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Il Generale Della Rovere (1959) – relatively conventional by Rossellini’s standards, but an increasingly rich and surprising moral canvas

 

Animal Kingdom (2010) – distinctive in parts, but ultimately another “whatever” addition to one of the most over-explored subjects in cinema

 

Last Tango in Paris (1972) - even clearer now how the sex is a device, deployed in a deconstruction of Brando both forensic and operatic...

 

Certified Copy (2010) – a skillful, alluring enigma, but smart rather than wise; you admire the film's tactics more than its ultimate vision

 

The Yes Men Fix the World (2009) – consistently funny and valuable, but like all that’s progressive in this world, confined to the margins

 

Chocolat (1988) – quietly builds to an astonishingly comprehensive critique of colonialism, ventilated by Denis’ peerless cinematic poetry

 

Solitary Man (2009)  - highly enjoyable for Douglas’ perfect grasp of the character, but ultimately seems merely to throw in its hand

 

6ixtynin9 (1999) – well done in a familiar post-Tarantino vein, but just a doodle next to the director’s luminous Last Life in the Universe

 

Saint Joan (1957) – an eccentric addition to the legendary films about Joan, best regarded maybe as a discussion-prompting counter-strategy

 

Tristana (1970) – magnificent study of power relationships; might ultimately almost stand as the most elegant and refined of horror films

 

City Island (2009) – quirky, colorful and fluid enough to lead you happily along, although ultimately ends up pretty soft (don’t they all?)

 

Immoral Tales (1974) – Borowczyk’s idiosyncrasies and rhythms separate him from a mere pornographer, but maybe not by as much as you’d like

 

Nights and Weekends (2008) – an interesting look at a particular strand of modern relationship, making a general virtue out of shallowness

 

Tartuffe (1926) – hardly Murnau’s most major work, but still very diverting and fluent, although with some definite structural redundancy

 

R.P.M. (1970) – a useful reference point at least in demonstrating why Zabriskie Point is so underrated; inadequate for most other purposes

 

Les anges du peche (1943) – much more conventional in its style and attitudes than later Bresson, but at least halfway to the master

 

Taxi Driver (1976) – a brilliantly vivid, intuitive movie, endlessly fascinating even if you suspect it’s largely an arbitrary quasi-fantasy

 

Les amours imaginaires (2010) – has a feeling of running on the spot (a 60’s Godardian kind of spot, stylistically if not intellectually)

 

The Docks of New York (1928)  - a more mature and exquisite balance between social realism and romantic stylization than in Underworld...

 

Around a Small Mountain (2009) – a beautiful, consciousness-enhancing Rivette miniature, albeit relatively less vital than his greatest work

 

Shock Corridor (1963) – a scaldingly iconoclastic expression of multi-faceted Cold War American madness (and it even has “Nymphos!”)

 

Incendies (2010) – study of war's perverse legacy might have worked as a theatrical abstraction; dubious in this glossy, literal-minded form

 

A Canterbury Tale (1944) – a relatively gentle, brilliantly integrated and intuitive expression of Powell/Pressburger’s preoccupations

 

The American (2010) – very stylish deployment of very familiar elements; but comparisons to Antonioni, Melville etc. not remotely deserved

 

Vampyr (1932) - owing less to vampire mythology than to Dreyer's vision of a cinema (and even a consciousness) moving beyond constraints...

 

Examined Life (2008) - the showcasing of philosophers is mostly interesting, but you wish the film did more than just nod and listen...

 

Midnight Cowboy (1969) - a classic of sorts I guess, but looks awfully contrived and melodramatic now, a garish would-be "adult" cartoon

 

The Life of Oharu (1952) - beautifully evocative tale of a woman's fraught life, carrying magnificent societal and psychological complexity

 

The Countess (2009) - sadly straightforward, hinting at times at a feminist metaphorical significance which it falls far short of achieving

 

Act of God (2009) - meditation on lightning doesn't deliver much of an intellectual or thematic jolt, mostly passing by in pretty passivity

 

Amarcord (1973) - a graceful memoir, full of striking moments, but hard to say it contributes heavily to Fellini's preeminent reputation

 

Green Zone (2010) - deploys one of the great crimes of our time as a basis for high-velocity myth-making; still, more cunning than it seems

 

Le silence de la mer (1949) – Melville’s exquisite treatment makes an inherently literary concept into a quietly enthralling moral tale

 

Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935) - feels largely assembled from whatever/whomever was sitting in the MGM inventory, but what an assembly line!

 

Of Gods and Men (2010) - primarily of men though; immaculately examines the incremental steps (unknowing and knowing) toward an extreme fate

 

Alice in Wonderland (2010) - much like the Cheshire Cat, this flavorless version largely erases itself from your mind as you watch it

 

Le cake-walk infernal (1903) - the Lady Gaga video of its long-ago day, an inexplicable but exuberant Melies piece of musical mythology

 

Cemetery Junction (2010) - very entertaining, but ultimately feels more like a nostalgic pastiche than a full-formed story of real people

 

The Big Red One (1980) - in its expanded form, brilliantly & turbulently portrays how war rewrites all we know about the world & ourselves

 

Queen to Play (2009) - pretty schematic self-improvement story overall, benefiting from mild class consciousness & Bonnaire's inherent depth

 

Borderline (1930) - still interesting for strenuous experimentalism, despite unsophisticated basic content and clunky would-be liberalism

 

I'm Still Here (2010) - fairly diverting but seldom actually satisfying or instructive; the points it might be making would be minor at best

 

Jigoku (1960) – popping with dark and lurid imagery, and undeniably starkly handsome, but hard to see it as much more than a potboiler

 

Lovely, Still (2008) - acceptably sweet when playing things straight; the climactic "revelation" obscures more than it illuminates though

 

The Last Command (1928) - deliriously fascinated by grandeur and the perversity of fate, strongly anticipates von Sternberg's greatest works

 

Biutiful (2010) - dubiously focuses more on conventional spiritual blather & sentimental invention than on tangible exploitation & suffering

 

Hopscotch (1980) - a bit creaky in parts, but pleasing for how Matthau's unsentimental pragmatism shapes the personal and political alike

 

Year of the Carnivore (2010) - sells short a potentially workable premise through timidity and ill-considered cuteness...where's the meat?

 

L'ami de mon amie (1987) - instructively setting Rohmer's familiar preoccupations in the dehumanizing context of modern development

 

Lolita (1962) – maybe it ain't Nabokov, but seems now like a cunning blueprint for 2001, transcending to Quilty's mansion/the next dimension

 

Happy Tears (2009) - underwhelming family chronicle, consigning intriguing elements and a bright cast to drab, uninsightful mournfulness

 

Okaasan (1952) - Naruse's quiet, highly observant tribute to a mother's fortitude, set against post-war struggle and familial dislocation

 

Faces (1968) - a fascinating study in vulnerability and its covers and deflections; more raw and less stylized than much of later Cassavetes

 

The Town (2010) - reminiscent at almost every turn of Michael Mann's Heat, and not once to this movie's advantage; blandly efficient at best

 

Dogtooth (2009) - perfectly (if necessarily rather coldly) achieved; magnificently ambiguous, but spilling out meaning and provocation..

 

Body and Soul (1925) - still a moving depiction of the rural black community's inner fractures, marked by unusual emphases and rhythms

 

Ricky (2009) - nicely-crafted fusion of gritty and fantastical certainly has theoretical merit, but still seems kinda like Ozon's lost it...

 

Underworld (1927) - most alluring for how von Sternberg is drawn away from genre mechanics toward desire, obsession and provocation

 

Target (1985) - Arthur Penn in action director mode, and very effectively, but surely sublimating his great skills more than he might have..

 

Parade (1974) - a deceptively simple-looking final note for Tati, wondrously binding performers and audience in a celebration of creativity

 

Enemies: A Love Story (1989)  - humanely comic, often mesmerizingly understated fable on the Holocaust's incalculable emotional turmoil

 

La Luna (1979) - stunningly orchestrated psychological turbulence, classically beautiful and deeply perverse in almost all respects

 

Survival of the Dead (2009) - a tight, pristine, mostly conventional genre piece, with the zombies' allegorical impact largely eroded by now

 

Still Walking (2008) - graceful depiction of family get-together; largely unsurprising, but distinguished by its relative tough-mindedness

 

Paul Robeson: Tribute To An Artist (1979) - limited by brevity, but fully establishes his remarkable artistic capacity and symbolic power

 

Daddy Longlegs (2009) - a remarkable character study, and surely one of the most grievously under-appreciated of recent American films

 

Shame (1968) - superbly setting out the moral mess of war; perhaps the Bergman film that best resists the caveats sometimes applied to him

 

Another Year (2010) - gorgeously resonant; astonishing when it allows you to glimpse the existential hell engulfing some of the characters

 

The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1974) - ends up more run-of-the-morgue than the title and initial sequences promise, but still fun

 

Citizen Kane (1941) - it's true, one of the most enthralling achievements in cinema, especially if you're in tune with Wellesian resonances

 

Cloud Nine (2008) - way too tough-minded and rigorous to be dismissed as old person porn, although one's reaction is inevitably ambiguous..

 

Missing (1982) - perhaps too schematic for maximum impact, but Lemmon's crumbling under the cold weight of realpolitik still hits home

 

The Disappearance Of Alice Creed (2009) - nicely ambiguous, well-controlled thriller; maybe it aims relatively low, but hits all its targets

 

City of Sadness (1989)  - superbly intuitive reflection on loss and dislocation, meticulously considered and yet almost mystically graceful

 

Somewhere (2010) - Coppola has a gorgeous sense of place and texture, although applied to a somewhat narrow thematic/existential purpose

 

The Killer Inside Me (2010) - less striking (or shocking) than the early notoriety suggested, but an interesting tonal exercise at least

 

Providence (1977) – engrossing for sure, but less aesthetically imposing than Marienbad, and less spirited than most of Resnais’ later work

 

Leslie, My Name Is Evil (2009) - it's stylistically interesting, but feels mostly like an artistic hammer applied to a mere thematic nut

 

The Law (1959) - sometimes seems intriguingly wayward and provocative, at other times merely lurid and shapeless...certainly not dull anyway

 

Four Friends (1981) - still engrossing for how the turbulence of America's evolution embeds itself in the film's structure and texture

 

Nostalgia for the Light (2010) - a smooth joining of philosophical and political dots, but doesn't strike me as profoundly as it does some

 

The Wolfman (2010) - entertaining and handsomely executed, but over-calculated and overly controlled, without a hint of wildness in its DNA

 

Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981) - another uniquely textured Bertolucci reverie, richly provocative on capitalism and its fractures

 

Shanghai Express (1932) - still a dazzling, intricate construction of pure cinema; its unity of purpose and vision remains entirely unfaded

 

Triage (2009) - fairly gripping when dramatizing war; less so as it gets bogged down in homefront therapy, even if sensitively done

 

Antonio das Mortes (1969) - near-mesmerizing, poetically intense political mythmaking, feeling as if torn from a country's bleeding heart

 

Alex In Wonderland (1970) - some striking if scattershot imagery, but I'm glad Mazursky stabilized and decided to go the Blume In Love route

 

New Gladiators (1984) - shockingly dull, murky and clumsy, with Fulci seemingly too disengaged even to take care of exploitation-film basics

 

Blue Valentine (2010) - a terrific, immaculately acted illustration of how cinema still illuminates even the most familiar human mechanisms

 

Angel (2007) - Ozon is typically effective at portraying feminine will and desire, although the overall impact is rather underwhelming here

 

Chimes At Midnight (1965) - the tone is regretful, but it's an immensely evocative affirmation & embodiment of Welles' commitment to renewal

 

Identification of a Woman (1982) - a gorgeously orchestrated expression of Antonioni's classic themes; a mere notch below his greatest work

 

Victor/Victoria (1982) - although widely celebrated, seems to me the start of Edwards' decline, neutering most of its potential provocations

 

It's Complicated (2009) - but of course it isn't - on the contrary, it's simple and banal; also glossy, complacent, a waste of great actors

 

Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow (2004) - an eloquently bleak expression of the fragmentation of war, expressed through staggering imagery

 

How Do You Know (2010) - a pretty comprehensive, miscast failure, lacking any kind of pace or style; utterly irrelevant to all our lives

 

Native Land (1942) - as sure of itself as an old-time sermon, and stirring as much anger and shame; still sadly relevant to these grim times

 

Film socialisme (2010)  - Godard pushes us out to the edge of our understanding and endurance, in the hope we may crawl back with open eyes

 

True Grit (2010) – strips away the first film’s ingratiating layers to reclaim the gorgeous starkness; perhaps the most rigorous Coen film

 

True Grit (1969) - even before the Coen version, this never seemed like more than an easy romp, making lazy use of Wayne and much else

 

Genealogies d'un crime (1997) - imposingly clever and impressive, but perhaps too stately and tonally unvarying to stand among Ruiz's best

 

Fedora (1978) - a lost-in-time oddity in Wilder's filmography, it's insufficiently incisive and often stodgy, but still patchily intriguing

 

The King's Speech (2010) - well-told; intriguing enough about establishment symbolism, the embryonic media etc to avoid mere curio status

 

4 aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle (1987) – perhaps one of the purest, most delicate expressions of Rohmer’s concept of a “moral” tale

 

Remember My Name (1978) - intriguing, but ultimately rather thin if set against later, emotionally lusher Rudolph films such as Choose Me

 

Public Speaking (2010) - a smooth if limited showcase for the iconoclastic if limited Leibowitz; Scorsese's mostly happy to sit and chuckle

 

Les plages d’Agnes (2008) - a quirky, evocative delight, embracing whims and new technology, eloquently shaded by past loss and tragedy

 

Days Of Wine And Roses (1962) - atypically stark Edwards; still scary for depicting love and mutual delight becoming helplessly destructive

 

The Fighter (2010) - weirdly over-valued, adding very little to the Rocky tradition; to me feels caricatured and even condescending at times

 

Le royaume des fees (1903) - watching several Melies films reveals the limitations of his vision, and yet, what a miracle he existed at all!

 

The Boys (2009) - an unremarkable but engaging little documentary, easily opening up our hearts (as a song might put it) to the Shermans

 

The Proud Valley (1940) - still fascinating for its merging of social document, wartime myth and calm cultural fusion (Robeson in Wales!)

 

A Brighter Summer Day (1991) - Yang's meticulous, spellbindingly resonant examination of a country and its youth in painful formation

 

Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer (2010) - shrewd, utterly depressing anecdote on America's distorted values & power structures

 

In Praise Of Older Women (1978) - bland, murky and mostly unerotic; a bit like a sleepy man's Unbearable Lightness of Being

 

Yi Yi (2000) - Yang's luminous, enveloping, ultimately optimistic vision of the continuum of life and the enduring possibility of renewal

 

The Bitter Tea Of General Yen (1933) - a simultaneously idealistic and perverse drama; weird and insinuating in a way you seldom see now

 

Kick-Ass (2010) - shows the strain of trying for new routes through well-explored territory; zippy, but no more than the sum of its parts

 

A Hen In The Wind (1948) - one of Ozu's saddest, most pointed films, an immensely humane examination of the bitter price of just keeping on

 

Penn And Teller Get Killed (1989) - first a showcase, then a cosmic extrapolation; more aligned to earlier Arthur Penn films than it seems

 

The Emperor Jones (1933) - almost plays now like a white man's confused, fearful blackness fantasia; fascinating even when essentially nuts

 

Numero Deux (1975) - Godard's grim depiction of decayed relationships in a corrupted age; deliberately offputting, but ultimately haunting

 

Brigadoon (1954) - Minnelli's gorgeous direction makes this (potentially merely silly) conception almost impossibly lovely and transcendent

 

Black Swan (2010) - seems to me a pretty thin aesthetic and psychological creation, surprisingly monotonous to watch and largely meaningless

 

Vision (2009) - at heart, another account of a strong-willed woman challenging the prevailing order, but with some satisfying ambiguities

 

O.C. And Stiggs (1985) - another case study in how Altman's bag of tricks turns unpromising material into something weirdly alluring

 

Duelle (1976) - Rivette is one of my all-time favorites, but this is a second-tier work, adds only incrementally to his overall achievement

 

Mark Of The Vampire (1935) - weirdly disconnected (but entertaining) for most of the way, and then suddenly all makes sense! (sort of...)

 

Hearts And Minds (1974) - a milestone of documentary & morality, exploring the multiple levels of horror & delusion surrounding Vietnam

 

Le voyage dans la lune (1902) - still a gorgeous, resourceful fantasy; a visionary affirmation of cinema's possibilities, and of mankind's

 

Edge Of Darkness (2010) - effective but overly mechanical, under-politicized thriller, with an unusually acute strand of pain and steeliness

 

Un chambre en ville (1982) - astonishing, troubled Demy musical, moving into much darker, provocative territory; should be much better known

 

Les Girls (1957) - pleasant enough, but not hard to list all the ways it should have been better; seems muted and dampened down overall

 

The Army Of Crime (2009) - an ambitious cross-section of occupied France; effective, but conventionally so next to Guediguian's earlier work

 

Brewster McCloud (1970) - Altman indulges himself to the hilt here, but it's surprising how coherent a vision he ultimately generates

 

The Father Of My Children (2009) - mostly familiar virtues but with a lot of extra seasoning for cinema lovers; astutely engaging throughout

 

Love & Money (1982) - very strange early Toback, grandly ambitious & radical at times, knowingly absurd at others; quite rewarding overall

 

The Only Son (1936) - more raw, socially charged and nakedly moving than most of the later Ozu films, but entirely as enveloping

 

127 Hours (2010) - adequately fulfills the challenges it sets for itself, but doesn't really offer much reason why anyone should care

 

The Woman On The Beach (1947) - the end is overly literal, but for the most part it's a quietly strange, rather hauntingly lovely miniature

 

Diabolically Yours (1967) - flat, assembly-line psychological thriller glossiness, although pretty well suited to Delon's steely remove

 

The Crazies (2010) - much sleeker than the ragged original, which of course makes it less interesting, and with minimal allegorical clout

 

Metropolis (1927) - amazing how much tighter it seems in this restored version; the political undercurrents remain as ambiguous as ever

 

Pandora And The Flying Dutchman (1951) - perhaps the best Powell/Pressburger movie made by someone else - intensely mythic and expressive

 

Inside Job (2010) - less insightful or galvanizing than it should be, never getting much of a handle on the ideological/cultural issues

 

The Man Who Loved Women (1977) - highly idealized, but oddly if drably persuasive, reflecting Truffaut's considerable sensitivity & fluidity

 

The Ballad Of Cable Hogue (1970) - Peckinpah beautifully ventilates this cantankerous yarn, almost at the peak of his confident mythmaking

 

Ajami (2009) - well-handled, anthropologically intriguing at times, but pretty conventional compared to, say, the transcendent Une prophete

 

Alexander The Last (2009) - interesting, but rather strenuously experimental and elliptical; the lilting tone is nice enough anyway

 

The Girl On A Motorcycle (1968) - blissfully ridiculous fetish drama; even seen through trash-friendly glasses, gets monotonous pretty fast

 

Carlos (2010) - dazzlingly conceived & executed, though with less room for the artistic daring that makes Assayas' work so thrilling overall

 

Trucker (2008) - so predictable and straightforward it might have been stenciled rather than actually filmed; doesn't exhibit much courage

 

The General (1926) - a perpetual delight, alert both to the grandness of America in formation and to human mysteries (& oh yeah, it's funny)

 

L'amour par terre (1984) - without delving deep into Rivette you'd never realize his almost Ozu-like devotion to certain themes and motifs…

 

8 1/2 Women (1999) - a diverting creation overall, but less stimulating than any random five minutes from Greenaway's titanic film The Falls

 

Jennifer's Body (2009) - a pretty complete missed opportunity, with glossy genre mechanics swamping any allegorical or satiric intentions

 

Rikyu (1989) - a rather plodding and understimulating historical study, especially in comparison to Teshigahara's earlier achievements

 

Caught (1949) - in many ways a rather strange tale of values and morality, made utterly compelling by Ophuls' fabulously nuanced direction

 

Hereafter (2010) - as low-key and matter-of-fact a "supernatural" picture as you'll ever see, which seems to be the Eastwood way of things

 

Stalker (1979) - strange, troubling and increasingly thrilling, suggesting the hopelessness of any intercourse between faith and rationality

 

A Letter To Elia (2010) - Scorsese's truly more galvanizing and moving nowadays when illuminating his heroes than he is in his own films

 

Tales Of The Golden Age (2009) -  doesn't add much to one's preexisting sense of the era; entertaining but surprisingly straightforward

 

Morocco (1930) - a movie where the perversity of desire is baked into virtually every frame, leading to one of the all-time great endings

 

An Autumn Afternoon (1962) - I'd rather lose myself within Ozu's cinematic universe than almost anyone else's; this is a gorgeous final note

 

The Social Network (2010) - yep, just about as good as they say; a gorgeously stylized & nuanced modern fable, honed with terrific instincts

 

The Chess Players (1977) - a deliberately artificial creation & an old man's film, but it's always historically interesting, sometimes more

 

The Hangover (2009) - surprisingly coherent & consistently handled; way less crass than it might have been (sure, damning with faint praise)

 

Death In The Garden (1956) - much more constrained than Bunuel's greatest works, but he fills the movie with elegant, biting commentary

 

The White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights (2009) - a solid, visually striking showcase for the band's amazing musicianship

 

Une Femme Douce (1969) - Bresson explores the terrifying allure of suicide as a logical response to a compromised, suppressing world

 

The Prowler (1951) - a terrific thriller and commentary on the limits of the social contract, with a memorably resentful Heflin performance

 

Va Savoir (2001) - beautiful late Rivette; a benevolent expression of the liberating power of creativity and theatricality

 

The Promise (2010) - solid examination of Springsteen's methods, but too pristine to be ranked among the great rock documentaries

 

The Gold Diggers (1983) - Potter elegantly taps the pleasures of classical cinema while wittily freeing it from dull masculine dominance...

 

The Circus (1928) - one of Chaplin's loveliest films; there's some egotism at its center, but also a deep sense of the fragility of glory

 

Arabian Nights (1974) – probably the least enveloping of the Pasolini trilogy, but still provocatively evokes an alternative ideology

 

Love Streams (1984) - one of my desert island movies; an audacious and gorgeous quasi-fantasy, superbly extending Cassavetes' previous work

 

Pirate Radio (2009) - certainly watchable, but stuck in the same rompish groove from start to end, with little period flavor (& few laughs)

 

The Aviator's Wife (1981) - doesn't have the revelations of the greatest Rohmer work, but then the weightlessness is inherent in the theme

 

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010) - has some resonance if you've followed Allen since the golden days; maybe not much otherwise

 

Death By Hanging (1968) - breathtaking at times in how the remarkable Oshima keeps shifting the cinematic, thematic and moral space

 

The Merry Widow (1934) - completely charming illustration of Lubitsch's elegance, and very clear-eyed at its center about human compromises

 

The Big City (1963) - a terrific, instructive illustration of Ray's sensitivity, exploring traditional values under threat in changing times

 

The Damned United (2009) - brassily & very entertainingly reminds you how big-time sports used to be rooted in community & in real passion

 

Man Hunt (1941) - less sulphuric than Lang's greatest work, but exciting for the theme of moral flippancy coalescing into righteous purpose

 

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) - one of the year's most graceful films; profound about our governing spiritual malaise

 

Where The Wild Things Are (2009) - Jonze makes stunning choices of design and tone throughout; it's surprisingly affecting and grounded

 

Miss Mend (1926) - fascinating as cultural history for its ideologically loaded take on the US, and still pretty effective as story-telling

 

Bitter Victory (1957) - a magnificently stark indictment, drawing on the symbiosis of biting human intimacy and the desert's bleak symbolism

 

A Perfect Couple (1979) - one of Altman's relatively minor, eccentric diversions, but still showcasing his offbeat, intuitive handling

 

Dersu Uzala (1975) - highly scenic tribute to noble primitivism is always engaging, but isn't one of Kurosawa's strongest in any sense

 

The Red Shoes (1948) - shimmers with intense beauty & powerful undertones, although not quite as valuable to me as Powell's "weirder" works

 

Passing Strange (2009) - terrific record of a kick-ass show, transcending post-modern cliches through great energy, eloquence and musicality

 

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (1967) - can anything be salvaged from the banal, depraved structures in which we've locked ourselves?

 

Limelight (1952) - expresses with rigid poignancy a psyche largely defined by distortions and past glories, with no redemption but applause

 

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) - interesting for evoking, albeit a bit messily, a very specific time and place in movie culture

 

Boy Meets Girl (1984) - unfolds like a troubled, sometimes transcendently sensuous dream, clawed from the darkness; gorgeously intuitive

 

A Matter Of Life And Death (1946) - emblematic Powell - extremely old-world English, but also wildly exotic and cinematically daring

 

On Dangerous Ground (1952) - has a great physicality at times, but overall carries the feeling of a prototype for Ray's fuller achievement

 

J’ai tue ma mere (2009) - finely crafted with a great control of style & tone, but still minor - hard at this stage to accept the Dolan hype

 

Bringing up Baby (1938) - almost mystically funny and profound; still dazzling for how the relationship can be so irrational and yet so true

 

Four Nights Of A Dreamer (1971) - as the title suggests, foregrounds the abstract, quasi-romantic aspects of Bresson's stunning cinema

 

If God Is Willing...(2010) - instructive and provocative in parts, overly familiar and sketchy in others...but easily worthwhile overall

 

Dust In The Wind (1986) - less provocative and instructive than Hou's greatest work, but overflowing with gorgeous imagery and observation

 

Advise & Consent (1962) - massively gripping, exploring the necessity and limitations of structure and ritual with almost supernatural poise

 

Day Of Wrath (1943) - compelling expression of how female desire, in a superstitious world, seems almost indistinguishable from pure evil

 

Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009) - appealing for its idealistic sense of community & loyalty, & for making Gere look like a dog's dream owner!

 

Daisies (1966) - an giddy, thrilling but principled vision of liberation, implicitly criticizing all that we squander in free societies

 

Crime And Punishment (1935) - a weird, barely-controlled melting pot, but Lorre's crazed engagement with the world carries a real charge

 

Le signe du lion (1959) - early Rohmer seems as interested in playing God as exploring inner mysteries; an intriguing launching pad anyway..

 

My Darling Clementine (1946) - one of Ford's starkest and greatest works, depicting stability and myth gradually asserting itself over chaos

 

The State Of Things (1982) - I hate to go with the flow on this, but Wenders' key films sure seemed more important then than they do now

 

Verboten! (1959) - packs a remarkably potent survey of attitudes into less than 90 minutes, with incredible low-budget resourcefulness

 

Chloe (2009) - massively lamentable effort; even calls into question Egoyan's basic competence and feeling for how humans actually function

 

Lebanon (2009) - functions more as a blackly clever concept movie than a  progressive commentary on war; always intriguing, but limited

 

The Shanghai Gesture (1941) - von Sternberg conveys a total immersion in the crazed artificiality, creating something truly weird & striking

 

The Ascent (1977) - one of the most vivid portrayals of humans being tested and (in part) failing, allowing a spawn of provocative readings

 

The Wrong Man (1956) - one of Hitchcock's most reality-anchored films paradoxically becomes one of his most existential, even Bressonian

 

The Key (1983) - functions like a Bertolucci knock-off without his exquisite sensibility; interesting enough, but doesn't gel into much

 

To Have And Have Not (1944) - a film of mystical unity; how can it be so alluring & stylized while also so gripping & morally instructive?

 

La Dolce Vita (1960) - I'm not the greatest Fellini admirer, but this is undeniably fascinating, phenomenally orchestrated and calibrated

 

My Dinner With Andre (1981) - an indulgence for sure, but the emotional and thematic takeaway is pretty satisfying, almost despite itself

 

The Music Room (1958) - stately and quietly moving, attentive both to the majesty and the hopelessness of its protagonist's worldview

 

Women In Trouble (2009) - I guess the big message here is that the porn life is just a life like any other; sure, I'll subscribe to that...

 

Celine et Julie vont en bateau (1974) - simply one of the most rigorous, sustained, tangible, meaningful fantasies in all of cinema

 

Petulia (1968) - less interesting now for the flash and "kookiness" than for the sure sense of a society losing touch with its own needs

 

Last Year At Marienbad (1961) - the comparisons re Inception aren't entirely misplaced, but they only show up Nolan's literal-mindedness

 

Minnie And Moskowitz (1971) - perhaps more revealing of the coarseness in Cassavetes' sensibility than his more complex & accomplished works

 

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) - seeing this unremarkable movie in isolation, it's a mystery why this material is currently so hot

 

She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949) - beautifully explores the rituals and myths of the West, their glory and fragility and inadequacies

 

Europa 51 (1952) - a thrilling expression of faith taking root among the post-war ruins, and the governing ideology's rejection of it

 

Everybody's Fine (2009) - largely like a glossy, maudlin, schematic variation on Tokyo Story; still, De Niro is quietly affecting at times

 

The Mother And The Whore (1973) - one of the greatest films on sexual politics - despairingly chronicles the limits of the human project

 

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - always intriguing how Kubrick seems as fascinated by our banality as our (still dazzlingly imagined) promise

 

The Girl On The Train (2009) - another impeccable, insinuating Techine meditation on human interactions, possibilities and mysteries

 

Get Low (2010) - never achieves any great lift-off, and often fussily handled, but expert old-timer acting keeps it interesting enough

 

Psycho (1960) - the formal discipline and astonishing structure almost distracts you from its magnificent strangeness & near-abstraction

 

Malpertuis (1971) - a much more intimate form of mythmaking than we're likely to see again; remains odd and surprising even if you know it

 

Michael Jackson's This Is It (2009) - commendably disciplined; focuses on process & musicianship, leaving intact what remains of his mystery

 

The Devil, Probably (1977) - mesmerizing and remarkably tough-minded, although ultimately one of Bresson's simpler works, probably

 

The Box (2009) - it's no surprise when the initial intrigue gets crushed by overblown mythology, but it's still disappointing just how much

 

Le Samourai (1967) - over time you view it increasingly as endlessly fascinating performance art, built around private versus public rituals

 

The Runaways (2010) - largely successful in transcending cliches and methodically tapping the (albeit rather confused) feminine perspective

 

The Mother Of Tears (2007) - has all of Argento's weaknesses, but the strengths overcome them this time - repulsive, but ruthlessly gripping

 

Woodstock (1970) - the director's cut; probably evokes the scope & the heart of the overall event as well as any mere 3 1/2 hours ever could

 

Helas pour moi (1993) - achingly beautiful; transmits profound sadness that (to put it very basically) the world can't be better than it is

 

Paranormal Activity (2007) - effective enough, although only by declining most of the possibilities the genre (& cinema in general) present

 

Paris Belongs To Us (1961) - Rivette's fascinating debut; often feels like a cross between the later him and someone a bit more conventional

 

Motherhood (2009) - casting Thurman in this put-upon role is fanciful, but on the other hand she does carry the movie (what there is of it)

 

La naissance de l’amour (1993) - very haunting, sculpted in extreme melancholy & lost possibility; evokes strong desire to see more Garrel

 

Prodigal Sons (2008) - interesting throughout, but never amounts to more than the sum of its parts, despite somewhat strenuous attempts

 

The Phantom Of Liberty (1974) - Inception my foot!...the stuff of dreams is here, but also of profound engagement (and it's way more fun)

 

Moon (2009) - not much here to disrupt one's orbit; could have used the color of Silent Running, or just a sliver of anything 2001 had

 

Le Plaisir (1952) - remarkable in every way; almost seems to distill all human knowledge of desire and fulfillment into just 90 minutes

 

The Invention Of Lying (2009) - hard to believe Gervais settled for such a conventional, fuzzy approach to this concept, but here it is...

 

L'amour fou (1969) - unusually raw and gritty for Rivette, and completely fascinating, not least as a "prologue" of sorts to Out 1

 

Inception (2010) - seriously overpraised in some quarters; an impressive piece of structuring, but with little overall meaning or relevance

 

Dillinger Is Dead (1969) - ...but hope survives (barely), in Ferreri's weirdly playful, meticulous, iconoclastic prescription

 

Soul Power (2008) - terrific if fragmented piece of strutting archaeology; falls in the tiny category of movies you wish had been longer

 

Lions Love (1969) - Varda takes a ride on a conceptual bronco and mostly holds on; knowingly messy, but also moving and piercing at times

 

Taking Woodstock (2009) - pretty fatal evidence for those who try to claim Ang Lee as a great director; has no texture or feel for anything

 

Out One (1971) - a truly unique viewing privilege, rich in creativity & mystery while exploring an immense intellectual disillusionment

 

Surrogates (2009) - some arresting images and ideas, but overall very thin; reminds you at every stage of other more fully-developed movies

 

The Long Long Trailer (1953) - enjoyable, eternally resonant missive from a culture defined entirely by commodities and stereotyped desires

 

I Am Love (2009) - remarkably sensual and attentive and pleasurable, although just too narrow I think to be valued at the highest level

 

Julia (2008) - a remarkable, daredevil study in performance, with Swinton just scintillating; I sure wish Zonca worked more frequently

 

Lady Oscar (1979) - sadly plain and straightforward compared to Demy's great work, barely tapping the material's considerable possibilities

 

The Joneses (2009) - has some nice satirical touches here and there, but it's seldom as biting or disquieting as you'd like it to be

 

Variety Lights (1950) - largely sentimental, although with a cold streak; expertly engrossing, but only hints at Fellini's later ambitions

 

All Of Me (1984) - still a joyous viewing experience, galvanized by Martin's amazing performance and a total conviction in the fairy tale

 

No Subtitles Necessary: Laszlo & Vilmos (2008) - a bit unbalanced (what's with all the Frances coverage?) but valuable and evocative overall

 

The Human Condition II (1959) - patiently & eloquently extends the first film's humanist project, reaching a chilling arrival point

 

The Kids Are All Right (2010) - a surprisingly conventional (while well-executed & funny) surface, but with real underlying conviction

 

Legal Eagles (1986) - lumbering and almost entirely toothless, but quasi-interesting for a kind of courtly quality that's seldom seen now

 

The Fireman (1916) - moves rapidly from balletic ass-kicking to a potted arson drama, as if summing up Chaplin's escalating ambition

 

Ponyo (2008) - as charming & iconoclastic as all Miyazaki's work, with an accessible (but hardly simple) vision of delight & transcendence

 

Cold Souls (2009) - certainly well handled; intriguing for how Barthes makes elements of potentially nutty fantasy seem almost desolate

 

Abbott And Costello Meet The Mummy (1955) - a sad sight by any measure, especially for the duo's overwhelming lack of energy and intuition

 

El Topo (1970) - amazingly confident, visually ravishing, structurally startling mythmaking, with more humanity than the legend may suggest

 

Downhill Racer (1969) - remarkably desolate sports movie, with Redford at his coldest, finding little distinction between triumph & wipe-out

 

Sherrybaby (2006) - puts most of its chips on Gyllenhaal, which works out fine, but the "grittiness" remains within accessible limits

 

The Unholy Three (1925) - mesmerizing whenever it hits its gorgeously freakish stride, although it ultimately peters out a bit

 

Nobody Waved Good-Bye (1964) - fascinating study of a glib teenager, born in wrong time and place, basically talking himself into oblivion

 

Hello Goodbye (2008) - utterly underdeveloped; feels like the main motivation was to deploy two stars for some kind of tax write-off scheme

 

Going Shopping (2005) - pretty and pleasant but utterly toothless Jaglom creation doesn't exactly suggest a very expansive worldview

 

Night Of The Demon (1957) - increasingly anguished blend of British drabness & wild mysticism; full of fascinating linkages & implications

 

Ossos (1997) - precisely evokes a startling local reality while experimenting with Bressonian aesthetics...a long way from later Costa

 

The Art Star And The Sudanese Twins (2007) - despite the odd background, a pretty flat reverie on the fine line between art and exploitation

 

Middle Of The Night (1959) - despite Mann's drab direction and a weak ending, fairly moving for the fluid writing and March's authenticity

 

The Prisoner or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair (2006) - absurd/horrifying, tightly-focused complement to wider-scale Iraq condemnations

 

Blaise Pascal (1972) - not quite as meticulous as Cartesius in charting the topography of a great mind, but immensely informative and worthy

 

Winter's Bone (2010) - provocative and seemingly informative as a window on a startlingly self-contained community; very cannily handled..

 

The Carey Treatment (1972) - always intriguing for how Edwards' deadpan style so perfectly wraps around Coburn's near-mystical sense of self

 

The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee (2009) - interesting to try building a movie around such a self-effacing character, but doesn't yield much

 

Mr. Thank You (1936) - sets out many of Japan's strains & tensions of the time, but with a delightful sense of community & possibility

 

The Honey Pot (1967) - hardly Mankiewicz at his best, and outright clunky at time, but mostly gets by on classically elegant performances

 

New York, I Love You (2009) - feels like everyone involved had a gun at their heads, forcing them to do the dreamy wistful thing...

 

Intentions Of Murder (1964) - extremely twisted and disconcerting tale of female empowerment in a painfully mixed-up post-war Japan

 

Splice (2010) - ideas count for much less here than the genre's demands for speed & clarity; imagine Michael Mann addressing such themes...

 

The Human Factor (1979) - suitable final note from Preminger dryly captures the Cold War's weird mixing of formality and derangement

 

La constellation Jodorowsky (1994) - doesn't adequately convey his artistic significance, but valuable for various personal insights

 

Let There Be Light (1946) - a window on the dawn of our new ultra-therapized age, simultaneously both humane and somehow depersonalizing

 

The Burning Plain (2008) - diverting enough, but ultimately predictable and unrevealing; the smart-alec structure counts for very little

 

The Human Condition I (1959) - powerfully sets out the meagre possibilities for progressive humanism in a time of fear and self-interest

 

A Perfect Getaway (2009) - has the same surprise ending as every other movie now; genre pieces like this sure used to have more color

 

Return Of The Secaucus Seven (1980) - still engaging but seems very conventional now, and often pretty forced; provides only modest insight

 

Intimate Enemies (2007) - soberly gripping; an effective historical reference point re appropriate terms of engagement with "terrorists"

 

The Exiles (1961) - utterly no feeling of artifice; the sense of existential loss and separation from their original purpose is overwhelming

 

Spread (2009) - good evocation of decadence, but otherwise pretty soft; Kutcher is much better at cool distance than at loss & devastation

 

The Grim Reaper (1962) - parade of deprived souls has early signs of Bertolucci's analytical prowess & some sad, chilling social observation

 

Gumshoe (1971) - the dissonant, stylized Liverpool setting works well at first, but ultimately the impact is self-defeatingly generic

 

Brothers (2009) - has some pleasant naturalistic moments, but overall too sculptured & pretty; way below the (overrated) Danish original

 

In Vanda's Room (2000) - fascinating as anthropology, dissolving any conventional relationship between humanism and aesthetic calculation

 

Harry Brown (2009) - relentlessly and distastefully silly, although Caine's dignity and the over the top "grittiness" help it roll along

 

L'histoire d'Adele H (1975) - elegantly & enigmatically reflects on the historical perception of female empowerment as a form of madness

 

Three Lives And Only One Death (1996) - very elegant metaphor for creativity & engagement, so gracefully handled it almost seems rational

 

The Girl In The Park (2007) - certainly modest, but benefits enormously from Weaver's moving performance and from some intriguing psychology

 

The L-Shaped Room (1962) - not too distinctive, but true to Caron's lovely fragility and to the lousy economics governing all the lives here

 

The Yacoubian Building (2006) - epic saga of changing times in Egypt, sometimes cheesy, but also often bold & anthropologically interesting

 

The Two Jakes (1990) - surprising Nicholson would be such an uninspired director; lousy instincts & pacing kill off the promise throughout

 

Oceans (2009) - easily labeled a spectacle for kids, but forget being a cineaste - just as a human, what could be more elevating than this?

 

The Unknown (1927) - the closing stretch is still as unnerving as anything you'll ever see, with Lon Chaney at his most mesmerizing...

 

The Czech Dream (2004) - amusing real-life anecdote of expert hoax, ultimately crafting some nice parallels with the pro-Europe movement

 

Orphan (2009) - throws a silly excess of ingredients into the pot, and it's hopelessly formulaic, but done with darkly handsome proficiency

 

No Regrets For Our Youth (1946) - variable but evocative early Kurosawa; a stylistic mixed bag, building to a back-to-the-land paean

  

Choke (2008) - largely rancid viewing experience; feels like being cornered in a topless bar by a smutty relationship therapist

 

Surveillance (2008) - makes most sense if seen as a kind of depraved performance-art tone poem, otherwise it just seems messy and tone d

 

O'Horten (2007) - pretty thin, even by the standards of such throwaway quirkiness; intriguing at times for its sense of a waking dream

 

Moby Dick (1956) - inadequately sustained, but with the right sense of inner coherence, however self-destructive, found only in obsession

 

Battle For Haditha (2007) - for me much more impactful and moving than The Hurt Locker, although some might consider it unsubtly anti-US

 

Vertical Features Remake (1978) - a major step ahead in the fascinating progression of Greenaway's short films, cranking up the mythology

 

Voices From Beyond (1994) - Fulci's last film shows him in sure decline; it's visually undistinguished with little sense of conviction

 

Stuck (2007) - a highly gripping little curio, pumping everything there is to be had from its nutty premise, and then knowing when to quit

 

Please Give (2010) - nicely explores issues of fulfillment & obligation within a very smart structure; intriguing and engaging throughout

 

The Falls (1980) - amazing myth making, even when heavy going; makes you marvel anyone could have so much creative capacity and discipline

 

Everlasting Moments (2008) - restrained memoir, usually choosing not to stare directly into the hurt; the impact is precise but modest...

 

The Good Night (2007) - one of those celebrity-laden exercises where you get the feeling they all forgot halfway through why they bothered..

 

The Daytrippers (1996) - perpetually underrated, nicely balanced between sharp observation and whimsicality (a pointer who can't point!)

 

I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958) - from the opening stag that feels like a wake, effortlessly resonant about 50's discontent..

 

Tickets (2005) - Loach's bit is happily familiar; Olmi's overly sculptured; Kiarostami's surprisingly easygoing; overall elegant but limited

 

You Don't Know Jack (2010) - Pacino is terrific, but a bland-ish movie -mostly limits itself to presenting Jack's side cleanly and clearly

 

Walkabout (1971) - gorgeously achieved; constantly surprising & productively disorienting, although without the layers of Roeg's later works

 

Nothing But The Truth (2008) - mostly workmanlike, with little texture, but easy to watch & an OK primer on some freedom of the press issues

 

The Diary Of An Unknown Soldier (1959) - Watkins' style is already remarkably formed and raw, even if the antiwar sentiments are familiar

 

Simon Of The Desert (1965) - how do you prove your piety without placing yourself as close to Satan as possible (like, on the dancefloor!)

 

Lianna (1983) - conveys a real fascination with the possibilities for female growth & self-expression, although often succumbs to convention

 

Golden Boy (1939) - Holden still feels modern but a lot of the rest is pure shtick; generally compelling though, sometimes even dazzling

 

The Secret In Their Eyes (2009) - the best foreign film Oscar goes once again for easy glitz; this beats Audiard & Haneke?...gimme a break..

 

River Queen (2005) - reminiscent at every turn of better films, and a bit of a slog, but has its watered-down Malick/Campion-esque moments..

 

The Loneliness Of The Long-Distance Runner (1962) - compared to similar films of the time, a bit strenuous in its structure and symbolism

 

Save The Green Planet (2003) - potentially tiring high-octane fantasy (spanning Kubrick to Saw) easily gets by on polished giddiness

 

The Gladiators (1969) - hits plenty of punches, and delightfully strange at times, but more didactic and narrow than Watkins' best work

 

The Knockout (1914) - almost embryonic in its technique, but takes a leap when Chaplin appears, already radiating screen-friendly agility

 

Dead Snow (2009) - Nazi zombie gore against pristine white backgrounds; utterly nutty, but gets the pace and attitude bloody right

 

Sitting Ducks (1980) - as always, Jaglom's heart is in the shambling, sometimes touching sense of community; but not his most achieved work

 

And Now For Something Completely Different (1972) - even some of Python's best bits struggle against the heavy-footed overall approach

 

Jules et Jim (1961) - after many viewings, it seems often forced to me, although with perpetually intriguing technique & sexual politics

 

The Wild Angels (1966) - the early sense of liberation doesn't last for long; turns into a surprisingly rigorous deconstruction of the myth

 

There's A Girl In My Soup (1970) - the cardboard-like Sellers/Hawn relationship never makes an iota of sense; pointlessly watchable at best

 

La petite Lili (2003) - evolves rather unexpectedly into a strange meditation on cinema's healing power; overall enjoyable, but unsatisfying

 

The Uneasy Three (1925) - quite elegant Leo McCarey comedy showing his escalating complexity, riffing nicely on the era's moral principles

 

The Blind Side (2009) - sure, might have deserved the Oscar attention, just like I might be eating the world’s most nutritious Twinkie bar

 

Coraline (2009) - very tangibly enchanting, and watching it shortly after Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders helps jazz up the subtext

 

Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders (1970) - mysteriously fascinating, overflowing reverie on the potential havoc of unleashed female sexuality

 

Spring Breakdown (2009) - shrill, shallow spectacle tries to talk a good game about poor female empowerment, when not crudely exploiting it

 

La bete humaine (1938) - still a disquieting, hugely confident work, most chilling for its grim insinuations on impact of industrialization

 

All The President's Men (1976) - as free of cliche & excess as such a film could possibly be; handsomely resonant about corruption & power

 

Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours (1989) - strangely ripe and moving, crafting a zone of expression outside normal laws & conventions

 

Heller In Pink Tights (1960) - some heavy plotting, but enchantingly illustrates how theatrical flourish enchants even the tough & the jaded

 

The Immigrant (1917) - Chaplin calibrating & deepening his comedy here, growing increasingly intricate & subtle as the backdrops get bigger

 

Mother (2009) - Bong is a shrewd and subtle stylist, and it's a gripping narrative, but the movie's after-taste is ultimately pretty generic

 

Tracks (1977) - Jaglom's artful swing from the convivial to the deranged speaks volumes about the impact of Vietnam on the national psyche

 

Killing Me Softly (2002) - idea of applying a (way) outsider's perspective (Chen Kaige!) to familiar titillation material falls utterly flat

 

The Young Girls Of Rochefort (1967) - a sprawling dream of community; takes your breath away how many things Demy holds in alignment here

 

Management (2008) - minor and stilted, with an old-hat turning-round-your-life theme, & two stars who seem to belong on different planets

 

Some Came Running (1958) - fascinating melodrama, with a persistent sense of longing and rootlessness and enormous depth of expression

 

Greenberg (2010) - has its moments throughout (Gerwig brings a lot), but seldom as original or existentially captivating as Baumbach intends

 

Empties (2007) - has an amiable glow, but suggests no reason at all for existing, other than the director finding a lead role for his dad

 

The Cheat (1915) - a rich narrative of transgression; more evidence of how inadequately DeMille's later reputation sums up his full career

 

Human Resources (1999) - examines with great, sympathetic precision the toll of an ideology built on inherently soul-destroying structures

 

Transsiberian (2008) - very gripping in a somewhat old-fashioned, wintery way, and highly atmospheric; Brad Anderson is quite underrated...

 

Crisis (1946) - premonitions of later Bergman, especially in the tortured gigolo character, but for now he lets small-town values win out

 

Precious (2009) - less of a "“sociological horror show” than I'd feared, but minor; often feels like a weird collage of gimmicky ideas…

 

Barfly (1987) - diverting enough, but flatter and less informative than its roots and Schroeder's achievements elsewhere would suggest

 

Cartesius (1974) - a transcendent project in education & illumination, particularly viewed now, with integrity & reason so widely degraded..

 

The Passionate Friends (1949) - highly engrossing as it acts out the ambiguity in the title - a relationship lacking a natural equilibrium..

 

Outsourced (2006) - conventional in its approach to emotions and issues, but makes some good points about the West's dwindling hegemony

 

Macbeth (1982) - told in just two takes; conveying the spooky sense of maybe being Macbeth's posthumous telescoped tortured recollection...

  

The Godless Girl (1929) - maybe God wins the day this time, but DeMille doesn't leave much doubt it might ultimately swing the other way

  

Un prophete (2009) - a punchy narrative for sure, very intuitive & resonant re implications for Europe's old guard as its power hollows out

  

Twentynine Palms (2003) - the elemental, searching quality is intriguing, but hard to shake off the sense of a cruder Zabriskie Point

  

When Did You Last See Your Father? (2007) - well, not as recently as I saw a dozen other equally inconsequentially "sensitive" movies

 

Battle In Seattle (2007) - effective overall in navigating the big picture; less so when resorting to conventional character arcs

 

Walker (1987) - pretty didactic at times, but a concentrated fist of a movie, mesmerizing as the deliberate anachronisms start to invade

 

Saute ma ville (1968) - as striking as Jeanne Dielman in a "performance art" kind of way, making domesticity spooky and imprisoning

 

A Foreign Affair (1948) - some flimsy foreground maneuvers, against a devastating Berlin backdrop & satisfying barbs at the hand that feeds

 

The Ghost Writer (2010) - a steely take on power: exhibits all Polanski's skill, but limited by genre-driven conventionality I think

 

Temple Grandin (2010) - bathed in an unimaginatively pristine glow, but generally engaging & informative about her achievements

 

Fish Tank (2009) - strong and intriguing throughout, with memorably abrasive character dynamics; almost unbearable tension at one point

 

Can She Bake A Cherry Pie? (1983) - really just a series of fragments, but striking for the sense of something deeply personal at its centre

 

The Holy Mountain (1973) - an astonishing, uncompromising, rebellious, exacting vision; all modern epics look merely disposable next to it

 

Desaccord parfait (2006) - feels like a tacky relic from the 70's; has possibilities on paper (like, Rampling!), realizes none of them

 

The Messenger (2009) - a moving, complex reverie about crafting meaningful self-identity within the  military worldview's distorted contours

 

The New York Ripper (1982) - benefits from Fulci's zealous approach to the slasher stuff, & from the backdrop of a crummy guilt-ridden city

 

Baghead (2008) - entertaining so-called mumblecore approach to Blair Witch-type material, although greater ambition wouldn't have hurt

 

Un lever de rideau (2006) - a pleasant & fluent, somewhat Rohmeresque miniature, but with a sense of strain that confirms Ozon's limitations

 

On The Beach (1959) - actually works better if taken as a metaphor for our slow-motion response to environmental & other pending crises

 

A Letter To Uncle Boonmee (2009) - on The Auteurs website; a suitable intro to Apichatpong's gorgeous (if initially head-scratching) work

 

Lake Of Fire (2006) - pristine & scalding; both sides have honesty & passion, but one side has more crazed (mostly male) self-righteousness

 

Vers Mathilde (2005) - a graceful, intuitive and logical documentary counterpoint to Claire Denis' awesome narrative films of this decade

 

Shutter Island (2010) - absorbing and fluent, but comically unworthy of a so-called greatest living director (low ambition, or insecurity?)

 

L'intrus (2004) - truly on the outer edge of what you can expect a (merely human!) filmmaker to create; just thrilling to contemplate

 

The Dragon Painter (1919) - a sweet, graceful, although immensely abbreviated (and, sure, silly) little fable; Hayakawa is very empathetic

 

Munchhausen (1943) - mostly a charming if chilly fantasy, very visually inventive at times, although has an air of superiority somehow

 

Anvil! The Story Of Anvil (2008) - good fun, well-pitched re both the poignancy and the Spinal Tap echoes, no Some Kind Of Monster though

 

The Happy Ending (1969) - quite personal & touching at times; too glossily calculated at others; hides a hankering to get raunchier I feel

 

Je, tu, il, elle (1976) - says much on societal/psychological strictures, while probing possibilities for productive human collision..

 

Satantango (1994) - as per legend, a starkly magnificent, slyly funny, not unduly punishing (!) 7-hour spiritual/social devastation epic

 

Ballad Of A Soldier (1959) - surely unfairly forgotten now; get past the pro-Soviet paeans and it's well-observed, touching, even surprising

 

In Search Of A Midnight Kiss (2007) - even at its best a poor dude's Before Sunrise, although unusually informative about the LA topography

 

Last Life In The Universe (2003) - a wonderful luminous film, with real weight and poignancy to its genre-grounded magic realism

 

10 Items Or Less (2006) - a self-regarding, tone-deaf stunt, rendering Morgan Freeman more annoying than would have seemed possible

 

Knight Without Armour (1937) - formed by long-out-the-window aesthetic conventions, but Feyder finds a tender core within the creakiness

 

Seance (2000) - narratively fairly straightforward, but genuinely creepy and troubling, with elements of strange, plaintive social critique

 

A Shot In The Dark (1964) - a very consistent, deadpan take on a brilliantly ambiguous “idiot” challenging order in a flatly venal world

 

Crazy Heart (2009) - the great Bridges could surely have gone further, into more complex territory, but the film doesn't want to go there...

 

La chambre (1972) - almost uncanny how such a simple formal idea seems to accommodate so much unsettling implication

 

Irma La Douce (1963) - 2nd rate Wilder at best: handsome and peppy, but so ridiculous it almost takes on an air of liberating abstraction

 

Fury (1936) - still potent damn-your-land-of-opportunity viewing, although melodramatic contrivance weighs too heavily in the second half

 

The Cure (1917) - important early insight that stuffy institutions are only validated by being mocked (for which it helps to be blind drunk)

 

Police, Adjective (2009) - a shrewd, deadpan expression of a cop's loss of individuality (which mainly only consisted of tedium anyway)...

 

Man Of The West (1958) - a fascinating, brooding genre piece, full of sublimated pain at old relationships and codes breaking apart

 

Smoke (1995) - nicely done and endlessly convivial; but acknowledging its own weightlessness doesn't ultimately equate to countering it...

 

The Phantom Carriage (1921) - grippingly structured and genuinely creepy, eerily conveying the pain both of this world and the next

 

Seems Like Old Times (1980) - was it really only thirty years ago that such amiable middle-aged plasticity could be a big-screen event?

 

The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (2009) - plot has an utter "whatever" quality, but it's a good skeleton for Gilliam's inventive clutter

 

The Local Stigmatic (1990) - weird and almost entirely viewer-resistant, although testifies to Pacino's wayward theatrical roots

 

Grey Gardens (2009) - finds an honorable and moving approach to the characters, but still never completely shakes off a sense of redundancy

 

Gervaise (1956) – just as handsome as Children Of Paradise, poignantly contrasting her sweet industriousness and her lovers' venality

 

Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) - cinematically dull, with lots of stilted activity, but also some elegance in the embryonic slapstick

 

Up In The Air (2009) - disappointingly weightless; feels created by people whose entire sense of the business world comes from other movies

 

Chinese Coffee (2000) - standard minor-league theatrics; Pacino and Orbach just have too much presence to embody these sad, minor lives...

 

The Little Fugitive (1953) - a great 50's New York time capsule, showing the ambiguous freedoms of youth in a less neurotic and cautious age

 

Tropical Malady (2004) - amazingly alluring and sensuous; takes a second viewing though to appreciate it as prose as well as poetry

 

Kings And Queen (2004) - often feels like a gorgeous caper, even as it skirts despair; Desplechin's grasp of human capacity is peerless

 

Avatar (2009) - full of pleasing (if confused) political provocation, although ultimately feels more like experiencing a game than a film

 

The Fatal Glass Of Beer (1933) - near brilliant in its beyond-whimsical form and content; Fields' persona is as stubbornly radical as ever

 

The Nutty Professor (1963) - shot through with elements of nastiness and twisted self-regard, with no interest in real people generally

 

Le Rayon Vert (1986) - not sure why this is so often cited as one of Rohmer's best, not that it isn't utterly engaging of course...

 

Big Deal On Madonna Street (1958) - a nice mix of broad and more subtle comedy, caper mechanics, and sometimes poignant social portraiture

 

Nine (2009) - I can’t recall a recent film with so little sense of spontaneity (especially murderous, obviously, for a musical)

 

Boomerang (1947) - fascinatingly ambitious procedural, built on meticulous organization, laying groundwork for Kazan's richer work to come

 

Confessions Of A Window Cleaner (1974) - under the relentless surface, really quite a melancholy window on a repressed and mediocre society

 

La regle du jeu (1939) - one of the truly great films; elegant beyond comparison; scintillatingly complex; possessing a mysterious harmony

 

Clean (2004) - another terrifically quirky examination by Assayas of globalization's existential toll, full of remarkable observations

 

Invictus (2009) - Eastwood's mega-pragmatic but principled form of stylization might by now be the most reliable tool-kit in the business...

 

La Chinoise (1967) - gorgeously vivid and stimulating; triangulates intellect and playfulness in a way that seems lost to mass culture now

 

Don Quijote de Orson Welles (1992) - shockingly slapdash in realizing Welles' intentions, but still an eye-opener, sometimes even beautiful

 

Casualties Of War (1989) - Vietnam as a purely cinematic creation, illustrating its horrible malleability both as experience and history...

 

Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006) - the grungy afterlife for suicides is initially intriguing, but peters out into meet-cute/new-age stuff

 

A Single Man (2009) - so being gay, it seems, mainly means being polite and pretty and wistful; a beautiful installation, but barely a film

 

La Route de Corinthe (1967) - some good moments, but an early sign of Chabrol's willingness to ease off artistically and enjoy the good life

 

Force Of Evil (1948) - compelling and politically charged; Garfield's is one of the all-time great portrayals of morally-bankrupt go-getting

 

Through A Glass Darkly (1961) - is the poor woman swallowed up for the sake of male unity, or liberated (to join God the spider?), or both?

 

Pigs And Battleships (1961) - inspired provocation of a chronically misled post-war Japan gone all but mad; leaves a corrosive aftertaste

 

Me And Orson Welles (2008) - knowingly old-fashioned and affectionate; feels true and informative as an evocation of Welles’ working methods

 

The Balloonatic (1923) - Keaton's customarily elegant staging and the ultimate escape from earthly ties creates something quite transcendent

 

The Valley (Obscured By Clouds) (1972) - a shaggy mysticism time capsule; goes from stilted to moderately enlightening, but always watchable

 

Jimmy Carter Man From Plains (2007) - maybe Carter was just too decent and thoughtful to be an effective President (Obama parallel ahead?..)

 

Claire's Knee (1970) - a kind of abstracted, sun-kissed Dangerous Liaisons; fascinating and nicely ambiguous, but second-tier Rohmer I think

 

Collapse (2009) - at least 90% correct if you ask me, and 100% riveting, even if you barely react to it with your usual aesthetic criteria..

 

L'Argent (1983) - I'm always in awe of Bresson's navigation between often horrifying specific causality, and inter-connection/predestination

 

The Insect Woman (1963) - an amazingly ambitious study of venality, although at least seems to allow mankind some faint remaining hope...

 

Knowing (2009) - if this had been made forty years ago pre-CE3K with a bit more grit, might have seemed like a true wonder; now, not so much

 

Ne touchez pas la hache (2007) - much more radical and adventurous than it first appears; beautifully strange and quietly savage...

 

Baby Face (1933) - concentrated spectacle of magnificent Stanwyck dissecting and blasting through men; amazing (except for soft ending)

 

L'aimee (2007) - Desplechin's quietly brave object lesson in creating resonance and texture from highly localized material

 

The Road (2009) - a bleak film for sure, but to little end; separated from the zombie apocalypse genre only by its self-righteous austerity

 

Killshot (2008) - efficient enough, but nothing about it even vaguely suggests the possibility of a higher-echelon Elmore Leonard flick...

 

Koko: A Talking Gorilla (1978) - through its careful observation of existential complexity, links compellingly to Schroeder's other work

 

The Candidate (1972) - the triumph of image-making over substance... perpetually resonant no matter how much the hairstyles change...

 

The International (2009) - like making a Bernie Madoff movie and, just to jazz things up, having him be a serial killer too...

 

The Headless Woman (2008) - strangely puts me in mind of Lynch's Inland Empire through its multiplicity of (real or imagined) implications..

 

The Ninth Gate (1999) - sad to see Polanski's sly sense of the perverse reduced to such glossy gobbledygook, no matter how easily watchable

 

Goya's Ghosts (2006) - handled fluidly enough, but the heavy use of dramatic contrivance puts it firmly in the annals of the second-rate...

 

White Cannibal Queen (1980) - as lousy a creation as you'll ever see, embodying every disdainful cliche applied to low-budget genre cinema

 

The Big Heat (1953) - Lang goes to the edge of the then-permissible, letting the stink of layers of corruption seep right to the surface

 

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) - shimmers with painstaking respect for the integrity of an ecosystem, however quirkily and dreamily imagined...

 

Clash By Night (1952) - with everyone highly expressive of some deep block, feels much like Lang encroaching (with great precision) on Sirk

 

I Am Curious - Yellow (1967) - actually rather touching in portraying Lena's somewhat reckless curiosity & desire to make a difference..

 

Ornamental Hairpin (1941) - no Ozu, but still an engaging, structurally quirky miniature, full of insight into Japanese social rigidity..

 

Carnal Knowledge (1971) - now feels like a narrow performance art piece, if not a stunt, although Nicholson is eternally mesmerizing

 

Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans (2009) - funny how Herzog flourishes again as the state of our societal misdirection deepens..

 

House Of Bamboo (1955) - could be seen now as a beautiful abstract parody of globalization - men in suits whipping up cross-border mayhem..

 

Fando and Lis (1968) - Fellini, Makaveyev, apocalypse, chicks with whips, Garden of Eden...you gotta problem with that?...didn't think so!

 

The Racket (1951) - condensed and sharp, although its approach to visuals and relationships often feels too much like series TV to come..

 

The Railrodder (1965) - rather uneasily grafting an affectionate late Keaton tribute onto a Canadian travelogue; nice but not much more..

 

The Leopard Man (1943) - a remarkably strange, spare and concentrated parable on responsibility and self-definition in a confused world

 

Francesco, giullare di Dio (1950) - a stunning, humane evocation; perhaps Rossellini's necessary corridor to his great, complex 50's work..

 

Antichrist (2009) - suggests a horrific dislocation in our relationship with Gaia and so with each other...interesting when not too dour..

 

Putney Swope (1969) - funny how much resonance/vision some of the dada stuff has - the grotesque President even looks a bit like Reagan..

 

Felix Saves The Day (1922) - an inventive (if primitive) delight, still pleasing in how it defines and ventilates the physical & comic space

 

La boheme (1926) - you certainly understand how Gish evokes such sympathy, but she's so ethereal, physical desire seems almost grotesque..

 

A Clockwork Orange (1971) - I often think I'd be content (safer?) never to see this terrifying masterpiece again, and then I return to it

 

Bronson (2008) - watching this you feel relieved our social structures, lousy as they are, work as effectively for as many of us as they do

 

The Red Desert (1964) - sets out a form of hope and adaptation but at the terrible cost of alienation from all that's natural...

 

Blonde Cobra (1963) - "What went wrong?"...a suitably anguished final note for a deceptively tough-minded, uncompromising artwork...

 

Amreeka (2009) - now there's the immigrant experience - integration means being able to wear your White Castle uniform in public...

 

Promise Her Anything (1965) - almost (but not quite) dislocated and clunky enough to be intriguing, with Beatty's most ineffective work ever

 

An Education (2009) - Mulligan is a mixed blessing: not charismatic enough to be stunning, not ordinary enough to be convincing...

 

Fists In The Pocket (1965) - pivotal movie of modern Italy: moments of bonding and release intercepting the ongoing momentum toward doom..

 

35 rhums (2008) - might argue it unrealistically romanticizes normal life's quiet wonders, but for me Denis is now one of the very best..

 

Avanti! (1972) - conveys a moving sense of meditative renewal despite some questionable mechanics (and Mills really isn't so fat either..)

 

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009) - resist the self-serving capitalist machine by not paying a premium price to watch this second-hand news..

 

Pickup On South Street (1953) - still potent, triangulating Fuller's disdain for Communism with his gritty delight in Widmark's neutrality

 

The Men Who Stare At Goats (2009) - missed opportunities throughout - just stare at this obvious list of structural and thematic weaknesses

 

7 Women (1966) - Ford's transplanting of Western codes to China is fascinating, but did his Western heroes ever go through such contortions?

 

The September Issue (2009) - Wintour says fashion’s always about looking forward, not back, but that's the road to disposability, not art

 

Early Summer (1951) - one of my favorite Ozus...happiness as a weighing of outcomes, relative to possibilities seized and lost...

 

The Stalking Moon (1968) - a quietly insinuating Western, forged from absences and distances and wounded beauty

 

A Serious Man (2009) - I sometimes think the Coens know the workings of almost everything, but not the value of it...

 

Night Wind (1999) - a world with a limited supply of human viability and too many walking shells, and they grimly try to make it reconcile

 

Touki Bouki (1973) - challengingly structured Senegalese film conveys the country's parched texture while spinning some aspirational magic..

 

The Apartment (1960) -still striking for its cynicism and frequent callousness, but carries surprisingly little satiric force now

 

Flight Of The Red Balloon (2007) - Hou's transcendentally enchanting tribute to the intertwining of life and art; one of the decade's best

 

Breathless (1960) - never loses its sense of the near-miraculous, not least for seeming so impossibly coherent, and inevitable

 

In The Loop (2009) - very vivid about why things just get worse and worse; deranged performance art having replaced rationality and debate

 

House Of Games (1987) - works best the first time of course, but Manet's neurotic delight in his artifice remains clinically fascinating

 

Trouble The Water (2008) - even after Spike Lee's great Katrina work, there's enough there to disgust and depress you all over again...

 

Che (2008) - takes on a sad grandeur in the almost deathwish-tinged second half, as the limits of the revolutionary project become clear

 

Bright Star (2009) - remarkably moving; at its most beautiful when finding physical expressions for the ethereal web they create together

 

I Am Curious - Blue (1968) - every element is dated, from the politics to the pubic hair, but the earthy delight is still quite endearing..

 

The Informant! (2009) - rather under-nourished, unimportant application of Soderbergh's favorite "limits of control" theme...

 

North By Northwest (1959) - one of the most sublimely slippery movies ever made, supremely serious, and yet not at all...

 

Visage (2009) - sometimes quite mesmerizing, but most of the time, visual and thematic gibberish..Tsai's work is almost a chore to watch now

 

Inland Empire (2006) - you miss the easier pleasures of Lynch's earlier works, and yet at times this film seems to be redefining the world..

 

Pierrot le fou (1965) - watching prime Godard remains one of the most exhilarating journeys in cinema, and with the least amount of coasting

 

The White Ribbon (2009) - almost intimidatingly rigorous and subtle, allowing as many readings and implications as a coldly wrinkled palm

 

Mon Oncle (1958) - from the dogs running free, to mankind's declining spontaneity as it climbs the wage scale, seems richer every time

 

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009) - it's a sorry state when a Herzog film is most interesting for speculating what David Lynch put in

 

Boarding Gate (2007) - beneath the decadent surface, a vibrant, sensitive chapter in Assayas' gradual construction of a theory of everything

 

Life During Wartime (2009) - "In the end China will take over and none of this will matter"...Solondz, none of your crap matters now either

 

Fin aout, debut septembre (1998) - one of Assayas' very best films; the delicacy of emotion and complexity of interaction is often thrilling

 

Honeymoons (2009) - very accomplished although devastatingly depressing...a whole lot of hell and just shreds of (probably misguided) hope

 

Death At A Funeral (2007) - might have been directed by an extra-terrestrial...just a few token gross-out laughs escape from the coffin..

 

Soul Kitchen (2009) - well, why shouldn't Akin take a break if he wants to...the Hollywood remake will barely need a rewrite...

 

Bonnie And Clyde (1967) - I see more now how it's Bonnie who touchingly embodies the 60's metaphor, traveling from transcendence to oblivion

 

White Material (2009) - a shimmering Denis masterpiece, uncannily capturing every fraught moment, the weight of history, their intertwining

 

Walk Don't Run (1966) - drawing relentlessly on conventions that used to work but now don't..makes sense Cary Grant bowed out after this

 

Enter The Void (2009) - easy to disdain, but haunting (at least!) for attempt to dramatize trauma, to simultaneously regress and transcend..

 

The Life Before Her Eyes (2007) - another example of painstaking craft applied to material that's not worth a damn (in this life anyway)..

 

Le refuge (2009) - has the typical Ozon allure and skill with actors, but doesn't feel very necessary or important; dubious ending too...

 

Jeanne Dielman (1975) - the 2001: A Space Odyssey of domesticity, equally as rich in mystery and strange drama as the programming slips...

 

Hadewijch (2009) - still has elements of what alienates people about Dumont, but feels less like a lecture, more like a genuine search...

 

Mr Smith Goes To Washington (1939) - one examines the movie for signs of hope of turning round our current mess, but we're just too far gone

 

Vengeance (2009) - a dour creation, with failed Melville wannabe streak - memorable use of compacted trash bundles, among other "touches"

 

Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974) - bring me even just 1 or 2 movies a year with such gritty mythic power (still 2nd level Sam tho)

 

District 9 (2009) - well, we screw up everything on earth, so why would alien arrivals fare any better...no CE3K-type wonderment here...

 

Targets (1968) - drawing an affectionate line under an expired horror aesthetic; if only Bogdanovich had remained this fresh and adept..

  

Tetro (2009) - not so thematically interesting except as an echo of earlier Coppola ground, but has an energetic, shimmering confidence

  

Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (2009) - any film with lines like "Commerce shuns a sentimental accountant" has to be cherishable!

 

L'intrus (2004) - utterly life-enhancing; perhaps the greatest film of the decade, although I might need an eternity to articulate why

  

Agora (2009) - impersonal and over-digitized, but all the contemporary resonance you want (Iraq? Putrid political cultures? Got it!)

  

The Rounders (1914) - very early, booze-sodden Chaplin is a static trifle, but startling for its full-on venomous portrayal of marriage...

  

Air Doll (2009) - often striking, but never transcends the feeling of being a movie you'd only make when you're out of good ideas..

  

Broken English (2007) - mostly conventional, but Posey nails her character, the dynamic with Poupaud is intriguing...and there's Paris!

  

Les herbes folles (2009) - in his late 80's Resnais still manages to suggest cinematic (and even behavioral) space not yet charted..

  

Big Eyes (1974) - difficult at this time/space remove to know how much his closing despair reflects a national existential fatigue or fear..

  

Swing Time (1936) - doesn't have the Minnelli/Donen-level moments, but it's astonishingly happy and sustained, and meticulously integrated

  

L’enfer d’Henri-Georges Clouzot (2009) - Clouzot's lost film would likely have been just a dated curio by now, but seen this way, it glows

 

Husbands (1970) - this biting dance with trauma is what awaits the Mad Men guys as the social contract fractures and darkens...

  

Cinema Museum (2008) - the sadness of the online era is we've lost the physical intricacy and splendor that once attached to film-watching

  

Backstory (2009) - documentary on rear projection vividly embodies how cinema not only survives but even thrives on its own deconstruction

 

Broken Embraces (2009) - highly entertaining, but Almodovar's inventiveness comes to feel like he's always turning away from something..

  

The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009) - take my once-decent concept and turn it into a romper room for old men, please!

  

The Last Days Of Disco (1998) - finely calibrated, stylized vision of disco's happy banality as never-to-be-regained social lubricant

  

Lorna's Silence (2008) - a more supercharged narrative than usual for the Dardennes, but bleeds truth about constraints of the new Europe

 

Jeanne La Pucelle: Les Prisons (1994) - moving second part sets out her downfall in a cultural/patriarchal context; overall - just brilliant

  

Jeanne La Pucelle: Les Batailles (1992) - Rivette superbly explores Joan of Arc as a social phenomenon, and a form of living theater..

  

Darling (1965) - feels like a hollow attempt to merge Antonioni (and a bit of Fellini) and the kitchen sink genre; minimal lasting interest

 

Le Testament D’Orphee (1959) - the closest modern cousins might be Matthew Barney's films, but they don't have Cocteau's playfulness

  

Love In The Afternoon (1957) - essentially incoherent but fascinating mixture of sentimentality and sleaze filtered through 50's codes..

  

Hannah Takes The Stairs (2007) - for all the naturalistic trappings, an idealized notion of young, brainy, accessibly pretty interactions

  

American Swing (2008) - story of New York swingers club is inherently diverting; not a very distinctive or expansive treatment of it though

  

Toronto Stories (2008) - imaginative second segment is easily the best - otherwise all appetizers, no kick - barely evokes the city I know..

  

Inglourious Basterds (2009) - Tarantino's gifts are formally dazzling at times; only immoral to me in the sense of any playing with history

  

Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) - never loses its rambunctious pleasure, even if it's a bit like watching a freeze-dried "official" version...

  

Thirst (2009) - the vampire genre just keeps on giving; works both as grim character study and as super-charged creator-destroyer metaphor

 

Lakeview Terrace (2008) - LaBute's early raw provocation still vaguely beats on, beneath levels of generic thriller gloss..

 

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (2008) - if only anything in this incredibly minor movie was as evocative and expansive as the title...

  

The Cove (2009) - increasingly, serious documentaries make you want to kill yourself; the only mildly cheery ones are on crappy marginalia..

 

F For Fake (1976) - becoming one of my favorite of all films - incredibly distinctive, provocative and (I increasingly think) self-revealing

  

It All Starts Today (1999) - good solid piece of muck-raking, but for posterity's purposes blown away by Cantet's later The Class

  

Mishima (1985) - Schrader over-thought and over-prettified himself here; should have channelled some of that delirious Cat People energy ..

  

Trafic (1972) - cinematically cruder than Tati's greatest work, although again shows his prescience, and unique approach to the punchline..

  

The Train (1965) - still exciting for the gritty physicality and the clever narrative - nowadays would be hyped up every which way...

  

Cria Cuervos (1976) - beautiful, masterfully constructed expression of intertwining memory and longing and childhood's complex perceptions..

 

In The Electric Mist (2009) - hardly smooth, but ultimately finds a distinctive way of conveying the pained legacy of the South's past...

  

Funny People (2009) - a big leap forward; a distant cousin to Scorsese's King Of Comedy, tho Apatow doesn't yet tap any broader implications

  

O Lucky Man! (1973) - more proof you never lose in the eyes of posterity by being imaginatively cynical about institutions and leaders..

  

Made in U.S.A. (1966) - made as the ratio of play and politics starts to shift - dazzling, but you miss some of the earlier, easier delight

 

Pineapple Express (2008) - perhaps the most persuasive claim for the Apatow factory to date; alchemy of vulnerability and carnage works!

  

Antonio Gaudi (1984) - you likely couldn't divine the Japanese perspective if you didn't know, but it makes perfect sense if you do..

  

What Just Happened (2008) - no doubt has some anthropological merit, but it's already the planet's most over-satirized milieu, so who cares

  

Nightwatching (2007) - interesting and accomplished in how form and content interact, but just doesn't seem too relevant to anything bigger.

 

Cassandra's Dream (2007) - an attempt to capture what worked pretty well in Match Point, but just seems marooned and flavourless here..

  

Silent Running (1972) - visionary in its way of course, although Dern sets a main tone of cantankerous individualism rather than idealism,,,

 

2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle (1967) - the peak of Godard's rapturous engagement with complexity, decay and its strange surface beauty..

 

Wendy and Lucy (2008) - brilliant, tragic, ultra-relevant depiction of the precariousness of quiet self-sufficiency in an age of decline..

  

Good Neighbor Sam (1964) - flabby, un-penetrating but amiable take on familiar theme of contemporary man stifled by corporatism and suburbia

  

The Music Lovers (1970) - Russell was always one of the best at capturing hedonistic bedlam, which almost makes up for everything else..

  

La sentinelle (1992) - early Desplechin in a quasi-thriller mode - has some directions he later abandoned, others he pursued and perfected..

  

La femme infidele (1969) - the barren bourgeoisie life virtually invites adultery and murder; dated of course, but still pretty potent..

 

Vendredi soir (2002) - a wonderful evocation of a one night stand, documentary-like and yet finding new ways to express the magical rush..

 

Humpday (2009) - excellently captures how articulate, educated guys can talk themselves into just about anything, and then back out again..

   

The Pornographers (1966) - full of startling compositions of all kinds - visual, narrative, psychological - evokes immense (if clinical) awe

 

Hair (1979) - mostly a forced attempt to find cinema in the joyously theatrical, although the final sense of loss is quite well realized..

  

Bruno (2009) - seems to me like a peppy, low-brow performance art thing, often real funny, but about as significant as a tiara on a poodle..

 

Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) - initially has the effective flowing Preminger-brand ambiguity; but maybe genre mechanics take over too much..

 

Out Of The Blue (1980) - goofy but highly productive, fusing an often delirious foreground and a couldn't-be-flatter Canadian background..

 

Filth And Wisdom (2008) - well, if you didn't know Madonna made it, you'd never guess - deserves credit for pace and variety at least..

  

Johnny Got His Gun (1971) - unusual exercise in subjective cinema; you feel Trumbo wanting to get wilder, more perverse: wouldn't have hurt!

  

Food Inc. (2008) - in a more focused world, this would prompt real anger and action - in the decrepit one we occupy, likely nothing...

  

Of Time And The City (2008) - eloquent but rather too jaundiced; doesn't give any sense of how Liverpool spawned such humour and music..

  

Ramona (1910) - an entire novel in 20 minutes - cinematic narrative still working out its most basic moves; fascinating as history lesson..

  

Early Spring (1956) - Ozu bleakly examining post-war Japan's failed promises - a broader and sadder canvas than most of his later works..

  

New York, New York (1977) - endlessly intriguing, brilliantly abstracted take on dawn of modern popular/performance culture and its cost...

  

One-Eyed Jacks (1961) - Brando's really a fluid director - movie often seems ready to bust through convention more than it ultimately does..

  

Notebook on Cities and Clothes (1989) - Wenders' modish pronouncements about this and that just seem arbitrary, essentially meaningless...

  

Late Spring (1949) - more tragic with every viewing - the sense of a society demanding constant sacrifice of even modest personal desire..

  

Lilith (1964) - basic idea of carers being as troubled as the patients is familiar, but this really feels traumatized to its chilly bones..

  

Tokyo-Ga (1985) - idea of Ozu tribute is touching, but vague approach suggests Wenders' appreciation of Ozu is superficial at best...

  

Late Autumn (1960) - many echoes of previous Ozu of course, but also some sublime reinvention and surprise, and even successful defiance!

  

Kwaidan (1964) - maybe an investigation of how the creepy spirit world is also the best ventilation for a crushingly orderly society..

 

Une femme mariee (1964) - meticulous dissection of femininity as consumer culture takes off, swamping historical/psychological readiness...

  

The Hurt Locker (2008) - as solid as hell, but sure sounds like a lot of critics were mainly glad it wasn't Transformers 2 all over again..

  

La vie des morts (1991) - right from the start, Desplechin was already a master of physical, emotional and existential geography..

  

I Could Never Be Your Woman (2006) - wants to say something re distorted self-image of female baby boomers, but has no clear idea what..

  

The Girlfriend Experience (2009) - in common with his previous Che, this revolution cannot be maintained - a sadder future surely awaits..

 

Venus In Furs (1969) - enjoyable campy creation, not aesthetically that interesting despite the overflow of stylistic and thematic ideas..

 

Crazed Fruit (1956) - essentially about post-war Japan losing its way in the shadow of the West - simplistic but coldly fascinating..

 

Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis (2008) - biggest French hit of all time; if we (or even they) knew why, it would help a lot at the G8 summit..

  

A Married Couple (1969) - almost moving now in showing a certain kind of masculinity fading into oblivion (for the greater good of course)..

  

Reprise (2006) - the specifics are less interesting than the overall design and artifice; you get little real sense of the literary life..

  

The Class (2008) - fascinating as performance art; provocative about what makes for meaningful education in a multi-cultural world...

  

Cruel Story Of Youth (1960) - cruel indeed, suffused with pain, still a potent metaphor for Japan's underlying stasis and insularity..

 

There Was A Father (1942) - Ozu's great tragic theme - sense of duty and propriety limiting even simple happiness (personal and societal)..

 

The Peach Girl (1931) - still delicately moving for all its stiff primitivism, but one regrets so little sense of space or the masses..

  

Don't Touch The White Woman (1974) - unique, splatter-arty way of evoking a history of self-absorbed, deranged American imperialism..

  

Piccadilly (1929) - most striking for scintillating Anna May Wong - good reference point for studying evolving treatment of race and culture

  

Public Enemies (2009) - actually works as quasi-abstract meditation on image-making in age of corporatization and depersonalization...

  

Small Change (1976) - Truffaut's infectious delight in the variety of childhood experiences, nicely placed here in the surrounding community

  

Tokyo Sonata (2008) - excellent, fluid parable of dehumanizing, weirding effect of modern economy, and urgent need to go back to basics...

 

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow (1963) - first sequence is best; all very easy and fluid with Loren always a dazzler - good 2nd level stuff...

  

Whatever Works (2009) - title meant to connote openness to possibilities; movie feels more like a series of random, drunken lurches..

  

Kill, Baby Kill (1966) - setting and state of mind fuse almost perfectly – story bleeds out in a collision of encounters and insinuations..

  

Recount (2008) - entertaining and cleanly (if blandly) told, but where's the anger - is all of this merely an amiable comedy of errors..?

 

Blame It On Rio (1984) - astonishing lumbering time capsule, has its transgressive elements, but general ambiance of a retirement home...

  

Ma nuit chez Maud (1969) - maybe the best movie argument for an examined life (or at least for calibrating the degree of unexamination!)..

  

Esther Kahn (2000) - strange, evasive, fascinating distant cousin to Cassavetes' Opening Night, about murderous cost of great acting...

  

Three Days of the Condor (1975) - has the Pollack trick of feeling meaningfully understated, without putting itself on any kind of line..

  

Cathy Come Home (1966) - brilliantly shows how quickly upward mobility turns; still as relevant as hell, since we never learn a damn thing..

 

Barocco (1976) - Techine later hit on an endlessly renewable template for easy-to-take complexity - this movie came before that though..

  

Deconstructing Harry (1997) - must have taken work to be so rancid and self-loathing, though often feels he edited the thing on imovie..

  

Boeing Boeing (1965) - the movie's sexism would be metaphysically challenging if it wasn't so bland and mechanical about everything..

 

Revolutionary Road (2008) - do they really carry unfulfilled potential, or are they the first seduced wave of now-chronic self-inflation?

  

The Brothers Bloom (2008) - the women bring infectious joy and style ; the men mostly bring the usual caper movie stuff; call it a draw..

  

A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982) - primarily a technical exercise; never feels Allen has real affinity for the unleashed spirits stuff.

 

Le ballon rouge (1956) - always strikes me how the adult world integrates the balloon while the boys, symbol of the future, destroy it...

  

Edge Of The City (1957) - a second-tier On The Waterfront; balanced depiction of the black family is still fresh; other elements less so..

  

Getting Straight (1970) - still a useful time capsule if only for the Gould character's misogyny, homophobia, insecurity and self-loathing..

  

When a Woman Ascends The Stairs (1960) - women always bear the worst of it, although the men with their lies and evasions are barely freer..

 

Beyond The Rocks (1922) - huge ambition, subtle and nutty at different times, like early Hollywood ironing out the kinks in the formula...

 

Nixon (2008) - strange this quirky anecdote got so much attention - historical/thematic payoff is minimal, though it goes down easy..

  

A Christmas Story (2008) - Desplechin is a genius - basic form here is familiar, but complexity of execution is stunning and fearless..

  

Le Petit Soldat (1961) - ambitious early Godard, pained window into troubled national soul, but more constricted than great work to come...

 

L'Appat (1995) - compelling viewing in what's-the-world-coming-to vein, but you feel Tavernier imitates greatness more than exhibiting it..

  

Cadillac Records (2008) - you kind of miss the days when a little friendly corruption might be the price of true social/cultural progress...

  

Gomorrah (2008) - great, sociologically persuasive evocation of a hopeless network...you watch with despair, hoping we avoid the same fate..

  

Departures (2008) - a weepy dawdle, but the time spent on dead bodies does kind of get to you, if just through identification mechanics...

  

Up (2009) - great to watch, but more a technological achievement than an aesthetic one, or at least blurs the difference, like the iphone...

  

Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon (2007) - Rohmer's lifelong project at its most elemental and sublime, yet still defining new territory..

  

The Sailor From Gibraltar (1967) - so preoccupied with "existential" poses and metaphors, it almost completely breaks up and drifts away..

  

Duplicity (2009) - sometimes so immaculate it seems to skirt profundity, although needed to hit the corporate amorality indictment harder...

  

Nobody's Fool (1994) - contrived take on small-town virtues, although maybe a partial blueprint for a better-proportioned future, I dunno...

 

Pontypool (2008) - a witty riff on the cracks in the Canadian melting pot; maybe it's our failed ideals that spawn the killer plague...

 

Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) - focusing on failings and regrets, maybe echoing Wilder’s own ideal artistic climate passing by..

  

One Week (2008) - well, good to know he doesn't blame his sappy music-type problems and unfulfilled ambitions on his glorious homeland...

  

Sin nombre (2009) - very kinetic, but you suspect it reflects an outsider’s quasi-romantic impositions on a sadder and duller reality...

 

Hunger (2008) - sometimes recalls one of Kubrick’s filmic labyrinths, without ever reducing the potency of the central human experience..

 

The Palm Beach Story (1942) - unimaginable now a movie could be so deft and funny while also so giddily challenging in its sexual politics..

 

Bye Bye Monkey (1978) - extremely distinct take on decay - worth it if just for images of dead King Kong against the twin towers (yep!)...

  

Away We Go (2009) - basically about life momentum either making you grotesque or else defined by inner sadness; minor pay-off at best...

 

Shall We Kiss (2007) - as sterile and intuition-free as this kind of French relationship stuff ever gets, possibly directed by a computer...

  

Sugar (2008) - interesting angles on how major-league sports machine distorts economies and expectations (evokes debates re foreign aid...)

 

Fingers (1978) - highly subjective, somehow coherent, goofily satisfying portrait of dysfunction, in a world of confusing signs and traces..

  

1941 (1979) - Everything gets away from Spielberg here; like watching a robot deliver one-liners, you get the concepts, but miss the heart..

  

Sunshine Cleaning (2008) - minor tribute to heartland entrepreneurism, but with integrity; economic crisis gives it extra resonance...

 

PS re The Legend Of Lylah Clare - that's basically meant to be positive...

  

The Legend Of Lylah Clare (1968) - a touch of Hitchcock, a bit of Fellini, a taste of Wilder, and a whole lot of pretentious posturing crap!

 

Two Lovers (2008) - another example of finding greater profundity in the small machinations of conventional lives than in saving the world.

  

My Sex Life...(1996) - my favourite film of the last 20 years, a profound, varied, tumbling essay on self-examination and reinvention...

 

State of Play (2009) - already seemed outdated when it came out; best contemporary paranoia stuff still belongs to 1970's Alan Pakula...

  

La passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928) - stark, stunning choreography of patriarchal vested interests spooked to the core by female activism...

  

Goodbye Solo (2008) - unconvincing central premise, but with rich, complex, moving insights into America's bumpy ongoing diversity ride...

  

Tokyo! (2008) - Carax's sequence is just loopy, but the other two nicely capture the city's complex negotiation between dreams and despair..

  

Tulpan (2008) - it's remote Kazakhstan, but might as well be the moon - feels anthropologically valuable, even when you suspect manipulation

  

Tyson (2008) - is he ultimately more than an outlandish mega-version of the prodigy that naively burns itself out? Damned if I know

  

Wise Blood (1979) - built from "damn the red states" building blocks, set on fire and molded into strange, sadistic, scary eloquence..

  

The Harder They Come (1972) - hard to separate anthropology from myth now..still mostly productive viewing, but a Sweetback extra lite...

 

Star Trek (2009) - finally goes where every bright progressive idea has eventually gone before - to another airless, graceless "franchise"..

  

Adoration (2008) - another treacly Egoyan puzzle movie, pleased as hell with itself, but wheezing under layers of stale "commentary"

 

Is Anybody There? (2008)...existential boundary-busting in Thatcherite Britain, from cradle to grave and beyond; less drab than it looks

 

Every Little Step (2008)...good fun, reminds you infrastructure of Broadway theatre often just as heavy and self-deluding as Hollywood..

  

Babes in Toyland (1934)...figure out how physical/psychological laws apply in this creepy thing..good future territory for (wooden?) shrinks

  

The Limits of Control (2009)..all we love and aspire to (aesthetic appreciation, uncomplicated eroticism) rises against Bush-era poison..

  

Zabriskie Point (1970)..now a beautiful tragic map of dreams/revolutions not seized, in a California not yet become the world's biggest lie

  

California Suite (1978)...I almost miss when such prosperous soft-concept bantering and low-energy plotting was fit for the big screen...