don Quixote (2018) – Gilliam’s accomplished fantasia flamboyantly reflects & quite movingly justifies his long obsession

 

Season of our Love (1966) – Vancini’s rather ineffectual study of melancholy self-examination falls short of its evident sweeping ambition

 

Rita, Sue and Bob too (1987) – Clarke’s boisterously funny, grounded plunge into sexual self-determination, not without its overdone aspects

 

Fortini/Cani (1976) – Straub/Huillet counterpoint calmly observed surfaces with boiling historical stains & complex political hypocrisies

 

A Rainy Day in New York (2019) – Allen tries to put young faces on classical moods and situations, with often bizarrely misconceived results

 

Sun in the Last Days of Shogunate (1957) – an incident-packed, nuanced semi-farce, with Kawashima in his most confidently expansive mode

 

Little Buddha (1993) – Bertolucci’s most uninteresting, inexplicably soft film, suffused in merely superficial beauty and spirituality

 

Street Scene (1931) – a strangely lesser-known Vidor film, marvelously balancing God’s-eye expansiveness and careful close observation

 

The Image Book (2018) – Godard’s reflection (both celebration & confession) on cinema’s helpless beauty & intertwined ideological violence

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) – beneath Edwards’ romanticism and its “iconic” qualities, a relative minefield of insecurity and cynicism

 

Golden Eighties (1986) – Akerman delivers classic musical-genre pleasures, infiltrated with personal and political insecurity and fracture

 

The Nightcomers (1971) – an enjoyably peculiar brew, but a less superficial director than Winner would surely have extracted more from it

 

Buoyancy (2019) – Rathjen’s story of modern-day slavery is often disturbingly convincing, but limited by its “triumph of human spirit” arc

 

Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) – Siegel’s dynamically incisive drama, marrying hard-edged realities with muscular, no-nonsense storytelling

 

The River (1997) – Tsai mesmerizingly explores lives at odds with themselves & God, their emptiness occasionally touched by furtive rapture

 

Fort Apache (1948) – perhaps the summit of Ford’s particular exploration of ritual and duty, of the tragedy and glory of transition

 

Diamantino (2018) – Abrantas & Schmidt’s happily iconoclastic fantasy, its artisanal candy floss seasoned by a plethora of modern fears

 

The Birds (1963) – one of Hitchcock’s, and cinema’s, most mind-alteringly vast expressions of the terrible glory of seeing and desiring

 

Melo (1986) – Resnais’ film has the heightened emotional concentration of classical theatre, beautifully ventilated with cinematic allusion

 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – Kaufman’s remake has some terrific elements, although gets more conventional as it goes along

 

A Screaming Man (2010) – Haroun’s mesmerizingly delicate, personally and politically anguished film leaves one in various states of mourning

 

Utopia (1950) – Laurel and Hardy’s last film is ambitiously plotted, but often poorly realized, and poorly attuned to their advancing years

 

Beginning (2020) – Kulumbegashvili’s mind-filling film is often formally mesmerizing, and existentially and socially almost terrifying

 

You and Me (1938) – Lang’s socially-minded romance incorporates some highly striking emphasis, digressions and musical interpolations

 

Les confins du monde (2018) – Nicloux travels a wrenchingly original, unsettling route into the extremity of war, as breakdown and erasure

 

Village of the Damned (1960) – a few elements of Rilla’s drama hang around in one’s memory, despite the often rushed and cursory handling

 

No Fear, No Die (1990) – Denis’ powers of observation are unnervingly powerful here, although her greatest works reach more thrilling peaks

 

The Hospital (1971) – Hiller/Chayefsky’s harsh satire provides some lasting, penetrating pleasures, offset by some impassioned overreaching

 

The Staggering Girl (2019) – Guadagnino’s short film is rich in resources at least, placed in service of a forgettably enigmatic trifle

 

Rio Bravo (1959) – an abiding source of rich Hawksian pleasures, with some of classic Hollywood’s most easefully fulfilling interactions

 

The Misfortunates (2009) – Van Groeningen’s boisterous family memoir is quite subtle and reflective, but doesn’t always care to show it

 

Stormy Weather (1943) – the value and authenticity of Stone’s musical lies in the performances; the rest is, to say the least, interesting

 

Eter (2018) – Zanussi’s historical drama conducts a fluidly wide-ranging moral & ethical investigation, with a startling final embellishment

 

The Rain People (1969) – Coppola’s searching early film doesn’t feel quite fully achieved, but represents an appealing road not taken

 

Intervista (1987) – one of Fellini’s lightest & most purely pleasurable films, his self-mythologizing at its most graceful & least grating

 

Zorns Lemma (1970) – Frampton’s astonishing edifice emanates the sense of an exactingly structured private (but communicable) obsession

 

Domains (2019) – Kusano’s unique film immerses us in a behavioural & moral space both meticulously constructed & mysteriously transcended

 

Kansas City Confidential (1952) – Karlson at his lean and committed best, cleanly navigating through disillusioning layers of venality

 

Princess Mononoke (1997) – perhaps Miyazaki’s most claspingly direct vision, its beauty offset by discomfiting images of pillage & imbalance

 

Heaven-Bound Travelers (1935) – in its rough extant form, the Gists’ filmic proclamation is suffused in fervent, even hectoring conviction

 

Peterloo (2018) – Leigh challenges the viewer with immersively detailed interactions, all the better to establish the climactic injustice

 

Soleil O (1967) – Hondo’s vibrant, proud, furious anecdote of black experience surveys a whole infrastructure of injustice and condescension

 

Variety (1983) – Gordon’s exceptionally well-conceived, displaced noir-like journey through societal and cinematic power structures

 

La gueule ouverte (1974) – one of Pialat’s smaller-scale films, but fully possessed by his rare capacity for naturalistic frankness

 

The Owls (2010) – Dunye ably contextualizes the narrative and illuminates the project’s collective nature, but to rather arid and minor ends

 

Krane’s Confectionary (1951) – Henning-Jensen’s study of modest rebellion is well-attuned to individual and collective despair and toxicity

 

David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020) – Lee’s impeccable film is almost as joyous & fulfilling as the real thing (which I saw – second row!)

 

Women of the Night (1948) – Mizoguchi in his most indicting, unadorned mode, examining prostitution as a creeping, corroding social trap

 

Her Smell (2018) – Perry’s deep dive into a psyche and a milieu, infusing broadly familiar structures with jittery, close-up conviction

 

A Dream Play (1963) – Bergman’s record of Strindberg’s play, filmed with respectful theatricality in all its evasively troubled majesty

 

Tongues Untied (1989) – Riggs’ hypnotic declaration of presence, pain, pride, diversity, a film both besieged and poetically celebratory

 

Murmur of the Heart (1971) – Malle’s coming-of-age provocation blurs the line between non-judgmental reverie and soft-centered complacency

 

The Dead Don’t Die (2019) – Jarmusch, never having made an outright bad film, seems here to laconically tease us with the prospect of one

 

The White Angel (1957) – Matarazzo’s Vertigo-anticipating extension of Nobody’s Children, increasingly bathed in almost devout conviction

 

Wolf (1994) – Nichols’ spectacularly misjudged (but, of course, watchable) genre movie fails and bewilders on just about every level

 

Variete (1925) – Dupont’s almost prototypically ill-fated love triangle drama is absolutely studded with startling expressionist highlights

 

At Eternity’s Gate (2018) – Schnabel’s deeply-felt approach, both investigation and transmigration, transcends potential over-familiarity

 

The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) – Tarkovsky’s early work is his most gently accessible, allowing glimpses of greater complexities

 

The Competition (1980) – Oliansky’s piano-heavy drama is smart enough to maintain interest, despite various unconvincingly struck notes

 

Satan’s Brew (1976) – Fassbinder’s aggressively hard to take farce inhabits a sickly and soulless society, at the mercy of the ruthless

 

The Plagiarists (2019) – Parlow’s amusingly shifty, highly allusive film channels both transient preoccupations and classic inspirations

 

Ikiru (1952) – one of Kurosawa’s most lasting films, on the glory (and institutional rarity) of stagnation overcome through moral clarity

 

Collateral (2004) – only Mann could have elevated the improbable material so indelibly, with such sustained visual and tonal coherence

 

Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) – the demands of Protazanov’s otherworldly dreams ultimately glumly yield to those of the Earthly revolution

 

Wild Rose (2018) – Harper deftly delivers formulaic satisfaction, while crafting a more individualistic portrait of artistic evolution

 

The Shop on Main Street (1965) – Kadar and Klos’s drama remains very moving in its final passage, surmounting earlier grating aspects

 

Streetwise (1984) – Bell’s wrenchingly classic social document continues to provoke complex reactions; pessimism and despair among them

 

Que la fete commence… (1975) – Tavernier’s teeming portrait of 18^th century France is an extraordinary immersion into decadence-ridden chaos

 

An Oversimplification of her Beauty (2012) – Nance’s delicate self-examination within a beautifully inventive fantasia, and vice versa

 

Le coup du berger (1956) – Rivette’s early short film, and his first elegantly-observed filmic conspiracy, albeit a modest and schematic one

 

On the Rocks (2020) – Murray is the main show in Coppola’s slight (but not vacuous), retro-feeling comedy, and that’s basically good enough

 

La fille de l’eau (1925) – a somewhat choppily eventful Renoir silent film, most memorable for a no-limits expressionistic dream sequence

 

Buddies (1985) – Bressan’s film remains an affecting human and historical document, its relative weaknesses as endearing as its strengths

 

The Cow (1969) – Mehrjui’s heartrending story of madness in the face of loss, simply observed but carrying a deep, dignified forcefulness

 

Destroyer (2018) – Kusama’s gloomy drama has some solidly old-fashioned virtues, but with an escalating sense of existential overreaching

 

Moses and Aaron (1975) – Straub/Huillet’s near-humblingly great spanning of the representationally fundamental & the metaphysically epic

 

Q & A (1990) – another powerful Lumet tale of corruption and compromise, although somewhat undermined this time by melodramatic excesses

 

Hungry Soul, Part II (1956) – a bit more familiar than Kawashima’s key works, but still a finely-calibrated study of unfulfilled yearning

 

Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) – Zhao’s delicately mediated and balanced study, arising out of deep immersion in a culture and location

 

Burden of Life (1935) – an engaging family drama, although Gosho is less of a stylistic and analytical force than his great contemporaries

 

It’s My Turn (1980) – Weill’s reserved comedy of self-discovery is agreeably well-judged throughout, with a finely-tuned arrival point

 

Le caporal epingle (1962) – Renoir’s very fine late work is a renewed assertion of the drive for freedom, & exploration of its ambiguities

 

Hereditary (2018) – Aster’s commanding film spans agonizing, convincingly-inhabited familial trauma, and gleefully outlandish mythology

 

Goin’ South (1978) – Nicholson’s minor Western comedy rather allows his own overstated presence to swamp all other potential virtues

 

Vive l’amour (1994) – Tsai’s shimmering, hypnotically withholding study of emptying possibilities, of connection without connectivity

 

Angels Over Broadway (1940) – Hecht and Garmes’ baroquely-expressed redemption drama, aggressively seeped in masculine self-disgust

 

For Sama (2019) – Al-Kateab and Watts’ absolutely vital, often heart-rending documentary prompts a huge sense of respect and humility

 

Operation Petticoat (1959) – one of Edwards’ most classically well-functioning comic machines, escalatingly subverting the established order

 

Desordre (1986) – Assayas’ early work shows his facility for narrative & emotional shift, but lacks the overall fullness of his later films

 

The Assassination Bureau (1969) – Dearden’s plush period comedy too often takes its eye off the concept’s dark morality, and off the fun

 

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) – with bleakly supple mastery, the tragic Hu Bo interrogates the unbearable heaviness of modern China

 

Town Bloody Hall (1979) – a rollicking record of ongoing, shifting relevance (e.g Mailer as seeming foreseer of Trumpian cultural backlash!)

 

Timecrimes (2007) – Vigalondo’s time travel flick marshals familiar paradoxes with relish, making a definite virtue out of its small scale

 

Rich and Strange (1931) – an early relationship drama rather more stiff than strange, but navigated with amused Hitchcockian skepticism

 

Shoah: Four Sisters (2017) – Lanzmann’s record is bottomlessly moving as oral history, endlessly fascinating as an act of witnessing

 

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – memorable both for Aldrich’s mastery of genre attitudes and power games, and for the ultimate obliteration of them

 

Nenette et Boni (1996) – Denis applies her almost unmatched, allusively sensuous powers to a portrait of familial connection and fracture

 

Underworld, U.S.A. (1961) – Fuller’s comprehensive, astoundingly and intimately pitiless dissection of corporatized American exploitation

 

Zama (2017) – Martel’s complex, often ravishing film charts an indelible personal odyssey, against the devastation & upheaval of colonialism

 

The Eagle has Landed (1976) – the film’s virtues are mostly superficial, but Sturges handles the sprawling canvas with veteran know-how

 

Coup de foudre (1983) – it’s easy to undervalue the controlled scope of Kurys’ work; even so, one wishes the film were a little less studied

 

Ball of Fire (1941) – by no means the most penetrating of Hawks’ great comedies, but it’s sweetly irresistible in just about every respect

 

In Bloom (2013) – with devastating precision and finesse, Ekvtimishvili and Gross chart a hard-edged society’s unbalanced sexual politics

 

Autumn Leaves (1956) – Aldrich’s anxiety- and repression-infused drama, at once plain and yet (not least re Crawford) strangely abstracted

 

The Life Ahead (2020) – Ponti’s Madame Rosa remake has superficial polish, but is thinner & more sentimentally calculating than the original

 

The Group (1966) – Lumet’s film occasionally works as disillusioned social history,  when not falling uncomfortably between various stools

 

The End of Evangelion (1997) – Anno’s (in isolation) confusing narrative yields to turbulently-inspired, strangely mesmerizing expression

 

The Wild Geese (1978) – McLaglen’s coldly effective action film could have done with a bit more wokeness, even by then-current standards

 

I Lost My Body (2019) – Clapin’s wondrously singular, superbly realized animation, at once dashingly weird, & hauntingly intimate & lovely

 

Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled (1918) – Phillips’ sprightly (but sadly degraded) African-American short is as peculiarly inspired as its title

 

The Legend of Rita (2000) – Schlondorff handles his eventful chronicle of terrorism and its aftermath with veteran incisive confidence

 

The Brothers Rico (1957) – Karlson seasons his sharp portrayal of pervasive criminality with familial challenges and anxious domesticity

 

Manta Ray (2018) – Phuttiphong’s enormously allusive, often gorgeously imagined film draws on the multiple losses & atrocities of refugeedom

 

The Magus (1968) – Green’s dated oddity, somewhat more interesting than its reputation, but tonally mismanaged and ultimately unrevealing

 

Mauvais sang (1986) – Carax’s modern classic is a rare meeting of strange and lovely, forcefully present while infused with dreamy escapism

 

Dawn of the Dead (1978) – Romero’s scrappy classic remains among the most strikingly eventful, metaphorically provocative horror films

 

The Souvenir (2019) – Hogg’s riveting memoir film unfolds in exquisitely considered fragments, highly alert to class-imposed complexities

 

Redes (1936) – Zinnemann/Muriel’s starkly ravishing tale carries immense righteous power, even though constrained by narrative artifice

 

Ghost Dog: the way of the Samurai (1999) – Jarmusch weaves together wildly disparate cultural elements into a funnily coherent conversation

 

Le mystere Picasso (1956) – Clouzot’s cleverly navigated performance film advances to and retreats from revelation in largely equal measure

 

Gloria Bell (2018) – Lelio’s closely-tracking remake trades up on star-kissed charisma, overall enhancing the graceful existential mystery

 

Le farceur (1960) – De Broca’s high-energy farce is often quite distinctive in its eccentricity, seasoned by a chillier and lonelier streak

 

The Cotton Club (1984) – Coppola’s epic often enthralls as performance and showmanship, but falls narratively and emotionally a bit flat

 

My Name is Nobody (1973) – Valerii (and Leone’s?) Western seasons its applause-worthy myth-making with various downright goofy notions

 

Uncut Gems (2019) – Sandler’s committed presence and the Safdies’ breathless narrative make for an engrossing if rather empty-feeling ride

 

Apostasy (1948) – Kinoshita’s story of prejudice and injustice retains much social interest, despite evidencing no great directorial finesse

 

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981) – Jaeckin’s pretty enough but hardly earthy adaptation, its edges persistently softened for easy consumption

 

High Life (2018) – Denis supply molds the genre material in daring, often borderline-outrageous, if not quite masterpiece-generating manner

 

Olivia (1951) – Audry’s vital study of generation-crossing female desire weaves an intricately mutable web of emotions, moods & power games

 

Dry Summer (1963) – Erksan’s intense drama of greed, lust and betrayal, powered (sometimes excessively) by unwavering, tense physicality

 

A Dry White Season (1989) – Palcy’s film contains much that’s savagely agitating, but the dominant narrative too often just gets in the way

 

India Song (1975) – Duras’ film holds presence & absence in unique equilibrium, casting a spell both soul-sickened & implicitly empowering

 

Kill List (2011) – Wheatley’s brutally accomplished genre-crossing revel, studded with echoes of past cinematic oddities and swaggers

 

Aniki Bobo (1942) – Oliveira’s early work, atypical in its straightforward charm, is a well-observed, if sometimes over-emphasized pleasure

 

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) – Sorkin’s packaged telling isn’t worth much, but has a definite right-movie-at-the-right-time vibe

 

La signora senza camelie (1953) – Antonioni’s sleek study of desolating fame builds to an ironic portrait of cushioned female surrender

 

Queen of Diamonds (1991) – Menkes incisively nails Vegas’s trashy emptiness, and yet in a film with a sense almost of divine ascension

 

The Law of the Border (1966) – Akad’s conflict-heavy drama straddles the ragged & the poetic, its genre-type moves pulsing with authenticity

 

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) – Jenkins confirms his extraordinary delicacy and ease, in a gloriously balanced, searching adaptation

 

Duvidha (1974) – Kaul’s film occupies a hauntingly elusive, heightened space, as if directed by the ghost at the heart of its narrative 

 

Big Time (1989) – not quite the indelible Waits film that we one day deserve, but ably showcasing his unique persona and canny musicianship

 

An Inn in Tokyo (1935) – Ozu’s silent film is among his saddest, as poverty ultimately imposes a grim, almost self-obliterating morality

 

Midsommar (2019) – Aster’s stunning, anthropologically compelling waking nightmare grips in every detail, even as it perplexes and repels

 

Nobody’s Children (1951) – Matarazzo’s tightly-wound, deeply-invested, socially-outraged variation on his recurring themes and devices

 

Havana (1990) – Pollack aims all too obviously for iconic romanticism and spectacle, but everything about it feels artificial and labored

 

An Innocent Witch (1965) – Gosho’s sympathetically troubled, ambiguity-seeded tale of exploited female sexuality, desired and demonized

 

The Favourite (2018) – Lanthimos’s film teems with biting provocations, but is ultimately less involving than his (even) weirder works

 

Les orders (1974) – Brault’s superbly calibrated record of a modern Canadian atrocity, deeply attuned to the machinery of dehumanization

 

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) – Weir’s drama covers the basics, but seldom feels like an optimal approach into the material

 

Swedenhielms (1935) – Molander’s stagy drama about an over-extended family’s self-centered travails now feels grating and complacent 

 

The Two Popes (2019) – Meirelles’ drama is plainly a fanciful artifice, but it’s conceived and embodied with pleasingly warm intelligence

 

Pickpocket (1959) – one of Bresson’s most mesmerizingly crafted inquiries and meditations, a film of almost unnervingly searching detail 

 

All the Vermeers in New York (1990) – Jost’s strangely haunting meeting of elusiveness & precision, contrasting the lasting & the ephermeral

 

Teorema (1968) – Pasolini’s inexhaustibly analyzable expression of the bourgeoisie’s unraveling, powered by a slyly seductive premise

 

Greta (2018) – a silly contrivance, establishing Jordan as a spent force, slightly redeemed by its take on a triumphing female friendship

 

The Traveler (1974) – Kiarostami’s chronicle of an errant child teems with life & insight, its ending foretelling the greater works to come

 

The Holcroft Covenant (1985) – Frankenheimer’s wildly unpersuasive high-concept thriller confuses & underwhelms in large & small ways alike

 

Poil de carotte (1932) – Duvivier’s masterfully-balanced study of an unhappy father and son remains chillingly raw and affecting at times

 

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015) – Cone’s sociologically valuable slice of anxiety-ridden Christian life, observed with much dexterity

 

Spoiled Children (1977) – Tavernier’s early film has a wide thematic reach, strongly anchored in the problems of contemporary urbanization

 

The Half of It (2020) – Wu’s gentle comedy has scores of appealing traits, but is limited by its artificial premise, among other things

 

Hungry Soul (1956) – Kawashima’s study of transgressive female desire grows in restrained power, although leaves much for the sequel

 

Swing Shift (1984) – Demme’s amiably missed-opportunity “Rosie the Riveter” drama is largely drained of analysis, anger or implication

 

Machorka-Muff (1963) – Straub/Huillet’s “abstract visual dream,” at once hard-edged in its historical specificity, & timelessly liberating

 

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) – Singer’s movie rattles by in stilted, compromised manner, while inevitably hitting a few pleasurable marks

 

It Always Rains on Sunday (1948) – Hamer anchors the central drama within a realistically colourful portrait of unadorned post-war community

 

Nowhere to Hide (1999) – Lee’s goofily brutal, now-for-my-next-trick action flick is a most uninvolving brand of applause-worthy virtuosity

 

Silver Bears (1977) – Passer has to scramble to hold the international-finance shenanigans together, but his pleasure is rather infectious

 

The Aquatic Effect (2016) – Anspach’s last, somewhat over-abbreviated film has a nice line in odd affinities and slanted storytelling

 

Day of the Outlaw (1959) – De Toth’s raw end-of-the-world Western draws combustibly on primal conflicts, played out in shivery isolation

 

Kinetta (2005) – a rather arid viewing experience, but not inappropriately to Lanthimos’ exploration of joyless fixations and relationships

 

Where Eagles Dare (1968) – Hutton’s wartime drama is uninspired in large and small ways alike, heavily flaunting its flavorless silliness

 

Dogman (2018) – Garrone’s film is uncomfortably well-realized, particularly in its empathetically put-upon central character, and the dogs

 

They Might be Giants (1971) – Harvey’s fragile-cored, time-capsule-infused comedy is oddly & defiantly appealing, although certainly flawed

 

Pharos of Chaos (1984) – a somewhat overwhelmed-seeming German observation of the aging Sterling Hayden, in all his grandeur and banality

 

A Reckless Rover (1918) – notable for a lively depiction of a comedic African-American milieu, although one heavily conceived in stereotype

 

Elles (2011) – Szumowska’s highly satisfying and assured engagement with prostitution as threat, liberation and domestic reference point

 

The Devil’s Playground (1976) – Schepisi’s tension-permeated study of Catholic boys school admits a certain rueful, resigned admiration

 

Mignonnes (2020) – Doucoure’s cynically & carelessly maligned film is an essentially sad social study that’s ultimately too soft if anything

 

Rio Grande (1950) – the stirring conclusion of Ford’s “cavalry trilogy” at once retreats and eases up, for a tapestry of moods and registers

 

Malina (1991) – Schroeter’s amazing, fiery, jaggedly sexualized depiction of breakdown is both operatically excessive & hurtingly immediate

 

Inside Daisy Clover (1965) – the knowing artificiality of Mulligan’s drama is overall more weakness than strength, but it has its moments

 

The Event (2015) – Loznitsa’s fall-of-USSR record observes and shapes the premonitory mundanity that attends historical momentousness

 

Newsfront (1978) – Noyce provides an enjoyably episodic sweep of changing times, but at the cost of very much political or emotional depth

 

The Skin (1981) – Cavani depicts the end of war as a crucible of exploitation, lies and illusions, with often savagely impressive impact

 

Black Legion (1937) – Mayo’s lumpily flawed movie still fascinates for its ever-relevant angle on cynical manipulation and suckerization

 

How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (2018) – Green’s “mini-film” comprises an ironically deadpan anecdote with a poetically evocative soul

 

Foul Play (1978) – Higgins’ peril-comedy isn’t boring, mostly just shallow & clumsy; the soft-balled Hitchcock references count for nothing

 

The Fish Child (2009) – Puenzo’s love-against-the-odds drama doesn’t really persuade on any level, despite various alluring elements

 

5 Against the House (1955) – Karlson’s quip-heavy heist drama is over-written and under-impactful, providing merely passing distraction

 

Gaby Baby Doll (2014) – Letourneau’s opposites-attract trifle evokes an intrigued affection, even if not much of it lands very convincingly

 

A Dandy in Aspic (1968) – Mann’s twisty Cold War drama provides some pictorial and tonal pleasures, but for much of the time is pretty flat

 

Porco Rosso (1992) – Miyazaki’s flying pig movie is of course swaggeringly absurd, but also honorably upright, and often evasively lovely

 

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) – despite some biting moments, it’s mostly a cinematically moribund message movie, from a pre-Kazanian Kazan

 

Vox Lux (2018) – Corbet’s grandiose but smart and haunting portrait of soul-destroying modern celebrity’s darkly-charged signification

 

Of Great Events and Ordinary People (1979) – Ruiz dazzlingly crafts one of the all-time great meditations on representation and engagement

 

Puberty Blues (1981) – Beresford’s worthwhile portrait observes Australia’s perpetuating patriarchal culture with low-key progressivity

 

David Golder (1931) – Duvivier’s early sound film, suffused in weary bitterness, still resonates with its depiction of grasping materialism

 

Late Night (2019) – Ganatra’s calculatingly engaging comedy too often feels like an incompletely-inhabited, blood-and-bile-inhibited outline

 

The Bronte Sisters (1979) – Techine’s atypical, finely-judged study places the sisters’ creative force as forged in isolation and exclusion

 

Investigating Sex (2001) – the form of Rudolph’s centered yet shifting film oddly befits its focus on the preoccupying contours of sexuality

 

The Indian Tomb (1959) – the second part of Lang’s adventure, driven by figurative and literal layers of compounding conspiracy and threat

 

Green Book (2018) – Farrelly’s relentlessly superficial if cursedly watchable pap lacks any rounded sense of interaction, time or place

 

Closely Watched Trains (1966) – Menzel’s deftly-observed, gently erotic-minded tale of self-discovery and resistance holds up pretty well

 

Personal Problems (1980) – Gunn’s shifts of focus, emphasis and rhythm expand and liberate the material, albeit sometimes a bit perplexingly

 

Don Giovanni (1979) – musically opulent, but Losey’s complacent handsomeness hardly interrogates the largely insufferable narrative

 

The Laundromat (2019) – Soderbergh’s witty, if often bumpy, deployment of open-ended form to an inherently unsummarizable ongoing outrage

 

Wooden Crosses (1932) – Bernard’s powerful, illusion-free war film squarely scrutinizes fear and death, and resilience and its limits

 

Welcome II the Terrordome (1995) – Onwurah’s super-ambitious mash-up has some great far-seeing moments, but bogs down at other times

 

Suspiria (1977) – Argento’s predestination-seeped classic, as defined by absences and ambiguities as by its often extraordinary compositions

 

Vice (2018) – for all the movie’s strenuous, certainly seldom-boring efforts, Cheney’s underlying ugliness remains elusively under-analyzed

 

The Munekata Sisters (1950) – with quiet force, Ozu examines contrasting approaches to self-determination in uncertainly modernizing times

 

Rich and Famous (1981) – Cukor’s last film is often overdone, but still underrated, curiously trying out modern perspectives on old forms

 

La boutique (1967) – Berlanga’s sex comedy looks stylish on the surface, but narratively just flails around to little cumulative impact

 

The Wise Kids (2011) – Cone sinks into the conviviality and suppression of his under-examined milieu with wide-ranging, humane consideration

 

The Illumination (1973) – a film of relative brevity but vast-ranging (if rather academic) scope, confidently marshaled by peak-form Zanussi

 

The Invisible Man (2020) – Whannell provides a halfway striking overall angle and some snappy scenes, but it can only count for so much

 

Bluebeard (1936) – Painleve & Bertrand’s super-whimsical, darkly-undertoned animation lies among cinema’s more oddly inspired 13 minutes

 

The Underneath (1995) – Soderbergh’s modern-day noir is deftly handled, although its ambitions seldom seem to be set particularly high

 

L’horloger de Saint-Paul (1974) – Tavernier places a low-key crime narrative at a preoccupied meeting place of old and new anxieties

 

Stan & Ollie (2018) – Baird’s film makes it easy to coast contentedly along, warmed by skillfully sentimental recreations and evocations

 

Our Town (1956) – Kawashima’s chronicle of stubborn perseverance provides a colourful & quite affecting window on changing, loss-heavy times

 

Sleepwalk (1986) – Driver’s altogether wonderful, intimately watchful yet dreamily morphing vision of mundane life infiltrated by myth

 

Calcutta (1969) – Malle methodically accumulates deprivations and colonially-gifted injustices, properly devoid of much token relief

 

The Irishman (2019) – Scorsese’s epic is in too many respects familiar, glib, opaque or superficial, eliciting mostly dutiful respect

 

History Lessons (1972) – Straub/Huillet’s daringly contrasting modes of representing and investigating a capitalism-determined civilization

 

Party Girl (1995) – Posey is the perfect standard-bearer for Mayer’s peppy fusion of self-expression, personal evolution and library science

 

The 47 Ronin (1941) – Mizoguchi’s long, contemplative, finely controlled study of the agonizing demands of personal and societal codes

 

The Mule (2018) – an inevitable if easy pleasure, infusing Eastwood’s sensationally honed storytelling skill with defiant fragility

 

The Mephisto Waltz (1971) – Wendkos’ deal-with-the-devil drama falls rather ineffectually between a moody high road and a campy low one

 

Diva (1981) – Beineix’s film has some potentially beguiling elements, but they impact less than the ugly swagger of its governing style

 

The Caine Mutiny (1954) – Dmytryk’s film is often much duller than its reputation; even the central human drama unfolds overly simply

 

Corpo celeste (2011) – Rohrwacher’s almost unprecedently wondrous debut, extraordinarily observant and true, shimmering in unforced mystery

 

The Slender Thread (1965) – Pollack’s race-against-time drama (and implicit tribute to American can-do-ism) is polished, but basically dull

 

The Hater (2020) – Komasa’s coldly virtuosic dive into the social media dark side is expertly thought-provoking, if inevitably unendearing

 

Prophecy (1979) – it’s disappointing how Frankenheimer surrenders so fully (albeit fairly proficiently) to unprophetic monster-movie devices

 

Jacques Rivette – le veilleur (1994) – Denis’ quiet portrait is thrilling for Rivette worshippers, confirming a gentle but firm singularity

 

Dream Street (1921) – for all its strange & problematic aspects, Griffith’s maligned drama now ranks among his richest, most restless works

 

Lover for a Day (2017) – Garrel’s impeccably executed romantic shuffling, its classical qualities infused with acutely-felt need and desire

 

The United States of America (1975) – Benning/Gordon’s mesmerizingly executed trip record, among the largest of small films (or vice versa)

 

The Forest for the Trees (2003) – Ade’s calmly excruciating study of not fitting in is perfectly pitched all the way to its sublime ending

 

The Searchers (1956) – perhaps Ford’s most magnificent & complex work, an epic attuned to America’s slow, painful, often ugly self-discovery

 

Li’l Quinquin (2014) – Dumont’s mesmerizingly strange, often hilarious investigation takes a uniquely wacked-out road to near-greatness

 

The Italian Job (1969) – Collinson’s caper film holds up well, with an improbable haul of logistically striking or peculiarly iconic moments

 

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) – a delightful instance of Miyazaki’s superbly-visualized, mysteriously affecting, warmly-shaded alchemy

 

Capernaum (2018) – Labaki’s heart-rending drama is a recent milestone in socially- and humanistically-charged, narratively fluent cinema

 

Between the Lines (1977) – Silver’s deceptively easygoing newspaper comedy has a terrific instinct for flaws, compromises & elusive closures

 

Song of the South (1946) – Disney’s notorious film has some conventional virtues, but reeks with racial subservience and marginalization

 

For Ever Mozart (1996) – one of Godard’s most tragically beautiful late films, on art & war, nobility & naivete, the ephemeral & the abiding

 

The Missouri Breaks (1976) – Penn’s digressive post-Watergate Western reflects on law and morality with elusive, often eccentric complexity

 

Spoor (2017) – Holland and Adamik’s darkly handsome, eco-conscious drama is consistently interesting, notwithstanding its big kooky streak

 

Tight Spot (1955) – for all its professionalism, Karlson’s reluctant witness drama makes only a modest bang, with Rogers unpersuasively cast

 

Mortal Transfer (2001) – Beineix’s least interesting movie strings together various tawdry manoeuvres, albeit quite dynamically implemented

 

A Guide for the Married Man (1967) – underneath all the smug leering, Kelly’s unpleasant comedy may embody a few grim social truths

 

Can you Ever Forgive Me? (2018) – Heller maximizes the story’s crowd-pleasing potential while cultivating an adequate thematic depth

 

Anne-Marie (1936) – Bernard’s beguiling film blends soaring ambitions and earthly affinities, although its gender role rebellion peters out

 

Wild Style (1982) – Ahearn’s film prioritizes multi-faceted, digressive observation over plot, with happily ragged, celebratory results

 

La menace (1977) – Corneau’s (maybe too) cleverly-conceived drama is a bit under-involving, despite plenty of great notions and spectacle

 

Booksmart (2019) – Wilde’s not too funny wild-night comedy feels largely hollow, hermetic and strained, for all its tolerant open-mindedness

 

He Who is Without Sin…(1952) – Matarazzo’s melodrama, immersed in separation and suffering, is grandly watchable, if a bit blandly played

 

Defending Your Life (1991) – probably not Brooks’ conceptually tightest movie, but more than adequately funny and philosophically engaging

 

The Executioner (1963) – Berlanga’s mesmerizingly assured black comedy expertly tightens an economic & moral vice on its overwhelmed victim

 

Sorry to Bother You (2018) – Riley’s uniquely-calibrated satire-and-then-some riffs richly on economic exploitation and cultural degradation

 

Emitai (1971) – Sembene’s highly arresting, clear-sighted, fabulously visualized confrontation of Senegalese culture and malign colonialism

 

Born in Flames (1983) – Borden’s amazing, teeming, defiantly attack-mode vision-collage foresees our failed, big-lie-infused landscape

 

Les portes de la nuit (1946) – Carne’s often lovely (when not over-mythologized) fatalistic drama, rooted in vivid post-Liberation anxiety

 

Museum Hours (2012) – Cohen’s extraordinarily astute, warmly illuminated (but not unshadowed) window on personal and aesthetic engagement

 

Fata Morgana (1971) – timeless myth-spawning magnificence yields to the human stain in Herzog’s rather magnificently opportunistic reverie

 

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) – Kaufman’s inspiredly weird expression of the wondrous intimacy & frightening immensity of connection

 

Gate of Hell (1953) – Kinugasa’s famous tragedy is prettily decorative, but its restrained anguish makes a relatively modest impact now

 

The Departed (2006) – Scorsese’s Oscar-winner ranks among his more alienatingly self-contained demonstrations of technical mastery

 

Bambole (1965) – four directors, four hot female stars, and four easy-to-take but mostly forgettable stories of repressed sexuality

 

Widows (2018) – McQueen’s crime drama has intimations of wide-angle, socially astute greatness, unrealized in the climactic narrative flurry

 

Scent of a Woman (1974) – Risi’s original moves along briskly and scenically, but its hectoring, leering notion of charm rapidly wears thin

 

You are Not I (1981) – variously other-worldly and creepily drab, Driver’s short-ish film sets out an implication-infused identity enigma

 

The Old and the New (1929) – Eisenstein’s industrial paean is deliriously vivid and venerating, both transcending and obliterating humanity

 

Dolemite is my Name (2019) – Brewer and Murphy put on a great show, although it’s a bit light both as character study and cultural history

 

Othon (1970) – Straub and Huillet craft a methodical challenge to preconceptions of historical recreation and narrative representation

 

Afterglow (1997) – Rudolph successfully pitches a potentially straightforward romantic melodrama on the heightened edge of absurdity

 

Awaara (1951) – Kapoor’s grand melodrama hits expressively fantastic notes & small, socially critical ones with equally accomplished swagger

 

Suburbicon (2018) – Clooney’s weirdly ungainly blending of unremarkable film noir, toothless satire and bloodless social commentary

 

The Naked Island (1960) – Shindo’s distilled study of barren lives is certainly memorable, despite counterproductive imposed constraints 

 

Empty Suitcases (1980) – Gordon’s mind-filling film feels largely, if not yet entirely, despairing of male-determined cinema & society alike

 

Forza Bastia (1978) – Tati’s rediscovered day-of-the-match footage is nicely observed fun, but real life resists the sublimely Tati-esque

 

The Report (2019) – Burns’ perhaps artfully dullish record plays rather too familiarly, but effectively puts across its multiple outrages

 

Les visiteurs du soir (1942) – Carne’s fantasy of supernatural intervention is rather too heavygoing, despite its alluring narrative folds

 

The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) – Schlondorff’s adaptation collapses into little more than random notions, mostly drained of allegorical force

 

The Purple Taxi (1977) – Boisset’s Irish-set drama appeals for its once in a lifetime cast, but is mostly empty gestures and pronouncements

 

The Sisters Brothers (2018) – Audiard pulls off the genre swagger, but the film’s heart is subtly ironic and ambiguously vulnerable 

 

Burden of Love (1955) – Kawashima’s eye-opening, pregnancy-festooned, progressively issue-laden narrative makes for quite unusual comedy

 

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – there’s much that lingers, maybe forever, in Scorsese’s calculated interrogation of Biblical cliché

 

Something Different (1963) – Chytilova’s intimately alert study of two female lives, marked by contrasting frustrations and compromises

 

Us (2019) – Peele weaves in some mild metaphorical interest, but overall the film plays much more conventionally & repetitively than Get Out

 

Scorpio (1973) – fairly average international spy games, elevated by the cast, when not hampered by Winner’s very basic cinematic instincts

 

Whisper of the Heart (1995) – Kondo’s happiness-provoking, fantasy-inflected love story, rooted in the interaction of dreams and commitment

 

Broken Blossoms (1919) – Griffith’s sensibility now seems crass on several fronts, but the film’s central melancholy spell somehow endures

 

Cities of Last Things (2018) – Ho’s concept-heavy drama ultimately feels rather too removed, but is impeccably structured and populated

 

Blume in Love (1973) – Mazursky’s delightfully regulated film embraces idealized romanticism all the better for seeing right through it

 

The Shipwrecker (1984) – Buhler’s coolly cerebral engagement with Sterling Hayden sounds more formally interesting than it actually is

 

Pushover (1954) – Quine’s expertly paced and plotted thriller is mostly all surface, but one of consistently devious, voyeuristic pleasures

 

Slack Bay (2016) – Dumont’s class-conscious farce swirls with affectations, peculiarities and taboos, while somehow seeming integrated

 

Walden (1969) – Mekas’ great submergence in a life fully lived and felt, asserting both the specificity and universality of experience

 

Water Lilies (2007) – Sciamma’s quietly enchanting study of personality and desire in formation; of femininity as structured display

 

Saturday Night Fever (1977) – Badham’s strutting classic of sorts, less airy (and more bitingly misogynistic) than the myth might suggest

 

Season of the Devil (2018) – one of Diaz’s more concentrated works, an extended, aching song of loss and grief in the face of brutality

 

Curse of the Cat People (1944) – Lewton’s beautiful evocation of intertwined isolations, marked by captivating play of light and shadow

 

The Invincibles (1994) – Graf’s politically-charged police thriller reaches for grandeur, but lets in too many slack and dilutive elements

 

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) – Carpenter executes his shrewdly absurd siege narrative with the maximum in existentially-charged stylization

 

Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (2013) – with the most finely light-footed seriousness, Hong enmeshes us in shifting internal & external realities

 

Nightfall (1956) – Tourneur’s film travels from urban darkness to open snowy landscapes, powerfully expressing the passage to redemption

 

Revenge (1989) – Shinarbayev’s narrative of grim earthly imperatives, shimmeringly told through poetically unbound structures and images

 

The Caretaker (1963) – Pinter’s inexhaustibly rich and provocative text, more memorable here for the acting than the cinematic realization

 

Everybody Knows (2018) – from a somewhat limited narrative, Farhadi crafts an insinuating portrait of widespread, if well-concealed, rot

 

That’s the Way of the World (1975) – Shore’s record-industry drama (Keitel produces EWF!) has enough substance to transcend curio status

 

La haine (1995) – Kassovitz’s often-inspired lightning-bolt film surveys and sparks multitudes, its ambition in some ways counterproductive

 

Air Raid Wardens (1943) – some standardly enjoyable Laurel and Hardy set-pieces surmount a blandly unaccommodating homefront framework

 

Marriage Story (2019) – Baumbach’s smart film overflows with interesting moves and details, while often feeling too studied at key moments

 

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) – Straub/Huillet’s beautiful, ethical, exactingly rigorous yet deeply alert historical evocation

 

Parting Glances (1986) – narrative artificiality aside, Sherwood’s classic bearing-of-witness film contains much that’s true and surprising

 

Mexican Bus Ride (1952) – beneath Bunuel’s convivially eventful surface lies a more deliciously biting vein of transgressive calculation

 

First Man (2018) – Chazelle’s most interesting film to date, for its intimate physicality and recessive core, and its surprising absences

 

Baal (1970) – Schlondorff’s Fassbinder-starring Brecht adaptation is rough-hewn, repellent and yet stubbornly, ambiguously insinuating

 

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) – Reisz and Pinter’s strategy holds up well, although the risk is consummately minimized throughout

 

Apart from You (1933) – Naruse’s emotionally resonant silent drama surveys a thankless world of gender-based injustice and imposed sacrifice

 

Sightseers (2012) – Wheatley drolly injects bloody murder into the latter-day strained reality of heritage Englishness’ bucolic surface

 

Body of my Enemy (1976) – Verneuil’s brassily enjoyable, focus-shifting clutter of a drama eventually submits to revenge-genre mechanics

 

Da 5 Bloods (2020) – Lee embraces melodrama with relish, as a scaffold for a passionately haunted, digressive survey of unending fracture

 

War and Peace (1966) – whatever its imposed constraints, Bondarchuk’s massive epic is a constant visual and logistical astonishment

 

Requiem for a Dream (2000) – Aronofsky’s awe-inspiring but largely unmoving parade of suffering is the most hypnotic of unwatchable movies

 

The Balloon (1956) – Kawashima’s absorbing family drama sets off understated spiritual searching against harder-edged modern pragmatism

 

Mid90s (2018) – Hill’s film evidences a fine touch with mood, interaction, and implication, although ultimately pulls up a bit short

 

Insiang (1976) – Brocka’s sensationally impactful tale of female oppression and revenge both transcends and deeply reflects its setting

 

Sidewalk Stories (1989) – Lane’s (mostly) silent comedy is cutely conceived, but really no great shakes in any aspect of its execution

 

Lettres d’amour (1942) – Autant-Lara’s romantic farce is deftly enough assembled, but rather passionlessly relentless in its complications

 

Burning Cane (2019) – the remarkable Youmans crafts a broodingly and intuitively coherent, if sometimes overwrought, cultural portrait

 

The Tree of Guernica (1975) – Arrabal’s vision is as much possessed as painterly, but it’s scathingly attuned to war’s corrosive decadence

 

When Pigs Fly (1993) – Driver’s unusual ghost story has beautiful elements, although overall lands more conventionally than her Sleepwalk

 

L’arme a gauche (1965) – a solid enough drama, moving from exoticism to remoteness, but probably Sautet’s least interesting work overall

 

The Old Man & the Gun (2018) – Lowery’s genial, warmly-textured showcase for the cherishable Redford, a film of knowingly small virtues

 

Le marginal (1983) – Deray’s grabbag of set-ups and confrontations, more than capably held together by conviction and attitude (Belmondo!)

 

Drive a Crooked Road (1954) – Quine’s snappily-written (by Blake Edwards) little crime drama, drawing shrewdly on social and sexual envy

 

Only Yesterday (1991) – Takahata’s very sweet expression of a present untidily informed by the past, with its delightfully-conceived ending

 

The Panic in Needle Park (1971) – Schatzberg’s unyielding study of addiction encompasses bleak documentary and disorienting stylization

 

Cosmos (2015) – Zulawski’s fulsomely strange, ever-renewing creation intrigues as cinematic sculpting, while hardly aiming to satisfy

 

Homework (1989) – Kiarostami’s utterly fascinating, formally enveloping testimony on Iran’s education system is humane and quietly ominous

 

The Fallen Idol (1948) – Reed’s spatially engrossing, delicately observed, emotionally scarred drama, hampered by a rushed-seeming ending

 

Noise (2006) – Assayas’ often aurally challenging, always rigorously observed record of spectrum-spanning “art rock festival” performances

 

“Doc” (1971) – Perry’s sparsely eloquent emphasis on frailty and loneliness makes for an unusual, if perhaps overly absent-feeling Western

 

Sophia Antipolis (2018) – Vernier is rapidly becoming a master chronicler of a fractured, confused age, fusing the discovered and imagined

 

The Lineup (1958) – with incisive precision and awareness, Siegel navigates a landscape shot through with malign implication and connection

 

Milou en Mai (1990) – Malle’s fusion of personal and political is pleasant but incompletely realized, seeming to grab at this and that

 

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) – Haskin’s often handsome concoction intrigues most in its lonely early stages, becoming hokier as it goes on

 

Knife + Heart (2018) – Gonzalez’s rather astonishing fever drama grips and transfixes with every rich, luridly provocative frame and concept

 

The Day of the Locust (1975) – Schlesinger’s adaptation feels by turns overwhelmed and inspired, attaining a distinctively pained blankness

 

Subway (1985) – Besson’s subterranean circus has no shortage of strikingly strutting acts, but it’s hard to care much about most of them

 

The Navigator (1924) – Keaton’s maritime comedy is filled with great gags, although lacks the personalized allure of his very best films

 

Camille Claudel 1915 (2013) – Dumont’s immaculate contrasting of physical and spiritual confinement shimmers with hope and injustice

 

Dark Star (1974) – Carpenter’s beguiling comedic space flick, handled with a perfect blend of disillusioned hokiness and expansive vision

 

Yella (2007) – Petzold immaculately posits modern Germany’s sleek entrepreneurial sheen as an excluded woman’s moment-of-death fantasy

 

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) – Wilder’s hermetic courtroom drama rattles happily along to the big reveal, flush on star charisma

 

Arabian Nights: Volume 3 (2015) – Gomes concludes by easing deeply & beautifully into fundamental (yet myth-tinged) connection & continuity

 

The Appointment (1969) – channeling European art film influences, Lumet creates an interesting if not very substantial romantic enigma

 

Antigone (1992) – with typically exacting precision, Straub/Huillet cause the material to at once recede and (as terrible warning) advance

 

Bonnie Scotland (1935) – a brightly-executed Laurel and Hardy feature, with the amazing pair at their most easefully funny and captivating

 

Golden Exits (2017) – Perry’s relationship study doesn’t hold the attention like his other works, albeit that might sort of be its point

 

L’enfant secret (1979) – Garrel’s study of an eroding relationship is an extraordinary emanation of separate, hurting, fractured cinema

 

Luminous Motion (1998) – Gordon’s astutely disturbing, wonderment-infused weirdo-parable on the stagnating capacity of traditional family

 

Sylvie et le fantome (1946) – Autant-Lara’s film is pure escapism, skillful and delicate, but its artificiality doesn’t approach poetry

 

Suspiria (2018) – Guadagnino lets loose (and then some) with quite amazing results, spawning a gorgeously textured, deeply inhabited vision

 

Docteur Popaul (1972) – a somewhat depressingly leering dark comedy (I suppose) from the well-populated slack end of Chabrol’s oeuvre

 

Cane River (1982) –  even the many imperfections of Jenkins’ rediscovered historically-conscious romance are cherishable and informative

 

Babette Goes to War (1959) – Christian-Jaque’s undistinguished WW2 comedy/drama barely even seems interested in, or really aware of Bardot

 

The Wife (2017) – despite the barnbusting lead performances, Runge’s drama is too tinny and under-powered to leave much of an impact

 

The Incubus (1981) – Hough’s opportunistic, low-conviction horror movie at least has Cassavetes and an allusively intense conclusion

 

Weekend at Dunkirk (1964) – Verneuil’s epic has epic moments to match Nolan’s, linked by muscularly varied incident and moral inquiry

 

Camera Buff (1979) – Kieslowski’s study of cinema as liberator & destroyer relies on relatively easy ironies, but masterfully charted ones

 

A Star is Born (2018) – Cooper’s treatment is well-inhabited and pleasurable, without dispelling the air of anachronism and redundancy

 

Un carnet de bal (1937) – a variedly episodic drama, limited by its artificial premise, elevated by Duvivier’s unerringly attuned control

 

Totally F****ed Up (1993) – Araki’s energetically inquisitive film is a near-hypnotic meeting of stylization and vulnerable authenticity

 

Coup de Grace (1976) – Schlondorff’s undercurrent-heavy Russian civil war drama is visually haunting, yet surely overly distancing

 

Ray Meets Helen (2017) – Rudolph’s comeback film doesn’t play entirely steadily, which generally aids its dreamily distanced peculiarity

 

Montparnasse 19 (1958) – Becker’s portrait of Modigliani is hauntingly pained, although barely explores the specificity of his vision

 

White of the Eye (1987) – Cammell, as weirdly possessed as his protagonist, pushes a conventional narrative toward the primally visionary

 

Un singe en hiver (1962) – a rather peculiar film by the often overlooked Verneuil, but not lacking in thematic ambition and reflectiveness

 

Octavio is Dead! (2018) – Lee hits her stride with the pleasantly-handled gender-fluid interactions, but bogs down in claptrap elsewhere

 

Dead Ringers (1988) – Cronenberg’s insularly concentrated, rather schematic tale exudes uneasy fascination, not least for Irons’ expertise

 

The Dawns here are Quiet (1972) – Rostotskiy’s war drama is strong when immersed in action and setting, weaker in its more fanciful aspects

 

Only One Night (1939) – Molander’s lively but overstated culture-clash drama glaringly underserves its female characters in particular

 

Cameraperson (2016) – Johnson’s emotion-spanning, ethically stimulating, overall riveting tapestry of personal and professional witnessing

 

Manila in the Claws of Light (1975) – Brocka’s utterly vivid and gripping, devastating illumination of a teeming, predatory environment

 

The Watermelon Woman (1996) – Dunye’s unusual, cannily loose-feeling film pleasurably challenges narrative, sexual and canonical norms

 

The Golden Coach (1953) – one happily submits to Renoir’s sumptuous artificiality, while rather missing the connectivity of his finest work

 

Leave no Trace (2018) – Granik’s well-observed, quietly tragic chronicle evokes broader fractures & strangenesses at the core of America

 

The Moment of Truth (1965) – Rosi indelibly records the substance & mystique of bullfighting as glorious, perhaps life force-eroding horror

 

Tucker: the Man and his Dream (1988) – Coppola’s happily indefatigable chronicle feels like rather too much dream and too little real man

 

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973) – Arrabal’s fiery, provocative vision is as unbound as its title, yet with a tender, even devout core

 

Eyes, Ears and Throats (2019) – a marvelously assembled collection of restored punk films; likely to set off a weird, irrational longing

 

L’eternel retour (1943) – Cocteau’s boldly winding retelling of classic material is vividly strange & lovely, strongly realized by Delannoy

 

Privilege (1990) – Rainer’s amazing film constantly shifts and pivots, deconstructing itself & much else in serious yet celebratory manner

 

Les mistons (1957) – even in 18 minutes, Truffaut’s nimble, resourceful early short encompasses a range of emotion and life experience

 

The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018) – Cousins’ enthralling letter to Welles analyzes, illuminates, (sometimes) grates, and in no way exhausts

 

L’invenzione di Morel (1974) – Greco’s rather heavily-expressed enigma belongs to a time of cinema as grand concept and physical destination

 

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) – the central motor of female inspiration remains powerful, although Seidelman allows in too much silliness

 

A Man Vanishes (1967) – the terse initial momentum of Imamura’s investigation rewardingly stalls and spins and semi-surrenders to invention

 

Beast (2017) – a much superior serial killer drama, for Pearce’s deft local observation and its sensitively unconventional characterizations

 

Limite (1931) – Peixoto’s only film is an astounding, inexhaustibly gorgeous flow of water, light, observation, allusion and mystery

 

Jennifer 8 (1992) – Robinson’s drama is appealing when at its more thoughtful, but ultimately all but falls apart in an unseemly rush

 

Bread and Chocolate (1974) – Brusati’s comedy is at times too broad, at others bland, at its best when drawing on exile and dispossession

 

Support the Girls (2018) – Bujalski’s seemingly unassuming film yield layers of piercing, socially and economically indicting observation

 

Till We Meet Again (1955) – Kawashima’s smoothly ambitious but rather restricted melodrama, ultimately marked by poignant unfulfillment

 

Patty Hearst (1988) – Schrader’s artfully evasive study often feels almost narcotized, but his formal intelligence gradually imposes itself

 

Greed in the Sun (1964) – Verneuil’s duel in the desert never acquires much depth, but grips through sustained forceful sun-baked swagger

 

Did you Wonder who Fired the Gun? (2017) – Wilkerson’s dark investigation, driven by a loathing drink of long-festering familial poison

 

Mado (1976) – another fascinating exercise in structure and group dynamics from peak-period Sautet, rich in personal and social implication

 

Girl 6 (1996) – Lee’s representation-preoccupied, intriguingly evasive film of seductive presences built on long-established absences

 

Two People (1945) – Dreyer’s disowned intimate drama feels rushed and inadequately articulated, yet exudes a strange, stark purity

 

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) – Chu’s movie is cannily executed throughout, although the “craziness” is mostly of an opulently oppressive nature

 

Taipei Story (1985) – Yang and Hou’s transfixingly well-rendered study of personal and societal hollowing in the shadow of modernization

 

Peeping Tom (1959) – Powell’s extraordinarily rich, luridly committed expression of cinema as mirror, excavator, lover and destroyer

 

Besieged (1998) – the film has its questionable aspects, but Bertolucci’s quicksilver mastery of cinema remains sensuously thrilling

 

“10” (1979) – probably Edwards’ most study-worthy, self-revealing film, cinematically fascinating & rich in ambiguities (& sure, it’s funny)

 

Home (2008) – Meier crafts a highly memorable family drama, powered by nuanced relationships and a terrifically-visualized overall concept

 

Wild 90 (1968) – Mailer’s confined behavioural experiment doesn’t light too many interesting fires, despite repeatedly pugnacious attempts

 

Mercuriales (2014) – Vernier’s strangely stunning film shifts deftly between multiple states and moods, at once delicate and troubled

 

Hot Biskits (1931) – Williams’ busy all-African-American short comedy prioritizes clean execution over cultural revelation or flavor

 

A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984) – Zanussi’s pain-infused post-war romance follows unusual, searching paths, but never fully takes hold

 

Barry Lyndon (1975) – Kubrick’s inexhaustible historical chronicle negotiates the gloriously palpable and the pervasively unknowable

 

Cold War (2018) – Pawlikowski’s film possesses an immensely graceful economy, spanning epochal life shifts & intimate behavioural mysteries

 

This Sporting Life (1963) – Anderson’s powerfully physical drama explores masculinity both as imposing gift and as uncomprehending curse

 

Daddy Nostalgia (1990) – Tavernier’s quiet surface yields a warm tapestry of actual & figurative separations, of intertwined joys & regrets

 

The War of the Worlds (1953) – Haskin’s vision of overmatched mankind, memorable for its bleakly beautiful, almost reverential images

 

Arabian Nights: Volume 2 (2015) – Gomes’ (relatively) more somberly-rooted second segment is a rich excavation of connection and consequence

 

The Point (1971) – Wolf and Nilsson’s tuneful, sweetly peculiar animation is at once trippy, satirical and, uh, pointedly message-bearing

 

Le monde vivant (2003) – Green’s open-eyed fairy tale emanates delighted conviction, even as it deconstructs and absurdifies itself

 

White Zombie (1932) – Halperin’s Haitian-set grab-bag has its moments,  but lacks for an overall insinuating coherence of tone or vision

 

Burning (2018) – Lee’s quietly glowing masterpiece is a socially resonant cinematic mystery, crossing contrasting states of being and action

 

Return of the Pink Panther (1975) – perhaps the best Clouseau movie, or at least the best synopsis of its strangely contoured universe

 

Rendez-vous (1985) – an extremity-embracing narrative of personal and artistic discovery, held together by Techine’s customary smoothness

 

All Night Long (1962) – Dearden’s jazz-world Othello is mostly just an overwritten curio, but not lacking for musical compensations

 

Kommunisten (2014) – Straub’s repositioning of extracts from past work gently affirms the breadth, beauty & courage of his work with Huillet

 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – Siegel’s terrific, propulsive narrative contains one of cinema’s great, ever-renewable allegories

 

A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (2016) – Diaz’s epic voyage of engagement with history and myth, to the limits of understanding and grief

 

Their First Mistake (1932) – among Laurel and Hardy’s strongest and certainly most subtext-heavy shorts; one only wishes it were longer

 

The Stranger (1991) – Ray ends his career on a physically restricted but intellectually engaged note, emphasizing awareness & reconciliation

 

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) – Meyer’s jaw-dropping vision marries chronic superficiality & bizarrely committed, rutting intensity

 

The Love Witch (2017) – a visual, tonal and thematic vision not so much implemented as lusciously exhaled by the iconoclastic Biller

 

Innocence Unprotected (1968) – Makaveyev’s new-film-made-from-an-old-one is a happy but scrupulous assertion of freedom and persistence

 

Hollywood Shuffle (1987) – Townsend’s happily ramshackle, sort-of-groundbreaking, funny-enough stirring of celebration and condemnation

 

Gribiche (1926) – Feyder’s contrasting of working-class spontaneity with deadened moneyed formality remains most formally & tonally pleasing

 

Under the Silver Lake (2018) – Mitchell’s lush, highly fanciful investigation is at once relentlessly revelatory and callowly static

 

Maitresse (1976) – Schroeder provides ample sympathetic provocations, but the film’s broader strategies ultimately ring rather hollow

 

Orlando (1992) – a key reference point in the cinema of gender construction, while also, in Potter’s hands, an exquisitely quizzical romp

 

Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) – an absorbingly cerebral social & personal document by Alea, crafted as near-emblematic art cinema

 

Exhibition (2013) – Hogg positions and repositions our spectatorship with near-eerie assurance within her remarkable installation-like film

 

Welcome Mr. Marshall! (1953) – Berlanga’s kowtowing-to-the-Yanks comedy has a few satirical highlights amid a lot of heavy foot-dragging drama

 

Kiss Me Goodbye (1982) – Mulligan’s feeble comedy is inexplicably bland, showing little affinity for or curiosity in its ghostly premise

 

Wildwechsel (1973) – Fassbinder’s “jail bait” drama may be one of his more conventional provocations, but no less bitingly executed

 

BlackKklansman (2018) – a secondary Lee work, most valuable & piercing when least constrained by the often rather plainly executed narrative

 

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939) – Mizoguchi’s exquisite tragic love story contrasts formal performance and besieged intimacy

 

Crooklyn (1994) – Lee’s family chronicle has modest but well-realized ambitions, illustrating his capacity for warmly lived-in observation

 

Nausicaa (1970) – Varda’s overlooked collage of Grecian mythologies & realities fulfillingly spans the didactic, bizarre, personal & poetic

 

Krisha (2015) – in its searing balance of naturalism & formal audacity, Shults’ perspective on familial trauma may well prove unforgettable

 

Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) – Dutt’s last directorial work is hauntingly bleak, almost seeming as a prophesy of looming self-obliteration

 

Popeye (1980) – Altman’s strange, attractively visualized project shrouds its “entertainment” in self-absorbed, semi-penetrable mystery

 

La ronde (1964) – Vadim’s version is handsomely mounted, elegantly amused and quite enjoyably played, but the interest gradually deflates

 

The Death of Stalin (2018) – Iannucci’s expertly-stylized absurdist patina serves to darkly accentuate the underlying moral emptiness

 

Beaubourg (1977) – Rossellini’s last film explores the Pompidou Centre with classical grace, prioritizing observation over deconstruction

 

The Comfort of Strangers (1990) – Schrader extracts every drop of archly twisted beauty from the story, but it still doesn’t amount to much

 

La Marseillaise (1938) – Renoir’s approach to history, encompassing both grand spectacle and easy intimacy, remains quietly radical

 

Archipelago (2010) – probably Hogg’s least vital work to date, but nevertheless one of grippingly impressive empathy and controlled tension

 

Badou Boy (1970) – Mambety’s dizzying short, at once a deeply-rooted celebration and a radical deconstruction, all but overwhelms the senses

 

Escape from New York (1981) – one wishes Carpenter’s smartly hokey drama spent less time on escaping, more on relishing its bizarro New York

 

Tales of Ginza (1955) – Kawashima’s ambitiously genre and tone-spanning melodrama gets rather weighed down with complications and oddities

 

Private Life (2018) – Jenkins’ bitterly humorous chronicle is compelling and existentially charged, although perhaps rather too mannered

 

Sanjuro (1962) – Kurosawa’s more tightly-conceived extension of Yojimbo makes for a narratively and tonally rather repetitive experience

 

Prospero’s Books (1991) – an astonishing Tempest, magicked at the peak of Greenaway’s daunting textual, imaginative & organizational powers

 

Les choses de la vie (1970) – Sautet’s film grips for its structural and logistical panache, while feeling underachieved as character study

 

Stinking Heaven (2015) – Silver’s impressively harrowing yet withholding study of the promises and agonizing limits of idealized community

 

The Passionate Friends (1949) – a most repressed form of passion, and somewhat of filmmaking, but certainly elevated by Lean’s precision

 

Police Story 2 (1988) – as enjoyable for Chan’s unforced geniality as for its near-exhausting-to-watch, somehow noble technical prowess

 

The Shootist (1976) – Wayne’s aptly final film is hard to resist, even if Siegel pushes the themes and conflicts rather too thickly

 

Shoplifters (2018) – with consummate skill, Koreeda crafts a fresh and fully-realized, complexly layered perspective on family and morality

 

Time Without Pity (1957) – Losey suffuses his race-against-time drama in sufficient pained emotion to push through the many deficiencies

 

Unknown Pleasures (2002) – Jia hauntingly channels China’s confusing evolution, the desultory personal vacuums within its modernity

 

Night Must Fall (1964) – Reisz and Finney both dissect and relish in the unpleasant material, leaving one both impressed and dissatisfied

 

Arabian Nights: Volume 1 (2015) – Gomes’ trilogy comes rapidly to colourful, rabble-rousing life, triumphantly spanning the unspannable 

 

Idaho Transfer (1973) – Fonda’s laid-back, evasive time travel fantasy has a nice angle on the slow extinguishment of youthful idealism

 

The Last Battle (1983) – Besson’s future-world showdown is basically thin and unedifying stuff, although kitted out with some style

 

Verdict: Not Guilty (1933) – the Gists’ vision of heavenly judgment is severely (if a bit shakily) yet tangibly and redemptively realized

 

Atlantique (2019) – Diop’s wonderful film is entirely fresh and alert, and yet with the sense of inevitable, eternally-returning myth

 

Jubilee (1978) – Jarman’s fabulous, visually and aurally full-to-bursting, sexually liberated punk fantasia both condemns and commemorates

 

The Juniper Tree (1990) – Keene’s tale of witchcraft and isolation makes for thin cinematic poetry, memorable only in lonely spurts

 

Sapphire (1959) – Dearden’s vivid, racially charged investigation both challenges and embodies a plethora of prejudices and assumptions

 

Bitter Money (2016) – Wang’s grave observation of modern China, tracking flickers of human individuality in an oppressive industrial machine

 

Staircase (1969) – Donen’s tedious, inadequately empathetic study of an aging gay couple seems poorly implemented by almost any measure

 

O Fantasma (2000) – Rodrigues’ amazing nocturnal vision of restless sexuality and desire drifts into a leather-clad feral wasteland

 

Female Trouble (1974) – below Waters’ delirious, tear-it-down odyssey may lie an empathetic dissection of the social construct of femininity

 

I Am Not a Witch (2017) – Nyoni’s film teems with well-observed visual and cultural astonishments, while often feeling somewhat held back

 

Moonrise (1948) – Borzage’s wondrously calibrated drama, possessed of haunting visual and narrative articulacy and expressive delicacy

 

Angst (1983) – Kargl’s close-up study of a startlingly vivid killer resists any sort of embrace, but is too smart and distinctive to dismiss

 

Maidstone (1970) – Mailer’s pugnacious patchwork of heightened “reality” is a highly of-its-time tumble of limitations and liberations

 

Border (2018) – Abbasi’s seriously strange, disquieting, multiple-boundary-exploring film is seeped in moral allusions and challenges

 

The Scapegoat (1959) – Hamer’s story of switched identities is entertaining enough, but feels overly formal and superficially inhabited

 

Petits freres (1999) – Doillon’s eventful picture of near-lawless youth is often depressing, ultimately hopeful (not entirely convincingly)

 

Harper (1966) – Smight’s attitude-heavy private eye flick is smoothly handled and spikily written, but the cynicism digs merely tan-deep

 

La Sapienza (2014) – Green’s wondrously distinct film nurtures a wryly life-, light-- and love-asserting core within its formal trappings 

 

Black Jack (1979) – Loach’s often grimly-anchored adventure yarn prioritizes its extraordinary period flavour over easy narrative momentum

 

The Death of Empedocles (1986) – Straub/Huillet’s text-heavy, formally rigorous performance work is strangely beautiful, even transcendent

 

Putting Pants on Philip (1927) – a formative Laurel & Hardy work with a breezy air of communal engagement, and a priapically energized Stan

 

L for Leisure (2014) – Kalman/Horn’s smartly evasive reflection on non-work, as multi-faceted institution and dreamy semi-glimpsed gateway

 

Suzaki Paradise Red Light (1956) – Kawashima’s study of marginal lives, both facilitated and slightly limited by its tolerant incisiveness

 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) – Kaufman’s adaptation is in too many ways titillating and posturing, rather than investigative

 

Yojimbo (1961) – Kurosawa’s sly action film is masterfully visualized and structurally striking, but hollower than one wishes of a classic

 

Eighth Grade (2018) – not that I would know, but Burnham’s well-modulated study feels authentically, often excruciatingly tuned-in

 

Joi Baba Felunath (1979) – Ray’s easygoing, scenic detective story is a knowingly minor work, defined mainly by relaxed interactions

 

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (2006) – there may be times when Gondry’s happy record is just exactly what you need (and, wow, Erykah Badu!)

 

La grande illusion (1937) – a Renoir masterpiece, holding myriad complexities and subtleties in almost mystically perfect equilibrium

 

Dark River (2017) – Barnard’s drama builds Gothic elements onto naturalistic observation, impacting a little less than her earlier work

 

L’homme en colere (1979) – Pinoteau’s very basic action picture is at once slapdash & unimaginative, with minor time-capsule compensations

 

Yentl (1983) – Streisand’s musical has an enterprising core, self-regardingly wrapped in oblivious timidity and sterile handsomeness 

 

Secrets of Women (1952) – Bergman’s series of variously flat or overdone vignettes presages the smiles of later, more fully-achieved works

 

The Kindergarten Teacher (2018) – Colangelo’s unusually unsettling drama, rooted in distorted idealism, anchored by a sensational Gyllenhaal

 

Viva l’Italia (1961) – a Garibaldi film of ample grand spectacle, anchored by Rossellini’s unforced, probing approach to recreating history

 

Jackie Brown (1997) – one of Tarantino’s most conceptually restrained, pleasurably observed and seasoned, and treasurably cast films

 

Serie noire (1979) – Corneau injects a brilliantly unbound Dewaere into the drabbest of crime film milieus, with fine & distinctive results

 

Sun Don’t Shine (2012) – Seimetz’s fine, hauntingly fraught character study, built on genre-displaced noir-ish motivations and anxieties

 

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941) – Ozu’s semi-precursor to Tokyo Story calmly excavates familial faultlines and hypocrisies

 

Hide in Plain Sight (1980) – Caan’s only directorial credit has some decent feeling and observation, but is rather too narratively sketchy

 

Un flic (1972) – Melville’s notionally rather unambitious last film moves further toward wordless abstraction, as if to a vanishing point

 

Don’t Worry, he Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018) – Van Sant drowns his film in group therapy tedium, barely cracking Callahan’s artistic engine

 

Robinson Crusoe (1954) – a diverting and colourful telling of the tale, particularly when most gripped by Bunuel’s expressive capacity

 

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992) – Harris’ portrait is spikily exuberant, emotionally compelling and smartly politically charged

 

Barrier (1966) – the remarkable Skolimowski charts a disorienting, almost hallucinatory path through troubled personal & societal landscapes

 

The Selfish Giant (2013) – Barnard’s powerful drama is painfully true to its deeply challenged community, yet not without a troubling beauty

 

The Cage (1975) – Granier-Deferre’s confinement drama plays its modest cards pretty strongly, all the way to an oddly satisfying ending

 

Near Dark (1987) – if not Bigelow’s best film, maybe the one you’d rescue first from the sunrise inferno, for its confident genre swagger

 

Der var engang (1922) – an incompletely surviving Dreyer work, of limited thematic interest, but not without feeling and expressive gravity

 

Annihilation (2018) – Garland’s film grips as a creepily insinuating allegory of environmental weirding, less so in its overdrawn specifics

 

Vincent, Francois, Paul…(1974) – an engaging study of weary male life passages, typifying Sautet’s structural and observational subtlety

 

Blow Out (1981) – a classic de Palma set-up, finding a relative integrity in disreputable material, and a terrible kind of commemoration

 

Pyaasa (1957) – Dutt’s finely-expressed melodrama, an emotionally unwavering elevation of artistic purity over money-grabbing venality

 

Hello Again (2017) – a valuable, generally pleasant record of LaChiusa’s great musical, if more jarring and less unified than would be ideal

 

Mickey One (1965) – a mesmerizingly observed yet wildly unbound existential mystery, as Penn and Beatty accelerate into their great periods

 

Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996) – Hou’s enveloping study of inter-dependence in the midst of distance – from past roots and present paradigms

 

The Ritz (1976) – Lester’s film, in concept a liberatingly open-minded breathless farce, in practice makes for rather tedious viewing

 

Shirkers (2018) – Tan places her long-lost movie within a lightly reflective quasi-detective story, to colourful and mostly pleasing effect

 

Man’s Castle (1933) – its somewhat insipidly conceived heroine aside, Borzage’s love story is delicately observed and often spikily funny

 

Swann in Love (1984) – Schlondorff’s Proust adaptation is meticulously considered, but it barely breathes or bleeds or bites or evokes

 

The Duelists (1977) – Scott’s episodic debut has plenty of actorly and pictorial interest, but never pierces very deeply, even less wounds

 

Sicilian Ghost Story (2017) – Grassadonia and Piazza’s absorbingly unusual negotiation between grim reality and liberating dream-life

 

Room at the Top (1959) – Clayton’s intensely class and power-conscious drama feels overwrought now, but it retains an elemental basic force

 

Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) – Weerasethakul’s film is at once intimate and limitless, wondrously invented while patiently unearthed

 

The Maidens of Fetish Street (1966) – Resnick’s string of grubby fantasies is fitfully semi-persuasive as a quasi-poetic essay on obsession

 

Tricked (2012) – Verhoeven’s brightly-executed, only modestly biting drama hardly evidences the flaunted innovation of its creative process

 

Lost Horizon (1973) – Jarrott’s famous flop isn’t so difficult to get through, but has only superficial beauty & little artistic coherence

 

Police Story (1985) – even for non-genre-aficionados, Chan’s breathlessly uplifting action-farce is impressively conceived and executed

 

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) – Taurog’s super-smooth Astaire-Powell teaming is among the most blissful of musicals, non-auteur division

 

Girl (2018) – Dhont’s absorbing transgender portrait balances reticence and exactitude, marked by intense attention to fragile physicality

 

Claudine (1974) – Berry’s small classic explores edge-of-its-tether black working class culture with rambunctious, almost radical frankness

 

Workers, Peasants (2001) – Straub/Huillet’s mysteriously perfect meeting of form and content, infused with the dignity of human endeavour

 

The Son of Joseph (2016) – Green deploys his uniquely-honed aesthetic strategies to perhaps their loveliest, warmest and funniest ends 

 

The Savage Innocents (1960) – Ray’s polar drama has an authentic core, but it’s often barely visible through the glaring, grating weaknesses

 

La nuit de Varennes (1982) – Scola’s expansively-conceived, pedagogically-minded French Revolution mash-up is a great, garrulous ride

 

The Long Good Friday (1979) – Mackenzie’s in-the-zone gangster drama piles strength upon strength, while overstating its thematic case a bit

 

High Flying Bird (2019) – Soderbergh gives the film a steely, probing intelligence, but it remains overly artificial and under-involving

 

Destiny (1921) – Lang’s mythology- & magic-heavy tale is most impactful now when anticipating later, more concentrated Langian conspiracies

 

Streamers (1983) – Altman’s incisive Rabe adaptation slices into the inherently unstable, desire-suppressing theatre of the military

 

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) – Blier’s relentlessly transgression-laden comedy feels at once fully achieved and largely affectless

 

First Reformed (2018) – Schrader’s agonized drama is at once significantly overstated, even crass, and yet rather magnificently rendered

 

Queimada! (1969) – Pontecorvo’s vivid drama of revolution and colonial meddling is problematic and bumpy, but always grandly provocative

 

Freeway (1996) – mythic echoes count for little in Bright’s enjoyably disreputable B-movie, enlivened by Witherspoon in her best ever mode

 

Razzia sur la chnouf (1955) – Decoin’s atmospheric drug-trade expose teems with character & incident, tersely anchored by the imposing Gabin

 

Lucky (2017) – Lynch constructs a fine late showcase for Stanton, lightly seasoned with philosophical investigations & existential mysteries

 

Viaggio con Anita (1979) – Monicelli’s murky, often attitudinally ugly comedy lurches arbitrarily along, wasting a displaced Hawn

 

Prince of the City (1981) – Lumet’s exactingly subtle study slowly exposes its initial exultation as an ethically untethered illusion

 

A Mother Should be Loved (1934) – even in incomplete surviving form, Ozu’s silent film is emotionally compelling and visually eloquent

 

Tully (2018) – Reitman and Cody’s study of motherhood is well-observed and empathetic and also utterly misconceived, in roughly equal parts

 

L’emmerdeur (1973) – Molinaro doesn’t offer much beyond briskness and a quirky casting pairing, but it still beats Wilder’s leaden remake

 

Funny Ha Ha (2002) – Bujalski perfectly channels a generation’s faltering adulthood, with the film’s modest means reflecting its milieu

 

Love in the City (1953) – a valuably auteur-heavy docu-fiction compilation, much more socially & existentially bleak than the title suggests

 

Submergence (2017) – Wenders’ strained narrative mostly fails to productively interrogate or stimulate, even less to create cinematic poetry

 

The Rite (1969) – Bergman’s study of art and authority in conflict is somewhat overstated and grotesque, and yet comprehensively stunning

 

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) – Schlesinger’s spy drama is smoothly executed, but rather too politically and emotionally lightweight

 

Toute une vie (1974) – Lelouch’s romantic epic expands outward with hypnotically vast ambition, at the cost of a recurring emptiness

 

The Dressmaker (2015) – a borderline-gratingly eccentric patchwork, consistently well-stitched by Moorhouse, but with skin-deep impact

 

De Mayerling a Sarajevo (1940) – an unusual Ophuls work in its mesh of ominous political specificity and elegantly timeless romanticism

 

Barton Fink (1991) – the Coens’ painstaking, gusto-infused, yet largely affectless vision of Hollywood as (at least) existential purgatory

 

Une histoire simple (1978) – Sautet’s empathetic, anxiety-attuned study is appealing, but less striking than his propulsive genre work

 

The Rider (2017) – Zhao’s gloriously considered and observed film engages uniquely with damaged masculinity and compromised sense of purpose

 

Le cave se rebiffe (1961) – Grainger’s counterfeiter drama, entirely typical of late Gabin, plays pretty well if hardly too distinctively

 

Sophie’s Choice (1982) – despite its “classic” elements, Pakula’s reverent but mis-weighted adaptation is among his less impressive films

 

Le notti di Cabiria (1957) – for all its heavy pathos, one willingly yields by now to the contours of Fellini’s film as those of a classic

 

Ready Player One (2018) – Spielberg notionally asserts the primacy of reality, while rejecting it with dazzlingly kinetic repetitiveness

 

Sextette (1977) – an astounding concoction, hardly lacking in bizarro interest, “directed” by Hughes with a sense of despairing hopelessness

 

And Life Goes On (1992) – Kiarostami’s journey through extreme human resilience exemplifies his masterly, expansively interrogative method

 

Bed of Roses (1933) – La Cava’s girls-on-the-make comedy packs plenty of plot, but gets flatter and less snappy as the girls get gooder

 

Western (2017) – Grisebach’s well-observed study of cross-cultural aspirations and realities, richly lodged in the folds of modern Europe

 

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) – Taylor’s no-dawdling adaptation doesn’t have much individuality, nor much relish for the sheer weirdness

 

A Short Film About Killing (1988) – a promise chillingly kept: Kieslowski achieves a multi-faceted, if knowingly circumscribed perfection

 

Oh…Rosalinda!! (1955) – for all its formal excellence, Powell and Pressburger’s late musical too often feels rather distant and academic

 

Bergman Island (2004) – Nyrerod’s satisfyingly frank, often poignant (if highly selective) portrait of a filmic lion in isolated winter

 

Guns of the Trees (1961) – Mekas’ incompletely realized (as acknowledged) debut is nonetheless productively strange, whimsical and engaged

 

Tabu (2012) – Gomes’ singularly surprising film, in which classical cinematic dream-making  emerges from artful contemporary complexity

 

Cuba (1979) – Lester’s romance-infused drama veers from knowing classicism into uninvolving artificiality, despite many interesting elements

 

The Emperor of Peru (1982) – a pretty enjoyable kid-friendly fantasy, especially when Arrabal brings the subdued peculiarity to the fore

 

Sergeant York (1941) – among the least Hawksian and most conventionally emotion-stoking of Hawks films, but not entirely unmoving

 

Let the Girls Play (2018) – Hallard’s breezy film prioritizes bright & easy narrative, at the cost of much deeper engagement or illumination

 

Sunday too Far Away (1975) – Hannam’s study of the sheep-shearing life is modest in most respects, but always anthropologically interesting

 

Le pont des arts (2004) – Green’s beautiful expression of art’s transcendent, connective possibilities, and the associated earthly threats

 

Cool Hand Luke (1967) – the rebellion in Rosenberg’s drama is mainly skin-deep, albeit very charismatic, glisteningly photographed skin

 

A Useful Life (2010) – Veiroj’s study of enforced transition is nicely done throughout, with particular resonance for aging cineastes (hi!)

 

To Catch a Thief (1955) – Hitchcock’s mostly shallow distraction often pushes scenic sophistication into the realm of pure abstraction

 

Class Relations (1984) – Straub/Huillet’s stark vision of a serially enmeshing, subjugating America is among their most powerful works

 

Get Carter (1971) – Hodges’ gangster classic is a hard-to-look-away negotiation between cold-eyed genre swagger and locally-rooted grit

 

La pelicula infinita (2018) – Listorti’s compilation taps into what might be cinema’s secret dream, of becoming pure Lynchian conspiracy

 

Swiss Miss (1938) – worth it for Laurel, Hardy, the St. Bernard and the piano, despite the dull setting and stodgy wraparound material

 

Benny’s Video (1992) – Haneke’s ambiguous fable of technology-fueled deterioration is effective but limited as both diagnosis and prophecy

 

The Hot Rock (1972) – Yates’ film may be the epitome of the undemandingly creative, pleasantly acted, un-bothersomely weightless caper flick

 

The Man from Nowhere (2010) – Lee’s pitting of enigmatic protagonist against the sleazy world is muscularly stylish, but mostly unmoving

 

Satan in High Heels (1962) – Intrator’s melodrama spins its wheels for much of the time, seldom living up to the title’s sleazy promise

 

True Stories (1986) – Byrne’s eye-filling journey through puzzlin’ modern-day evidence and fancy is one of the great cinematic one-offs

 

Wild Strawberries (1957) – among Bergman’s most classically impeccable, all-seeing studies, less disquieting than his later savage peaks

 

You Were Never Really Here (2017) – Ramsay’s striking but minor film infuses low-grade melodrama with dark texture & traumatic implication

 

Un papillon sur l’epaule (1978) – Deray’s enjoyable journey of conspiracy-tinged bemusement, toward an arrival point of limited clarity

 

Bottle Rocket (1996) – Anderson’s uncannily out-of-the-box-Andersonian debut is a happy string of variously peculiar, absurd & sweet notions

 

Antoine et Antoinette (1947) – Becker impeccably ventilates his sweetly simple narrative with a bustling wealth of flavorful observation

 

Isle of Dogs (2018) – eccentric material even for Anderson, laying on layers of oddity and separation with happy, beguiling hermeticism

 

The Ear (1970) – Kachyna’s fluently uneasy exploration of a toxic marriage, backgrounded by pervasive state-driven insecurity & infiltration

 

See You in the Morning (1989) – Pakula’s interesting but rather too aridly analytical exploration of modern familial infrastructure

 

The Sicilian Clan (1969) – given the great trio of stars, it’s a pity Verneuil’s crime epic isn’t more tonally and thematically striking

 

Darkest Hour (2017) – it feels like such overly- polished & -orchestrated slabs of history should have run their course, but apparently not

 

Archimede, le clochard (1959) – hardly a demanding work, but lifted by its verbal ornateness and by Grangier’s loose, unfussy handling

 

Babylon (1980) – Rosso’s electrifying portrait of community, in all its exuberant complexity, transcendent aspiration and besieged reality

 

Max et les ferrailleurs (1971) – Sautet’s drama drives home its strong premise, within a rich observance of contrasting tones & moralities

 

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) – the Coens’ beautifully-judged, existentially-charged journey along the Western-genre spectrum of doom

 

The President (1919) – Dreyer’s penetrating drama of transgression and guilt, well-attuned to recurring patriarchal arrogance and injustice

 

Career Girls (1997) – simple and yet increasingly expansive, even mystical, Leigh enjoyably explores the complicated energies of friendship

 

Le voleur de crimes (1969) – Trintignant’s tale of proud self-obliteration is a bit too slight, for all its sustained eccentric intensity

 

Disobedience (2017) – Lelio appears almost eerily attuned to the material & milieu, creating a consistently, observantly subtle experience

 

Car Wash (1976) – even when embracing dumbness, Schultz’s comedy has winning interactions and a persistent feeling for societal currents

 

L’infant de l’hiver (1989) – early but quite assured Assayas work shows his feeling for emotional structures, if not yet fully inhabited

 

The Lost Weekend (1945) – Wilder’s literately wrenching drama is hardly uninteresting, but now seems over-emphatic in many respects

 

The Dreamed Path (2016) – Beckermann contrasts conversations between generations, crafting an alluring sense of communion across them

 

Unman, Wittering & Zigo (1971) – Mackenzie’s drama of British public school malevolence: no If, but effective on its own off-putting terms

 

Deep Crimson (1996) – Ripstein gives the macabre story an effective if limited air of twisted vulnerability and lurking deep-black comedy

 

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) – Chaplin’s last film is hardly a success, but may be grudgingly admired for its stubborn artificiality

 

Stray Dogs (2013) – Tsai’s film is persistently, hauntingly touching and connective, despite its unique, withholding strangeness 

 

China Gate (1957) – Fuller’s artifice-transcending Apocalypse Now-like quest digs deeply & rawly into racial prejudice & political ambiguity

 

L’oeuvre au noir (1988) – Delvaux’s Inquisition-era drama leavens its prevailing studious gravity with idiosyncratic inquiry & observation

 

The Fury (1978) – the film bursts with sensational De Palma sequences, while ultimately seeming perplexingly unworthy of his attention

 

Black Tide (2018) – Zonka’s no-one-is-innocent police drama is pretty effective, despite its ample doses of hamminess and overstatement

 

The Music Box (1932) – a reliable delight for Stan and Ollie’s beautifully textured interplay, although this isn’t its richest expression

 

Farewell, Babylon! (1993) – out of not that much, Arrabal spins a mostly diverting, happily eccentric quasi-narrative (and time capsule)

 

Thank God it’s Friday (1978) – Klane’s sanitized, inoffensive diversion offers prototypical character antics and credits-to-credits disco

 

Visages villages (2017) – Varda and JR’s enchanting, sweetly poignant journey overflows with productive, respectful engagement and invention

 

House on Bare Mountain (1962) – Frost brings some real zest to his nudie-centric narrative, but it’s unfortunately only minimally infectious

 

Too Early/Too Late (1982) – Straub/Huillet’s impeccably measured indictment of capitalism’s crushing of natural dignity, agency and beauty

 

Stalag 17 (1953) – Wilder’s blend of dark drama and dumb comedy is well-paced and -calculated rather to the point of alienating coldness

 

Au poste! (2018) – Dupieux’s amiably goofy police-interrogation comedy playfully and unpredictably interrogates its own form and content

 

The Skin Game (1931) – a dated but still quite biting tale of conflicting values and prejudices, lifted by the odd Hitchcockian flourish

 

Mala noche (1986) – Van Sant’s first feature is perhaps still his most personally expressed, emotionally frank & sociologically interesting

 

Les naufragés de l'île de la Tortue (1976) – Rozier’s singular comedy celebrates openness to chance and discovery, in life and (and as) art

 

The Post (2017) – a softly conventional treatment of the material by any measure, but Spielberg certainly runs a polished, assured show

 

Paw (1959) – Henning-Jensen’s tale of a “boy of two worlds” is scenically pleasurable, while depending on simplistic cultural oppositions

 

Hammett (1982) – Wenders navigates fluidly within conventions and ambiguities, at once objectively distanced and seductively enmeshed

 

Profound Desires of the Gods (1968) – a compelling provocation, for all Imamura’s calculated drawing on primitivism and transgression

 

The 15:17 to Paris (2018) – Eastwood’s intriguingly experimental take on the material roots the heroism in extreme unadorned ordinariness

 

The Old Gun (1975) – Enrico discomfitingly steers from honorably anguished evocation of war to near exploitation-genre-type vengeance

 

Water (1985) – Clement’s cluttered colonial farce hits wanly at easy political targets, entirely ignoring the real tragedy of its premise

 

The Song of Home (1925) – Mizoguchi’s somewhat schematic and inevitably ragged early film already shows his deep feeling and individualism

 

Film Stars don’t die in Liverpool (2017) – McGuigan’s appealing but minor historical footnote lacks much sense of faded Hollywood glamour

 

Pravda (1970) – viewed at a time of brutally ascendant capitalism, the Vertov Group’s rather plaintive seriousness becomes reinvigorated

 

Fort Apache the Bronx (1981) – Petrie’s focus-shifting, episodically-ambitious cop drama ultimately lacks authorial strength and flavour

 

Days of Hate (1954) – Nilsson’s concise tale of an obsessed woman carries a pervasive oneiric quality, creating its own unsettling texture

 

Female Human Animal (2018) – Appignanesi constructs an absorbing, informatively provocative investigation, although not without missteps

 

Melodie en sous-sol (1963) – Verneuil’s unhurried handling & some nifty moves lift the caper mechanics, and then there’s also Delon & Gabin

 

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) – Robinson’s very patchy & unsatisfactory film does retain shards of eloquence & conceptual grandeur

 

Le maître-nageur (1979) – Trintignant’s weirdo satire is dotted with piercing moments, within an uncompromisingly whimsical overall scheme

 

Phantom Thread (2017) – Anderson thrillingly evokes a hermetic creative world, in all its nuanced glory and seeping underlying instability

 

Goupi mains rouges (1943) – Becker’s bustling story of familial conflicts, evidencing all his supple mastery with character and incident

 

Permanent Vacation (1980) – a lonely study, modest in scope and in resources, but satisfactorily equipped with emerging Jarmuschian attitude

 

Le secret (1974) – Enrico’s intriguingly enigmatic if not ultimately too illuminating drama, drawing deeply on charismatic star presence

 

22 July (2018) – Greengrass’ reverent recreation is as solid as expected, but tends toward over-conventionality in its tone and focus

 

La casa del angel (1957) – Nilsson’s atmospheric study of emerging sexuality, beautifully poised between innocence, repression and menace

 

Heathers (1988) – Lehmann’s multi-kind-of-iconic, black-as-death-and-then-some, parody-transcending comedy still surprises and impresses

 

Classe tous risques (1960) – Sautet puts across the packed narrative with the optimum meeting of pacey toughness and immersed sensitivity

 

Molly’s Game (2017) – Sorkin’s mannered skill verges by now on grating self-parody, generating a pointless, uninterestingly proficient film

 

Craig’s Wife (1936) – Arzner’s condensed drama of a woman’s unraveling, filled with precise observation and wide-reaching social implication

 

Cure (1997) – with quietly creeping mastery, Kurosawa extends his terrific genre premise into broader implication and destabilization

 

The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) – Alda and Schatzberg’s genteel calibrations and contrasts go down too soothingly to matter much now

 

Amour fou (2014) – Hausner transfixingly crafts a highly-poised, allusive reflection on freedom and its personal and societal ambiguities

 

Shadows (1959) – from the start, Cassavetes was the greatest & coolest of behavioral choreographers & investigators, also of shit disturbers

 

A Short Film about Love (1988) – a shivery prison of a film, but conceived and executed by Kieslowski with almost breathtaking exactitude

 

Charlie Bubbles (1968) – Finney’s one film as director is both formally striking and pensively authentic, if ultimately overly elusive

 

Roma (2018) – Cuaron’s grandly (almost disquietingly) well-achieved evocation, marked by shimmering observation and stunning set-pieces

 

Renaldo and Clara (1978) – Dylan wraps his Rolling Thunder tour record in wryly messy observation and wistfully eccentric playacting

 

Alexandria Again and Forever (1989) – Chahine’s full-blooded, politically charged outburst, overwhelmed by endless self-mythologizing

 

Cops (1922) – Keaton and Cline’s priceless short ranks among the most fluently and elegantly unbroken twenty minutes of comedy on film

 

120 battements par minute (2017) – Campillo’s essential, perfectly-calibrated memoir of Act Up - Paris is galvanizing and heartbreaking

 

The Late Show (1977) – the (forced) Carney/Tomlin teaming only partially elevates the prevailing ordinariness of Benton’s comedic film noir

 

Palermo Shooting (2008) – Wenders’ citing of Bergman & Antonioni only confirms his own film’s gimmicky, if proficiently explored, hollowness

 

Dementia (1955) – Parker’s sinisterly sleazy vision is a striking, if ultimately rather hollow assembly of troubled surfaces and notions

 

Senoritas (2013) – Rodriguez’s observation of a young woman balances intimacy & isolation, connectivity & anomie, revelation & unknowability

 

Kaleidoscope (1966) – Smight’s low-impact caper illustrates Beatty’s oddly recurring career-long affinity to flat, undemanding material

 

La balance (1982) – Swaim’s multi-faceted crime drama is skillful but not really genre-defying, rendering its stature rather mysterious

 

The Wrath of God (1972) – Nelson’s rambunctious movie is mostly notions and affectations, devoid of any Peckinpah-like coalescing spirit

 

A Fantastic Woman (2017) – a few grace notes aside, Lelio’s film draws its strength from sympathetic dignity rather than radicalism

 

The Flying Deuces (1939) – an enjoyably rickety Laurel and Hardy feature, with a peculiarly (ultimately nuttily) morbid underlying streak

 

The Voice of the Moon (1990) – Fellini’s last film doesn’t lack for characteristic flourishes, but seldom fully galvanizes or inspires

 

Bloodbrothers (1978) – Mulligan doesn’t seem ideally attuned to the boisterous material, although it’s dotted with searching moments

 

Patience (after Sebald) (2012) – Gee’s superbly-crafted essay film is at once dramatization, elucidation, extrapolation and pilgrimage

 

Little Peach (1958) – Naruse immerses himself deeply, often rawly, into the grind of marriage; as a woman’s choice, and as her subjugation

 

Finders Keepers (1984) – Lester’s breathless comedy is a relative marvel of pacing and organization, but one of pretty hollow consequence

 

Du rififi a Paname (1966) – given the raw elements (Gabin vs Raft!), de La Patelliere’s international crime mishmash is pretty underwhelming

 

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) – McDonagh’s largely grotesque contrivance should have been shunned more than lauded

 

Du cote d’Orouet (1971) – beneath its easy pleasures, Rozier’s understated film explores under-examined lives & the institution of leisure

 

Scrubbers (1982) – Zetterling’s raucously humane study of female confinement, with an almost Kubrickian attunement to visionary strangeness

 

La petite Lise (1930) – Gremillon’s drama is suffused in fatalistic brooding, with sequences of intense, almost disembodied physicality

 

Unsane (2018) – for all Soderbergh’s practiced intensity, the movie’s ultimate impact doesn’t much transcend that of standard fraught peril

 

Foxtrot (1976) – Ripstein’s sputtering tale of class-fueled desert island breakdown is underpowered both as drama and as wartime allegory

 

Southern Comfort (1981) – at the engaged peak of his terse powers, Hill elevates a nastily conceived narrative to near-classic status

 

Ten to sen (1958) – apparently based on classic detective material, but Kobayashi’s extremely perfunctory handling hardly brings that out

 

The Shape of Water (2017) – del Toro’s immaculately-textured film is no doubt an immediate classic, and yet a barely relevant trifle

 

The Girl with a Pistol (1968) – Monicelli’s rather messy Vitti-goes-to-Britain movie teems with time-capsule, culture-clash interest

 

The Coca-Cola Kid (1985) – Makavejev’s strangely suppressed film barely hits as satire, maybe all the better to evoke dark corporate gravity

 

The Scientific Cardplayer (1972) – an enjoyably inventive, bitterly class-conscious parable, despite Comencini’s constraints as a stylist

 

The Other Side of the Wind (2018) – a thrilling, teeming Welles reclamation, at once interrogatingly present and receding into unknowability

 

Lo squadron bianco (1936) – Genina’s crisp but memorably visualized drama of self-exile and redemption belongs in the canon of desert movies

 

Bad Timing (1980) – probably not Roeg’s most pleasurable film, but among his most fearlessly transgressive, destabilizing and accusatory

 

Man on the Roof (1976) – Widerberg grounds his memorable climactic set-piece in a well-stewed portrait of police force contrasts & tensions

 

Downsizing (2017) – Payne’s ambitious film has many incremental strengths, none of which mitigate against a dissipated overall impact

 

La tete contre les murs (1959) – with appalled restraint, Franju probes the disquietingly exploitable morality of mental hospitalization

 

Withnail & I (1987) – Robinson’s enduringly funny comedic memoir, anchored by the priceless Grant, shot through with existential panic

 

The Great Silence (1968) – Corbucci’s strikingly wintery western pitilessly depicts the extinction of all goodness under a twisted law

 

Red Sparrow (2018) – Lawrence maintains an impersonal & unmoving efficiency, obliviously punctuated with regular nastiness & exploitation

 

La califfa (1970) – Bevilacqua suffuses his film in jaggedly politicized provocations and oppositions, to rather unclear ultimate ends

 

In the Line of Fire (1993) – Petersen’s highly proficient, characterless thriller stands at the very top rank of third-tier Eastwood films

 

L’auberge rouge (1923) – Epstein is among the most ominously fascinated, and visually and psychologically engaging, of silent directors

 

Battle of the Sexes (2017) – King’s personal & political history might deserve a movie less suffused in Hollywoodian slickness & calculation

 

Der Fall (1972) – you’ll seldom see a detective film that suppresses genre swagger as thoroughly as does Bruh’s absorbingly morose study

 

Modern Problems (1981) – Shapiro’s laughlessly scattershot telekinesis-themed comedy is poorly conceived and even more wretchedly executed

 

Signori & signori (1966) – Germi’s high-energy farce traffics ruthlessly in chronic sexual compulsion & its surrounding societal hypocrisies

 

A Field in England (2013) – Wheatley’s strange and remarkable creation, earthily and unearthily celebratory while seeped in ominous stasis

 

The Lady of Musashino (1951) – Mizoguchi’s tenderly clear-eyed study of a refined tradition eroded by urbanization, by modern moralities

 

Harlequin (1980) – Wincer’s drama steadily descends into lofty supernatural grab-bag, with unconvincing political/allegorical seasoning

 

Cesar and Rosalie (1972) – …and David, as Sautet’s well-played love triangle takes on more structurally and emotionally radical undertones

 

Marjorie Prime (2017) – Almereyda’s superbly-crafted, implication-heavy exploration of the evolving malleability of identity and memory

 

The Plough and the Stars (1936) – a concentrated study in Ford’s ruefully sentimental, gratingly celebratory, helplessly tribal Irishness

 

On ne meurt que deux fois (1985) – Deray’s investigation has an off-kilter, iconic Rampling-charged appeal, when not seeming overly murky

 

California Split (1974) – on repeat viewings, Altman’s texturally absorbing gambling study feels defined primarily by its ultimate emptiness

 

Quand on a 17 ans (2016) – Techine’s fine study of turbulent teenage attraction, richly rooted in its environment, in behavioural mysteries

 

The Killing (1956) – Kubrick’s first great filmic enigma, layering exacting detail over pervasive (if not yet cosmic) existential absence

 

Car Cemetery (1983) – Arrabal’s punky/kinky post-apocalyptic fantasia feels as much constrained as inspired by its Biblical parallels

 

The Illustrated Man (1969) – Smight’s Bradbury adaptation is consistently portentous, unenjoyably acted, and aggressively meaningless

 

Un beau soleil interieur (2017) – yet another captivating Denis masterpiece, shimmering with structural and observational delicacies

 

Comes a Horseman (1978) – an unusual setting for Pakula, but its thematic links to his greatest works gradually come into satisfying focus

 

Les uns et les autres (1981) – as Lelouch’s epic, performance-heavy spectacle expands toward greatness, its core feels smaller and emptier

 

The Paleface (1922) – Keaton’s film fascinates as performance and even as existential mystery, even as it now offends in many other respects

 

Happy as Lazzarro (2018) – at once intensely observed and serenely imagined, Rohrwacher’s graceful vision is perhaps improbably persuasive

 

Freebie and the Bean (1974) – amid all the goofy excess, Rush’s more intimately off-kilter sensibility shows through pretty regularly

 

Theories des ensembles (1990) – a delightful mini-Marker, as simple as a bedtime story, yet deeply technologically & philosophically engaged

 

Dishonored (1931) – Sternberg’s sensationally atmospheric showcase for Dietrich, at her most seductively amused and reality-bending

 

Sleeping Sickness (2011) – Kohler’s fascinatingly measured observations encompass a bracing range of cultural and political complexity

 

Gypsy (1962) – an adequate record of potentially sensational material, only shallowly tapped by LeRoy, and with imperfect lead casting

 

Mille milliards de dollars (1982) – Verneuil’s investigation of malign corporate power remains relevant, despite its suboptimal execution

 

Hustle (1975) – Aldrich’s stark, rather incompletely-realized drama is a melancholy channeling of its period’s confusions & contradictions

 

9 doigts (2017) – Ossang’s punkish spinning of myth and genre sustains a handsomely intense artificiality, but never really galvanizes

 

The Reckless Moment (1949) – Ophuls’ fascinating incursion of noir-ish menace into superficially perfect (but confining) domesticity

 

La belle noiseuse (1991) – Rivette’s film about a painting yields some of his most exquisitely realized ambiguities and complexities

 

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) – Pollack’s film always feels a little too removed from the fatigue & stench & ultimate hopelessness

 

Francofonia (2015) – Sokurov’s heavily-executed blend of recreation, history and reflection informs, but only intermittently stimulates

 

Saint Jack (1979) – one of Bogdanovich’s best films, navigated with understated skill, and great facility with character and atmosphere

 

Un coeur en hiver (1989) – Sautet’s study of emotional distance is exquisitely calibrated, but ranks below his more connective work

 

Sons of the Desert (1933) – prime Laurel & Hardy, the spousal dynamic adding a deliriously weird subtext to their eternal codependency

 

The Land of Steady Habits (2018) – probably Holofcener’s flattest & least resonant work, albeit that might kind of be its sociological point

 

Edouard et Caroline (1951) – Becker’s beautiful little relationship study, marked by the most delicate visual and emotional calibration

 

Micki & Maude (1984) – a comedy from just past the end of Edwards’ great period, always enjoyably proficient but only sporadically inspired

 

The Stranger within a Woman (1966) – Naruse, at his engrossing bleakest, introduces an extreme rupture into a familiar domestic structure

 

Outside In (2017) – as in much of Shelton’s work, the carefully sensitive observation ultimately yields a limited lasting consequence

 

Dorian Gray (1970) – interesting less for the narrative updating than for Dallamano’s committed channeling of period style and decadence

 

Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore (1996) – Jacobson’s likeably rough-edged film infuses lurking darkness into sex-positive collegiality

 

Six et demi onze (1927) – Epstein’s doomed romance is structurally & visually fascinating, regarding photography both as marvel & threat

 

Black Panther (2018) –  Coogler’s cinematic exuberance and sharply-honed contemporary instincts largely surmount the conventional aspects

 

Anna (1967) – Koralnik’s love letter to Karina is a rather dreamily eccentric treat, a closer relative to long-form music video than to Demy

 

Sea of Love (1989) – Becker’s serial killer drama is hardly memorable as narrative, but has pretty strong writerly and actorly texture

 

El sopar (1974) – Portabella’s alert witnessing of lives forged by resistance, allowing neither easy articulation nor clear arrival point

 

Call me by your Name (2017) – Guadagnino’s aspirational vision of love and pain is aesthetically impressive, if more as statue than flesh

 

Le dos au mur (1958) – Molinaro’s neatly-plotted adultery and blackmail drama maintains interest despite its overly passionless execution

 

Mr. Jealousy (1997) – Baumbach’s identity-in-formation early work is too artificially & repressively conceived, but goes down easily enough

 

Three Daughters (1961) – Ray’s rather unwieldy trilogy: two sensitively rendered if limited vignettes bracketing an unremarkable ghost story

 

The Stairs (2016) – Gibson’s study of middle-aged addiction in Toronto is a humane act of witness-bearing, devoid of false certainties

 

Madame Rosa (1977) – Mizrahi’s film is certainly more morally provocative and unsentimental than it sounds in outline, if calculatingly so

 

Willie and Phil (1980) – Mazursky’s over-affable take-off on Jules et Jim extends tolerant pleasantness to the point of near-affectlessness

 

Un nomme La Rocca (1961) – Becker and Belmondo allow the rather perplexingly shifting narrative a quasi-Melvillian stylistic coherence

 

All the Money in the World (2017) – Scott’s monotonous charting of easy oppositions is as handsome and under-invested as all his late work

 

La spiaggia (1954) – Lattuada’s summer resort melodrama becomes increasingly sharp in its social criticism, embodied in a distinctive ending

 

Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990) – Mekas’ deeply-lived personal memorial doesn’t deny the viewer a propulsive voyeuristic thrill

 

Jacob the Liar (1974) – Beyer’s triflingly empathetic fable offers trite foreground interest at the cost of an obscured ultimate horror

 

Hello Destroyer (2016) – Funk’s sad character study is also a persuasive indictment of a rampant hypocrisy at the heart of Canadian culture

 

An American Romance (1944) – Vidor’s grand hymn to exceptionalism eschews subtlety in favour of surrender-inducing physicality & incident

 

Beau pere (1981) – Blier’s transgressive love story stays on the right side of complete ickiness, with Dewaere an empathetic focal point

 

Jack of Diamonds (1967) – Taylor’s slick caper delivers strictly generic distractions, notwithstanding its unctuously-treated “guest stars”

 

Madame Hyde (2017) – Bozon puts the worn-out concept to surprisingly stimulating use, as a renewal of personal and pedagogic communication

 

The Medusa Touch (1978) – Gold’s smart handling of the melodrama allows the film an improbable degree of grounded, widely-indicting power

 

L’Anglaise et le duc (2001) – a fine extension of Rohmer’s oeuvre, stimulating both as naturalistic recreation and historical interrogation

 

Libeled Lady (1936) – Conway’s pacey screwball comedy is a confident delight, if a bit more mechanical and skin-deep than the genre’s highs

 

Boro in the Box (2011) – Mandico’s deliciously iconoclastic short film pays Borowczyk the most liberated yet loving tribute imaginable

 

The Jokers (1967) – Winner’s appealingly-conceived, happily thrown-together caper is certainly more fun than his later wearisome cinema

 

The Last Metro (1980) – Truffaut’s film is consistently and eventfully engaging, at the cost of greater historical bite or evocative power

 

Piranha (1978) – Dante’s early mayhem-fest is zippily written and zestily executed, with nicely judged infusions of political resonance

 

Voyage a travers le cinema francais (2016) – completely irresistible of course, curated by Tavernier with delightful, frank individuality

 

Lured (1947) – Sirk’s enjoyably busy, focus-shifting thriller, enlivened by its steady critique of woman as societal bait and decoration

 

Orson Welles: One Man Band (1995) – Silovic’s mesmerizing assembly properly celebrates Welles’ restless, often joyous creative radicalism

 

Midnight Lace (1960) – Miller’s suspense film has an enjoyably Hitchcockian surface & structure, less so the underlying acuity & intensity

 

Blind Massage (2014) – Lou’s informative, often-surprising portrait of an alternative community spans sensitivity, sensuality and turbulence

 

Funny Lady (1975) – leaving aside a few tunes and the easy nostalgia, Ross turns in a mostly dreary, going-through-the-motions sequel

 

Quelques jours avec moi (1988) – Sautet steers his eccentric narrative toward a quirkily engaging emphasis on connection and acceptance

 

County Hospital (1932) – if only for the “hard-boiled eggs and nuts,” a solid core element of the indelible Laurel and Hardy mythology

 

Mother! (2017) – Aronofsky’s tritely magnificent expression of monstrous creativity works best when in blackly satiric, discomfiting mode

 

Le Marie du port (1950) – Carne’s polished attentiveness to messy motivations and behaviour elevates an otherwise minor if eventful romance

 

Bad Lieutenant (1992) – Ferrara and Keitel’s absolute tour de force in absurd revelation, confounding one’s rational judgment and taste

 

Up to his Ears (1965) – despite de Broca’s ravishing set-pieces and backdrops, the film’s thematic weightlessness tips into insipidity

 

Werewolf (2016) – McKenzie’s hauntingly close, sparse study of addiction both as deprivation and as near-wondrous, if doomed, fulfilment

 

Nea (1976) – Kaplan’s lively “young Emmanuelle” story acts out the classic ambiguities of female-desire centric, female-directed cinema

 

Street of No Return (1989) – Fuller’s displaced but largely effective last film lands some old-style punches, under an often peculiar gloss

 

Aerograd (1935) – Dovzhenko fulfils propagandistic stipulations while (more interestingly) crafting a darkly intimate cultural study

 

I, Tonya (2017) – Gillespie’s tiresomely over-active movie is at best ineffectual & anthropologically shallow, at its worst barely tolerable

 

I fidanzati (1963) – notable for Olmi’s distinctive placement of romantic realization within almost peerless social & industrial observation

 

The Music of Chance (1993) – Haas is well attuned to the mysterious alternative-paradigm sort-of-coherence of the Austerian tone and method

 

L’invitation (1973) – Goretta skillfully crafts the characters and group dynamics, but the film seldom feels notably challenging or profound

 

For the Plasma (2014) – Bingham/Molzam craft a sparsely alluring, if surely under-developed, negotiation between specificity & transcendence

 

Ajatrik (1958) – Ghatak invests his episodic tale of a poor-man-and-his-car with consistently raw, widely observant emotion and power

 

Fever Pitch (1985) – Brooks’ disparaged drama provides strong doses of troubled observation & reportorial snap, its narrative excesses aside

 

Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) – Matsumoto’s transgender-centered drama ranges from the representationally striking to the trite and lurid

 

Lady Bird (2017) – Gerwig’s debut exhibits wonderful deftness, counterpointed by a warm, wise feeling for frustrations and anxieties

 

The Deadly Trap (1971) – Clement’s faltering grafting of Gaslight-type anxiety narrative onto vague mass-conspiracy drama, or vice versa

 

Nighthawks (1981) – Malmuth’s New York terrorism drama does OK for pacy spectacle but lacks much context (especially in post 9/11 hindsight)

 

Paradis perdu (1940) – Gance’s multi-generational story of love and loss is well-told on its own too-often tritely sentimental terms

 

Miss Sloane (2016) – Madden’s tiresome lobbyist drama feels as overly polished and inauthentically calculating as its political targets

 

Le tigre aime la chair fraiche (1964) – Chabrol handles the shenanigans with some style and deadpan wit, although to inherently limited ends

 

Repo Man (1984) – Cox’s classic mash-up retains a weirdly indelible stylistic and attitudinal coherence, even as the fun rapidly wears thin

 

Un borghese piccolo piccolo (1977) – Monicelli slyly takes a seeming “average man” satire in a rather startlingly subversive direction

 

Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) – Gilroy’s diverting character study is impressively thoughtful, but narratively rather over-extended

 

A Girl in Every Port (1928) – a prototypically Hawksian dynamic makes for solid formative viewing, spiced & strangified by the iconic Brooks

 

The Double Life of Veronique (1991) – Kieslowski’s existential mystery, both propelled & (of course) restricted by its alluring calibrations

 

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) – a largely bland caper, absent Jewison’s meshing of relentless materialism with stylistic over-consumption

 

Neighboring Sounds (2012) – Filho’s geographically-specific life study is masterfully constructed, vibrantly observed, sociologically rich

 

Crazy Mama (1975) – Demme’s good humour and flair with wacky group dynamics can only do so much to elevate the thin, constrained material

 

Maine Ocean (1986) – Rozier’s unbound narrative encompasses everything from communal goofiness to virtually end-of-the-world-type solitude

 

You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) – Lanfield’s Astaire-Hayworth match-up goes too light on song and dance, too heavy on turgid complications

 

The Strange Little Cat (2013) – with composed idiosyncrasy, Zurcher charts the mundanity, mystery and latent horror of family interactions

 

The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) – the peculiar blend of whimsy and commentary only fitfully flourishes under Forbes’ overwhelmed direction

 

Cache (2005) – Haneke’s brilliantly articulated film carries an immense implicative scope, leaving almost no points of certainty or comfort

 

The Main Event (1979) – any potential for a nicely crackling face-off is squandered by substantial lack of punch, in all departments

 

Pieta (2012) – for all the film’s superficial diversions, Kim’s concepts and instincts seem mostly grotesque, contorted and deadening

 

The Fixer Uppers (1935) – an adequate but somewhat peculiarly-conceived Laurel and Hardy short, rather limiting their classic interplay

 

Garcon! (1983) – a relatively minor Sautet work, yet an utterly pleasurable, marvelously orchestrated anecdote of compromise and renewal

 

Coogan’s Bluff (1968) – Siegel’s mastery of space, attitude and pacing elevates the (now unfavourably dated) narrative’s easy oppositions

 

The Bridges of Sarajevo (2014) – a largely successful, if overly dutiful-feeling anthology, satisfyingly varied in style and perspective

 

The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) – Johnson’s high-concept premise is offset by a vulnerable human core, to moderately diverting effect

 

Husbands and Lovers (1991) – Bolognini’s overly prettified tale of agonized polyamory is far better at exposing bodies than emotional truth

 

The Disaster Artist (2017) – Franco’s watchably breezy but unimportant quasi-tribute feels more like a borrowed ride than an actual one

 

La nuit de carrefour (1932) – Renoir’s early crime drama, fascinatingly rooted in the sensual and behavioural textures of shadowy lives

 

Looker (1981) – Crichton’s forward-looking thriller doesn’t lack for interesting concepts, nor sadly for uninteresting narrative & character

 

Sudden Rain (1956) – Naruse’s small-scale drama subtly charts perhaps-irresolvable familial and communal anxieties and discontentments

 

Keanu (2016) – enjoyable but thematically blunted Key and Peele romp has future Oscar-winning screenwriter all over it (uh, not really…)

 

Vice and Virtue (1963) – Vadim’s rather grotesque visual and narrative concepts do little to illuminate the morality of war, or of anything

 

Eureka (1983) – Roeg’s strange, mythically-infused tale of intertwined discovery and loss is as productively challenging as any of his works

 

Le parfum de la dame en noir (1931) – L’Herbier dispatches the somewhat creaky narrative with some panache, if minimal broader implication

 

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – despite any number of impressive & thoughtful concepts, Villeneuve’s film is more trudge than transporting vision

 

The Arrival of Joachim Stiller (1976) – Kumel’s winding tale of faith and influence is distinctly eccentric, but very shrewd and winning

 

Wolfen (1981) – Wadleigh’s genre picture generally feels rather distant and underinvolving, despite various points of broader resonance

 

Manon 70 (1968) – Aurel’s film provides rather too much easy enjoyment & prettiness to fully impress as an investigation of moral relativity

 

Their Finest (2016) – Scherfig’s quite stirring film articulately explores cinematic compromises while (unironically?) capitulating to them

 

A Woman’s Face (1938) – Molander’s enjoyable melodrama never transcends absurdity, skipping along on easy transitions and contrasts

 

Slaves of New York (1989) – the movie has its pleasures, but Ivory never feels sufficiently close to the milieu or its anxieties & attitudes

 

The Lion Hunters (1966) – Rouch’s hypnotically rich chronicle of the hunt, as respectful of its layered myths as of its meticulous realities

 

Detroit (2017) – Bigelow applies her visceral organizational skills to still-incendiary material, evoking a deep and righteous anger

 

Malj (1977) – Ilic’s ominously-styled short film is certainly one of the more singular expressions of survival and escape in cinema history

 

The Morning After (1986) – one of Lumet’s more low-impact dramas, embodying a missed opportunity to engage with Fonda’s shifting star image

 

Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (1964) – Godard’s closing segment subtly indicts the mostly undemanding pleasures that precede it

 

The Lost City of Z (2016) – Gray’s historical drama, rich with old-fashioned pioneering grandeur, feels at once unresolved and inevitable

 

Le rideau cramoisi (1953) – Astruc’s seductively enigmatic short story of desire would be the blackest of comedies, if pitched differently

 

Heist (2001) – it’s narratively clever of course, but also chilly and mechanical, suffused in Mamet’s writerly affectations and maneuvers

 

The Third Lover (1962) – a modest but effective study of envy and malign intervention, perfectly suited to Chabrol’s fascinated scrutiny

 

Dunkirk (2017) – Nolan’s formally impressive, immersive recreation transcends genre norms in many ways, remains limited by them in others

 

Imperative (1982) – Zanussi’s honorable but forced philosophical investigation ultimately just about overcomes its rather arid gravity

 

The Blot (1921) – Weber’s silent landmark remains immensely empathetic and intimately moving, shimmering with intertwined complexities

 

Things to Come (2016) – an absorbing, probing tapestry of life adjustments & passages, luminously woven by Hansen-Love & embodied by Huppert

 

Big Bad Mama (1974) – Carver’s loosely-driven period piece is brashly engaging, even if its main commitment is to redneck-brand titillation

 

Docteur Chance (1997) – Ossang’s road movie is a strangely beautiful artifice, placing doomed, pouting momentum over conventional coherence

 

Brief Ecstasy (1937) – Greville’s alert handling of stodgy melodrama, not least the (unresolved) emphasis on female intellectual fulfilment

 

In the Fade (2017) – Akin’s drama is mostly schematic & sensationalistic, relying heavily for any sense of coherence on Kruger’s conviction

 

The Drowning Pool (1975) – Rosenberg’s polished but no-big-deal detective flick almost seems weightily reflective by latter-day standards

 

Invitation au voyage (1982) – when not feeling forced, Del Monte’s transgressive pop-inflected odyssey sustains a darkly romantic charge

 

Bedtime Story (1964) – Levy’s confidently-motoring, savvily twisting artificiality, with Niven and Brando an abstractly empathetic tag team

 

The Unknown Girl (2016) – the Dardennes’ spartan but hauntingly acute investigation of the nature and toll of responsibility and redemption

 

Night Call Nurses (1972) – Kaplan’s lively exploitation picture actually is almost as preoccupied with trauma & activism as with titillation

 

Mahjong (1996) – Yang’s film teems with incident and stringent moral implication, but doesn’t cohere as pleasingly as his greatest works

 

The Fly (1958) – Neumann’s straight-faced absurdity benefits from its visual and vague thematic kinship to the period’s domestic melodramas

 

Happy End (2017) – Haneke’s utterly enveloping study of multi-faceted destabilization; of intertwining literal and figurative death wishes

 

The Toolbox Murders (1978) – Donnelly gets the highlights, if that’s what they are, out of the way early; the rest is mostly a blank

 

Veronika Voss (1982) – Fassbinder positions his Sunset Boulevard-like narrative as a window on cold-hearted cultural & historical transition

 

King & Country (1964) – Losey’s concentrated case study of wartime inhumanity is potently visualized, but narrow in its scope and impact

 

The Dreamed Path (2016) – a bit less satisfying than Schanelec’s previous work, despite its impeccable precision and alluring layerings

 

Show People (1928) – an early example of Hollywood’s self-absorption, conveyed by Vidor in his lightest, most happily celebratory vein

 

Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995) – Sautet’s fine body of work ends on a delicately woven, immaculately restrained study of life transitions

 

The Eiger Sanction (1975) – Eastwood delivers on the material’s scenic potential, and doesn’t seem to aim to fire anything else out of it

 

Logan Lucky (2017) – Soderbergh’s well-made caper comedy doesn’t amount to much, despite its bedrock of cultural sympathy and attentiveness

 

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969) – Oshima’s astounding exercise in narrative rebellion, powered by a kind of aggressive semi-callowness

 

Labyrinth (1986) – Henson’s fantasy never cooks up much magic, but has the occasional striking element, and Bowie! (sure, not prime Bowie)

 

Lac aux dames (1934) – Allegret’s pleasant film delivers varied incident and (surprising) titillation more surely than emotional depth

 

Southside with You (2016) – Tanne doesn’t tap Linklater-type enchantment, but any Obama mythology/nostalgic longing is pretty irresistible

 

The Empty Canvas (1963) – Damiani’s tale of obsession and frustration provides plenty of interest, despite its overall aesthetic modesty

 

Stealing Beauty (1996) – Bertolucci’s Tuscan contrivance skirts insipidity, and yet his sensuous cinematic observation remains remarkable

 

La fievre monte a El Pao (1959) – Bunuel’s socially-conscious, somberly-rendered drama, underlain by moral compromise & twisted desire

 

Beatriz at Dinner (2017) – Arteta’s largely well-played if unsurprising clash of worldviews isn’t exactly a beacon of hope for progressives

 

The Woman in Blue (1973) – Deville ultimately steers an initially flimsy-seeming enigma into more intriguing, pensively reflective territory

 

The Hand (1981) – Stone does pretty well at giving events a fraught, varied texture (kinda like JFK!), but the upside is inherently limited

 

La pyramide humaine (1961) – Rouch’s fascinating , forgivably earnest meeting of cultures is both cinematic experiment & idealistic reverie

 

Gimme Danger (2016) – Jarmusch’s Stooges documentary is an archival delight, contemplative for all its (never dangerous) visual energy

 

Farewell to Spring (1959) – for all its empathetic care, Kinoshita’s study of maturing friendship in wrenching times seldom pierces deeply

 

Crossroads (1986) – the dubiously-conceived myth-inflected narrative reduces Hill to ambling triviality; the music is the main compensation

 

The Girls (1968) – Zetterling’s innovatively provocative clash of art and life interrogates just about every stale assumption about women

 

Fahrenheit 451 (2018) – Bahrani’s insufficiently-reflective, repetitively-pounding filming feels like a missed opportunity in every respect

 

From the Clouds to the Resistance (1979) – Straub/Huillet challengingly interrogate the persistence of humanity’s violent submission to myth

 

Mascara (1987) – Conrad’s myth-stained melodrama feels forged in committed inside-out queerness, however oddly framed, located and expressed

 

The Eagle with Two Heads (1948) – Cocteau’s grandly singular structure of political and regal intrigue, rendering twisted tragedy as triumph

 

The Comedian (2016) – in no way a Pupkin-update (if only!) but still a relative triumph for De Niro, if one of easy effects and pleasures

 

Le Tigre se parfume a la dynamite (1965) – raggedly-plotted espionage stuff, so loosely controlled by Chabrol as to seem mildly subversive

 

Personal Best (1982) – Towne’s sports film remains a stimulatingly problematic text in representing female physicality and fluid desire

 

Numero zero (1971) – Eustache’s respectful record of his grandmother’s life testimony, a pure channeling of weary, turbulent experience

 

Brad’s Status (2017) – White’s preoccupied character study never transcends “first world problems”-type introspection and self-readjustment

 

L’oro di Roma (1961) – Lizzani’s piercing but constrained drama doesn’t quite rank among the cinema of occupation’s most lasting works

 

Lulu on the Bridge (1997) – for all its clunky peculiarities, Auster’s film intrigues for its sense of elemental investigation and pleasure

 

Party Girl (1958) – Ray’s rather bumpy melodrama is most compelling for its central sense of worn-out decency, under siege by empty swagger

 

La soledad (2016) – Armand’s film hardly lacks for haunted, bewildered impact, even as he pushes too hard to encompass Venezuela’s tragedy

 

The Man who Knew too Much (1934) – Hitchcock’s effective thriller, pushing throughout toward greater future depth & psychological complexity

 

Grandeur et decadence… (1986) – Godard treads fairly lightly & affectionately through times of change, rendering you poignantly stimulated

 

The Domino Principle (1977) – Kramer’s serviceable assassination thriller falters at delivering much on its apparent grander ambitions

 

Ismael’s Ghosts (2017) – Desplechin may be dancing on the spot, but the choreography and rhythms remain uniquely beguiling and stimulating

 

The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969) – Lerner’s quite compelling opening out of Shaffer’s fascinating sun-drenched, humanity-stained quest

 

Fado majeur et mineur (1994) – a grave yet playfully confounding fragment from Ruiz’s bottomless cinema of echoes, layers and dreams

 

Telefon (1977) – an effective thriller for Siegel’s assured tone and pacing and the anxious subtext, although with muted ultimate impact

 

Victoria (2016) – Triet’s end-of-her-tether comedy seems to aspire to a wilder, more tempestuous tone than its cutes and clutter allow

 

The Seventh Victim (1943) – Lewton and Robson’s quietly threat-laden devil worshipper drama leaves a complexly troubled aftertaste

 

Un mauvais fils (1980) – an astutely-measured, searching study of incremental renewal, a peak illustration of Sautet’s more intimate mode

 

The Choirboys (1977) – the material should surely sing of a messed-up America more scabrously and roughly than it does in Aldrich’s hands

 

Orly (2010) – Schanelec sets out pleasingly innovative routes into the well-established existential possibilities of airport departures

 

Topaz (1969) – Hitchcock’s late film at times seems stolid and artificial, at other times almost experimental in its shifts and abstractions

 

A Confucian Confusion (1994) – Yang’s sharply genial study of a society where economic growth outpaces the emotional and intellectual kind

 

Hardcore (1979) – a strong, inherently diverting film, but for Schrader, something of a missed moral, sociological and stylistic opportunity

 

La loi de la jungle (2016) – Peretjatko’s satire of unprincipled development is mostly a goofy slog, with little real bite or panache

 

The Man in the White Suit (1951) – Mackendrick’s smart, sure-footed comedy, cleverly foreseeing the looming fragility of industrial society

 

Eaux profondes (1981) – Deville’s Highsmith adaptation falls a bit short overall, despite striking stylistic, tonal and structural moves

 

Pass Over (2018) – Lee’s exemplary filming of vivid theatrical material, a Godot-like expression of America’s complex culture of oppression

 

Les nouveaux messieurs (1929) – Feyder’s silent drama stirringly contrasts the promise of the left & the practiced persistence of the right

 

Blue Black Permanent (1992) – Tait’s wonderfully measured, alert conversation between generations, and reflection on seeing and recording

 

Anima nera (1962) – Rossellini ruthlessly deconstructs the stereotype of male irresponsibility, stripping it down to its outmaneuvered core

 

I Called Him Morgan (2016) – Collin makes unusually effective use of archival materials, crafting a haunting memoir of thwarted artistry

 

Ugetsu (1953) – Mizoguchi’s chillingly beautiful tale of earthly tumult & fracture that lets in the ghosts of temptation, & those of comfort

 

HealtH (1980) – Altman’s thinly allegorical satire is enjoyable enough, but rather too defined by the transient hollowness it observes

 

A Woman’s Decision (1975) – Zanussi’s study is one of his looser works, but deeply attuned to existential anxieties and social heaviness

 

Wonder Wheel (2017) – one of Allen’s more sustained late works shifts effectively from easeful period evocation into stark, pitiless tragedy

 

The Walls of Malapaga (1949) – Clement’s doomed romance endures for its immersion in time and place, despite its familiarly fatalistic core

 

Surrender (1987) – Belson’s lazily-handled comedy of intertwined emotional and economic anxiety never works up much pace or punch

 

La punition (1962) – Rouch’s captivating (seemingly Varda-inflected?) meditation on the freedom and limitation of exploration and encounter

 

Lady Macbeth (2016) – Oldroyd’s chilling drama: superbly sparse and confined, yet infused with an ambiguous air of broader societal shifting

 

Les amis (1971) – Blain’s calmly radical treatment of potentially transgressive material, carefully evasive and indirect, never merely coy

 

Tequila Sunrise (1988) – Towne’s film is an able study in structure, mood and light, until plot mechanics ultimately triumph over all else

 

A double tour (1959) – Chabrol extracts just about every tortured, loathing nuance possible from the ultimately somewhat thin material

 

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) – Reeves’ is an impressively conceived and sustained vision, if seldom very conceptually stimulating

 

Immortal Love (1961) – Kinoshita’s eventful drama of relentless familial pain is rather too dutiful & restrained to penetrate as it intends

 

Star 80 (1983) – Fosse’s filmography ends in flashy disappointment, extracting little of substance from its unpleasant case history 

 

The Tenant (1976) – Polanski’s effective if rather over-elaborated tale of paranoia, at its best when evoking anxiety and persecution

 

A United Kingdom (2016) – Asante’s welcome excavation of a significant historical episode feels a little more stifled than necessary

 

Zouzou (1934) – Allegret’s atmospherically bustling, often saucy rags-to-riches tale provides an effective showcase for Josephine Baker

 

Things Change (1988) – a pleasant, well-played trifle, but Mamet’s affinity for such pervasively genre-limited cinema is hard to figure out

 

Bande a part (1964) – Godard’s legendary film pulsates with the allure of losing oneself in an invented moment, and with its sadness

 

The Trip to Spain (2017) – a get-together as ingratiatingly familiar by now as any mainstream franchise, but funny and seductive throughout

 

T. R. Baskin (1971) – a film of modest virtues, since contemporary dehumanization and personal enigma aren’t Ross’s most natural territory

 

The Nights of Zayandeh-Rood (1990) – wrecked by censorship, Makhmalbef’s family chronicle speaks tremulously to the trauma of revolution

 

The Devil is a Woman (1935) – von Sternberg/Dietrich’s rather coldly capricious last film lacks the overwhelming allure of its predecessors

 

A Decent Woman (2016) – Rinner’s well-crafted showdown of nudists and materialists is too straightforward to really stir or challenge

 

The Rowdyman (1972) – Carter/Pinsent’s film chugs along rather too easily to achieve lasting impact, other than as a marker of time & place

 

Histoires d’Amerique (1988) – Akerman’s mesh of jokes & testimony is both celebratory & eerie, mirroring the fraught Jewish-American odyssey

 

Cactus Flower (1969) – the familiarly-honed material neither stings nor blossoms cinematically, but Saks navigates it pleasantly enough

 

Bird People (2014) – Ferran extends the weary metaphorical possibilities of airports to wondrously extreme, persuasively unfettered heights

 

The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go (1970) – Meredith’s jumbled, pseudo-idealistic action-comedy, suffused in dopiness and antiquated attitudes

 

Sankofa (1993) – Gerima’s always strikingly-conceived, often astounding expression of reborn communion with past culture and injustice

 

Isle of the Dead (1945) – a modest narrative, but suffused with Lewton’s remarkable shadow-infused play of preoccupation and fragility

 

The Handmaiden (2016) – likely Park’s best film, if only for obscuring his hermetic limitations with sheer narrative & visual sumptuousness

 

Mandingo (1975) – Fleischer’s terrifyingly well-realized exploration of slave-owning America’s moral and psychological wretchedness

 

The Supplement (2002) – Zanussi’s interesting exercise in fleshing out the bones of an earlier film, rather labored on its own terms though

 

Single Room Furnished (1968) – Mansfield is strikingly plaintive in her last film, which Cimber generally handles with a decent touch

 

The Square (2017) – Ostlund’s sleek, assured exhibit of a film, an impressively multi-pronged exploration of art-world ethics & absurdities

 

Blue Collar (1978) – Schrader’s powerful debut remains a key film of its period about labour, race, power and their complex interaction

 

The Case is Closed (1982) – with understated power and empathy, Sen dissects the bottomless inequalities and injustices of Indian society

 

The Narrow Margin (1952) – Fleischer’s terse and tight thriller is great viewing, but ranks below film noir’s thematic and sensual peaks

 

Queen of Katwe (2016) – Nair delivers the expected tale of colourful odds-beating assertion, with an (equally expected) absence of much else

 

Being Two isn’t Easy (1962) – Ichikawa’s eyes-of-a-child slice-of-life drama is at best trifling, and frequently tedious and/or insipid

 

9 to 5 (1980) – Higgins’ easy-to-take comedy can be seen now as unnecessarily and counterproductively rigged, and only half-woke at best

 

The French Way (1945) – De Baroncelli’s low-energy farce makes poor use of Josephine Baker, largely pushed to the narrative’s bland margins

 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) – Lanthimos’ imposing if knowingly alienating exercise in ominous, mythologically-informed displacement

 

Slap the Monster on Page One (1972) – Bellocchio’s dark study of establishment hypocrisy remains potent, for all the territory’s familiarity

 

Iceman (1984) – notwithstanding its Sorkin-ish science chatter, Schepisi’s drama just gets increasingly silly, contrived and clumsy

 

Les enfants terribles (1950) – a mesmerizing, disruptive amalgam of Cocteau’s poetic extremity & Melville’s skeptical, unsparing observation

 

I, Daniel Blake (2016) – near-vanishing-point Loach, the weight of injustice reducing a quietly worthy man to a dying assertion of identity

 

The Structure of Crystal (1969) – Zanussi’s understated reflection on relative freedoms, a very subtle posing of the personal as political

 

Lookin’ to Get Out (1982) – the movie sustains a superficial, raucous energy, but it all matters far less than Ashby’s enduring earlier work

 

Torso (1973) – the impact of Martino’s lascivious, committed fluidity is rather limited by the film’s thematically sparse narrative

 

The Florida Project (2017) – Baker’s sociologically, morally & stylistically rich study walks an immaculate line between cute & troubling

 

L’argent (1928) – L’Herbier’s milestone silent drama, epically grappling with the unequal power and morality of man and financial markets

 

Rough Cut (1980) – a passable caper, but would be low-energy, textureless stuff from anyone, let alone a film notionally signed by Siegel

 

Jaguar (1968) – Rouch’s dizzyingly stimulating country-to-city African odyssey throbs with incident and underlying social implication

 

Paterson (2016) – Jarmusch’s masterful observation of inner lives, an implicit rebuke to the prevailing brainlessness of dominant culture

 

The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) – Olmi’s moving chronicle of peasant life, encompassing generous humanism and quiet political indictment

 

Dreamscape (1984) – Ruben’s thriller falls short of Pakula on one hand and Ken Russell on the other, but is good, lightly-implicating fun

 

The Silence (1963) – Bergman’s highly arresting study of conflict and flight is one of his most sensuous, implication-laden enigmas

 

Girls Trip (2017) – Lee’s energetic movie doesn’t flag, but the narrative & moral trajectory & sexual frankness are predictably calibrated

 

It (1927) – Bow still radiates - if not all of “it” - at least a big piece of it, showcased by Badger’s admiring, fleet-footed narrative

 

Dog Day (1984) – Boisset’s injection of the iconic Marvin into a raucously bawdy French rustic context shambolically fails to come off

 

Justine (1969) – Cukor’s formally impressive but distant film feels too inertly classical to tap the material’s rich potential complexities

 

Antiporno (2016) – Sono at once creates candy-porn, jerks off to it and blows it up, in formally impressive if ideologically suspect style

 

The Klansman (1974) – Young’s film stimulates for its wretched sociological background, more than for its ploddingly ugly foreground drama

 

Une etrange affaire (1981) – Granier-Deferre’s elegant, mysterious but precise fable of charismatic leadership and its reality-bending orbit

 

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) – an enjoyably fast-paced if never biting comedy, a fluent adjunct to Ford’s primary cinematic achievement

 

Mountains may Depart (2015) – Jia’s limitlessly fascinating straddling of experiences, of personal and societal shifts and displacements

 

Time after Time (1979) – Meyer’s high-concept film appeals most for its pleasant incongruities, before fraught plot mechanics take over

 

Purple Butterfly (2003) – Lou’s historical reverie/thriller is frequently dreamily enveloping, at other times rather murkily disorienting

 

The Queen’s Guards (1961) – a pageantry-seeped military memoir, with Powell fitfully engaged by its more skeptical and anguished elements

 

Cezanne et moi (2016) – for better & worse, Thompson scenically observes her epochal protagonists more than she stylistically channels them

 

Cisco Pike (1972) – Norton’s loose-limbed drug-dealer drama, a great little time capsule of in-the-moment presences and interactions

 

Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1987) – Rosi’s only superficially engaging adaptation is heavy with over-deliberation and over-prettification

 

Battling Butler (1926) – a pleasant but relatively subdued Keaton comedy, not equaling the cinematic and physical grace of his best works

 

Roxanne Roxanne (2017) – Larnell’s intuitively-shaped, empathetic chronicle, emphasizing Shante’s perseverance against chronic male weakness

 

Porte des lilas (1957) – Clair’s late film feels like a settling for less, but finds some darker veins within its small-scale observation

 

The First Deadly Sin (1980) – Hutton handles the weary procedural aspect solidly enough, but flails at the apparent broader intentions

 

Mother Kusters goes to Heaven (1975) – Fassbinder’s stylistically restrained but utterly fascinating exercise in frustration and venality

 

Norman (2016) – Cedar’s nimble film, at its best in exploring the textures of connection, ultimately leaves a softer impact than one hopes

 

Amore et rabbia (1969) – five varied provocations, most notably Bertolucci’s possessed performance art and Godard’s interrogative beauty

 

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) – Murakami delivers some colorfully goofy visions of community, stranded among much anonymous space padding

 

La beaute du diable (1950) – Clair’s fine treatment of Faust, propelled throughout by exquisite narrative fluidity and directorial elegance

 

Last Flag Flying (2017) – Linklater’s knowingly old-fashioned Vietnam reunion odyssey sinks easefully into contradictory American attitudes

 

Petit a petit (1970) – beneath its loose, often goofy surface, Rouch’s film reflects on the delights & limitations of cultural interchange

 

Suburbia (1984) – Spheeris’ super-cool, attitude-heavy vision of (inevitably doomed) alternative community amid a hostile & clueless society

 

Liliom (1934) –  a rather draggy supernaturally-infused tale of redeemed brutishness, notable though as an uncharacteristic Lang work

 

Free Fire (2016) – Wheatley tightly concocts a carnage-strewn, no-way-out, near-vanishing-point of genre cinema, to somewhat unclear ends

 

The Condemned of Altona (1962) – despite its heavy-footedness, De Sica’s brooding Sartre adaptation wades in fascinating moral waters

 

Dreamchild (1985) – Millar and Potter’s reverie nimbly spans ages and registers, but the calculated restraint and taste limits its impact

 

Bellissima (1951) – Visconti’s neo-realist grounding is merely an intermittent anchor for choreographic flourishes and actorly histrionics

 

Obvious Child (2014) – of course, the (modest yet meaningful) virtue of Robespierre’s abortion-centered comedy is its very ordinariness

 

Kleinhoff Hotel (1977) – Lizzani’s erotic drama is calculatingly exploitative, and yet not without a striking commitment and preoccupation

 

Max Dugan Returns (1983) – Ross/Simon’s low-impact comedy would be a grim study of moral and material surrender, if it meant anything at all

 

Fraulein Doktor (1969) – hints of decadence & a powerful final battle scene aside, Lattuada’s war drama is largely mechanical & passionless

 

Gold (2016) – Gaghan’s Bre-X fictionalization maintains interest, but one often wishes for the hand of a Mann or Pakula (or Eureka’s Roeg!)

 

Portrait of Madame Yuki (1950) – another calmly potent Mizoguchi study of toxic gender relations, ultimately all but conflating sex & death

 

Track 29 (1988) – Roeg/Potter’s mostly underwhelming drama layers rather strained elaborations on top of a central psychological enigma

 

Irezumi (1966) – Masumura’s bloodily devouring, desirous melodrama; one of his more straightforward works, but utterly gripping throughout 

 

Manifesto (2015) – Rosefeldt’s unique high-concept piece is a near-marvel of organization, imagination, pedagogery and pure performance

 

Lust for Life (1956) –  Minnelli’s expressive powers are ironically constrained by fidelity to Van Gogh’s; but Douglas compels throughout

 

La naissance du jour (1980) – Demy’s small-scale literary adaptation most intrigues for fleetingly complex glimpses of his unique sensibility

 

The Getaway (1972) – a decent thriller on its own terms, although a minor, morally weightless work in the context of Peckinpah’s cinema

 

Wet Woman in the Wind (2016) – Shiota ventilates the brisk soft-porn material with an appealingly deadpan, lightly absurdist sensibility

 

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) – at its frequent finest, a transporting, sensitive, evocative record of Welles’ immense cinematic fluency

 

Decoder (1984) – Muscha’s brooding drama is appealingly dated in its punkish analog trappings, very little so in its broader preoccupations

 

Leo the Last (1970) – Boorman’s peculiar, voyeuristic sociological parable/channeling of revolutionary desires/chaotic provocation

 

Journey to the West (2014) – Tsai’s (slowly!) dreamy and gracefully funny short film, seemingly carrying a subtext of understated indictment

 

Madigan (1968) – Siegel’s tough, propulsive detective thriller; impeccably weaving moral contrasts and shadings and shifting perspectives

 

Marseille (2004) – Schanelec’s impressively considered film crafts a most unusual alchemy of person & place, & expression of new beginning

 

No Blade of Grass (1970) – Wilde’s environmental collapse thriller is at best a brash visual assault, at (frequent) worst unhinged & jarring

 

Informe general II (2016) – Portabella’s clear-eyed if genteel charting of the gulf between small-group awareness and state-wide torpor

 

The Leopard Man (1943) – Lewton/Tourneur’s brilliantly-sustained classic, a haunting, seldom-equaled marriage of delicacy and pained gravity

 

Salto nel vuoto (1980) – for all Bellocchio’s acuity, this repression-laden, corroded-establishment drama is a bit too heavy & unsurprising

 

Lost Lost Lost (1976) – but also vibrantly and permanently found; in Mekas’ absorbing survey of exile, arrival, evolution and community

 

Journey to the Shore (2015) – Kurosawa’s calm rewriting of our metaphysical universe, studiously free of conventional genre trappings

 

The Bronze Buckaroo (1939) – Kahn’s bare-bones all-black Western carries its unstated otherness with shambling charm, but few fireworks

 

The Constant Factor (1980) – Zanussi’s almost mathematically powerful study of pervasive corruption and the limits of a moral response to it

 

Colossal (2016) – could Vigalondo have foreseen that his out-there movie would so resonate as a remarkable allegory of Trumpian menace?

 

Come Drink with Me (1966) – vividly enjoyable but not yet full-throttle Hu, in terms of both raw technique and underlying sensuousness

 

Superstar (1988) – Haynes’ Karen Carpenter bio-pic is at once an eerily multi-faceted investigation, and a negation of any such possibility

 

Ossessione (1943) – hard not to think of Visconti’s adaptation primarily in earthier, hungrier contrast to its Hollywood counterparts

 

Alien: Covenant (2017) - Scott sure knows how to punch it out, but the feeling of repetition, redundancy and overreach is insurmountable

 

Birds in Peru (1968) – Gary’s ritualistic, sun-baked ceremony of sex, death & fate taps (albeit rather strenuously) a sparse elemental power

 

Working Girl (1988) – Nichols’ overvalued comedy, heavily dependent on reality-obscuring simplifications, feels now like a dusty relic

 

I Will Buy You (1956) – Kobayashi’s (rather strenuously) heavy-hearted baseball scouting drama is among the most somber of sports films

 

Fences (2016) – Washington does right by the (inherently not so cinematic) play, such that you lose yourself in the language and evocation

 

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) – De Sica’s rather familiarly, elegantly rarified, but nonetheless moving drama of looming Holocaust

 

Galaxina (1980) – Sachs’ genre parody is perplexing in most ways, hardly aiming for quality yet drearily tentative in its raunchy cheesiness

 

Letters by a Novice (1960) – an artful mixture of austere investigation and calculating decadence, seemingly entirely up Lattuada’s alley

 

The Beguiled (2017) – Coppola’s restraint and feeling for female community serves here to push the material toward virtual invisibility

 

The Music (1972) – Masumura/Mishima’s astonishingly-rendered, pained erotic extremity, conflating psychoanalysis & transgressive invention

 

Revolution (1985) – Hudson’s film is mostly effective when channeling chaotic mass experience, much less so in its narrative contrivances

 

Mammy Water (1953) – Rouch’s brief but teeming study exuberantly straddles eye-filling actualities and respectfully-presented myths

 

Christine (2016) – Campos renders a sad real-life tale as a case study in pervasive discomfort, and in coping mechanisms taken and spurned

 

Michael Kohlhass (1969) – Schlondorff’s tale of injustice and rebellion, its impact rather muddied by its attempt to channel the sixties

 

Maria’s Lovers (1984) – Konchalovsky’s minor post-war drama feels mostly trivial and arbitrary, not tapping its actors’ considerable powers

 

The National Health (1973) – Gold/Nichols’ carefully-gauged hospital comedy, its diagnosis both directly scathing and challengingly evasive

 

Marguerite & Julien (2015) – Donzelli’s period-bending treatment of transgressive material, intriguingly straddling history & romantic myth

 

A Woman of Paris (1923) – its modest sensitivity to female perspective & desire aside, Chaplin’s drama is of limited cinematic interest now

 

Mourir a 30 ans (1982) – Goupil’s memoir of 1968, somberly but piercingly contrasting all-consuming activism & subsequent directionlessness

 

The Night Visitor (1971) – Benedek’s ingenious thriller delivers fascinating logistics, although its echoes of Bergman are merely frost-deep

 

Raw (2016) – at its harrowing best, Ducournau’s vivid film is a startling expression of the scorching, perilous power of female desire

 

Tom Jones (1963) – occasional pell-mell interest aside, Richardson’s relentless opportunism now seems mostly tiring and alienating

 

Lost Persons Area (2009) – Strubbe’s representation of Europe’s shifting order is highly well-conceived, but carries a muted overall impact

 

The Reckoning (1970) – Gold’s super-meaty class-conscious drama, anchored by Williamson’s sensationally contemptuous, possessed presence

 

Une jeunesse allemande (2015) – Periot’s absorbing film conveys the turbulent passing of a very era-specific melding of culture and action

 

Raw Deal (1948) – under Mann’s alert handling, a thriller narrative of hard-driving visual eloquence, suffused with unfulfilled longing

 

Kung-fu master! (1988) – no director can bridge loveliness and social transgression as easefully yet meaningfully as the incomparable Varda

 

Julia (1977) – Redgrave’s moving presence aside, Zinnemann’s lead-footed memory piece seldom feels fully-inhabited or very evocative

 

The Future Perfect (2016) – Wohlatz’s beguiling study of a young immigrant’s multiple aspirations, navigating self-assertion & assimilation

 

Station Six-Sahara (1963) – superficially a potboiler, but infused by Holt with substantial behavioral relish & subtle structural mysteries

 

A Cat in the Brain (1990) – pure immersive cinema of a kind, although Fulci’s show of anguished self-reflection is only semi-persuasive

 

Story of a Love Story (1973) – Frankenheimer’s all-but-lost film is ceaselessly if strenuously investigative, and surprisingly rewarding

 

A Ghost Story (2017) – Lowery’s extraordinarily well-judged amalgamation of tangibly-depicted myths and sparse, searching ambiguities

 

The Mascot (1934) – Starewicz’s remarkable stop-motion adventure is an early spanning of Toy Story & Tim Burton, of the cute & the freaky

 

Goya’s Ghosts (2006) – the narrative contrivances of Forman’s blandly handsome film seriously weaken its historical and cultural impact

 

La terra trema (1948) – Visconti’s searching emphasis on realism is moving, yet highly mediated, arguably undermined by wider ambitions

 

Snowden (2016) – Stone applies relative directorial restraint to potentially paranoia-strewn material, with respectable but limited results

 

The Corruption of Chris Miller (1973) – Bardem’s expressively visualized semi-elevation of a lurid killer narrative, with a dash of Persona!

 

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) – Coppola affectionately makes it all feel more meaningful than it is, aided by seen-the-future-level casting

 

My Second Brother (1959) – the major impact of Imamura’s engaging and committed early film lies in its bleak social and economic awareness

 

Wonderstruck (2017) – Haynes’ parallel lives story has the multi-dimensional beauty of a diorama, to be meticulously explored and caressed

 

L’attentat (1972) – Boisset’s solid, wide-ranging entry into a classic tradition, finding corruption and complacency inside every dark suit

 

Death Proof (2007) – hard not to admire Tarantino’s artful balance of leisurely good spirits, deceptive finesse, and insistent disposability

 

Marketa Lazarova (1967) – Vlacil’s turbulent, imposing historical chronicle, both vividly direct & narratively elusive, even hallucinatory

 

The Bad Batch (2016) – Amirpour’s film becomes increasingly intriguing, as a sly subversion of swaggering post-apocalypse-type cliches

 

Kill! (1971) –  Gary’s murky drug-trade thriller, fitfully sparked by the tussle between intellectual ambitions and mostly pulpish execution

 

Wrong is Right (1982) – Brooks’ well-titled farce-attack is both absurd & prescient, stylistically uncertain & (thus) pretty much on target

 

The Burmese Harp (1956) – Ichikawa’s transcendence-seeking tale of post-war Burma seldom surpasses superficial grandeur and spirituality

 

Good Time (2017) – the Safdies’ very striking blend of propulsively inventive crime narrative and extraordinary observational directness

 

The Golden Fortress (1974) – you might view Ray’s handling of the flamboyant material either as overly staid, or as carefully interrogative

 

Heat (1995) – a modern genre landmark, for Mann’s awe-inspiring, deeply-searching mastery of narrative, visual and thematic geometry

 

La ligne de demarcation (1966) – Chabrol’s effective Occupation drama emphasizes dogged collective solidarity over individual heroism

 

Hidden Figures (2016) – Melfi’s bland conventionality leaves little basis for distinguishing inspirational truths from trite exaggerations

 

Dear Summer Sister (1972) – Oshima’s unusual, oddly troubling layering of an almost naively beaming surface on deeply fractured depths

 

Mike’s Murder (1984) – Bridges plays observantly and languidly with textures and contrasting milieus, although to limited ultimate ends

 

Les maitres fous (1955) – Rouch’s unique, often astonishing anthropological record also acts as a savage parody of hollow colonial pomp

 

Wonder Woman (2017) – Jenkins’ blockbuster is pretty fresh and engagingly literate, when not lost in interminable pyrotechnic abstraction

 

A Special Day (1977) – Scola’s precisely rendered study of a brief encounter, affectingly contrasting intimate truths and national delusions

 

Casino (1995) – illustrating Scorsese both at his most technically unimpeachable, and at his most relentlessly & under-rewardingly hermetic

 

Vie privee (1962) – Malle rather peculiarly extrapolates Bardot’s immense if rather shallow mythology into a fatalistic death ritual

 

Nocturnal Animals (2016) – Ford’s tiresomely pretentious, airlessly “well-crafted” drama is almost entirely unpleasant and unedifying

 

The Penal Colony (1970) – Ruiz’s strangely ominous creation almost seems now like a prediction of degrading political & factual objectivity

 

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1982) – Petit’s film is less a detective story than a genre- and gender-defying study in absence and darkness

 

Mother Never Dies (1942) – Naruse’s moving story of life after loss, rather more sentimental (& ultimately jingoistic) than his finest work

 

My Cousin Rachel (2017) – Michell’s drama of suspicion and desire avoids Gothic excess, but at the cost of diluted ambiguity and impact

 

The Silent Partner (1978) – Duke’s pretty nifty, sometimes surprisingly raw thriller, cherishable as an all-time-great Toronto time-capsule

 

In the White City (1983) – Tanner’s questing cinema finds here its most mythic port of call, experience and memory shimmeringly intertwining

 

Hud (1963) – the physical and emotional territory of Ritt’s bleak drama frequently evokes stronger, less constrained films, before and since

 

Frantz (2016) – with customarily precise yet somewhat passionless virtuosity, Ozon navigates post-war misdirections and compromises

 

Steelyard Blues (1973) – Myerson’s frequently grating drop-out comedy does happily elevate at times (mostly due to the inspired Peter Boyle)

 

Une vieille maitresse (2007) – Breillat’s brilliant 19^th century drama, composed yet destabilizing, of a desire that pushes toward death

 

Carmen Jones (1954) – Preminger’s all-black musical now seems more like an artificialized denial of black culture than an elevation of it

 

The Other Side of Hope (2017) – Kaurismaki’s customarily well-honed, wide-ranging and supple survey of multi-cultural dreams and realities

 

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) – Mekas’ remarkable, captivating memory film, feeling at once unfiltered and highly mediated

 

The Girl from Trieste (1982) – Campanile’s undercharged story of obsession does find its way to a strikingly doomed, alienated finale

 

Hot Thrills and Warm Chills (1967) – for Berry, thrills and chills evidently drive their own unknowable laws of narrative, framing & pacing

 

Nocturama (2016) – Bonello’s sleekly knowing, trite yet stimulating terrorism drama sleekly rejects conventional representational dilemmas

 

Real Life (1979) – Brooks’ evasively fascinating, at least semi-premonitory collision of showbiz stylization and documentary-style flatness

 

Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease (2000) – Zanussi’s drama pushes as hard as its title, but attains a sort of cranky magnificence

 

Veiled Aristocrats (1932) – Micheaux’s clear-eyed, ultimately celebratory assertion of racial identity and (also!) female self-determination

 

Baby Driver (2017) – for the most part, the film zooms & flies on Wright’s happy cinematic air, infused with barely flagging creative joy

 

Moderato Cantabile (1960) – one of the period’s memorably doomed enigmatic encounters, hauntingly observed by Brook (& Antonioni’s spirit?)

 

Phobia (1980) – if only Huston had brought some bleak relish and a greater sense of the absurd to the mechanical serial killer narrative…

 

The Man who Put his Will on Film (1970) – Oshima’s stark enigma seems to posit cinema as a shifting, almost autonomously malevolent threat

 

Jackie (2016) – at once highly immersive and dreamlike, Larrain’s precise recreation taps the ambiguities of intimate witnessing of history

 

Haxan (1922) – Christensen’s unequaled blend of historical pedagogy, lurid fantasy & socially-aware self-reflection remains quite remarkable

 

Rollover (1981) – few films ever grappled with global financial complexity as Pakula’s does, even fewer with such stylistic audaciousness

 

Le temps de mourir (1970) – paranoia spawns its own bleak destiny in Farwagi’s enigmatic, occasionally striking drama of predestination

 

Logan (2017) – Mangold at least brings some modest literacy, cinematic grandeur & emotional frailty to the essentially meaningless material

 

Moi, un noir (1958) – Rouch’s vastly impactful study of African exile, aspiration & resentment remains ambiguously revelatory & troubling

 

Mr. Patman (1980) – in various oddly interesting ways, Guillermin’s murky drama symbolizes its strange, displaced era in Canadian cinema

 

Monsieur Klein (1976) – Losey’s dark case history of the Holocaust’s perversion of fate and rationality, articulated with unforced mastery

 

La La Land (2016) – Chazelle’s airily pretty but passionless appropriation of classic forms yields only fleeting, if not vapid pleasures

 

The Champagne Murders (1967) – an enjoyably anxious exercise in highly-designed, ambiguous confinement; second-tier Chabrol at best though

 

The Color of Money (1986) – Scorsese’s perhaps most underrated movie, placing stark psychological structures within restless cinematic ones

 

Trois jours a vivre (1957) – Grainger’s rather rushed marriage of backstage theatrics and noir-type tension never satisfactorily coheres

 

A Quiet Passion (2017) - Davies' outstanding study of Emily Dickinson enthralls with its sensitivity and precise charting of complexities

 

La memoire courte (1979) – de Gregorio’s increasingly bracing, Rivette-tinged investigation into evasive histories and unreliable narrators

 

I Dreamt I Woke Up (1991) – Boorman’s loving exploration of his Irish home, both facilitated and cluttered by playfully mythic inventions

 

Ten Nights in a Bar Room (1926) – Calnek’s tale of lost moral compasses ultimately rather chills for its repurposed imagery of mob justice

 

I Am Madame Bovary (2016) – Feng’s alert, tragi-comic charting of classically thwarted female determination in an age of dismal bureaucracy

 

Monterey Pop (1968) – Pennebaker’s (too short!) concert film contains some indelible, almost incomparably vivid images of key performers

 

Wimbledon Stage (2001) – Amalric’s enigmatic investigation of a non-writing writer balances persuasive mystery & lightly-observed detail

 

There was a Crooked Man (1970) – Mankiewicz’s late-career slumming exercise maintains its brassy swagger, but it’s all offputtingly coarse

 

The City Below (2010) – Hochhausler’s quite fascinating immersion in intertwined possibilities – personal & corporate, elevating & ominous

 

He Ran all the Way (1951) – a modest set-up, boosted by Berry’s expressive direction and Garfield’s hauntingly tortured final performance

 

Vanishing Point (1984) – like cinematic breath, Ruiz’s film draws in toward its ominous secrets, out toward a world of cryptic possibilities

 

The Goodbye Girl (1977) – under the narcotic-like patter, Simon’s comedies now seem relentlessly complacent and behaviorally under-engaged

 

Europe, she Loves (2016) – Gassmann’s observant study of marooned modern youth presses the “Europe is lost” theme rather too single-mindedly

 

The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965) – Williams’ rediscovered, obsession-ridden oddity is proudly defiant, yet often strangely lovely

 

The Diary of Lady M (1993) – Tanner’s intimate films with Mezieres are strong and progressive, but more transient than his major works

 

Murder on the Orient Express (1974) – Lumet’s (indeed) plushly train-like version doesn’t allow the concept or the cast much fresh air

 

First they Killed my Father (2017) – for all its committed skill, Jolie’s memoir of 1970’s Cambodia feels overly mediated and composed

 

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – Whale’s grandly-visualized horror milestone teems with intense repression & feeling, amid wondrous mythology

 

Cheerful Wind (1981) – Hou’s early film belongs very much to his lighter, even goofy, side, but already hints at the scope of his concerns

 

The Birth of a Nation (2016) – Parker’s persistent lack of subtlety fortunately doesn’t obscure the film’s central, primally righteous force

 

Manji (1964) – Masumura’s creepily expansive (if hardly optimistic) vision of desire and fulfilment at once thrills and repels you

 

Full Metal Jacket (1987) – Kubrick immerses us in soldiering and war as a journey into hermetic, edge-of-madness self-fictionalization

 

Traffic Jam (1979) – Comencini gradually supplants the initial broad comedy with a bleak portrait of societal paralysis and venality

 

The End of the Tour (2015) – who knows whether Ponsoldt’s film captures the “real” Wallace, but it’s persuasive on its own intimate terms

 

Cesar (1936) – Pagnol’s prolonged talkiness increasingly impresses as a form of psychologically and sociologically engaged modernism

 

War Machine (2017) – Michod’s McChrystal-by-another-name semi-satire is mostly heavy-footed stuff, often seeming tonally all wrong

 

Camouflage (1977) – Zanussi’s confidently scathing portrait of the multi-faceted rot, if not outright madness, underlying hermetic academia

 

Cutter’s Way (1981) – Passer’s brilliantly, evasively tortured film seems even more prescient in a fractured, dark-fantasy-ridden America

 

Charulata (1964) – the perfectly nuanced sensitivity of such genteelly interiorized Ray films is both their majesty and their limitation

 

Silence (2016) – a luminously immersed testing of faith, in which the relative silence of “Scorsese” may be as prominent as that of God

 

Joe Bullet (1973) – for all its pulp limitations, de Witt’s apartheid-era drama buzzes with the possibility of unconstrained action

 

Desert Hearts (1985) – Deitch’s beautiful period story of women in love, a restrained small step & clear-eyed large one for American cinema

 

La traversee de Paris (1956) – Autant-Lara’s rather grating Occupation comedy increasingly flails around as it grasps at darker resonance

 

Queen & Country (2014) – a mostly pleasing cinematic withdrawal by Boorman into memoir, dense with calmly-observed anxiety & repression

 

Ludwig (1973) – a study of anguished royalty, typifying Visconti’s problematic placement between turgidity and genuine tormented grandeur

 

Mudbound (2017) – Rees’ patient, ultimately traumatizing drama presages the geographic & cultural divides that will all but consume America

 

Dragon Inn (1967) – Hu’s gorgeous classic sinks with relish into genre skirmishes while increasingly seeming to dream beyond it, toward Zen

 

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) – Friedkin’s strangely compelling straddling of vulgar disposability and almost spiritually-infused certainty

 

Le mouton enrage (1974) – Deville’s evasively peculiar comedy of compromised self-determination, built on bleakly twisted underpinnings

 

Personal Shopper (2016) – Assayas’ scintillating cinematic tapestry, woven from a myriad of artistic and existential strivings and mysteries

 

Ten Minutes to Live (1932) – hard to surmount the limitations of Micheaux’s revue/drama, likely the least necessary of his surviving films

 

Good Men, Good Women (1995) – Hou’s impeccable work of reflective commemoration, spanning generations of national and personal traumas

 

Escape from Alcatraz (1979) – Siegel’s classic escape film is a tersely vivid tapestry of figurative, spiritual and physical confinements

 

Jauja (2014) – in Alonso’s beautiful, respectful cinema of discovery and exile, the potentially startling flows as naturally as clear water

 

Barefoot in the Park (1967) – Simon’s facile writing now seems beyond machine-like, almost monstrous in its faking of human intercourse

 

On Body and Soul (2017) – Enyedi’s beautifully attentive film, on what our dreams know better than our tired, ritualistic waking minds

 

Little Murders (1971) – Arkin’s black, black comedy has a highly distinctive angle on contemporary alienation, disarray and screwed-up hope

 

The Future is Woman (1984) – Ferreri strikingly (if not so subtly) welds an amped-up disco surface onto an elemental, nurturing underbelly

 

Woman of the Year (1942) – considered at a time of yawning cultural divide, the central conflict of Stevens’ comedy seems all the fresher

 

The Human Surge (2016) – Williams’ artfully rough-hewn global survey captures cultural parallels & divergences, possibilities & confinements

 

Child’s Play (1972) – a limited, contrived piece of theater, but lifted by Lumet’s dark shaping and by crackerjack actorly presences

 

To Die Like a Man (2009) – Rodrigues’ fascinating, melancholy film, rich with unusual representations of performance and self-assertion

 

The Chase (1966) – Penn’s overstuffed but powerful, premonitory allegory of American delusion, ugliness and societal incoherence

 

Land of Mine (2015) – an effective depiction by Zandvliet of post-war abstractions, even if it follows familiar emotional and dramatic beats

 

Just a Gigolo (1979) – Hemmings’ film doesn’t exhibit much relish for the period/setting, the decadence nor (most sadly) its striking cast

 

L’amant double (2017) – Ozon’s sleek, erotic creepy-twin melodrama is to lasting cinema what phantom pregnancies are to population growth

 

The Flying Ace (1926) – Norman’s niftily plotted and quite fluid thriller doesn’t mention or hint at race, which fuels its quiet radicalism

 

Ce jour-la (2003) – Ruiz’s singular comedy progresses from rather grating wackiness to (I think) strangely complex allegorical depths

 

The Brood (1979) – one of Cronenberg’s less gripping or persuasive creations, at least up to the eye-popping, repulsion-rich final stretch

 

Toni Erdmann (2016) – Ade’s highly successful serio-comic investigation of our faltering personal and collective spontaneity & connectivity

 

The Bellboy (1960) – Lewis’ engagingly alienating (if that makes sense) directorial debut, at once formally exacting & conceptually unbound

 

The State I am in (2000) – Petzold’s coolly allusive drama of modernity possessed by past; endless flight indistinguishable from stasis

 

Daisy Miller (1974) – Bogdanovich’s pleasant but passionless James adaptation, limited by insufficient tonal and analytical precision

 

Okja (2017) – Boon’s film feels ultimately like a soft punch, despite all its whimsy, biting satire, technical panache and general oddness

 

One A.M. (1916) – an impeccable exhibition of dexterity, although feeling now rather as if Chaplin barely sensed the audience beyond himself

 

Querelle (1982) – Fassbinder’s remarkable, no-way-back meditation; a ritualistic, anguishing enacting of intertwined awakening and death

 

The Founder (2016) – Hancock’s flavorless McDonald’s origin story doesn’t even hint at the fast food industry’s mostly toxic social legacy

 

Three Rooms in Manhattan (1965) – clash-of-culture interest aside, Carne’s over-extended study in romantic anguish falls mostly flat

 

So Fine (1981) – Bergman’s comedy is enjoyable and varied enough but never really sparks, with the central gimmick contributing little

 

Les maries de l’an deux (1971) – Rappeneau puts together a grand, fast-paced historical romp, little of which seems to matter much now

 

The Big Sick (2017) – absent its modest contribution to filmic diversity, Showalter’s comedy would be no more than unremarkably pleasant

 

Letter from Siberia (1958) – Marker at once descends deeply and ethically into his complex subject, and seems to whimsically ascend above it

 

Pi (1998) – perhaps Aronofsky’s most lasting film, pounding its way to some kind of jittery coherence (if not necessarily persuasiveness)

 

Flic story (1975) – a largely familiar detective/gangster structure, enhanced by actorly charisma & Deray’s evocation of post-war weariness

 

Lion (2016) – Davis’ quite offputtingly well-polished, sociologically and otherwise mostly valueless piece of one-in-a-million feel-goodery

 

Seisaku’s Wife (1965) – Masumura (epically under-celebrated) unflinchingly depicts the repression and meanness at the heart of rural society

 

Chain Letters (1985) – Rappaport’s distinctive take on contemporary unease feels at once highly stylized and yet near-randomly unearthed

 

I Am Self-Sufficient (1976) – Moretti’s early film is a bit underpowered, even allowing that dissatisfied lassitude is its main fuel source

 

Get Out (2017) – Peele’s metaphorically-charged horror comedy is sharp and eerily effective, yet has surely been too generously appraised

 

My Love has been Burning (1949) – Mizoguchi’s film is an absolute landmark in the cinema of women’s rights, activism and self-determination

 

Xanadu (1980) – Greenwald’s mostly ill-considered, what-were-they-thinking mishmash at least exhibits a spurting idiosyncratic dreaminess

 

Elle (2016) – hard to know how to react to Verhoeven’s elegantly calculated displacements, or (beyond admiring Huppert) how much even to try

 

The Deadly Affair (1966) – Lumet and le Carre’s familiarly solid, unshowy exercise in institutional, ethical and domestic exhaustion

 

Eden (2001) – Gitai’s evocation of 1940s Israel feels like a boringly missed opportunity, allowing only flashes of insight or identification

 

Shampoo (1975) – Ashby/Towne’s impeccable utilization, extension and ultimate (transient) hollowing-out of the bottomless Beatty mystique

 

Sacro GRA (2013) – Rosi’s well-caught quotidian observations seem to hint at an underlying unifying loss, a troubling existential darkness

 

Sergeant Madden (1939) – about five parts unimportantly enjoyable police drama to one part visually and thematically engaged von Sternberg

 

13 Tzameti (2005) – Babluani’s tight, unsentimental drama is impressively (if not that consequentially) fully-imagined in every detail

 

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) – a Holmes/Freud mash-up more stimulating in Meyer’s concept than in Ross’s blandly rendered actuality

 

Neruda (2016) – Larrain’s meta-fiction narrative might have seemed strained, in the hands of a less graceful weaver of cinematic tapestries

 

All Fall Down (1962) – Frankenheimer’s family melodrama has plenty of meat and color, but ultimately lacks emotional and expressive potency

 

Cobra Verde (1987) – Herzog’s drama piles on eye-filling scenes, while surely grappling inadequately with the representation of slavery

 

All that Jazz (1979) – Fosse’s cinematic testimony is a whirl of the repellent and the visionary, artistic virtuosity and mere restlessness

 

Scabbard Samurai (2010) – Matsumoto’s is the most enjoyably Letterman-ish samurai movie we’re likely to see, cutesy sentimentality aside

 

I Was a Male War Bride (1949) – Hawks’ brilliantly unforced comedy of frustration and denial, soberly building to a classic final stretch

 

Pars vite et reviens tard (2007) – Wargnier drives an interesting urban paranoia premise toward strictly superficial, convoluted rewards

 

Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1973) – Fuller’s rather peculiar German thriller is at once classical and chaotic, immediate and abstracted

 

Julieta (2016) – Almodovar’s sensuous melodrama hardly seems aware of real life’s messy textures, but easily envelops on its own terms

 

Uptight (1968) – Dassin’s powerful, often anguished informer melodrama, galvanized by the era’s tensions, debates and social realities

 

Historias extraordinarias (2008) – Llinas’ binge of storytelling, drunk on narrative possibility, while retaining an evenly wry sobriety

 

Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972) – Ritt’s episodic, philosophical, often bitter comedy, propelled by beautifully dry writing, directing and acting

 

Abuse of Weakness (2013) – Breillat’s fascinating, masterfully-controlled case study in the ambiguous exercise of power and exploitation

 

Birthright (1939) – for all its imperfections, Micheaux’s drama is a deeply-felt expression of anger at persistent belittlement & injustice

 

Shadows in Paradise (1986) – an emblematic illustration of Kaurismaki’s peculiar melding of gloomy denial and tight-lipped hopefulness

 

Asparagus (1979) – Pitt’s brief, vivid, sensuous animation drinks/sucks from strange, deep pools/organs of individual & collective desire

 

It’s only the end of the world (2016) – largely dour & limited family material, but rather interestingly interrogated & ventilated by Dolan

 

Indecent Desires (1968) – marginally interesting for Wishman’s modestly innovative structure of desire, and for its starkly pitiless ending

 

Symbol (2009) – Matsumoto’s great tease of a movie, positing utter nonsense as the heart of all meaning & connection (or something anyway…)

 

The War between Men and Women (1972) – Shavelson’s pretty ambitious Thurber-inspired comedy too often bogs down in tedious wheel-spinning

 

Potiche (2010) – Ozon’s broad, breezy tale of female awakening plays pretty successfully with garishly outdated attitudes and aesthetics

 

Eleven P.M. (1928) – Maurice’s drama is often confusingly articulated, but still intrigues for its sad, ultimately other-worldly conviction

 

Plein sud (1981) – Beraud’s preoccupied drama of erotic collision and chaotic personal reinvention is pleasingly engaged and unpredictable

 

Arrival (2016) – Villeneuve’s well-crafted alien visitor drama ultimately privileges dreaminess over investigation, rather disappointingly

 

Farewell, friend (1968) – Herman’s twisty thriller is well-plotted and -paced and has the striking Delon-Bronson team-up, so that’s all good

 

Until the end of the World (1991) – a great escalation of Wenders’ movie wanderlust, yet a relative stagnation in his artistic expansiveness

 

Le trio infernal (1974) – Girod’s rather rigidly nasty piece of period decadence makes only a modest satirical or stylistic impact

 

The Dinner (2017) – more a fussy dog’s breakfast of family anguish, as Moverman unenjoyably and indigestibly burns up the cinematic kitchen

 

Rififi (1955) – the film now might seem alternatively either conventional or forced, but Dassin finds in it a pained, pessimistic coherence

 

Author! Author! (1982) – interesting only for stray glimpses of a preoccupied centre, but barely breaking through Hiller’s ineffectual gloss

 

A Touch of Zen (1971) – Hu’s great epic travels from rich, intimate narrative to an astounding relinquishment of earthly and cinematic bonds

 

Rules don’t Apply (2016) – Beatty’s fascinating exercise in evasiveness – his subject’s, his own, that of his film’s preoccupied playfulness

 

I knew her well (1965) – Pietrangeli’s brilliantly observant, assumption-challenging study of a young woman, both celebratory and sobering

 

Local Hero (1983) – for every nicely observed element of Forsyth’s widely-treasured film, there’s another that seems crass or undercooked

 

Shock Treatment (1973) – the hedonistic sheen of Jessua’s breezy modern vampirism drama is more striking than the cynical underpinning

 

The Lovers (2017) – navigating most deftly between lightness and gravity, Jacobs explores ideas of intertwined withering and renewal

 

Toni (1935) – Renoir’s tragic drama of thwarted desire and ambition; as always, rich in broader, impeccably-seeded social implication

 

Modern Romance (1981) – one of Brooks’ best & most elusively funny films, at once universal & distinctly, itchily precise (space floor?!)

 

‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1971) – Griffi’s film sustains a suitably pained if somewhat overly prettified air, on the way to its bloody finale

 

I Am Not Your Negro (2016) – for all its clear strengths, Peck’s film is maybe a less electric interlocutor than Baldwin’s work would merit

 

Not Reconciled (1965) – Straub’s brief work implicitly rebukes an entire tradition of stale, conventional narrative and representation

 

He Knows you’re Alone (1980) – a moderately lively slasher, limited by Mastroianni’s lack of cinematic relish, nastiness-wise or otherwise

 

Two English Girls (1971) – one of the finest illustrations of Truffaut’s navigation between intimacy & distance, whimsicality & formality

 

Song to Song (2017) – Malick’s immersive new cinema remains both vital & alienating, experience & sensation at once elevated & flattened

 

Sunday in Peking (1956) – viewing China primarily as bucolic fulfilment of past dreams, Marker could hardly imagine the shape of its future

 

Swamp Thing (1982) – Craven’s film isn’t very dramatically or thematically imposing, but skips by on bursts of broadly-etched zestiness

 

Ecce bombo (1978) – Moretti’s early not-quite comedy is a rather interestingly ungraspable exercise in blankness and dissatisfaction

 

20^th Century Women (2016) – for all its vivid sincerity, Mills’ film seems strained & artificial next to, say, Reichardt’s Certain Women

 

La chamade (1968) – not much in Cavalier’s film penetrates too deeply, albeit that the sense of weightlessness is inherent to the theme

 

Werner Herzog eats his Shoe (1980) – worth seeing just for the concept, even if the movie is short on actual unambiguous shoe-eating

 

Shadowman (1974) – Franju’s late, sporadically insinuating thriller provides some elemental narrative pleasures, but limited overall potency

 

T2 Trainspotting (2017) – strained regrets aside, Boyle’s sequel has a lot of synthetic-feeling energy & conflict, but little real feeling

 

Utamaro and his Five Women (1946) – Mizoguchi’s captivating, deeply-connected reflection on integrity and self-determination in art and love

 

The First Monday in October (1981) – time-capsule interest aside, Neame’s plodding semi-comedy doesn’t argue a very stirring case for itself

 

In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) – among Fassbinder’s most extreme expressions of trauma, querulously balancing intimacy and ungraspability

 

Loving (2016) – Nichols’ study appeals most for its reticence; its quiet observance of social revolution embodied by unassuming people

 

Le trou (1960) – Becker’s near-hypnotic prison escape drama builds to a devastating final evaluation of relative freedom and morality

 

Some Kind of Hero (1982) – Pressman’s overly brisk downward-spiral Vietnam vet movie needed more character, and a far less flimsy redemption

 

The Outside Man (1973) – a terse, efficient thriller, vastly elevated by Deray’s fascinated immersion in Los Angeles geography and culture

 

The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) – despite inspired stretches and overall consummate skill, the film doesn’t much extend our sense of Baumbach

 

Conflagration (1958) – Ichikawa’s hermetic but intensely gripping tale, darkly propelled by barely expressible self-loathing and anguish

 

Compromising Positions (1985) – Perry’s not-exactly-Lynchian exposure of suburban secrets and discontent plays it a bit too soft throughout

 

Story of Sin (1975) – Borowczyk painstakingly, almost austerely charts the moral ambiguities underlying his potentially lurid chronicle

 

The Eyes of my Mother (2016) – hard not to admire Pesce’s straddling of tranquility & malevolence, while also praying for release from it

 

Red Angel (1966) – Masumura’s amazing study of war’s perverting yet cleansing effects, suffused in physical and psychic damage and suffering

 

Eyewitness (1981) – beneath its rather conventional surface, Yates’ drama is heavy with the detritus of America’s scarred moral landscape

 

Sauvage innocence (2001) – a mesmerizingly-executed slow collision with fate, perhaps somewhat conventionally conceived for Garrel though

 

The Electric Horseman (1979) – a nice little ramble, leaving aside the inherent hypocrisy of its anti-corporate, simplicity-embracing creed

 

A Man called Ove (2015) – Holm at least brings some decent warmth to his distinctly familiar-feeling melting-of-a-crusty-old-man tale

 

The Bedford Incident (1965) – Harris navigates a grippingly mirthless course to a highly Strangelove-ian abstract/realist end-point

 

Amelie (2001) – Jeunet’s notably skillful crowdpleaser no doubt hits every target for which it aims, albeit they’re mostly valueless ones

 

1,000 Convicts and a Woman (1971) – the title is pretty much the only relish-worthy aspect of this largely joyless British contrivance

 

Century of Birthing (2011) – Diaz’s mighty reflection on faith, creativity and commitment, encompassing the grotesque and the sublime

 

It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) – if only Donen/Kelly’s musical could have dug even deeper into the melancholy that tempers its exuberance..

 

Thomas in Love (2000) – Renders maintains the governing gimmick quite ably, but the film doesn’t leave much lasting impression of any kind

 

The Mackintosh Man (1973) – a rather plain drama, but lifted by Huston’s seasoned, unshowy pleasure in the life-draining spy machinations

 

Ruined Heart…(2014) – Khavn’s doomed criminal/whore love story is a strikingly individual, aggressively visualized performance-art piece

 

Bad Girls go to Hell (1965) – Wishman injects a trace of quiet authorial sympathy into a generally disembodied & mechanical victimhood drama

 

Danton (1983) – Wajda skillfully navigates historical events & oppositions, yet his film hardly taps the revolution’s complex momentousness

 

Our Souls at Night (2017) – you wish the still-magnetic stars were in harder-edged material, but a pleasing movie on its own flaccid terms

 

Casque d’Or (1952) – Becker’s drama of doomed romance might almost embody the huge virtues of the period’s French cinema, & its limitations

 

The Loveless (1981) – Bigelow/Montgomery’s striking collision, at once direct & evasive, of classic biker aesthetics & small-town repression

 

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) – among Fassbinder’s most precise, unerring works; occupying a unique space between reverie & social document

 

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) – Lee’s engaging cavalcade of American idiocies and failings is generally more dutiful than incisive

 

Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) – Ozu’s exquisite portrait, both bleak and hopeful, of a post-war community’s gradual rehumanization

 

Paris, Texas (1984) – Wenders’ finely weighted, and yet somewhat forced, navigation between old- and new-world connections and ruptures

 

Police Woman (1973) – an often disengaged-feeling martial arts potboiler, suffused in the kind of mediocrity one can be nostalgic about

 

The Light between Oceans (2016) –  Cianfrance’s tragi-romance is mostly pleasantly if unremarkably old-fashioned, without being cloying

 

Odd Obsession (1959) – Ichikawa’s darkly preoccupied family drama might have a racy synopsis, but is a largely monotonous viewing experience

 

Critical Care (1997) – interesting enough material, not lacking in care, but Lumet needed to give it some extra fire, or kick, or passion…

 

Turkish Delight (1973) – few films have immersed themselves in gleeful, unashamed animal spirits as boisterously as Verhoeven does here

 

Berlin Syndrome (2017) – the grimly unappealing core material ultimately proves unworthy of Shortland’s multi-faceted engagement with it

 

3 hommes a abattre (1980) – Deray’s efficient but rather mechanical man-in-the-wrong-place thriller feels only intermittently engaged

 

The Girl from Chicago (1932) – its depiction of varying morality aside, one of Micheaux’s weaker, more thematically limited surviving films

 

Ares (2016) – Benes’ grim vision of a strained future benefits from being viewed in fanciful hindsight as a pumped-up prophecy of Macron!

 

Rabid (1977) – Cronenberg’s vividly punishing early work effectively occupies the intersection of intimate and collective anxieties

 

Chungking Express (1994) – perhaps the most purely enjoyable, kinetic, wondrously intuitive expression of Wong’s beautiful cinematic gifts

 

The Big Clock (1948) – Farrow’s structurally-striking thriller is great to watch, but lacks the thematic & tonal depths of classic noir

 

John From (2015) – Nicolau’s idiosyncratic, precise deconstruction of teenage dreams & rituals, in the most beguiling of sun-kissed packages

 

The Driver’s Seat (1973) – Griffi’s odd little jigsaw movie (with Taylor & Warhol!) draws fairly effectively on the era’s multiple anxieties

 

Oldboy (2003) – no doubt a gift from Park to genre fans, bringing a patina of tragic grandeur to its manipulations and contrivances

 

The Sorcerors (1967) – Reeves’ great little mind-control drama, seeped in local texture, agonized emotion and overall genre mastery

 

Evolution (2015) – Hadzihailovic’s eerily precise, mythic tale of ritual and mutation; suffused in alienated, somehow accusatory beauty

 

Born to Win (1971) – Passer’s sadly under-remembered movie is a distinctive blend of eccentric delight and grim, no-way-out junkiehood

 

The Factory (2004) – Loznitsa’s short study sets out unchanging brutal realities, couched within semi-abstract, almost wondrous mystery

 

The Scar of Shame (1927) – some biting thematic elements aside, Perugini’s drama is a bit less notable than other “race film” landmarks

 

Spetters (1980) – Verhoeven propels the broadly-drawn, often biting material with his swift, brutally frank cinematic, social & moral relish

 

Barry (2016) – Gandhi’s gentle Obama mythology now seems as far removed as Columbus, given America’s current Presidential atrocities

 

Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion (1970) – the orderliness of Petri’s comedy of degraded power may feel weirdly comforting now

 

Blue Steel (1989) – Bigelow’s minutely alert but short-of-redemptive visualization of a dispiritingly ugly relentless killer narrative

 

Rome, Open City (1945) – one feels Rossellini methodically constructing, if not yet fully crossing, a bridge to cinematic modernity

 

Night will Fall (2014) – Singer’s chronicle of recovered Holocaust film is reverent and moving, but can it ever pierce us sufficiently now?

 

La prisonniere (1968) – Clouzot’s strained last film is most gripped & gripping when immersed in pure cinematic &/or behavioral manipulation

 

Kicking and Screaming (1995) – Baumbach’s debut lacks much overall punch, but provides many appealing, often quite Stillman-esque fragments

 

Stavisky (1974) – Resnais’ sumptuous surface incrreasingly yields a study of extraordinary complexity, subtlety and regretful allusiveness

 

The Girl with all the Gifts (2016) – McCarthy’s impeccable character-driven vision both delivers and transcends zombie-genre pleasures

 

Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) – Becker’s famous, precisely rendered crime drama, marked throughout by wearily understated observation

 

Starman (1984) – Carpenter’s basic-feeling alien visitor road movie is generally pleasant, but no great shakes in any department whatsoever

 

Storm Children (2014) – Diaz’s observation of devastation; a quietly challenging fusion of pictorial mastery and sociological helplessness

 

The Sandpiper (1965) – pretty insipid stuff in all respects, with Minnelli’s expressive mastery seemingly shamed into timid submission

 

Trance (2006) – Villaverde’s study of enforced prostitution finds startling, quasi-mythic ways to chart the limits of our identification

 

The Spy who Loved Me (1977) – a sporadically pretty but hollow & unengaged Bond epic, hardly sustaining the “nobody does it better” branding

 

Jonas et Lila, a demain (1999) – Tanner’s enthralling late-career investigation is allusive & romantic, but also alert to threats & limits

 

The Lodger (1927) – Hitchcock’s tightly gripping silent film foretells his later masterly explorations of sexual obsession and trauma

 

Therese Desqueyroux (2012) – Miller’s careful but unsurprising telling feels far less alive and piercing than Franju’s earlier version

 

The Shooting (1966) – Hellman’s mythic ambitions can seem rather strained, but the film nevertheless emanates a strange, sparse power

 

Demain on demenage (2004) – in its own celebratory yet haunted way, Akerman’s comedy is as radically destructive as her epic Jeanne Dielman

 

Prime Cut (1972) – Ritchie’s should-be classic thriller is sparsely & scenically articulated, on a startlingly weird underlying sensibility

 

Our Little Sister (2015) – Koreeda’s Ozu-lite tale is overly prettified and hardly momentous, but filled with subtle, satisfying virtues

 

Hellbound train (1930) – for all its hectoring strangeness, Gist’s film is a raggedly authentic cry of wide-ranging societal anguish

 

Grenouilles (1983) – Arrieta’s short film plays engagingly (in its minimal, abstracted way) with low-budget genre myths and contrivances

 

The Accountant (2016) – O’Connor’s weirdly over-stuffed narrative is all debits and few credits, bursts of accounting-talk notwithstanding

 

Sounds from the Mountain (1954) – Naruse’s masterfully observed, often severely piercing study of faltering relationships and structures

 

What Women Want (2000) – Meyers’ unmemorable comedy is largely free of complexities, ambiguities or ironies (oh, or of real laughs either)

 

The Tenth Victim (1965) – Petri’s playful futuristic thriller is diverting and good-looking, but doesn’t have his later forceful bite

 

The Last Married Couple in America (1980) – beneath the standard contrivances, Cates provides bitter glances at a vast emotional wasteland

 

Keetje Tippel (1975) – a strikingly expansive chronicle of social and sexual exploitation, well-served by Verhoeven’s unflinching brashness

 

American Honey (2016) – Arnold’s microcosm of strained capitalism; a lovely, piercingly observant odyssey of cinematic pollen-gathering

 

The Village Teacher (1947) – initial promise as a character study yields to Donskoy’s dutifully reverent evocation of Soviet achievements

 

Black Hawk Down (2001) – despite Scott’s exacting focus on immersive authenticity, the film doesn’t really expand the genre’s vocabulary

 

Description d’un combat (1960) – Marker strains to see Israel’s future, and (of course) fails, even as the most effortless of time travelers

 

Black or White (2014) – Binder’s tidily balanced conventionality hardly allows his greater thematic ambitions (such as they are) to flourish

 

Drunken Master (1978) – whatever one’s affinity for the genre, Chan’s almost constant, cleanly-observed ultra-physicality is mesmerizing

 

Mirror, Mirror (1990) – Sargenti smartly positions the lurid Carrie-like material to reflect female desires, insecurities, bonds and rifts

 

The 400 Blows (1959) – Truffaut’s film taps a romantically poignant, searching totality that binds and transcends the sum of its parts

 

Cafe Society (2016) – hardly a fully-achieved Allen film, but appealing for its gorgeous surfaces and quietly regretful, dreamy undertones

 

Les bas-fonds (1936) – Renoir’s peerlessly varied observation of social complexities culminates in offsetting states of relative liberation

 

Captive (1986) – Mayersberg’s somewhat detached but resonant reflection on, perhaps, the intertwined confinements of storybook princesses

 

The Triplets of Belleville (2003) – Chomet’s wonderfully-executed animated treasure, pitched at a previously uncharted angle to the world

 

Model Shop (1969) – Demy’s treasurably dead-end American film, drifting plaintively at an intersection of drab depression & displaced beauty

 

Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012) – Diaz’s ultimately devastating investigation of the cruel contours and legacy of extreme personal trauma

 

Scum (1979) – Clarke’s unsparing portrait of callous institutional uselessness ultimately verges on draining, Kubrickian horror fantasy

 

Ashik Kerib (1988) – less satisfying than his earlier works, Parajanov’s fantasy spans both painstaking conservation and hermetic denial

 

The Exile (1931) – Micheaux’s film groundbreakingly digs into racial constructs and perceptions, technical limitations notwithstanding

 

Big Man Japan (2007) – Matsumoto wittily spins his superhero mumbo-jumbo-mythmaking to absurd lengths, & yet finds a rumpled grandeur there

 

Magnificent Obsession (1954) – Sirk immaculately renders the astounding plot contrivances  & settings as confining as they are transcending

 

Fire at Sea (2016) – Rosi’s suprising, quietly audacious approach to the migrant crisis draws out sharply tragic parallels and oppositions

 

They’re a Weird Mob (1966) –  a proficient if often toothless romp, elevated by Powell’s playfully brutal observations of masculinity

 

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) – it’s hardly worth recalling the nominal plot, but Gans’ escalating abandon makes some kind of impression

 

The Spook who sat by the Door (1973) – Dixon’s remarkable, incendiary blend of biting satire and deadly serious revolutionary quasi-prophecy

 

In a Glass Cage (1985) – for all Villalonga’s exacting skill with challenging material, there’s little to be gained from watching the film

 

Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946) – Williams’ rather under-realized melodrama teems with interesting, sometimes provocative fragments

 

Denial (2016) – any contribution to the cinema of rationality is ever-timely and valuable, despite Jackson’s overly conventional instincts

 

Two Women (1960) – De Sica’s ending largely retains its bleak power, but much of the film’s querulous suffering feels strenuously calculated

 

A Beautiful Mind (2001) – Howard’s highly watchable (of course), not unmoving movie is laden with predictable simplifications & limitations

 

Le Amiche (1955) – Antonioni’s early masterpiece, suffused with spiritual misalignment beneath its ceaselessly observant, probing surface

 

James White (2015) – a film of essentially small parameters, but deftly seeded by Mond & the fine actors with unusual hurts & grace notes

 

Pointilly (1972) – Arrieta’s fragment of preoccupation (and abuse?), both watchful and mythic, is intriguing enough that you wish for more

 

The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992) – Armstrong’s modest but vividly, expansively observed drama of familial transitions and displacements

 

Menilmontant (1926) – Kirsanoff’s supremely haunting narrative is a glory of cinema’s expressive power, both as disruption and as comforter

 

Certain Women (2016) – Reichardt’s exquisitely observed and geographically rooted, deeply-felt study in circumscribed but meaningful lives

 

That Man from Rio (1964) – de Broca’s pantheon-worthy romp, its underlying coldness mightily offset by the epically charismatic Belmondo

 

Unrelated (2007) – Hogg demonstrates a superb, sometimes quietly heartbreaking feeling for the shifts in human connection, and their victims

 

O Henry’s Full House (1952) – Hawks’ sequence aside, the use of five directors doesn’t prevent a frequent feeling of sanitized repetition

 

Sogni d’oro (1981) – Moretti’s incident-filled 8 ½-type self-mythology is at once sort of unsummarizably brilliant, yet mostly uninteresting

 

Nude on the Moon (1961) – hard to imagine whose erotic reveries would exactly have been satisfied by Phelan/Wishman’s perplexing fantasy

 

Dog Days (2001) – Seidl’s unique deployment of cinema’s inherent voyeurism opens up knowingly problematic yet oddly expansive sexual terrain

 

Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970) – Schatzberg’s study of a fashion model taps both the industry’s modish surfaces and its enervating heart

 

The Salesman (2016) – Farhadi’s well-honed investigative method again probes rewardingly into Iran’s distinct yet very human hypocrisies

 

The Thing from Another World (1951) – it’s true - Nyby’s classic yarn most enthralls for the constantly masterful Hawksian group dynamics

 

Le cent et une nuits de Simon Cinema (1995) – Varda’s goofy, ramshackle star-studded homage teems with defiantly elemental creative pleasure

 

Dr. Strangelove (1964) – a lasting achivement, if frequently a stifling one, for Kubrick’s visual grandeur and structural cleverness

 

The Tribe (2014) – Slaboshpitsky’s stylization is arguably overdone, but the film is still something of a startling triumph on its own terms

 

Christopher Strong (1933) – Arzner’s fascinating study of intertwined female capacity and (both self- and externally-imposed) limitations

 

The Settlement (2002) – Loznitsa crafts his film almost as strange displaced science fiction, but challenges us to see the humanity within

 

De Palma (2015) – Baumbach and Kasdan deliver just about as effective and illuminating a survey as one can imagine in the time allotted

 

The New Land (1972) – the second part of Troell’s fine saga, as eerily well-attuned to the new life’s isolation as to its grand belonging

 

Married to the Mob (1988) – on its own terms, capable only of demonstrating Demme to be a proficient enhancer of largely turgid material

 

Jack Frost (1964) – Rou’s charmingly tangible musical fantasy evokes its magical rustical world with beguiling, knowing primitivism

 

Equity (2016) – Menon’s control and the well-worked-out script make for gripping viewing, despite the project’s narrow, hermetic nature

 

Listen to Britain (1942) – Jennings and McAllister bring diverse observations of a challenged nation into precise, watchful equilibrium

 

The Legend of Suram Fortress (1985) – Parajanov/Abashidze’s film is an alluring, somewhat weary emissary from a far-off aesthetic tradition

 

The Last Picture Show (1971) – Bogdanovich’s haunting film merits its reputation, even if its poetic desolation can feel over-calculated

 

An Investigation on the Night that Won’t Forget (2012) – Diaz’s commemoration could hardly be cinematically simpler, or more vastly human

 

Year of the Dragon (1985) – Cimino’s provocatively flawed but often brashly scintillating expression of America’s escalating tribal madness

 

La carriere de Suzanne (1963) – Rohmer’s second moral tale, dense with deeply considered relationships, is among the most rawly complex 

 

The Sea of Trees (2015) – an increasingly depressing slog through the forest, as the full depth of Van Sant’s insipidity blooms into view

 

Double Indemnity (1944) – a fascinating noir web, with Wilder’s snappy perfection almost entering a zone of spiritually-drained abstraction

 

Cemetery of Splendour (2015) – as always, Apichatpong’s exquisite perceptions seem to open up wondrous new spiritual and narrative spaces

 

The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) – Kloves’ film poses at being harder-edged than it is, but is pleasingly seeped in taciturn charisma

 

Requiem for a Vampire (1971) – Rollin seems rather lacking in conviction here, leaden plotting somewhat undercutting his erotic ritualism

 

Pride (2014) – Warchus’ calculating film is hardly hard-edged, but is pleasing & persuasive in its evocation of community & shared struggle

 

Wind Across the Everglades (1958) – hardly as focused as Ray’s best work, but increasingly propelled by a central relish and intensity

 

Italian for Beginners (2000) – Scherfig unproductively applies the minimal ‘Dogme’ style to a contrived piece of romantic wish-fulfilment

 

White Girl (2016) – somewhat familiar territory, greatly ventilated by Wood’s alert direction and Saylor’s fascinatingly vital fragility

 

Los Olvidados (1950) – Bunuel’s grimly indelible landmark, its severe sociological potency magnified through constant expressive mastery

 

Psycho II (1983) – Franklin references the original’s general form and assorted content with aplomb, but can’t revive its potent substance

 

The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) – Ford’s film remains a key if subdued reference point in exploring America’s founding myths & lies

 

Under the Shadow (2016) – much in Anvari’s “ghost” story feels overly generic, for all its powerful metaphoric and social elements

 

eXistenZ (1999) – a fascinating, if relatively more rigid expression of Cronenberg’s magnificently unsettled, premonitionary sensibility

 

Belladonna of Sadness (1973) – Yamamoto’s weirdly lovely submission to narrative and artistic iconoclasm, stoked by recurrent erotic frenzy

 

I Smile Back (2015) – Palky’s film is most interesting for Silverman’s complex presence, and for hints of a broader critique of domesticity

 

The Frozen North (1922) – enjoyable, relatively low-key Keaton short is somewhat harder-edged than expected, until its dreamy final reveal

 

The Asthenic Syndrome (1990) – Muratova’s remarkable, overspilling expression of our screwed-up, deadened societal train to nowhere

 

The Shipping News (2001) – Hallstrom’s adaptation feels frosted, distant and overly compressed, achieving little of lasting interest

 

Andrei Rublev (1969) – Tarkovsky’s inexhaustible, daunting recreation; cinema as teeming, immersive, cruel and transcendent pilgrimage

 

A Hologram for the King (2016) – it’s enjoyable and sociologically diverting, even if Tykwer’s crisp proficiency doesn’t yield much depth

 

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) – Mankiewicz’s lugubrious drama warrants no more than a minor place in the museum of cinematic repression

 

JLG/JLG (1994) – Godard’s beguiling self-mythology, possessed by mourning and retrenchment while (of course) restlessly investigative

 

Sausage Party (2016) – as craftily polished as a supermarket tomato, Tiernan & Vernon’s (let’s say) liberation fantasy is tirelessly amazing

 

The Emigrants (1971) – Troell’s steady, entirely persuasive chronicle draws its power from wondrous faith, rooted in stark necessity

 

The Last of England (1987) – Jarman’s scorching evocation of a death-spiraling Britain; perhaps overdone but forgivably and masterfully so

 

The Last Vacation (1947) – Renoir might have found vitality in this family vignette; Leenhardt assembles pretty, undistinguished mechanics

 

A Bigger Splash (2015) – not ultimately a major film, but galvanized by Guadagnino’s ravishing taste in cinematic and emotional architecture

 

The Age of the Medici (1973) – Rossellini’s unerring rationality and measured clarity sustains a mesmerizing historical representation

 

The Crying Game (1992) – Jordan’s singular fusion of political and romantic destinies; fascinating despite its soft, unresolved heart

 

A Quiet Place in the Country (1968) – the narrative’s generic aspects fetter Petri’s fine madness, notwithstanding its anti-consumerist bite

 

The Childhood of a Leader (2015) – Corbet audaciously & painstakingly represents our futile desire to trace back evil to explicable origins

 

Wedding in Blood (1973) – a straightforward Chabrol drama, with all his practiced skill but little of narrative or psychological distinction

 

Moonlight (2016) – Jenkins’ utterly enveloping, structurally impeccable study carries a wondrous sense of elevation, immersion and destiny

 

Le Testament d’Orphee (1959) – Cocteau’s farewell film, a marvelously strange but enraptured assertion of restless poetic sensibility

 

Body Double (1984) – one’s assessment would drown in reservations, if not for De Palma’s often ravishing, utterly spellbinding scenemaking

 

The Sidewalk is Gone (2002) – but even in such a relatively minor diversion, Tsai’s peculiar deadpan poetry of absences remains alluring

 

Villain (1971) – Tuchner’s slab of British gangland nastiness; only modest surprises, but should satisfy most cravings for red meat

 

Divines (2016) – Benyamina’s deeply-rooted yet transcendent drama of young female overreach radiates thrilling cinematic and human energy

 

The Wild Bunch (1969) – in its chilling nihilistic perfection, Peckinpah’s tirelessly orchestrated epic remains an astonishment to behold

 

Cafe Lumiere (2003) – Hou pays beautiful tribute to Ozu’s complex grace and mild quirks, while noting Japan’s subsequent social evolution

 

The Big Sky (1952) – a work of grand spectacle and classic Hawksian human structures, tapping the faultlines of the nation’s harsh formation

 

The Innocents (2016) – Fontaine’s stark drama is moving and well-told, if ultimately slightly lacking in cinematic and moral distinctiveness

 

Winter Kills (1979) – Richert plays drolly with America’s unquenchable, helplessly romantic obsessions with conspiracy, power & myth-making

 

Demons (1985) – Bava’s gorily concentrated relish-fest may be, if nothing else, the movie a Billy Idol/Motley Crue et al soundtrack needs

 

You Only Live Twice (1967) – the fifth Bond film is already a largely ponderous experience, visual excellence & skin-deep “exoticism” aside

 

High-Rise (2015) – Wheatley’s fearsomely well-orchestrated, tightly-packed adaptation encompasses epochs of social delusions and faultlines

 

The Third Generation (1978) – Fassbinder’s pitiless diagnosis of post-war Germany as little more than a political and behavioral toilet

 

The Mirror has Two Faces (1996) – the movie’s vaguely affirmative core gets smothered by Streisand’s gooey, superficial manipulations

 

Hour of the Wolf (1968) – with ruthless concision, Bergman extrapolates the preoccupations of the artistic sensibility into pure horror film

 

Dog Eat Dog (2016) – Schrader impressively ventilates and transcends his paltry material, but the film still feels way beneath him

 

The Phantom of the Moulin-Rouge (1925) – Clair’s central dream of mischievous transcendence just about wins out over stodgy plotting

 

Second-Hand Hearts (1981) – one hopes Ashby’s angle was affectionately sociological more than raucous condescenion, but it’s tough to tell

 

Fellini’s Casanova (1976) – maybe Fellini’s most undervalued film, weary with the toll of such relentless pursuit and climax and aftermath

 

Danny Collins (2015) – in the absence of much else, Fogelman’s film feels as if everyone involved was basically just enjoying Pacino’s act

 

The Games of Angels (1964) – Borowczyk’s brief animation of industrialized destruction lies among his most precisely calculated visions

 

The Postman always Rings Twice (1981) – the mild erotic charge aside, Rafelson’s interest in the dated material remains a little mysterious

 

Wet Dreams (1974) – best known for Nick Ray’s (hauntingly wrecked) piece, but diverting throughout as a giddy/dirty conceptual time capsule

 

Little Men (2016) – another fine, minutely calibrated work from Sachs, deeply sympathetic to practical, economic and human limitations

 

La belle et la bete (1946) – Cocteau’s delightfully articulated, emotionally vivid myth, suffused in magic both as facilitator & as barrier

 

Winter of our Dreams (1981) – almost every scene of Duigan’s modest but precise drama feels possessed by some form of loss, lack or absence

 

Aquarius (2016) – Filho’s film teems with exquisitely measured social and personal observation, indelibly anchored by the incredible Braga

 

The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) – Ross’s drab comedy now looks like a time capsule for a particular strain of ugliness and coarseness

 

Une femme de menage (2002) – Berri’s film has all the prototypical virtues of French cinema, even if nothing about it is too surprising

 

Private Property (1960) – Stevens’ rediscovered class-conscious drama has a pretty effective angle on catastrophic envy and desire

 

The Wave (2015) – Uthaug’s throwback fjord disaster movie is just about passably watchable, as long as you can shut out the dialogue

 

The Trouble with Harry (1955) – for all its dark-sounding premise, Hitchcock’s comedy is mostly a trifling diversion from his major work

 

The Official Story (1985) – Puenzo’s solid study of political awakening is perhaps more conventionally executed than its theme requires

 

The Terminal Man (1974) – modestly cautionary "mind control" drama, enhanced by Hodges’ chilly, astute, deliberately-paced precision

 

Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution (2011) – Diaz’ shimmering lament, suffused with loss, yet powered by the hope inherent in creation

 

Go Down, Death! (1944) – Williams’ morality tale remains startling for its potent conviction in the intervening reality of heaven and hell

 

The Oberwald Mystery (1980) – an unusual expression of Antonioni’s pervasive disquiet, emphasizing its technical modernity, yet lost in time

 

Sleeping Giant (2015) – Cividino ventilates his simple tale through superb feeling for youthful behaviour, morality and environment

 

Juste avant la nuit (1971) – Chabrol’s eerily well-controlled examination of transgression, guilt and morality; among his strongest works

 

Manchester by the Sea (2016) – Lonergan’s film isn’t without humour, but makes its mark as a rare sustained study of the contours of sadness

 

A Simple Story (1959) – aptly named, and yet the meticulousness and purity of Hanoun’s observation is its own kind of aesthetic complexity

 

Cannery Row (1982) –  Ward’s desired mythic artifice never entirely gels, but I may never forget the Nolte/Winger dancing scene at least

 

Nathalie Granger (1972) – Duras’ film is calm and almost narrative-free, yet seems to draw on a world of individual and systemic trauma

 

Lost River (2014) – Gosling’s strikingly weirdo directorial effort is strangely haunting, for all its stylistic and narrative excesses

 

Le roman de Werther (1938) – Ophuls’ eloquent, emotionally gripping tragic love story pulsates with his empathetic cinematic elegance

 

I Am Sam (2001) – Nelson’s film is such obvious nonsense that it’s best to treat the whole thing as an absurd parody, which mostly works

 

Salut les cubains! (1971) – Varda’s joyous (if arguably underly-politicized?) creativity renders still photographs as breathless as dance

 

Joy (2015) – perhaps the most straightforwardly satisfying example of Russell’s facility for effortless-seeming, intuitive organization

 

Onibaba (1964) – Shindo’s striking dark tapestry; perhaps not a work of great depth, but one of memorably needy, lusty, fearful texture

 

That’s Entertainment! III (1994) – a workmanlike compilation overall, distinctly lifted by some striking previously unseen material

 

Les intrigues de Sylvia Couski (1975) – Arrieta’s intriguingly elusive film; a highly fluid, open exercise in identity and performance

 

The Search (2014) – Hazanavicius provides some strikingly bleak recreations, but his narrative structure is overly limiting and unpersuasive

 

The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959) – almost at career-end, Lang concocts his most exotically ravishing expression of his ensnaring narrative

 

The Verdict (1982) – Lumet positions familiar material as a gripping wintery vision of light in the personal and institutional darkness

 

Business is Business (1971) – beneath the brash shenanigans, Verhoeven’s film is a somewhat wistful survey of a bleak sexual landscape

 

Hell or High Water (2016) – Mackenzie reaches a bit too strenuously for broader resonance, but it’s still a super-solid, loss-seeped drama

 

What did the Lady Forget (1937) – Ozu’s mildly provocative early sound film has all his smooth facility with distinctive family structures

 

I Ought to be in Pictures (1982) – hardly feels like Simon or Ross were really trying, but weary old-time know-how holds it together

 

The President (2014) – Makhmalbaf’s deeply-felt odyssey constitutes a desolately resonant reference point for Trump-fueled despair

 

Eldridge Cleaver (1970) –  Klein’s punchy portrait should strike our politically destitute era as hard as ever, as iconography & as attitude

 

Fruits of Passion (1981) – Terayama’s committed but inherently rather detached film of intense erotic presences within structuring absences

 

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) – Walsh’s provocative deconstruction of women and/as currency, presented with suitably brassy polish

 

Rams (2015) – Hakonarson’s film is surprisingly satisfying both as quirky sociological window and as cornerstone of the sheep-film pantheon

 

Out of Season (1975) – Bridges’ meaningless, glumly-acted drama feels like observing a turgid funeral march toward a well-signposted grave

 

Lessons of Darkness (1992) – Herzog’s relatively conventional pictorial mastery communicates reverence but too, at times, unexpressed horror

 

49^th Parallel (1941) – Powell’s Nazis-in-Canada epic still excites with its ambition and commitment, despite its over-emphatic aspects

 

Life of Riley (2014) – a perfect end point for Resnais: a magnificent artificiality, suffused with dreamy yet intricate cinematic mystery

 

Score (1974) – Metzger’s full-bodied, fairy-tale-inflected, cinematically & verbally quite well-articulated celebration of bisexual hedonism

 

Melancholia (2008) – Diaz’s enormously striking, anguished, necessarily fractured expression of relentless personal and national trauma

 

Grass (1925) – Cooper and Schoedsack’s documentary odyssey falls a little short of cinematic grandeur, for all its many stunning images

 

Maggie’s Plan (2015) – the Miller/Gerwig brand names feel to be severely flagging in this unaccountably mechanical, low-insight effort

 

Courage for every day (1964) – Schorm’s fluidly observed but not greatly distinctive study of escalating (righteous) rage against the system

 

Mistress (1992) – Primus’ love/hate Hollywood vignette occasionally spins its general flatness into something more interestingly dark

 

Perceval le gallois (1978) – tonally & structurally, one of Rohmer’s most distinctive works, but no less morally & sociologically bracing

 

Knight of Cups (2015) – hard to assess whether Malick is trapped in cinematic affectation, or in some sense truly artistically liberated

 

The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) – Ophuls’ milestone film is (true to the history it addresses) as pervasively unsatisfying as it is imposing

 

Heat (1986) – the movie has hints of something darker and dreamier, but Richards’ sometimes appealing rhythms aren’t enough to get there

 

The Ghost that Never Returns (1930) – Room’s drama is just about as hauntingly evocative as its title, with terrifically visualized moments

 

Captain Fantastic (2016) – the film’s weaknesses are easily forgiven, given Ross’s genial skill and the inherent appeal of non-conformity

 

The Exterminating Angel (1962) – Bunuel’s brilliantly strange expression of the corrupt stasis at the heart of the ruling establishments

 

Time out of Mind (2014) – Moverman’s largely effective study of homelessness, drawing on both immersed realism and resourceful artifice

 

The Demons (1973) – on paper it sounds like a feverish trash explosion, but in practice Franco renders it plodding, flat and repetitive 

 

Viva (2007) – Biller’s immensely pleasurable, perfectly designed and sustained 70’s evocation/parody/critique/lament/you name it…

 

Mr. Freedom (1969) – Klein’s remarkable piece of pop-art distills American grandstanding to a hyperactive, brightly coloured junkyard

 

Swiss Army Man (2016) – just when you think there can be no new love stories, Kwan and Scheinert’s dank yet delicate oddity proves otherwise

 

The Ballad of Narayama (1958) - Kinoshita’s grim tale has a sustained beauty, but one of sustained artificiality, and inherent distance

 

Ornette: Made in America (1985) – Clarke’s strategically eccentric approach perfectly complements Coleman’s genially iconoclastic power

 

Bang Gang (2015) – Husson’s study of “modern love” is accomplished and searching in some respects, overly posed and perfunctory in others

 

The Front (1976) – Ritt’s blacklist comedy is rather too sparse and unatmospheric to leave much of an impression, beyond dutiful admiration

 

Love Battles (2013) – Doillon & the actors arrive at some memorably erotic physical & emotional architecture, which must count for something

 

Primary (1960) – Drew’s alert and stimulating time-capsule study of the low-tech drudgery and mundanity on the road to ultimate power

 

Ashes (2012) – Apichatpong dreams briefly, turbulently of pushing his cinema away, but ultimately it returns, in all its elemental beauty

 

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) – perhaps Peckinpah’s greatest, most epically rueful film, seeped in a decay both romantic and terrible

 

City of Women (1980) – only Fellini could rattle around deep inside his own ass with such sustained, unbound, happily problematic brilliance

 

The Spy in Black (1939) – Powell’s well-paced film certainly points toward the confidence and scope of his soon-to-follow masterworks

 

Green Room (2015) – hard to give much of a damn about Saulnier’s drama, for all its attention to detail and engagingly naturalistic aspects

 

The Marquise of O (1976) – Rohmer’s striking case study of tangled proprieties & impulses provides a strong adjunct to his core achievement

 

Big Trouble (1986) – feels most like Cassavetes when the messy narrative yields to an eccentric observance of life as actorly improvisation

 

Liebelei (1933) – not as glorious as Ophuls’ later works, but demonstrating all the elements of his expansive, empathetic cinematic mastery

 

Born to be Blue (2015) – Budreau’s Chet Baker film benefits from Hawke’s performance, but feels overly formal and emotionally distanced

 

L’ange et la femme (1977) – Carle’s strange, sparse, isolated fantasy somehow seems to draw on Quebec’s politically-charged otherness

 

Short Term 12 (2013) – Cretton’s film is deft and often quite moving, even if driven by a familiar form of narrative over-compression

 

The Pumpkin Eater (1964) – striking when at its most rawly, despairingly Pinteresque; at other times it feels forced in its icy alienation

 

11 Minutes (2015) – Skolimowski’s exercise in connection & causation is skillful, but certainly more limited & mannered than his best work

 

Sudden Impact (1983) – Eastwood’s brash portrayal of America as crime-ridden cesspit; one hopes the intention was at least quasi-satiric

 

Oyuki the Virgin (1935) – Mizoguchi’s study of female self-determination against society’s disdain; not as potent now as his greatest works

 

Sunset Song (2015) – Davies’ beautiful, intimate deeply-rooted rural chronicle holds a wealth of sociological and philosophical complexity

 

Blood and Black Lace (1964) – Bava at lurid play in his perfect stylized milieu; the results are often ravishing, if only fleetingly

 

Money Monster (2016) – Foster’s movie is to an impactful topical commentary as a bunch of tweets are to an eloquently reflective essay

 

Le chat (1971) – Granier-Deferre’s sober tale, somewhat more enduring than the clapped-out lives it depicts; Gabin/Signoret obviously help

 

The Lobster (2015) – Lanthimos’ unique comedy expresses with superb elegance the desperate tyranny of our social and cultural ideologies

 

The Battle of the Sexes (1928) – one perhaps detects Griffith most keenly when the battling yields to depicting stupidity and suffering

 

Vagabond (1985) – Varda’s calmly expansive approach places questions of self-determination vs. victimhood into constant, doomed tension

 

Trumbo (2015) – I suppose it’s somewhat ironic that Roach’s portrayal of a writer’s fiery defiance should be so safe and pedestrian

 

Woyzeck (1979) – Herzog’s small-scale film encompasses a wealth of twisted observation, with Kinski’s staggering presence at its fulcrum

 

Midnight Special (2016) – Nichols brings it a reflective sheen and classy casting, but ultimately it’s just more unilluminating hocus-pocus

 

Festival panafricain d’Alger (1969) – Klein’s productively exhausting record pulsates with music, incident and hunger for revolution

 

The D Train (2015) – Mogul/Paul’s comedy of renewal through sexual and social repositioning stops well short of scorching the tracks

 

Dernier domicile connu (1970) – Giovanni’s solid worn-out-shoe-leather police drama, seeped in disillusionment at societal shortcomings

 

Neighbors (1981) – Avildsen’s stiff corpse of a comedy, surely one of the more clueless efforts ever turned in by an Oscar-winning director

 

Coming Home (2014) – Zhang’s drama is no doubt heartfelt, but ultimately a trifling way of dealing with politically charged material

 

Night Mail (1936) – Watt and Wright’s propulsive portrait of pre-war Britain evokes both industrial ingenuity and menial human confinement

 

Tale of Tales (2015) – Garrone’s happy if unimportant blend of the inconsequentiality of bedtime stories, & the adult dreams to follow later

 

Super Fly (1972) – O’Neal’s mountainously iconic presence thrives mightily against Parks’ provocatively textured cinematic rhythms

 

Le beau marriage (1982) – Rohmer’s merely superficially slight comedy somehow seems to foresee the vexing weightlessness of the online era

 

45 Years (2015) – Haigh’s wondrously acted (or inhabited) study is a quietly tragic masterpiece of emotional calibration and evocation

 

The Lickerish Quartet (1970) – Metzger asserts erotica’s reality-bending power, and all but seduces/bludgeons you into believing it

 

Interior. Leather Bar. (2013) – Franco/Mathews’s film is certainly fascinating, even if marked as much by glibness as by profound reflection

 

Princesse Tam-Tam (1935) – Greville’s movie would be of little interest, beyond its compromised, contradictory use of Josephine Baker

 

The Shallows (2016) – Collet-Serra’s concentrated (and, yes, un-deep) woman-in-peril drama does sustain a certain sensationalistic beauty

 

La rupture (1970) – Chabrol pushes events & characterizations near absurdity, all the better to emphasize the film’s central moral strength

 

Anomalisa (2015) – the existential despair and inner heaviness may not be so new, but Kaufman’s astounding expression of it certainly is

 

Un certo giorno (1968) – Olmi’s calmly probing observation of a business executive, musing on the contingencies of success and contentment

 

Black Widow (1987) – for all its limitations, Rafelson’s drama is perpetually alluring for its immersion in female desire and fascination

 

All our Desires (2011) – Lioret’s amalgam of modest social crusade & hankie-friendly melodrama; smooth, but rather perplexingly forgettable

 

The Phynx (1970) – Katzin’s bizarre, leaden attempt at a madcap generation-spanning celebrity-strewn romp evokes near-total bewilderment

 

By the Sea (2015) – generally interesting but persistently limited attempt by Jolie to occupy the cinematic territory of past masters

 

The Night Heaven Fell (1958) – Vadim delivers accomplished Bardot-ogling, but his largely bleak film talks of passion more than it evokes it

 

Roar (1981) –  much as Harrison’s one-of-a-kind movie asserts man/beast harmony, the sense of otherness and threat is often plain terrifying

 

Messidor (1979) – another sparsely transporting study by Tanner, of the intertwined living & dying fueled by directionless, doomed movement

 

The Sky Trembles…(2015) – Rivers’ powerfully disquieting drama, seemingly a challenge to underexamined ideas of cinema as cultural leveler

 

The French (1982) – Klein’s wide-ranging tournament record, free of pumped-up glamour, teeming with solid time capsule-type pleasures now

 

Yolanda and the Thief (1945) – not the most coherent of musicals, but Minnelli’s expressive mastery compensates for its deficiencies

 

The Witch (2015) – Eggers’ impressive film navigates with imposingly chilly finesse between disparate occurrences and uncertainties

 

Nora Helmer (1974) – Fassbinder gives Ibsen’s play a fascinatingly ritualistic tone, eloquently evoking social and psychological constraints

 

The Neon Demon (2016) – like its subject, Refn’s film of fleetingly alluring surfaces & concepts seems designed to be rapidly disposed of

 

Mr. and Mrs. Kabal’s Theatre (1967) – Borowczyk’s disquieting, sparse animation, studded with piercing dreams of real-world erotica ahead

 

Straight Outta Compton (2015) – Gray’s essentially old-fashioned telling often falls a bit flat, excepting when it taps into social currents

 

La promesse (1996) – emblematic Dardenne brothers work, applying propulsive narrative technique to searching, socially-grounded material

 

Ill Met by Moonlight (1957) – a well-told yarn, but too narrow in its scope for Powell and Pressburger’s masterful sensibility to flourish

 

Starstruck (1982) – Armstrong happily delivers the requisite tacky set-pieces, while never losing her sense of social and cultural realities

 

Mauvaise graine (1934) – Wilder’s debut (!) is an appealing if rather rushed drama, more at ease with the convivial than the hard-bitten

 

The Forbidden Room (2015) – Maddin/Johnson’s astounding, unprecedented creation, crafted with volcanic relish from cinema’s scrappy margins

 

Serail (1976) – de Gregorio’s playful and yet deadly serious mystery, drawing ever-inward while suggesting limitless further unpackings

 

Hail, Caesar! (2016) – with consummate skill, the Coens celebrate both the technical mastery and mythic reach of classic Hollywood

 

Demons 2 (1986) – the movie races along in its opportunistically haphazard way, seldom providing much basis for rating Bava Jr. as a stylist

 

Frankenstein must be Destroyed (1969) – Fisher’s study in escalating anguish and doom is intensely focused, if stately by modern standards

 

Steve Jobs (2015) – Boyle/Sorkin’s highly structured, mannered, repetitive approach falls flat, to the point of near-boredom by the end

 

The Goalie’s Anxiety…(1972) – from Wenders’ early, questing period; full of smart moves, but not ultimately yielding his richest outcomes

 

Code 46 (2003) – Winterbottom’s enigmatic semi-thriller, a deadened distillation of elements from similar films, never seems necessary

 

Full Moon in Paris (1984) – Rohmer’s beautifully structured (albeit highly typical) study of a young woman’s doomed idealistic overreach

 

Leave her to Heaven (1945) – Stahl paints the prettiest of aspirational postcards, then lets loose Tierney’s sensational malevolence

 

The Invitation (2015) – Kusama expertly shapes the Purge-like premise into a human exploration as well as a genre-friendly creep-out

 

Edvard Munch (1974) – Watkins’ rewarding multi-facteted investigation, intimately evocative while insisting on social and historical context

 

99 Homes (2014) – Bahrani’s film is full of compelling observation, fortunately not too obscured by the labored, unconvincing plot mechanics

 

Spirits of the Dead (1968) – Malle, Fellini & Vadim execute their respective segments with solidity, tortured razzle-dazzle & shamelessness

 

Spectre (2015) – Mendes’ digitized spectacle-making often fleetingly dazzles, but the film’s heart feels entirely weary, if not absent

 

Heremias (2006) – Diaz’ long but monumentally rewarding narrative of wrenching personal evolution in a cruel, unyielding environment

 

My Brilliant Career (1979) – Armstrong’s eternally pleasurable, well-observed study of a vibrant young woman determined to set her own path

 

The Treasure (2015) – Porumboiu holds the drudgeries of existence and the possibility of mythic triumph in mysteriously perfect balance

 

Things to Come (1936) – the film’s strident certainty is hard to warm to now, no less than the oppressive scale of Menzies’ visualizations

 

Sid and Nancy (1986) – Cox ably charts the relationship’s raucous otherness, but at the (inevitable?) cost of a rather wearying film

 

The Virgin’s Bed (1969) – even as it utterly strangifies the Biblical references, Garrel’s stark film is carried by revolutionary faith

 

Creed (2015) – Coogler’s object lesson in renewing familiar devices & structures, through sensitivity to character, & sheer cinematic smarts

 

The Sunday Woman (1975) – Comencini’s mystery has an appealing cast and playful streak, but just succumbs to endless unilluminating tangles

 

Last Love (2013) – Nettelbeck’s glossy, deadening sap-odyssey lurches shambolically from one meaningless exchange/confrontation to another

 

Lightning (1952) – Naruse’s customarily acute observation of family turmoil winds its way to a quiet assertion of self-determination

 

Suffragette (2015) – much in Gavron’s scrupulous film is stirring, but such a history surely demanded a more radical, wayward presentation

 

The Strange Affair (1968) – and also just a bit strained, as Greene jazzes up a familiar trajectory through seediness and stained decency

 

Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005) – Tscherkassky reconfigures violent Western genre pleasures as deep cinematic trauma

 

Room (2015) – Abrahamson’s affinity for the child’s perceptions, & for the competing confinements of lived experiences, bring it in solidly

 

May Days (1978) – Klein’s loosely-compiled record of Paris 1968, a wistful/stirring reference point for dreams of counter-Trumpian action?

 

Paris by Night (1989) – Hare’s sharp modern noir, a politically charged deconstruction of Rampling’s superbly incarnated protagonist

 

Camille 2000 (1969) – the plot and characters barely register really, but Metzger’s erotic set-pieces are something to contemplate

 

Hitchcock Truffaut (2015) – Jones’ essay film is a twinkling, maturely-flavoured drink from one of film culture’s inexhaustible fountains

 

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) – Brooks’ fragmented, impressionistic filming and Keaton’s idiosyncrasy yield a fascinatingly evasive study

 

Conte d’ete (1996) – Rohmer’s beautiful study of, essentially, behavioural and emotional shallowness, against a setting of quiet continuity

 

Crimson Peak (2015) – not untypically, the blood all flows through del Toro’s design and imagery, seldom through his pale narrative

 

Viktor und Viktoria (1932) – Schunzel’s zippy little trifle, not a major entry in the cinema of desire, even less that of queerness

 

Dirty Pretty Things (2002) – Frears provides plenty to grimly chew over, but sacrifices some penetration for the sake of thriller mechanics

 

Female Vampire (1972) – the only structuring principle of Franco’s trudging, barely sentient grab-bag is Romay’s perpetually naked body

 

The Danish Girl (2015) – Hooper’s deadening sensitivity & caution often seem like a denial of the story’s physical & emotional specificity

 

The Running Man (1963) – Reed’s cat-and-mouse drama trots blandly along, seemingly barely engaged with the material’s possibilities

 

Trances (1981) – El Maanouni’s multi-faceted exploration of performance & environment; informative & rousing, if not quite deliriously so

 

Two Men in Town (2014) – Bouchareb’s chronicle of the hateful erosion of new beginnings, most interesting in its wider angle moments

 

Du cote de la cote (1958) – Varda’s exquisite cataloguing of sights from the Riviera, ultimately as attuned to exclusion as to celebration

 

Concussion (2015) – Landesman only sporadically rises above soft-centered pedestrianism to evoke, say, the steel and scope of a Michael Mann

 

Nada (1974) – Chabrol’s brisk terrorism drama often flirts with quasi-absurdity; but then, it seems to ask, what political project doesn’t?

 

River of Grass (1994) – Reichardt’s not unrewarding but often rather peculiar debut is far from her most unified or fully realized work

 

The Camp Followers (1965) – Zurlini’s desolate odyssey of war and sexual brutality accumulates in despairing, near-disbelieving power

 

Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015) – occasionally interesting for its icy dread and regret, but Wenders generally feels rather marooned here

 

Charley Varrick (1973) – Siegel’s memorable thriller, a beautifully structured abstraction layered with terse observation and texture

 

Ceremonie d’amour (1987) – Borowczyk’s late return to form, almost like an interrogation held within an erotically-charged private structure

 

Bright Road (1953) – the sentimental, insulated triviality of Mayer’s film largely undermines the historical significance of its black cast

 

On my Way (2013) – Bercot plays around with Deneuve’s star image and lasting if wearier allure, to pleasant if not very significant effect

 

The Warriors (1979) – propelled by Hill’s feeling for edgy confrontations in ominous spaces; civilization out at the margins, if anywhere

 

Perdida (2009) – a little treat of a movie, albeit rather softball-ish, as Garcia-Besne excavates intertwined family & film industry history

 

Commandment Keeper Church… (1940) – in their frail endurance, Hurston’s fragmented recordings evoke a quiet sea of reverence, and some fear