Movie "tweets" to November 19, 2024

 

 

My Imaginary Country (2022) – Guzman’s brief but stirring observance of resurgent Chilean progressivism, inevitably cautious in its optimism

 

When Tomorrow Dies (1965) – the most smoothly crafted of Kent’s early films, and better than decent in its treatment of female restlessness

 

Lux Aeterna (2019) – Noe’s assertion of unleashed creative force is quite the sensory experience, although leaves one at a skeptical remove

 

Lydia (1941) – Duvivier’s ruefully-tinged tale of spurned suitors and lost loves is rather lacking in conviction and emotional force

 

The Ballad of Narayama (1983) – Imamura’s mannered Palme d’or winner evokes a far more distanced response than his incendiary best work

 

Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) – Newman’s drama is terrific when observing men at work (and death), less so in its one-note defiance

 

The Novelist’s Film (2022) – Hong’s film beautifully explores (and embodies) the mysteries and tensions of connection and creativity

 

Daddy Long Legs (1955) – the graceful ease of the wonderful Astaire-Caron pairing surmounts the material’s awfully dated underpinnings

 

Eternity and a Day (1998) – a near-archetypal art-film reverie, not Angelopoulos’ greatest work, but likely among his most accessible

 

Working Girls (1931) – Arzner’s empathetic depiction of material realities somewhat contextualizes the film’s marriage-driven preoccupations

 

Saturday Fiction (2019) – Ye’s intricate tapestry of swooning artifice and brutal reality is as breathtakingly executed as any recent film

 

Top of the Heap (1972) – St. John’s film is lumpy & overstretched at times, but engages distinctively with racial frustration & weariness

 

Kinds of Kindness (2024) – Lanthimos’ explication-defying triptych is tremendously inventive & thoughtful, & rather impressively alienating

 

Intimidation (1960) – Kurahara’s crime drama expertly packs a bundle into barely more than an hour, without feeling rushed or abridged

 

Punch-Drunk Love (2002) – a small but strangely wondrous film, both in Anderson’s inspired broad conception & his unerring mastery of detail

 

The Facts of Murder (1959) – Germi’s slow-burning, well-observed drama packs in a lot, but it’s unfortunately not particularly memorable

 

The Royal Hotel (2023) – Green crafts a properly depressing picture of lonely messed-up masculinity, but the ultimate impact feels diluted

 

1900 (1976) – Bertolucci’s epic doesn’t match his best work, and yet is wondrous viewing in its often heavy-footed, crass, misshapen fashion

 

Orphans (1987) – Pakula’s film works best when embracing the material’s weirder aspects, feeling too theatrically constrained at other times

 

Chaudhvin ka chand (1960) – Sadiq’s initially rather standard melodramatic complications steadily accumulate in culturally-revealing anguish

 

Alice (2022) – Ver Linden’s cartoonish simplifications & posturings hardly do justice to the material’s tenuously fact-based underpinnings

 

Olympia (1938) – Riefenstahl’s film distances in its supplication and stylistic bombast, but also provides much near-prototypical excitement

 

25^th Hour (2002) – at its best, Lee’s variable drama eloquently channels a sorrowful post-9/11 sense of extinguished possibilities

 

Don’t Cheat, Darling! (1973) – an East German musical!, no challenge to Demy, but sustaining its good spirits more than might be expected

 

Napoleon (2023) – Scott marshals his awe-inspiring resources with dull prowess, in the service of a moribund approach to its subject

 

Orgasmo (1969) – Lenzi’s paranoia drama is just another unrevealing sex and décor contrivance, but ramps up the venality effectively enough

 

1984 (1984) – Radford’s dully literal, intellectually unengaging filming doesn’t make much of a case for the work’s continuing relevance

 

Signe: Arsene Lupin (1959) – Robert’s caper delivers elegantly unruffled, well-plotted fun from start to finish, albeit not much more

 

My First Film (2024) – Anger’s beautifully woven film culminates in a unique meeting of cinematic and biological celebration and choice

 

Poem (1972) – by many measures the most straightforward and compact of Jissoji’s trilogy, but no less fascinating in every respect

 

One False Move (1991) – Franklin’s astutely-handled thriller never eases up, even when sometimes overcooking its culture-clash elements

 

Samurai Spy (1965) – the extreme complexity of Shinoda’s narrative rather overwhelms one’s appreciation of the film’s strengths & subtleties

 

All of Us Strangers (2023) – Haigh’s beautifully calibrated expression of loss & isolation, through a wondrous queering of the supernatural

 

My One and Only Love (1957) – Chahine’s raucously zesty musical-comedy maintains a sophisticated patina, despite much underlying clumsiness

 

Tron (1982) – Lisberger’s movie has its patchily prophetic aspects, but doesn’t enact them in a very enjoyable or coherent fashion

 

Is This Fate? (1979) – Reidemeister’s distinctive methods draw out an absorbingly contoured, not-quite-hopeless portrait of strained family

 

Little Joe (2019) – various diverting eccentricities aside, Hausner’s simplistic channeling of a Body Snatchers premise doesn’t achieve much

 

The Ladies Man (1961) – Lewis’ film has some still-stunning design & choreographic elements, deployed to often repetitive & distancing ends

 

Three Floors (2021) – Moretti’s polished, low-drama sameness unifies the up-and-down material, but the results are hardly very vital

 

Annie Laurie (1927) – Robertson’s restored melodrama is mostly tepid stuff, Gish notwithstanding, although it cranks up for the final act

 

A Question of Silence (1982) – Gorris’ exploration of female otherness remains, at the very least, satisfyingly analyzable and debatable

 

Start the Revolution Without Me (1970) – Yorkin’s farce is handsomely mounted and quite deftly plotted, but hardly relevant to anything

 

Back to Burgundy (2017) – Klapisch mostly sticks to familiar conflicts and dynamics, but elevated by irresistible local colour and detail

 

Wagon Master (1950) – an appealing application of Ford’s customary strengths, often feeling close to Hawks in its character dynamics

 

Fallen Leaves (2023) – second-tier Kaurismaki, but still, a cherishable gesture of hope for life and for art in an all-round punishing world

 

Midnight Mary (1933) – Wellman’s snappy, travail-laden drama ultimately hits no great height, but Young perseveres most appealingly

 

Beautiful City (2004) – Farhadi’s overly ramped-up early drama lacks his later thematic finesse, but makes a suitably desolate impact

 

A Warm December (1973) – Poitier’s emphasis on Black culture only partially elevates the generally soppy, often tonally peculiar romance

 

Kamikaze 89 (1982) – Fassbinder’s acting-only presence only underlines Gremm’s ragged direction of this scattershot dystopian fantasia

 

The Bitter Ash (1963) – Kent’s discontent-suffused drama remains almost unnervingly potent, despite persistently inadequate writing & acting

 

Vengeance is Mine… (2021) – beneath its brassy, super-eventful surface, Edwin’s startling film gleefully undermines genre-movie masculinity

 

The More the Merrier (1943) – Stevens’ sprightly handling & Coburn’s priceless playing don’t entirely validate a bothersomely coercive plot

 

Lingua Franca (2019) – Sandoval’s melancholy drama makes for worthily anxious viewing, even if rather thin and vague in some key respects

 

Who’s Who (1979) – Leigh’s study of class distinctions is more ungainly and strained than his best work, but still hits targets galore

 

Door (2008) – Takahashi works some quite striking visual, aural and tonal variations on a familiarly escalating domestic threat narrative

 

Angel (1937) – Lubitsch’s thoughtfully restrained three-cornered romance, distinguished by its peerless use of space, absence and silence

 

La rabbia (1963) – a two-part macro-analysis of existential discontent, with Pasolini far surpassing the unpoetic, hectoring Guareschi

 

I Saw the TV Glow (2024) – Schoenbrun’s unexpectedly affecting, synopsis-defying exploration of otherness verges on flat-out brilliance

 

Madame Freedom (1956) – Han’s study of female transgression is fully compelling, even if not among the period’s most potent masterpieces

 

The Elephant Man (1980) – Lynch’s film remains a moving, near-optimally controlled navigation through potentially pitfall-laden material

 

Sandakan No. 8 (1974) – Kumai’s memoir of exploitation is commendably sincere and decent, but rather lacking in finesse in many respects

 

You Hurt my Feelings (2023) – Holofcener’s all-round under-engaged, hermetic triviality doesn’t suggest much left in the creative tank

 

Au hazard Balthazar (1966) – Bresson’s exquisite, inexhaustible film may leave you disconcertingly poised between despair and wonderment

 

The Company (2003) – Altman’s Wiseman-lite ballet movie could surely have been more penetrating, but is sumptuously easy to surrender to

 

Love Letter (1953) – Tanaka’s affectingly melancholy drama, suffused in post-war Japan’s emotional and financial desperation and striving

 

Civil War (2024) – Garland’s lamely depoliticized, curiosity-deficient drama holds one’s attention, but the missed opportunities are glaring

 

Plot of Fear (1976) – Cavara’s giallo brings together some outside-the-norm concepts and embellishments, but without fully realizing on them

 

Loophole (1981) – Quested’s bank robbery drama leaves you adequately recompensed, even while mostly sticking to how-it-happened basics

 

I Hate But Love (1962) – Kurahara’s genre-straddling film cycles through an impressive range of tones, moods, energy levels and locations

 

Beau is Afraid (2023) – Aster’s trauma-heavy parable of a doomed life’s gestation (perhaps) is all way too much, for which we give thanks

 

Farewell My Love (1956) – Chahine’s garrulous, death-haunted musical pushes the form’s melodramatic possibilities to near breaking point

 

Strip Jack Naked (1991) – Peck’s film is most valuable in illuminating his vital Nighthawks, supplemented by well-told personal history

 

Les granges brulees (1973) – Chapot’s investigation draws unexpectedly well on steely star dynamics and withholding, wintery rural reserve

 

Sasquatch Sunset (2024) – a strange project by the Zellners (obviously!) but largely persuasive and sad in its sense of imperiled communion

 

Carriage to Vienna (1966) – Kachyna’s sparsely tense drama sustains a terrifically atmospheric, psychologically fraught immediacy

 

Burden of Dreams (1982) – Blank’s madness-adjacent record, memorable as it is, can’t help often seeming inadequate, or maybe superfluous

 

Ballerina (2023) – Lee’s revenge thriller is proficiently and gleefully generic, with just a few isolated points of modest distinctiveness

 

Pygmalion (1938) – it’s not the fault of Asquith/Howard’s fluent, properly unsentimental filming if one keeps anticipating Lerner and Loewe

 

The House by the Sea (2017) – Guediguian’s family drama is a top-to-bottom overreach, however affectionately and resonantly rendered

 

Darling Lili (1970) – the film for me has never quite connected as desired, despite Edwards’ sophisticated interrogation of image & reality

 

Black Rain (1989) – an intensely memorable recreation of Hiroshima and its aftermath, exactingly crafted by a ruefully seasoned Imamura

 

Nothing But a Man (1964) – Roemer’s intelligently sensitive film sadly surveys the barely evolving limits imposed on Black life aspirations

 

Paris 13^th District (2021) – Audiard maintains an age-defying freshness and engagement, even through the film’s less persuasive patches

 

The Gold Rush (1942 version) – Chaplin’s portentous added soundtrack and other tinkering is (academic interest aside) mostly for the worst

 

Sibyl (2019) – Triet sinks into classic-level art-movie themes & structures with sensually alert intelligence & innately tuned-in panache

 

Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) – worth it at least for the animation, and the immortal line: “What’s that got to do with my knob?”

 

Les temps qui changent (2004) – Techine’s nuanced meshing of narrative, romantic and cultural elements works (as usual) improbably well

 

Stars in My Crown (1950) – Tourneur’s luminous, intelligently moving portrait of a challenged community’s reliance on faith-based morality

 

Faya dayi (2021) – exploring an economically and spiritually entrapped culture, Beshir attains a rare sense of cinematic expansiveness

 

You Can’t Take it With You (1938) – Capra’s moralizing parade of eccentricity falls flat now, evoking little joy, and even less revelation

 

Barrios altos (1987) – Berlanga’s potentially liberating hairpin-bend plotting gradually deteriorates into an unrewardingly confusing grind

 

City on Fire (1979) – Rakoff’s dull disaster movie lacks any kind of creative energy or basic curiosity, achieving just about nothing

 

Never Look Away (2018) – von Donnersmarck’s epic chronicle is meatily relishable, its inspired aspects outnumbering its more prosaic ones

 

The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962) – Carey’s highly peculiar (but ever-relevant) demagoguery parable does cast a strangely lingering spell

 

Pacification (2022) – Serra’s languidly handsome, slyly evasive journey through the varyingly malign stratifications of colonialism

 

One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1942) – Powell/Pressburger’s classic marries terrific efficiency with multi-faceted warmth and idiosyncrasy

 

The Suspended Step of the Stork (1991) – Angelopoulos’ meditation on distance and exile is, overall, transfixingly conceived and composed

 

See No Evil (1971) – Fleischer’s thriller is effective in its watchfully atmospheric build-up, but plot mechanics eventually take over

 

Spring Fever (2009) – with often hurting intimacy, the shifts and makeovers of Ye’s film take its characters far from its opening ecstasy 

 

Winchester ’73 (1950) – Mann’s Western has unmatchable narrative drive, although the subsequent work with Stewart is richer overall

 

Proxima (2019) – Winocur’s all-round absorbing (if indulgence demanding) melding of space-program procedural and mother-daughter romanticism

 

Theodora Goes Wild (1936) – Boleslawski’s repression-loosening comedy is funny and deftly played, although not very internally consistent

 

Deprisa, Deprisa (1981) – a startling change of tone and subject for Saura, executed with fresh, genre-embracing contemporary flavour

 

The Kiss of Death (1977) – a strong, surely undervalued Leigh work, at times sombre and ritualistic, at others disconcertingly unpredictable

 

American Fiction (2023) – Jefferson’s superficially provocative film rapidly comes to seem simplified and intellectually undercharged

 

An Actor’s Revenge (1963) – Ichikawa’s hard-working film is no doubt an esoteric artificiality, but an almost ceaselessly dazzling one

 

My Blueberry Nights (2007) – Wong’s likeable but patchy and under-achieving odyssey, at times suggesting distracted self-caricature

 

Elena et les hommes (1956) – Renoir’s collision of worlds & desires is a high-functioning joy, if a little heavier going than his very best

 

Mandara (1971) – Jissoji’s deeply personal, challenging, stylistically restless film leaves one drained and shaken, and possibly transformed

 

Pearl (2022) – West’s poisoned-chocolate-box aesthetic and the sensational Goth make for enjoyably, malevolently satisfying viewing

 

Black Sun (1964) – Kurahara’s desolation-tinged drama pushes a range of racially-charged buttons, with sometimes jaw-dropping intensity

 

The Whistle Blower (1986) – Langton’s Cold War drama is a plain, minor work, most useful now as a reflection of its era’s various anxieties

 

The Moon has Risen (1955) – Tanaka’s family drama is a gently sympathetic adjunct to co-writer Ozu’s similar, more fully realized works

 

Fremont (2023) – Jalali’s deadpan quasi-comedy of exile & assimilation is small in just about every way, but precisely & quietly meaningful

 

Without Anesthesia (1978) – Wajda’s close-up study of contemporary turmoil may be among his most compellingly, conflictedly personal works

 

Presumed Innocent (1990) – Pakula keeps things well-controlled and coherent, but it barely registers in comparison to his most lasting works

 

The Cat has Nine Lives (1968) – Stockl’s beautiful channeling of female experience, lastingly infiltrating in all its truths and mysteries

 

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) – Ball’s all-round well-judged episode scales the extreme high end of technical accomplishment

 

Triumph of the Will (1935) – Riefenstahl’s still-cautionary record of fervent unity, its unblinking purposefulness as fearsome as ever

 

Rain Man (1988) – Levinson’s psychologically trite, offputtingly materialistic drama doesn’t wear too well (or even entertain much)

 

The All-Around Reduced Personality (1978) – Sander constructs an enormously stimulating record of a time, place, sensibility and struggle

 

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (2023) – Jackson’s beautifully composed & textured, yet rather hermetic & distanced-feeling tapestry of memory

 

Adventures of a Dentist (1965) – Klimov’s deeply bizarre comedy taps deeply into the stiflingly malign, conformity-minded Soviet psyche

 

Festival in Cannes (2001) – a wispy concoction even by Jaglom’s later standards, but he ensures that the romance outweighs the bullshit

 

The Adventures of Arsene Lupin (1957) – Becker’s unfaltering controlled, amused elegance can’t transcend the film’s inherent superficiality

 

Brother (2022) – Virgo’s layered study of loss and remembrance works quite beautifully on its own (tastefully circumscribed) terms

 

The Petrified Forest (1973) – Shinoda’s darkly twisting, destabilizing drama, seeped in ethical and spiritual ambiguity and transgression

 

The American Success Company (1980) – Richert’s patchy, peculiar comedy largely fails as satire, but is likeable in a stumbling kind of way

 

Frankenstein vs. Baragon (1965) – Honda’s energetic mash-up starts off strong (Nazis!) but ends up less mind-stoking than hoped for

 

Nitram (2021) – Kurzel’s astutely inhabited study of errant behaviour, barely-containable impulsiveness evolving into ungraspable tragedy

 

Baba Amin (1950) – Chahine’s frantic, supernaturally-tinged comedy is unpolished and over-egged, but the existential panic rings true enough

 

State and Main (2000) – Mamet’s cobbled-together clash of values and cultures is trifling at best, near-venally complacent at worst

 

First Case, Second Case (1979) – the droll structural simplicity of Kiarostami’s shrewd investigation yields disquietingly ominous results

 

Poor Things (2023) – Lanthimos’ odyssey is a gonzo-visionary, rudely & cerebrally engaging wonder, albeit evoking pleasure more than passion

 

Samurai Rebellion (1967) – Kobayashi’s gripping drama, ever-relevant for its study of the destructively distorting workings of privilege

 

Chariots of Fire (1981) – a British landmark of sorts, but one rooted more in heritage-imbibing calculation than in cinematic inspiration

 

The Divorce of Lady X (1938) – Whelan’s early colour film looks good and doesn’t play as stiffly as it might have, so that’s not too bad

 

Mektoub my Love (2017) – Kechiche’s idealistic observance of summertime youth at least feels comfortable in its own languidly ogled skin

 

Patton (1970) – Schaffner’s epic hits the spot on its own swaggeringly accessible terms, and has to be seen at least once just for Scott

 

Un heros tres discret (1996) – Audiard’s impressively (perhaps excessively) lively and varied study of major-league wartime self-reinvention

 

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – the film endures as an all-purpose reference point, simplifications and contrivances notwithstanding

 

Everything Went Fine (2021) – Ozon’s clear-headed end-of-life drama conforms to and circumvents expectations in just about equal measure

 

My Name is Julia Ross (1945) – Lewis’s steelily worry-inducing classic makes remarkably full and varied use of its mere sixty-five minutes

 

Robinson’s Garden (1987) – Yamamoto’s spikily intimate urban fantasy ranges from bewitching to grating, but the best of it sticks with you

 

Red Sun (1971) – Young’s Western is unremarkably solid in most respects, but easily worth seeing once for the Bronson/Mifune/Delon meet-up

 

Rotting in the Sun (2023) – Silva’s twistingly self-mythologizing, eye-filling romp has a terrifically transgressive, anxiety-laced energy

 

The Big Combo (1955) – Lewis’ noirish convolution is top-drawer across the board, not least in several career-defining on-screen presences

 

Eden is West (2009) – Costa-Gavras squanders his technical adeptness on a ridiculously over-revved, often tasteless immigrant odyssey

 

The Women (1939) – Cukor’s spectacularly Bechdel-test-failing ensemble piece doesn’t offer much now beyond some fine-tuned mean-spiritedness

 

Daguerrotype (2016) – an inherently rather minor application of Kurosawa’s implicative powers, but amply enjoyable in many of its details

 

Love and Pain and… (1973) – Pakula expands the rather unexciting material with streaks of playfulness and ambiguity, but it only goes so far

 

L.627 (1992) – Tavernier’s involved and scrupulous police drama crafts a draining sense of a barely functional, socially corrosive grind

 

Sweet Substitute (1964) – much about Kent’s film is plain or cursory, but it endures if only for its breathtakingly cold-hearted ending

 

Godland (2022) – it’s weirdly tempting to view Palmason’s handsomely brutalizing drama as the bleakest of blackly existential comedies

 

Kings Row (1942) – Wood’s drama infiltrates its small-town doings with unexpected doses of psychological trauma and behavioral darkness

 

Love Unto Waste (1986) – Kwan’s chronicle of messily striving lives becomes increasingly unpredictable, thematically challenging, & haunting

 

Hard Labour (1973) – Leigh’s quietly devastating study of social & existential marginalization, studded with unexpected, meaningful moments

 

Woman is the Future of Man (2004) – yet another impressive Hong creation, at once forensic and elusive, laced with sexual pessimism

 

The Naked Spur (1953) – a terrific Mann/Stewart Western, its intense character dynamics ravishingly well-played and dynamically visualized

 

Official Competition (2021) – Duprat & Cohn’s comedy hits just about all its often-deadpan marks, fueled by irresistible performances

 

Roberta (1935) – Kern’s songs are sensational, but it’s otherwise only middling as an Astaire-Rogers musical, pretty dire in other respects

 

Get on the Bus (1996) – Lee’s journey of bonding and discovery is likeably vivid and purposeful, even at its most crassly conflict-stirring

 

Witchhammer (1970) – Vavra’s drama of persecution and terror is blood-curdlingly well-done, executed with incisive clarity in all respects

 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) – for me, contrarily, a fuller viewing experience than Fury Road, not that it’s much worth arguing over

 

Samson (1961) – Wajda’s episodic study of Jewish survival surely withholds too much, but is darkly well-attuned to fear and incomprehension

 

Tough Guys Don’t Dance (1987) – Mailer pedantically and flavorlessly translates his unrewarding book into an even more unrewarding movie

 

Le rouge est mis (1957) – Grangier’s hard-boiled drama is seldom too surprising, but unsentimentally and satisfyingly delivers the goods

 

The Holdovers (2023) – Payne’s handling is steady and classy as usual, but can’t transcend the material’s ceaselessly piled-up contrivances

 

This Transient Life (1970) – Jissoji’s meeting of transgression and spirituality is chillingly, immaculately provocative and fulfilling

 

The Yards (2000) – Gray’s film may be constrained by melodrama, but delivers classic-level contours and textures, and phenomenal casting

 

America as seen by a Frenchman (1960) – and in Reichenbach a pretty easily mesmerized, low-analysis Frenchman, however understandably

 

Personality Crisis: One Night Only (2022) – Scorsese/Tedeschi’s well-judged, if darkness-averse showcase for the mega-treasurable Johansen

 

Love’s Confusion (1959) – Dudow oversees the frothy-sounding plot with notable ideology-minimalizing openness and relative frankness

 

Tin Men (1987) – Levinson’s mundane dueling salesman drama demonstrates that he’s no Mamet, if indeed much of anyone at all, artistry-wise

 

The Murder of Mr. Devil (1970) – Krumbachova’s satirical battle of the sexes, sparked by sharply imaginative notions and visualizations

 

Oppenheimer (2023) – Nolan’s dazzling plush limo of a film, high-end-accessorized in all respects, softening the edges of one’s reservations

 

Welcome, or No Trespassing! (1964) – Klimov’s film is a bright and funny, hi-jinks-driven, bureaucracy-smashing Soviet-era comedy (really!)

 

Gregory’s Girl (1980) – Forsyth’s comedy retains its localized charm, but the sense of directorial fragility and limitation grows over time

 

La fin du monde (1931) – Gance’s apocalyptic drama is magnificent at its possessed best, surmounting some notably inadequate plotting

 

Dune: Part Two (2024) – Villeneuve applies utterly top-flight feats of visualization and organization to a ceremonially distancing narrative

 

The Traveling Players (1975) – Angelopoulos’ journey through shifting national trauma is formally mesmerizing, and steadily traumatizing

 

loudQUIETloud: a Film about the Pixies (2006) – and a suitably clear-eyed and deglamorized one, actually a bit under-polished if anything

 

Muriel (1963) – Resnais’ challengingly singular tapestry of immediacies and absences grows more richly masterful with each viewing

 

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022) – Goldhaber’s drama is over-calculated and -circumscribed, but rousingly solid stuff as far as it goes

 

Lissy (1957) – Wolf’s film is a valuably multi-faceted, if not particularly subtle, survey of an incendiarily fearful pre-WW2 Germany

 

Power (1986) – Lumet’s rapidly- and pervasively-dated political drama is worth revisiting, for all its flat, conceptually muddled aspects

 

The Four of the Apocalypse (1975) – Fulci’s most uncharacteristic Western offsets its macabre elements with odd, sympathetic digressions

 

Earth Mama (2023) – Leaf’s study of challenged motherhood may seem familiar in outline, but is distinguished by its empathetic toughness

 

Harakiri (1962) – Kobayashi’s expertly-structured, slow-burning samurai drama, contrasting individual and institutional truth and honor

 

Noises Off (1992) – Bogdanovich’s transcription of Frayn’s painstaking mechanics is amply respect-worthy, if sadly not all that entertaining

 

Gueule d’amour (1937) – Gremillon’s ominous drama of obsession-fueled decline, powered by the sensationally unstable Gabin-Balin dynamics

 

Talk to Me (2022) – the Philippous’ horror film doesn’t perhaps transcend its genre, but it’s quite memorably penetrating and trauma-infused

 

A Wedding Suit (1976) – Kiarostami’s child-oriented drama whips up a surprising degree of anxiety, rooted in convincing economic insecurity

 

Firefox (1982) – one of Eastwood’s less engaging movies has him barely registering within the special effects & plodding Cold War theatrics

 

A Ravishing Idiot (1964) – Molinaro’s tiresome espionage comedy tries hard to not much effect, making poor use of its mismatched stars

 

The Color Purple (2023) – Bazawule’s filming is respectable and often ravishing, but gradually declines in persuasiveness and cohesion

 

Devil of the Desert (1954) – Chahine’s high-spirited uprising drama provides ample scenic action, amid much rushed and choppy narrative

 

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) – Anderson’s dazzling (albeit somewhat distancing) film makes even the most exacting of directors seem sloppy

 

Blindfolded Eyes (1978) – Saura’s intertwining of art and life meanders a bit at times, but ultimately burns a shocked hole in one’s memory

 

The Blackening (2022) – Story’s jokily subversive horror comedy hits more than it misses, but ultimately lets the viewer off far too easily

 

Los que volvieron (1948) – Galindo’s character-baring drama is fairly basic stuff both narratively and visually, but not unsatisfying

 

Strange Invaders (1983) – Laughlin’s zippily appealing fantasy isn’t the tightest of movies, but at least doesn’t overplay its varied hand

 

With Beauty and Sorrow (1965) – Shinoda’s ruthlessly unpredictable creation, often startling in its actions, relationships and psychologies

 

Dream Scenario (2023) – Borgli’s shrewd, literate, quite scary expression of the extreme vicissitudes of modern-day virality and influence

 

The Aristocats (1970) – a nostalgic, jazz-tinged Disney highpoint, the animation handsome and supple, the anthropomorphism easy to take

 

Khrushtalyoy, my Car! (1998) – German’s work overwhelms and brutalizes one’s faculties like few others, achieving a disquieting grandeur

 

Pool of London (1951) – Dearden niftily oversees the film’s multiple strands and moods, including some relatively envelope-pushing aspects

 

Frere et soeur (2022) – Desplechin’s overly withholding film frequently evokes, at least in spurts, the rich vivacity of his best work

 

Pick a Star (1937) – Sedgwick’s utterly complacent, stardom-besotted trifle, with not enough Laurel and Hardy to make it worth the trouble

 

Paris (2008) – Klapisch’s tapestry has its oddities and omissions, but in its best moments provides a rush of pure, immersive sensation

 

Pocket Money (1972) – Rosenberg’s pleasantly conceived buddy movie yields mostly minor results, other than Marvin subtly outacting Newman

 

Grace a Dieu (2018) – Ozon’s navigation through difficult, complex material is enormously gripping, & almost disconcertingly well-controlled

 

The Liquidator (1965) – Cardiff’s rickety Bond variation squanders its central concept, blandly filling time with not much of anything

 

Blind Spot (1981) – von Alemann’s superbly-considered, paradigm-challenging positing and investigation of a feminist approach to history

 

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) – the musical numbers aside, one wishes Curtiz’s biopic were more fully possessed by Cagney’s pugnacious energy

 

Pleasure (2021) – Thyberg’s painstaking care is impressive & informative, but the film’s poise & ambiguity are frequently counter-productive

 

Abigail’s Party (1977) – Leigh’s observation of relentless martial awfulness is sort of mesmerizing, although in an abstract kind of way

 

Pas de scandale (1999) – Jacquot’s elusively haunting weaving of piercing specificities, startling juxtapositions, and preoccupied evasions

 

Bend of the River (1952) – not among the psychologically or thematically richest of the Mann/Stewart Westerns, but a good yarn nevertheless

 

Tale of Cinema (2005) – Hong’s meta-narrative achieves a beautifully allusive, evasive equilibrium, well-grounded in human idiosyncrasy

 

The Gay Divorcee (1934) – a patchy Astaire-Rogers musical, but with many points of elevation, not least the long (long!) Continental number

 

The Silent Twins (2022) – Smoczynska’s highly pleasurable enigma astutely & energetically fuels a multitude of reactions & interpretations

 

Martha (1974) – Fassbinder’s unnervingly heightened study, driven by a spectacularly cheerless, socially indicting perspective on marriage

 

Bless Their Little Hearts (1983) – Woodberry’s piercing study of challenged family, immediate yet elegiac, casts a widely sorrowful net

 

The Warped Ones (1960) – Kurahara’s drama draws so fully on its protagonist’s manic energy, it ultimately seems on the verge of ripping open

 

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) – a true cornucopia of wonderments, which I really wish evoked a deeper response than it does

 

Strangers in the House (1942) – Decoin’s Simenon adaptation morosely drags its feet on the way to a rushed but enjoyably blustering reveal

 

Ham on Rye (2019) – Taorima’s strange, delicate expression of teenage rites of passage crafts its own previously uncharted imaginative space

 

Experience (1973) – Kiarostami’s early study of youth is certainly small-scale, but executed with innate visual skill, sensitivity & warmth

 

I Like Movies (2022) – Levack’s film is cleanly and appealingly executed, while in no way stretching one’s sense of the movies one likes

 

The Four Days of Naples (1962) – it’s hard to look away from Loy’s powerfully draining recreation, despite a recurring sense of bombast

 

Eight Men Out (1988) – Sayles’ historical drama prioritizes narrative efficiency over most else, with rather flat, mostly unmoving results

 

Forever a Woman (1955) – Tanaka’s frank, affecting portrait of creativity & illness, extraordinarily attuned to its protagonist’s pain & joy

 

Fingernails (2023) – Nikos’ assertion of romantic self-determination is surprisingly coherent on its own peculiar but well-worked-out terms

 

Julia (1974) – Rothemund’s unremarkably titillating comedy at least keeps things moving, enlivened by a recurring kinky weird streak

 

Affliction (1997) – not Schrader’s most tightly-realized work overall, but one with some indelible moments rooted in towering performances

 

The Battle of Algiers (1965) – Pontecorvo’s viscerally and cerebrally exciting film remains a key reference point in the cinema of conflict

 

This Place (2022) – one wants to like Nayani’s well-meaning drama, but the poor-quality writing and scene-making make it pretty hard

 

A Man There Was (1917) – Sjostrom’s formidably tortured drama, highlighted by several pioneeringly well-executed aquatic set-pieces

 

The Angelic Conversation (1985) – Jarman’s pilgrimage-like immersive rapture leaves no aspect of the frame, soundtrack or montage unqueered

 

Les seins de glace (1974) – Lautner’s atmospherically- and psychologically-challenged drama works minor variations on familiar themes

 

Joy Ride (2023) – Lim’s hardworkingly superficial movie seldom evokes actual joy, likewise much real sense of cultural or personal discovery

 

Three Poplars on Plyuschikha Street (1968) – Lioznova’s poignant vignette draws in a lightly-treading range of social implication and detail

 

Six O’ Clock News (1996) – McElwee is ever-enjoyable company, even as his doom-laced existential investigation makes only limited progress

 

El Casado Casa Quiere (1948) – Solares’ comedy provides a few competently harried relative highpoints, while often getting bogged down

 

Aftersun (2022) – Wells’s captivating and haunting debut suggests a remarkably intuitive and fluid sense of cinema, and of much else

 

Cousin Angelica (1974) – Saura’s assured, at times inspired blending of past & present reveries, desires & traumas approaches his best work

 

The Believers (1987) – Schlesinger’s dire human-sacrifice thriller is at best unenjoyably absurd and at worst culturally offensive

 

One Way Ticket to Love (1960) – Shinoda’s debut is a fine, if rather over-plotted, study of seaminess-imperiled pressure and desperation

 

Past Lives (2023) – Song’s film makes heavy weather of basically not that much, albeit with pleasantly and tastefully applied polish

 

The Roof (1956) – De Sica’s socially informative drama is as enjoyable as any of his work, while subject to familiarly reductive limitations

 

Tomasso (2019) – Ferrara’s personal doodling, teasing and mythmaking is strangely absorbing, however restricted its objective achievement

 

Mahler (1974) – the film is in many ways among Russell’s all-round best, and yet too seldom engages, delights or persuasively informs

 

The Five Devils (2022) – Mysius’ magic-infused interweaving of cross-temporal causes and effects is an unexpectedly alluring pleasure

 

The Ugly American (1963) – Englund is no Pontecorvo, but the film is of lastingly earnest interest for all its simplifications and evasions

 

After the Rehearsal (1984) – an aging Bergman’s return to the memory-suffused, eternally testing, eternally giving crucible of theatre

 

The Upturned Glass (1947) – Huntington’s rather plain murder drama at least yields some relative structural and philosophical surprises

 

Possessive (2017) – Edwin’s doomed teen romance is cleanly done, but doesn’t occupy the same cinematic universe as his awesome Vengeance…

 

Portnoy’s Complaint (1972) – one sporadically admires Lehman’s commitment to unlikability, but much about the film is unrewardingly grueling

 

The Delinquents (2023) – Moreno’s quite wonderful film evolves from bank heist drama to patiently dreamy vision of spiritual unburdening

 

The Perfect Furlough (1958) – within its severely dated parameters, Edwards’ early film is bright and zippy, with ample formal pleasures

 

What’s Up Connection (1990) – Yamamoto’s super-energetic mash-up expresses cultural loss and absorption in astoundingly inventive manner

 

Algie, the Miner (1912) – Guy’s ten-minute silent film accommodates a surprisingly lively subversion of gender norms and relationships

 

Orchestra Seats (2006) – Thompson’s elegant light comedy forgivably ranks idealized affection above real-world anxieties and practicalities

 

The Liberation of L. B. Jones (1970) – Wyler’s barely tolerable last film, more a capitulation to than interrogation of its wretched milieu

 

The Innocents (2021) – Vogt’s drama, novel and subtle throughout, ranks high on the list of creepy (if artfully inexplicable) child movies

 

The Incredible Journey (1963) – Disney’s easy-pleasure, (relatively!) restrained animal odyssey still likely delivers what you came for

 

Tetsuo: the Iron Man (1989) – Tsukamoto’s astounding vision just pulverizes the senses, such that judgment barely seems possible or relevant

 

Fantasia (1940) – Disney’s grand project is rather touching in its highfalutin eccentricity, when not punishingly reductive and wrong-headed

 

La mort de Danton (2011) – Diop’s astute, irresistible portrait efficiently nails multiple components of French cultural cluelessness

 

Nuts in May (1976) – Leigh’s comedy is slow-burningly hilarious at times, built on disquietingly repressive psychological undercurrents

 

Hyenas (1992) – Mambety’s Durrenmatt adaptation is colourful and spirited, but hits the venal titular metaphor rather too directly

 

The Man From Laramie (1955) – Mann’s marvelous compositions give intense expression to the tightly-wound psychological undercurrents

 

Lan Yu (2001) – Kwan’s modern landmark studies same-sex love with quietly truthful finesse, well-attuned to personal and societal evolution

 

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) – Milestone’s version remains more immediately impactful and draining than the recent remake

 

Tar (2022) – the contours of the comeuppance leave one queasy, but at its frequent best Field’s film is enthralling in its thoroughness

 

Mysteries (1978) – de Mussanet’s Hamsun adaptation is consistently intriguing, but lacking in overall clarity and strength of vision

 

On Chesil Beach (2017) – Cooke’s McEwan adaptation mostly comes across as a tastefully distant artificiality, but sensitively executed

 

Thirst for Love (1966) – Kurahara’s drama is packed with fascinating detail, although doesn’t quite nail the central transgressive obsession

 

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) – Scorsese’s overly deliberate drama ultimately feels misshapen and misjudged in too many key respects

 

The Murderers are Among Us (1946) – Staudte’s post-war drama remains impactful in its (albeit circumscribed) reaching for moral reckoning  

 

The Naked Face (1984) – Forbes’ murder hodgepodge isn’t very persuasive on its own terms, and often (re, say, Steiger) actively unenjoyable

 

Deep Red (1975) – Argento constructs some terrific cinematic architecture & atmosphere, although the film often feels captive to its genre

 

The Fabelmans (2022) – it’s strange that Spielberg’s stupendous vanity project should come out feeling so distanced and unconvincing

 

The Last Adventure (1967) – Enrico’s episodic romp is unusually narratively & tonally unpredictable, with terrific behavioral vibrancy

 

Sphinx (1981) – Schaffner delivers some spectacular travelogue, but the rest is deadly dull and/or preposterous and/or barely coherent

 

Destinies of Women (1952) – Dudow’s teeming drama embeds much progressive empathy into its propagandistically forward-looking framework

 

Saltburn (2023) – Fennell’s narratively shaky movie seldom feels particularly worthwhile, with little ultimate satiric or other pay-off

 

Johnny Corncob (1973) – Jancovics’ animation is arresting in its ugliness-skirting faux simplicity, but it’s not the most involving of tales

 

Pasolini (2014) – Ferrara’s intertwining of biographical recreation and artistic extrapolation is among his most unerringly effective works

 

An Angel for Satan (1966) – Mastrocinque’s not-bad concoction, elevated by some starkly chilled visuals, and a mostly well-deployed Steele

 

The Whale (2022) – Aronofksy’s unproductively theatrical drama seldom convinces or moves, despite its aggressively attention-getting aspects

 

The Eyes of the Mummy (1918) – Lubitsch’s stiff early film has a few striking moments, but doesn’t cast any kind of sustained spell

 

Broadcast News (1987) – Brooks’ overly amiable, insufficiently interrogative movie is still worthwhile as a quaintly dated discussion point

 

Pastorale 1943 (1978) – Verstappen’s reflectively shifting narrative and unexpected choices of emphasis outweigh various flatter elements

 

Maestro (2023) – Cooper’s film impresses less for its depths than its surfaces, but at their best those surfaces are grandly electrifying

 

Night Games (1966) – Zetterling’s frequently startling (then at the end surprisingly redemptive) case history of intertwined abuse & wonder

 

The Addiction (1995) – Ferrara’s attitude-heavy vampire picture stylishly channels a spectrum of physical and existential uncertainty

 

Giants and Toys (1958) – the colourful surface of Masumura’s corporate satire rapidly reveals a dazzlingly pessimistic social analysis 

 

Blue Jean (2022) – Oakley’s quietly precise and credible study of stifled sexual identity in an imperfectly evolving time and place

 

Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973) – with ample charm and wit, Vorlicek’s wide-eyed telling fits snugly within its various constraints

 

Brazil (1985) – Gilliam’s epic retains a sense of propulsive grandeur, despite big dollops of banality, flippancy and/or unproductive excess

 

Branded to Kill (1967) – Suzuki tears through multiple limits and conventions with an almost unnerving degree of imagination and confidence

 

No Hard Feelings (2023) – Stupnitsky’s sunnily distasteful, vaguely resentful comedy isn’t so bad on its own resource-squandering terms

 

Stronger than Love (1955) – Demicheli’s amusingly heated Cuban melodrama, powered by outsized passions, motivations and resentments

 

Ali (2001) – Mann’s top-tier cinematic prowess and energy can’t entirely overcome the familiar limitations of the linear biopic form

 

Elisa, my Love (1977) – Saura expands the filmic space around his modest central narrative in accomplished, sometimes perturbing style

 

Turning Red (2022) – for all its high-concept craft and energy & beguiling Toronto-ness, Shi’s fable is less engaging than hoped for

 

L’etrange Monsieur Victor (1938) – its modest star-image tweaking aside, Gremillon’s drama offers familiar, but happily-received, pleasures

 

Christine (1983) – Carpenter makes good visual use of the car, but the plotting around it seems haphazard and thematically unimpactful

 

Killers on Parade (1961) – Shinoda’s caper pops with imaginative verve, tempered by twinges of authentic melancholy at the state of things

 

Barbie (2023) – Gerwig discharges the commercial mandate in sensationally imaginative, energetic, even penetratingly thoughtful manner

 

The Black Hole (1979) – Disney’s space opera undercuts its relative visual strengths with a plethora of lame and grating miscalculations

 

Place Vendome (1998) – Garcia’s plush, increasingly fatalistic drama has no lack of enticing elements, but falls a bit short as a whole

 

Blind Date (1959) – Losey’s attention to mood, interaction and class-conscious machinations elevates the solid if strained core premise

 

Doppelganger (2003) – a lesser Kurosawa work overall, notwithstanding the quite unexpected swerve into shaggy-dog/road games territory

 

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) – Lloyd’s elemental version solidly endures, propelled by star charisma, cleanly-drawn conflict, ample exoticism

 

Bubble (2022) – Araki’s sort of dystopian Little Mermaid has a pretty gooey core, within the considerable visual & conceptual heavy-hitting

 

Little Big Man (1970) – Penn’s daring, captivating survey of American history as inextricably intertwined, ever-renewing tragedy and farce

 

Choice of Arms (1981) – Corneau’s convoluted, overly sprawling crime drama benefits from his steady handling, and an utterly classic cast

 

The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean (1966) – Compton’s fable retains a peculiarly touching delicacy, even when the storytelling somewhat wobbles

 

La permanence (2016) – Diop’s most concentrated long-form work, observing patient compassion in the face of fathomless need and trauma

 

Repeat Performance (1947) – Werker’s unusual drama executes a Twilight Zone-like premise with a bracing degree of pessimism and resentment

 

Neptune Frost (2021) – Williams/Uzeyman’s boundary-transcending, teeming expression of an exploited people’s complexities and capacities

 

Cabaret (1972) – Fosse’s film is worth revisiting for the Fosse-ness, but isn’t particularly satisfying by most non-Fosse-ness measures

 

To You, From Me (1994) – Jang’s narratively & stylistically audacious film gleefully assails just about all aspects of South Korean society

 

Strangers on a Train (1951) – one of Hitchcock’s most tightly executed pleasures, albeit lying outside his swoon-inducing masterworks

 

Mother, I Am Suffocating…(2019) – Mosese’s expression of the pained relief of exile carries an acutely haunting visual and emotional force

 

Seventh Heaven (1937) – King’s remake is shamelessly sanitized, would-be-spiritually-uplifting hokum, albeit sweetly enacted by Simon

 

Passages (2023) – Sachs’ small-scale drama may most stick in the mind for its uncommonly nasty and manipulative emotional structures

 

Seytan (1974) – Erksan’s narratively choppy, resource-challenged, atmosphere-deprived Exorcist remake has only minor virtues at best

 

No Nukes (1980) – an inadequately shaped, thematically dated record, but with some lasting musical highlights (Scott-Heron, Springsteen…)

 

The Living Skeleton (1968) – Matsuno’s overly busy ghosts-and-weirdness narrative holds together through sparse, preoccupied conviction

 

Armageddon Time (2022) – Gray’s fine, strikingly melancholy reflection on the evasive workings of privilege, progress, influence and chance

 

Streetwalker (1951) – Landeta’s coincidence-heavy melodrama, distinguished by its empathy for constrained female lives, both rich and poor

 

The War of the Worlds (2005) – Spielberg’s vision of destruction is an astounding visual achievement, but emotionally coarse and/or barren

 

Les stances a Sophie (1971) – Mizrahi’s marriage chronicle sustains a bright, sparky air of feminism-infused investigation & experimentation

 

May December (2023) – yet another unprecedented Haynes tour de force, combining disparate tones and genres with sensational stylistic acumen

 

Dogora (1964) – Honda’s peppily bewildering mash-up of jewel heist caper and coal-eating space monster (yep, they got to that idea first…)

 

Crossing Delancey (1988) – Silver fleshes out the thin but appealing core story with a warm wealth of surrounding detail and observation

 

After the Curfew (1954) – a valuable discovery, for Ismail’s lonely portrait of Indonesia’s post-military societal and moral precariousness

 

She Said (2022) – Schrader’s no-nonsense investigation drama is respectably done, but not particularly galvanizing from any perspective

 

Evil of Dracula (1974) – the most narratively overstuffed and overall least visually and thematically alluring of Yamamoto’s vampire trilogy

 

Dreamgirls (2007) – Condon botches the job in too many key respects, the musical highlights barely surviving the surrounding near-chaos

 

Eerie Tales (1919) – Oswald’s anthology is of course historically interesting, but far too stiff and overstated to evoke eeriness now

 

Bottoms (2023) – Seligman’s high-scoring comedy has a good angle on self-empowerment, although the climactic ramping-up is a mixed bag

 

The Game is Over (1966) – Vadim’s film has ample if dated style and titillation, but ultimately seems mostly misogynistically mean-spirited

 

Witness (1985) – Weir’s drama plays more conventionally than its reputation suggests, while certainly lifted by directorial sensitivity

 

Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (1977) – Shinoda’s satisfyingly unpredictable and perverse fable spans just about every available register

 

Bones and All (2022) – Guadagnino balances the disparate elements with great delicacy, although the upside is inherently rather limited

 

Eight Hours of Terror (1957) – the Stagecoach resonances don’t do Suzuki’s often shakily-handled and overacted early effort too many favors

 

The Insider (1999) – Mann’s ability to wrangle sprawling material is second to none, although at the cost of persistent over-simplification

 

Honeycomb (1969) – Saura’s charting of an arid marriage’s desperate game-playing makes for hermetic, only sporadically galvanizing viewing

 

The Killer (2023) – Fincher’s sleekly proficient, detail-oriented handling near-transforms the essentially contrived & unimportant material

 

Towards Tenderness (2016) – Diop’s all-round impressive short study encompasses a scintillating vastness of social and cultural implication

 

I Start Counting (1970) – Greene infiltrates the core material with intriguing detail and subtext, drawing on both dream and threat

 

The Living Dead Girl (1982) – the pained mood piece at the core of Rollin’s film just about surmounts the myriad inadequacies around it

 

The Country Girl (1954) – Seaton’s adaptation makes for pretty drab, tedious viewing, its notable cast now seeming forced and unpersuasive

 

Triangle of Sadness (2022) – Ostlund’s overpraised, draggy and bloated creation leaves you cinematically and intellectually unsatisfied

 

History is Made at Night (1937) – Borzage infiltrates the assured romantic comedy with a palpably unsettling sense of threat and menace

 

Max par Marcel (2009) – a rare Marcel Ophuls film marked by excessive brevity, its warm memories of his father delighting and illuminating

 

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978) – Morrissey/Cook/Moore’s take-off scores its rather desperate laughs, but without much overall pop

 

Heroic Trio 2: Executioners (1993) – To’s sequel somewhat improves on its predecessor, if only through more sustained grimness and loss

 

A Child is Waiting (1963) – Cassavetes musters some empathetically forthright observation, within an overly circumscribed overall structure

 

Afire (2023) – Petzold’s supple tale of personal & artistic catalysis, its initial lightness ultimately yielding tragedy-infused complexity

 

Bambi (1942) – Disney’s classic holds joy and threat in effective balance, although is most commanding when gripped by the latter (Man!)

 

King Lear (1987) – beneath the surface’s play and quasi-chaos, Godard establishes a haunting sense of cultural besiegement and fragility

 

Straight on Till Morning (1972) – Collinson’s serial killer drama blends stylistic ambition with numerous surprises of tone and emphasis

 

Sage femme (2017) – Provost’s story of reconciliation is unfailingly watchable, no matter how short on thematic or stylistic surprises

 

Gigi (1958) – Minnelli’s tuneful and decorative Oscar-winner actually ranks among his less fulfilling works, even skirting unpleasantness

 

Ghost in the Shell 2.0 (2008) – the impact of Oshii’s film does diminish a little on reviewing, regardless of the “2.0” version refinements

 

The Mad Genius (1931) – Curtiz’s showily well-tuned tale of manipulation, a prime vehicle for Barrymore’s atmospherically ripe stylings

 

Master Gardener (2022) – Schrader’s study of shifting power dynamics is rewardingly strange, all the way to an unexpected happy ending

 

Anima persa (1977) – Risi’s drama penetrates less than you hope for, despite its darkly amusing peeling away of bourgeois structures

 

Topsy-Turvy (1999) – Leigh’s wonderful study of creativity in all its facets, joyousness coexisting with fragility, even outright terror

 

Time to Love (1966) – Erksan’s enigmatic love story evidences great care, but is compositionally overdone and behaviorally unrevealing

 

Rustin (2023) – Wolfe’s overly procedural, spoon-feeding movie adequately discharges its basic commemorative mandate, and that’s about it

 

Africa on the Seine (1955) – Sarr/Vieyra’s brief observance of Black life in Paris is acerbic & pointed, but not ultimately without optimism

 

Prince of Darkness (1987) – one of Carpenter’s less rewarding works, marked by scattershot narrative and a sad lack of dramatic intensity

 

Lake of Dracula (1971) – a worthy stylistic and thematic successor to Yamamoto’s Vampire Doll, even if more conventional in numerous ways

 

Moonage Daydream (2022) – Morgen’s film scintillates in its multitudinous presences, even as one remains aware of the inevitable absences 

 

Fighting Elegy (1966) – Suzuki’s drama makes for rather repetitively pounding viewing, but certainly scores as cheerless social critique

 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) – a work of astoundingly fine-tuned inventiveness, and of no small emotional intelligence

 

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1955) – Allegret’s inevitably constrained filming has a better feel for class differences than for the core passion

 

Asteroid City (2023) – not Anderson’s most easily pleasurable film, but ultimately one of his most intricately rich, humane and stimulating

 

Himiko (1974) – despite the film’s formal strengths, Shinoda’s dramatizing of Japan’s founding myths is among his less elevating works

 

Family Business (1989) – Lumet’s brassy, notably-cast crime drama all but revels in inconsequentiality (but solidly crafted, naturally)

 

Stress is Three (1968) – a second-tier Saura work, well in control of its sparsely toxic set-ups, but ultimately limited in its impact

 

Women Talking (2022) – Polley’s instincts and methods lead her disappointingly awry here, generating a reductively artificial, unmoving film

 

Fanfan la tulipe (1952) – Christian-Jaque’s film has ample wit, pace and spirit, and then leaves an utterly shallow after-impression

 

Mary Magdalene (2018) – Davis makes consistently interesting narrative choices, their impact limited by monotonous tonal stateliness

 

A Reflection of Fear (1972) – Fraker taps some strange, disembodied veins of troubled reverie, but it ultimately comes to rather too little

 

Made in Hong Kong (1997) – Chan’s tremendous drama of delinquent youth provides a virtually unbroken, intricate, nihilism-tinged rush

 

The Secret Life of an American Wife (1968) – Axelrod’s lifelessly garrulous comedy is unappealingly conceived, often just depressing

 

Voleuses (2023) – Laurent’s emphasis on female fun and camaraderie is appealing, but the film seldom transcends its gleaming superficiality

 

The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949) – Williams’ notably-cast but overly stiff drama stands out for its aspects of doomed Welsh authenticity

 

Ghost in the Shell (1985) – viewed at a time of escalating AI-related thrill & fright, Oshii’s sexy, hard-edged reverie feels new again

 

Endless Night (1972) – Gilliat’s Agatha Christie grab-bag is more peculiar than suspenseful, but one generally appreciates the effort

 

No Bears (2022) – Panahi’s wondrous, moving film radiates clarity of purpose in the face of almost all-touching constraint and suspicion

 

When Worlds Collide (1951) – Mate’s drama has sufficient high-concept momentum to surpass its copious limitations and peculiarities

 

Chico & Rita (2010) – a delightfully energetic music-saturated animated chronicle, albeit with not too many narrative or stylistic surprises

 

Alice Adams (1935) – Stevens oversees a supple piece of small-town Americana, but all else is secondary to the fascinatingly vivid Hepburn

 

Russian Dolls (2005) – Klapisch’s L’auberge sequel, despite its theme of ongoing growth, too often feels like a (still polished) retread

 

Diamonds are Forever (1971) – a few bits of extended brutality aside, Hamilton’s Bond entry lacks much dramatic energy or distinct identity

 

Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) – Suleiman’s film attains a wryly moving synthesis of deadpan comedy & ever-looming existential tragedy

 

The Notorious Landlady (1962) – Quine’s over-extended comedy struggles to maintain momentum, but the well-staged finale pays off nicely

 

Hold Me Tight (2021) – Amalric’s study of loss, trauma, remembrance, fantasy and renewal is wondrously, intricately vivid and enveloping

 

Vacation from Marriage (1945) – Korda’s forced wartime relationship drama, all too obvious in its calculated ideological assurances

 

First Graders (1984) – as always, Kiarostami is innately well-attuned to the material, calmly drawing out humour, portent and implication

 

The Looking Glass War (1970) – Pierson’s solid Le Carre adaptation leaves a suitably doomed, politically abstracted overall impression

 

Night Shift (2020) – Fontaine’s police drama is well-attuned to small escapes from everyday tensions, but makes a minimal overall impression

 

Rear Window (1954) – one of Hitchcock’s richest visual and thematic tapestries, intensely and pleasurably full in complexity and implication

 

Election 2 (2006) – To intelligently builds on the first film, with some startling individual sequences, and an ultimate thematic grandeur

 

The Edge of the World (1937) – Powell’s early work has a marvelous overall gusto and conviction, surmounting the sometimes untidy filmmaking

 

Lunana: a Yak in the Classroom (2019) – Dorji’s humane film isn’t consistently strong, but carries ample scenic and ethnographic interest

 

Pulp Fiction (1994) – if not Tarantino’s best work, likely his most inexhaustibly inspired, somehow vividly generous even at its sleaziest

 

The Vampire Doll (1970) – Yamamoto’s sleekly, unfussily handled tale, crisply peeling back its impressively malign and tangled premise

 

The Son (2022) – Zeller’s trauma-infused drama carries some basic clinical interest, but is distancingly predictable and artificial

 

Knife in the Water (1962) – the dauntingly assured, societally insinuating potency of Polanski’s early film barely diminishes over time

 

Society (1989) – once you’re done with the gross-out surprise value of Yuzna’s satire, there’s not too much to reward deeper consideration

 

Fountainhead (1956) – Kobayashi’s ambitious meeting of personal and political rather wanders at times, but is enormously engrossing overall

 

Cow (2021) – Arnold’s study of farming infrastructure and the unknowability at its centre is thought-provoking, if not quite revelatory

 

Violette Noziere (1978) – Chabrol maintains an atmospheric behavioral mystery, while arguably pushing the structure a little hard at times

 

Something to do with the Wall (1991) – Levine/McElwee provide a modestly observational adjunct to weightier examinations and analyses

 

Love on a Pillow (1962) – Bardot gets oddly marginalized within Vadim’s decorative, narratively haphazard journey of self-discovery

 

Nyad (2023) – Vasarhelyi/Chin deliver something close to a dramatized PowerPoint presentation, not that the subject matter demands much else

 

Looping the Loop (1928) – Robison’s circus-set drama is never less than sturdy, often gripping in its navigation of poignancy and creepiness

 

The Howling (1981) – Dante’s nifty little horror flick, although hardly genre-transcending, displays tons of good humor & all-round know-how

 

The Left-Handed Woman (1977) – Handke’s study of feminine self-determination, its multiple withholdings both enriching and limiting

 

Living (2022) – Hermanus’s remake provides ample delicately-crafted pleasures, although one likely wishes for a greater cumulative impact

 

Tokyo Drifter (1966) – the existential bereftness within Suzuki’s hyper-designed, hyper-everything action film is improbably persuasive

 

The Golden Boat (1990) – Ruiz’s wondrously strange & shifting, near-vampirically blood-spurting dip into New York’s spikily creative depths

 

The World of Apu (1959) – Ray’s film has some of his most delicate passages, even as his ambitions expand beyond quotidian observation

 

The Souvenir: Part II (2021) – Hogg’s work continues to grow in scope and capacity to surprise, while tending its core observational virtues

 

La bonne annee (1973) – the tonal and structural surprises and pleasures of Lelouch’s light but lasting film outweigh the various stumbles

 

Dream Demon (1988) – Cokliss’ fantasy teems with forceful visual and thematic notions, arrayed within a slipperily effective overall scheme

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

                       

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

                                                                

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

overall purpose, style or (least of all) fun

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

A Girl Missing (2019) – Fukada crafts an alluring narrative and surrounding structural mystery, although the ultimate impact is fairly muted

 

Paths of Glory (1957) – a flawed but inescapable reference point in the cinema of wartime morality, indelible at its most Kubrickian

 

Dear Comrades! (2020) – Konchalovsky’s strong film overemphasizes personal over collective experience, but stimulates at every turn

 

Flower Drum Song (1961) – Koster’s constrained film does well enough by the music and choreography, but much else is dated and/or debatable

 

La vallee fantome (1987) – another bracingly unpredictable, thematically & geographically expansive reverie from the sadly undersung Tanner

 

Cross of Iron (1977) – Peckinpah’s war drama lacks the precision of his best work, but steadily grows in smoldering, sickened forcefulness

 

Gangubai Kathiawadi (2022) – Bhansali’s scrubbed and idealized telling has amply winning heart-in-the-right-place momentum and charisma

 

The Razor’s Edge (1946) – Goulding’s uninspired adaptation prioritizes tedious melodrama over the supposedly central philosophical inquiry

 

Barbara (2017) – Amalric’s bewitching exercise in evocation and representation, at once scintillatingly present and elegantly elusive

 

The First Time (1969) – Neilson’s horny-teenagers/Jackie-Bisset flick isn’t so bad on its own terms, but they’re not the most elevated terms

 

Wife of a Spy (2020) – Kurosawa’s delectable historical drama gradually eliminates almost any points of personal or national certainty

 

Plaza Suite (1971) – Hiller’s overly faithful filming of Neil Simon’s play is, at best, little more than a tolerably dated museum exhibit

 

Emporte-moi (1999) – Pool’s warm film is rather thin at times, but benefits from its various points of cultural and personal specificity

 

Twentieth Century (1934) – an ever-reliable, grandly acted pleasure, even if not quite equaling the depth and range of Hawks’ greatest works

 

Hive (2021) – the film has inherent anthropological interest, but Basholli’s narrative and cinematic instincts are overly superficial

 

The Lion in Winter (1968) – Harvey’s mostly heavy-footed filming of Goldman’s endlessly twisting archness gets tedious long before the end

 

Beanpole (2019) – Balagov’s arrestingly visualized, trauma-suffused study of post-war adjustment, marked by startling psychology & behaviour

 

The Song Remains the Same (1976) – an often eccentric, overreaching but have-to-see-once-if-you-care-at-all-about-Led Zeppelin concert movie

 

Quo Vadis, Aida? (2020) – Zbanic’s propulsive narrative bears witness to an almost unbearable weight of moral and individual failure

 

Cry Terror! (1958) – Stone’s hard-driving thriller has plenty of great sequences, and a cracking cast, but ultimately disappoints a bit

 

Apparition (2012) – Sandoval’s small but haunting study sets out the futility of idealized religion in the face of political brutality

 

The Naked Edge (1961) – a sad use of Cooper in his last film, cast adrift by Anderson’s cluelessly over-emphatic notion of suspense

 

Decision to Leave (2022) – Park’s best film to date occupies and ventilates its chosen genre with staggering control and imaginative panache

 

Cold Sweat (1970) – Young’s no-nonsense drama is at least cleanly done, benefiting mightily from a bizarrely classy cast (Liv Ullmann!)

 

IP5… (1992) – a mostly uncomfortable, mysticism-tinged amalgam of disparate elements, embodying the ebbing of Beineix’s creative energy

 

Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) – not Ford’s emotionally or thematically richest film, but one filled with ravishingly painterly compositions

 

The Swarm (2020) – Philippot’s well-ordered but limited quasi-horror falls rather short, whether narratively, thematically or emotionally

 

Grand Prix (1966) – Frankenheimer oversees a solid all-stops-out spectacle, seasoned with a requisite amount of melodrama and inner turmoil

 

The Body Remembers…(2019) – Hepburn and Tailfeathers’ deceptively simple film surveys a riveting myriad of personal and cultural imbalances

 

Still Life (1974) – Saless’ moving, unadorned examination of institutional indifference to small lives is resonant even in its limitations

 

Boiling Point (2021) – Barantini’s movie is super-entertaining, even if it feels more like a bunch of flashy appetizers than a balanced meal

 

Todo un caballero (1947) – Delgado’s modestly refreshing film places its central courtroom drama in laconically amused, reflective context

 

The Couch Trip (1986) – Ritchie’s shoddy comedy is a head-shaking low point for most concerned, the genial Akroyd partially excepted

 

La viaccia (1961) – Bolognini’s undernoted film, the central romance gradually overshadowed by a pessimistic dissection of venal capitalism

 

The Midnight Sky (2020) – Clooney’s end-of-the-world drama intrigues for its melancholy recessiveness, despite some exasperating elements

 

Be Pretty and Shut Up! (1976) - Seyrig’s likably inelegant, sometimes eccentrically assembled testimonies remain amply worthwhile overall

 

The Last Face (2016) – Penn attempts an ambitious fusion of registers and intents, but mostly only undermines the film’s primary strengths

 

Godzilla (1954) – Honda’s cheesy mayhem is diverting enough, but it’s the persistent nuclear-age anxiety and moroseness that lingers

 

Dog (2022) – Tatum/Carolin’s movie is supple enough, but with few narrative or sociological surprises, and even fewer emotional ones

 

The Confrontation (1969) – with almost Demy-evoking fluidity, Jancso challengingly represents a fraught modern history of corroded idealism

 

Harry & Son (1984) – Newman’s story of age and anxiety maintains a warm amiability, at the cost of pulling its social and emotional punches

 

La grande bouffe (1973) – Ferreri’s opera of imploding potency carries a weird, determined majesty, even if of a mostly alienating timbre

 

Ammonite (2020) – Lee’s drama feels overly dour at times, but grips for its alertness to class complexities & its multi-faceted physicality

 

Enthusiasm (1930) – Vertov’s escalating submissiveness in the face of industrial fervour seems tragically infused now with pending decline

 

Just Mercy (2019) – whatever its points of over-familiarity, Cretton’s focused study is frequently enormously and righteously moving

 

The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960) – Lang’s massively enjoyable final film brings classic intrigues & threats into a new technological age

 

Cry Macho (2021) – Eastwood knowingly undermines the apparent road thriller premise, taking things slow and small and rather sweet

 

Property is no Longer a Theft (1973) – Petri’s acidicly unbending deconstruction of capitalism grows more discouragingly relevant overall

 

Chinese Boxes (1984) – Petit’s tersely-expressed, often amusingly withholding drama, built around layers of narrative and moral absence

 

Falbalas (1945) – Becker deftly evokes the setting in all its hectically layered complexity, even as the narrative becomes a bit overwrought

 

Possessor (2020) – Cronenberg’s creepy premise makes for rather narrow, but quite thematically fruitful, emotionally pained viewing

 

Zero Focus (1961) – Nomura’s rather too flatly revelation-heavy investigation is at least quite moving in its melancholy arrival point

 

Thirst Street (2017) – Silver’s amusing, unpredictable cross-cultural study of personal unraveling makes a satisfying if modest impression

 

Letter from Paris (1976) – Borowczyk’s noisily deglamorized portrait may be sort of a one-joke movie, but in its way a life-affirming one

 

After Yang (2022) – Kogonoda’s is among the most suggestively delicate of high-concept futuristic films, sometimes to a wistful fault

 

Poem of the Sea (1958) – Solntseva’s painterly but probing film constantly elevates and surprises, transcending its ideological constraints

 

Extremities (1986) – Young’s film of Mastrosimone’s play provides too little serious examination, but is certainly nerve-jangling at times

 

The Whip and the Body (1963) – Bava’s horror film well sustains its mood of heavy foreboding, supplemented by flashes of relishing sadism

 

Wendy (2020) – Zeitlin’s expansively imaginative sensibility is highly appealing, even if the film is often as confounding as it is magical

 

Come Have Coffee with Us (1970) – Lattuada’s musty, predictably under-examined sex comedy never works up much narrative or erotic energy

 

First Cow (2019) – Reichardt’s small treasure of a film, told with her customary all-round finesse and exquisite attention to detail

 

The Dybbuk (1937) – one submits willingly (if not always without difficulty) to Waszynski’s exacting stylistic, mythic and tonal severity

 

The Card Counter (2021) – one of Schrader’s major works, constantly surprising, yet suffused in lonely, quasi-ritualistic inevitability

 

The Holy Man (1965) – Ray’s minor tale of exploitation and gullibility is rather overdone in some ways and under-developed in others

 

Who is Bernard Tapie? (2001) – Zenovich places packaged biography within an ambiguously self-revealing (or self-mythologizing?) framework

 

Swept Away (1974) – Wertmuller’s most prettily streamlined, drainingly single-minded film wears down the viewer as fully as the characters

 

She Dies Tomorrow (2020) – Seimetz’s fascinatingly supple and allusive creation accommodates dread and wonder, defeat and transcendence

 

Hermoso ideal (1948) – Galindo’s melodrama creaks plenty, but briskly covers an impressive span of cultural and geographic territory

 

A Bread Factory, Part Two (2018) – Wang’s second part ramps up the peculiarities, but the cumulative result is nourishingly mind-filling

 

The Big Gundown (1966) – Sollima’s money-in-the-bank Western, powered by well-conceived stand-offs, twists and contrasting moralities

 

Elvis (2022) – Luhrmann’s frequently mystifying labors leave one feeling distanced and short-changed at best, actively hostile at worst

 

Downpour (1972) – Beizai’s vital snapshot of a lost-in-time Iran teems with creative zest, ranging from kookiness to existential despair

 

Light of Day (1987) – a rather flat Schrader oddity , not that strong on either the aspirational rock life nor the conflicting real one

 

In Spring (1929) – Kaufman’s all-seeing survey of Ukraine’s seasonal rebirth remains transportingly fresh, gracefully engaged, vital viewing

 

The Hunt (2020) – Zobel keeps things snappy and adequately inventive, but the vein of would-be satiric commentary is mostly eye-rolling

 

The Mercenary (1968) – a sweepingly confident Western, propelled by frenetic revolutionary fervour, but lacking the bite of Corbucci’s best

 

Waves (2019) – Shults’ emotionally ambitious drama has its problematic aspects, but even so is mostly quite shimmeringly compelling

 

What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) – Dallamano’s conventionally nasty scenario eventually runs out of narrative & psychological momentum

 

In the Earth (2021) – Wheatley blends science and myth with resourceful panache, generating a surprisingly coherent-feeling experience

 

Where to? (1957) – Nasser’s anthropologically valuable story of poverty, its authenticity-seeped modesty both endearing and limiting

 

Eye of the Needle (1981) – Marquand’s all-round expertise and a fascinating Sutherland consistently lift a potentially leaden thriller

 

Dutch Wife in the Desert (1967) – Yamatoya’s jazzy, oddly pleasing hitman flick busts through narrative, thematic and tonal expectations

 

Shirley (2020) – Decker’s darkly eccentric quasi-fantasia confirms her huge artistic vibrancy, although the film isn’t ideal in various ways

 

The Fate of Lee Khan (1973) – Hu again makes kick-ass, if not transcendent, use of colourfully confined narrative and physical space

 

A Bread Factory, Part One (2018) – Wang’s empathetic scope and odd humor wins one over, despite various stilted or unpersuasive aspects

 

Blind Venus (1941) – Gance’s undoubtedly sincere but convoluted and dated melodrama, best when busily surrendering to dreamy absurdity

 

Tribute (1980) – a mostly eye-rolling extravaganza of sentimental excess and overacting, overseen by Clark with no finesse whatsoever

 

Blue Film Woman (1968) – the stylistic peak of Kan’s chronicle is probably the opening credits; what follows leaves one largely indifferent

 

X (2022) – West works his enjoyably disreputable horror movie premise to the max, incorporating an unusual meeting of creepiness and longing

 

The Shadow Within (1970) – a secondary Nomura film, but illustrating his customarily skillful spanning of genres, moods and concerns

 

Guest of Honour (2019) – perhaps Egoyan’s smoothest and best recent movie, despite much that’s over-elaborate or just impenetrably peculiar

 

Walpurgis Night (1935) – Edgren’s overstuffed melodrama races (not unrevealingly) through everything from abortion to the Foreign Legion!

 

The Return of the Soldier (1982) – Bridges’ unremarkable heritage project, elevated by its strong cast and multi-faceted class consciousness

 

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964) – Pasolini’s deeply socially connective, dialectical witnessing of classic revolutionary myth

 

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020) – the movie is funny, well-conceived and even kinda sweet in parts, but the formula rapidly stretches thin

 

Companeros (1970) – Corbucci’s revolution-charged Western, even if familiar in many respects, is never dull, plain or under-invested

 

The Party (2017) – Potter’s overwound contrivance goes down more than easily, but doesn’t hit any great heights, satirical or otherwise

 

Hotel des Invalides (1952) – Franju’s observance of imperial grandiosity and human toll may belong among cinema’s most staggering 22 minutes

 

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (2021) – Sharpe’s freshly imaginative treatment makes for bright, if hardly very analytical, viewing

 

Bandini (1963) – Roy’s strong wronged-woman melodrama is empathetic and progressively charged, although not without its rickety aspects

 

New Year’s Day (1989) – Jaglom’s peculiar, untidy-seeming instincts do succeed in creating a distinct tonal and cinematic space of sorts

 

Fruit of Paradise (1970) – Chytilova’s aggressively inventive fantasia of self-discovery & resistance, exuberantly rooted in founding myths

 

1917 (2019) – for the most part, Mendes’ rather absurdly polished, pacey compression alienates & obscures as much as it compels & reveals

 

Crossfire (1947) – Dmytryk’s intriguingly structured, often potent thriller, unusually rich in memorable characterizations and interactions

 

This Much I Know to Be True (2022) – Dominik’s outstandingly-crafted performance film, seemingly all but psychically synced to its subjects

 

La visita (1963) – beneath a cringe-inducing romantic mismatch, Pietrangeli dexterously opens up layers of compromise and self-recognition

 

Chan is Missing (1982) – Wang’s film remains satisfyingly fresh and amusing, observationally and in its cultural and philosophical musings

 

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970) – Argento’s precariously stylish killer mystery, capped by some spectacularly twisted psychology

 

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (2017) – Fiennes’ portrait is surprisingly candid at times, while preserving Jones’ uncrackable otherness

 

Flunky, Work Hard! (1931) – Naruse’s brief early study of economic insecurity, deftly anchoring its comedy within a broader desperation

 

Kajillionaire (2020) – by far July’s most appealing movie to date, its imaginative whimsy yielding a surprising kind of mini-perfection

 

A bout de souffle (1960) – one might respond forever to Godard’s inexhaustible film, whether in words or celluloid or gestures or dreams

 

The House of the Devil (2009) – West pulls off some very well-done suspense and switches of tone, but one ultimately just wishes for more

 

Night Train Murders (1975) – Lado’s dispiriting Virgin Spring appropriation is half-hearted even in its sleaziness, let alone anything else

 

Rocks (2019) – Gavron’s method yields some moments of uncommonly energetic authenticity, rather overshadowing the notional narrative

 

Devdas (1955) – Roy’s epic of caste-enforced separation and lifelong suffering, much of its impact lying in unsparing accumulation

 

The Lost Daughter (2021) – Gyllenhaal’s strong if slightly overly-structured debut, distinguished by its unusual complexity of character

 

The Virgin Spring (1960) – Bergman’s work of fearsome contrasts and conflicts, its unsettling mastery bordering on ruthless exploitation

 

Night Falls on Manhattan (1997) – a second-tier Lumet at best, its moral shadings undermined by overly compressed and linear plotting

 

Papa les petits bateaux (1971) – Kaplan’s stylistically and tonally exaggerated woman-takes-charge comedy rather wears out its welcome

 

The Great Buster (2018) – Bogdanovich’s rightly affectionate Keaton tribute is expertly and informatively curated and appealingly organized

 

The Victory of Women (1946) – not among Mizoguchi’s most emotionally galvanizing works, but utterly instructive even at its most didactic

 

The Batman (2022) – Reeves’ joyless take on the material is strongly done on its own preoccupied terms, if hardly a must-see at this point

 

Two Weeks in September (1967) – Bourguignon’s Bardot-adoring romantic travelogue is nicely pitched, but ultimately not very consequential

 

Talk Radio (1988) – the battering nihilism of Stone’s empty film distinctly misconstrues the medium’s real strategic insidiousness

 

Uptown Saturday Night (1974) – it’s fun to see Poitier in a looser vein, exercising a convivial, if forgivably haphazard directorial hand

 

Psychomagic, a Healing Art (2019) – Jodorowksy’s genially-presented case studies are often oddly touching, if at best only semi-persuasive

 

Dodsworth (1936) – one of Wyler’s more lasting films, for its steady contrasting of attitudes, cultures, and capacities for personal growth

 

Sun Children (2020) – Majidi’s overdone street-kid yarn packs in all manner of colour & social interest, but increasingly loses its bearings

 

if….(1968) – Anderson’s extraordinary survey of British inadequacy and structural porousness remains as ruthlessly unprecedented as ever

 

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005) – Park’s drama eventually attains a near-grandeur equal to its sometimes rather distancing craft

 

Breezy (1973) – Eastwood shapes the somewhat risky material into a sensitively flavorful time capsule, run through with middle-aged anxiety

 

Celeste (1980) – Adlon’s study of devotion and interdependence constitutes a narrow but finely delineated dramatic and cinematic space

 

Crime of Passion (1956) – Oswald’s drama doesn’t entirely come together, but exercises some pull through its idiosyncratic tonal choices

 

Titane (2021) – the startlingly expressive, vulnerable physicality of Ducournau’s work makes much of cinema seem, well, staid by comparison

 

David and Lisa (1962) – Perry’s solicitous observation of fragile coping mechanisms surmounts the film’s various under-developed aspects

 

Beloved Sisters (2014) – Graf’s impeccably sustained, multi-faceted historical extrapolation, rich in compelling personal and social detail

 

The Nickel Ride (1974) – Mulligan emphasizes anxious character study over crime drama, with satisfyingly flavorful, albeit modest, results

 

Afternoon (2007) – Schanelec’s family portrait constructs a somehow (if ambiguously) perfect lattice from lassitude and ephemerality

 

Saboteur (1942) – one of Hitchcock’s more cursory works overall, but well-stocked with engaging peculiarities and striking characterizations

 

The Metamorphosis of Birds (2020) – Vasconcelos’ family memoir sustains a wondrously searching sense of connectivity and receptivity

 

Eye of the Devil (1966) – ritualistic horror claptrap, made all the more unpalatable by Thompson’s humorlessly bombastic direction

 

Collective (2019) – Nanau’s immensely, often chillingly implication-heavy uncovering of modern-faced endemic corruption and inadequacy

 

A Little Night Music (1977) – Prince’s disappointing rendering of Sondheim’s sublime musical, a glumly static, jarringly miscast affair

 

Tigrero: a Film that Was Never Made (1994) – Kaurismaki’s laconically pleasing, absence-haunted meeting of worlds, cultures and maestros

 

It Happened One Night (1934) – Capra’s classic works a treat of course, while lacking the acuity and finesse of the genre’s very best

 

RRR (2022) – you think of Jeanne Dielman, and then Rajamouli’s boisterously digitized, sadism-laden myth-making would be, like, the opposite

 

The Family Way (1966) – the Boultings’ comedy now plays like a catalogue of socially-imposed dysfunction, suppression and lurking anger

 

The Wild Pear Tree (2018) – Ceylan’s exacting cross-generational negotiation of the spiritual and material might just be his greatest work

 

Man on a Swing (1974) – Perry’s police drama is often tonally interesting, but the central histrionics pan out rather underwhelmingly

 

The Woman Next Door (1981) – a relatively minor Truffaut work overall, and yet enrichened at every turn by his empathetic resourcefulness

 

Niagara (1953) – Hathaway turns in some memorably imposing images of Monroe and the falls, but much of the rest is highly unremarkable

 

Fever Dream (2021) – Llosa has spellbinding capacities, but the material here is ultimately far less permeating than her Milk of Sorrow

 

Life at the Top (1965) – Kotcheff solidly extends the original’s tone & themes, although with a recurring sense of going through the motions

 

Honeyland (2019) – the film’s huge effectiveness as implication-heavy narrative somewhat works against that as instructive realism

 

Sparkle (1976) – O’Steen’s showbiz saga is overstuffed and/or sketchy at times, but has lots of sweetness and crystalline musicality

 

The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion (1992) – with brash ruthlessness, Itami (rather chillingly ill-fatedly) nails the parasitical shitheads

 

The Big Steal (1949) – Siegel’s cracking early work plays and shifts and morally realigns while driving surely and sleekly ahead 

 

Undine (2020) – Petzold invests himself in a somewhat lame narrative, albeit skillfully positioned both emotionally and historically

 

Beat Girl (1960) – Greville’s wide-eyed mash-up of milieus and cultures teems with odd sociological interest, knowingly and otherwise

 

Dead Pigs (2018) – Yan’s likeable if familiar satire of contemporary China’s excesses and contrasts is ultimately a bit too reconciliatory

 

Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) – Davis’ irresistible, attitude-seeped drama provides an energetic mini-microcosm of urban Black culture

 

Inspecteur Lavardin (1986) – Chabrol makes it difficult to know where sly manipulation meets indifference, but it’s something to contemplate

 

The Mummy (1932) – Freund’s famous piece of creepy mythology has worn a bit thin by now, despite ample visual and mythological paddings

 

Argentina, 1985 (2022) – the strengths and limitations of Mitre’s treatment manifest largely as expected, but it’s a solid work even so

 

The Pink Panther (1963) – a potentially dull romp, elevated as much by some gorgeous Edwards scene-making as by the embryonic Clouseau

 

A Hidden Life (2019) – an (ever-timely) narrative of principled resistance, well-served by Malick’s perpetually questioning sensuousness

 

Pressure (1976) – Ove’s landmark film, as authentically revealing in its messy over-ambition as in its dramatization of relentless prejudice

 

Eros (2004) – Wong’s segment is the captivating highpoint; Antonioni’s is cherishable if overstated; Soderbergh’s is a bit of a throwaway

 

Black Widow (1954) – Johnson’s winding mystery is an adequate time-filler, while lacking in much vigor, bite or culminating surprise

 

What Do We See…? (2021) – Koberidze’s meditative movie gently tunes into infinite possibilities, while marked by a certain central avoidance

 

Hotel (1967) – it’s no Airport (!), but Quine keeps the pieces (albeit of varying interest & broader relevance) glossily & smoothly purring

 

La ultima pelicula (2013) – Martin/Peranson’s “last movie” is as beautifully, critically, wittily mind-bending as that appellation deserves

 

Nationtime – Gary (1972) – Greaves’ convention record is a mind-changingly vital, if imperfect record of emerging will and consciousness

 

The Professional (1981) – Lautner’s politically skeptical, proficient but not too noteworthy Belmondo-outsavvies-them-all action vehicle

 

Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) – Sturges’ rip-roaring classic keeps things pumping in inspired, if reinforcingly sentimental fashion

 

Athena (2022) – Gavras’ application of astounding technical virtuosity to alienatingly flawed content represents a modern pinnacle of sorts

 

The Servant (1963) – a dominatingly cerebral Losey/Pinter achievement, but one that now feels sociologically and cinematically distant

 

Corpus Christ (2019) – Komasa’s modern-day religious parable fuses the beatific and the feral with invigorating style and self-belief

 

Space is the Place (1974) – Coney’s wow-quality Sun Ra fantasia has one well-shod foot in the then-present, the other in the trippy beyond

 

Portrait d’une jeune fille…(1994) – Akerman’s lovely yet grave study of character in formation, a dance of indelibility and transience

 

The Hurricane (1937) – some expressive prison suffering aside, not too Fordian a Ford film, but with amply muscular conflict & destruction

 

My Little Sister (2020) – even at its most necessarily harrowing, Chuat and Reymond’s film maintains its cultural and behavioral freshness

 

Luv (1967) – Donner’s awful, brain-hurting film allows only the vaguest glimpses of how bitingly well the material may have worked on stage

 

The Lure (2015) – Smoczynska’s blissfully kooky but not unserious mermaid-themed quasi-musical, propelled by female desire and sexuality

 

Rage (1972) – Scott’s drama is most tonally and visually striking in its early stages, with interest waning as the revenge mechanics gear up

 

White Wedding (1989) – Brisseau’s tale of shocking attraction walks a fine line between compelling provocation & unconvincing arbitrariness

 

7 Men from Now (1956) – Boetticher frames a tightly anguished story of honor & venality against overwhelming, not-yet-conquered landscapes

 

CODA (2021) – Heder deploys many of the standard weaknesses of sentimentally formulaic moviemaking, but it adequately connects regardless

 

Paris vu par…(1965) – one of the best of the 60’s anthology films, with no real weak links; Rouch’s segment is perhaps the most penetrating

 

Sorry We Missed You (2019) – Loach’s pace and compression limit the sense of realism, but the thesis is as wrenchingly galvanizing as ever

 

Raining in the Mountain (1979) – Hu’s epic doesn’t rival A Touch of Zen, but provides stirringly mysticism-tinged colour and confrontation

 

Terminal USA (1993) – as per the title, Moritsugu’s uproariously cliché-splattering hour-long evisceration doesn’t leave much in place

 

Ghost of Yotsuya, Part Two (1949) – Kinoshita’s rushed, villainy-heavy conclusion doesn’t deliver on the first part’s intensifying promise

 

The Glorias (2020) – Taymor’s shake-up of the biographic form is engagingly enjoyable,

despite (or in part because of) its flaws and oddities

 

Katzelmacher (1969) – Fassbinder’s quasi-deadpan-comedy of cheerless lives builds to a strange kind of minimalist, marooned grandeur

 

The Nightingale (2018) – Kent marshals the hyper-dramatic elements with unnervingly dark and forceful, socially eviscerating sense of purpose

 

The Automobile (1971) – Giannetti’s lightly poignant film feels too slight both as character study (notwithstanding Magnani) and moral tale

 

Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983) – a loose, rather creatively under-nourished Jaglom romance, as the scope of his work starts to narrow

 

The Count of the Old Town (1935) – Adolphson’s comic slice of Stockholm life doesn’t offer much beyond jovial eccentricity and local colour

 

Deep Water (2022) – Lyne maintains a handsomely seductive, implication-heavy mood, but much about the film seems oddly under-developed

 

La boulangere de Monceau (1963) – Rohmer’s short film pulsates with the charmed sense of an astounding artist commencing his life’s work

 

Swallow (2019) – Mirabella-Davis’s film is effective, if artificial-feeling, for much of its length, although not ultimately very persuasive

 

Autostop rosso sangue (1977) – Campanile’s unabashedly venal road movie makes for sleazily compulsive, if spiritually draining viewing

 

Boogie Woogie (2009) – Ward’s plushly-cast art-world satire has its moments, but for the most part plays out too obviously and monotonously

 

Late Chrysanthemums (1954) – Naruse’s very fine study of contrasting post-war fates and economic stability, studded with unusual detail

 

Being the Ricardos (2021) – Sorkin’s relentlessly overstuffed (and centrally miscast) movie only sporadically hits a productive stride

 

The Basilisks (1963) – Wertmuller’s study of small-town dynamics is a bit over-insistent, but well-attuned to social and existential stasis

 

Flames (2017) – Throwell and Decker’s provocatively ambiguous self-exposure is a spikily and surprisingly elevating, creation-saturated trip

 

Prefab Story (1979) – Chytilova’s immersion into eye-hurting, identity-sapping would-be modernity, navigated with fantastic, swerving energy

 

Fearless (1993) – Weir’s film is visually and behaviorally riveting, even if ultimately rather too heavy on free-floating mysticism

 

Ghost of Yotsuya, Part One (1949) – Kinoshita’s drama is suffused in escalating pressure and anguish, building to a well-judged cliffhanger

 

The King of Staten Island (2020) – no doubt fated to stand as the emblematic Pete Davidson movie, but it’s adroitly unexceptional otherwise

 

La voglia matta (1962) – Salce’s lively, quite well-sustained, ultimately desolation-tinged comedy of escalating middle-aged humiliation

 

Frankie (2019) – Sachs’ knowingly incomplete-feeling yet often exquisite, precisely inhabited tour through internal and external landscapes

 

Charles and Lucie (1979) – Kaplan’s broad comedy of mishap and resulting renewal is appealingly unvarnished, but hardly very major stuff

 

Annie (1982) – a pretty consistently enjoyable, nicely cast adaptation, with Huston at the very least avoiding the most likely pitfalls

 

Las Hurdes (1933) – Bunuel’s study of utter dispossession establishes the utter conceptual clarity and seriousness of his wondrous cinema

 

Kimi (2022) – Soderbergh applies his formidable technical know-how to an effectively-conceived, very much of-the-moment tech thriller

 

Black Orpheus (1959) – Camus’ film endures less as myth or sociology than as a seldom-equaled explosion of sustained colour, rhythm & motion

 

The Assignment (2016) – under the absurd circumstances, Hill and the cast execute the mission with admirable straight-faced intensity

 

Il merlo maschio (1970) – Campanile’s sex comedy is a shameless morass of insecurity and objectification, but fairly inventive about it

 

Better Luck Tomorrow (2002) – Lin’s slick drama mildly subverts cultural stereotypes, while also jettisoning much flavor and plausibility

 

Take Aim at the Police Van (1960) –  Suzuki delivers complications worthy of that title in lean, no-nonsense, sleaze-seasoned style

 

Don’t Look Up (2021) – McKay’s satire is impressively conceived & controlled, although an ensuing sense of emptiness is all but inevitable

 

The Mill on the Po (1949) – Lattuada’s (sometimes overly) forceful contrasting of personal and collective drama yields some major highpoints

 

Ford vs. Ferrari (2019) – as technically impressive a vehicle as expected, aside from lacking any worthwhile spiritual or thematic engine

 

End of the Game (1975) – Schell’s existentially-charged crime drama doesn’t fully come off, but contains sufficient diverting oddities

 

Dangerous Game (1993) – for all the off-putting excess, Ferrara taps a grippingly intense, confessional sense of cinematic insatiability

 

Le bonheur (1965) – one of Varda’s most disturbingly beautiful works, contrasting socially-rooted pleasures with radical challenges to them

 

Red, White and Blue (2020) – McQueen’s involving study is a bit more conventional and less complexly textured than the best of Small Axe

 

Stromboli (1950) – Rossellini’s meeting of truths & artifices, its predominant visual barrenness yielding extraordinary underlying fullness

 

Kate Plays Christine (2016) – Greene’s investigation consistently intrigues, even as it establishes all too well its own ultimate inadequacy

 

Illustrious Corpses (1976) – if not Rosi’s finest film, perhaps his most emblematic; meticulously controlled and broadly indicting

 

Old Enough (1984) – Silver’s study of a class-crossing youthful friendship has enough truth and freshness to surmount its bumpy elements

 

Osaka Elegy (1936) – Mizoguchi digs into societal gender-based injustice with a breathtaking, ultimately near-defiant lack of sentimentality

 

tick, tick…BOOM! (2021) – Miranda provides sufficient performative highpoints to get through the overdone and/or repetitive passages

 

Diamonds of the Night (1964) – Nemec’s tight concept yields a terrifyingly virtuosic tapestry of experience, memory, and imagining

 

Dark Waters (2019) – Haynes’ uncharacteristic but very fine and humane, politically and morally relevant, sometimes Pakula-evoking drama

 

The Judge and the Assassin (1976) – Tavernier’s subtle yet often boldly surprising navigation through personal and collective morality

 

Teknolust (2002) – Leeson’s oddly overlooked high-concept film is a tonal and visual delight, light-footedly stimulating at every turn

 

L’ecole des facteurs (1947) – the kick-off to Tati’s indelible body of work, his behavioral mastery and cinematic precision already intact

 

The Sky is Everywhere (2022) – the suboptimal material pushes Decker toward multiple excesses, not that she doesn’t do it with major flair

 

Aparajito (1956) – Ray’s second film remains a key reference point, holding large and small things in impeccable, attentive equilibrium

 

Ray & Liz (2018) – Billingham’s laugh-or-you’ll-cry riveting, unsentimentally close-up observation of desperate parental inadequacy

 

The Murri Affair (1974) – Bolognini’s broadly satisfying historical drama, spiced by social tensions and ambiguously decadent implication

 

Working Girls (1986) – Borden’s revelatory workplace study, dense in character and incident, every moment fully inhabited and informed

 

Entranced Earth (1967) – Rocha’s fiery, restless vision encompasses pride & self-loathing, tapping a history of failed, out-matched idealism

 

Pig (2021) – Sarnoski works some amusing and adroit variations on vigilante-type structures, although it’s overdone in multiple respects

 

La cigarette (1919) – Dulac’s tender yet ominous story of melancholy misunderstanding, with notable use of contrasting perspectives

 

White Riot (2019) – Shah’s Rock Against Racism movie pleasingly tracks a progressive piece of drop-in-the-ever-troubled-ocean history

 

Lucky Luciano (1973) – Rosi’s artfully constructed, often unexpectedly indirect study, heavy in disillusioned political implication 

 

Babymother (1998) – Henriques’ slice of Black British life has an engaging general vibe & energy, but too often feels overstuffed & sketchy

 

Passing Fancy (1933) – Ozu’s cherishable silent film applies his customary visual delicacy to a story of initially deceptive simplicity

 

Pieces of a Woman (2020) – Mundruczo finds some unusually bracing perspectives on a wrenching physical and psychological experience

 

Doctor Glas (1968) – Zetterling’s fascinatingly unconventional, visually aggressive contrasting of a poised outer and a turbulent inner life

 

Dawson City, Frozen Time (2016) – Morrison’s merging of actual and dream histories utterly absorbs, if more as reverie than film scholarship

 

Les novices (1970) – a thin, under-invested Bardot comedy, with little sign of Chabrol’s reported shadow-directing, but the dog is great

 

Deal of the Century (1983) – Friedkin’s uncertain quasi-satire hardly lives up to its title, although in some respects it ages fairly well

 

I vitelloni (1953) – Fellini’s pessimistic study of hindered masculinity ages more gracefully than many of his grander subsequent works

 

The Power of the Dog (2021) – Campion’s seasoned powers are on full display, even if the film is a little less deft than her finest work

 

Port of Call (1948) – Bergman’s socially-critical drama, suffused in working-class physicality, typifies his sturdy, if narrower, early work

 

Seberg (2019) – Andrews’ well-intended but disappointing study is a lot of missed opportunities, including an atypically dull Stewart

 

Despair (1978) – Fassbinder dazzlingly orchestrates the enigma, but it’s one of his most conventionally tricky, somewhat sealed-off films

 

Ready to Wear (1994) – hardly Altman’s most major film, but it’s enormous fun, with reality and artifice persuasively inter-mingled

 

The Hellbenders (1967) – Corbucci’s vivid, incident-packed Western is no masterpiece, but enjoyably gleams with crazed, committed venality

 

One Night in Miami (2020) – King’s too-smooth drama has no shortage of isolated strengths, but never transcends its inherent limitations

 

Pillars of Society (1935) – Sirk’s early drama has its peculiarities, but bites with relish into small-town stuffiness and hypocrisy

 

The Ghost of Peter Sellers (2018) – Medak’s memoir provides irresistible cinema-geek pleasures, along with some seasoned poignancy

 

Dodes’ka-den (1970) – Kurosawa’s chronicle contrasts the naturalistic and the expressionist, its impact ranging from diffident to absorbing

 

Sharky’s Machine (1981) – Reynolds’ rather uncertainly-handled action drama manages an occasional flash of individuality, not too much more

 

La verité (1960) – an engrossing Bardot-centered courtroom drama, but impacting more straightforwardly than Clouzot presumably intended

 

In the Heights (2021) – Chu’s over-calculating musical, vibrantly uplifting in theory, displays a disappointingly bland form of proficiency

 

Nice and Friendly (1922) – a woodenly-executed, low-effort/low-reward Chaplin short, even allowing for the limited underlying ambition

 

The Traitor (2019) – one of veteran Bellocchio’s most classically enthralling works, darkly interrogating relative honour and morality

 

The Mutations (1974) – Cardiff’s bizarre spectacle tempers its rampant absurdity with heavy elements of misplaced-seeming authenticity

 

The Power of Kangwon Province (1998) – Hong’s fine early work, often playfully structured, but colored by dissatisfaction and misconnection

 

El Dorado (1967) – a deep abiding pleasure for Hawksian connoisseurs, brimming with perfectly pitched exchanges, shadings and fallibilities

 

Genus Pan (2020) – not Diaz’s strongest work, and yet an audacious expression of the chaos and carnage flowing from human desperation

 

That Uncertain Feeling (1941) – a happily peculiar, psychosexually infiltrated application of the high-functioning Lubitsch “touch”

 

Rodin (2017) – Doillon’s study withholds much, all the better to evoke the difficult contours of creativity, and attendant personal detritus

 

Jaws (1975) – Spielberg’s first huge hit barely seems dated, its impeccable technique supported by an alert sense of character and place

 

The Cool Lakes of Death (1982) – Van Brakel’s committed chronicle of repression and self-discovery largely achieves its epic ambitions

 

Modesty Blaise (1966) – beneath its rather heavy concept of stylishness, Losey’s movie primarily talks to and (one hopes) entertains itself

 

Earwig (2021) – Hadzihailovic’s highly singular vision, penetratingly present & utterly displaced, voyages toward the strangest of closures

 

Damn Yankees (1958) – Donen/Abbott’s irresistible musical has some distinctive texture, and fabulous (if barely integrated) Fosse routines

 

And then we Danced (2019) – Akin’s film is narratively fairly predictable, but has plenty of sociological colour and observational flair

 

Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971) – Mutrux’s lassitude-heavy study of marginal lives is a peculiar, only fitfully effective category hybrid

 

Of Freaks and Men (1998) – Balabanov is a wondrously imaginative & controlled director, but the film often makes for near-loathsome viewing

 

Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) – beneath its light conventionality, Hitchcock’s atypical comedy casts a fascinated eye on twisted marital dynamics

 

The Human Voice (2020) – Almodovar’s high-panache, mega-designed short film expertly expands its constrained physical and thematic space

 

The Music Man (1962) – it’s pleasing to revisit Willson’s material once in a while, even in DaCosta’s deficiency-strewn filming of it

 

Penance (2012) – Kurosawa’s long, often rather peculiar, but thoroughly satisfying tale, a series of studies in relative power and capacity

 

A Doll’s House (1973) – Losey’s approach to Ibsen’s play hardly lacks compensations, but is far from ideal, flubbing some key moments

 

Letters Home (1986) – Akerman’s lovely film, based on Sylvia Plath’s correspondence, its theatricality facilitating as much as it constrains

 

Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) – a classic anguished noir set-up, evidencing throughout Preminger’s masterly control of tone, mood and pace

 

Introduction (2021) – the objective “smallness” of Hong’s film somehow allows almost limitless-feeling structural & observational capacity

 

Hands Across the Table (1935) – Leisen’s delicate comedy has some lovely scenes (and Lombard!), although gets a little plainer as it goes on

 

Vitalina Varela (2019) – Costa’s masterwork is a stunning communion of physical & spiritual states, of limitless light & intimate darkness

 

The Parallax View (1974) – among Pakula’s most lasting films, brilliantly placing genre heroics in outmatched, implication-heavy perspective

 

Katalin Varga (2009) – more sparely linear than Strickland’s later work, but marked by elements of comparably near-chilling authority

 

Guess who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) – Kramer’s trumped-up concoction is hardly lasting cinema, but at least it’s not like watching nothing

 

Another Round (2020) – Vinterberg ensures the premise goes down easily, although rather constrained both as social and psychological study

 

How Green was My Valley? (1941) – Ford’s gorgeous Welsh family drama is moving and meaningful, for all its idealizations and simplifications

 

L’homme fidele (2018) – Garrel’s slight but elegant, amusingly ambiguous exercise in emotional, sexual and psychological architecture

The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) – a shallow, unexciting Bond effort, valueless except as a shrine to the dated and objectionable

 

Un jeu brutal (1983) – Brisseau is weirdly successful at making his film’s grotesque contrivances feel almost profound and elevating

 

Little Man, What Now? (1934) – Borzage’s soulful but socially-critical, perfectly pitched and acted story of young love’s financial struggle

 

A Hero (2021) – Farhadi’s finely-tuned work does evoke the sense of a recurring template, but one of seemingly inexhaustible adaptability 

 

What’s New Pussycat? (1965) – Donner’s antic comedy, seldom actually funny, is at least conceptually interesting, in a hollowing kind of way

 

Coincoin and the Extra-Humans (2019) – Dumont’s exercise in all-out apocalypse-heralding weirding is an improbably worthy Quinquin follow-up

 

The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970) – Billington’s often very funny wide-angle satire, forged in uneasily far-seeing datedness

 

Bye Bye Africa (1999) – Haroun’s engrossing (if perhaps over-calculated) film explores (and enacts) cinema as facilitator and destroyer

 

Three Cases of Murder (1955) – a seemingly mismatched and yet, in its variety and intermittent eccentricity, unexpectedly satisfying trilogy

 

Notturno (2020) – Rosi’s almost heartbreaking act of witnessing excavates humanity and strange beauty from within unimaginable chaos

 

Unfaithfully Yours (1948) – Sturges’ expertly conceived and structured comedy, perhaps as often disconcerting or chilling as it is funny

 

Blood of my Blood (2015) – Bellocchio’s sort-of nutty and yet rather masterfully executed angle on abiding governing perversion & corruption

 

The Homecoming (1973) – Hall’s valuable filming of Pinter’s sensational play, imposingly attuned to all its biting multi-faceted turbulence

 

Come and See (1985) – Klimov’s chilling, stand-alone vision, from the comprehension-dissolving boundary of wartime extremity & grotesqueness

 

The Cardinal (1963) – Preminger’s study of personal and institutional Catholicism is strong and wide-ranging (while hardly exhaustive)

 

The Hand of God (2021) – Sorrentino’s winning memory film is full of impressive showmanship, while seldom connecting very meaningfully

 

Born Yesterday (1950) – Cukor’s adaptation, constrained and stagy and dated in any number of ways, happily retains its central charm

 

Les miserables (2019) – Ly’s all-seeing, draining sociological survey is almost too cinematically exciting and sleek for its own deeper good

 

Coma (1978) – Crichton’s paranoid thriller is enjoyably well-conceived, and buoyed by its famously compromised “feminist” sensibility

 

The Lover (1992) – for all its care and handsomeness, Annaud’s adaptation too often feels emotionally and intellectually undercharged

 

The Broken Butterfly (1919) – Tourneur’s rediscovered silent melodrama has some lovely, pastoral elements, amid much mega-dated contrivance

 

Eureka (2000) – Aoyama’s pilgrimage-like drama contains much of impressive allure, even if it doesn’t entirely justify its epic length

 

The Boston Strangler (1968) – Fleischer impressively varies the approach, pace & tone, without generating commensurate impact or revelation

 

The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) – a slight, fanciful premise, but one explored by Takahata with an exquisitely sustained delicacy

 

Old Boyfriends (1979) – Tewksbury’s semi-comedic identity puzzle has, at the least, an intriguing structure and some striking tonal shifts

 

The Velvet Underground (2021) – Haynes dazzlingly establishes the group’s miraculously transporting singularity; any caveats are minor

 

The White Sheik (1952) – Fellini’s early, endearingly fantasy-propelled comedy, elevated by outbursts of broader energy and ambition

 

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) – reliably easy-pleasure viewing, alertly charting the varied terrain of teenage self-mythologizing

 

The Night of Counting the Tears (1969) – Salam’s grandly singular film stands almost as unyieldingly outside time as its subject matter

 

The Assistant (2019) – Green examines the self-perpetuating, belittling wasteland of office culture with rare, smartly excruciating focus

 

Uski Roti (1970) – Kaul’s time-fragmenting, quietly existentially-charged study of distantly joined lives, spent fruitlessly waiting

 

The Trip to Greece (2020) – Winterbottom again adjusts the ridiculously satisfying formula just about as much as needed, so I’m all good!

 

Costa Azzurra (1959) – Sala’s sun-baked French Riviera comedy examines its own dated attitudes just enough to attain marginal respectability

 

Strange Culture (2007) – Leeson’s flexible investigative form skillfully illuminates and interrogates a startling real-life incident

 

Pirosmani (1969) – Shengelaia’s visually ravishing, studiously unconventional study of the Georgian artist is a small, immersive revelation

 

Chained for Life (2018) – Schimberg’s fascinating spanning of ideas & registers is never less than respect-inducing, often rather dazzling

 

The Long Farewell (1971) – Muratova’s wonderfully layered and attentive family portrait pulsates with intimations of ambition and constraint

 

Passing (2021) – Hall’s film has its debatable aspects, but there’s not a moment that doesn’t hold one’s aesthetic and thematic attention

 

On purge bebe (1931) – Renoir’s efficient, often highly theatrical laxative-driven farce plays a bit puzzlingly now, but not unenjoyably

 

Prizzi’s Honor (1985) – Huston’s late film at times seems cunningly and darkly wry, at others merely incomprehensibly and impenetrably blank

 

Berenice (1954) – Rohmer’s unadorned early short film is probably his most overtly horror-like, even vampiric study of attraction

 

Bombshell (2019) – Roach’s underwhelmingly efficient movie dangles a plethora of synthetic amusements, to overly bland and toothless ends

 

Beware of a Holy Whore (1971) – Fassbinder’s observance of movie-set disorder & torpor as exotically desolate, laughlessly comic wonderment

 

City Hall (2020) – Wiseman’s epic portrait of the city as aspiration and reality is grandly (if sometimes a bit hagiographically) satisfying

 

Il moralista (1959) – Bianchi’s comedy takes a few titillatingly satiric punches at censorious hypocrisy,  but is mostly just messy

 

…Two Girls in Love (1995) – Maggenti’s progressive romance isn’t particularly sophisticated overall, but certainly maintains a winning charm

 

The Artful Penetration of Barbara (1969) – Brass’s never-a-dull-moment London grab-bag throbs with sexed-up curiosity and engagement

 

Lovesong (2016) – Kim’s astutely-observed study of female friendship and its parameters is a pleasure, although restrained to a fault

 

Love in the Rain (1975) – Jeong’s romantic comedy draws only modest variations on a familiar premise, muting the class-driven implications

 

The Voyeurs (2021) – Mohan exploits some time-honoured cinematic mechanisms fairly effectively, but the impact rapidly diminishes

 

La vie du Christ (1906) – Guy’s simple but bustling history embodies the uncynical wonder of very early film, especially in its final scene

 

Trouble in Mind (1985) – for all its sometimes inspired oddities, Rudolph’s strangified modern noir leaves a rather flat overall impression

 

High and Low (1963) – one of Kurosawa’s finest films repositions a wrenching personal drama as a window on societal inequality & instability

 

Richard Jewell (2019) – Eastwood allows in too much cheap stuff and clutter, but the central study of overwhelmed decency is finely observed

 

Sunyeo (1979) – Kim’s tale of injury, striving and temptation isn’t perhaps his most piercing work, but engages spikily with conventions

 

His House (2020) – Weekes flirts with run-of-the-mill horror, transcended through compellingly unique articulations of displaced otherness

 

Music in Darkness (1948) – Bergman’s study of life without sight slowly transcends apparent predictability, in small ways and in larger ones

 

Chocolate Babies (1996) – Winter’s raucous slice of queer community is an exuberantly serious assault on conformity and complacency

 

Home from the Hill (1960) – Minnelli brings the narrative’s sensational primal melodrama to rivetingly visualized, deeply felt fruition

 

Amnesia (2015) – it’s good to see Schroeder still at it, but this meeting of disparate elements never fully coalesces or penetrates

 

I Walk the Line (1970) – Frankenheimer’s southern potboiler is under-developed in most respects, although hardly dull (if only for the cast)

 

Ste. Anne (2021) – Vermette’s film pulsates with openness to a land, a culture, to the inexhaustible seductiveness of cinematic exploration

 

The Return of Bulldog Drummond (1934) – Summers’ shakily get-the-job-done drama remains of modest interest for its time capsule elements

 

Un dimanche a la campagne (1984) – Tavernier’s skillfully recessive film is finely done, if relatively overrated among his very varied works

 

Freud (1962) – Huston’s impressively conceived if over-schematic project carries at times the feel of a preoccupied private tutorial

 

The Whistlers (2019) – Porumboiu delivers plausibly generic crime thriller pleasures, while also bending them with playfully astute rigour

 

From Here to Eternity (1953) – Zinnemann’s drama, potentially a compromised sprawl, displays an improbable array of individual strengths

 

Swimming out Till the Sea turns Blue (2020) – the great Jia places modern Chinese literature in warmly-evoked historical & cultural context

 

FTA (1972) – however rough-edged, Parker’s record of Fonda/Sutherland’s idealistic roadshow still hits diversely meaningful targets

 

On connait le chanson (1997) – Resnais provides endless formal pleasure, while remaining true to thwarted, weighed-down human experience

 

Kitty (1945) – not Leisen’s most substantial work, but with some sublime moments within the accomplished, often amusing superficiality

 

Mekong Hotel (2012) – Apichatpong’s brief, entirely beguiling hybrid of the startling and soothing, the placid now and the loaded then

 

Film (1965) – Beckett/Schneider’s short work hardly satisfies; what’s most debatable perhaps is the exact fashion in which it alienates

 

Annette (2021) – Carax’s intense, self-extrapolating opus is awe-inspiring at its best, easily surmounting various less persuasive aspects

 

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) – Arkush’s happily Ramone-heavy (yeh!) extravaganza, with empowerment mostly winning out over ogling

 

Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000) – Bong pretty much hits the ground running, with an amusingly shifting, lightly ethically-seeded narrative

 

Tevya (1939) – Schwartz’s filming of the Fiddler source material holds up well, risks of over-flavoring held in check by defiant stoicism

 

Bacurau (2019) – Mendonca Filho and Dornelles challengingly reposition nasty genre material in mostly compelling, culturally resonant ways

 

Ride Lonesome (1959) – another impeccable Boetticher/Scott contrast of condensed (yet richly-felt) tension and limitlessly open backdrops

 

I Was at Home, But…(2020) – Schanelec’s film holds sharply observed human truths in equilibrium with scintillating cinematic mysteries

 

A Bigger Splash (1973) – Hazan’s unprecedented, alluring David Hockney-centered reverie occupies all kinds of mysterious intersections

 

Success is the Best Revenge (1984) – Skolimowski’s deeply personal, lumpy yet possibly quasi-magnificent expression of exile and engagement

 

A Walk with Love and Death (1969) – Huston’s chronicle of purity in the midst of national nightmare sustains a fragile, doomed conviction

 

Manakamana (2013) – Spray/Velez’s film exemplifies structured denial as a route into somewhat rarified cinematic and sociological pleasures

 

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943) – Sturges’ pacey ingenuity coexists with too much repetition and indifference to real character

 

Azor (2021) – Fontana’s intelligently restrained, class-sensitive craftmanship dissects a society’s calculated moral and structural erosion

 

Farewell, my Lovely (1975) – Richards’ retro project is solid enough, but is tonally too unvarying, never feeling particularly vital

 

Irma Vep (1996) – Assayas’ captivatingly singular film about a film spans quasi-documentary, pointed satire, and wondrous abstraction

 

Sylvia Scarlett (1935) – Cukor’s remarkable comedy is as “queer” in its tone & structure as in the title character’s unfussy gender-fluidity

 

Agnes par Varda (2019) – only Varda could make a 90-year-old’s wander through the past feel like such a brightly forward-looking affirmation

 

The Alphabet Murders (1965) – Tashlin’s unconventional approach to Agatha Christie is more of a shaky peculiarity than anything else

 

Preparations to be Together… (2020) – Horvat places a classic modern-day enigma within acutely-observed social and personal realities

 

Three Women (1924) – Lubitsch’s melodrama provides ample evidence of the fabled “touch,” albeit applied here to often strained material

 

Spirited Away (2001) – for me anyway, this is Miyazaki’s most fully-inhabited, humorously singular, completely enthralling feast of a movie

 

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) – Hancock’s drama is intriguingly evasive, navigating between sweetness and multi-faceted threat

 

A Woman’s Revenge (2012) – as its fierce central concept becomes clear, Gomes’ ethically considered theatricality grows greatly in power

 

It Should Happen to You (1954) – Cukor’s fame-for-fame’s-sake comedy has plenty of bright spots, although the satirical bite is restrained

 

Prime Time (2021) – Piatek’s drama isn’t that interesting as a narrative, but more so for its gradually-revealed vein of societal pessimism

 

Morituri (1965) – aided by the mercurial Brando, Wicki’s drama intermittently makes the prevailing murkiness into a moral and visual virtue

 

Clemency (2019) – Chukwu disinters the ritualistic machinery of death and its accumulating existential toll with draining brilliance

 

The Bandit (1946) – the initial atmospheric starkness and social grounding of Lattuada’s drama rather extravagantly dissipates as it goes on

 

Escape to Victory (1981) – Huston’s strange project, wildly fanciful and revisionist, but played mostly straight, to the point of dourness

 

The Nude Princess (1976) – Canavari affects a degree of political consciousness, but the movie is defined primarily by lewd exhibitionism

 

The Wedding Guest (2018) – Winterbottom’s injection of noirish plotting & terseness into an India/Pakistan travelogue comes off pretty well

 

El fantasma del convento (1934) – de Fuentes’ mysterious tale is atmospherically creepy, but narratively and thematically rather limited

 

Lovers Rock (2020) – McQueen’s elevating immersion into the joy of gathering, laced with the threats and irritants against which it rises

 

The Guerilla Fighter (1968) – Sen’s frustration-ridden political drama is a fascinating reference point, in its omissions & inclusions alike

 

Jojo Rabbit (2019) – Waititi’s Nazi comedy may be less dreadful than expected, but it’s hard to see the point or virtue of any of it

 

Los tallos amorgos (1956) – the strengths of Ayala’s sweatily noirish exercise in guilt & manipulation outweigh the over-emphatic weaknesses

 

Skin Deep (1989) – much underrated late Edwards rewardingly revisits “10” territory, studded with immaculate, desperation-fueled set-ups

 

About Some Meaningless Events (1974) – Derkaoui’s vivid, punchy, if work-in-progress-feeling political and cultural temperature-taking

 

Ingrid Goes West (2017) – Spicer’s film has its predictable aspects, but nicely channels a certain strand of contemporary desperation

 

Quai des Orfevres (1947) – Clouzot’s drama is a highly superior, atmospherically balanced marvel of characterization, incident & implication

 

Mr. & Mrs. Bridge (1990) – Ivory’s adaptation is carefully delineated to a fault, but crafts a moving portrait of quiet capitulation

 

Charles, Dead or Alive (1969) – Tanner’s wryly amusing study of rebellion, studded with personal, political and philosophical inquiry

 

Color out of Space (2019) – Stanley’s triumphant return is a crazed yet held-together spectacle of comprehensive destabilization & breakdown

 

I’ll Give a Million (1935) – Camerini’s consistently lively if not quite screwball-pace comedy, served with not-too-biting social critique

 

Children of a Lesser God (1986) – Haines provides some respectable observation and debate, along with much under-energized sogginess

 

Daughters of Darkness (1971) – Kumel’s uniquely-pitched vampire film embeds its chilly genre moves within greater psychological mysteries

 

Beirut (2018) – Anderson delivers the pictorial values and the requisite sense of chaos, but it’s all far more basic than the history merits

 

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1954) – Becker’s colourful but mostly trite spectacle leaves its venal backdrop almost entirely unexamined

 

Color Adjustment (1992) – Riggs’ study of prime-time representation is a bit dated and hardly comprehensive, but full of shrewd reflection

 

Jeff (1969) – Herman’s concise double-cross gangster flick is pretty standard Delon fare, leavened with just a few eccentric touches

 

Queen & Slim (2019) – it’s not hard to reel off excesses in Matsoukas’ narrative & mythologizing, and yet the film rises and connects

 

Snow Trail (1947) – Taniguchi’s never-a-dull-moment (if elemental and ultimately oddly sentimental) escape-through-the-mountains drama

 

Special Effects (1984) – Cohen has a great core concept, but his race-to-the-finish-line approach doesn’t explore it very resonantly

 

Tomka and his Friends (1977) – Keko’s study of childhood during wartime charms and informs, despite a feeling of artistic tunnel vision

 

Nurse (2013) – Aarniokoski at least brings some style to the sleazy lameness, and especially to the bloody climactic high-absurdity mayhem

 

No Blood Relation (1932) – Naruse’s silent film is compulsive story-telling, if more visually and emotionally insistent than his finest work

 

The United States vs. Billie Holliday (2021) – Daniels’ wastefully unilluminating treatment verges on being a fuzzy one-note trudge

 

A Woman in the Wall (1969) – Park’s concentrated relationship-triangle drama is decently (even if not that memorably) positioned and crafted

 

Ad Astra (2019) – Gray’s introspective drama starts off tonally and visually strong, but the overall design ultimately feels insufficient

 

La sonate a Kreutzer (1956) – Rohmer’s jittery early work hardly matches his later serene assurance, but teems with historical interest

 

The Slugger’s Wife (1985) – one can vaguely see the possibility of a passable movie, but Ashby barely seems interested in drawing it out

 

The Howl (1970) – Brass’s sex-and-violence-stained odyssey bleeds brain-frying creative energy, earning an exhausted form of respect

 

Diane (2018) – Jones’ remarkable film masters the rhythms and textures of modest lives, and the existentially-charged complexity within

 

A Ship to India (1947) – Bergman’s semi-Bergmanish early melodrama blends noir-inflected romance with desperately toxic family dynamics

 

The Delta (1996) – Sachs’ early film is sociologically and behaviourally fascinating, although leaves a questionable final impression

 

El camino (1963) – Mariscal’s funny, tolerantly varied study of narrowly-defined lives is a consistent delight, if seldom too surprising

 

Little Women (2019) – Gerwig’s enormously skillful adaptation is a real elevating delight, even if perhaps too virtuously scrubbed in parts

 

I Was Born, But…(1932) – Ozu’s silent film is a fully-realized, subtly-observed delight, feeling entirely unconstrained by the lack of sound

 

Marvin & Tige (1983) – Weston’s pretty basic, sentimental story of an unlikely friendship, considerably elevated by Cassavetes’ presence

 

Gods of the Plague (1970) – Fassbinder’s assured but exploratory-feeling, noir-influenced early work, suffused in lassitudinous implication

 

The Story of Lovers Rock (2011) – in charmingly unpolished fashion, Shabazz’s cultural history steadily indicts an exclusionary mainstream

 

Throne of Blood (1957) – Kurosawa’s adaptation is often visually galvanizing, yet never completely banishes a sense of arbitrariness

 

The 40-Year-Old Version (2020) – Blank’s movie has much that’s engagingly authentic, mixed in with a few too many phony beats and set-ups

 

A Man and a Gisaeng (1969) – Shim/Shin’s brassy comedy intrigues for its gender-crossing moves, although it’s ultimately pretty conservative

 

Alice (1990) – Allen’s movie falls mostly flat both as character study and as magic-infused reverie, leaving just secondary compensations

 

Douce (1943) – among Autant-Lara’s most darkly sumptuously works, its romantic longings infested with bitterly class-based realities

 

The Mustang (2019) – de Clermont-Tonnerre’s study is narratively and metaphorically unsurprising, but scenically and sociologically winning

 

The Working Class Goes To Heaven (1972) – Petri’s fire-breathing drama of workplace action sees dehumanization & delusion in all directions

 

Puffball (2007) – Roeg’s last film plainly doesn’t touch his peak, but is intriguingly suffused in female biology, conflicts and affinities

 

Intermezzo (1936) – Molander’s pained love story only mildly satisfies at best, before ultimately entirely sinking into a melodramatic swamp

 

It Comes at Night (2017) – Shults’ minor but well-controlled threat- and mistrust-heavy drama benefits somewhat from Covid-era resonance

 

Lucia (1968) – Solas’ expressively & narratively bold (to a fault) trilogy pries open the painful intimate crevices of revolutionary change

 

Pale Rider (1985) – Eastwood delivers expertly-honed, righteously-fueled pleasures, notwithstanding mythological and egotistical excesses

 

Detective Story (1951) – Wyler’s practiced theatricality and actor-shuffling can hardly withstand the damaged intensity at the centre

 

An Easy Girl (2019) – Zlotowski’s pleasurable chronicle deftly represents female sexuality, alert to the ambiguities of choice and power

 

Black Girl (1972) – Davis’s modest but far-reaching family drama opens up wrenching layers of societally-imposed compromise and regret

 

The Color of Lies (1999) – one of Chabrol’s strongest and gravest late films, a sustained reflection on morality and accountability

 

To Each His Own (1946) – Leisen’s warm skill & de Havilland’s steady presence almost serve to completely extinguish one’s sense of absurdity

 

Before we Vanish (2017) – Kurosawa retains a great feel for metaphorically loaded concepts, but this lands more lightly than his best works

 

How to Steal a Million (1966) – handsomely unimportant Wyler fluff, even by the long-established standards of handsomely unimportant fluff

 

Raja (2003) – Doillon’s oddly persuasive study of turbulent obsession channels the distorting complacency of male colonial privilege

 

Full of Life (1956) – Quine’s slice of pregnant life lightly distinguishes itself through its ethnic flavour and range of thematic interests

 

Merveilles a Montfermeil (2019) – Balibar’s film sustains a kind of klutzy disorientation that viably probes progressive ideals & quicksands

 

Airport 1975 (1974) – Smight’s sequel has little of the original’s sprawling appeal and sporadic human interest, but it’s not dull anyway

 

Countryman (1982) – Jobson juxtaposes traditional, mythic & nastily contemporary notions of Jamaica, with lumpy but mostly appealing results

 

The Lion has Wings (1939) – the idealism is of course overdone, but it’s thoroughly interesting when considered in its historical context

 

Ash is Purest White (2018) – Jia’s work is limitlessly interesting, despite an increasing sense of sociological and thematic familiarity

 

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) – Kramer’s epic is generally as gratingly over-insistent as that tiring title, rarely actually funny

 

L’enfer (1994) – Chabrol’s more quotidian but still expertly unnerving adjunct to Clouzot’s legendary unfinished version of the material

 

Remember the Night (1940) – Leisen’s lovely romantic fancy walks a touching, perfectly-played line between discovery and predestination

 

Family Romance, LLC (2019) – an easy treasure trove of modern ambiguities and poignancies, observed by Herzog with unusual self-effacement

 

10 Rillington Place (1971) – Fleischer’s ideally cast dramatization is an almost unbearably sad and creepy study in calculated malevolence

 

Le bal des folles (2021) – Laurent’s study of oppression is rather too stately & quasi-spiritual to fully realize its potent subject matter

 

Sebastian (1968) – Greene’s fizzily diversion-laden codebreaking yarn tempers its general nonchalance with shards of deeper implication

 

Rafiki (2018) – Kahiu’s Kenyan same-sex romance isn’t particularly sophisticated in many respects, but its very existence brings joy

 

The Wild One (1953) – Benedek’s once-disruptive drama retains shards of cultural significance, but feels under-achieved on its own terms

 

Joint Security Area (2000) – Park’s border-set drama grips through its bold-strokes occupation of political, geographical & narrative space

 

Murder at the Vanities (1934) – a silly hybrid of over-the-top musical revue and backstage mayhem, energetically held together by Leisen

 

Young Ahmed (2019) – both in what it includes and excludes, the Dardennes’ too-brief study of radicalized youth seldom feels ideally judged

 

The Andromeda Strain (1971) – Wise sets out the high-concept notions with admiring subservience, injecting an occasional overdone flourish

 

Marianne & Julianne (1981) – von Trotta’s study of turbulent sisterhood is an expertly practiced occupying of rather familiar thematic space

 

The Grass is Greener (1960) – Donen’s monied dud has a few passingly charming notions, but few signs of any life worth giving a damn about

 

A Silent Voice: the Movie (2016) – Yamada’s astonishingly impressive study of teenage pain & connection surely ranks with the best of anime

 

The Lady Eve (1941) – Sturges’ classic comedy is full of glorious notions & moments, shrouding a certain absence of central emotional truth

 

Oxygene (2021) – Aja’s accomplished but still rather deadening film never transcends the sum of its parts, which get flightier as it goes on

 

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) – Yates’ excellent study of crime-world dependency and betrayal, a bleak tapestry of subtly tragic ironies

 

A Portuguesa (2019) – Gomes’ extraordinarily subtle exploration of a reflective female-written world sustained within a reckless male one

 

The Tall T (1957) – Boetticher’s incisive, expertly shaped Western, infiltrated with manifold questionings of frontier masculinity

 

Une semaine de vacances (1980) – Tavernier’s restrained but exceptionally smart and satisfying examination of youthful existential crisis

 

Once a Thief (1965) – Nelson’s relevance-aspiring crime drama has sufficient flavour and oddity to transcend utter conventionality

 

Somniloquies (2017) – corporeal solidity blurrily yields to ascendantly transgressive dreams, with destabilizing, boundary-crossing effects

 

In Name Only (1939) – Cromwell’s love vs. avarice melodrama isn’t particularly notable, but Lombard gives it a touchingly delicate centre

 

Center Stage (1996) – Kwan’s entrancingly well-judged intertwining of textured historical evocation & multi-faceted present-day perspective

 

Greaser’s Palace (1972) – Downey’s blissfully whacked-out allegorical grabbag is startlingly (if not completely explicably) fulfilling!

 

Wasp Network (2019) – Assayas’ intelligently expansive film both simplifies and obscures, appositely to the political chaos it charts

 

They Were Expendable (1945) – among Ford’s most complexly moving pictures, for its recurring offsetting of heroism with absence and loss

 

Red Moon Tide (2020) – Patino’s folk-tale-like reverie, in some ways localized simplicity itself, culminates in gorgeously eruptive imagery

 

The Dirty Dozen (1967) – Aldrich’s eye-poppingly-cast drama provides some dumb good fun, when it’s not in one way or another repulsive

 

The Hedonists (2016) – Jia’s tragi-comic short film (which you truly wish were longer) observes the bewildering transition to new paradigms

 

Shoes (1916) – Weber’s tough, observant social document, frankly surveying the reality of poverty, and underlying dreams of better lives

 

Rosa Luxemburg (1986) – von Trotta’s study conveys a moving empathy for the wearying toll of resistance, but too often falls rather flat

 

The Sugarland Express (1974) – Spielberg overplays things a bit, but is well attuned to the multi-level, quasi-prophetic (O.J.?) dynamics

 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) – Sciamma’s instant classic places some absolutely electric moments within a near-swoon-inducing whole

 

The Marrying Kind (1952) – Cukor’s episodic marriage chronicle leavens its deft comedy with convincing economic and behavioral anxiety

 

De l’autre cote (2002) – Akerman’s border study identifies much parched, plaintive beauty, and contrasting institutionalized ugliness

 

Reflections in a Golden Eye (1968) – hard to look away from Huston’s drama, even (or especially) at its most adventurously questionable

 

Infinite Football (2018) – Porumboiu wryly positions a futility-marked conversation to accommodate social glimpses & philosophical shadings

 

Midnight (1939) – Leisen’s exemplary comedy seems virtually to float on air (expensively accessorized, eloquently twist-laden air, that is)

 

Les equilibristes (1991) – Papatakis’ unprecedented, destabilizing journey through possibility and destruction, love and exploitation

 

Shivers (1975) – Cronenberg’s early work has its ragged aspects, but they don’t much impede its central visceral and allegorical potency

 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019) – Heller likely makes the material as rewardingly & artfully multi-faceted as reasonably possible

 

Vendetta of a Samurai (1952) – Mori’s suspensefully legend-debunking perspective provides an intriguingly disillusioned genre counterpoint

 

Stripes (1981) – Reitman’s pallid creation provides familiarly under-examined ideological reassurance and few enduring comic highlights

 

Deadly Sweet (1967) – Brass’ cursorily plotted response to Blow-Up is impressively stylistically rapacious, but with scattershot results

 

Princess Cyd (2017) – Cone’s study of gradually accumulating awareness & sensation has a slender, but warmly & pleasurably inhabited frame

 

Paracelsus (1943) – Pabst’s rather histrionic but not unthoughtful drama stands in interesting relationship to its Nazi production context

 

Bowfinger (1999) – Oz’s pleasantly imagined and performed comedy is engaging enough, even if not often particularly funny (the dog aside)

 

Adoption (1975) – Meszaros’ unadorned but highly illuminating study of the wrenchingly shifting line between female freedom and constraint

 

Knives Out (2019) – Johnson’s satisfyingly intricate, misdirection-heavy whodunit, seasoned with a barbed take on privilege and entitlement

 

The Mission (1986) – Joffe arouses suitable anti-colonial and -doctrinal disgust, for all his film’s exoticism-seeking and other excesses

 

Siren of the Tropics (1927) – Etievant/Nalpas’ dated melodrama endures as an imperfect (but better than nothing) Josephine Baker showcase

 

Return of the Prodigal Son (1967) – Schorm’s study of disaffection is one of the Czech New Wave’s major, most lastingly questioning works

 

Welcome to New York (2014) – Ferrara, in relatively straightforward mode, relishingly sinks his teeth into the super-well-suited material

 

A Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955) – Zeman’s prettily-imagined, gently pedagogically-driven voyage through the glories of evolution

 

The Mauritanian (2021) – Macdonald’s drama is always solid and intelligent, if only occasionally moving past relative conventionality

 

The Crimes of Petiot (1973) – Madrid’s serial-killer flick, potentially preoccupied and trauma-inducing, mostly just feels flat and drained

 

Recorder: the Marion Stokes Project (2019) – Wolf’s intriguing study in intertwined vision and eccentricity, perspicacity and passivity

 

It Rains on our Love (1946) – Bergman’s early, socially-critical film is lastingly frank & intimate, even if overelaborate in some respects

 

Black is…Black ain’t (1994) – Riggs’ urgently visionary final work stands as a moving and ambitious memorial, however incompletely realized

 

La parmigiana (1963) – Pietrangeli’s open-minded chronicle of a young woman, smoothly contrasting relative moralities and states of freedom

 

A Quiet Place (2018) – Krasinski’s tight, creepy drama sits at the safe end of the horror spectrum, but still works well in most respects

 

I grandi magazzini (1939) – Camerini’s bustling comedy-drama is mostly light stuff, elevated by its acute sense of workplace power relations

 

They All Laughed (1981) – Bogdanovich’s connection-heavy comedy has a limited sweetness and panache, but feels strangely hollow and absented

 

The American Soldier (1970) – a decadent Fassbinder highlight: a displaced film noir skewering the allure & cluelessness of American swagger

 

Gemini Man (2019) – a total success, assuming Lee’s ambition was to sublimate himself in coldly alienating, concept-squandering nonsense

 

Huis-clos (1954) – Audry’s cinematic “opening up” is utterly worth seeing, even if it dilutes the force of Sartre’s text in key respects

 

Fear of a Black Hat (1993) – Cundieff’s affectionately undiluted rap mockumentary holds up well, not least the sharp musical parodies

 

Our Lady of the Turks (1968) – Bene’s fragmented expression of (I think) history’s traumatic legacy makes for difficult, withholding viewing

 

A Story of Children and Film (2013) – Cousins pleasurably, and sometimes relishingly, combines the personal and the wide-rangingly pedagogic

 

Secrets of a Soul (1926) – Pabst’s “psychoanalytical film” seems staidly over-literal now, but it remains fascinating in its ambition

 

No Sudden Move (2021) – Soderbergh’s drama never really breaks out, but becomes more satisfying as the scope expands & the twists accumulate

 

Crime and Passion (1976) – one can glimpse something complexly multi-faceted and darkly-charged, but Passer rather lets it get away from him

 

The Accidental Tourist (1988) – a few shallow diversions (mostly the dog) aside, Kasdan’s adaptation is somnolent and barely sufferable

 

Scattered Clouds (1967) – Naruse’s sweetly melancholy last film patiently explores gradations of conflict, regret and mutual understanding

 

The Vast of Night (2019) – Patterson’s retro-flavoured sci-fier is best when sinking into time and place, falling somewhat short plot-wise

 

Assunta Spina (1948) – Mattoli marshals classic melodrama both as a vehicle for and a social investigation of Magnani’s piercing affect

 

The Pickle (1993) – Mazursky’s satire has flashes of his warmth and skill, but overall seems like a severe lapse in judgment and inspiration

 

Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977) – a major, underseen Duras work: an investigation of a woman, and an investigation into investigations of women

 

White Boy Rick (2018) – Demange’s low-life odyssey, forgettable for much of the way, eventually reaches ethically stimulating territory

 

The Sign of Venus (1955) – Risi’s comedy has a notably sad but stoic female-driven core, surrounded by a gallery of flawed masculinity

 

Fear X (2003) – Winding Refn’s tale of loss and obsession doesn’t rank as much more than a curiosity, but a very skillfully calibrated one

 

Black Jesus (1968) – Zurlini overemphasizes white perspectives, but crafts a compelling, politically-charged study of principled suffering

 

Triple Frontier (2019) – Chandor expands with assurance into an old-fashioned adventure yarn; it’s a shame it all matters so little

 

Remontons les Champs-Elysees (1938) – Guitry’s priapic history lesson distorts & trivializes, yet not without a certain galloping grandeur

 

Beverly Hills Cop (1984) – Murphy’s monster hit now plays very blandly, virtually all potentially sharp edges smoothed down to nothing

 

Yeong-ja in her prime (1975) – beneath the often brash pace and expression, Kim sets out a sympathetic and socially-revealing case history

 

Butter on the Latch (2013) – Decker’s first feature is enthralling both as psychological puzzle & as unfamiliar anthropological observation

 

Michael (1924) – Dreyer’s fascinating silent film finds a strange ultimate transcendence within recurring disappointment and exploitation

 

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020) – Wolfe’s film is awkward in various ways, but preserves the central glory and agony of Wilson’s work

 

12 + 1 (1969) – an Italian “twelve chairs” romp, offering adequate variety and diversion (Sharon Tate!), but hardly satisfying overall

 

Conceiving Ada (1997) – Leeson’s high-concept cross-century female conversation impresses, but isn’t the overall equal of her Teknolust

 

Torna! (1954) – best approached from a Matarazzo-centric worldview, whereby the echoing of past films becomes a rather endearing strength

 

Velvet Buzzsaw (2019) – Gilroy (no Peter Strickland) scores some mild satirical points, but shows little flair for the giallo-type stuff

 

Comment ca va (1976) – Godard and Mieville delve exactingly, yet not hopelessly, into the latent oppressiveness of mass communication

 

48 Hrs. (1983) – Hill’s early distinctiveness is utterly lost in this brain-hurtingly banal stuff; even Murphy only provides minimal uplift

 

A Broken Drum (1949) – Kinoshita’s busy drama of family conflicts has some adroit moments, amid an often overly clunky overall framework

 

NOTFILM (2015) – Lipman’s careful explication of the 1965 Beckett/Keaton short as a locus of connections, complexities and reflections

 

Black Peter (1964) – in its deadpan observation of teenage directionlessness, Forman’s debut is among his funniest & most distinctive works

 

Coffee and Cigarettes (2003) – Jarmusch’s impeccably executed compilation, dotted with cool contrasts, correspondences and intimations

 

Mon pere avait raison (1936) – one of Guitry’s more intriguing films, for its probing of life passages and generational expectations

 

Dragged Across Concrete (2019) – in its weaving between forcefulness and evasiveness, Zahler’s drama approaches a blunt conceptual grandeur

 

Transgression (1974) – Kim’s probing take on monastic life is always arresting, often disorienting, somehow fusing irreverence and devotion

 

Slacker (1990) – with super-impressive use of limited resources, Linklater achieves a weirdly beguiling, philosophically loaded quasi-stasis

 

The Lower Depths (1957) – Kurosawa’s sense of desperate community leavens one of his most tough-minded, expressively heightened works

 

Louder than Bombs (2015) – for all its care and technical skill, Trier’s family drama feels disappointingly artificial and unmoving

 

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) – with eccentric courtliness, Zeman’s fantasy pointedly insists on narrative and formal variation 

 

Scanners (1981) – although hardly dull, it’s one of Cronenberg’s less penetrating early films, its themes and concepts rather too dispersed

 

You Only Live Once (1937) – Lang’s classic doomed-lovers thriller finds moments of fragile loveliness within a largely pitiless society

 

Take Me Somewhere Nice (2019) – Sendijarevic’s amused but mindful cross-border journey makes some easy moves, & several boldly resonant ones

 

Guru, the Mad Monk (1970) – Milligan’s extreme mismatching of style and content achieves a most artless form of deadened coherence

 

Abouna (2002) – Haroun’s mostly easygoing but quietly pleasing chronicle of preoccupying absences and unconventionally happy presences

 

The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956) – for all its simplifications and contrivances, Quine’s film skips brightly through mildly unusual territory

 

The Fall of the American Empire (2018) – it’s easy enough to warm to Arcand’s ambition and sympathies, despite the movie’s copious obstacles

 

The Volunteer (1944) – only Powell and Pressburger would have made a military recruiting film that’s so whimsically and humanely engaging

 

The Swindle (1997) – Chabrol’s elegantly unimportant con man/woman drama is certainly skillful in its way, but it’s not much of a way

 

Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976) – Mazursky’s highly appealing quasi-memoir is warmly dexterous throughout, within its knowing limits

 

Zombi Child (2019) – Bonello’s prodigous meeting of spiritual and national myths, of supernatural and personal confinements and escapes

 

Daydreams (1922) – episodic (and incompletely-surviving) Keaton short includes a few sublime moments amid a rather downbeat overall scheme

 

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003) – Kim’s dissection of familial damage makes for memorable, if hermetically constrained, cinematic architecture

 

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) – one might regard Polanski’s classic as a painfully intimate film within a sillier (but full-bloodedly handled) one

 

Loveless (2017) – Zvyagintsev’s calculated film punches a range of outrage-inducing buttons in expertly imposing, socially-critical fashion

 

Duck Soup (1933) – McCarey’s (let’s say) conceptually interesting Marx Brothers classic aggressively evades any kind of capsule summary

 

The Disciple (2020) – Tamhane’s painstaking study of artistic struggle, both illuminatingly hermetic and (a bit too smoothly) universal

 

Season of the Witch (1972) – Romero’s atypical but successful film, driven as much by sharp-tongued social critique as by horror mechanisms

 

Boat People (1982) – Hui’s pumped-up Vietnamese drama constitutes a problematically interesting blend of witness-bearing and artifice

 

No Man of Her Own (1950) – Leisen’s fateful noir-tinged melodrama is finely-handled, but thinner than his or Stanwyck’s greatest works  

 

Roubaix, une lumiere (2019) – Desplechin’s police drama, in no way limited by genre, rich in observance of place, chance and causation

 

A Song is Born (1948) – Hawks’ remake of his own Ball of Fire has far less energy & heart, notwithstanding various musical compensations

 

Double Edge (1992) – Kollek’s Israel-Palestine survey remains dispiritingly relevant, for all its unimpressive manipulation & sensationalism

 

Our Dancing Daughters (1928) – Beaumont’s silent contains lots of fizzy interaction, but with a surprising amount of cautionary perspective

 

Mia madre (2015) – Moretti’s observance of art and death gently satisfies, but doesn’t quite attain its sought-for revelatory synthesis

 

The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) – Huston’s amused, relaxed-feeling mystery, decorated with enjoyable if inconsequential trickery

 

The Lighthouse (2006) – Saakyan’s hypnotic study of life in war feels entirely real and rooted, and yet intensely imagined and painted

 

Modern Times (1936) – Chaplin’s instincts and affinities now often appear dated or hollow, but the moments of dexterous grace remain

 

Parasite (2019) – Bong’s film has elements of thematic and narrative inspiration, although it’s the initial exposition that engrosses most

 

Butley (1974) – Pinter barely “opens up” Gray’s play, but punches home the desperately lonely flailing underlying the bitter hectoring

 

Growing Up (1983) – Chen’s pleasant study of childhood is cleanly and crisply observed, while never penetrating to the extent of Hou or Yang

 

Loving Vincent (2017) – overall, a limitation-transcending expression of adoration for Van Gogh as artist, myth, transformer of sight itself

 

Phffft (1954) – Robson’s often dire, mechanically single-minded sex comedy at least has the odd lively exchange, and a nice dancing scene

 

The Paradine Case (1947) – a relative Hitchcock failure, its prevailing stiffness and propriety stifling the erotic obsession at its centre

 

The White Tiger (2021) – Bahrani unfortunately steers the culturally rich material perilously close to being a patchy, meandering slog

 

St. Louis Blues (1929) – Murphy’s showcase for Bessie Smith, as a zone of heavy lament within a happily hedonistic all-black world

 

Synonyms (2019) – Lapid comes at his themes with major intellectual resourcefulness, but it’s all a bit more fun in theory than practice

 

The Unforgiven (1960) – Huston’s tortured Western, its relish at a glimpsed American dream gradually devastated by lies, blood and prejudice

 

Plaisir d’amour (1991) – Kaplan’s comedy punctures smug male self-entitlement in elegantly varied, if not ultimately too revelatory fashion

 

Love on the Run (1936) – Van Dyke’s indifferently scripted and cursorily executed comedy, only intermittently elevated by star quality

 

3 Faces (2018) – Panahi’s meditation on confinement, transgression and continuance is an enveloping meeting of pleasure and profundity

 

The Witch who Came from the Sea (1976) – Cimber’s ill-fated-sexuality-studded film navigates pretty well between shock and poignancy

 

Naussica of the Valley of the Wind (1984) – Miyazaki’s debut is thematically engaging, but often crude and cluttered by his later standards

 

Stage Struck (1958) – Lumet’s creaky drama doesn’t really hold up, but provides plenty of incidental, time capsule-type amusements

 

Based on a True Story (2017) – Polanski expertly expands the parameters of the familiar core premise, but the ultimate impact is a bit light

 

Penny Serenade (1941) – it’s hard to warm to Stevens’ essentially coldly deterministic view of adult happiness, despite its strengths

 

La captive (2000) – Akerman’s study of thwarted male control over female narratives is formally seductive and strangely, tragically comic

 

Strangers when we Meet (1960) – Quine’s most enduring film, every scene channeling the period’s strange marriage of affluence & suppression

 

Joker (2019) – Phillips’ film is horribly effective, even impressive, in parts, but its would-be vision is laboured and vague at best

 

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (1975) – Schlondorff/von Trotta’s drama impresses and informs, yet doesn’t fully land its ultimate punches

 

Staying Alive (1983) – Stallone’s thinly flashy, entirely unpersuasive sequel lacks any of the original’s relative sociological interest

 

Dollar (1938) – Molander’s arch comedy of interrelated couples is frequently grating, its commentary on values and priorities falling flat

 

Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (2014) – the extraordinary Decker weaves a sensuously full cinematic space, and then startlingly deconstructs it

 

The Wayward Girl (1959) – Karlmar beautifully observes evolving female sexuality & sensibility, but the film overall comes up a little short

 

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) – King’s absorbing, if imperfect, historical missive, from one era of calculated oppression to another

 

Road to Sampo (1975) – Lee’s film evolves from a wintry, absurdist comedy into a delicately poignant study of compromises and transitions

 

Hustlers (2019) – Scafaria’s film never feels really vital, notwithstanding its prioritizing of empathy & social awareness over exploitation

 

Women of Ryazan (1927) – Preobrazhenskaya observes rural community in all its hypocrisy, offset by a strong closing declaration of purpose

 

The Ploughman’s Lunch (1983) – Eyre/McEwan’s marvelously subtle, way under-appreciated personal, political and historical temperature-taking

 

Le mariage de Chiffon (1942) – Autant-Lara’s romantic confection is able enough on its own terms, but they’re distinctly complacent ones

 

It Felt Like Love (2013) – Hittmann’s extraordinarily tuned-in study of chaotic teenage sexuality, haunting both as cinema & social document

 

Nest of Vipers (1978) – Cervi’s period drama of intertwined desires is rather too tentative and underdeveloped to stir up much interest

 

Mangrove (2020) – McQueen absorbingly evokes time and place and the texture of threatened community, although pushes a bit too hard at times

 

The Cremator (1969) – Herz’s utterly ensnaring study of spiritual degradation and manipulation is impeccable in every twisted detail

 

The Lighthouse (2019) – Eggers’ possessed, often rollickingly hilarious, perfectly pitched vision of corroding identity and sanity

 

Dos monjes (1934) – Oro’s film lingers for its starkly pained, boldly expressed framing story, more than the rather florid melodrama within

 

The Killing Floor (1984) – Duke’s revealing piece of social & racial history makes for committed, if in various ways rather bare-bones filmmaking

 

March of Fools (1975) – Ha’s fascinating portrait of youth; spanning low comedy, tragedy, philosophical inquiry & militarized homoeroticism

 

The Great Pretender (2018) – Silver’s relationship study may be a small film, but smartly ventilated by mysterious glimpses of a bigger one

 

Scandal in Sorrento (1955) – Risi’s sun-baked, sex-propelled comedy is certainly handsome enough, but it’s mostly mechanical and trifling

 

The Last Seduction (1994) – Dahl’s shrewd and stylish manipulation doesn’t penetrate that deeply, but Fiorentino is a presence for the ages

 

O Ebrio (1946) – de Abreu’s film has patches of near-unhinged storytelling & uncertain handling, but an overriding conviction & sincerity

 

Honey Boy (2019) – the film has its familiar aspects, but also much authentic-feeling hurt & strange magic, beautifully modulated by Har’el

 

Vivre ensemble (1973) – Karina’s underseen, observantly personal, unpredictable directorial debut, vital to fully appreciating her legend

 

The Fly (1986) – a more conventionally audience-friendly Cronenberg film no doubt, but made with wittily top-quality control and calibration

 

Il maestro di Vigevano (1963) – Petri’s put-upon comedy is bitterly but sympathetically alert to class-based subjugation & infantilization

 

The 50 Year Argument (2014) – Scorsese’s most self-effacing work is a respectfully rarified immersion into engagement and contemplation

 

La souriante Madame Beudet (1923) – Dulac’s contrasting of a woman’s inner and external lives is a searing, much undersung silent classic

 

Time (2020) – Bradley’s film is as wide & deep & precise yet ungraspable as its title, closely personal and inherently, tragically political

 

Chung Kuo (1972) – Antonioni’s voyage to China is a humbly serene, deeply fascinated observation of (and self-acknowledgement of) otherness

 

Dressed to Kill (1980) – De Palma’s often sumptuous atrocity might simultaneously have you holding your breath and rolling your eyes

 

Intimate Lighting (1965) – the (then) radicalism of Passer’s film lies in its very uninsistence, its impact at once evasive and lingering

 

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) – Talbot’s small miracle of a film captivates with each deeply-experienced, searching frame

 

Eva (1948) – Molander’s Bergman-written, death-dogged life chronicle is grippingly ambitious & assured, even if not consistently persuasive

 

The Day I Will Never Forget (2002) – a record of a terrible act, calmly placed by Longinotto within its self-perpetuating cultural context

 

Ici et ailleurs (1976) – the Dziga Vertov’s group’s from-a-distance reflection on Palestine, shot through with a sense of rueful limitation

 

London Fields (2018) – Cullen’s flashy adaptation has a rudimentary, diversionary skill, but feels persistently distanced and incomplete

 

Les espions (1957) – Clouzot’s initially cluttered-seeming drama gradually reveals itself as a sharp vision of pervasive threat and anxiety

 

Archangel (1990) – Maddin’s obsessively exacting aesthetic impresses & sometimes seduces, even as it remains largely distant & unyielding

 

Hotel du Nord (1938) – Carne’s emblematically idealistic, helplessly enveloping marriage of romantic fatalism and bustling proletarianism

 

Black and Blue (2019) – Taylor’s police drama has terrific momentum, laced with more than sufficient outrage-inducing social content

 

The Insect Woman (1972) – Kim’s delectable film holds a rather astounding number of themes and twists in darkly amused equilibrium

 

An Officer and a Gentleman (1982) – Hackford’s drama is at least somewhat personal-feeling in its recurring clunkiness and misogyny

 

Loves of a Blonde (1965) – if only in its understated unpredictability and humour, Forman’s study remains an endearing assertion of freedom

 

Starlet (2012) – Baker’s thoroughly winning modern fairy tale of sorts, laced with deadpan comedy and clear-sighted social observation

 

Army (1944) – Kinoshita’s episodic portrayal of Japanese lives molded by past and looming wars, notable now mainly for historical reference

 

Mank (2020) – Fincher’s pristinely-crafted film sounds in theory like a movie lover’s dream, but only intermittently connects or rouses

 

Diabolo menthe (1977) – the light touch of Kurys’ journey through teenage sisterhood shouldn’t obscure its range and quiet radicalism

 

The Brave (1997) – Depp doesn’t really justify the sad premise, but well-sustains a tone of doomed stoicism, sprinkled with varied oddities

 

Fools in the Mountains (1957) – Carlmar’s comedy has its bright aspects, but wears out its mistaken identity concept long before the end

 

The Twentieth Century (2019) – Rankin’s blissfully inventive, goofily inspiring vision of Canada’s definitional conflicts and confusions

 

Le nouveau testament (1936) – Guitry’s comedy is skillfully loquacious, but the life lessons (such as they are) barely register now

 

8 Million Ways to Die (1986) – Ashby’s crime thriller is flat and fuzzy stuff, lacking much critical perspective or notable creative energy

 

Ankur (1974) – with quiet fortitude, Benegal lays out the moral decay that underlies rural India’s tradition- and caste-driven structures

 

Sweet Country (2017) – Thornton’s (just a bit too) virtuosically-gripping case history of sparse yet already defilement-sodden society

 

Medea (1969) – an often-disorienting but bewitching, stunningly-designed telling, feeling almost as if directly dreamed onscreen by Pasolini

 

The Doctor (1991) – Haines’ taste-of-my-own-medicine drama may be more primally affecting than it objectively deserves, but what can you do?

 

Chains (1949) – Matarazzo’s drama is at its anxiety-stirring best when tightening the screws; less so in the (inevitably) liberating finale

 

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (2019) – Linklater’s tale of regeneration often plays a bit flatly, but opens up winningly in the home stretch

 

Humain, trop humain (1974) – Malle’s now near-nostalgic observance of factory production is inherently but insufficiently political

 

Five Days One Summer (1982) – Zinnemann’s last film has much genuine, sometimes haunting, grandeur, but an overly restrained narrative core

 

Nana (1926) – a too-often dull silent Renoir, at its best at its most nakedly suffering, but damaged by Hessling’s unalluring presence

 

God’s Own Country (2017) – Lee’s engrossingly authentic-feeling, frank study, electrically attuned both to the scenic and the intimate

 

I Live in Fear (1955) – Kurosawa’s atomic-age drama is among his more low-key, brooding works, gripping for its central existential clarity

 

Phantom Love (2007) – Menkes’ astounding fusion of lived and imagined experience, of pain and rapture, resistance and transcendence

 

Dosuni (1963) – Park’s lightly-handled but meaningful chronicle of a determined young woman in an economically strained, hustling society

 

Sword of Trust (2019) – Shelton’s comedy becomes narratively over-stretched, but her relaxed way with interactions really shines at times

 

Thomasine & Bushrod (1974) – Parks’ enjoyable outlaw drama keeps things mostly loose and variable, with lightly norm-challenging results

 

Capitaine Conan (1996) – Tavernier’s artfully disorienting war film reverberates with astounding incident, implication and moral complexity

 

Hallelujah (1929) – Vidor’s all-black musical drama reaches numerous expressive heights, amid its largely unceasing anthropological interest

 

The Ornithologist (2016) – Rodrigues’ exceptional cinematic offering, a pilgrimage deep into nature & unnature, self-discovery & self-loss

 

Dancing Lady (1933) – Leonard’s musical skips along in snappily blissful implausibility, propelled by effortlessly elevating star quality

 

Soigne ta droite (1987) – a relative knockabout comedy from Godard, its virtues requiring (to me anyway) rather strenuous excavation efforts

 

Wait Until Dark (1967) – despite Hepburn’s touching centre, Young’s luridly over-elaborate exercise in terror is ugly and unappealing

 

Pain and Glory (2019) – Almodovar hardly challenges us now, but his cinema has become a painterly oasis of gracefully preoccupied serenity

 

The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) – an atypically straightforward Wilder exercise, executed with empathetic skill within its narrow parameters

 

Scarlet Diva (2000) – Argento’s quasi-self-portrait confesses, pleads and evades in an aggressively ambiguous, enjoyably in-your-face manner

 

Images (1972) – the spell of Altman’s breakdown movie lies less in its conceptual elaborations than in its physical immediacy and detail

 

The Daughters of Fire (2018) – Carri’s film lustily embraces pornographic elements, while bracingly complicating the mechanics and the gaze

 

Dead of Night (1945) – an ever-irresistible anthology, skipping through its flatter passages to culminate in pull-all-the-stops-out style

 

TGM the Liberator (1990) – Chytilova’s one-of-a-kind career ends with a lively but far from subversive, reconciliatory-feeling documentary

 

Blessed Event (1932) – Del Ruth’s newspaper drama has a fabulous line in fast-talking cynicism, dotted with surprisingly raw moments

 

Ema (2019) – Larrain’s fabulously seductive, fiery chronicle offers an almost frustratingly irresistible alchemy of giving and withholding

 

Accident (1967) – Losey/Pinter’s film may be the polished, implication-heavy apex of a certain (ultimately unproductive) cinematic strain

 

Castle in the Sky (1986) – Miyazaki’s wildly imaginative spectacle is fairly exhilarating, although not among his emotionally fullest works

 

The Red Kimono (1925) – Lang and Davenport’s highly sympathetic, quite cinematically engaging study of a woman’s shame and redemption

 

Non-Fiction (2018) – Assayas’ film deploys a super-smoothly retrograde approach to surveying the cutting-edge, or maybe it’s vice versa

 

Hell and High Water (1954) – one of Fuller’s less impactful films delivers fairly standard drama and crudely dated characterizations

 

Women Without Men (2009) – Neshat and Azari’s rather peculiar tale of lost possibilities is far from perfect, but maintains a glassy allure

 

Humanoids from the Deep (1979) – the monsters are OK, but Peeters allows the surrounding narrative and quasi-themes to mostly unravel

 

Staying Vertical (2016) – for every element of earthy rootedness, Guiraudie’s strange self-discovery odyssey throws in a bizarro provocation

 

Green for Danger (1947) – Gilliat’s whodunit rattles happily along, propelled by doses of comedy, romantic frustration and wartime paranoia

 

Malmkrog (2020) – Puiu’s brain-flooding film, a shiftingly doom-ridden comedy powered by imposing aesthetic and intellectual seriousness

 

Lawyer Man (1932) – Dieterle’s steadily unremarkable Powell vehicle breezes through a lifetime’s worth of ups, downs & degrees of cynicism

 

Casa de lava (1994) – Costa’s challenging, disorienting, lingering-in-the-mind expression of colonialism’s accursedly tangled complexities 

 

Only Two Can Play (1962) – Gilliat’s smutty comedy somewhat endures as a duly depressing window on its repressed, class-driven milieu

 

Climax (2018) – Noe comes on like a depraved Busby Berkeley, going from exuberant high to wrenching low with get-out-of-my-fucking way elan

 

The True Story of Jesse James (1957) – a solid telling, amply studded by Ray with arresting moments and stunning widescreen compositions

 

My Twentieth Century (1989) – Enyedi’s wide-angle historical fantasy thirsts after greatness, but its devices are too often twee or tiresome

 

The Velvet Vampire (1971) – Rothman’s (perhaps artfully) unpolished film works savvy, ideologically-charged variations on the vampire genre

 

J’accuse (2019) – Polanski’s examination of duty in the face of institutional resistance, executed with undiminished fluency and acuity

 

Black and Tan (1929) – Murphy’s short film preserves some classic Duke Ellington moments within an oddly disorienting comedy-to-tragedy arc

 

Ex Drummer (2007) – Mortier’s movie bites out its own sick-times-whimsical sorta-category, for unenjoyable yet damnably stimulating viewing

 

Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) – one of Ophuls’ loveliest films, drawing on cinema’s inherent play of permanence and transience

 

Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018) – one concludes Bi’s dream-noirish, boundary-transcending odyssey feeling transported, even transformed

 

The Balcony (1963) – Strick’s adaptation is a largely effective, memorably-cast artificiality, even if rather drained of its core power

 

Un jour Pina m’a demande (1983) – Akerman captures the expressive majesty of Bausch’s work, and its almost scary, destabilizing power

 

St. Louis Blues (1958) – the film is limited in all the usual Hollywood ways (and then some), but shines for its unique cast and musicality

 

Antigone (2019) – Deraspe’s excitingly tuned-in repurposing of Greek mythology, as a tragic study in complexities of immigrant assimilation

 

The Driller Killer (1979) – beneath the notorious “nasty” bits, a bracing early dip into the teeth-bared obsessive well of Ferrara’s cinema

 

Sicilia! (1999) – it’s an eternal Huillet/Straub mystery, how such precisely grounded calibration yields something close to bountifulness

 

Shoulder Arms (1918) – Chaplin’s enjoyably patchy, sometimes bleak-streaked soldier comedy aims both high and low, ending in dreamy idealism

 

Madeline’s Madeline (2018) – Decker’s amazing film, a delicately honey-gathering bee that pollinates the flower at the heart of creation

 

La francaise et l’amour (1960) – a love-at-all-ages anthology, with seven directors working in a uniformly unexertingly pleasant register

 

Saturn 3 (1980) – Donen provides a few striking visuals, and the cast is worth something, but the sense of possibility rapidly dissipates

 

Supermarkt (1974) – Klick’s in-your-face film works both as escalating crime drama and as exploration of social boundaries and affinities

 

Judy (2019) – Goold’s movie is one of conventional and not particularly exciting strengths, largely including Zellweger’s performance

 

Diabolique (1955) – Clouzot’s narrative trap, lubricated with humour, cruelty & transgression, barely rusts with time, however often visited

 

Clockwatchers (1997) – Sprecher’s enjoyably lingering film, starting as fairly easy parody, gradually takes on greater existential weight

 

Bicycle Thieves (1948) – De Sica’s film still holds truths, but they lie as much around its edges as in its limitingly structured centre

 

The White Crow (2018) – Fiennes’ time-shifting portrayal of Nureyev is finely-crafted in all respects, perhaps a bit counter-productively

 

When the Buckwheat Blooms (1968) – Lee’s epically-contoured tale of desire and separation is a restrained, often melancholy pleasure

 

Perfect (1985) – Bridges undermines his film’s plausible ambitions through persistent over-simplification and lack of critical distance

 

Vladimir et Rosa (1971) – Godard & Gorin’s mind-filling, often humorous, not-too-didactic engagement with representation in turbulent times

 

The Farewell (2019) – Wang’s charmingly light but well-considered film studies the loss & regret inherent in personal & societal evolution

 

I Am Waiting (1957) – Kurahawa’s noir-ish romance has little depth, but much capable low-life distraction and tapping of heavy emotion

 

Lolita (1997) – Lyne’s adaptation often feels like a rather distanced, academic achievement, although elevated in its climactic bereftness

 

Faisons un reve… (1936) – a knowingly minor Guitry set-up, but with a few stylistic flourishes and resistance-crushing performance moments

 

Rebecca (2020) – Wheatley’s scenically well-imagined version is certainly watchable, but doesn’t hang together particularly strongly

 

La prise de pouvoir par Louis XVI (1966) – Rossellini’s brilliantly-controlled, ever-relevant examination of ritualized image-making & power

 

Field Niggas (2015) – Allah’s deeply personal & respectful engagement with Harlem street life is immediate & timeless, beautiful & appalling

 

Passe ton bac d’abord (1977) – with unmatched empathetic clarity, Pialat dissects socially-determined, aspiration-stifling teenage lives

 

The Hot Stuff (1981) – Vadim’s bland caper doesn’t have much going for it, beyond a few glimmers of engagement with art world practices

 

Tormento (1950) – Matarazzo’s story of separation & suffering is rather less artful & fully developed than his other Sanson/Nazzari dramas

 

Never Really Sometimes Always (2020) – the amazing Hittman’s surface minimalism conveys enormous and sobering personal and social complexity

 

The Little Match Girl (1928) – Renoir’s early short film encompasses both observant emotional poignancy and exuberant visual experimentation

 

In Fabric (2018) – in Strickland’s hands, potentially trite horror notions acquire extraordinary, blackly amused multi-dimensional ceremony

 

The Two of Us (1967) – Berri’s balanced study of wartime relocation, crammed with behavioural pleasures and darkly pointed undertones

 

Housekeeping (1987) – Forsyth’s adaptation often seems defined as much by its absences as its premises, to mixed if quietly endearing effect

 

Why Does Herr R Run Amok? (1970) – Fassbinder and Fengler’s film may be among the most pitiless and withholding of (sort of) comedies

 

Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019) – perhaps Tarantino’s most visually and conceptually assured fantasia, teeming with tangible pleasures

 

The Hidden Fortress (1958) – it’s hard to rate the film as highly as many do, even while bowing to Kurosawa’s inventiveness and assurance

 

Husbands and Wives (1992) – Allen’s often anguished relationship chronicle is overdone in any number of ways, but connects even so

 

The Neighbor’s Wife and Mine (1931) – Gosho’s comedy (with jazz!) of a put-upon writer is a bit misshapen, but sprightly handled overall

 

The Man who Killed Don Quixote (2018) – Gilliam’s accomplished fantasia flamboyantly reflects & quite movingly justifies his long obsession

 

Season of our Love (1966) – Vancini’s rather ineffectual study of melancholy self-examination falls short of its evident sweeping ambition

 

Rita, Sue and Bob too (1987) – Clarke’s boisterously funny, grounded plunge into sexual self-determination, not without its overdone aspects

 

Fortini/Cani (1976) – Straub/Huillet counterpoint calmly observed surfaces with boiling historical stains & complex political hypocrisies

 

A Rainy Day in New York (2019) – Allen tries to put young faces on classical moods and situations, with often bizarrely misconceived results

 

Sun in the Last Days of Shogunate (1957) – an incident-packed, nuanced semi-farce, with Kawashima in his most confidently expansive mode

 

Little Buddha (1993) – Bertolucci’s most uninteresting, inexplicably soft film, suffused in merely superficial beauty and spirituality

 

Street Scene (1931) – a strangely lesser-known Vidor film, marvelously balancing God’s-eye expansiveness and careful close observation

 

The Image Book (2018) – Godard’s reflection (both celebration & confession) on cinema’s helpless beauty & intertwined ideological violence

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) – beneath Edwards’ romanticism and its “iconic” qualities, a relative minefield of insecurity and cynicism

 

Golden Eighties (1986) – Akerman delivers classic musical-genre pleasures, infiltrated with personal and political insecurity and fracture

 

The Nightcomers (1971) – an enjoyably peculiar brew, but a less superficial director than Winner would surely have extracted more from it

 

Buoyancy (2019) – Rathjen’s story of modern-day slavery is often disturbingly convincing, but limited by its “triumph of human spirit” arc

 

Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) – Siegel’s dynamically incisive drama, marrying hard-edged realities with muscular, no-nonsense storytelling

 

The River (1997) – Tsai mesmerizingly explores lives at odds with themselves & God, their emptiness occasionally touched by furtive rapture

 

Fort Apache (1948) – perhaps the summit of Ford’s particular exploration of ritual and duty, of the tragedy and glory of transition

 

Diamantino (2018) – Abrantas & Schmidt’s happily iconoclastic fantasy, its artisanal candy floss seasoned by a plethora of modern fears

 

The Birds (1963) – one of Hitchcock’s, and cinema’s, most mind-alteringly vast expressions of the terrible glory of seeing and desiring

 

Melo (1986) – Resnais’ film has the heightened emotional concentration of classical theatre, beautifully ventilated with cinematic allusion

 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) – Kaufman’s remake has some terrific elements, although gets more conventional as it goes along

 

A Screaming Man (2010) – Haroun’s mesmerizingly delicate, personally and politically anguished film leaves one in various states of mourning

 

Utopia (1950) – Laurel and Hardy’s last film is ambitiously plotted, but often poorly realized, and poorly attuned to their advancing years

 

Beginning (2020) – Kulumbegashvili’s mind-filling film is often formally mesmerizing, and existentially and socially almost terrifying

 

You and Me (1938) – Lang’s socially-minded romance incorporates some highly striking emphasis, digressions and musical interpolations

 

Les confins du monde (2018) – Nicloux travels a wrenchingly original, unsettling route into the extremity of war, as breakdown and erasure

 

Village of the Damned (1960) – a few elements of Rilla’s drama hang around in one’s memory, despite the often rushed and cursory handling

 

No Fear, No Die (1990) – Denis’ powers of observation are unnervingly powerful here, although her greatest works reach more thrilling peaks

 

The Hospital (1971) – Hiller/Chayefsky’s harsh satire provides some lasting, penetrating pleasures, offset by some impassioned overreaching

 

The Staggering Girl (2019) – Guadagnino’s short film is rich in resources at least, placed in service of a forgettably enigmatic trifle

 

Rio Bravo (1959) – an abiding source of rich Hawksian pleasures, with some of classic Hollywood’s most easefully fulfilling interactions

 

The Misfortunates (2009) – Van Groeningen’s boisterous family memoir is quite subtle and reflective, but doesn’t always care to show it

 

Stormy Weather (1943) – the value and authenticity of Stone’s musical lies in the performances; the rest is, to say the least, interesting

 

Eter (2018) – Zanussi’s historical drama conducts a fluidly wide-ranging moral & ethical investigation, with a startling final embellishment

 

The Rain People (1969) – Coppola’s searching early film doesn’t feel quite fully achieved, but represents an appealing road not taken

 

Intervista (1987) – one of Fellini’s lightest & most purely pleasurable films, his self-mythologizing at its most graceful & least grating

 

Zorns Lemma (1970) – Frampton’s astonishing edifice emanates the sense of an exactingly structured private (but communicable) obsession

 

Domains (2019) – Kusano’s unique film immerses us in a behavioural & moral space both meticulously constructed & mysteriously transcended

 

Kansas City Confidential (1952) – Karlson at his lean and committed best, cleanly navigating through disillusioning layers of venality

 

Princess Mononoke (1997) – perhaps Miyazaki’s most claspingly direct vision, its beauty offset by discomfiting images of pillage & imbalance

 

Heaven-Bound Travelers (1935) – in its rough extant form, the Gists’ filmic proclamation is suffused in fervent, even hectoring conviction

 

Peterloo (2018) – Leigh challenges the viewer with immersively detailed interactions, all the better to establish the climactic injustice

 

Soleil O (1967) – Hondo’s vibrant, proud, furious anecdote of black experience surveys a whole infrastructure of injustice and condescension

 

Variety (1983) – Gordon’s exceptionally well-conceived, displaced noir-like journey through societal and cinematic power structures

 

La gueule ouverte (1974) – one of Pialat’s smaller-scale films, but fully possessed by his rare capacity for naturalistic frankness

 

The Owls (2010) – Dunye ably contextualizes the narrative and illuminates the project’s collective nature, but to rather arid and minor ends

 

Krane’s Confectionary (1951) – Henning-Jensen’s study of modest rebellion is well-attuned to individual and collective despair and toxicity

 

David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020) – Lee’s impeccable film is almost as joyous & fulfilling as the real thing (which I saw – second row!)

 

Women of the Night (1948) – Mizoguchi in his most indicting, unadorned mode, examining prostitution as a creeping, corroding social trap

 

Her Smell (2018) – Perry’s deep dive into a psyche and a milieu, infusing broadly familiar structures with jittery, close-up conviction

 

A Dream Play (1963) – Bergman’s record of Strindberg’s play, filmed with respectful theatricality in all its evasively troubled majesty

 

Tongues Untied (1989) – Riggs’ hypnotic declaration of presence, pain, pride, diversity, a film both besieged and poetically celebratory

 

Murmur of the Heart (1971) – Malle’s coming-of-age provocation blurs the line between non-judgmental reverie and soft-centered complacency

 

The Dead Don’t Die (2019) – Jarmusch, never having made an outright bad film, seems here to laconically tease us with the prospect of one

 

The White Angel (1957) – Matarazzo’s Vertigo-anticipating extension of Nobody’s Children, increasingly bathed in almost devout conviction

 

Wolf (1994) – Nichols’ spectacularly misjudged (but, of course, watchable) genre movie fails and bewilders on just about every level

 

Variete (1925) – Dupont’s almost prototypically ill-fated love triangle drama is absolutely studded with startling expressionist highlights

 

At Eternity’s Gate (2018) – Schnabel’s deeply-felt approach, both investigation and transmigration, transcends potential over-familiarity

 

The Steamroller and the Violin (1961) – Tarkovsky’s early work is his most gently accessible, allowing glimpses of greater complexities

 

The Competition (1980) – Oliansky’s piano-heavy drama is smart enough to maintain interest, despite various unconvincingly struck notes

 

Satan’s Brew (1976) – Fassbinder’s aggressively hard to take farce inhabits a sickly and soulless society, at the mercy of the ruthless

 

The Plagiarists (2019) – Parlow’s amusingly shifty, highly allusive film channels both transient preoccupations and classic inspirations

 

Ikiru (1952) – one of Kurosawa’s most lasting films, on the glory (and institutional rarity) of stagnation overcome through moral clarity

 

Collateral (2004) – only Mann could have elevated the improbable material so indelibly, with such sustained visual and tonal coherence

 

Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924) – the demands of Protazanov’s otherworldly dreams ultimately glumly yield to those of the Earthly revolution

 

Wild Rose (2018) – Harper deftly delivers formulaic satisfaction, while crafting a more individualistic portrait of artistic evolution

 

The Shop on Main Street (1965) – Kadar and Klos’s drama remains very moving in its final passage, surmounting earlier grating aspects

 

Streetwise (1984) – Bell’s wrenchingly classic social document continues to provoke complex reactions; pessimism and despair among them

 

Que la fete commence… (1975) – Tavernier’s teeming portrait of 18^th century France is an extraordinary immersion into decadence-ridden chaos

 

An Oversimplification of her Beauty (2012) – Nance’s delicate self-examination within a beautifully inventive fantasia, and vice versa

 

Le coup du berger (1956) – Rivette’s early short film, and his first elegantly-observed filmic conspiracy, albeit a modest and schematic one

 

On the Rocks (2020) – Murray is the main show in Coppola’s slight (but not vacuous), retro-feeling comedy, and that’s basically good enough

 

La fille de l’eau (1925) – a somewhat choppily eventful Renoir silent film, most memorable for a no-limits expressionistic dream sequence

 

Buddies (1985) – Bressan’s film remains an affecting human and historical document, its relative weaknesses as endearing as its strengths

 

The Cow (1969) – Mehrjui’s heartrending story of madness in the face of loss, simply observed but carrying a deep, dignified forcefulness

 

Destroyer (2018) – Kusama’s gloomy drama has some solidly old-fashioned virtues, but with an escalating sense of existential overreaching

 

Moses and Aaron (1975) – Straub/Huillet’s near-humblingly great spanning of the representationally fundamental & the metaphysically epic

 

Q & A (1990) – another powerful Lumet tale of corruption and compromise, although somewhat undermined this time by melodramatic excesses

 

Hungry Soul, Part II (1956) – a bit more familiar than Kawashima’s key works, but still a finely-calibrated study of unfulfilled yearning

 

Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015) – Zhao’s delicately mediated and balanced study, arising out of deep immersion in a culture and location

 

Burden of Life (1935) – an engaging family drama, although Gosho is less of a stylistic and analytical force than his great contemporaries

 

It’s My Turn (1980) – Weill’s reserved comedy of self-discovery is agreeably well-judged throughout, with a finely-tuned arrival point

 

Le caporal epingle (1962) – Renoir’s very fine late work is a renewed assertion of the drive for freedom, & exploration of its ambiguities

 

Hereditary (2018) – Aster’s commanding film spans agonizing, convincingly-inhabited familial trauma, and gleefully outlandish mythology

 

Goin’ South (1978) – Nicholson’s minor Western comedy rather allows his own overstated presence to swamp all other potential virtues

 

Vive l’amour (1994) – Tsai’s shimmering, hypnotically withholding study of emptying possibilities, of connection without connectivity

 

Angels Over Broadway (1940) – Hecht and Garmes’ baroquely-expressed redemption drama, aggressively seeped in masculine self-disgust

 

For Sama (2019) – Al-Kateab and Watts’ absolutely vital, often heart-rending documentary prompts a huge sense of respect and humility

 

Operation Petticoat (1959) – one of Edwards’ most classically well-functioning comic machines, escalatingly subverting the established order

 

Desordre (1986) – Assayas’ early work shows his facility for narrative & emotional shift, but lacks the overall fullness of his later films

 

The Assassination Bureau (1969) – Dearden’s plush period comedy too often takes its eye off the concept’s dark morality, and off the fun

 

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018) – with bleakly supple mastery, the tragic Hu Bo interrogates the unbearable heaviness of modern China

 

Town Bloody Hall (1979) – a rollicking record of ongoing, shifting relevance (e.g Mailer as seeming foreseer of Trumpian cultural backlash!)

 

Timecrimes (2007) – Vigalondo’s time travel flick marshals familiar paradoxes with relish, making a definite virtue out of its small scale

 

Rich and Strange (1931) – an early relationship drama rather more stiff than strange, but navigated with amused Hitchcockian skepticism

 

Shoah: Four Sisters (2017) – Lanzmann’s record is bottomlessly moving as oral history, endlessly fascinating as an act of witnessing

 

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) – memorable both for Aldrich’s mastery of genre attitudes and power games, and for the ultimate obliteration of them

 

Nenette et Boni (1996) – Denis applies her almost unmatched, allusively sensuous powers to a portrait of familial connection and fracture

 

Underworld, U.S.A. (1961) – Fuller’s comprehensive, astoundingly and intimately pitiless dissection of corporatized American exploitation

 

Zama (2017) – Martel’s complex, often ravishing film charts an indelible personal odyssey, against the devastation & upheaval of colonialism

 

The Eagle has Landed (1976) – the film’s virtues are mostly superficial, but Sturges handles the sprawling canvas with veteran know-how

 

Coup de foudre (1983) – it’s easy to undervalue the controlled scope of Kurys’ work; even so, one wishes the film were a little less studied

 

Ball of Fire (1941) – by no means the most penetrating of Hawks’ great comedies, but it’s sweetly irresistible in just about every respect

 

In Bloom (2013) – with devastating precision and finesse, Ekvtimishvili and Gross chart a hard-edged society’s unbalanced sexual politics

 

Autumn Leaves (1956) – Aldrich’s anxiety- and repression-infused drama, at once plain and yet (not least re Crawford) strangely abstracted

 

The Life Ahead (2020) – Ponti’s Madame Rosa remake has superficial polish, but is thinner & more sentimentally calculating than the original

 

The Group (1966) – Lumet’s film occasionally works as disillusioned social history,  when not falling uncomfortably between various stools

 

The End of Evangelion (1997) – Anno’s (in isolation) confusing narrative yields to turbulently-inspired, strangely mesmerizing expression

 

The Wild Geese (1978) – McLaglen’s coldly effective action film could have done with a bit more wokeness, even by then-current standards

 

I Lost My Body (2019) – Clapin’s wondrously singular, superbly realized animation, at once dashingly weird, & hauntingly intimate & lovely

 

Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled (1918) – Phillips’ sprightly (but sadly degraded) African-American short is as peculiarly inspired as its title

 

The Legend of Rita (2000) – Schlondorff handles his eventful chronicle of terrorism and its aftermath with veteran incisive confidence

 

The Brothers Rico (1957) – Karlson seasons his sharp portrayal of pervasive criminality with familial challenges and anxious domesticity

 

Manta Ray (2018) – Phuttiphong’s enormously allusive, often gorgeously imagined film draws on the multiple losses & atrocities of refugeedom

 

The Magus (1968) – Green’s dated oddity, somewhat more interesting than its reputation, but tonally mismanaged and ultimately unrevealing

 

Mauvais sang (1986) – Carax’s modern classic is a rare meeting of strange and lovely, forcefully present while infused with dreamy escapism

 

Dawn of the Dead (1978) – Romero’s scrappy classic remains among the most strikingly eventful, metaphorically provocative horror films

 

The Souvenir (2019) – Hogg’s riveting memoir film unfolds in exquisitely considered fragments, highly alert to class-imposed complexities

 

Redes (1936) – Zinnemann/Muriel’s starkly ravishing tale carries immense righteous power, even though constrained by narrative artifice

 

Ghost Dog: the way of the Samurai (1999) – Jarmusch weaves together wildly disparate cultural elements into a funnily coherent conversation

 

Le mystere Picasso (1956) – Clouzot’s cleverly navigated performance film advances to and retreats from revelation in largely equal measure

 

Gloria Bell (2018) – Lelio’s closely-tracking remake trades up on star-kissed charisma, overall enhancing the graceful existential mystery

 

Le farceur (1960) – De Broca’s high-energy farce is often quite distinctive in its eccentricity, seasoned by a chillier and lonelier streak

 

The Cotton Club (1984) – Coppola’s epic often enthralls as performance and showmanship, but falls narratively and emotionally a bit flat

 

My Name is Nobody (1973) – Valerii (and Leone’s?) Western seasons its applause-worthy myth-making with various downright goofy notions

 

Uncut Gems (2019) – Sandler’s committed presence and the Safdies’ breathless narrative make for an engrossing if rather empty-feeling ride

 

Apostasy (1948) – Kinoshita’s story of prejudice and injustice retains much social interest, despite evidencing no great directorial finesse

 

Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1981) – Jaeckin’s pretty enough but hardly earthy adaptation, its edges persistently softened for easy consumption

 

High Life (2018) – Denis supply molds the genre material in daring, often borderline-outrageous, if not quite masterpiece-generating manner

 

Olivia (1951) – Audry’s vital study of generation-crossing female desire weaves an intricately mutable web of emotions, moods & power games

 

Dry Summer (1963) – Erksan’s intense drama of greed, lust and betrayal, powered (sometimes excessively) by unwavering, tense physicality

 

A Dry White Season (1989) – Palcy’s film contains much that’s savagely agitating, but the dominant narrative too often just gets in the way

 

India Song (1975) – Duras’ film holds presence & absence in unique equilibrium, casting a spell both soul-sickened & implicitly empowering

 

Kill List (2011) – Wheatley’s brutally accomplished genre-crossing revel, studded with echoes of past cinematic oddities and swaggers

 

Aniki Bobo (1942) – Oliveira’s early work, atypical in its straightforward charm, is a well-observed, if sometimes over-emphasized pleasure

 

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) – Sorkin’s packaged telling isn’t worth much, but has a definite right-movie-at-the-right-time vibe

 

La signora senza camelie (1953) – Antonioni’s sleek study of desolating fame builds to an ironic portrait of cushioned female surrender

 

Queen of Diamonds (1991) – Menkes incisively nails Vegas’s trashy emptiness, and yet in a film with a sense almost of divine ascension

 

The Law of the Border (1966) – Akad’s conflict-heavy drama straddles the ragged & the poetic, its genre-type moves pulsing with authenticity

 

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) – Jenkins confirms his extraordinary delicacy and ease, in a gloriously balanced, searching adaptation

 

Duvidha (1974) – Kaul’s film occupies a hauntingly elusive, heightened space, as if directed by the ghost at the heart of its narrative 

 

Big Time (1989) – not quite the indelible Waits film that we one day deserve, but ably showcasing his unique persona and canny musicianship

 

An Inn in Tokyo (1935) – Ozu’s silent film is among his saddest, as poverty ultimately imposes a grim, almost self-obliterating morality

 

Midsommar (2019) – Aster’s stunning, anthropologically compelling waking nightmare grips in every detail, even as it perplexes and repels

 

Nobody’s Children (1951) – Matarazzo’s tightly-wound, deeply-invested, socially-outraged variation on his recurring themes and devices

 

Havana (1990) – Pollack aims all too obviously for iconic romanticism and spectacle, but everything about it feels artificial and labored

 

An Innocent Witch (1965) – Gosho’s sympathetically troubled, ambiguity-seeded tale of exploited female sexuality, desired and demonized

 

The Favourite (2018) – Lanthimos’s film teems with biting provocations, but is ultimately less involving than his (even) weirder works

 

Les orders (1974) – Brault’s superbly calibrated record of a modern Canadian atrocity, deeply attuned to the machinery of dehumanization

 

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982) – Weir’s drama covers the basics, but seldom feels like an optimal approach into the material

 

Swedenhielms (1935) – Molander’s stagy drama about an over-extended family’s self-centered travails now feels grating and complacent 

 

The Two Popes (2019) – Meirelles’ drama is plainly a fanciful artifice, but it’s conceived and embodied with pleasingly warm intelligence

 

Pickpocket (1959) – one of Bresson’s most mesmerizingly crafted inquiries and meditations, a film of almost unnervingly searching detail 

 

All the Vermeers in New York (1990) – Jost’s strangely haunting meeting of elusiveness & precision, contrasting the lasting & the ephermeral

 

Teorema (1968) – Pasolini’s inexhaustibly analyzable expression of the bourgeoisie’s unraveling, powered by a slyly seductive premise

 

Greta (2018) – a silly contrivance, establishing Jordan as a spent force, slightly redeemed by its take on a triumphing female friendship

 

The Traveler (1974) – Kiarostami’s chronicle of an errant child teems with life & insight, its ending foretelling the greater works to come

 

The Holcroft Covenant (1985) – Frankenheimer’s wildly unpersuasive high-concept thriller confuses & underwhelms in large & small ways alike

 

Poil de carotte (1932) – Duvivier’s masterfully-balanced study of an unhappy father and son remains chillingly raw and affecting at times

 

Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (2015) – Cone’s sociologically valuable slice of anxiety-ridden Christian life, observed with much dexterity

 

Spoiled Children (1977) – Tavernier’s early film has a wide thematic reach, strongly anchored in the problems of contemporary urbanization

 

The Half of It (2020) – Wu’s gentle comedy has scores of appealing traits, but is limited by its artificial premise, among other things

 

Hungry Soul (1956) – Kawashima’s study of transgressive female desire grows in restrained power, although leaves much for the sequel

 

Swing Shift (1984) – Demme’s amiably missed-opportunity “Rosie the Riveter” drama is largely drained of analysis, anger or implication

 

Machorka-Muff (1963) – Straub/Huillet’s “abstract visual dream,” at once hard-edged in its historical specificity, & timelessly liberating

 

Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) – Singer’s movie rattles by in stilted, compromised manner, while inevitably hitting a few pleasurable marks

 

It Always Rains on Sunday (1948) – Hamer anchors the central drama within a realistically colourful portrait of unadorned post-war community

 

Nowhere to Hide (1999) – Lee’s goofily brutal, now-for-my-next-trick action flick is a most uninvolving brand of applause-worthy virtuosity

 

Silver Bears (1977) – Passer has to scramble to hold the international-finance shenanigans together, but his pleasure is rather infectious

 

The Aquatic Effect (2016) – Anspach’s last, somewhat over-abbreviated film has a nice line in odd affinities and slanted storytelling

 

Day of the Outlaw (1959) – De Toth’s raw end-of-the-world Western draws combustibly on primal conflicts, played out in shivery isolation

 

Kinetta (2005) – a rather arid viewing experience, but not inappropriately to Lanthimos’ exploration of joyless fixations and relationships

 

Where Eagles Dare (1968) – Hutton’s wartime drama is uninspired in large and small ways alike, heavily flaunting its flavorless silliness

 

Dogman (2018) – Garrone’s film is uncomfortably well-realized, particularly in its empathetically put-upon central character, and the dogs

 

They Might be Giants (1971) – Harvey’s fragile-cored, time-capsule-infused comedy is oddly & defiantly appealing, although certainly flawed

 

Pharos of Chaos (1984) – a somewhat overwhelmed-seeming German observation of the aging Sterling Hayden, in all his grandeur and banality

 

A Reckless Rover (1918) – notable for a lively depiction of a comedic African-American milieu, although one heavily conceived in stereotype

 

Elles (2011) – Szumowska’s highly satisfying and assured engagement with prostitution as threat, liberation and domestic reference point

 

The Devil’s Playground (1976) – Schepisi’s tension-permeated study of Catholic boys school admits a certain rueful, resigned admiration

 

Mignonnes (2020) – Doucoure’s cynically & carelessly maligned film is an essentially sad social study that’s ultimately too soft if anything

 

Rio Grande (1950) – the stirring conclusion of Ford’s “cavalry trilogy” at once retreats and eases up, for a tapestry of moods and registers

 

Malina (1991) – Schroeter’s amazing, fiery, jaggedly sexualized depiction of breakdown is both operatically excessive & hurtingly immediate

 

Inside Daisy Clover (1965) – the knowing artificiality of Mulligan’s drama is overall more weakness than strength, but it has its moments

 

The Event (2015) – Loznitsa’s fall-of-USSR record observes and shapes the premonitory mundanity that attends historical momentousness

 

Newsfront (1978) – Noyce provides an enjoyably episodic sweep of changing times, but at the cost of very much political or emotional depth

 

The Skin (1981) – Cavani depicts the end of war as a crucible of exploitation, lies and illusions, with often savagely impressive impact

 

Black Legion (1937) – Mayo’s lumpily flawed movie still fascinates for its ever-relevant angle on cynical manipulation and suckerization

 

How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal (2018) – Green’s “mini-film” comprises an ironically deadpan anecdote with a poetically evocative soul

 

Foul Play (1978) – Higgins’ peril-comedy isn’t boring, mostly just shallow & clumsy; the soft-balled Hitchcock references count for nothing

 

The Fish Child (2009) – Puenzo’s love-against-the-odds drama doesn’t really persuade on any level, despite various alluring elements

 

5 Against the House (1955) – Karlson’s quip-heavy heist drama is over-written and under-impactful, providing merely passing distraction

 

Gaby Baby Doll (2014) – Letourneau’s opposites-attract trifle evokes an intrigued affection, even if not much of it lands very convincingly

 

A Dandy in Aspic (1968) – Mann’s twisty Cold War drama provides some pictorial and tonal pleasures, but for much of the time is pretty flat

 

Porco Rosso (1992) – Miyazaki’s flying pig movie is of course swaggeringly absurd, but also honorably upright, and often evasively lovely

 

Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) – despite some biting moments, it’s mostly a cinematically moribund message movie, from a pre-Kazanian Kazan

 

Vox Lux (2018) – Corbet’s grandiose but smart and haunting portrait of soul-destroying modern celebrity’s darkly-charged signification

 

Of Great Events and Ordinary People (1979) – Ruiz dazzlingly crafts one of the all-time great meditations on representation and engagement

 

Puberty Blues (1981) – Beresford’s worthwhile portrait observes Australia’s perpetuating patriarchal culture with low-key progressivity

 

David Golder (1931) – Duvivier’s early sound film, suffused in weary bitterness, still resonates with its depiction of grasping materialism

 

Late Night (2019) – Ganatra’s calculatingly engaging comedy too often feels like an incompletely-inhabited, blood-and-bile-inhibited outline

 

The Bronte Sisters (1979) – Techine’s atypical, finely-judged study places the sisters’ creative force as forged in isolation and exclusion

 

Investigating Sex (2001) – the form of Rudolph’s centered yet shifting film oddly befits its focus on the preoccupying contours of sexuality

 

The Indian Tomb (1959) – the second part of Lang’s adventure, driven by figurative and literal layers of compounding conspiracy and threat

 

Green Book (2018) – Farrelly’s relentlessly superficial if cursedly watchable pap lacks any rounded sense of interaction, time or place

 

Closely Watched Trains (1966) – Menzel’s deftly-observed, gently erotic-minded tale of self-discovery and resistance holds up pretty well

 

Personal Problems (1980) – Gunn’s shifts of focus, emphasis and rhythm expand and liberate the material, albeit sometimes a bit perplexingly

 

Don Giovanni (1979) – musically opulent, but Losey’s complacent handsomeness hardly interrogates the largely insufferable narrative

 

The Laundromat (2019) – Soderbergh’s witty, if often bumpy, deployment of open-ended form to an inherently unsummarizable ongoing outrage

 

Wooden Crosses (1932) – Bernard’s powerful, illusion-free war film squarely scrutinizes fear and death, and resilience and its limits

 

Welcome II the Terrordome (1995) – Onwurah’s super-ambitious mash-up has some great far-seeing moments, but bogs down at other times

 

Suspiria (1977) – Argento’s predestination-seeped classic, as defined by absences and ambiguities as by its often extraordinary compositions

 

Vice (2018) – for all the movie’s strenuous, certainly seldom-boring efforts, Cheney’s underlying ugliness remains elusively under-analyzed

 

The Munekata Sisters (1950) – with quiet force, Ozu examines contrasting approaches to self-determination in uncertainly modernizing times

 

Rich and Famous (1981) – Cukor’s last film is often overdone, but still underrated, curiously trying out modern perspectives on old forms

 

La boutique (1967) – Berlanga’s sex comedy looks stylish on the surface, but narratively just flails around to little cumulative impact

 

The Wise Kids (2011) – Cone sinks into the conviviality and suppression of his under-examined milieu with wide-ranging, humane consideration

 

The Illumination (1973) – a film of relative brevity but vast-ranging (if rather academic) scope, confidently marshaled by peak-form Zanussi

 

The Invisible Man (2020) – Whannell provides a halfway striking overall angle and some snappy scenes, but it can only count for so much

 

Bluebeard (1936) – Painleve & Bertrand’s super-whimsical, darkly-undertoned animation lies among cinema’s more oddly inspired 13 minutes

 

The Underneath (1995) – Soderbergh’s modern-day noir is deftly handled, although its ambitions seldom seem to be set particularly high

 

L’horloger de Saint-Paul (1974) – Tavernier places a low-key crime narrative at a preoccupied meeting place of old and new anxieties

 

Stan & Ollie (2018) – Baird’s film makes it easy to coast contentedly along, warmed by skillfully sentimental recreations and evocations

 

Our Town (1956) – Kawashima’s chronicle of stubborn perseverance provides a colourful & quite affecting window on changing, loss-heavy times

 

Sleepwalk (1986) – Driver’s altogether wonderful, intimately watchful yet dreamily morphing vision of mundane life infiltrated by myth

 

Calcutta (1969) – Malle methodically accumulates deprivations and colonially-gifted injustices, properly devoid of much token relief

 

The Irishman (2019) – Scorsese’s epic is in too many respects familiar, glib, opaque or superficial, eliciting mostly dutiful respect

 

History Lessons (1972) – Straub/Huillet’s daringly contrasting modes of representing and investigating a capitalism-determined civilization

 

Party Girl (1995) – Posey is the perfect standard-bearer for Mayer’s peppy fusion of self-expression, personal evolution and library science

 

The 47 Ronin (1941) – Mizoguchi’s long, contemplative, finely controlled study of the agonizing demands of personal and societal codes

 

The Mule (2018) – an inevitable if easy pleasure, infusing Eastwood’s sensationally honed storytelling skill with defiant fragility

 

The Mephisto Waltz (1971) – Wendkos’ deal-with-the-devil drama falls rather ineffectually between a moody high road and a campy low one

 

Diva (1981) – Beineix’s film has some potentially beguiling elements, but they impact less than the ugly swagger of its governing style

 

The Caine Mutiny (1954) – Dmytryk’s film is often much duller than its reputation; even the central human drama unfolds overly simply

 

Corpo celeste (2011) – Rohrwacher’s almost unprecedently wondrous debut, extraordinarily observant and true, shimmering in unforced mystery

 

The Slender Thread (1965) – Pollack’s race-against-time drama (and implicit tribute to American can-do-ism) is polished, but basically dull

 

The Hater (2020) – Komasa’s coldly virtuosic dive into the social media dark side is expertly thought-provoking, if inevitably unendearing

 

Prophecy (1979) – it’s disappointing how Frankenheimer surrenders so fully (albeit fairly proficiently) to unprophetic monster-movie devices

 

Jacques Rivette – le veilleur (1994) – Denis’ quiet portrait is thrilling for Rivette worshippers, confirming a gentle but firm singularity

 

Dream Street (1921) – for all its strange & problematic aspects, Griffith’s maligned drama now ranks among his richest, most restless works

 

Lover for a Day (2017) – Garrel’s impeccably executed romantic shuffling, its classical qualities infused with acutely-felt need and desire

 

The United States of America (1975) – Benning/Gordon’s mesmerizingly executed trip record, among the largest of small films (or vice versa)

 

The Forest for the Trees (2003) – Ade’s calmly excruciating study of not fitting in is perfectly pitched all the way to its sublime ending

 

The Searchers (1956) – perhaps Ford’s most magnificent & complex work, an epic attuned to America’s slow, painful, often ugly self-discovery

 

Li’l Quinquin (2014) – Dumont’s mesmerizingly strange, often hilarious investigation takes a uniquely wacked-out road to near-greatness

 

The Italian Job (1969) – Collinson’s caper film holds up well, with an improbable haul of logistically striking or peculiarly iconic moments

 

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) – a delightful instance of Miyazaki’s superbly-visualized, mysteriously affecting, warmly-shaded alchemy

 

Capernaum (2018) – Labaki’s heart-rending drama is a recent milestone in socially- and humanistically-charged, narratively fluent cinema

 

Between the Lines (1977) – Silver’s deceptively easygoing newspaper comedy has a terrific instinct for flaws, compromises & elusive closures

 

Song of the South (1946) – Disney’s notorious film has some conventional virtues, but reeks with racial subservience and marginalization

 

For Ever Mozart (1996) – one of Godard’s most tragically beautiful late films, on art & war, nobility & naivete, the ephemeral & the abiding

 

The Missouri Breaks (1976) – Penn’s digressive post-Watergate Western reflects on law and morality with elusive, often eccentric complexity

 

Spoor (2017) – Holland and Adamik’s darkly handsome, eco-conscious drama is consistently interesting, notwithstanding its big kooky streak

 

Tight Spot (1955) – for all its professionalism, Karlson’s reluctant witness drama makes only a modest bang, with Rogers unpersuasively cast

 

Mortal Transfer (2001) – Beineix’s least interesting movie strings together various tawdry manoeuvres, albeit quite dynamically implemented

 

A Guide for the Married Man (1967) – underneath all the smug leering, Kelly’s unpleasant comedy may embody a few grim social truths

 

Can you Ever Forgive Me? (2018) – Heller maximizes the story’s crowd-pleasing potential while cultivating an adequate thematic depth

 

Anne-Marie (1936) – Bernard’s beguiling film blends soaring ambitions and earthly affinities, although its gender role rebellion peters out

 

Wild Style (1982) – Ahearn’s film prioritizes multi-faceted, digressive observation over plot, with happily ragged, celebratory results

 

La menace (1977) – Corneau’s (maybe too) cleverly-conceived drama is a bit under-involving, despite plenty of great notions and spectacle

 

Booksmart (2019) – Wilde’s not too funny wild-night comedy feels largely hollow, hermetic and strained, for all its tolerant open-mindedness

 

He Who is Without Sin…(1952) – Matarazzo’s melodrama, immersed in separation and suffering, is grandly watchable, if a bit blandly played

 

Defending Your Life (1991) – probably not Brooks’ conceptually tightest movie, but more than adequately funny and philosophically engaging

 

The Executioner (1963) – Berlanga’s mesmerizingly assured black comedy expertly tightens an economic & moral vice on its overwhelmed victim

 

Sorry to Bother You (2018) – Riley’s uniquely-calibrated satire-and-then-some riffs richly on economic exploitation and cultural degradation

 

Emitai (1971) – Sembene’s highly arresting, clear-sighted, fabulously visualized confrontation of Senegalese culture and malign colonialism

 

Born in Flames (1983) – Borden’s amazing, teeming, defiantly attack-mode vision-collage foresees our failed, big-lie-infused landscape

 

Les portes de la nuit (1946) – Carne’s often lovely (when not over-mythologized) fatalistic drama, rooted in vivid post-Liberation anxiety

 

Museum Hours (2012) – Cohen’s extraordinarily astute, warmly illuminated (but not unshadowed) window on personal and aesthetic engagement

 

Fata Morgana (1971) – timeless myth-spawning magnificence yields to the human stain in Herzog’s rather magnificently opportunistic reverie

 

I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020) – Kaufman’s inspiredly weird expression of the wondrous intimacy & frightening immensity of connection

 

Gate of Hell (1953) – Kinugasa’s famous tragedy is prettily decorative, but its restrained anguish makes a relatively modest impact now

 

The Departed (2006) – Scorsese’s Oscar-winner ranks among his more alienatingly self-contained demonstrations of technical mastery

 

Bambole (1965) – four directors, four hot female stars, and four easy-to-take but mostly forgettable stories of repressed sexuality

 

Widows (2018) – McQueen’s crime drama has intimations of wide-angle, socially astute greatness, unrealized in the climactic narrative flurry

 

Scent of a Woman (1974) – Risi’s original moves along briskly and scenically, but its hectoring, leering notion of charm rapidly wears thin

 

You are Not I (1981) – variously other-worldly and creepily drab, Driver’s short-ish film sets out an implication-infused identity enigma

 

The Old and the New (1929) – Eisenstein’s industrial paean is deliriously vivid and venerating, both transcending and obliterating humanity

 

Dolemite is my Name (2019) – Brewer and Murphy put on a great show, although it’s a bit light both as character study and cultural history

 

Othon (1970) – Straub and Huillet craft a methodical challenge to preconceptions of historical recreation and narrative representation

 

Afterglow (1997) – Rudolph successfully pitches a potentially straightforward romantic melodrama on the heightened edge of absurdity

 

Awaara (1951) – Kapoor’s grand melodrama hits expressively fantastic notes & small, socially critical ones with equally accomplished swagger

 

Suburbicon (2018) – Clooney’s weirdly ungainly blending of unremarkable film noir, toothless satire and bloodless social commentary

 

The Naked Island (1960) – Shindo’s distilled study of barren lives is certainly memorable, despite counterproductive imposed constraints 

 

Empty Suitcases (1980) – Gordon’s mind-filling film feels largely, if not yet entirely, despairing of male-determined cinema & society alike

 

Forza Bastia (1978) – Tati’s rediscovered day-of-the-match footage is nicely observed fun, but real life resists the sublimely Tati-esque

 

The Report (2019) – Burns’ perhaps artfully dullish record plays rather too familiarly, but effectively puts across its multiple outrages

 

Les visiteurs du soir (1942) – Carne’s fantasy of supernatural intervention is rather too heavygoing, despite its alluring narrative folds

 

The Handmaid’s Tale (1990) – Schlondorff’s adaptation collapses into little more than random notions, mostly drained of allegorical force

 

The Purple Taxi (1977) – Boisset’s Irish-set drama appeals for its once in a lifetime cast, but is mostly empty gestures and pronouncements

 

The Sisters Brothers (2018) – Audiard pulls off the genre swagger, but the film’s heart is subtly ironic and ambiguously vulnerable 

 

Burden of Love (1955) – Kawashima’s eye-opening, pregnancy-festooned, progressively issue-laden narrative makes for quite unusual comedy

 

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – there’s much that lingers, maybe forever, in Scorsese’s calculated interrogation of Biblical cliché

 

Something Different (1963) – Chytilova’s intimately alert study of two female lives, marked by contrasting frustrations and compromises

 

Us (2019) – Peele weaves in some mild metaphorical interest, but overall the film plays much more conventionally & repetitively than Get Out

 

Scorpio (1973) – fairly average international spy games, elevated by the cast, when not hampered by Winner’s very basic cinematic instincts

 

Whisper of the Heart (1995) – Kondo’s happiness-provoking, fantasy-inflected love story, rooted in the interaction of dreams and commitment

 

Broken Blossoms (1919) – Griffith’s sensibility now seems crass on several fronts, but the film’s central melancholy spell somehow endures

 

Cities of Last Things (2018) – Ho’s concept-heavy drama ultimately feels rather too removed, but is impeccably structured and populated

 

Blume in Love (1973) – Mazursky’s delightfully regulated film embraces idealized romanticism all the better for seeing right through it

 

The Shipwrecker (1984) – Buhler’s coolly cerebral engagement with Sterling Hayden sounds more formally interesting than it actually is

 

Pushover (1954) – Quine’s expertly paced and plotted thriller is mostly all surface, but one of consistently devious, voyeuristic pleasures

 

Slack Bay (2016) – Dumont’s class-conscious farce swirls with affectations, peculiarities and taboos, while somehow seeming integrated

 

Walden (1969) – Mekas’ great submergence in a life fully lived and felt, asserting both the specificity and universality of experience

 

Water Lilies (2007) – Sciamma’s quietly enchanting study of personality and desire in formation; of femininity as structured display

 

Saturday Night Fever (1977) – Badham’s strutting classic of sorts, less airy (and more bitingly misogynistic) than the myth might suggest

 

Season of the Devil (2018) – one of Diaz’s more concentrated works, an extended, aching song of loss and grief in the face of brutality

 

Curse of the Cat People (1944) – Lewton’s beautiful evocation of intertwined isolations, marked by captivating play of light and shadow

 

The Invincibles (1994) – Graf’s politically-charged police thriller reaches for grandeur, but lets in too many slack and dilutive elements

 

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) – Carpenter executes his shrewdly absurd siege narrative with the maximum in existentially-charged stylization

 

Nobody’s Daughter Haewon (2013) – with the most finely light-footed seriousness, Hong enmeshes us in shifting internal & external realities

 

Nightfall (1956) – Tourneur’s film travels from urban darkness to open snowy landscapes, powerfully expressing the passage to redemption

 

Revenge (1989) – Shinarbayev’s narrative of grim earthly imperatives, shimmeringly told through poetically unbound structures and images

 

The Caretaker (1963) – Pinter’s inexhaustibly rich and provocative text, more memorable here for the acting than the cinematic realization

 

Everybody Knows (2018) – from a somewhat limited narrative, Farhadi crafts an insinuating portrait of widespread, if well-concealed, rot

 

That’s the Way of the World (1975) – Shore’s record-industry drama (Keitel produces EWF!) has enough substance to transcend curio status

 

La haine (1995) – Kassovitz’s often-inspired lightning-bolt film surveys and sparks multitudes, its ambition in some ways counterproductive

 

Air Raid Wardens (1943) – some standardly enjoyable Laurel and Hardy set-pieces surmount a blandly unaccommodating homefront framework

 

Marriage Story (2019) – Baumbach’s smart film overflows with interesting moves and details, while often feeling too studied at key moments

 

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) – Straub/Huillet’s beautiful, ethical, exactingly rigorous yet deeply alert historical evocation

 

Parting Glances (1986) – narrative artificiality aside, Sherwood’s classic bearing-of-witness film contains much that’s true and surprising

 

Mexican Bus Ride (1952) – beneath Bunuel’s convivially eventful surface lies a more deliciously biting vein of transgressive calculation

 

First Man (2018) – Chazelle’s most interesting film to date, for its intimate physicality and recessive core, and its surprising absences

 

Baal (1970) – Schlondorff’s Fassbinder-starring Brecht adaptation is rough-hewn, repellent and yet stubbornly, ambiguously insinuating

 

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981) – Reisz and Pinter’s strategy holds up well, although the risk is consummately minimized throughout

 

Apart from You (1933) – Naruse’s emotionally resonant silent drama surveys a thankless world of gender-based injustice and imposed sacrifice

 

Sightseers (2012) – Wheatley drolly injects bloody murder into the latter-day strained reality of heritage Englishness’ bucolic surface

 

Body of my Enemy (1976) – Verneuil’s brassily enjoyable, focus-shifting clutter of a drama eventually submits to revenge-genre mechanics

 

Da 5 Bloods (2020) – Lee embraces melodrama with relish, as a scaffold for a passionately haunted, digressive survey of unending fracture

 

War and Peace (1966) – whatever its imposed constraints, Bondarchuk’s massive epic is a constant visual and logistical astonishment

 

Requiem for a Dream (2000) – Aronofsky’s awe-inspiring but largely unmoving parade of suffering is the most hypnotic of unwatchable movies

 

The Balloon (1956) – Kawashima’s absorbing family drama sets off understated spiritual searching against harder-edged modern pragmatism

 

Mid90s (2018) – Hill’s film evidences a fine touch with mood, interaction, and implication, although ultimately pulls up a bit short

 

Insiang (1976) – Brocka’s sensationally impactful tale of female oppression and revenge both transcends and deeply reflects its setting

 

Sidewalk Stories (1989) – Lane’s (mostly) silent comedy is cutely conceived, but really no great shakes in any aspect of its execution

 

Lettres d’amour (1942) – Autant-Lara’s romantic farce is deftly enough assembled, but rather passionlessly relentless in its complications

 

Burning Cane (2019) – the remarkable Youmans crafts a broodingly and intuitively coherent, if sometimes overwrought, cultural portrait

 

The Tree of Guernica (1975) – Arrabal’s vision is as much possessed as painterly, but it’s scathingly attuned to war’s corrosive decadence

 

When Pigs Fly (1993) – Driver’s unusual ghost story has beautiful elements, although overall lands more conventionally than her Sleepwalk

 

L’arme a gauche (1965) – a solid enough drama, moving from exoticism to remoteness, but probably Sautet’s least interesting work overall

 

The Old Man & the Gun (2018) – Lowery’s genial, warmly-textured showcase for the cherishable Redford, a film of knowingly small virtues

 

Le marginal (1983) – Deray’s grabbag of set-ups and confrontations, more than capably held together by conviction and attitude (Belmondo!)

 

Drive a Crooked Road (1954) – Quine’s snappily-written (by Blake Edwards) little crime drama, drawing shrewdly on social and sexual envy

 

Only Yesterday (1991) – Takahata’s very sweet expression of a present untidily informed by the past, with its delightfully-conceived ending

 

The Panic in Needle Park (1971) – Schatzberg’s unyielding study of addiction encompasses bleak documentary and disorienting stylization

 

Cosmos (2015) – Zulawski’s fulsomely strange, ever-renewing creation intrigues as cinematic sculpting, while hardly aiming to satisfy

 

Homework (1989) – Kiarostami’s utterly fascinating, formally enveloping testimony on Iran’s education system is humane and quietly ominous

 

The Fallen Idol (1948) – Reed’s spatially engrossing, delicately observed, emotionally scarred drama, hampered by a rushed-seeming ending

 

Noise (2006) – Assayas’ often aurally challenging, always rigorously observed record of spectrum-spanning “art rock festival” performances

 

“Doc” (1971) – Perry’s sparsely eloquent emphasis on frailty and loneliness makes for an unusual, if perhaps overly absent-feeling Western

 

Sophia Antipolis (2018) – Vernier is rapidly becoming a master chronicler of a fractured, confused age, fusing the discovered and imagined

 

The Lineup (1958) – with incisive precision and awareness, Siegel navigates a landscape shot through with malign implication and connection

 

Milou en Mai (1990) – Malle’s fusion of personal and political is pleasant but incompletely realized, seeming to grab at this and that

 

Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) – Haskin’s often handsome concoction intrigues most in its lonely early stages, becoming hokier as it goes on

 

Knife + Heart (2018) – Gonzalez’s rather astonishing fever drama grips and transfixes with every rich, luridly provocative frame and concept

 

The Day of the Locust (1975) – Schlesinger’s adaptation feels by turns overwhelmed and inspired, attaining a distinctively pained blankness

 

Subway (1985) – Besson’s subterranean circus has no shortage of strikingly strutting acts, but it’s hard to care much about most of them

 

The Navigator (1924) – Keaton’s maritime comedy is filled with great gags, although lacks the personalized allure of his very best films

 

Camille Claudel 1915 (2013) – Dumont’s immaculate contrasting of physical and spiritual confinement shimmers with hope and injustice

 

Dark Star (1974) – Carpenter’s beguiling comedic space flick, handled with a perfect blend of disillusioned hokiness and expansive vision

 

Yella (2007) – Petzold immaculately posits modern Germany’s sleek entrepreneurial sheen as an excluded woman’s moment-of-death fantasy

 

Witness for the Prosecution (1957) – Wilder’s hermetic courtroom drama rattles happily along to the big reveal, flush on star charisma

 

Arabian Nights: Volume 3 (2015) – Gomes concludes by easing deeply & beautifully into fundamental (yet myth-tinged) connection & continuity

 

The Appointment (1969) – channeling European art film influences, Lumet creates an interesting if not very substantial romantic enigma

 

Antigone (1992) – with typically exacting precision, Straub/Huillet cause the material to at once recede and (as terrible warning) advance

 

Bonnie Scotland (1935) – a brightly-executed Laurel and Hardy feature, with the amazing pair at their most easefully funny and captivating

 

Golden Exits (2017) – Perry’s relationship study doesn’t hold the attention like his other works, albeit that might sort of be its point

 

L’enfant secret (1979) – Garrel’s study of an eroding relationship is an extraordinary emanation of separate, hurting, fractured cinema

 

Luminous Motion (1998) – Gordon’s astutely disturbing, wonderment-infused weirdo-parable on the stagnating capacity of traditional family

 

Sylvie et le fantome (1946) – Autant-Lara’s film is pure escapism, skillful and delicate, but its artificiality doesn’t approach poetry

 

Suspiria (2018) – Guadagnino lets loose (and then some) with quite amazing results, spawning a gorgeously textured, deeply inhabited vision

 

Docteur Popaul (1972) – a somewhat depressingly leering dark comedy (I suppose) from the well-populated slack end of Chabrol’s oeuvre

 

Cane River (1982) –  even the many imperfections of Jenkins’ rediscovered historically-conscious romance are cherishable and informative

 

Babette Goes to War (1959) – Christian-Jaque’s undistinguished WW2 comedy/drama barely even seems interested in, or really aware of Bardot

 

The Wife (2017) – despite the barnbusting lead performances, Runge’s drama is too tinny and under-powered to leave much of an impact

 

The Incubus (1981) – Hough’s opportunistic, low-conviction horror movie at least has Cassavetes and an allusively intense conclusion

 

Weekend at Dunkirk (1964) – Verneuil’s epic has epic moments to match Nolan’s, linked by muscularly varied incident and moral inquiry

 

Camera Buff (1979) – Kieslowski’s study of cinema as liberator & destroyer relies on relatively easy ironies, but masterfully charted ones

 

A Star is Born (2018) – Cooper’s treatment is well-inhabited and pleasurable, without dispelling the air of anachronism and redundancy

 

Un carnet de bal (1937) – a variedly episodic drama, limited by its artificial premise, elevated by Duvivier’s unerringly attuned control

 

Totally F****ed Up (1993) – Araki’s energetically inquisitive film is a near-hypnotic meeting of stylization and vulnerable authenticity

 

Coup de Grace (1976) – Schlondorff’s undercurrent-heavy Russian civil war drama is visually haunting, yet surely overly distancing

 

Ray Meets Helen (2017) – Rudolph’s comeback film doesn’t play entirely steadily, which generally aids its dreamily distanced peculiarity

 

Montparnasse 19 (1958) – Becker’s portrait of Modigliani is hauntingly pained, although barely explores the specificity of his vision

 

White of the Eye (1987) – Cammell, as weirdly possessed as his protagonist, pushes a conventional narrative toward the primally visionary

 

Un singe en hiver (1962) – a rather peculiar film by the often overlooked Verneuil, but not lacking in thematic ambition and reflectiveness

 

Octavio is Dead! (2018) – Lee hits her stride with the pleasantly-handled gender-fluid interactions, but bogs down in claptrap elsewhere

 

Dead Ringers (1988) – Cronenberg’s insularly concentrated, rather schematic tale exudes uneasy fascination, not least for Irons’ expertise

 

The Dawns here are Quiet (1972) – Rostotskiy’s war drama is strong when immersed in action and setting, weaker in its more fanciful aspects

 

Only One Night (1939) – Molander’s lively but overstated culture-clash drama glaringly underserves its female characters in particular

 

Cameraperson (2016) – Johnson’s emotion-spanning, ethically stimulating, overall riveting tapestry of personal and professional witnessing

 

Manila in the Claws of Light (1975) – Brocka’s utterly vivid and gripping, devastating illumination of a teeming, predatory environment

 

The Watermelon Woman (1996) – Dunye’s unusual, cannily loose-feeling film pleasurably challenges narrative, sexual and canonical norms

 

The Golden Coach (1953) – one happily submits to Renoir’s sumptuous artificiality, while rather missing the connectivity of his finest work

 

Leave no Trace (2018) – Granik’s well-observed, quietly tragic chronicle evokes broader fractures & strangenesses at the core of America

 

The Moment of Truth (1965) – Rosi indelibly records the substance & mystique of bullfighting as glorious, perhaps life force-eroding horror

 

Tucker: the Man and his Dream (1988) – Coppola’s happily indefatigable chronicle feels like rather too much dream and too little real man

 

I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973) – Arrabal’s fiery, provocative vision is as unbound as its title, yet with a tender, even devout core

 

Eyes, Ears and Throats (2019) – a marvelously assembled collection of restored punk films; likely to set off a weird, irrational longing

 

L’eternel retour (1943) – Cocteau’s boldly winding retelling of classic material is vividly strange & lovely, strongly realized by Delannoy

 

Privilege (1990) – Rainer’s amazing film constantly shifts and pivots, deconstructing itself & much else in serious yet celebratory manner

 

Les mistons (1957) – even in 18 minutes, Truffaut’s nimble, resourceful early short encompasses a range of emotion and life experience

 

The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018) – Cousins’ enthralling letter to Welles analyzes, illuminates, (sometimes) grates, and in no way exhausts

 

L’invenzione di Morel (1974) – Greco’s rather heavily-expressed enigma belongs to a time of cinema as grand concept and physical destination

 

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) – the central motor of female inspiration remains powerful, although Seidelman allows in too much silliness

 

A Man Vanishes (1967) – the terse initial momentum of Imamura’s investigation rewardingly stalls and spins and semi-surrenders to invention

 

Beast (2017) – a much superior serial killer drama, for Pearce’s deft local observation and its sensitively unconventional characterizations

 

Limite (1931) – Peixoto’s only film is an astounding, inexhaustibly gorgeous flow of water, light, observation, allusion and mystery

 

Jennifer 8 (1992) – Robinson’s drama is appealing when at its more thoughtful, but ultimately all but falls apart in an unseemly rush

 

Bread and Chocolate (1974) – Brusati’s comedy is at times too broad, at others bland, at its best when drawing on exile and dispossession

 

Support the Girls (2018) – Bujalski’s seemingly unassuming film yield layers of piercing, socially and economically indicting observation

 

Till We Meet Again (1955) – Kawashima’s smoothly ambitious but rather restricted melodrama, ultimately marked by poignant unfulfillment

 

Patty Hearst (1988) – Schrader’s artfully evasive study often feels almost narcotized, but his formal intelligence gradually imposes itself

 

Greed in the Sun (1964) – Verneuil’s duel in the desert never acquires much depth, but grips through sustained forceful sun-baked swagger

 

Did you Wonder who Fired the Gun? (2017) – Wilkerson’s dark investigation, driven by a loathing drink of long-festering familial poison

 

Mado (1976) – another fascinating exercise in structure and group dynamics from peak-period Sautet, rich in personal and social implication

 

Girl 6 (1996) – Lee’s representation-preoccupied, intriguingly evasive film of seductive presences built on long-established absences

 

Two People (1945) – Dreyer’s disowned intimate drama feels rushed and inadequately articulated, yet exudes a strange, stark purity

 

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) – Chu’s movie is cannily executed throughout, although the “craziness” is mostly of an opulently oppressive nature

 

Taipei Story (1985) – Yang and Hou’s transfixingly well-rendered study of personal and societal hollowing in the shadow of modernization

 

Peeping Tom (1959) – Powell’s extraordinarily rich, luridly committed expression of cinema as mirror, excavator, lover and destroyer

 

Besieged (1998) – the film has its questionable aspects, but Bertolucci’s quicksilver mastery of cinema remains sensuously thrilling

 

“10” (1979) – probably Edwards’ most study-worthy, self-revealing film, cinematically fascinating & rich in ambiguities (& sure, it’s funny)

 

Home (2008) – Meier crafts a highly memorable family drama, powered by nuanced relationships and a terrifically-visualized overall concept

 

Wild 90 (1968) – Mailer’s confined behavioural experiment doesn’t light too many interesting fires, despite repeatedly pugnacious attempts

 

Mercuriales (2014) – Vernier’s strangely stunning film shifts deftly between multiple states and moods, at once delicate and troubled

 

Hot Biskits (1931) – Williams’ busy all-African-American short comedy prioritizes clean execution over cultural revelation or flavor

 

A Year of the Quiet Sun (1984) – Zanussi’s pain-infused post-war romance follows unusual, searching paths, but never fully takes hold

 

Barry Lyndon (1975) – Kubrick’s inexhaustible historical chronicle negotiates the gloriously palpable and the pervasively unknowable

 

Cold War (2018) – Pawlikowski’s film possesses an immensely graceful economy, spanning epochal life shifts & intimate behavioural mysteries

 

This Sporting Life (1963) – Anderson’s powerfully physical drama explores masculinity both as imposing gift and as uncomprehending curse

 

Daddy Nostalgia (1990) – Tavernier’s quiet surface yields a warm tapestry of actual & figurative separations, of intertwined joys & regrets

 

The War of the Worlds (1953) – Haskin’s vision of overmatched mankind, memorable for its bleakly beautiful, almost reverential images

 

Arabian Nights: Volume 2 (2015) – Gomes’ (relatively) more somberly-rooted second segment is a rich excavation of connection and consequence

 

The Point (1971) – Wolf and Nilsson’s tuneful, sweetly peculiar animation is at once trippy, satirical and, uh, pointedly message-bearing

 

Le monde vivant (2003) – Green’s open-eyed fairy tale emanates delighted conviction, even as it deconstructs and absurdifies itself

 

White Zombie (1932) – Halperin’s Haitian-set grab-bag has its moments,  but lacks for an overall insinuating coherence of tone or vision

 

Burning (2018) – Lee’s quietly glowing masterpiece is a socially resonant cinematic mystery, crossing contrasting states of being and action

 

Return of the Pink Panther (1975) – perhaps the best Clouseau movie, or at least the best synopsis of its strangely contoured universe

 

Rendez-vous (1985) – an extremity-embracing narrative of personal and artistic discovery, held together by Techine’s customary smoothness

 

All Night Long (1962) – Dearden’s jazz-world Othello is mostly just an overwritten curio, but not lacking for musical compensations

 

Kommunisten (2014) – Straub’s repositioning of extracts from past work gently affirms the breadth, beauty & courage of his work with Huillet

 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – Siegel’s terrific, propulsive narrative contains one of cinema’s great, ever-renewable allegories

 

A Lullaby to the Sorrowful Mystery (2016) – Diaz’s epic voyage of engagement with history and myth, to the limits of understanding and grief

 

Their First Mistake (1932) – among Laurel and Hardy’s strongest and certainly most subtext-heavy shorts; one only wishes it were longer

 

The Stranger (1991) – Ray ends his career on a physically restricted but intellectually engaged note, emphasizing awareness & reconciliation

 

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) – Meyer’s jaw-dropping vision marries chronic superficiality & bizarrely committed, rutting intensity

 

The Love Witch (2017) – a visual, tonal and thematic vision not so much implemented as lusciously exhaled by the iconoclastic Biller

 

Innocence Unprotected (1968) – Makaveyev’s new-film-made-from-an-old-one is a happy but scrupulous assertion of freedom and persistence

 

Hollywood Shuffle (1987) – Townsend’s happily ramshackle, sort-of-groundbreaking, funny-enough stirring of celebration and condemnation

 

Gribiche (1926) – Feyder’s contrasting of working-class spontaneity with deadened moneyed formality remains most formally & tonally pleasing

 

Under the Silver Lake (2018) – Mitchell’s lush, highly fanciful investigation is at once relentlessly revelatory and callowly static

 

Maitresse (1976) – Schroeder provides ample sympathetic provocations, but the film’s broader strategies ultimately ring rather hollow

 

Orlando (1992) – a key reference point in the cinema of gender construction, while also, in Potter’s hands, an exquisitely quizzical romp

 

Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) – an absorbingly cerebral social & personal document by Alea, crafted as near-emblematic art cinema

 

Exhibition (2013) – Hogg positions and repositions our spectatorship with near-eerie assurance within her remarkable installation-like film

 

Welcome Mr. Marshall! (1953) – Berlanga’s kowtowing-to-the-Yanks comedy has a few satirical highlights amid a lot of heavy foot-dragging drama

 

Kiss Me Goodbye (1982) – Mulligan’s feeble comedy is inexplicably bland, showing little affinity for or curiosity in its ghostly premise

 

Wildwechsel (1973) – Fassbinder’s “jail bait” drama may be one of his more conventional provocations, but no less bitingly executed

 

BlackKklansman (2018) – a secondary Lee work, most valuable & piercing when least constrained by the often rather plainly executed narrative

 

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939) – Mizoguchi’s exquisite tragic love story contrasts formal performance and besieged intimacy

 

Crooklyn (1994) – Lee’s family chronicle has modest but well-realized ambitions, illustrating his capacity for warmly lived-in observation

 

Nausicaa (1970) – Varda’s overlooked collage of Grecian mythologies & realities fulfillingly spans the didactic, bizarre, personal & poetic

 

Krisha (2015) – in its searing balance of naturalism & formal audacity, Shults’ perspective on familial trauma may well prove unforgettable

 

Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) – Dutt’s last directorial work is hauntingly bleak, almost seeming as a prophesy of looming self-obliteration

 

Popeye (1980) – Altman’s strange, attractively visualized project shrouds its “entertainment” in self-absorbed, semi-penetrable mystery

 

La ronde (1964) – Vadim’s version is handsomely mounted, elegantly amused and quite enjoyably played, but the interest gradually deflates

 

The Death of Stalin (2018) – Iannucci’s expertly-stylized absurdist patina serves to darkly accentuate the underlying moral emptiness

 

Beaubourg (1977) – Rossellini’s last film explores the Pompidou Centre with classical grace, prioritizing observation over deconstruction

 

The Comfort of Strangers (1990) – Schrader extracts every drop of archly twisted beauty from the story, but it still doesn’t amount to much

 

La Marseillaise (1938) – Renoir’s approach to history, encompassing both grand spectacle and easy intimacy, remains quietly radical

 

Archipelago (2010) – probably Hogg’s least vital work to date, but nevertheless one of grippingly impressive empathy and controlled tension

 

Badou Boy (1970) – Mambety’s dizzying short, at once a deeply-rooted celebration and a radical deconstruction, all but overwhelms the senses

 

Escape from New York (1981) – one wishes Carpenter’s smartly hokey drama spent less time on escaping, more on relishing its bizarro New York

 

Tales of Ginza (1955) – Kawashima’s ambitiously genre and tone-spanning melodrama gets rather weighed down with complications and oddities

 

Private Life (2018) – Jenkins’ bitterly humorous chronicle is compelling and existentially charged, although perhaps rather too mannered

 

Sanjuro (1962) – Kurosawa’s more tightly-conceived extension of Yojimbo makes for a narratively and tonally rather repetitive experience

 

Prospero’s Books (1991) – an astonishing Tempest, magicked at the peak of Greenaway’s daunting textual, imaginative & organizational powers

 

Les choses de la vie (1970) – Sautet’s film grips for its structural and logistical panache, while feeling underachieved as character study

 

Stinking Heaven (2015) – Silver’s impressively harrowing yet withholding study of the promises and agonizing limits of idealized community

 

The Passionate Friends (1949) – a most repressed form of passion, and somewhat of filmmaking, but certainly elevated by Lean’s precision

 

Police Story 2 (1988) – as enjoyable for Chan’s unforced geniality as for its near-exhausting-to-watch, somehow noble technical prowess

 

The Shootist (1976) – Wayne’s aptly final film is hard to resist, even if Siegel pushes the themes and conflicts rather too thickly

 

Shoplifters (2018) – with consummate skill, Koreeda crafts a fresh and fully-realized, complexly layered perspective on family and morality

 

Time Without Pity (1957) – Losey suffuses his race-against-time drama in sufficient pained emotion to push through the many deficiencies

 

Unknown Pleasures (2002) – Jia hauntingly channels China’s confusing evolution, the desultory personal vacuums within its modernity

 

Night Must Fall (1964) – Reisz and Finney both dissect and relish in the unpleasant material, leaving one both impressed and dissatisfied

 

Arabian Nights: Volume 1 (2015) – Gomes’ trilogy comes rapidly to colourful, rabble-rousing life, triumphantly spanning the unspannable 

 

Idaho Transfer (1973) – Fonda’s laid-back, evasive time travel fantasy has a nice angle on the slow extinguishment of youthful idealism

 

The Last Battle (1983) – Besson’s future-world showdown is basically thin and unedifying stuff, although kitted out with some style

 

Verdict: Not Guilty (1933) – the Gists’ vision of heavenly judgment is severely (if a bit shakily) yet tangibly and redemptively realized

 

Atlantique (2019) – Diop’s wonderful film is entirely fresh and alert, and yet with the sense of inevitable, eternally-returning myth

 

Jubilee (1978) – Jarman’s fabulous, visually and aurally full-to-bursting, sexually liberated punk fantasia both condemns and commemorates

 

The Juniper Tree (1990) – Keene’s tale of witchcraft and isolation makes for thin cinematic poetry, memorable only in lonely spurts

 

Sapphire (1959) – Dearden’s vivid, racially charged investigation both challenges and embodies a plethora of prejudices and assumptions

 

Bitter Money (2016) – Wang’s grave observation of modern China, tracking flickers of human individuality in an oppressive industrial machine

 

Staircase (1969) – Donen’s tedious, inadequately empathetic study of an aging gay couple seems poorly implemented by almost any measure

 

O Fantasma (2000) – Rodrigues’ amazing nocturnal vision of restless sexuality and desire drifts into a leather-clad feral wasteland

 

Female Trouble (1974) – below Waters’ delirious, tear-it-down odyssey may lie an empathetic dissection of the social construct of femininity

 

I Am Not a Witch (2017) – Nyoni’s film teems with well-observed visual and cultural astonishments, while often feeling somewhat held back

 

Moonrise (1948) – Borzage’s wondrously calibrated drama, possessed of haunting visual and narrative articulacy and expressive delicacy

 

Angst (1983) – Kargl’s close-up study of a startlingly vivid killer resists any sort of embrace, but is too smart and distinctive to dismiss

 

Maidstone (1970) – Mailer’s pugnacious patchwork of heightened “reality” is a highly of-its-time tumble of limitations and liberations

 

Border (2018) – Abbasi’s seriously strange, disquieting, multiple-boundary-exploring film is seeped in moral allusions and challenges

 

The Scapegoat (1959) – Hamer’s story of switched identities is entertaining enough, but feels overly formal and superficially inhabited

 

Petits freres (1999) – Doillon’s eventful picture of near-lawless youth is often depressing, ultimately hopeful (not entirely convincingly)

 

Harper (1966) – Smight’s attitude-heavy private eye flick is smoothly handled and spikily written, but the cynicism digs merely tan-deep

 

La Sapienza (2014) – Green’s wondrously distinct film nurtures a wryly life-, light-- and love-asserting core within its formal trappings 

 

Black Jack (1979) – Loach’s often grimly-anchored adventure yarn prioritizes its extraordinary period flavour over easy narrative momentum

 

The Death of Empedocles (1986) – Straub/Huillet’s text-heavy, formally rigorous performance work is strangely beautiful, even transcendent

 

Putting Pants on Philip (1927) – a formative Laurel & Hardy work with a breezy air of communal engagement, and a priapically energized Stan

 

L for Leisure (2014) – Kalman/Horn’s smartly evasive reflection on non-work, as multi-faceted institution and dreamy semi-glimpsed gateway

 

Suzaki Paradise Red Light (1956) – Kawashima’s study of marginal lives, both facilitated and slightly limited by its tolerant incisiveness

 

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) – Kaufman’s adaptation is in too many ways titillating and posturing, rather than investigative

 

Yojimbo (1961) – Kurosawa’s sly action film is masterfully visualized and structurally striking, but hollower than one wishes of a classic

 

Eighth Grade (2018) – not that I would know, but Burnham’s well-modulated study feels authentically, often excruciatingly tuned-in

 

Joi Baba Felunath (1979) – Ray’s easygoing, scenic detective story is a knowingly minor work, defined mainly by relaxed interactions

 

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (2006) – there may be times when Gondry’s happy record is just exactly what you need (and, wow, Erykah Badu!)

 

La grande illusion (1937) – a Renoir masterpiece, holding myriad complexities and subtleties in almost mystically perfect equilibrium

 

Dark River (2017) – Barnard’s drama builds Gothic elements onto naturalistic observation, impacting a little less than her earlier work

 

L’homme en colere (1979) – Pinoteau’s very basic action picture is at once slapdash & unimaginative, with minor time-capsule compensations

 

Yentl (1983) – Streisand’s musical has an enterprising core, self-regardingly wrapped in oblivious timidity and sterile handsomeness 

 

Secrets of Women (1952) – Bergman’s series of variously flat or overdone vignettes presages the smiles of later, more fully-achieved works

 

The Kindergarten Teacher (2018) – Colangelo’s unusually unsettling drama, rooted in distorted idealism, anchored by a sensational Gyllenhaal

 

Viva l’Italia (1961) – a Garibaldi film of ample grand spectacle, anchored by Rossellini’s unforced, probing approach to recreating history

 

Jackie Brown (1997) – one of Tarantino’s most conceptually restrained, pleasurably observed and seasoned, and treasurably cast films

 

Serie noire (1979) – Corneau injects a brilliantly unbound Dewaere into the drabbest of crime film milieus, with fine & distinctive results

 

Sun Don’t Shine (2012) – Seimetz’s fine, hauntingly fraught character study, built on genre-displaced noir-ish motivations and anxieties

 

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941) – Ozu’s semi-precursor to Tokyo Story calmly excavates familial faultlines and hypocrisies

 

Hide in Plain Sight (1980) – Caan’s only directorial credit has some decent feeling and observation, but is rather too narratively sketchy

 

Un flic (1972) – Melville’s notionally rather unambitious last film moves further toward wordless abstraction, as if to a vanishing point

 

Don’t Worry, he Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018) – Van Sant drowns his film in group therapy tedium, barely cracking Callahan’s artistic engine

 

Robinson Crusoe (1954) – a diverting and colourful telling of the tale, particularly when most gripped by Bunuel’s expressive capacity

 

Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992) – Harris’ portrait is spikily exuberant, emotionally compelling and smartly politically charged

 

Barrier (1966) – the remarkable Skolimowski charts a disorienting, almost hallucinatory path through troubled personal & societal landscapes

 

The Selfish Giant (2013) – Barnard’s powerful drama is painfully true to its deeply challenged community, yet not without a troubling beauty

 

The Cage (1975) – Granier-Deferre’s confinement drama plays its modest cards pretty strongly, all the way to an oddly satisfying ending

 

Near Dark (1987) – if not Bigelow’s best film, maybe the one you’d rescue first from the sunrise inferno, for its confident genre swagger

 

Der var engang (1922) – an incompletely surviving Dreyer work, of limited thematic interest, but not without feeling and expressive gravity

 

Annihilation (2018) – Garland’s film grips as a creepily insinuating allegory of environmental weirding, less so in its overdrawn specifics

 

Vincent, Francois, Paul…(1974) – an engaging study of weary male life passages, typifying Sautet’s structural and observational subtlety

 

Blow Out (1981) – a classic de Palma set-up, finding a relative integrity in disreputable material, and a terrible kind of commemoration

 

Pyaasa (1957) – Dutt’s finely-expressed melodrama, an emotionally unwavering elevation of artistic purity over money-grabbing venality

 

Hello Again (2017) – a valuable, generally pleasant record of LaChiusa’s great musical, if more jarring and less unified than would be ideal

 

Mickey One (1965) – a mesmerizingly observed yet wildly unbound existential mystery, as Penn and Beatty accelerate into their great periods

 

Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996) – Hou’s enveloping study of inter-dependence in the midst of distance – from past roots and present paradigms

 

The Ritz (1976) – Lester’s film, in concept a liberatingly open-minded breathless farce, in practice makes for rather tedious viewing

 

Shirkers (2018) – Tan places her long-lost movie within a lightly reflective quasi-detective story, to colourful and mostly pleasing effect

 

Man’s Castle (1933) – its somewhat insipidly conceived heroine aside, Borzage’s love story is delicately observed and often spikily funny

 

Swann in Love (1984) – Schlondorff’s Proust adaptation is meticulously considered, but it barely breathes or bleeds or bites or evokes

 

The Duelists (1977) – Scott’s episodic debut has plenty of actorly and pictorial interest, but never pierces very deeply, even less wounds

 

Sicilian Ghost Story (2017) – Grassadonia and Piazza’s absorbingly unusual negotiation between grim reality and liberating dream-life

 

Room at the Top (1959) – Clayton’s intensely class and power-conscious drama feels overwrought now, but it retains an elemental basic force

 

Mysterious Object at Noon (2000) – Weerasethakul’s film is at once intimate and limitless, wondrously invented while patiently unearthed

 

The Maidens of Fetish Street (1966) – Resnick’s string of grubby fantasies is fitfully semi-persuasive as a quasi-poetic essay on obsession

 

Tricked (2012) – Verhoeven’s brightly-executed, only modestly biting drama hardly evidences the flaunted innovation of its creative process

 

Lost Horizon (1973) – Jarrott’s famous flop isn’t so difficult to get through, but has only superficial beauty & little artistic coherence

 

Police Story (1985) – even for non-genre-aficionados, Chan’s breathlessly uplifting action-farce is impressively conceived and executed

 

Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) – Taurog’s super-smooth Astaire-Powell teaming is among the most blissful of musicals, non-auteur division

 

Girl (2018) – Dhont’s absorbing transgender portrait balances reticence and exactitude, marked by intense attention to fragile physicality

 

Claudine (1974) – Berry’s small classic explores edge-of-its-tether black working class culture with rambunctious, almost radical frankness

 

Workers, Peasants (2001) – Straub/Huillet’s mysteriously perfect meeting of form and content, infused with the dignity of human endeavour

 

The Son of Joseph (2016) – Green deploys his uniquely-honed aesthetic strategies to perhaps their loveliest, warmest and funniest ends 

 

The Savage Innocents (1960) – Ray’s polar drama has an authentic core, but it’s often barely visible through the glaring, grating weaknesses

 

La nuit de Varennes (1982) – Scola’s expansively-conceived, pedagogically-minded French Revolution mash-up is a great, garrulous ride

 

The Long Good Friday (1979) – Mackenzie’s in-the-zone gangster drama piles strength upon strength, while overstating its thematic case a bit

 

High Flying Bird (2019) – Soderbergh gives the film a steely, probing intelligence, but it remains overly artificial and under-involving

 

Destiny (1921) – Lang’s mythology- & magic-heavy tale is most impactful now when anticipating later, more concentrated Langian conspiracies

 

Streamers (1983) – Altman’s incisive Rabe adaptation slices into the inherently unstable, desire-suppressing theatre of the military

 

Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978) – Blier’s relentlessly transgression-laden comedy feels at once fully achieved and largely affectless

 

First Reformed (2018) – Schrader’s agonized drama is at once significantly overstated, even crass, and yet rather magnificently rendered

 

Queimada! (1969) – Pontecorvo’s vivid drama of revolution and colonial meddling is problematic and bumpy, but always grandly provocative

 

Freeway (1996) – mythic echoes count for little in Bright’s enjoyably disreputable B-movie, enlivened by Witherspoon in her best ever mode

 

Razzia sur la chnouf (1955) – Decoin’s atmospheric drug-trade expose teems with character & incident, tersely anchored by the imposing Gabin

 

Lucky (2017) – Lynch constructs a fine late showcase for Stanton, lightly seasoned with philosophical investigations & existential mysteries

 

Viaggio con Anita (1979) – Monicelli’s murky, often attitudinally ugly comedy lurches arbitrarily along, wasting a displaced Hawn

 

Prince of the City (1981) – Lumet’s exactingly subtle study slowly exposes its initial exultation as an ethically untethered illusion

 

A Mother Should be Loved (1934) – even in incomplete surviving form, Ozu’s silent film is emotionally compelling and visually eloquent

 

Tully (2018) – Reitman and Cody’s study of motherhood is well-observed and empathetic and also utterly misconceived, in roughly equal parts

 

L’emmerdeur (1973) – Molinaro doesn’t offer much beyond briskness and a quirky casting pairing, but it still beats Wilder’s leaden remake

 

Funny Ha Ha (2002) – Bujalski perfectly channels a generation’s faltering adulthood, with the film’s modest means reflecting its milieu

 

Love in the City (1953) – a valuably auteur-heavy docu-fiction compilation, much more socially & existentially bleak than the title suggests

 

Submergence (2017) – Wenders’ strained narrative mostly fails to productively interrogate or stimulate, even less to create cinematic poetry

 

The Rite (1969) – Bergman’s study of art and authority in conflict is somewhat overstated and grotesque, and yet comprehensively stunning

 

The Falcon and the Snowman (1985) – Schlesinger’s spy drama is smoothly executed, but rather too politically and emotionally lightweight

 

Toute une vie (1974) – Lelouch’s romantic epic expands outward with hypnotically vast ambition, at the cost of a recurring emptiness

 

The Dressmaker (2015) – a borderline-gratingly eccentric patchwork, consistently well-stitched by Moorhouse, but with skin-deep impact

 

De Mayerling a Sarajevo (1940) – an unusual Ophuls work in its mesh of ominous political specificity and elegantly timeless romanticism

 

Barton Fink (1991) – the Coens’ painstaking, gusto-infused, yet largely affectless vision of Hollywood as (at least) existential purgatory

 

Une histoire simple (1978) – Sautet’s empathetic, anxiety-attuned study is appealing, but less striking than his propulsive genre work

 

The Rider (2017) – Zhao’s gloriously considered and observed film engages uniquely with damaged masculinity and compromised sense of purpose

 

Le cave se rebiffe (1961) – Grainger’s counterfeiter drama, entirely typical of late Gabin, plays pretty well if hardly too distinctively

 

Sophie’s Choice (1982) – despite its “classic” elements, Pakula’s reverent but mis-weighted adaptation is among his less impressive films

 

Le notti di Cabiria (1957) – for all its heavy pathos, one willingly yields by now to the contours of Fellini’s film as those of a classic

 

Ready Player One (2018) – Spielberg notionally asserts the primacy of reality, while rejecting it with dazzlingly kinetic repetitiveness

 

Sextette (1977) – an astounding concoction, hardly lacking in bizarro interest, “directed” by Hughes with a sense of despairing hopelessness

 

And Life Goes On (1992) – Kiarostami’s journey through extreme human resilience exemplifies his masterly, expansively interrogative method

 

Bed of Roses (1933) – La Cava’s girls-on-the-make comedy packs plenty of plot, but gets flatter and less snappy as the girls get gooder

 

Western (2017) – Grisebach’s well-observed study of cross-cultural aspirations and realities, richly lodged in the folds of modern Europe

 

The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977) – Taylor’s no-dawdling adaptation doesn’t have much individuality, nor much relish for the sheer weirdness

 

A Short Film About Killing (1988) – a promise chillingly kept: Kieslowski achieves a multi-faceted, if knowingly circumscribed perfection

 

Oh…Rosalinda!! (1955) – for all its formal excellence, Powell and Pressburger’s late musical too often feels rather distant and academic

 

Bergman Island (2004) – Nyrerod’s satisfyingly frank, often poignant (if highly selective) portrait of a filmic lion in isolated winter

 

Guns of the Trees (1961) – Mekas’ incompletely realized (as acknowledged) debut is nonetheless productively strange, whimsical and engaged

 

Tabu (2012) – Gomes’ singularly surprising film, in which classical cinematic dream-making  emerges from artful contemporary complexity

 

Cuba (1979) – Lester’s romance-infused drama veers from knowing classicism into uninvolving artificiality, despite many interesting elements

 

The Emperor of Peru (1982) – a pretty enjoyable kid-friendly fantasy, especially when Arrabal brings the subdued peculiarity to the fore

 

Sergeant York (1941) – among the least Hawksian and most conventionally emotion-stoking of Hawks films, but not entirely unmoving

 

Let the Girls Play (2018) – Hallard’s breezy film prioritizes bright & easy narrative, at the cost of much deeper engagement or illumination

 

Sunday too Far Away (1975) – Hannam’s study of the sheep-shearing life is modest in most respects, but always anthropologically interesting

 

Le pont des arts (2004) – Green’s beautiful expression of art’s transcendent, connective possibilities, and the associated earthly threats

 

Cool Hand Luke (1967) – the rebellion in Rosenberg’s drama is mainly skin-deep, albeit very charismatic, glisteningly photographed skin

 

A Useful Life (2010) – Veiroj’s study of enforced transition is nicely done throughout, with particular resonance for aging cineastes (hi!)

 

To Catch a Thief (1955) – Hitchcock’s mostly shallow distraction often pushes scenic sophistication into the realm of pure abstraction

 

Class Relations (1984) – Straub/Huillet’s stark vision of a serially enmeshing, subjugating America is among their most powerful works

 

Get Carter (1971) – Hodges’ gangster classic is a hard-to-look-away negotiation between cold-eyed genre swagger and locally-rooted grit

 

La pelicula infinita (2018) – Listorti’s compilation taps into what might be cinema’s secret dream, of becoming pure Lynchian conspiracy

 

Swiss Miss (1938) – worth it for Laurel, Hardy, the St. Bernard and the piano, despite the dull setting and stodgy wraparound material

 

Benny’s Video (1992) – Haneke’s ambiguous fable of technology-fueled deterioration is effective but limited as both diagnosis and prophecy

 

The Hot Rock (1972) – Yates’ film may be the epitome of the undemandingly creative, pleasantly acted, un-bothersomely weightless caper flick

 

The Man from Nowhere (2010) – Lee’s pitting of enigmatic protagonist against the sleazy world is muscularly stylish, but mostly unmoving

 

Satan in High Heels (1962) – Intrator’s melodrama spins its wheels for much of the time, seldom living up to the title’s sleazy promise

 

True Stories (1986) – Byrne’s eye-filling journey through puzzlin’ modern-day evidence and fancy is one of the great cinematic one-offs

 

Wild Strawberries (1957) – among Bergman’s most classically impeccable, all-seeing studies, less disquieting than his later savage peaks

 

You Were Never Really Here (2017) – Ramsay’s striking but minor film infuses low-grade melodrama with dark texture & traumatic implication

 

Un papillon sur l’epaule (1978) – Deray’s enjoyable journey of conspiracy-tinged bemusement, toward an arrival point of limited clarity

 

Bottle Rocket (1996) – Anderson’s uncannily out-of-the-box-Andersonian debut is a happy string of variously peculiar, absurd & sweet notions

 

Antoine et Antoinette (1947) – Becker impeccably ventilates his sweetly simple narrative with a bustling wealth of flavorful observation

 

Isle of Dogs (2018) – eccentric material even for Anderson, laying on layers of oddity and separation with happy, beguiling hermeticism

 

The Ear (1970) – Kachyna’s fluently uneasy exploration of a toxic marriage, backgrounded by pervasive state-driven insecurity & infiltration

 

See You in the Morning (1989) – Pakula’s interesting but rather too aridly analytical exploration of modern familial infrastructure

 

The Sicilian Clan (1969) – given the great trio of stars, it’s a pity Verneuil’s crime epic isn’t more tonally and thematically striking

 

Darkest Hour (2017) – it feels like such overly- polished & -orchestrated slabs of history should have run their course, but apparently not

 

Archimede, le clochard (1959) – hardly a demanding work, but lifted by its verbal ornateness and by Grangier’s loose, unfussy handling

 

Babylon (1980) – Rosso’s electrifying portrait of community, in all its exuberant complexity, transcendent aspiration and besieged reality

 

Max et les ferrailleurs (1971) – Sautet’s drama drives home its strong premise, within a rich observance of contrasting tones & moralities

 

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018) – the Coens’ beautifully-judged, existentially-charged journey along the Western-genre spectrum of doom

 

The President (1919) – Dreyer’s penetrating drama of transgression and guilt, well-attuned to recurring patriarchal arrogance and injustice

 

Career Girls (1997) – simple and yet increasingly expansive, even mystical, Leigh enjoyably explores the complicated energies of friendship

 

Le voleur de crimes (1969) – Trintignant’s tale of proud self-obliteration is a bit too slight, for all its sustained eccentric intensity

 

Disobedience (2017) – Lelio appears almost eerily attuned to the material & milieu, creating a consistently, observantly subtle experience

 

Car Wash (1976) – even when embracing dumbness, Schultz’s comedy has winning interactions and a persistent feeling for societal currents

 

L’infant de l’hiver (1989) – early but quite assured Assayas work shows his feeling for emotional structures, if not yet fully inhabited

 

The Lost Weekend (1945) – Wilder’s literately wrenching drama is hardly uninteresting, but now seems over-emphatic in many respects

 

The Dreamed Path (2016) – Beckermann contrasts conversations between generations, crafting an alluring sense of communion across them

 

Unman, Wittering & Zigo (1971) – Mackenzie’s drama of British public school malevolence: no If, but effective on its own off-putting terms

 

Deep Crimson (1996) – Ripstein gives the macabre story an effective if limited air of twisted vulnerability and lurking deep-black comedy

 

A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) – Chaplin’s last film is hardly a success, but may be grudgingly admired for its stubborn artificiality

 

Stray Dogs (2013) – Tsai’s film is persistently, hauntingly touching and connective, despite its unique, withholding strangeness 

 

China Gate (1957) – Fuller’s artifice-transcending Apocalypse Now-like quest digs deeply & rawly into racial prejudice & political ambiguity

 

L’oeuvre au noir (1988) – Delvaux’s Inquisition-era drama leavens its prevailing studious gravity with idiosyncratic inquiry & observation

 

The Fury (1978) – the film bursts with sensational De Palma sequences, while ultimately seeming perplexingly unworthy of his attention

 

Black Tide (2018) – Zonka’s no-one-is-innocent police drama is pretty effective, despite its ample doses of hamminess and overstatement

 

The Music Box (1932) – a reliable delight for Stan and Ollie’s beautifully textured interplay, although this isn’t its richest expression

 

Farewell, Babylon! (1993) – out of not that much, Arrabal spins a mostly diverting, happily eccentric quasi-narrative (and time capsule)

 

Thank God it’s Friday (1978) – Klane’s sanitized, inoffensive diversion offers prototypical character antics and credits-to-credits disco

 

Visages villages (2017) – Varda and JR’s enchanting, sweetly poignant journey overflows with productive, respectful engagement and invention

 

House on Bare Mountain (1962) – Frost brings some real zest to his nudie-centric narrative, but it’s unfortunately only minimally infectious

 

Too Early/Too Late (1982) – Straub/Huillet’s impeccably measured indictment of capitalism’s crushing of natural dignity, agency and beauty

 

Stalag 17 (1953) – Wilder’s blend of dark drama and dumb comedy is well-paced and -calculated rather to the point of alienating coldness

 

Au poste! (2018) – Dupieux’s amiably goofy police-interrogation comedy playfully and unpredictably interrogates its own form and content

 

The Skin Game (1931) – a dated but still quite biting tale of conflicting values and prejudices, lifted by the odd Hitchcockian flourish

 

Mala noche (1986) – Van Sant’s first feature is perhaps still his most personally expressed, emotionally frank & sociologically interesting

 

Les naufragés de l'île de la Tortue (1976) – Rozier’s singular comedy celebrates openness to chance and discovery, in life and (and as) art

 

The Post (2017) – a softly conventional treatment of the material by any measure, but Spielberg certainly runs a polished, assured show

 

Paw (1959) – Henning-Jensen’s tale of a “boy of two worlds” is scenically pleasurable, while depending on simplistic cultural oppositions

 

Hammett (1982) – Wenders navigates fluidly within conventions and ambiguities, at once objectively distanced and seductively enmeshed

 

Profound Desires of the Gods (1968) – a compelling provocation, for all Imamura’s calculated drawing on primitivism and transgression

 

The 15:17 to Paris (2018) – Eastwood’s intriguingly experimental take on the material roots the heroism in extreme unadorned ordinariness

 

The Old Gun (1975) – Enrico discomfitingly steers from honorably anguished evocation of war to near exploitation-genre-type vengeance

 

Water (1985) – Clement’s cluttered colonial farce hits wanly at easy political targets, entirely ignoring the real tragedy of its premise

 

The Song of Home (1925) – Mizoguchi’s somewhat schematic and inevitably ragged early film already shows his deep feeling and individualism

 

Film Stars don’t die in Liverpool (2017) – McGuigan’s appealing but minor historical footnote lacks much sense of faded Hollywood glamour

 

Pravda (1970) – viewed at a time of brutally ascendant capitalism, the Vertov Group’s rather plaintive seriousness becomes reinvigorated

 

Fort Apache the Bronx (1981) – Petrie’s focus-shifting, episodically-ambitious cop drama ultimately lacks authorial strength and flavour

 

Days of Hate (1954) – Nilsson’s concise tale of an obsessed woman carries a pervasive oneiric quality, creating its own unsettling texture

 

Female Human Animal (2018) – Appignanesi constructs an absorbing, informatively provocative investigation, although not without missteps

 

Melodie en sous-sol (1963) – Verneuil’s unhurried handling & some nifty moves lift the caper mechanics, and then there’s also Delon & Gabin

 

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989) – Robinson’s very patchy & unsatisfactory film does retain shards of eloquence & conceptual grandeur

 

Le maître-nageur (1979) – Trintignant’s weirdo satire is dotted with piercing moments, within an uncompromisingly whimsical overall scheme

 

Phantom Thread (2017) – Anderson thrillingly evokes a hermetic creative world, in all its nuanced glory and seeping underlying instability

 

Goupi mains rouges (1943) – Becker’s bustling story of familial conflicts, evidencing all his supple mastery with character and incident

 

Permanent Vacation (1980) – a lonely study, modest in scope and in resources, but satisfactorily equipped with emerging Jarmuschian attitude

 

Le secret (1974) – Enrico’s intriguingly enigmatic if not ultimately too illuminating drama, drawing deeply on charismatic star presence

 

22 July (2018) – Greengrass’ reverent recreation is as solid as expected, but tends toward over-conventionality in its tone and focus

 

La casa del angel (1957) – Nilsson’s atmospheric study of emerging sexuality, beautifully poised between innocence, repression and menace

 

Heathers (1988) – Lehmann’s multi-kind-of-iconic, black-as-death-and-then-some, parody-transcending comedy still surprises and impresses

 

Classe tous risques (1960) – Sautet puts across the packed narrative with the optimum meeting of pacey toughness and immersed sensitivity

 

Molly’s Game (2017) – Sorkin’s mannered skill verges by now on grating self-parody, generating a pointless, uninterestingly proficient film

 

Craig’s Wife (1936) – Arzner’s condensed drama of a woman’s unraveling, filled with precise observation and wide-reaching social implication

 

Cure (1997) – with quietly creeping mastery, Kurosawa extends his terrific genre premise into broader implication and destabilization

 

The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) – Alda and Schatzberg’s genteel calibrations and contrasts go down too soothingly to matter much now

 

Amour fou (2014) – Hausner transfixingly crafts a highly-poised, allusive reflection on freedom and its personal and societal ambiguities

 

Shadows (1959) – from the start, Cassavetes was the greatest & coolest of behavioral choreographers & investigators, also of shit disturbers

 

A Short Film about Love (1988) – a shivery prison of a film, but conceived and executed by Kieslowski with almost breathtaking exactitude

 

Charlie Bubbles (1968) – Finney’s one film as director is both formally striking and pensively authentic, if ultimately overly elusive

 

Roma (2018) – Cuaron’s grandly (almost disquietingly) well-achieved evocation, marked by shimmering observation and stunning set-pieces

 

Renaldo and Clara (1978) – Dylan wraps his Rolling Thunder tour record in wryly messy observation and wistfully eccentric playacting

 

Alexandria Again and Forever (1989) – Chahine’s full-blooded, politically charged outburst, overwhelmed by endless self-mythologizing

 

Cops (1922) – Keaton and Cline’s priceless short ranks among the most fluently and elegantly unbroken twenty minutes of comedy on film

 

120 battements par minute (2017) – Campillo’s essential, perfectly-calibrated memoir of Act Up - Paris is galvanizing and heartbreaking

 

The Late Show (1977) – the (forced) Carney/Tomlin teaming only partially elevates the prevailing ordinariness of Benton’s comedic film noir

 

Palermo Shooting (2008) – Wenders’ citing of Bergman & Antonioni only confirms his own film’s gimmicky, if proficiently explored, hollowness

 

Dementia (1955) – Parker’s sinisterly sleazy vision is a striking, if ultimately rather hollow assembly of troubled surfaces and notions

 

Senoritas (2013) – Rodriguez’s observation of a young woman balances intimacy & isolation, connectivity & anomie, revelation & unknowability

 

Kaleidoscope (1966) – Smight’s low-impact caper illustrates Beatty’s oddly recurring career-long affinity to flat, undemanding material

 

La balance (1982) – Swaim’s multi-faceted crime drama is skillful but not really genre-defying, rendering its stature rather mysterious

 

The Wrath of God (1972) – Nelson’s rambunctious movie is mostly notions and affectations, devoid of any Peckinpah-like coalescing spirit

 

A Fantastic Woman (2017) – a few grace notes aside, Lelio’s film draws its strength from sympathetic dignity rather than radicalism

 

The Flying Deuces (1939) – an enjoyably rickety Laurel and Hardy feature, with a peculiarly (ultimately nuttily) morbid underlying streak

 

The Voice of the Moon (1990) – Fellini’s last film doesn’t lack for characteristic flourishes, but seldom fully galvanizes or inspires

 

Bloodbrothers (1978) – Mulligan doesn’t seem ideally attuned to the boisterous material, although it’s dotted with searching moments

 

Patience (after Sebald) (2012) – Gee’s superbly-crafted essay film is at once dramatization, elucidation, extrapolation and pilgrimage

 

Little Peach (1958) – Naruse immerses himself deeply, often rawly, into the grind of marriage; as a woman’s choice, and as her subjugation

 

Finders Keepers (1984) – Lester’s breathless comedy is a relative marvel of pacing and organization, but one of pretty hollow consequence

 

Du rififi a Paname (1966) – given the raw elements (Gabin vs Raft!), de La Patelliere’s international crime mishmash is pretty underwhelming

 

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017) – McDonagh’s largely grotesque contrivance should have been shunned more than lauded

 

Du cote d’Orouet (1971) – beneath its easy pleasures, Rozier’s understated film explores under-examined lives & the institution of leisure

 

Scrubbers (1982) – Zetterling’s raucously humane study of female confinement, with an almost Kubrickian attunement to visionary strangeness

 

La petite Lise (1930) – Gremillon’s drama is suffused in fatalistic brooding, with sequences of intense, almost disembodied physicality

 

Unsane (2018) – for all Soderbergh’s practiced intensity, the movie’s ultimate impact doesn’t much transcend that of standard fraught peril

 

Foxtrot (1976) – Ripstein’s sputtering tale of class-fueled desert island breakdown is underpowered both as drama and as wartime allegory

 

Southern Comfort (1981) – at the engaged peak of his terse powers, Hill elevates a nastily conceived narrative to near-classic status

 

Ten to sen (1958) – apparently based on classic detective material, but Kobayashi’s extremely perfunctory handling hardly brings that out

 

The Shape of Water (2017) – del Toro’s immaculately-textured film is no doubt an immediate classic, and yet a barely relevant trifle

 

The Girl with a Pistol (1968) – Monicelli’s rather messy Vitti-goes-to-Britain movie teems with time-capsule, culture-clash interest

 

The Coca-Cola Kid (1985) – Makavejev’s strangely suppressed film barely hits as satire, maybe all the better to evoke dark corporate gravity

 

The Scientific Cardplayer (1972) – an enjoyably inventive, bitterly class-conscious parable, despite Comencini’s constraints as a stylist

 

The Other Side of the Wind (2018) – a thrilling, teeming Welles reclamation, at once interrogatingly present and receding into unknowability

 

Lo squadron bianco (1936) – Genina’s crisp but memorably visualized drama of self-exile and redemption belongs in the canon of desert movies

 

Bad Timing (1980) – probably not Roeg’s most pleasurable film, but among his most fearlessly transgressive, destabilizing and accusatory

 

Man on the Roof (1976) – Widerberg grounds his memorable climactic set-piece in a well-stewed portrait of police force contrasts & tensions

 

Downsizing (2017) – Payne’s ambitious film has many incremental strengths, none of which mitigate against a dissipated overall impact

 

La tete contre les murs (1959) – with appalled restraint, Franju probes the disquietingly exploitable morality of mental hospitalization

 

Withnail & I (1987) – Robinson’s enduringly funny comedic memoir, anchored by the priceless Grant, shot through with existential panic

 

The Great Silence (1968) – Corbucci’s strikingly wintery western pitilessly depicts the extinction of all goodness under a twisted law

 

Red Sparrow (2018) – Lawrence maintains an impersonal & unmoving efficiency, obliviously punctuated with regular nastiness & exploitation

 

La califfa (1970) – Bevilacqua suffuses his film in jaggedly politicized provocations and oppositions, to rather unclear ultimate ends

 

In the Line of Fire (1993) – Petersen’s highly proficient, characterless thriller stands at the very top rank of third-tier Eastwood films

 

L’auberge rouge (1923) – Epstein is among the most ominously fascinated, and visually and psychologically engaging, of silent directors

 

Battle of the Sexes (2017) – King’s personal & political history might deserve a movie less suffused in Hollywoodian slickness & calculation

 

Der Fall (1972) – you’ll seldom see a detective film that suppresses genre swagger as thoroughly as does Bruh’s absorbingly morose study

 

Modern Problems (1981) – Shapiro’s laughlessly scattershot telekinesis-themed comedy is poorly conceived and even more wretchedly executed

 

Signori & signori (1966) – Germi’s high-energy farce traffics ruthlessly in chronic sexual compulsion & its surrounding societal hypocrisies

 

A Field in England (2013) – Wheatley’s strange and remarkable creation, earthily and unearthily celebratory while seeped in ominous stasis

 

The Lady of Musashino (1951) – Mizoguchi’s tenderly clear-eyed study of a refined tradition eroded by urbanization, by modern moralities

 

Harlequin (1980) – Wincer’s drama steadily descends into lofty supernatural grab-bag, with unconvincing political/allegorical seasoning

 

Cesar and Rosalie (1972) – …and David, as Sautet’s well-played love triangle takes on more structurally and emotionally radical undertones

 

Marjorie Prime (2017) – Almereyda’s superbly-crafted, implication-heavy exploration of the evolving malleability of identity and memory

 

The Plough and the Stars (1936) – a concentrated study in Ford’s ruefully sentimental, gratingly celebratory, helplessly tribal Irishness

 

On ne meurt que deux fois (1985) – Deray’s investigation has an off-kilter, iconic Rampling-charged appeal, when not seeming overly murky

 

California Split (1974) – on repeat viewings, Altman’s texturally absorbing gambling study feels defined primarily by its ultimate emptiness

 

Quand on a 17 ans (2016) – Techine’s fine study of turbulent teenage attraction, richly rooted in its environment, in behavioural mysteries

 

The Killing (1956) – Kubrick’s first great filmic enigma, layering exacting detail over pervasive (if not yet cosmic) existential absence

 

Car Cemetery (1983) – Arrabal’s punky/kinky post-apocalyptic fantasia feels as much constrained as inspired by its Biblical parallels

 

The Illustrated Man (1969) – Smight’s Bradbury adaptation is consistently portentous, unenjoyably acted, and aggressively meaningless

 

Un beau soleil interieur (2017) – yet another captivating Denis masterpiece, shimmering with structural and observational delicacies

 

Comes a Horseman (1978) – an unusual setting for Pakula, but its thematic links to his greatest works gradually come into satisfying focus

 

Les uns et les autres (1981) – as Lelouch’s epic, performance-heavy spectacle expands toward greatness, its core feels smaller and emptier

 

The Paleface (1922) – Keaton’s film fascinates as performance and even as existential mystery, even as it now offends in many other respects

 

Happy as Lazzarro (2018) – at once intensely observed and serenely imagined, Rohrwacher’s graceful vision is perhaps improbably persuasive

 

Freebie and the Bean (1974) – amid all the goofy excess, Rush’s more intimately off-kilter sensibility shows through pretty regularly

 

Theories des ensembles (1990) – a delightful mini-Marker, as simple as a bedtime story, yet deeply technologically & philosophically engaged

 

Dishonored (1931) – Sternberg’s sensationally atmospheric showcase for Dietrich, at her most seductively amused and reality-bending

 

Sleeping Sickness (2011) – Kohler’s fascinatingly measured observations encompass a bracing range of cultural and political complexity

 

Gypsy (1962) – an adequate record of potentially sensational material, only shallowly tapped by LeRoy, and with imperfect lead casting

 

Mille milliards de dollars (1982) – Verneuil’s investigation of malign corporate power remains relevant, despite its suboptimal execution

 

Hustle (1975) – Aldrich’s stark, rather incompletely-realized drama is a melancholy channeling of its period’s confusions & contradictions

 

9 doigts (2017) – Ossang’s punkish spinning of myth and genre sustains a handsomely intense artificiality, but never really galvanizes

 

The Reckless Moment (1949) – Ophuls’ fascinating incursion of noir-ish menace into superficially perfect (but confining) domesticity

 

La belle noiseuse (1991) – Rivette’s film about a painting yields some of his most exquisitely realized ambiguities and complexities

 

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) – Pollack’s film always feels a little too removed from the fatigue & stench & ultimate hopelessness

 

Francofonia (2015) – Sokurov’s heavily-executed blend of recreation, history and reflection informs, but only intermittently stimulates

 

Saint Jack (1979) – one of Bogdanovich’s best films, navigated with understated skill, and great facility with character and atmosphere

 

Un coeur en hiver (1989) – Sautet’s study of emotional distance is exquisitely calibrated, but ranks below his more connective work

 

Sons of the Desert (1933) – prime Laurel & Hardy, the spousal dynamic adding a deliriously weird subtext to their eternal codependency

 

The Land of Steady Habits (2018) – probably Holofcener’s flattest & least resonant work, albeit that might kind of be its sociological point

 

Edouard et Caroline (1951) – Becker’s beautiful little relationship study, marked by the most delicate visual and emotional calibration

 

Micki & Maude (1984) – a comedy from just past the end of Edwards’ great period, always enjoyably proficient but only sporadically inspired

 

The Stranger within a Woman (1966) – Naruse, at his engrossing bleakest, introduces an extreme rupture into a familiar domestic structure

 

Outside In (2017) – as in much of Shelton’s work, the carefully sensitive observation ultimately yields a limited lasting consequence

 

Dorian Gray (1970) – interesting less for the narrative updating than for Dallamano’s committed channeling of period style and decadence

 

Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore (1996) – Jacobson’s likeably rough-edged film infuses lurking darkness into sex-positive collegiality

 

Six et demi onze (1927) – Epstein’s doomed romance is structurally & visually fascinating, regarding photography both as marvel & threat

 

Black Panther (2018) –  Coogler’s cinematic exuberance and sharply-honed contemporary instincts largely surmount the conventional aspects

 

Anna (1967) – Koralnik’s love letter to Karina is a rather dreamily eccentric treat, a closer relative to long-form music video than to Demy

 

Sea of Love (1989) – Becker’s serial killer drama is hardly memorable as narrative, but has pretty strong writerly and actorly texture

 

El sopar (1974) – Portabella’s alert witnessing of lives forged by resistance, allowing neither easy articulation nor clear arrival point

 

Call me by your Name (2017) – Guadagnino’s aspirational vision of love and pain is aesthetically impressive, if more as statue than flesh

 

Le dos au mur (1958) – Molinaro’s neatly-plotted adultery and blackmail drama maintains interest despite its overly passionless execution

 

Mr. Jealousy (1997) – Baumbach’s identity-in-formation early work is too artificially & repressively conceived, but goes down easily enough

 

Three Daughters (1961) – Ray’s rather unwieldy trilogy: two sensitively rendered if limited vignettes bracketing an unremarkable ghost story

 

The Stairs (2016) – Gibson’s study of middle-aged addiction in Toronto is a humane act of witness-bearing, devoid of false certainties

 

Madame Rosa (1977) – Mizrahi’s film is certainly more morally provocative and unsentimental than it sounds in outline, if calculatingly so

 

Willie and Phil (1980) – Mazursky’s over-affable take-off on Jules et Jim extends tolerant pleasantness to the point of near-affectlessness

 

Un nomme La Rocca (1961) – Becker and Belmondo allow the rather perplexingly shifting narrative a quasi-Melvillian stylistic coherence

 

All the Money in the World (2017) – Scott’s monotonous charting of easy oppositions is as handsome and under-invested as all his late work

 

La spiaggia (1954) – Lattuada’s summer resort melodrama becomes increasingly sharp in its social criticism, embodied in a distinctive ending

 

Scenes from the Life of Andy Warhol (1990) – Mekas’ deeply-lived personal memorial doesn’t deny the viewer a propulsive voyeuristic thrill

 

Jacob the Liar (1974) – Beyer’s triflingly empathetic fable offers trite foreground interest at the cost of an obscured ultimate horror

 

Hello Destroyer (2016) – Funk’s sad character study is also a persuasive indictment of a rampant hypocrisy at the heart of Canadian culture

 

An American Romance (1944) – Vidor’s grand hymn to exceptionalism eschews subtlety in favour of surrender-inducing physicality & incident

 

Beau pere (1981) – Blier’s transgressive love story stays on the right side of complete ickiness, with Dewaere an empathetic focal point

 

Jack of Diamonds (1967) – Taylor’s slick caper delivers strictly generic distractions, notwithstanding its unctuously-treated “guest stars”

 

Madame Hyde (2017) – Bozon puts the worn-out concept to surprisingly stimulating use, as a renewal of personal and pedagogic communication

 

The Medusa Touch (1978) – Gold’s smart handling of the melodrama allows the film an improbable degree of grounded, widely-indicting power

 

L’Anglaise et le duc (2001) – a fine extension of Rohmer’s oeuvre, stimulating both as naturalistic recreation and historical interrogation

 

Libeled Lady (1936) – Conway’s pacey screwball comedy is a confident delight, if a bit more mechanical and skin-deep than the genre’s highs

 

Boro in the Box (2011) – Mandico’s deliciously iconoclastic short film pays Borowczyk the most liberated yet loving tribute imaginable

 

The Jokers (1967) – Winner’s appealingly-conceived, happily thrown-together caper is certainly more fun than his later wearisome cinema

 

The Last Metro (1980) – Truffaut’s film is consistently and eventfully engaging, at the cost of greater historical bite or evocative power

 

Piranha (1978) – Dante’s early mayhem-fest is zippily written and zestily executed, with nicely judged infusions of political resonance

 

Voyage a travers le cinema francais (2016) – completely irresistible of course, curated by Tavernier with delightful, frank individuality

 

Lured (1947) – Sirk’s enjoyably busy, focus-shifting thriller, enlivened by its steady critique of woman as societal bait and decoration

 

Orson Welles: One Man Band (1995) – Silovic’s mesmerizing assembly properly celebrates Welles’ restless, often joyous creative radicalism

 

Midnight Lace (1960) – Miller’s suspense film has an enjoyably Hitchcockian surface & structure, less so the underlying acuity & intensity

 

Blind Massage (2014) – Lou’s informative, often-surprising portrait of an alternative community spans sensitivity, sensuality and turbulence

 

Funny Lady (1975) – leaving aside a few tunes and the easy nostalgia, Ross turns in a mostly dreary, going-through-the-motions sequel

 

Quelques jours avec moi (1988) – Sautet steers his eccentric narrative toward a quirkily engaging emphasis on connection and acceptance

 

County Hospital (1932) – if only for the “hard-boiled eggs and nuts,” a solid core element of the indelible Laurel and Hardy mythology

 

Mother! (2017) – Aronofsky’s tritely magnificent expression of monstrous creativity works best when in blackly satiric, discomfiting mode

 

Le Marie du port (1950) – Carne’s polished attentiveness to messy motivations and behaviour elevates an otherwise minor if eventful romance

 

Bad Lieutenant (1992) – Ferrara and Keitel’s absolute tour de force in absurd revelation, confounding one’s rational judgment and taste

 

Up to his Ears (1965) – despite de Broca’s ravishing set-pieces and backdrops, the film’s thematic weightlessness tips into insipidity

 

Werewolf (2016) – McKenzie’s hauntingly close, sparse study of addiction both as deprivation and as near-wondrous, if doomed, fulfilment

 

Nea (1976) – Kaplan’s lively “young Emmanuelle” story acts out the classic ambiguities of female-desire centric, female-directed cinema

 

Street of No Return (1989) – Fuller’s displaced but largely effective last film lands some old-style punches, under an often peculiar gloss

 

Aerograd (1935) – Dovzhenko fulfils propagandistic stipulations while (more interestingly) crafting a darkly intimate cultural study

 

I, Tonya (2017) – Gillespie’s tiresomely over-active movie is at best ineffectual & anthropologically shallow, at its worst barely tolerable

 

I fidanzati (1963) – notable for Olmi’s distinctive placement of romantic realization within almost peerless social & industrial observation

 

The Music of Chance (1993) – Haas is well attuned to the mysterious alternative-paradigm sort-of-coherence of the Austerian tone and method

 

L’invitation (1973) – Goretta skillfully crafts the characters and group dynamics, but the film seldom feels notably challenging or profound

 

For the Plasma (2014) – Bingham/Molzam craft a sparsely alluring, if surely under-developed, negotiation between specificity & transcendence

 

Ajatrik (1958) – Ghatak invests his episodic tale of a poor-man-and-his-car with consistently raw, widely observant emotion and power

 

Fever Pitch (1985) – Brooks’ disparaged drama provides strong doses of troubled observation & reportorial snap, its narrative excesses aside

 

Funeral Parade of Roses (1969) – Matsumoto’s transgender-centered drama ranges from the representationally striking to the trite and lurid

 

Lady Bird (2017) – Gerwig’s debut exhibits wonderful deftness, counterpointed by a warm, wise feeling for frustrations and anxieties

 

The Deadly Trap (1971) – Clement’s faltering grafting of Gaslight-type anxiety narrative onto vague mass-conspiracy drama, or vice versa

 

Nighthawks (1981) – Malmuth’s New York terrorism drama does OK for pacy spectacle but lacks much context (especially in post 9/11 hindsight)

 

Paradis perdu (1940) – Gance’s multi-generational story of love and loss is well-told on its own too-often tritely sentimental terms

 

Miss Sloane (2016) – Madden’s tiresome lobbyist drama feels as overly polished and inauthentically calculating as its political targets

 

Le tigre aime la chair fraiche (1964) – Chabrol handles the shenanigans with some style and deadpan wit, although to inherently limited ends

 

Repo Man (1984) – Cox’s classic mash-up retains a weirdly indelible stylistic and attitudinal coherence, even as the fun rapidly wears thin

 

Un borghese piccolo piccolo (1977) – Monicelli slyly takes a seeming “average man” satire in a rather startlingly subversive direction

 

Roman J. Israel, Esq. (2017) – Gilroy’s diverting character study is impressively thoughtful, but narratively rather over-extended

 

A Girl in Every Port (1928) – a prototypically Hawksian dynamic makes for solid formative viewing, spiced & strangified by the iconic Brooks

 

The Double Life of Veronique (1991) – Kieslowski’s existential mystery, both propelled & (of course) restricted by its alluring calibrations

 

The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) – a largely bland caper, absent Jewison’s meshing of relentless materialism with stylistic over-consumption

 

Neighboring Sounds (2012) – Filho’s geographically-specific life study is masterfully constructed, vibrantly observed, sociologically rich

 

Crazy Mama (1975) – Demme’s good humour and flair with wacky group dynamics can only do so much to elevate the thin, constrained material

 

Maine Ocean (1986) – Rozier’s unbound narrative encompasses everything from communal goofiness to virtually end-of-the-world-type solitude

 

You’ll Never Get Rich (1941) – Lanfield’s Astaire-Hayworth match-up goes too light on song and dance, too heavy on turgid complications

 

The Strange Little Cat (2013) – with composed idiosyncrasy, Zurcher charts the mundanity, mystery and latent horror of family interactions

 

The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969) – the peculiar blend of whimsy and commentary only fitfully flourishes under Forbes’ overwhelmed direction

 

Cache (2005) – Haneke’s brilliantly articulated film carries an immense implicative scope, leaving almost no points of certainty or comfort

 

The Main Event (1979) – any potential for a nicely crackling face-off is squandered by substantial lack of punch, in all departments

 

Pieta (2012) – for all the film’s superficial diversions, Kim’s concepts and instincts seem mostly grotesque, contorted and deadening

 

The Fixer Uppers (1935) – an adequate but somewhat peculiarly-conceived Laurel and Hardy short, rather limiting their classic interplay

 

Garcon! (1983) – a relatively minor Sautet work, yet an utterly pleasurable, marvelously orchestrated anecdote of compromise and renewal

 

Coogan’s Bluff (1968) – Siegel’s mastery of space, attitude and pacing elevates the (now unfavourably dated) narrative’s easy oppositions

 

The Bridges of Sarajevo (2014) – a largely successful, if overly dutiful-feeling anthology, satisfyingly varied in style and perspective

 

The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972) – Johnson’s high-concept premise is offset by a vulnerable human core, to moderately diverting effect

 

Husbands and Lovers (1991) – Bolognini’s overly prettified tale of agonized polyamory is far better at exposing bodies than emotional truth

 

The Disaster Artist (2017) – Franco’s watchably breezy but unimportant quasi-tribute feels more like a borrowed ride than an actual one

 

La nuit de carrefour (1932) – Renoir’s early crime drama, fascinatingly rooted in the sensual and behavioural textures of shadowy lives

 

Looker (1981) – Crichton’s forward-looking thriller doesn’t lack for interesting concepts, nor sadly for uninteresting narrative & character

 

Sudden Rain (1956) – Naruse’s small-scale drama subtly charts perhaps-irresolvable familial and communal anxieties and discontentments

 

Keanu (2016) – enjoyable but thematically blunted Key and Peele romp has future Oscar-winning screenwriter all over it (uh, not really…)

 

Vice and Virtue (1963) – Vadim’s rather grotesque visual and narrative concepts do little to illuminate the morality of war, or of anything

 

Eureka (1983) – Roeg’s strange, mythically-infused tale of intertwined discovery and loss is as productively challenging as any of his works

 

Le parfum de la dame en noir (1931) – L’Herbier dispatches the somewhat creaky narrative with some panache, if minimal broader implication

 

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – despite any number of impressive & thoughtful concepts, Villeneuve’s film is more trudge than transporting vision

 

The Arrival of Joachim Stiller (1976) – Kumel’s winding tale of faith and influence is distinctly eccentric, but very shrewd and winning

 

Wolfen (1981) – Wadleigh’s genre picture generally feels rather distant and underinvolving, despite various points of broader resonance

 

Manon 70 (1968) – Aurel’s film provides rather too much easy enjoyment & prettiness to fully impress as an investigation of moral relativity

 

Their Finest (2016) – Scherfig’s quite stirring film articulately explores cinematic compromises while (unironically?) capitulating to them

 

A Woman’s Face (1938) – Molander’s enjoyable melodrama never transcends absurdity, skipping along on easy transitions and contrasts

 

Slaves of New York (1989) – the movie has its pleasures, but Ivory never feels sufficiently close to the milieu or its anxieties & attitudes

 

The Lion Hunters (1966) – Rouch’s hypnotically rich chronicle of the hunt, as respectful of its layered myths as of its meticulous realities

 

Detroit (2017) – Bigelow applies her visceral organizational skills to still-incendiary material, evoking a deep and righteous anger

 

Malj (1977) – Ilic’s ominously-styled short film is certainly one of the more singular expressions of survival and escape in cinema history

 

The Morning After (1986) – one of Lumet’s more low-impact dramas, embodying a missed opportunity to engage with Fonda’s shifting star image

 

Les plus belles escroqueries du monde (1964) – Godard’s closing segment subtly indicts the mostly undemanding pleasures that precede it

 

The Lost City of Z (2016) – Gray’s historical drama, rich with old-fashioned pioneering grandeur, feels at once unresolved and inevitable

 

Le rideau cramoisi (1953) – Astruc’s seductively enigmatic short story of desire would be the blackest of comedies, if pitched differently

 

Heist (2001) – it’s narratively clever of course, but also chilly and mechanical, suffused in Mamet’s writerly affectations and maneuvers

 

The Third Lover (1962) – a modest but effective study of envy and malign intervention, perfectly suited to Chabrol’s fascinated scrutiny

 

Dunkirk (2017) – Nolan’s formally impressive, immersive recreation transcends genre norms in many ways, remains limited by them in others

 

Imperative (1982) – Zanussi’s honorable but forced philosophical investigation ultimately just about overcomes its rather arid gravity

 

The Blot (1921) – Weber’s silent landmark remains immensely empathetic and intimately moving, shimmering with intertwined complexities

 

Things to Come (2016) – an absorbing, probing tapestry of life adjustments & passages, luminously woven by Hansen-Love & embodied by Huppert

 

Big Bad Mama (1974) – Carver’s loosely-driven period piece is brashly engaging, even if its main commitment is to redneck-brand titillation

 

Docteur Chance (1997) – Ossang’s road movie is a strangely beautiful artifice, placing doomed, pouting momentum over conventional coherence

 

Brief Ecstasy (1937) – Greville’s alert handling of stodgy melodrama, not least the (unresolved) emphasis on female intellectual fulfilment

 

In the Fade (2017) – Akin’s drama is mostly schematic & sensationalistic, relying heavily for any sense of coherence on Kruger’s conviction

 

The Drowning Pool (1975) – Rosenberg’s polished but no-big-deal detective flick almost seems weightily reflective by latter-day standards

 

Invitation au voyage (1982) – when not feeling forced, Del Monte’s transgressive pop-inflected odyssey sustains a darkly romantic charge

 

Bedtime Story (1964) – Levy’s confidently-motoring, savvily twisting artificiality, with Niven and Brando an abstractly empathetic tag team

 

The Unknown Girl (2016) – the Dardennes’ spartan but hauntingly acute investigation of the nature and toll of responsibility and redemption

 

Night Call Nurses (1972) – Kaplan’s lively exploitation picture actually is almost as preoccupied with trauma & activism as with titillation

 

Mahjong (1996) – Yang’s film teems with incident and stringent moral implication, but doesn’t cohere as pleasingly as his greatest works

 

The Fly (1958) – Neumann’s straight-faced absurdity benefits from its visual and vague thematic kinship to the period’s domestic melodramas

 

Happy End (2017) – Haneke’s utterly enveloping study of multi-faceted destabilization; of intertwining literal and figurative death wishes

 

The Toolbox Murders (1978) – Donnelly gets the highlights, if that’s what they are, out of the way early; the rest is mostly a blank

 

Veronika Voss (1982) – Fassbinder positions his Sunset Boulevard-like narrative as a window on cold-hearted cultural & historical transition

 

King & Country (1964) – Losey’s concentrated case study of wartime inhumanity is potently visualized, but narrow in its scope and impact

 

The Dreamed Path (2016) – a bit less satisfying than Schanelec’s previous work, despite its impeccable precision and alluring layerings

 

Show People (1928) – an early example of Hollywood’s self-absorption, conveyed by Vidor in his lightest, most happily celebratory vein

 

Nelly & Monsieur Arnaud (1995) – Sautet’s fine body of work ends on a delicately woven, immaculately restrained study of life transitions

 

The Eiger Sanction (1975) – Eastwood delivers on the material’s scenic potential, and doesn’t seem to aim to fire anything else out of it

 

Logan Lucky (2017) – Soderbergh’s well-made caper comedy doesn’t amount to much, despite its bedrock of cultural sympathy and attentiveness

 

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969) – Oshima’s astounding exercise in narrative rebellion, powered by a kind of aggressive semi-callowness

 

Labyrinth (1986) – Henson’s fantasy never cooks up much magic, but has the occasional striking element, and Bowie! (sure, not prime Bowie)

 

Lac aux dames (1934) – Allegret’s pleasant film delivers varied incident and (surprising) titillation more surely than emotional depth

 

Southside with You (2016) – Tanne doesn’t tap Linklater-type enchantment, but any Obama mythology/nostalgic longing is pretty irresistible

 

The Empty Canvas (1963) – Damiani’s tale of obsession and frustration provides plenty of interest, despite its overall aesthetic modesty

 

Stealing Beauty (1996) – Bertolucci’s Tuscan contrivance skirts insipidity, and yet his sensuous cinematic observation remains remarkable

 

La fievre monte a El Pao (1959) – Bunuel’s socially-conscious, somberly-rendered drama, underlain by moral compromise & twisted desire

 

Beatriz at Dinner (2017) – Arteta’s largely well-played if unsurprising clash of worldviews isn’t exactly a beacon of hope for progressives

 

The Woman in Blue (1973) – Deville ultimately steers an initially flimsy-seeming enigma into more intriguing, pensively reflective territory

 

The Hand (1981) – Stone does pretty well at giving events a fraught, varied texture (kinda like JFK!), but the upside is inherently limited

 

La pyramide humaine (1961) – Rouch’s fascinating , forgivably earnest meeting of cultures is both cinematic experiment & idealistic reverie

 

Gimme Danger (2016) – Jarmusch’s Stooges documentary is an archival delight, contemplative for all its (never dangerous) visual energy

 

Farewell to Spring (1959) – for all its empathetic care, Kinoshita’s study of maturing friendship in wrenching times seldom pierces deeply

 

Crossroads (1986) – the dubiously-conceived myth-inflected narrative reduces Hill to ambling triviality; the music is the main compensation

 

The Girls (1968) – Zetterling’s innovatively provocative clash of art and life interrogates just about every stale assumption about women

 

Fahrenheit 451 (2018) – Bahrani’s insufficiently-reflective, repetitively-pounding filming feels like a missed opportunity in every respect

 

From the Clouds to the Resistance (1979) – Straub/Huillet challengingly interrogate the persistence of humanity’s violent submission to myth

 

Mascara (1987) – Conrad’s myth-stained melodrama feels forged in committed inside-out queerness, however oddly framed, located and expressed

 

The Eagle with Two Heads (1948) – Cocteau’s grandly singular structure of political and regal intrigue, rendering twisted tragedy as triumph

 

The Comedian (2016) – in no way a Pupkin-update (if only!) but still a relative triumph for De Niro, if one of easy effects and pleasures

 

Le Tigre se parfume a la dynamite (1965) – raggedly-plotted espionage stuff, so loosely controlled by Chabrol as to seem mildly subversive

 

Personal Best (1982) – Towne’s sports film remains a stimulatingly problematic text in representing female physicality and fluid desire

 

Numero zero (1971) – Eustache’s respectful record of his grandmother’s life testimony, a pure channeling of weary, turbulent experience

 

Brad’s Status (2017) – White’s preoccupied character study never transcends “first world problems”-type introspection and self-readjustment

 

L’oro di Roma (1961) – Lizzani’s piercing but constrained drama doesn’t quite rank among the cinema of occupation’s most lasting works

 

Lulu on the Bridge (1997) – for all its clunky peculiarities, Auster’s film intrigues for its sense of elemental investigation and pleasure

 

Party Girl (1958) – Ray’s rather bumpy melodrama is most compelling for its central sense of worn-out decency, under siege by empty swagger

 

La soledad (2016) – Armand’s film hardly lacks for haunted, bewildered impact, even as he pushes too hard to encompass Venezuela’s tragedy

 

The Man who Knew too Much (1934) – Hitchcock’s effective thriller, pushing throughout toward greater future depth & psychological complexity

 

Grandeur et decadence… (1986) – Godard treads fairly lightly & affectionately through times of change, rendering you poignantly stimulated

 

The Domino Principle (1977) – Kramer’s serviceable assassination thriller falters at delivering much on its apparent grander ambitions

 

Ismael’s Ghosts (2017) – Desplechin may be dancing on the spot, but the choreography and rhythms remain uniquely beguiling and stimulating

 

The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969) – Lerner’s quite compelling opening out of Shaffer’s fascinating sun-drenched, humanity-stained quest

 

Fado majeur et mineur (1994) – a grave yet playfully confounding fragment from Ruiz’s bottomless cinema of echoes, layers and dreams

 

Telefon (1977) – an effective thriller for Siegel’s assured tone and pacing and the anxious subtext, although with muted ultimate impact

 

Victoria (2016) – Triet’s end-of-her-tether comedy seems to aspire to a wilder, more tempestuous tone than its cutes and clutter allow

 

The Seventh Victim (1943) – Lewton and Robson’s quietly threat-laden devil worshipper drama leaves a complexly troubled aftertaste

 

Un mauvais fils (1980) – an astutely-measured, searching study of incremental renewal, a peak illustration of Sautet’s more intimate mode

 

The Choirboys (1977) – the material should surely sing of a messed-up America more scabrously and roughly than it does in Aldrich’s hands

 

Orly (2010) – Schanelec sets out pleasingly innovative routes into the well-established existential possibilities of airport departures

 

Topaz (1969) – Hitchcock’s late film at times seems stolid and artificial, at other times almost experimental in its shifts and abstractions

 

A Confucian Confusion (1994) – Yang’s sharply genial study of a society where economic growth outpaces the emotional and intellectual kind

 

Hardcore (1979) – a strong, inherently diverting film, but for Schrader, something of a missed moral, sociological and stylistic opportunity

 

La loi de la jungle (2016) – Peretjatko’s satire of unprincipled development is mostly a goofy slog, with little real bite or panache

 

The Man in the White Suit (1951) – Mackendrick’s smart, sure-footed comedy, cleverly foreseeing the looming fragility of industrial society

 

Eaux profondes (1981) – Deville’s Highsmith adaptation falls a bit short overall, despite striking stylistic, tonal and structural moves

 

Pass Over (2018) – Lee’s exemplary filming of vivid theatrical material, a Godot-like expression of America’s complex culture of oppression

 

Les nouveaux messieurs (1929) – Feyder’s silent drama stirringly contrasts the promise of the left & the practiced persistence of the right

 

Blue Black Permanent (1992) – Tait’s wonderfully measured, alert conversation between generations, and reflection on seeing and recording

 

Anima nera (1962) – Rossellini ruthlessly deconstructs the stereotype of male irresponsibility, stripping it down to its outmaneuvered core

 

I Called Him Morgan (2016) – Collin makes unusually effective use of archival materials, crafting a haunting memoir of thwarted artistry

 

Ugetsu (1953) – Mizoguchi’s chillingly beautiful tale of earthly tumult & fracture that lets in the ghosts of temptation, & those of comfort

 

HealtH (1980) – Altman’s thinly allegorical satire is enjoyable enough, but rather too defined by the transient hollowness it observes

 

A Woman’s Decision (1975) – Zanussi’s study is one of his looser works, but deeply attuned to existential anxieties and social heaviness

 

Wonder Wheel (2017) – one of Allen’s more sustained late works shifts effectively from easeful period evocation into stark, pitiless tragedy

 

The Walls of Malapaga (1949) – Clement’s doomed romance endures for its immersion in time and place, despite its familiarly fatalistic core

 

Surrender (1987) – Belson’s lazily-handled comedy of intertwined emotional and economic anxiety never works up much pace or punch

 

La punition (1962) – Rouch’s captivating (seemingly Varda-inflected?) meditation on the freedom and limitation of exploration and encounter

 

Lady Macbeth (2016) – Oldroyd’s chilling drama: superbly sparse and confined, yet infused with an ambiguous air of broader societal shifting

 

Les amis (1971) – Blain’s calmly radical treatment of potentially transgressive material, carefully evasive and indirect, never merely coy

 

Tequila Sunrise (1988) – Towne’s film is an able study in structure, mood and light, until plot mechanics ultimately triumph over all else

 

A double tour (1959) – Chabrol extracts just about every tortured, loathing nuance possible from the ultimately somewhat thin material

 

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) – Reeves’ is an impressively conceived and sustained vision, if seldom very conceptually stimulating

 

Immortal Love (1961) – Kinoshita’s eventful drama of relentless familial pain is rather too dutiful & restrained to penetrate as it intends

 

Star 80 (1983) – Fosse’s filmography ends in flashy disappointment, extracting little of substance from its unpleasant case history 

 

The Tenant (1976) – Polanski’s effective if rather over-elaborated tale of paranoia, at its best when evoking anxiety and persecution

 

A United Kingdom (2016) – Asante’s welcome excavation of a significant historical episode feels a little more stifled than necessary

 

Zouzou (1934) – Allegret’s atmospherically bustling, often saucy rags-to-riches tale provides an effective showcase for Josephine Baker

 

Things Change (1988) – a pleasant, well-played trifle, but Mamet’s affinity for such pervasively genre-limited cinema is hard to figure out

 

Bande a part (1964) – Godard’s legendary film pulsates with the allure of losing oneself in an invented moment, and with its sadness

 

The Trip to Spain (2017) – a get-together as ingratiatingly familiar by now as any mainstream franchise, but funny and seductive throughout

 

T. R. Baskin (1971) – a film of modest virtues, since contemporary dehumanization and personal enigma aren’t Ross’s most natural territory

 

The Nights of Zayandeh-Rood (1990) – wrecked by censorship, Makhmalbef’s family chronicle speaks tremulously to the trauma of revolution

 

The Devil is a Woman (1935) – von Sternberg/Dietrich’s rather coldly capricious last film lacks the overwhelming allure of its predecessors

 

A Decent Woman (2016) – Rinner’s well-crafted showdown of nudists and materialists is too straightforward to really stir or challenge

 

The Rowdyman (1972) – Carter/Pinsent’s film chugs along rather too easily to achieve lasting impact, other than as a marker of time & place

 

Histoires d’Amerique (1988) – Akerman’s mesh of jokes & testimony is both celebratory & eerie, mirroring the fraught Jewish-American odyssey

 

Cactus Flower (1969) – the familiarly-honed material neither stings nor blossoms cinematically, but Saks navigates it pleasantly enough

 

Bird People (2014) – Ferran extends the weary metaphorical possibilities of airports to wondrously extreme, persuasively unfettered heights

 

The Yin and the Yang of Mr. Go (1970) – Meredith’s jumbled, pseudo-idealistic action-comedy, suffused in dopiness and antiquated attitudes

 

Sankofa (1993) – Gerima’s always strikingly-conceived, often astounding expression of reborn communion with past culture and injustice

 

Isle of the Dead (1945) – a modest narrative, but suffused with Lewton’s remarkable shadow-infused play of preoccupation and fragility

 

The Handmaiden (2016) – likely Park’s best film, if only for obscuring his hermetic limitations with sheer narrative & visual sumptuousness

 

Mandingo (1975) – Fleischer’s terrifyingly well-realized exploration of slave-owning America’s moral and psychological wretchedness

 

The Supplement (2002) – Zanussi’s interesting exercise in fleshing out the bones of an earlier film, rather labored on its own terms though

 

Single Room Furnished (1968) – Mansfield is strikingly plaintive in her last film, which Cimber generally handles with a decent touch

 

The Square (2017) – Ostlund’s sleek, assured exhibit of a film, an impressively multi-pronged exploration of art-world ethics & absurdities

 

Blue Collar (1978) – Schrader’s powerful debut remains a key film of its period about labour, race, power and their complex interaction

 

The Case is Closed (1982) – with understated power and empathy, Sen dissects the bottomless inequalities and injustices of Indian society

 

The Narrow Margin (1952) – Fleischer’s terse and tight thriller is great viewing, but ranks below film noir’s thematic and sensual peaks

 

Queen of Katwe (2016) – Nair delivers the expected tale of colourful odds-beating assertion, with an (equally expected) absence of much else

 

Being Two isn’t Easy (1962) – Ichikawa’s eyes-of-a-child slice-of-life drama is at best trifling, and frequently tedious and/or insipid

 

9 to 5 (1980) – Higgins’ easy-to-take comedy can be seen now as unnecessarily and counterproductively rigged, and only half-woke at best

 

The French Way (1945) – De Baroncelli’s low-energy farce makes poor use of Josephine Baker, largely pushed to the narrative’s bland margins

 

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) – Lanthimos’ imposing if knowingly alienating exercise in ominous, mythologically-informed displacement

 

Slap the Monster on Page One (1972) – Bellocchio’s dark study of establishment hypocrisy remains potent, for all the territory’s familiarity

 

Iceman (1984) – notwithstanding its Sorkin-ish science chatter, Schepisi’s drama just gets increasingly silly, contrived and clumsy

 

Les enfants terribles (1950) – a mesmerizing, disruptive amalgam of Cocteau’s poetic extremity & Melville’s skeptical, unsparing observation

 

I, Daniel Blake (2016) – near-vanishing-point Loach, the weight of injustice reducing a quietly worthy man to a dying assertion of identity

 

The Structure of Crystal (1969) – Zanussi’s understated reflection on relative freedoms, a very subtle posing of the personal as political

 

Lookin’ to Get Out (1982) – the movie sustains a superficial, raucous energy, but it all matters far less than Ashby’s enduring earlier work

 

Torso (1973) – the impact of Martino’s lascivious, committed fluidity is rather limited by the film’s thematically sparse narrative

 

The Florida Project (2017) – Baker’s sociologically, morally & stylistically rich study walks an immaculate line between cute & troubling

 

L’argent (1928) – L’Herbier’s milestone silent drama, epically grappling with the unequal power and morality of man and financial markets

 

Rough Cut (1980) – a passable caper, but would be low-energy, textureless stuff from anyone, let alone a film notionally signed by Siegel

 

Jaguar (1968) – Rouch’s dizzyingly stimulating country-to-city African odyssey throbs with incident and underlying social implication

 

Paterson (2016) – Jarmusch’s masterful observation of inner lives, an implicit rebuke to the prevailing brainlessness of dominant culture

 

The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978) – Olmi’s moving chronicle of peasant life, encompassing generous humanism and quiet political indictment

 

Dreamscape (1984) – Ruben’s thriller falls short of Pakula on one hand and Ken Russell on the other, but is good, lightly-implicating fun

 

The Silence (1963) – Bergman’s highly arresting study of conflict and flight is one of his most sensuous, implication-laden enigmas

 

Girls Trip (2017) – Lee’s energetic movie doesn’t flag, but the narrative & moral trajectory & sexual frankness are predictably calibrated

 

It (1927) – Bow still radiates - if not all of “it” - at least a big piece of it, showcased by Badger’s admiring, fleet-footed narrative

 

Dog Day (1984) – Boisset’s injection of the iconic Marvin into a raucously bawdy French rustic context shambolically fails to come off

 

Justine (1969) – Cukor’s formally impressive but distant film feels too inertly classical to tap the material’s rich potential complexities

 

Antiporno (2016) – Sono at once creates candy-porn, jerks off to it and blows it up, in formally impressive if ideologically suspect style

 

The Klansman (1974) – Young’s film stimulates for its wretched sociological background, more than for its ploddingly ugly foreground drama

 

Une etrange affaire (1981) – Granier-Deferre’s elegant, mysterious but precise fable of charismatic leadership and its reality-bending orbit

 

The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) – an enjoyably fast-paced if never biting comedy, a fluent adjunct to Ford’s primary cinematic achievement

 

Mountains may Depart (2015) – Jia’s limitlessly fascinating straddling of experiences, of personal and societal shifts and displacements

 

Time after Time (1979) – Meyer’s high-concept film appeals most for its pleasant incongruities, before fraught plot mechanics take over

 

Purple Butterfly (2003) – Lou’s historical reverie/thriller is frequently dreamily enveloping, at other times rather murkily disorienting

 

The Queen’s Guards (1961) – a pageantry-seeped military memoir, with Powell fitfully engaged by its more skeptical and anguished elements

 

Cezanne et moi (2016) – for better & worse, Thompson scenically observes her epochal protagonists more than she stylistically channels them

 

Cisco Pike (1972) – Norton’s loose-limbed drug-dealer drama, a great little time capsule of in-the-moment presences and interactions

 

Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1987) – Rosi’s only superficially engaging adaptation is heavy with over-deliberation and over-prettification

 

Battling Butler (1926) – a pleasant but relatively subdued Keaton comedy, not equaling the cinematic and physical grace of his best works

 

Roxanne Roxanne (2017) – Larnell’s intuitively-shaped, empathetic chronicle, emphasizing Shante’s perseverance against chronic male weakness

 

Porte des lilas (1957) – Clair’s late film feels like a settling for less, but finds some darker veins within its small-scale observation

 

The First Deadly Sin (1980) – Hutton handles the weary procedural aspect solidly enough, but flails at the apparent broader intentions

 

Mother Kusters goes to Heaven (1975) – Fassbinder’s stylistically restrained but utterly fascinating exercise in frustration and venality

 

Norman (2016) – Cedar’s nimble film, at its best in exploring the textures of connection, ultimately leaves a softer impact than one hopes

 

Amore et rabbia (1969) – five varied provocations, most notably Bertolucci’s possessed performance art and Godard’s interrogative beauty

 

Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) – Murakami delivers some colorfully goofy visions of community, stranded among much anonymous space padding

 

La beaute du diable (1950) – Clair’s fine treatment of Faust, propelled throughout by exquisite narrative fluidity and directorial elegance

 

Last Flag Flying (2017) – Linklater’s knowingly old-fashioned Vietnam reunion odyssey sinks easefully into contradictory American attitudes

 

Petit a petit (1970) – beneath its loose, often goofy surface, Rouch’s film reflects on the delights & limitations of cultural interchange

 

Suburbia (1984) – Spheeris’ super-cool, attitude-heavy vision of (inevitably doomed) alternative community amid a hostile & clueless society

 

Liliom (1934) –  a rather draggy supernaturally-infused tale of redeemed brutishness, notable though as an uncharacteristic Lang work

 

Free Fire (2016) – Wheatley tightly concocts a carnage-strewn, no-way-out, near-vanishing-point of genre cinema, to somewhat unclear ends

 

The Condemned of Altona (1962) – despite its heavy-footedness, De Sica’s brooding Sartre adaptation wades in fascinating moral waters

 

Dreamchild (1985) – Millar and Potter’s reverie nimbly spans ages and registers, but the calculated restraint and taste limits its impact

 

Bellissima (1951) – Visconti’s neo-realist grounding is merely an intermittent anchor for choreographic flourishes and actorly histrionics

 

Obvious Child (2014) – of course, the (modest yet meaningful) virtue of Robespierre’s abortion-centered comedy is its very ordinariness

 

Kleinhoff Hotel (1977) – Lizzani’s erotic drama is calculatingly exploitative, and yet not without a striking commitment and preoccupation

 

Max Dugan Returns (1983) – Ross/Simon’s low-impact comedy would be a grim study of moral and material surrender, if it meant anything at all

 

Fraulein Doktor (1969) – hints of decadence & a powerful final battle scene aside, Lattuada’s war drama is largely mechanical & passionless

 

Gold (2016) – Gaghan’s Bre-X fictionalization maintains interest, but one often wishes for the hand of a Mann or Pakula (or Eureka’s Roeg!)

 

Portrait of Madame Yuki (1950) – another calmly potent Mizoguchi study of toxic gender relations, ultimately all but conflating sex & death

 

Track 29 (1988) – Roeg/Potter’s mostly underwhelming drama layers rather strained elaborations on top of a central psychological enigma

 

Irezumi (1966) – Masumura’s bloodily devouring, desirous melodrama; one of his more straightforward works, but utterly gripping throughout 

 

Manifesto (2015) – Rosefeldt’s unique high-concept piece is a near-marvel of organization, imagination, pedagogery and pure performance

 

Lust for Life (1956) –  Minnelli’s expressive powers are ironically constrained by fidelity to Van Gogh’s; but Douglas compels throughout

 

La naissance du jour (1980) – Demy’s small-scale literary adaptation most intrigues for fleetingly complex glimpses of his unique sensibility

 

The Getaway (1972) – a decent thriller on its own terms, although a minor, morally weightless work in the context of Peckinpah’s cinema

 

Wet Woman in the Wind (2016) – Shiota ventilates the brisk soft-porn material with an appealingly deadpan, lightly absurdist sensibility

 

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) – at its frequent finest, a transporting, sensitive, evocative record of Welles’ immense cinematic fluency

 

Decoder (1984) – Muscha’s brooding drama is appealingly dated in its punkish analog trappings, very little so in its broader preoccupations

 

Leo the Last (1970) – Boorman’s peculiar, voyeuristic sociological parable/channeling of revolutionary desires/chaotic provocation

 

Journey to the West (2014) – Tsai’s (slowly!) dreamy and gracefully funny short film, seemingly carrying a subtext of understated indictment

 

Madigan (1968) – Siegel’s tough, propulsive detective thriller; impeccably weaving moral contrasts and shadings and shifting perspectives

 

Marseille (2004) – Schanelec’s impressively considered film crafts a most unusual alchemy of person & place, & expression of new beginning

 

No Blade of Grass (1970) – Wilde’s environmental collapse thriller is at best a brash visual assault, at (frequent) worst unhinged & jarring

 

Informe general II (2016) – Portabella’s clear-eyed if genteel charting of the gulf between small-group awareness and state-wide torpor

 

The Leopard Man (1943) – Lewton/Tourneur’s brilliantly-sustained classic, a haunting, seldom-equaled marriage of delicacy and pained gravity

 

Salto nel vuoto (1980) – for all Bellocchio’s acuity, this repression-laden, corroded-establishment drama is a bit too heavy & unsurprising

 

Lost Lost Lost (1976) – but also vibrantly and permanently found; in Mekas’ absorbing survey of exile, arrival, evolution and community

 

Journey to the Shore (2015) – Kurosawa’s calm rewriting of our metaphysical universe, studiously free of conventional genre trappings

 

The Bronze Buckaroo (1939) – Kahn’s bare-bones all-black Western carries its unstated otherness with shambling charm, but few fireworks

 

The Constant Factor (1980) – Zanussi’s almost mathematically powerful study of pervasive corruption and the limits of a moral response to it

 

Colossal (2016) – could Vigalondo have foreseen that his out-there movie would so resonate as a remarkable allegory of Trumpian menace?

 

Come Drink with Me (1966) – vividly enjoyable but not yet full-throttle Hu, in terms of both raw technique and underlying sensuousness

 

Superstar (1988) – Haynes’ Karen Carpenter bio-pic is at once an eerily multi-faceted investigation, and a negation of any such possibility

 

Ossessione (1943) – hard not to think of Visconti’s adaptation primarily in earthier, hungrier contrast to its Hollywood counterparts

 

Alien: Covenant (2017) - Scott sure knows how to punch it out, but the feeling of repetition, redundancy and overreach is insurmountable

 

Birds in Peru (1968) – Gary’s ritualistic, sun-baked ceremony of sex, death & fate taps (albeit rather strenuously) a sparse elemental power

 

Working Girl (1988) – Nichols’ overvalued comedy, heavily dependent on reality-obscuring simplifications, feels now like a dusty relic

 

I Will Buy You (1956) – Kobayashi’s (rather strenuously) heavy-hearted baseball scouting drama is among the most somber of sports films

 

Fences (2016) – Washington does right by the (inherently not so cinematic) play, such that you lose yourself in the language and evocation

 

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970) – De Sica’s rather familiarly, elegantly rarified, but nonetheless moving drama of looming Holocaust

 

Galaxina (1980) – Sachs’ genre parody is perplexing in most ways, hardly aiming for quality yet drearily tentative in its raunchy cheesiness

 

Letters by a Novice (1960) – an artful mixture of austere investigation and calculating decadence, seemingly entirely up Lattuada’s alley

 

The Beguiled (2017) – Coppola’s restraint and feeling for female community serves here to push the material toward virtual invisibility

 

The Music (1972) – Masumura/Mishima’s astonishingly-rendered, pained erotic extremity, conflating psychoanalysis & transgressive invention

 

Revolution (1985) – Hudson’s film is mostly effective when channeling chaotic mass experience, much less so in its narrative contrivances

 

Mammy Water (1953) – Rouch’s brief but teeming study exuberantly straddles eye-filling actualities and respectfully-presented myths

 

Christine (2016) – Campos renders a sad real-life tale as a case study in pervasive discomfort, and in coping mechanisms taken and spurned

 

Michael Kohlhass (1969) – Schlondorff’s tale of injustice and rebellion, its impact rather muddied by its attempt to channel the sixties

 

Maria’s Lovers (1984) – Konchalovsky’s minor post-war drama feels mostly trivial and arbitrary, not tapping its actors’ considerable powers

 

The National Health (1973) – Gold/Nichols’ carefully-gauged hospital comedy, its diagnosis both directly scathing and challengingly evasive

 

Marguerite & Julien (2015) – Donzelli’s period-bending treatment of transgressive material, intriguingly straddling history & romantic myth

 

A Woman of Paris (1923) – its modest sensitivity to female perspective & desire aside, Chaplin’s drama is of limited cinematic interest now

 

Mourir a 30 ans (1982) – Goupil’s memoir of 1968, somberly but piercingly contrasting all-consuming activism & subsequent directionlessness

 

The Night Visitor (1971) – Benedek’s ingenious thriller delivers fascinating logistics, although its echoes of Bergman are merely frost-deep

 

Raw (2016) – at its harrowing best, Ducournau’s vivid film is a startling expression of the scorching, perilous power of female desire

 

Tom Jones (1963) – occasional pell-mell interest aside, Richardson’s relentless opportunism now seems mostly tiring and alienating

 

Lost Persons Area (2009) – Strubbe’s representation of Europe’s shifting order is highly well-conceived, but carries a muted overall impact

 

The Reckoning (1970) – Gold’s super-meaty class-conscious drama, anchored by Williamson’s sensationally contemptuous, possessed presence

 

Une jeunesse allemande (2015) – Periot’s absorbing film conveys the turbulent passing of a very era-specific melding of culture and action

 

Raw Deal (1948) – under Mann’s alert handling, a thriller narrative of hard-driving visual eloquence, suffused with unfulfilled longing

 

Kung-fu master! (1988) – no director can bridge loveliness and social transgression as easefully yet meaningfully as the incomparable Varda

 

Julia (1977) – Redgrave’s moving presence aside, Zinnemann’s lead-footed memory piece seldom feels fully-inhabited or very evocative

 

The Future Perfect (2016) – Wohlatz’s beguiling study of a young immigrant’s multiple aspirations, navigating self-assertion & assimilation

 

Station Six-Sahara (1963) – superficially a potboiler, but infused by Holt with substantial behavioral relish & subtle structural mysteries

 

A Cat in the Brain (1990) – pure immersive cinema of a kind, although Fulci’s show of anguished self-reflection is only semi-persuasive

 

Story of a Love Story (1973) – Frankenheimer’s all-but-lost film is ceaselessly if strenuously investigative, and surprisingly rewarding

 

A Ghost Story (2017) – Lowery’s extraordinarily well-judged amalgamation of tangibly-depicted myths and sparse, searching ambiguities

 

The Mascot (1934) – Starewicz’s remarkable stop-motion adventure is an early spanning of Toy Story & Tim Burton, of the cute & the freaky

 

Goya’s Ghosts (2006) – the narrative contrivances of Forman’s blandly handsome film seriously weaken its historical and cultural impact

 

La terra trema (1948) – Visconti’s searching emphasis on realism is moving, yet highly mediated, arguably undermined by wider ambitions

 

Snowden (2016) – Stone applies relative directorial restraint to potentially paranoia-strewn material, with respectable but limited results

 

The Corruption of Chris Miller (1973) – Bardem’s expressively visualized semi-elevation of a lurid killer narrative, with a dash of Persona!

 

Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) – Coppola affectionately makes it all feel more meaningful than it is, aided by seen-the-future-level casting

 

My Second Brother (1959) – the major impact of Imamura’s engaging and committed early film lies in its bleak social and economic awareness

 

Wonderstruck (2017) – Haynes’ parallel lives story has the multi-dimensional beauty of a diorama, to be meticulously explored and caressed

 

L’attentat (1972) – Boisset’s solid, wide-ranging entry into a classic tradition, finding corruption and complacency inside every dark suit

 

Death Proof (2007) – hard not to admire Tarantino’s artful balance of leisurely good spirits, deceptive finesse, and insistent disposability

 

Marketa Lazarova (1967) – Vlacil’s turbulent, imposing historical chronicle, both vividly direct & narratively elusive, even hallucinatory

 

The Bad Batch (2016) – Amirpour’s film becomes increasingly intriguing, as a sly subversion of swaggering post-apocalypse-type cliches

 

Kill! (1971) –  Gary’s murky drug-trade thriller, fitfully sparked by the tussle between intellectual ambitions and mostly pulpish execution

 

Wrong is Right (1982) – Brooks’ well-titled farce-attack is both absurd & prescient, stylistically uncertain & (thus) pretty much on target

 

The Burmese Harp (1956) – Ichikawa’s transcendence-seeking tale of post-war Burma seldom surpasses superficial grandeur and spirituality

 

Good Time (2017) – the Safdies’ very striking blend of propulsively inventive crime narrative and extraordinary observational directness

 

The Golden Fortress (1974) – you might view Ray’s handling of the flamboyant material either as overly staid, or as carefully interrogative

 

Heat (1995) – a modern genre landmark, for Mann’s awe-inspiring, deeply-searching mastery of narrative, visual and thematic geometry

 

La ligne de demarcation (1966) – Chabrol’s effective Occupation drama emphasizes dogged collective solidarity over individual heroism

 

Hidden Figures (2016) – Melfi’s bland conventionality leaves little basis for distinguishing inspirational truths from trite exaggerations

 

Dear Summer Sister (1972) – Oshima’s unusual, oddly troubling layering of an almost naively beaming surface on deeply fractured depths

 

Mike’s Murder (1984) – Bridges plays observantly and languidly with textures and contrasting milieus, although to limited ultimate ends

 

Les maitres fous (1955) – Rouch’s unique, often astonishing anthropological record also acts as a savage parody of hollow colonial pomp

 

Wonder Woman (2017) – Jenkins’ blockbuster is pretty fresh and engagingly literate, when not lost in interminable pyrotechnic abstraction

 

A Special Day (1977) – Scola’s precisely rendered study of a brief encounter, affectingly contrasting intimate truths and national delusions

 

Casino (1995) – illustrating Scorsese both at his most technically unimpeachable, and at his most relentlessly & under-rewardingly hermetic

 

Vie privee (1962) – Malle rather peculiarly extrapolates Bardot’s immense if rather shallow mythology into a fatalistic death ritual

 

Nocturnal Animals (2016) – Ford’s tiresomely pretentious, airlessly “well-crafted” drama is almost entirely unpleasant and unedifying

 

The Penal Colony (1970) – Ruiz’s strangely ominous creation almost seems now like a prediction of degrading political & factual objectivity

 

An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (1982) – Petit’s film is less a detective story than a genre- and gender-defying study in absence and darkness

 

Mother Never Dies (1942) – Naruse’s moving story of life after loss, rather more sentimental (& ultimately jingoistic) than his finest work

 

My Cousin Rachel (2017) – Michell’s drama of suspicion and desire avoids Gothic excess, but at the cost of diluted ambiguity and impact

 

The Silent Partner (1978) – Duke’s pretty nifty, sometimes surprisingly raw thriller, cherishable as an all-time-great Toronto time-capsule

 

In the White City (1983) – Tanner’s questing cinema finds here its most mythic port of call, experience and memory shimmeringly intertwining

 

Hud (1963) – the physical and emotional territory of Ritt’s bleak drama frequently evokes stronger, less constrained films, before and since

 

Frantz (2016) – with customarily precise yet somewhat passionless virtuosity, Ozon navigates post-war misdirections and compromises

 

Steelyard Blues (1973) – Myerson’s frequently grating drop-out comedy does happily elevate at times (mostly due to the inspired Peter Boyle)

 

Une vieille maitresse (2007) – Breillat’s brilliant 19^th century drama, composed yet destabilizing, of a desire that pushes toward death

 

Carmen Jones (1954) – Preminger’s all-black musical now seems more like an artificialized denial of black culture than an elevation of it

 

The Other Side of Hope (2017) – Kaurismaki’s customarily well-honed, wide-ranging and supple survey of multi-cultural dreams and realities

 

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1972) – Mekas’ remarkable, captivating memory film, feeling at once unfiltered and highly mediated

 

The Girl from Trieste (1982) – Campanile’s undercharged story of obsession does find its way to a strikingly doomed, alienated finale

 

Hot Thrills and Warm Chills (1967) – for Berry, thrills and chills evidently drive their own unknowable laws of narrative, framing & pacing

 

Nocturama (2016) – Bonello’s sleekly knowing, trite yet stimulating terrorism drama sleekly rejects conventional representational dilemmas

 

Real Life (1979) – Brooks’ evasively fascinating, at least semi-premonitory collision of showbiz stylization and documentary-style flatness

 

Life as a Fatal Sexually Transmitted Disease (2000) – Zanussi’s drama pushes as hard as its title, but attains a sort of cranky magnificence

 

Veiled Aristocrats (1932) – Micheaux’s clear-eyed, ultimately celebratory assertion of racial identity and (also!) female self-determination

 

Baby Driver (2017) – for the most part, the film zooms & flies on Wright’s happy cinematic air, infused with barely flagging creative joy

 

Moderato Cantabile (1960) – one of the period’s memorably doomed enigmatic encounters, hauntingly observed by Brook (& Antonioni’s spirit?)

 

Phobia (1980) – if only Huston had brought some bleak relish and a greater sense of the absurd to the mechanical serial killer narrative…

 

The Man who Put his Will on Film (1970) – Oshima’s stark enigma seems to posit cinema as a shifting, almost autonomously malevolent threat

 

Jackie (2016) – at once highly immersive and dreamlike, Larrain’s precise recreation taps the ambiguities of intimate witnessing of history

 

Haxan (1922) – Christensen’s unequaled blend of historical pedagogy, lurid fantasy & socially-aware self-reflection remains quite remarkable

 

Rollover (1981) – few films ever grappled with global financial complexity as Pakula’s does, even fewer with such stylistic audaciousness

 

Le temps de mourir (1970) – paranoia spawns its own bleak destiny in Farwagi’s enigmatic, occasionally striking drama of predestination

 

Logan (2017) – Mangold at least brings some modest literacy, cinematic grandeur & emotional frailty to the essentially meaningless material

 

Moi, un noir (1958) – Rouch’s vastly impactful study of African exile, aspiration & resentment remains ambiguously revelatory & troubling

 

Mr. Patman (1980) – in various oddly interesting ways, Guillermin’s murky drama symbolizes its strange, displaced era in Canadian cinema

 

Monsieur Klein (1976) – Losey’s dark case history of the Holocaust’s perversion of fate and rationality, articulated with unforced mastery

 

La La Land (2016) – Chazelle’s airily pretty but passionless appropriation of classic forms yields only fleeting, if not vapid pleasures

 

The Champagne Murders (1967) – an enjoyably anxious exercise in highly-designed, ambiguous confinement; second-tier Chabrol at best though

 

The Color of Money (1986) – Scorsese’s perhaps most underrated movie, placing stark psychological structures within restless cinematic ones

 

Trois jours a vivre (1957) – Grainger’s rather rushed marriage of backstage theatrics and noir-type tension never satisfactorily coheres

 

A Quiet Passion (2017) - Davies' outstanding study of Emily Dickinson enthralls with its sensitivity and precise charting of complexities

 

La memoire courte (1979) – de Gregorio’s increasingly bracing, Rivette-tinged investigation into evasive histories and unreliable narrators

 

I Dreamt I Woke Up (1991) – Boorman’s loving exploration of his Irish home, both facilitated and cluttered by playfully mythic inventions

 

Ten Nights in a Bar Room (1926) – Calnek’s tale of lost moral compasses ultimately rather chills for its repurposed imagery of mob justice

 

I Am Madame Bovary (2016) – Feng’s alert, tragi-comic charting of classically thwarted female determination in an age of dismal bureaucracy

 

Monterey Pop (1968) – Pennebaker’s (too short!) concert film contains some indelible, almost incomparably vivid images of key performers

 

Wimbledon Stage (2001) – Amalric’s enigmatic investigation of a non-writing writer balances persuasive mystery & lightly-observed detail

 

There was a Crooked Man (1970) – Mankiewicz’s late-career slumming exercise maintains its brassy swagger, but it’s all offputtingly coarse

 

The City Below (2010) – Hochhausler’s quite fascinating immersion in intertwined possibilities – personal & corporate, elevating & ominous

 

He Ran all the Way (1951) – a modest set-up, boosted by Berry’s expressive direction and Garfield’s hauntingly tortured final performance

 

Vanishing Point (1984) – like cinematic breath, Ruiz’s film draws in toward its ominous secrets, out toward a world of cryptic possibilities

 

The Goodbye Girl (1977) – under the narcotic-like patter, Simon’s comedies now seem relentlessly complacent and behaviorally under-engaged

 

Europe, she Loves (2016) – Gassmann’s observant study of marooned modern youth presses the “Europe is lost” theme rather too single-mindedly

 

The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds (1965) – Williams’ rediscovered, obsession-ridden oddity is proudly defiant, yet often strangely lovely

 

The Diary of Lady M (1993) – Tanner’s intimate films with Mezieres are strong and progressive, but more transient than his major works

 

Murder on the Orient Express (1974) – Lumet’s (indeed) plushly train-like version doesn’t allow the concept or the cast much fresh air

 

First they Killed my Father (2017) – for all its committed skill, Jolie’s memoir of 1970’s Cambodia feels overly mediated and composed

 

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – Whale’s grandly-visualized horror milestone teems with intense repression & feeling, amid wondrous mythology

 

Cheerful Wind (1981) – Hou’s early film belongs very much to his lighter, even goofy, side, but already hints at the scope of his concerns

 

The Birth of a Nation (2016) – Parker’s persistent lack of subtlety fortunately doesn’t obscure the film’s central, primally righteous force

 

Manji (1964) – Masumura’s creepily expansive (if hardly optimistic) vision of desire and fulfilment at once thrills and repels you

 

Full Metal Jacket (1987) – Kubrick immerses us in soldiering and war as a journey into hermetic, edge-of-madness self-fictionalization

 

Traffic Jam (1979) – Comencini gradually supplants the initial broad comedy with a bleak portrait of societal paralysis and venality

 

The End of the Tour (2015) – who knows whether Ponsoldt’s film captures the “real” Wallace, but it’s persuasive on its own intimate terms

 

Cesar (1936) – Pagnol’s prolonged talkiness increasingly impresses as a form of psychologically and sociologically engaged modernism

 

War Machine (2017) – Michod’s McChrystal-by-another-name semi-satire is mostly heavy-footed stuff, often seeming tonally all wrong

 

Camouflage (1977) – Zanussi’s confidently scathing portrait of the multi-faceted rot, if not outright madness, underlying hermetic academia

 

Cutter’s Way (1981) – Passer’s brilliantly, evasively tortured film seems even more prescient in a fractured, dark-fantasy-ridden America

 

Charulata (1964) – the perfectly nuanced sensitivity of such genteelly interiorized Ray films is both their majesty and their limitation

 

Silence (2016) – a luminously immersed testing of faith, in which the relative silence of “Scorsese” may be as prominent as that of God

 

Joe Bullet (1973) – for all its pulp limitations, de Witt’s apartheid-era drama buzzes with the possibility of unconstrained action

 

Desert Hearts (1985) – Deitch’s beautiful period story of women in love, a restrained small step & clear-eyed large one for American cinema

 

La traversee de Paris (1956) – Autant-Lara’s rather grating Occupation comedy increasingly flails around as it grasps at darker resonance

 

Queen & Country (2014) – a mostly pleasing cinematic withdrawal by Boorman into memoir, dense with calmly-observed anxiety & repression

 

Ludwig (1973) – a study of anguished royalty, typifying Visconti’s problematic placement between turgidity and genuine tormented grandeur

 

Mudbound (2017) – Rees’ patient, ultimately traumatizing drama presages the geographic & cultural divides that will all but consume America

 

Dragon Inn (1967) – Hu’s gorgeous classic sinks with relish into genre skirmishes while increasingly seeming to dream beyond it, toward Zen

 

To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) – Friedkin’s strangely compelling straddling of vulgar disposability and almost spiritually-infused certainty

 

Le mouton enrage (1974) – Deville’s evasively peculiar comedy of compromised self-determination, built on bleakly twisted underpinnings

 

Personal Shopper (2016) – Assayas’ scintillating cinematic tapestry, woven from a myriad of artistic and existential strivings and mysteries

 

Ten Minutes to Live (1932) – hard to surmount the limitations of Micheaux’s revue/drama, likely the least necessary of his surviving films

 

Good Men, Good Women (1995) – Hou’s impeccable work of reflective commemoration, spanning generations of national and personal traumas

 

Escape from Alcatraz (1979) – Siegel’s classic escape film is a tersely vivid tapestry of figurative, spiritual and physical confinements

 

Jauja (2014) – in Alonso’s beautiful, respectful cinema of discovery and exile, the potentially startling flows as naturally as clear water

 

Barefoot in the Park (1967) – Simon’s facile writing now seems beyond machine-like, almost monstrous in its faking of human intercourse

 

On Body and Soul (2017) – Enyedi’s beautifully attentive film, on what our dreams know better than our tired, ritualistic waking minds

 

Little Murders (1971) – Arkin’s black, black comedy has a highly distinctive angle on contemporary alienation, disarray and screwed-up hope

 

The Future is Woman (1984) – Ferreri strikingly (if not so subtly) welds an amped-up disco surface onto an elemental, nurturing underbelly

 

Woman of the Year (1942) – considered at a time of yawning cultural divide, the central conflict of Stevens’ comedy seems all the fresher

 

The Human Surge (2016) – Williams’ artfully rough-hewn global survey captures cultural parallels & divergences, possibilities & confinements

 

Child’s Play (1972) – a limited, contrived piece of theater, but lifted by Lumet’s dark shaping and by crackerjack actorly presences

 

To Die Like a Man (2009) – Rodrigues’ fascinating, melancholy film, rich with unusual representations of performance and self-assertion

 

The Chase (1966) – Penn’s overstuffed but powerful, premonitory allegory of American delusion, ugliness and societal incoherence

 

Land of Mine (2015) – an effective depiction by Zandvliet of post-war abstractions, even if it follows familiar emotional and dramatic beats

 

Just a Gigolo (1979) – Hemmings’ film doesn’t exhibit much relish for the period/setting, the decadence nor (most sadly) its striking cast

 

L’amant double (2017) – Ozon’s sleek, erotic creepy-twin melodrama is to lasting cinema what phantom pregnancies are to population growth

 

The Flying Ace (1926) – Norman’s niftily plotted and quite fluid thriller doesn’t mention or hint at race, which fuels its quiet radicalism

 

Ce jour-la (2003) – Ruiz’s singular comedy progresses from rather grating wackiness to (I think) strangely complex allegorical depths

 

The Brood (1979) – one of Cronenberg’s less gripping or persuasive creations, at least up to the eye-popping, repulsion-rich final stretch

 

Toni Erdmann (2016) – Ade’s highly successful serio-comic investigation of our faltering personal and collective spontaneity & connectivity

 

The Bellboy (1960) – Lewis’ engagingly alienating (if that makes sense) directorial debut, at once formally exacting & conceptually unbound

 

The State I am in (2000) – Petzold’s coolly allusive drama of modernity possessed by past; endless flight indistinguishable from stasis

 

Daisy Miller (1974) – Bogdanovich’s pleasant but passionless James adaptation, limited by insufficient tonal and analytical precision

 

Okja (2017) – Boon’s film feels ultimately like a soft punch, despite all its whimsy, biting satire, technical panache and general oddness

 

One A.M. (1916) – an impeccable exhibition of dexterity, although feeling now rather as if Chaplin barely sensed the audience beyond himself

 

Querelle (1982) – Fassbinder’s remarkable, no-way-back meditation; a ritualistic, anguishing enacting of intertwined awakening and death

 

The Founder (2016) – Hancock’s flavorless McDonald’s origin story doesn’t even hint at the fast food industry’s mostly toxic social legacy

 

Three Rooms in Manhattan (1965) – clash-of-culture interest aside, Carne’s over-extended study in romantic anguish falls mostly flat

 

So Fine (1981) – Bergman’s comedy is enjoyable and varied enough but never really sparks, with the central gimmick contributing little

 

Les maries de l’an deux (1971) – Rappeneau puts together a grand, fast-paced historical romp, little of which seems to matter much now

 

The Big Sick (2017) – absent its modest contribution to filmic diversity, Showalter’s comedy would be no more than unremarkably pleasant

 

Letter from Siberia (1958) – Marker at once descends deeply and ethically into his complex subject, and seems to whimsically ascend above it

 

Pi (1998) – perhaps Aronofsky’s most lasting film, pounding its way to some kind of jittery coherence (if not necessarily persuasiveness)

 

Flic story (1975) – a largely familiar detective/gangster structure, enhanced by actorly charisma & Deray’s evocation of post-war weariness

 

Lion (2016) – Davis’ quite offputtingly well-polished, sociologically and otherwise mostly valueless piece of one-in-a-million feel-goodery

 

Seisaku’s Wife (1965) – Masumura (epically under-celebrated) unflinchingly depicts the repression and meanness at the heart of rural society

 

Chain Letters (1985) – Rappaport’s distinctive take on contemporary unease feels at once highly stylized and yet near-randomly unearthed

 

I Am Self-Sufficient (1976) – Moretti’s early film is a bit underpowered, even allowing that dissatisfied lassitude is its main fuel source

 

Get Out (2017) – Peele’s metaphorically-charged horror comedy is sharp and eerily effective, yet has surely been too generously appraised

 

My Love has been Burning (1949) – Mizoguchi’s film is an absolute landmark in the cinema of women’s rights, activism and self-determination

 

Xanadu (1980) – Greenwald’s mostly ill-considered, what-were-they-thinking mishmash at least exhibits a spurting idiosyncratic dreaminess

 

Elle (2016) – hard to know how to react to Verhoeven’s elegantly calculated displacements, or (beyond admiring Huppert) how much even to try

 

The Deadly Affair (1966) – Lumet and le Carre’s familiarly solid, unshowy exercise in institutional, ethical and domestic exhaustion

 

Eden (2001) – Gitai’s evocation of 1940s Israel feels like a boringly missed opportunity, allowing only flashes of insight or identification

 

Shampoo (1975) – Ashby/Towne’s impeccable utilization, extension and ultimate (transient) hollowing-out of the bottomless Beatty mystique

 

Sacro GRA (2013) – Rosi’s well-caught quotidian observations seem to hint at an underlying unifying loss, a troubling existential darkness

 

Sergeant Madden (1939) – about five parts unimportantly enjoyable police drama to one part visually and thematically engaged von Sternberg

 

13 Tzameti (2005) – Babluani’s tight, unsentimental drama is impressively (if not that consequentially) fully-imagined in every detail

 

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) – a Holmes/Freud mash-up more stimulating in Meyer’s concept than in Ross’s blandly rendered actuality

 

Neruda (2016) – Larrain’s meta-fiction narrative might have seemed strained, in the hands of a less graceful weaver of cinematic tapestries

 

All Fall Down (1962) – Frankenheimer’s family melodrama has plenty of meat and color, but ultimately lacks emotional and expressive potency

 

Cobra Verde (1987) – Herzog’s drama piles on eye-filling scenes, while surely grappling inadequately with the representation of slavery

 

All that Jazz (1979) – Fosse’s cinematic testimony is a whirl of the repellent and the visionary, artistic virtuosity and mere restlessness

 

Scabbard Samurai (2010) – Matsumoto’s is the most enjoyably Letterman-ish samurai movie we’re likely to see, cutesy sentimentality aside

 

I Was a Male War Bride (1949) – Hawks’ brilliantly unforced comedy of frustration and denial, soberly building to a classic final stretch

 

Pars vite et reviens tard (2007) – Wargnier drives an interesting urban paranoia premise toward strictly superficial, convoluted rewards

 

Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street (1973) – Fuller’s rather peculiar German thriller is at once classical and chaotic, immediate and abstracted

 

Julieta (2016) – Almodovar’s sensuous melodrama hardly seems aware of real life’s messy textures, but easily envelops on its own terms

 

Uptight (1968) – Dassin’s powerful, often anguished informer melodrama, galvanized by the era’s tensions, debates and social realities

 

Historias extraordinarias (2008) – Llinas’ binge of storytelling, drunk on narrative possibility, while retaining an evenly wry sobriety

 

Pete ‘n’ Tillie (1972) – Ritt’s episodic, philosophical, often bitter comedy, propelled by beautifully dry writing, directing and acting

 

Abuse of Weakness (2013) – Breillat’s fascinating, masterfully-controlled case study in the ambiguous exercise of power and exploitation

 

Birthright (1939) – for all its imperfections, Micheaux’s drama is a deeply-felt expression of anger at persistent belittlement & injustice

 

Shadows in Paradise (1986) – an emblematic illustration of Kaurismaki’s peculiar melding of gloomy denial and tight-lipped hopefulness

 

Asparagus (1979) – Pitt’s brief, vivid, sensuous animation drinks/sucks from strange, deep pools/organs of individual & collective desire

 

It’s only the end of the world (2016) – largely dour & limited family material, but rather interestingly interrogated & ventilated by Dolan

 

Indecent Desires (1968) – marginally interesting for Wishman’s modestly innovative structure of desire, and for its starkly pitiless ending

 

Symbol (2009) – Matsumoto’s great tease of a movie, positing utter nonsense as the heart of all meaning & connection (or something anyway…)

 

The War between Men and Women (1972) – Shavelson’s pretty ambitious Thurber-inspired comedy too often bogs down in tedious wheel-spinning

 

Potiche (2010) – Ozon’s broad, breezy tale of female awakening plays pretty successfully with garishly outdated attitudes and aesthetics

 

Eleven P.M. (1928) – Maurice’s drama is often confusingly articulated, but still intrigues for its sad, ultimately other-worldly conviction

 

Plein sud (1981) – Beraud’s preoccupied drama of erotic collision and chaotic personal reinvention is pleasingly engaged and unpredictable

 

Arrival (2016) – Villeneuve’s well-crafted alien visitor drama ultimately privileges dreaminess over investigation, rather disappointingly

 

Farewell, friend (1968) – Herman’s twisty thriller is well-plotted and -paced and has the striking Delon-Bronson team-up, so that’s all good

 

Until the end of the World (1991) – a great escalation of Wenders’ movie wanderlust, yet a relative stagnation in his artistic expansiveness

 

Le trio infernal (1974) – Girod’s rather rigidly nasty piece of period decadence makes only a modest satirical or stylistic impact

 

The Dinner (2017) – more a fussy dog’s breakfast of family anguish, as Moverman unenjoyably and indigestibly burns up the cinematic kitchen

 

Rififi (1955) – the film now might seem alternatively either conventional or forced, but Dassin finds in it a pained, pessimistic coherence

 

Author! Author! (1982) – interesting only for stray glimpses of a preoccupied centre, but barely breaking through Hiller’s ineffectual gloss

 

A Touch of Zen (1971) – Hu’s great epic travels from rich, intimate narrative to an astounding relinquishment of earthly and cinematic bonds

 

Rules don’t Apply (2016) – Beatty’s fascinating exercise in evasiveness – his subject’s, his own, that of his film’s preoccupied playfulness

 

I knew her well (1965) – Pietrangeli’s brilliantly observant, assumption-challenging study of a young woman, both celebratory and sobering

 

Local Hero (1983) – for every nicely observed element of Forsyth’s widely-treasured film, there’s another that seems crass or undercooked

 

Shock Treatment (1973) – the hedonistic sheen of Jessua’s breezy modern vampirism drama is more striking than the cynical underpinning

 

The Lovers (2017) – navigating most deftly between lightness and gravity, Jacobs explores ideas of intertwined withering and renewal

 

Toni (1935) – Renoir’s tragic drama of thwarted desire and ambition; as always, rich in broader, impeccably-seeded social implication

 

Modern Romance (1981) – one of Brooks’ best & most elusively funny films, at once universal & distinctly, itchily precise (space floor?!)

 

‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1971) – Griffi’s film sustains a suitably pained if somewhat overly prettified air, on the way to its bloody finale

 

I Am Not Your Negro (2016) – for all its clear strengths, Peck’s film is maybe a less electric interlocutor than Baldwin’s work would merit

 

Not Reconciled (1965) – Straub’s brief work implicitly rebukes an entire tradition of stale, conventional narrative and representation

 

He Knows you’re Alone (1980) – a moderately lively slasher, limited by Mastroianni’s lack of cinematic relish, nastiness-wise or otherwise

 

Two English Girls (1971) – one of the finest illustrations of Truffaut’s navigation between intimacy & distance, whimsicality & formality

 

Song to Song (2017) – Malick’s immersive new cinema remains both vital & alienating, experience & sensation at once elevated & flattened

 

Sunday in Peking (1956) – viewing China primarily as bucolic fulfilment of past dreams, Marker could hardly imagine the shape of its future

 

Swamp Thing (1982) – Craven’s film isn’t very dramatically or thematically imposing, but skips by on bursts of broadly-etched zestiness

 

Ecce bombo (1978) – Moretti’s early not-quite comedy is a rather interestingly ungraspable exercise in blankness and dissatisfaction

 

20^th Century Women (2016) – for all its vivid sincerity, Mills’ film seems strained & artificial next to, say, Reichardt’s Certain Women

 

La chamade (1968) – not much in Cavalier’s film penetrates too deeply, albeit that the sense of weightlessness is inherent to the theme

 

Werner Herzog eats his Shoe (1980) – worth seeing just for the concept, even if the movie is short on actual unambiguous shoe-eating

 

Shadowman (1974) – Franju’s late, sporadically insinuating thriller provides some elemental narrative pleasures, but limited overall potency

 

T2 Trainspotting (2017) – strained regrets aside, Boyle’s sequel has a lot of synthetic-feeling energy & conflict, but little real feeling

 

Utamaro and his Five Women (1946) – Mizoguchi’s captivating, deeply-connected reflection on integrity and self-determination in art and love

 

The First Monday in October (1981) – time-capsule interest aside, Neame’s plodding semi-comedy doesn’t argue a very stirring case for itself

 

In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) – among Fassbinder’s most extreme expressions of trauma, querulously balancing intimacy and ungraspability

 

Loving (2016) – Nichols’ study appeals most for its reticence; its quiet observance of social revolution embodied by unassuming people

 

Le trou (1960) – Becker’s near-hypnotic prison escape drama builds to a devastating final evaluation of relative freedom and morality

 

Some Kind of Hero (1982) – Pressman’s overly brisk downward-spiral Vietnam vet movie needed more character, and a far less flimsy redemption

 

The Outside Man (1973) – a terse, efficient thriller, vastly elevated by Deray’s fascinated immersion in Los Angeles geography and culture

 

The Meyerowitz Stories (2017) – despite inspired stretches and overall consummate skill, the film doesn’t much extend our sense of Baumbach

 

Conflagration (1958) – Ichikawa’s hermetic but intensely gripping tale, darkly propelled by barely expressible self-loathing and anguish

 

Compromising Positions (1985) – Perry’s not-exactly-Lynchian exposure of suburban secrets and discontent plays it a bit too soft throughout

 

Story of Sin (1975) – Borowczyk painstakingly, almost austerely charts the moral ambiguities underlying his potentially lurid chronicle

 

The Eyes of my Mother (2016) – hard not to admire Pesce’s straddling of tranquility & malevolence, while also praying for release from it

 

Red Angel (1966) – Masumura’s amazing study of war’s perverting yet cleansing effects, suffused in physical and psychic damage and suffering

 

Eyewitness (1981) – beneath its rather conventional surface, Yates’ drama is heavy with the detritus of America’s scarred moral landscape

 

Sauvage innocence (2001) – a mesmerizingly-executed slow collision with fate, perhaps somewhat conventionally conceived for Garrel though

 

The Electric Horseman (1979) – a nice little ramble, leaving aside the inherent hypocrisy of its anti-corporate, simplicity-embracing creed

 

A Man called Ove (2015) – Holm at least brings some decent warmth to his distinctly familiar-feeling melting-of-a-crusty-old-man tale

 

The Bedford Incident (1965) – Harris navigates a grippingly mirthless course to a highly Strangelove-ian abstract/realist end-point

 

Amelie (2001) – Jeunet’s notably skillful crowdpleaser no doubt hits every target for which it aims, albeit they’re mostly valueless ones

 

1,000 Convicts and a Woman (1971) – the title is pretty much the only relish-worthy aspect of this largely joyless British contrivance

 

Century of Birthing (2011) – Diaz’s mighty reflection on faith, creativity and commitment, encompassing the grotesque and the sublime

 

It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) – if only Donen/Kelly’s musical could have dug even deeper into the melancholy that tempers its exuberance..

 

Thomas in Love (2000) – Renders maintains the governing gimmick quite ably, but the film doesn’t leave much lasting impression of any kind

 

The Mackintosh Man (1973) – a rather plain drama, but lifted by Huston’s seasoned, unshowy pleasure in the life-draining spy machinations

 

Ruined Heart…(2014) – Khavn’s doomed criminal/whore love story is a strikingly individual, aggressively visualized performance-art piece

 

Bad Girls go to Hell (1965) – Wishman injects a trace of quiet authorial sympathy into a generally disembodied & mechanical victimhood drama

 

Danton (1983) – Wajda skillfully navigates historical events & oppositions, yet his film hardly taps the revolution’s complex momentousness

 

Our Souls at Night (2017) – you wish the still-magnetic stars were in harder-edged material, but a pleasing movie on its own flaccid terms

 

Casque d’Or (1952) – Becker’s drama of doomed romance might almost embody the huge virtues of the period’s French cinema, & its limitations

 

The Loveless (1981) – Bigelow/Montgomery’s striking collision, at once direct & evasive, of classic biker aesthetics & small-town repression

 

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) – among Fassbinder’s most precise, unerring works; occupying a unique space between reverie & social document

 

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016) – Lee’s engaging cavalcade of American idiocies and failings is generally more dutiful than incisive

 

Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) – Ozu’s exquisite portrait, both bleak and hopeful, of a post-war community’s gradual rehumanization

 

Paris, Texas (1984) – Wenders’ finely weighted, and yet somewhat forced, navigation between old- and new-world connections and ruptures

 

Police Woman (1973) – an often disengaged-feeling martial arts potboiler, suffused in the kind of mediocrity one can be nostalgic about

 

The Light between Oceans (2016) –  Cianfrance’s tragi-romance is mostly pleasantly if unremarkably old-fashioned, without being cloying

 

Odd Obsession (1959) – Ichikawa’s darkly preoccupied family drama might have a racy synopsis, but is a largely monotonous viewing experience

 

Critical Care (1997) – interesting enough material, not lacking in care, but Lumet needed to give it some extra fire, or kick, or passion…

 

Turkish Delight (1973) – few films have immersed themselves in gleeful, unashamed animal spirits as boisterously as Verhoeven does here

 

Berlin Syndrome (2017) – the grimly unappealing core material ultimately proves unworthy of Shortland’s multi-faceted engagement with it

 

3 hommes a abattre (1980) – Deray’s efficient but rather mechanical man-in-the-wrong-place thriller feels only intermittently engaged

 

The Girl from Chicago (1932) – its depiction of varying morality aside, one of Micheaux’s weaker, more thematically limited surviving films

 

Ares (2016) – Benes’ grim vision of a strained future benefits from being viewed in fanciful hindsight as a pumped-up prophecy of Macron!

 

Rabid (1977) – Cronenberg’s vividly punishing early work effectively occupies the intersection of intimate and collective anxieties

 

Chungking Express (1994) – perhaps the most purely enjoyable, kinetic, wondrously intuitive expression of Wong’s beautiful cinematic gifts

 

The Big Clock (1948) – Farrow’s structurally-striking thriller is great to watch, but lacks the thematic & tonal depths of classic noir

 

John From (2015) – Nicolau’s idiosyncratic, precise deconstruction of teenage dreams & rituals, in the most beguiling of sun-kissed packages

 

The Driver’s Seat (1973) – Griffi’s odd little jigsaw movie (with Taylor & Warhol!) draws fairly effectively on the era’s multiple anxieties

 

Oldboy (2003) – no doubt a gift from Park to genre fans, bringing a patina of tragic grandeur to its manipulations and contrivances

 

The Sorcerors (1967) – Reeves’ great little mind-control drama, seeped in local texture, agonized emotion and overall genre mastery

 

Evolution (2015) – Hadzihailovic’s eerily precise, mythic tale of ritual and mutation; suffused in alienated, somehow accusatory beauty

 

Born to Win (1971) – Passer’s sadly under-remembered movie is a distinctive blend of eccentric delight and grim, no-way-out junkiehood

 

The Factory (2004) – Loznitsa’s short study sets out unchanging brutal realities, couched within semi-abstract, almost wondrous mystery

 

The Scar of Shame (1927) – some biting thematic elements aside, Perugini’s drama is a bit less notable than other “race film” landmarks

 

Spetters (1980) – Verhoeven propels the broadly-drawn, often biting material with his swift, brutally frank cinematic, social & moral relish

 

Barry (2016) – Gandhi’s gentle Obama mythology now seems as far removed as Columbus, given America’s current Presidential atrocities

 

Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion (1970) – the orderliness of Petri’s comedy of degraded power may feel weirdly comforting now

 

Blue Steel (1989) – Bigelow’s minutely alert but short-of-redemptive visualization of a dispiritingly ugly relentless killer narrative

 

Rome, Open City (1945) – one feels Rossellini methodically constructing, if not yet fully crossing, a bridge to cinematic modernity

 

Night will Fall (2014) – Singer’s chronicle of recovered Holocaust film is reverent and moving, but can it ever pierce us sufficiently now?

 

La prisonniere (1968) – Clouzot’s strained last film is most gripped & gripping when immersed in pure cinematic &/or behavioral manipulation

 

Kicking and Screaming (1995) – Baumbach’s debut lacks much overall punch, but provides many appealing, often quite Stillman-esque fragments

 

Stavisky (1974) – Resnais’ sumptuous surface incrreasingly yields a study of extraordinary complexity, subtlety and regretful allusiveness

 

The Girl with all the Gifts (2016) – McCarthy’s impeccable character-driven vision both delivers and transcends zombie-genre pleasures

 

Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) – Becker’s famous, precisely rendered crime drama, marked throughout by wearily understated observation

 

Starman (1984) – Carpenter’s basic-feeling alien visitor road movie is generally pleasant, but no great shakes in any department whatsoever

 

Storm Children (2014) – Diaz’s observation of devastation; a quietly challenging fusion of pictorial mastery and sociological helplessness

 

The Sandpiper (1965) – pretty insipid stuff in all respects, with Minnelli’s expressive mastery seemingly shamed into timid submission

 

Trance (2006) – Villaverde’s study of enforced prostitution finds startling, quasi-mythic ways to chart the limits of our identification

 

The Spy who Loved Me (1977) – a sporadically pretty but hollow & unengaged Bond epic, hardly sustaining the “nobody does it better” branding

 

Jonas et Lila, a demain (1999) – Tanner’s enthralling late-career investigation is allusive & romantic, but also alert to threats & limits

 

The Lodger (1927) – Hitchcock’s tightly gripping silent film foretells his later masterly explorations of sexual obsession and trauma

 

Therese Desqueyroux (2012) – Miller’s careful but unsurprising telling feels far less alive and piercing than Franju’s earlier version

 

The Shooting (1966) – Hellman’s mythic ambitions can seem rather strained, but the film nevertheless emanates a strange, sparse power

 

Demain on demenage (2004) – in its own celebratory yet haunted way, Akerman’s comedy is as radically destructive as her epic Jeanne Dielman

 

Prime Cut (1972) – Ritchie’s should-be classic thriller is sparsely & scenically articulated, on a startlingly weird underlying sensibility

 

Our Little Sister (2015) – Koreeda’s Ozu-lite tale is overly prettified and hardly momentous, but filled with subtle, satisfying virtues

 

Hellbound train (1930) – for all its hectoring strangeness, Gist’s film is a raggedly authentic cry of wide-ranging societal anguish

 

Grenouilles (1983) – Arrieta’s short film plays engagingly (in its minimal, abstracted way) with low-budget genre myths and contrivances

 

The Accountant (2016) – O’Connor’s weirdly over-stuffed narrative is all debits and few credits, bursts of accounting-talk notwithstanding

 

Sounds from the Mountain (1954) – Naruse’s masterfully observed, often severely piercing study of faltering relationships and structures

 

What Women Want (2000) – Meyers’ unmemorable comedy is largely free of complexities, ambiguities or ironies (oh, or of real laughs either)

 

The Tenth Victim (1965) – Petri’s playful futuristic thriller is diverting and good-looking, but doesn’t have his later forceful bite

 

The Last Married Couple in America (1980) – beneath the standard contrivances, Cates provides bitter glances at a vast emotional wasteland

 

Keetje Tippel (1975) – a strikingly expansive chronicle of social and sexual exploitation, well-served by Verhoeven’s unflinching brashness

 

American Honey (2016) – Arnold’s microcosm of strained capitalism; a lovely, piercingly observant odyssey of cinematic pollen-gathering

 

The Village Teacher (1947) – initial promise as a character study yields to Donskoy’s dutifully reverent evocation of Soviet achievements

 

Black Hawk Down (2001) – despite Scott’s exacting focus on immersive authenticity, the film doesn’t really expand the genre’s vocabulary

 

Description d’un combat (1960) – Marker strains to see Israel’s future, and (of course) fails, even as the most effortless of time travelers

 

Black or White (2014) – Binder’s tidily balanced conventionality hardly allows his greater thematic ambitions (such as they are) to flourish

 

Drunken Master (1978) – whatever one’s affinity for the genre, Chan’s almost constant, cleanly-observed ultra-physicality is mesmerizing

 

Mirror, Mirror (1990) – Sargenti smartly positions the lurid Carrie-like material to reflect female desires, insecurities, bonds and rifts

 

The 400 Blows (1959) – Truffaut’s film taps a romantically poignant, searching totality that binds and transcends the sum of its parts

 

Cafe Society (2016) – hardly a fully-achieved Allen film, but appealing for its gorgeous surfaces and quietly regretful, dreamy undertones

 

Les bas-fonds (1936) – Renoir’s peerlessly varied observation of social complexities culminates in offsetting states of relative liberation

 

Captive (1986) – Mayersberg’s somewhat detached but resonant reflection on, perhaps, the intertwined confinements of storybook princesses

 

The Triplets of Belleville (2003) – Chomet’s wonderfully-executed animated treasure, pitched at a previously uncharted angle to the world

 

Model Shop (1969) – Demy’s treasurably dead-end American film, drifting plaintively at an intersection of drab depression & displaced beauty

 

Florentina Hubaldo, CTE (2012) – Diaz’s ultimately devastating investigation of the cruel contours and legacy of extreme personal trauma

 

Scum (1979) – Clarke’s unsparing portrait of callous institutional uselessness ultimately verges on draining, Kubrickian horror fantasy

 

Ashik Kerib (1988) – less satisfying than his earlier works, Parajanov’s fantasy spans both painstaking conservation and hermetic denial

 

The Exile (1931) – Micheaux’s film groundbreakingly digs into racial constructs and perceptions, technical limitations notwithstanding

 

Big Man Japan (2007) – Matsumoto wittily spins his superhero mumbo-jumbo-mythmaking to absurd lengths, & yet finds a rumpled grandeur there

 

Magnificent Obsession (1954) – Sirk immaculately renders the astounding plot contrivances  & settings as confining as they are transcending

 

Fire at Sea (2016) – Rosi’s suprising, quietly audacious approach to the migrant crisis draws out sharply tragic parallels and oppositions

 

They’re a Weird Mob (1966) –  a proficient if often toothless romp, elevated by Powell’s playfully brutal observations of masculinity

 

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) – it’s hardly worth recalling the nominal plot, but Gans’ escalating abandon makes some kind of impression

 

The Spook who sat by the Door (1973) – Dixon’s remarkable, incendiary blend of biting satire and deadly serious revolutionary quasi-prophecy

 

In a Glass Cage (1985) – for all Villalonga’s exacting skill with challenging material, there’s little to be gained from watching the film

 

Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A. (1946) – Williams’ rather under-realized melodrama teems with interesting, sometimes provocative fragments

 

Denial (2016) – any contribution to the cinema of rationality is ever-timely and valuable, despite Jackson’s overly conventional instincts

 

Two Women (1960) – De Sica’s ending largely retains its bleak power, but much of the film’s querulous suffering feels strenuously calculated

 

A Beautiful Mind (2001) – Howard’s highly watchable (of course), not unmoving movie is laden with predictable simplifications & limitations

 

Le Amiche (1955) – Antonioni’s early masterpiece, suffused with spiritual misalignment beneath its ceaselessly observant, probing surface

 

James White (2015) – a film of essentially small parameters, but deftly seeded by Mond & the fine actors with unusual hurts & grace notes

 

Pointilly (1972) – Arrieta’s fragment of preoccupation (and abuse?), both watchful and mythic, is intriguing enough that you wish for more

 

The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992) – Armstrong’s modest but vividly, expansively observed drama of familial transitions and displacements

 

Menilmontant (1926) – Kirsanoff’s supremely haunting narrative is a glory of cinema’s expressive power, both as disruption and as comforter

 

Certain Women (2016) – Reichardt’s exquisitely observed and geographically rooted, deeply-felt study in circumscribed but meaningful lives

 

That Man from Rio (1964) – de Broca’s pantheon-worthy romp, its underlying coldness mightily offset by the epically charismatic Belmondo

 

Unrelated (2007) – Hogg demonstrates a superb, sometimes quietly heartbreaking feeling for the shifts in human connection, and their victims

 

O Henry’s Full House (1952) – Hawks’ sequence aside, the use of five directors doesn’t prevent a frequent feeling of sanitized repetition

 

Sogni d’oro (1981) – Moretti’s incident-filled 8 ½-type self-mythology is at once sort of unsummarizably brilliant, yet mostly uninteresting

 

Nude on the Moon (1961) – hard to imagine whose erotic reveries would exactly have been satisfied by Phelan/Wishman’s perplexing fantasy

 

Dog Days (2001) – Seidl’s unique deployment of cinema’s inherent voyeurism opens up knowingly problematic yet oddly expansive sexual terrain

 

Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970) – Schatzberg’s study of a fashion model taps both the industry’s modish surfaces and its enervating heart

 

The Salesman (2016) – Farhadi’s well-honed investigative method again probes rewardingly into Iran’s distinct yet very human hypocrisies

 

The Thing from Another World (1951) – it’s true - Nyby’s classic yarn most enthralls for the constantly masterful Hawksian group dynamics

 

Le cent et une nuits de Simon Cinema (1995) – Varda’s goofy, ramshackle star-studded homage teems with defiantly elemental creative pleasure

 

Dr. Strangelove (1964) – a lasting achivement, if frequently a stifling one, for Kubrick’s visual grandeur and structural cleverness

 

The Tribe (2014) – Slaboshpitsky’s stylization is arguably overdone, but the film is still something of a startling triumph on its own terms

 

Christopher Strong (1933) – Arzner’s fascinating study of intertwined female capacity and (both self- and externally-imposed) limitations

 

The Settlement (2002) – Loznitsa crafts his film almost as strange displaced science fiction, but challenges us to see the humanity within

 

De Palma (2015) – Baumbach and Kasdan deliver just about as effective and illuminating a survey as one can imagine in the time allotted

 

The New Land (1972) – the second part of Troell’s fine saga, as eerily well-attuned to the new life’s isolation as to its grand belonging

 

Married to the Mob (1988) – on its own terms, capable only of demonstrating Demme to be a proficient enhancer of largely turgid material

 

Jack Frost (1964) – Rou’s charmingly tangible musical fantasy evokes its magical rustical world with beguiling, knowing primitivism

 

Equity (2016) – Menon’s control and the well-worked-out script make for gripping viewing, despite the project’s narrow, hermetic nature

 

Listen to Britain (1942) – Jennings and McAllister bring diverse observations of a challenged nation into precise, watchful equilibrium

 

The Legend of Suram Fortress (1985) – Parajanov/Abashidze’s film is an alluring, somewhat weary emissary from a far-off aesthetic tradition

 

The Last Picture Show (1971) – Bogdanovich’s haunting film merits its reputation, even if its poetic desolation can feel over-calculated

 

An Investigation on the Night that Won’t Forget (2012) – Diaz’s commemoration could hardly be cinematically simpler, or more vastly human

 

Year of the Dragon (1985) – Cimino’s provocatively flawed but often brashly scintillating expression of America’s escalating tribal madness

 

La carriere de Suzanne (1963) – Rohmer’s second moral tale, dense with deeply considered relationships, is among the most rawly complex 

 

The Sea of Trees (2015) – an increasingly depressing slog through the forest, as the full depth of Van Sant’s insipidity blooms into view

 

Double Indemnity (1944) – a fascinating noir web, with Wilder’s snappy perfection almost entering a zone of spiritually-drained abstraction

 

Cemetery of Splendour (2015) – as always, Apichatpong’s exquisite perceptions seem to open up wondrous new spiritual and narrative spaces

 

The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) – Kloves’ film poses at being harder-edged than it is, but is pleasingly seeped in taciturn charisma

 

Requiem for a Vampire (1971) – Rollin seems rather lacking in conviction here, leaden plotting somewhat undercutting his erotic ritualism

 

Pride (2014) – Warchus’ calculating film is hardly hard-edged, but is pleasing & persuasive in its evocation of community & shared struggle

 

Wind Across the Everglades (1958) – hardly as focused as Ray’s best work, but increasingly propelled by a central relish and intensity

 

Italian for Beginners (2000) – Scherfig unproductively applies the minimal ‘Dogme’ style to a contrived piece of romantic wish-fulfilment

 

White Girl (2016) – somewhat familiar territory, greatly ventilated by Wood’s alert direction and Saylor’s fascinatingly vital fragility

 

Los Olvidados (1950) – Bunuel’s grimly indelible landmark, its severe sociological potency magnified through constant expressive mastery

 

Psycho II (1983) – Franklin references the original’s general form and assorted content with aplomb, but can’t revive its potent substance

 

The Man who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) – Ford’s film remains a key if subdued reference point in exploring America’s founding myths & lies

 

Under the Shadow (2016) – much in Anvari’s “ghost” story feels overly generic, for all its powerful metaphoric and social elements

 

eXistenZ (1999) – a fascinating, if relatively more rigid expression of Cronenberg’s magnificently unsettled, premonitionary sensibility

 

Belladonna of Sadness (1973) – Yamamoto’s weirdly lovely submission to narrative and artistic iconoclasm, stoked by recurrent erotic frenzy

 

I Smile Back (2015) – Palky’s film is most interesting for Silverman’s complex presence, and for hints of a broader critique of domesticity

 

The Frozen North (1922) – enjoyable, relatively low-key Keaton short is somewhat harder-edged than expected, until its dreamy final reveal

 

The Asthenic Syndrome (1990) – Muratova’s remarkable, overspilling expression of our screwed-up, deadened societal train to nowhere

 

The Shipping News (2001) – Hallstrom’s adaptation feels frosted, distant and overly compressed, achieving little of lasting interest

 

Andrei Rublev (1969) – Tarkovsky’s inexhaustible, daunting recreation; cinema as teeming, immersive, cruel and transcendent pilgrimage

 

A Hologram for the King (2016) – it’s enjoyable and sociologically diverting, even if Tykwer’s crisp proficiency doesn’t yield much depth

 

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) – Mankiewicz’s lugubrious drama warrants no more than a minor place in the museum of cinematic repression

 

JLG/JLG (1994) – Godard’s beguiling self-mythology, possessed by mourning and retrenchment while (of course) restlessly investigative

 

Sausage Party (2016) – as craftily polished as a supermarket tomato, Tiernan & Vernon’s (let’s say) liberation fantasy is tirelessly amazing

 

The Emigrants (1971) – Troell’s steady, entirely persuasive chronicle draws its power from wondrous faith, rooted in stark necessity

 

The Last of England (1987) – Jarman’s scorching evocation of a death-spiraling Britain; perhaps overdone but forgivably and masterfully so

 

The Last Vacation (1947) – Renoir might have found vitality in this family vignette; Leenhardt assembles pretty, undistinguished mechanics

 

A Bigger Splash (2015) – not ultimately a major film, but galvanized by Guadagnino’s ravishing taste in cinematic and emotional architecture

 

The Age of the Medici (1973) – Rossellini’s unerring rationality and measured clarity sustains a mesmerizing historical representation

 

The Crying Game (1992) – Jordan’s singular fusion of political and romantic destinies; fascinating despite its soft, unresolved heart

 

A Quiet Place in the Country (1968) – the narrative’s generic aspects fetter Petri’s fine madness, notwithstanding its anti-consumerist bite

 

The Childhood of a Leader (2015) – Corbet audaciously & painstakingly represents our futile desire to trace back evil to explicable origins

 

Wedding in Blood (1973) – a straightforward Chabrol drama, with all his practiced skill but little of narrative or psychological distinction

 

Moonlight (2016) – Jenkins’ utterly enveloping, structurally impeccable study carries a wondrous sense of elevation, immersion and destiny

 

Le Testament d’Orphee (1959) – Cocteau’s farewell film, a marvelously strange but enraptured assertion of restless poetic sensibility

 

Body Double (1984) – one’s assessment would drown in reservations, if not for De Palma’s often ravishing, utterly spellbinding scenemaking

 

The Sidewalk is Gone (2002) – but even in such a relatively minor diversion, Tsai’s peculiar deadpan poetry of absences remains alluring

 

Villain (1971) – Tuchner’s slab of British gangland nastiness; only modest surprises, but should satisfy most cravings for red meat

 

Divines (2016) – Benyamina’s deeply-rooted yet transcendent drama of young female overreach radiates thrilling cinematic and human energy

 

The Wild Bunch (1969) – in its chilling nihilistic perfection, Peckinpah’s tirelessly orchestrated epic remains an astonishment to behold

 

Cafe Lumiere (2003) – Hou pays beautiful tribute to Ozu’s complex grace and mild quirks, while noting Japan’s subsequent social evolution

 

The Big Sky (1952) – a work of grand spectacle and classic Hawksian human structures, tapping the faultlines of the nation’s harsh formation

 

The Innocents (2016) – Fontaine’s stark drama is moving and well-told, if ultimately slightly lacking in cinematic and moral distinctiveness

 

Winter Kills (1979) – Richert plays drolly with America’s unquenchable, helplessly romantic obsessions with conspiracy, power & myth-making

 

Demons (1985) – Bava’s gorily concentrated relish-fest may be, if nothing else, the movie a Billy Idol/Motley Crue et al soundtrack needs

 

You Only Live Twice (1967) – the fifth Bond film is already a largely ponderous experience, visual excellence & skin-deep “exoticism” aside

 

High-Rise (2015) – Wheatley’s fearsomely well-orchestrated, tightly-packed adaptation encompasses epochs of social delusions and faultlines

 

The Third Generation (1978) – Fassbinder’s pitiless diagnosis of post-war Germany as little more than a political and behavioral toilet

 

The Mirror has Two Faces (1996) – the movie’s vaguely affirmative core gets smothered by Streisand’s gooey, superficial manipulations

 

Hour of the Wolf (1968) – with ruthless concision, Bergman extrapolates the preoccupations of the artistic sensibility into pure horror film

 

Dog Eat Dog (2016) – Schrader impressively ventilates and transcends his paltry material, but the film still feels way beneath him

 

The Phantom of the Moulin-Rouge (1925) – Clair’s central dream of mischievous transcendence just about wins out over stodgy plotting

 

Second-Hand Hearts (1981) – one hopes Ashby’s angle was affectionately sociological more than raucous condescenion, but it’s tough to tell

 

Fellini’s Casanova (1976) – maybe Fellini’s most undervalued film, weary with the toll of such relentless pursuit and climax and aftermath

 

Danny Collins (2015) – in the absence of much else, Fogelman’s film feels as if everyone involved was basically just enjoying Pacino’s act

 

The Games of Angels (1964) – Borowczyk’s brief animation of industrialized destruction lies among his most precisely calculated visions

 

The Postman always Rings Twice (1981) – the mild erotic charge aside, Rafelson’s interest in the dated material remains a little mysterious

 

Wet Dreams (1974) – best known for Nick Ray’s (hauntingly wrecked) piece, but diverting throughout as a giddy/dirty conceptual time capsule

 

Little Men (2016) – another fine, minutely calibrated work from Sachs, deeply sympathetic to practical, economic and human limitations

 

La belle et la bete (1946) – Cocteau’s delightfully articulated, emotionally vivid myth, suffused in magic both as facilitator & as barrier

 

Winter of our Dreams (1981) – almost every scene of Duigan’s modest but precise drama feels possessed by some form of loss, lack or absence

 

Aquarius (2016) – Filho’s film teems with exquisitely measured social and personal observation, indelibly anchored by the incredible Braga

 

The Owl and the Pussycat (1970) – Ross’s drab comedy now looks like a time capsule for a particular strain of ugliness and coarseness

 

Une femme de menage (2002) – Berri’s film has all the prototypical virtues of French cinema, even if nothing about it is too surprising

 

Private Property (1960) – Stevens’ rediscovered class-conscious drama has a pretty effective angle on catastrophic envy and desire

 

The Wave (2015) – Uthaug’s throwback fjord disaster movie is just about passably watchable, as long as you can shut out the dialogue

 

The Trouble with Harry (1955) – for all its dark-sounding premise, Hitchcock’s comedy is mostly a trifling diversion from his major work

 

The Official Story (1985) – Puenzo’s solid study of political awakening is perhaps more conventionally executed than its theme requires

 

The Terminal Man (1974) – modestly cautionary "mind control" drama, enhanced by Hodges’ chilly, astute, deliberately-paced precision

 

Elegy to the Visitor from the Revolution (2011) – Diaz’ shimmering lament, suffused with loss, yet powered by the hope inherent in creation

 

Go Down, Death! (1944) – Williams’ morality tale remains startling for its potent conviction in the intervening reality of heaven and hell

 

The Oberwald Mystery (1980) – an unusual expression of Antonioni’s pervasive disquiet, emphasizing its technical modernity, yet lost in time

 

Sleeping Giant (2015) – Cividino ventilates his simple tale through superb feeling for youthful behaviour, morality and environment

 

Juste avant la nuit (1971) – Chabrol’s eerily well-controlled examination of transgression, guilt and morality; among his strongest works

 

Manchester by the Sea (2016) – Lonergan’s film isn’t without humour, but makes its mark as a rare sustained study of the contours of sadness

 

A Simple Story (1959) – aptly named, and yet the meticulousness and purity of Hanoun’s observation is its own kind of aesthetic complexity

 

Cannery Row (1982) –  Ward’s desired mythic artifice never entirely gels, but I may never forget the Nolte/Winger dancing scene at least

 

Nathalie Granger (1972) – Duras’ film is calm and almost narrative-free, yet seems to draw on a world of individual and systemic trauma

 

Lost River (2014) – Gosling’s strikingly weirdo directorial effort is strangely haunting, for all its stylistic and narrative excesses

 

Le roman de Werther (1938) – Ophuls’ eloquent, emotionally gripping tragic love story pulsates with his empathetic cinematic elegance

 

I Am Sam (2001) – Nelson’s film is such obvious nonsense that it’s best to treat the whole thing as an absurd parody, which mostly works

 

Salut les cubains! (1971) – Varda’s joyous (if arguably underly-politicized?) creativity renders still photographs as breathless as dance

 

Joy (2015) – perhaps the most straightforwardly satisfying example of Russell’s facility for effortless-seeming, intuitive organization

 

Onibaba (1964) – Shindo’s striking dark tapestry; perhaps not a work of great depth, but one of memorably needy, lusty, fearful texture

 

That’s Entertainment! III (1994) – a workmanlike compilation overall, distinctly lifted by some striking previously unseen material

 

Les intrigues de Sylvia Couski (1975) – Arrieta’s intriguingly elusive film; a highly fluid, open exercise in identity and performance

 

The Search (2014) – Hazanavicius provides some strikingly bleak recreations, but his narrative structure is overly limiting and unpersuasive

 

The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959) – almost at career-end, Lang concocts his most exotically ravishing expression of his ensnaring narrative

 

The Verdict (1982) – Lumet positions familiar material as a gripping wintery vision of light in the personal and institutional darkness

 

Business is Business (1971) – beneath the brash shenanigans, Verhoeven’s film is a somewhat wistful survey of a bleak sexual landscape

 

Hell or High Water (2016) – Mackenzie reaches a bit too strenuously for broader resonance, but it’s still a super-solid, loss-seeped drama

 

What did the Lady Forget (1937) – Ozu’s mildly provocative early sound film has all his smooth facility with distinctive family structures

 

I Ought to be in Pictures (1982) – hardly feels like Simon or Ross were really trying, but weary old-time know-how holds it together

 

The President (2014) – Makhmalbaf’s deeply-felt odyssey constitutes a desolately resonant reference point for Trump-fueled despair

 

Eldridge Cleaver (1970) –  Klein’s punchy portrait should strike our politically destitute era as hard as ever, as iconography & as attitude

 

Fruits of Passion (1981) – Terayama’s committed but inherently rather detached film of intense erotic presences within structuring absences

 

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956) – Walsh’s provocative deconstruction of women and/as currency, presented with suitably brassy polish

 

Rams (2015) – Hakonarson’s film is surprisingly satisfying both as quirky sociological window and as cornerstone of the sheep-film pantheon

 

Out of Season (1975) – Bridges’ meaningless, glumly-acted drama feels like observing a turgid funeral march toward a well-signposted grave

 

Lessons of Darkness (1992) – Herzog’s relatively conventional pictorial mastery communicates reverence but too, at times, unexpressed horror

 

49^th Parallel (1941) – Powell’s Nazis-in-Canada epic still excites with its ambition and commitment, despite its over-emphatic aspects

 

Life of Riley (2014) – a perfect end point for Resnais: a magnificent artificiality, suffused with dreamy yet intricate cinematic mystery

 

Score (1974) – Metzger’s full-bodied, fairy-tale-inflected, cinematically & verbally quite well-articulated celebration of bisexual hedonism

 

Melancholia (2008) – Diaz’s enormously striking, anguished, necessarily fractured expression of relentless personal and national trauma

 

Grass (1925) – Cooper and Schoedsack’s documentary odyssey falls a little short of cinematic grandeur, for all its many stunning images

 

Maggie’s Plan (2015) – the Miller/Gerwig brand names feel to be severely flagging in this unaccountably mechanical, low-insight effort

 

Courage for every day (1964) – Schorm’s fluidly observed but not greatly distinctive study of escalating (righteous) rage against the system

 

Mistress (1992) – Primus’ love/hate Hollywood vignette occasionally spins its general flatness into something more interestingly dark

 

Perceval le gallois (1978) – tonally & structurally, one of Rohmer’s most distinctive works, but no less morally & sociologically bracing

 

Knight of Cups (2015) – hard to assess whether Malick is trapped in cinematic affectation, or in some sense truly artistically liberated

 

The Sorrow and the Pity (1969) – Ophuls’ milestone film is (true to the history it addresses) as pervasively unsatisfying as it is imposing

 

Heat (1986) – the movie has hints of something darker and dreamier, but Richards’ sometimes appealing rhythms aren’t enough to get there

 

The Ghost that Never Returns (1930) – Room’s drama is just about as hauntingly evocative as its title, with terrifically visualized moments

 

Captain Fantastic (2016) – the film’s weaknesses are easily forgiven, given Ross’s genial skill and the inherent appeal of non-conformity

 

The Exterminating Angel (1962) – Bunuel’s brilliantly strange expression of the corrupt stasis at the heart of the ruling establishments

 

Time out of Mind (2014) – Moverman’s largely effective study of homelessness, drawing on both immersed realism and resourceful artifice

 

The Demons (1973) – on paper it sounds like a feverish trash explosion, but in practice Franco renders it plodding, flat and repetitive 

 

Viva (2007) – Biller’s immensely pleasurable, perfectly designed and sustained 70’s evocation/parody/critique/lament/you name it…

 

Mr. Freedom (1969) – Klein’s remarkable piece of pop-art distills American grandstanding to a hyperactive, brightly coloured junkyard

 

Swiss Army Man (2016) – just when you think there can be no new love stories, Kwan and Scheinert’s dank yet delicate oddity proves otherwise

 

The Ballad of Narayama (1958) - Kinoshita’s grim tale has a sustained beauty, but one of sustained artificiality, and inherent distance

 

Ornette: Made in America (1985) – Clarke’s strategically eccentric approach perfectly complements Coleman’s genially iconoclastic power

 

Bang Gang (2015) – Husson’s study of “modern love” is accomplished and searching in some respects, overly posed and perfunctory in others

 

The Front (1976) – Ritt’s blacklist comedy is rather too sparse and unatmospheric to leave much of an impression, beyond dutiful admiration

 

Love Battles (2013) – Doillon & the actors arrive at some memorably erotic physical & emotional architecture, which must count for something

 

Primary (1960) – Drew’s alert and stimulating time-capsule study of the low-tech drudgery and mundanity on the road to ultimate power

 

Ashes (2012) – Apichatpong dreams briefly, turbulently of pushing his cinema away, but ultimately it returns, in all its elemental beauty

 

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973) – perhaps Peckinpah’s greatest, most epically rueful film, seeped in a decay both romantic and terrible

 

City of Women (1980) – only Fellini could rattle around deep inside his own ass with such sustained, unbound, happily problematic brilliance

 

The Spy in Black (1939) – Powell’s well-paced film certainly points toward the confidence and scope of his soon-to-follow masterworks

 

Green Room (2015) – hard to give much of a damn about Saulnier’s drama, for all its attention to detail and engagingly naturalistic aspects

 

The Marquise of O (1976) – Rohmer’s striking case study of tangled proprieties & impulses provides a strong adjunct to his core achievement

 

Big Trouble (1986) – feels most like Cassavetes when the messy narrative yields to an eccentric observance of life as actorly improvisation

 

Liebelei (1933) – not as glorious as Ophuls’ later works, but demonstrating all the elements of his expansive, empathetic cinematic mastery

 

Born to be Blue (2015) – Budreau’s Chet Baker film benefits from Hawke’s performance, but feels overly formal and emotionally distanced

 

L’ange et la femme (1977) – Carle’s strange, sparse, isolated fantasy somehow seems to draw on Quebec’s politically-charged otherness

 

Short Term 12 (2013) – Cretton’s film is deft and often quite moving, even if driven by a familiar form of narrative over-compression

 

The Pumpkin Eater (1964) – striking when at its most rawly, despairingly Pinteresque; at other times it feels forced in its icy alienation

 

11 Minutes (2015) – Skolimowski’s exercise in connection & causation is skillful, but certainly more limited & mannered than his best work

 

Sudden Impact (1983) – Eastwood’s brash portrayal of America as crime-ridden cesspit; one hopes the intention was at least quasi-satiric

 

Oyuki the Virgin (1935) – Mizoguchi’s study of female self-determination against society’s disdain; not as potent now as his greatest works

 

Sunset Song (2015) – Davies’ beautiful, intimate deeply-rooted rural chronicle holds a wealth of sociological and philosophical complexity

 

Blood and Black Lace (1964) – Bava at lurid play in his perfect stylized milieu; the results are often ravishing, if only fleetingly

 

Money Monster (2016) – Foster’s movie is to an impactful topical commentary as a bunch of tweets are to an eloquently reflective essay

 

Le chat (1971) – Granier-Deferre’s sober tale, somewhat more enduring than the clapped-out lives it depicts; Gabin/Signoret obviously help

 

The Lobster (2015) – Lanthimos’ unique comedy expresses with superb elegance the desperate tyranny of our social and cultural ideologies

 

The Battle of the Sexes (1928) – one perhaps detects Griffith most keenly when the battling yields to depicting stupidity and suffering

 

Vagabond (1985) – Varda’s calmly expansive approach places questions of self-determination vs. victimhood into constant, doomed tension

 

Trumbo (2015) – I suppose it’s somewhat ironic that Roach’s portrayal of a writer’s fiery defiance should be so safe and pedestrian

 

Woyzeck (1979) – Herzog’s small-scale film encompasses a wealth of twisted observation, with Kinski’s staggering presence at its fulcrum

 

Midnight Special (2016) – Nichols brings it a reflective sheen and classy casting, but ultimately it’s just more unilluminating hocus-pocus

 

Festival panafricain d’Alger (1969) – Klein’s productively exhausting record pulsates with music, incident and hunger for revolution

 

The D Train (2015) – Mogul/Paul’s comedy of renewal through sexual and social repositioning stops well short of scorching the tracks

 

Dernier domicile connu (1970) – Giovanni’s solid worn-out-shoe-leather police drama, seeped in disillusionment at societal shortcomings

 

Neighbors (1981) – Avildsen’s stiff corpse of a comedy, surely one of the more clueless efforts ever turned in by an Oscar-winning director

 

Coming Home (2014) – Zhang’s drama is no doubt heartfelt, but ultimately a trifling way of dealing with politically charged material

 

Night Mail (1936) – Watt and Wright’s propulsive portrait of pre-war Britain evokes both industrial ingenuity and menial human confinement

 

Tale of Tales (2015) – Garrone’s happy if unimportant blend of the inconsequentiality of bedtime stories, & the adult dreams to follow later

 

Super Fly (1972) – O’Neal’s mountainously iconic presence thrives mightily against Parks’ provocatively textured cinematic rhythms

 

Le beau marriage (1982) – Rohmer’s merely superficially slight comedy somehow seems to foresee the vexing weightlessness of the online era

 

45 Years (2015) – Haigh’s wondrously acted (or inhabited) study is a quietly tragic masterpiece of emotional calibration and evocation

 

The Lickerish Quartet (1970) – Metzger asserts erotica’s reality-bending power, and all but seduces/bludgeons you into believing it

 

Interior. Leather Bar. (2013) – Franco/Mathews’s film is certainly fascinating, even if marked as much by glibness as by profound reflection

 

Princesse Tam-Tam (1935) – Greville’s movie would be of little interest, beyond its compromised, contradictory use of Josephine Baker

 

The Shallows (2016) – Collet-Serra’s concentrated (and, yes, un-deep) woman-in-peril drama does sustain a certain sensationalistic beauty

 

La rupture (1970) – Chabrol pushes events & characterizations near absurdity, all the better to emphasize the film’s central moral strength

 

Anomalisa (2015) – the existential despair and inner heaviness may not be so new, but Kaufman’s astounding expression of it certainly is

 

Un certo giorno (1968) – Olmi’s calmly probing observation of a business executive, musing on the contingencies of success and contentment

 

Black Widow (1987) – for all its limitations, Rafelson’s drama is perpetually alluring for its immersion in female desire and fascination

 

All our Desires (2011) – Lioret’s amalgam of modest social crusade & hankie-friendly melodrama; smooth, but rather perplexingly forgettable

 

The Phynx (1970) – Katzin’s bizarre, leaden attempt at a madcap generation-spanning celebrity-strewn romp evokes near-total bewilderment

 

By the Sea (2015) – generally interesting but persistently limited attempt by Jolie to occupy the cinematic territory of past masters

 

The Night Heaven Fell (1958) – Vadim delivers accomplished Bardot-ogling, but his largely bleak film talks of passion more than it evokes it

 

Roar (1981) –  much as Harrison’s one-of-a-kind movie asserts man/beast harmony, the sense of otherness and threat is often plain terrifying

 

Messidor (1979) – another sparsely transporting study by Tanner, of the intertwined living & dying fueled by directionless, doomed movement

 

The Sky Trembles…(2015) – Rivers’ powerfully disquieting drama, seemingly a challenge to underexamined ideas of cinema as cultural leveler

 

The French (1982) – Klein’s wide-ranging tournament record, free of pumped-up glamour, teeming with solid time capsule-type pleasures now

 

Yolanda and the Thief (1945) – not the most coherent of musicals, but Minnelli’s expressive mastery compensates for its deficiencies

 

The Witch (2015) – Eggers’ impressive film navigates with imposingly chilly finesse between disparate occurrences and uncertainties

 

Nora Helmer (1974) – Fassbinder gives Ibsen’s play a fascinatingly ritualistic tone, eloquently evoking social and psychological constraints

 

The Neon Demon (2016) – like its subject, Refn’s film of fleetingly alluring surfaces & concepts seems designed to be rapidly disposed of

 

Mr. and Mrs. Kabal’s Theatre (1967) – Borowczyk’s disquieting, sparse animation, studded with piercing dreams of real-world erotica ahead

 

Straight Outta Compton (2015) – Gray’s essentially old-fashioned telling often falls a bit flat, excepting when it taps into social currents

 

La promesse (1996) – emblematic Dardenne brothers work, applying propulsive narrative technique to searching, socially-grounded material

 

Ill Met by Moonlight (1957) – a well-told yarn, but too narrow in its scope for Powell and Pressburger’s masterful sensibility to flourish

 

Starstruck (1982) – Armstrong happily delivers the requisite tacky set-pieces, while never losing her sense of social and cultural realities

 

Mauvaise graine (1934) – Wilder’s debut (!) is an appealing if rather rushed drama, more at ease with the convivial than the hard-bitten

 

The Forbidden Room (2015) – Maddin/Johnson’s astounding, unprecedented creation, crafted with volcanic relish from cinema’s scrappy margins

 

Serail (1976) – de Gregorio’s playful and yet deadly serious mystery, drawing ever-inward while suggesting limitless further unpackings

 

Hail, Caesar! (2016) – with consummate skill, the Coens celebrate both the technical mastery and mythic reach of classic Hollywood

 

Demons 2 (1986) – the movie races along in its opportunistically haphazard way, seldom providing much basis for rating Bava Jr. as a stylist

 

Frankenstein must be Destroyed (1969) – Fisher’s study in escalating anguish and doom is intensely focused, if stately by modern standards

 

Steve Jobs (2015) – Boyle/Sorkin’s highly structured, mannered, repetitive approach falls flat, to the point of near-boredom by the end

 

The Goalie’s Anxiety…(1972) – from Wenders’ early, questing period; full of smart moves, but not ultimately yielding his richest outcomes

 

Code 46 (2003) – Winterbottom’s enigmatic semi-thriller, a deadened distillation of elements from similar films, never seems necessary

 

Full Moon in Paris (1984) – Rohmer’s beautifully structured (albeit highly typical) study of a young woman’s doomed idealistic overreach

 

Leave her to Heaven (1945) – Stahl paints the prettiest of aspirational postcards, then lets loose Tierney’s sensational malevolence

 

The Invitation (2015) – Kusama expertly shapes the Purge-like premise into a human exploration as well as a genre-friendly creep-out

 

Edvard Munch (1974) – Watkins’ rewarding multi-facteted investigation, intimately evocative while insisting on social and historical context

 

99 Homes (2014) – Bahrani’s film is full of compelling observation, fortunately not too obscured by the labored, unconvincing plot mechanics

 

Spirits of the Dead (1968) – Malle, Fellini & Vadim execute their respective segments with solidity, tortured razzle-dazzle & shamelessness

 

Spectre (2015) – Mendes’ digitized spectacle-making often fleetingly dazzles, but the film’s heart feels entirely weary, if not absent

 

Heremias (2006) – Diaz’ long but monumentally rewarding narrative of wrenching personal evolution in a cruel, unyielding environment

 

My Brilliant Career (1979) – Armstrong’s eternally pleasurable, well-observed study of a vibrant young woman determined to set her own path

 

The Treasure (2015) – Porumboiu holds the drudgeries of existence and the possibility of mythic triumph in mysteriously perfect balance

 

Things to Come (1936) – the film’s strident certainty is hard to warm to now, no less than the oppressive scale of Menzies’ visualizations

 

Sid and Nancy (1986) – Cox ably charts the relationship’s raucous otherness, but at the (inevitable?) cost of a rather wearying film

 

The Virgin’s Bed (1969) – even as it utterly strangifies the Biblical references, Garrel’s stark film is carried by revolutionary faith

 

Creed (2015) – Coogler’s object lesson in renewing familiar devices & structures, through sensitivity to character, & sheer cinematic smarts

 

The Sunday Woman (1975) – Comencini’s mystery has an appealing cast and playful streak, but just succumbs to endless unilluminating tangles

 

Last Love (2013) – Nettelbeck’s glossy, deadening sap-odyssey lurches shambolically from one meaningless exchange/confrontation to another

 

Lightning (1952) – Naruse’s customarily acute observation of family turmoil winds its way to a quiet assertion of self-determination

 

Suffragette (2015) – much in Gavron’s scrupulous film is stirring, but such a history surely demanded a more radical, wayward presentation

 

The Strange Affair (1968) – and also just a bit strained, as Greene jazzes up a familiar trajectory through seediness and stained decency

 

Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005) – Tscherkassky reconfigures violent Western genre pleasures as deep cinematic trauma

 

Room (2015) – Abrahamson’s affinity for the child’s perceptions, & for the competing confinements of lived experiences, bring it in solidly

 

May Days (1978) – Klein’s loosely-compiled record of Paris 1968, a wistful/stirring reference point for dreams of counter-Trumpian action?

 

Paris by Night (1989) – Hare’s sharp modern noir, a politically charged deconstruction of Rampling’s superbly incarnated protagonist

 

Camille 2000 (1969) – the plot and characters barely register really, but Metzger’s erotic set-pieces are something to contemplate

 

Hitchcock Truffaut (2015) – Jones’ essay film is a twinkling, maturely-flavoured drink from one of film culture’s inexhaustible fountains

 

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) – Brooks’ fragmented, impressionistic filming and Keaton’s idiosyncrasy yield a fascinatingly evasive study

 

Conte d’ete (1996) – Rohmer’s beautiful study of, essentially, behavioural and emotional shallowness, against a setting of quiet continuity

 

Crimson Peak (2015) – not untypically, the blood all flows through del Toro’s design and imagery, seldom through his pale narrative

 

Viktor und Viktoria (1932) – Schunzel’s zippy little trifle, not a major entry in the cinema of desire, even less that of queerness

 

Dirty Pretty Things (2002) – Frears provides plenty to grimly chew over, but sacrifices some penetration for the sake of thriller mechanics

 

Female Vampire (1972) – the only structuring principle of Franco’s trudging, barely sentient grab-bag is Romay’s perpetually naked body

 

The Danish Girl (2015) – Hooper’s deadening sensitivity & caution often seem like a denial of the story’s physical & emotional specificity

 

The Running Man (1963) – Reed’s cat-and-mouse drama trots blandly along, seemingly barely engaged with the material’s possibilities

 

Trances (1981) – El Maanouni’s multi-faceted exploration of performance & environment; informative & rousing, if not quite deliriously so

 

Two Men in Town (2014) – Bouchareb’s chronicle of the hateful erosion of new beginnings, most interesting in its wider angle moments

 

Du cote de la cote (1958) – Varda’s exquisite cataloguing of sights from the Riviera, ultimately as attuned to exclusion as to celebration

 

Concussion (2015) – Landesman only sporadically rises above soft-centered pedestrianism to evoke, say, the steel and scope of a Michael Mann

 

Nada (1974) – Chabrol’s brisk terrorism drama often flirts with quasi-absurdity; but then, it seems to ask, what political project doesn’t?

 

River of Grass (1994) – Reichardt’s not unrewarding but often rather peculiar debut is far from her most unified or fully realized work

 

The Camp Followers (1965) – Zurlini’s desolate odyssey of war and sexual brutality accumulates in despairing, near-disbelieving power

 

Every Thing Will Be Fine (2015) – occasionally interesting for its icy dread and regret, but Wenders generally feels rather marooned here

 

Charley Varrick (1973) – Siegel’s memorable thriller, a beautifully structured abstraction layered with terse observation and texture

 

Ceremonie d’amour (1987) – Borowczyk’s late return to form, almost like an interrogation held within an erotically-charged private structure

 

Bright Road (1953) – the sentimental, insulated triviality of Mayer’s film largely undermines the historical significance of its black cast

 

On my Way (2013) – Bercot plays around with Deneuve’s star image and lasting if wearier allure, to pleasant if not very significant effect

 

The Warriors (1979) – propelled by Hill’s feeling for edgy confrontations in ominous spaces; civilization out at the margins, if anywhere

 

Perdida (2009) – a little treat of a movie, albeit rather softball-ish, as Garcia-Besne excavates intertwined family & film industry history

 

Commandment Keeper Church… (1940) – in their frail endurance, Hurston’s fragmented recordings evoke a quiet sea of reverence, and some fear

 

 

 

 

No Home Movie (2015) – Akerman’s quietly tragic last film creates an almost ghostly structure of presence and absence, belonging and exile

 

Equus (1977) – you can sense the power it once held on stage, but Lumet’s unpersuasive film version feels in need of a wilder master

 

Conte d’hiver (1992) – Rohmer’s return to the concept of life as a Pascalian wager; not among his greatest works, but entirely fulfilling

 

Frank (2014) – Abrahamson successfully conveys the weird beauty of wayward creative personality, & the fragile allure of living in its orbit

 

Miracle in Milan (1951) – De Sica’s weirdo fantasy/reality-denial, for sure not the movie you’d choose to commemorate Italian neo-realism

 

Carol (2015) – Haynes’ enormously engrossing film, a superb filmic expression of coded behaviour, agonized desire and social entrapment

 

Wild River (1960) – one of Kazan’s most richly visualized, often biting films, beautifully expressing the ambivalence that attends progress

 

The Middle of the World (2003) – Amorim’s film is vivid & fluent, packing a wealth of mood & incident, but its overall impression is modest

 

Truth (2015) – Vanderbilt’s study of scandal at CBS News is generally a lightweight piece of investigation (probably not by ironic design)

 

Invisible Adversaries (1977) – Export’s thrilling, disruptive investigation of stagnant discourse, one of the great films by & about women 

 

Further Beyond (2016) – Molloy/Lawlor’s impeccably smart yet pleasingly light-spirited reflection on filmic possibilities and restrictions

 

The Blood of Jesus (1941) – Williams’ pioneer film remarkably amalgamates passionately recorded truths and piercingly imagined beliefs

 

3 Hearts (2014) - Jacquot’s contrived drama goes down rather too conventionally, despite various points of structural and tonal interest

 

The Stunt Man (1980) – Rush’s tale of healing through Hollywood’s cathartic circus; often enjoyable but, indeed, more stunt than vision

 

La veuve Couderc (1971) – a modest drama, consistently elevated by Granier-Deferre through a rural texture both nostalgic and disquieting

 

Our Brand is Crisis (2015) – as the film lurches to a close, it seems more likely that Green’s brand is obnoxious, pandering dumbing-down

 

Billy Liar (1963) – Billy’s compulsive escape from British stagnancy is ever-relevant, even if Schlesinger’s film sometimes feels forced

 

Through the Olive Trees (1994) – with masterful, open-minded precision, Kiarostami’s mesmerizing films at once shape & discover their world

 

Black Mass (2015) – Cooper’s labored Bulger drama lacks any slash of artistic distinction or relish, even of the merely gratuitous kind

 

Panique (1946) – Duvivier’s well-executed, typically flavourful study of private and (in a memorable climax) public manipulation

 

And God Created Woman (1988) – Vadim’s mechanical remake suggests a director languishing far from his true time, place and passions

 

Every Which Way but Loose (1978) – in its own narrow-parametered way, I guess you could go with it as a kind of cultural celebration

 

The Lady in the Car with Glasses…(2015) – not a bad thriller premise, but swamped by Sfar’s nervous visual and structural hyperactivity

 

Light Sleeper (1992) - Schrader’s study of weary dissatisfaction occupies its own space, albeit reverberating with echoes of his other work

 

Yearning (1964) – another fine Naruse social study/romantic tragedy, again driven by postwar Japan’s underlying chronic incoherence

 

Macbeth (2015) – Kurzel for the most part reduces the play to standard-issue semi-mythical brooding bloodiness, albeit well-handled as such

 

Woman on the Run (1950) – fun to imagine traces of Welles in associate Foster’s tight little thriller, especially in the vertiginous finale

 

The Assault (1986) – Rademakers’ saga of war’s cruel arbitrariness and its aftermath is largely turgid (in the familiar Oscar-winning way)

 

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015) – sometimes Gomez-Rejon delights you; other times you wish he’d just let the poor girl die in peace

 

Le camion (1977) – Duras posits, with gracefully allusive persuasiveness, that contemplating a film might be as evocative as watching one

 

Mo’ Better Blues (1990) – Lee’s wonderful film envelops us in jazz world sensuousness & incident, before withdrawing to more grounded dreams

 

Sweet Charity (1969) – the movie has some prime Fosse choreography and strong songs, but much of it is slack, flashy and over-extended

 

Mustang (2015) – Erguven’s chronicle of female oppression; inherently gripping & stirring, but not particularly cinematically distinguished

 

The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (2011) - Losier’s impressionistic study is just about as strangely touching as its dreamy title

 

Un temoin dans la ville (1959) – Molinaro’s thriller teems with diverse mood & action, yielding steady if ultimately rather slight pleasures

 

Remember (2015) – executed with somewhat more finesse than most of Egoyan’s recent work, but fundamentally no less unpleasant and ill-judged

 

Les fantomes du chapelier (1982) – Chabrol’s interestingly structured exploration of murder, expertly pollinated with gloomy resonances

 

The French Connection (1971) – the classic status hardly seems merited, despite Friedkin’s gripping car chase and artfully dank emptiness

 

Sully (2016) – Eastwood’s absorbingly unfussy blend of well-honed, preoccupied character study and patient, super-well-mounted spectacle

 

Voici le temps des assassins (1956) – Duvivier’s expertly slow-burning thriller provides a memorable variation on the film noir temptress

 

Brooklyn (2015) – pleasant, often well-observed viewing, although it surely wouldn’t have hurt if Crowley had extended the tonal range a bit

 

Girlhood (2014) – Sciamma’s hypnotically empathetic study of friendships and structures, illuminating intertwined liberations and prisons

 

A Matter of Time (1976) – Minnelli’s last film - ambitious & reflective in its own way, but far less impactful than his earlier masterpieces

 

The Shape of Things (2003) – you may doubt how many dimensions LaBute’s shape of things really has, but it’s still provocative and engaging

 

Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) – Ruttmann’s unskeptical awe at the then-new modernity remains interesting, but hardly stirring now

 

Life (2015) – Corbijn recreates a snippet from the James Dean history; well-done in most respects, but just inherently not very important

 

Policeman (2011) – Lapid intelligently plies open some faultlines in Israel’s self-definition, allowing only the briefest hope of repair

 

Where does it Hurt? (1972) – some half-promising satirical elements, but swamped by Amateau’s leaden handling, and off-putting racism

 

Freeheld (2015) – yet another movie in which the material’s inherent worthiness is all but strangled by shockingly pedestrian story-telling

 

La fin du jour (1939) – Duvivier’s melancholy celebration of aging community is a little soft-hearted, but it’s a forgivable concession

 

Stranger than Paradise (1984) – Jarmusch’s irresistible portrait of an America of grand migrations & quests, but minimal tangible revelation

 

Une collection particuliere (1973) – perfectly encapsulating Borowczyk’s meticulously structural and formal approach to proud lustiness

 

Heart of a Dog (2015) – Anderson’s shimmering essay of love and remembrance, winding with unforced grace between the intimate and the cosmic

 

Miquette (1950) – Clouzot in unconventionally zany, winking-at-the-camera mode; not much sense of passion beneath the artful superficiality

 

Fear City (1984) – some mostly straightforward distractions - the later Go Go Tales is the only Ferrara strip joint movie anyone needs

 

Knife in the Head (1978) – Hauff’s imposing trauma drama, positing “craziness” as perhaps the clearest light on a drably oppressed society

 

Everest (2015) – Kormakur’s achingly predictable slog through stale material has lots of artificial dazzle but little cinematic presence

 

Love is Colder than Death (1969) – but it’s hardly worth splitting the difference, when played out in Fassbinder’s existential wasteland

 

White Girl in a Blizzard (2014) – Araki brings all his luminous, frank expressiveness to the material, leaving no resonance unexplored

 

La kermesse heroique (1935) – Feyder’s full-to-bursting comedy, its farcical qualities modulated by profound, intense underlying anxiety

 

Amy (2015) – for all Kapadia’s facility, the film is too easy on the industry’s & audience’s ongoing complicity in such grim case histories

 

Don’t Look Now (1973) – probably Roeg’s most straightforward film, and so for all its striking images & devices, one of his least necessary

 

Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005) – Tscherkassky reconfigures violent Western genre pleasures as deep cinematic trauma

 

Splendor in the Grass (1961) – Kazan’s drama of broken love and sexual suppression, beautifully suspended between fragility and intensity

 

My Golden Days (2015) – a glowing Desplechin masterwork: an intricately structured memory excavation rendered with superb, moving naturalism

 

Marathon Man (1976) – much about Schlesinger’s thriller is overblown and/or outright distasteful, despite some famously effective passages

 

Nouvelle vague (1990) – Godard’s densely challenging text ultimately uplifts for its vision of elevation from stifling structures and codes

 

The Cobweb (1955) – Minnelli’s sensational expression of pervasive 50’s anxiety, a major peak of the ultra-expressive melodramatic form

 

Goodbye First Love (2011) – Hansen-Love’s fine exploration of the evolving architecture of desire, as sensation operated upon by time

 

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972) – Rafelson’s masterpiece, excavated from a nation fending off the dark with tall tales and dice throws

 

The Story of Piera (1983) – a rather flat experience, despite Ferreri’s jagged approach to narrative and recurringly perverse instincts

 

The Connection (1962) – Clarke’s landmark film brilliantly interrogates, and embodies, both sober realities and artistic artifices

 

A Simple Life (2011) – but in Hui’s hands a quietly evocative one; the degree to which it’s a fully realized life is inherently ambiguous

 

Executive Action (1973) – Miller’s interesting but underpowered pre-Stone speculation on the JFK killing feels sparse and patched together

 

La vie de Jesus (1997) – insisting on the sublimity in what we might disdain, Dumont frames an unadorned life as a form of pilgrimage

 

Holiday (1938) – Cukor’s fine comedy, energized by intuitive camaraderie, by fun and self-exploration as the driver of meaningful existence

 

Il n’ya pas de rapport sexuel (2011) – Siboni’s not uninformative porn documentary toys predictably with the premise of its shrewd title

 

Emmanuelle in Soho (1981) – and thereby stripped of any glamour or eroticism, replaced by woebegone, sociologically damning British drabness

 

Lisztomania (1975) – I can usually go with the bubbly Russell flow, but making it through this nutball cultural mash-up is mostly a chore

 

Black Sabbath (1963) – Bava’s trilogy of slow-building horrors, narratively pretty solid, enhanced through engaged lighting and camerawork

 

Grandma (2015) – beyond some good give-and-take and commendable liberalism, Weitz’s life-revealed-in-a-day structure doesn’t amount to much

 

Remorques (1941) – Gremillon’s tight but evocative fatalistic romance/drama, striking for its engaged sense of anxious community

 

Heartburn (1986) – Nichols’ adaptation would seem like standard-issue scene-making, absent his still, often penetrative mode of observation

 

Detruisez-vous (1969) – at different times, Bard’s disorienting oppositions evoke both revolution in one’s grasp, and its impossibility

 

Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) – Heller’s exquisitely-considered exploration, pulsating with the excitement of self-exploration & definition

 

Manon (1949) – distinguished throughout by Clouzot’s grim undermining of romantic ideals, never more than in its remarkable final section

 

Ned Rifle (2014) – amiable enough but low-achieving extension of the Henry Fool mythology doesn’t suggest Hartley has much game left

 

La prima notte di quiete (1972) – Zurlini is far less striking than Antonioni, but gradually taps a similarly fascinating, desolate longing

 

Bridge of Spies (2015) – Spielberg in his appealingly unshowy, quietly imposing, if not very interrogative servant-of-history mode

 

Ballet mechanique (1924) – Leger and Murphy’s pioneering short retains its urgency, but only fleetingly taps into cinema’s sensuousness

 

Hanna K (1983) – Costa-Gavras’ stodgily twisting melodrama hardly provides the most effective way of illuminating or exploring modern Israel

 

War Requiem (1989) – a modest Jarman work, but drawing powerfully from the dark ocean of war-related imagery, from the drab to the psychotic

 

Woman in the Dunes (1964) – despite Teshigahara’s facility, ultimately more a visually arresting entertainment than a vital exploration

 

A Walk in the Woods (2015) – Kwapis’ trek movie, sticking diligently to the most banal trails, makes Wild feel like the work of Antonioni

 

Three Songs about Lenin (1934) – for all Vertov’s cinematic commitment, feels now much like being preached at for a (rather long) hour

 

Sicario (2015) – Villeneuve’s often arresting but ultimately insufficiently complex probe into America’s murky moral and legal heart

 

A Drama of Jealousy (1970) – Scola’s interrogative approach doesn’t ultimately excavate much depth, for all the energy and incident

 

Touchy Feely (2013) – Shelton has some interesting concepts & juxtapositions, but her formal experiments feel like mere artistic groping

 

Echappement libre (1964) – Becker’s Belmondo/Seberg reteaming is zippy fun, but stuck in genre convention, where Breathless transcended it

 

Inside Out (2015) – intriguing to think such a film could illuminate consciousness, if it lived way further outside the Hollywood headspace

 

Repast (1951) – Naruse’s absorbing study of a strained marriage, finely tuned to the ever-present reminders of other roads not taken

 

She’s Funny that Way (2014) – Bogdanovich observes this heavygoing farce with a glassily emphatic intensity, underlining its disembodiment

 

La tete d’un homme (1933) – Duvivier’s Maigret mystery is compelling for its intense, visually engaged examination of twisted psychology

 

The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology (2015) – among much else, a useful reference point for untangling the wearisome mechanics of Trumpism

 

Three into Two Won’t Go (1969) – Hall’s rather flat, or alternatively, intriguingly muted drama of middle-class lies and disappointments

 

Histoire de Marie et Julien (2003) – Rivette’s brilliant “ghost” story, a film of most quietly intricate structural and emotional complexity

 

Love Story (1970) – a lot of undistinguished 70s cinema looks more textured with time; this particular one, not really so much

 

The Look of Silence (2014) – Oppenheimer’s brilliantly structured, devastatingly poised interrogation of overwhelming moral complexities

 

Too Late for Kisses (1949) – rather plainly visualized, but you feel the collective creative relish driving Scott’s patriarchy-busting moves

 

Irreversible (2002) – Noe’s notorious film: too (in its way) sincere to be exploitative, too nakedly experimental to be passionately admired

 

Cruising (1980) – Friedkin’s notorious film isn’t without artful ambiguity & distance, but hard to separate it from the shallow opportunism

 

Victoria (2015) – Schipper’s single-take virtuosity expresses something of Europe’s uncertain, alternatively giddy and traumatized momentum

 

Mister Roberts (1955) – Ford/LeRoy’s easygoing wartime chronicle remains a pleasant showcase for star interactions, dated attitudes aside

 

The Practice of Love (1985) – less striking than Export’s majestic Invisible Adversaries, but in its own way as pervasively disruptive

 

Exorcist II: the Heretic (1977) – Boorman succeeds in evading the original’s literal-mindedness, but struggles to articulate his own vision

 

Android Dreams (2014) – De Sosa’s desolate approach to science fiction seems to ring with echoes of Europe’s lost vitality and coherence

 

The Trial (1962) – Welles’ imposing if imperfect adaptation of Kafka, heavy with darkly blended visual, psychological and historical trauma

 

The Exquisite Corpus (2015) – Tscherkassky converts scraps of titillation into an incendiary, seductive yet accusatory cinematic labyrinth

 

The Ninth Configuration (1980) – Blatty’s provocative drama glimpses the vastness of American madness, but disappointingly averts its gaze

 

Szamanka (1996) – Zulawski’s feverish Last Tango, each combustible encounter marking one step closer to psychic (and actual?) apocalypse

 

I Confess (1953) – Hitchcock’s stark study of guilt and suppression, articulated at times in a fascinatingly purged, almost Bressonian style

 

Macaroni (1985) – little more than a Naples travelogue, with Scola deploying Lemmon and Mastroianni in the most obvious manner possible

 

An Enemy of the People (1978) – Schaefer’s far too stagy, actorly & unatmospheric version of the play, unequal to McQueen’s quiet commitment

 

Lunacy (2005) – Svankmajer’s imposing cinematic edifice, built (over-built?) at the intersection of free will, madness and unbound flesh

 

I Married a Witch (1942) – gimmicks and special effects (like Veronica Lake) aside, much of Clair’s high-concept comedy is pretty pedestrian

 

The Future (2013) – we already know the future isn’t what it used to be, but Carrasco makes the point with virtuosic low-budget strangeness

 

Thieves after Dark (1983) – Fuller’s fatalistic French thriller is too often bland and slack, but his signature isn’t entirely absent

 

Jimmy’s Hall (2014) – not a major Loach work, but it draws powerfully on ongoing institutional fear of worker organization and expression

 

Loving Couples (1964) – Zetterling’s astounding drama often seems to be drawing on the entirety of female experience, desire & suppression

 

Beasts of no Nation (2015) – Fukunaga leads us into incomprehensible experience; perhaps the film’s failures to illuminate it are deliberate

 

Fantastic Planet (1973) – Laloux’s fantasy defines its own artistic universe, powered by allegory, savagery, whimsy, vision and silliness

 

Nightcrawler (2014) – Gilroy quite ingeniously locates modern day vampirism in the overlap of TV news and morally vacuous career drive

 

Walkover (1965) – Skolimowski’s early films are endlessly diverting, pugnaciously grounded while elevated with a uniquely jagged energy

 

Trainwreck (2015) – less funny and investigative than any random episode of Schumer’s show, and laden down with trivial distractions

 

The 3 Penny Opera (1931) – Pabst’s filming is piercing at times, but at others it seems to drift, ending up rather shapeless and perplexing

 

The Gambler (2014) – Wyatt’s film delivers some old-fashioned pleasures, but too often seems merely to strike grimly superficial poses

 

Todo moro (1976) – Petri’s intense, eloquently scathing representation of Italy’s governing rot, darkly foreseeing a terrible cleansing

 

Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015) – or maybe it’s just a penis-fixated buffoon masquerading as him, in one of Greenaway’s less imposing works

 

Adua & her Friends (1960) – Pietrangeli’s study of female collaboration is so pleasurable, their final failure hits all the more tragically

 

A Spell to Ward off the Darkness (2013) – or else to willingly succumb to it, in Russell/Rivers’ eccentric but mysteriously balanced study

 

Secrets (1971) – Saville’s study of a family and its transgressions searches too hard for shards of significance, but doesn’t entirely fail

 

Un chant d’amour (1950) – Genet’s remains one of cinema’s most beautifully expressed wishes, of an enacted desire that displaces the law

 

CQ (2001) – Coppola (no Peter Strickland) throws in plenty of cinephile-friendly eye candy, but overall it’s stylistically uninteresting

 

The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974) – Barilli’s grab-bag trauma drama, rendered eerily coherent by sheer well-visualized conviction

 

Love & Mercy (2015) – Pohlad’s Brian Wilson biography, unusually attentive both to its characters and to the texture of the creative process

 

Quand tu liras cette letter (1953) – Melville packs a huge amount of social observation and contrast into this still bitingly adult drama

 

Love & Friendship (2016) – an expertly-judged and -balanced social dissection, extending Stillman’s slowly-accumulating perfect score

 

The Devil’s Eye (1960) – an oddly-premised Bergman “comedy” that’s both amusing and severe, complementing his other work of the period

 

Crimes of Passion (1984) – Russell’s sort-of-inspired sleaze opera, intermittently pointlessly posing as a serious investigation of desire

 

La course du lievre…(1972) – Clement’s amazingly cast crime drama encompasses numerous intriguing takes on the genre’s inherent fancifulness

 

Tangerine (2015) – Baker’s wonderfully energetic mini-odyssey, a very modern application of the everyone-has-her/his-reasons philosophy

 

That is the Dawn (1956) – Bunuel’s romantic drama, driven by deeply-felt social compassion, housing a calm but clear vein of transgression

 

The Falling (2014) – Morley’s enthralling fable of female mystery and complexity, exquisitely conceived and realized in every detail

 

Order of Death (1983) – Faenza’s murky storytelling doesn’t realize the potential of the premise, & certainly not of the imaginative casting

 

Within our Gates (1920) – Micheaux’s (objectively, often bizarrely choppy) storytelling expresses the tangled pain of black life in America

 

Be with Me (2005) – Khoo’s quiet drama of loss & longing doesn’t initially seem too special, but thrives through interesting juxtapositions

 

Obsession (1976) – De Palma’s immaculately sustained sensual reverie, channeling Vertigo’s acuteness into stunned, dream-like experience

 

On the Silver Globe (1988) – Zulawski’s unfinished forward-looking epic; sadly, a bit of a monotonous slog, for all its allusive power

 

Sabrina (1954) – not one of Wilder’s more incisive films, but an eternally pleasant confection, not least for the casting of course

 

The Salt of the Earth (2014) – Salgado’s work is soberingly limitless, but Wenders doesn’t bring much more than hushed reverence toward it

 

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) – Altman’s “revisionism” mostly consists of discarding one cinematic myth for a stranger, dreamier replacement

 

Jane B. par Agnes V. (1988) – Varda’s blissfully inventive, ultra-Varda-ish placing of the evasive Birkin as the gateway to a cinematic maze

 

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) – Hawks’ classic comedy of gender exaggeration, studded (!) with memorable (in various ways!) set-pieces

 

Misunderstood (2014) – Argento’s study of a largely unloved child, interestingly channeling the whims and extremes of her own sensibility

 

Tempest (1982) – a weird Mazursky project that plays almost like a bloated, unfocused parody of his best work; enjoyable viewing regardless

 

Sex is Comedy (2002) – a lighter yet still troubling work from Breillat, on the tensions underlying the portrayal of desire in cinema

 

Chicago (1927) – Urson’s precursor to the musical doesn’t exude much jazz age flavour but is enjoyable anyway, with a nice vein of cynicism

 

Dheepan (2015) – the derided ending is actually the most interesting artistic flourish in Audiard’s otherwise unremarkably scrupulous study

 

Laughter in the Dark (1969) – Nabokov’s fascinating tale probably should have yielded a sharper film than Richardson put together here

 

Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012) – Greenaway remains a dauntingly astonishing architect of intellectual and cinematic structures

 

The Wild Duck (1976) – sad that Seberg registers so little in her final film, but it’s sensitive to the complexities of Ibsen’s play

 

Ricki and the Flash (2015) – Demme can’t tease much depth out of such trivial material; still, he delivers easy, if mostly flashless fun

 

La belle captive (1983) – one of Robbe-Grillet’s best films, crafting a stylish dream-logic narrative, pervaded by anxiety and obsession

 

Personal Velocity (2002) – Miller’s three-part film is an almost exemplary example of how small things, shown on screen, may become profound

 

Pepe le Moko (1937) – one still dreamily loses oneself in the doomed machinations, as much as in Duvivier’s fluent evocation of the Casbah

 

Queen of Earth (2015) – Perry’s virtuoso pivot from the flowing literacy of Listen Up Philip, deep into the unyielding contours of trauma

 

Battles without Honor and Humanity (1973) – and fought against a landscape largely free of hope or integrity, in Fukasaku’s gangster classic

 

They made me a Fugitive (1947) – Cavalcanti’s excellent study in post-war venality, hustling & despair, crackingly conceived & articulated

 

The Human Centipede (2009) – Six maintains the creepiness pretty well, but it’s all just too hermetically weird to have much evocative power

 

La tendre ennemie (1936) – in its investigation of female desire, Ophuls’ rather cluttered high-concept film calls ahead to Lola Montes

 

Everybody’s All-American (1988) – Hackford’s bland slog through years and regrets carries little deep sense of time, place or real character

 

Blanche (1971) – Borowczyk’s exquisitely controlled tale of repressed desire and manipulation, essential to a rounded view of his cinema

 

Magic Mike XXL (2015) – if nothing else, Jacobs’ film is striking for its near-total immersion in (a certain concept of) female pleasure

 

La chienne (1931) – irresistible early Renoir, telling its twisted tale with amused attentiveness to the complexities of human motivations

 

The Last Five Years (2014) – LaGravenese’s sweetly fluid musical, providing a more than adequate stop-off between more consequential movies

 

Rysopis (1965) – Skolimowski elevates the mundane through sustained imagination, pace, and affinity for everyday oddities and mysteries

 

She’s Gotta Have It (1986) – Lee’s joy-evoking, super-inventive debut, the all-time great cinematic appetizer to a staggeringly rich career

 

The Middleman (1976) – Ray’s studies of compromised modern India are among his most interesting work, despite some excessive underlining

 

Leviathan (2012) – Castaing-Taylor/Paravel’s turbulently meditative record/poem, wondrous and horrible, of the ocean and industrial man

 

Shoot the Pianist (1960) – Truffaut’s loosely discursive approach to the noir material feels largely as fresh and modern as ever

 

Invincible (2001) – Herzog is well-attuned to the material’s perverse elements, but too often falls merely into meandering, dour stateliness

 

A Walk Through H (1978) – Greenaway’s multi-layered journey, a dauntingly self-contained mythology that’s nevertheless bracingly liberating

 

Trois places pour le 26 (1988) – Demy’s overlooked last film, a happily retro musical that’s also a remarkable, transgressive investigation

 

The Symbol of the Unconquered (1920) – even in this incomplete state, Micheaux’s film provides a compelling window on racial complexities

 

A Hijacking (2012) – Lindholm’s drama provides a more quietly piercing, far less bombastic contrast to the broadly similar Captain Phillips

 

High Plains Drifter (1973) – Eastwood’s early film as director; a rigorously unfussy step on his long, active road of self-myth construction

 

La vie de famille (1985) – Doillon’s examination, both incisive & playful, of ambiguities that make a family (if the concept exists at all)

 

The Rink (1916) – Chaplin’s action-packed short is ultimately a showcase for ceaseless roller-skating aplomb, with Charlie’s delight evident

 

Les voleurs (1996) – one of Techine’s very best films, navigating its narrative and thematic complexities with near-supernatural assurance

 

Opening Night (1977) – a Cassavetes masterpiece, brilliantly expressing the traumas and liberating breakthroughs of acting and creation

 

My Neighbor Totoro (1988) – a more small-scale example of Miyazaki’s aesthetic – it’s the wondrous trippiness which mostly makes the movie

 

Nothing Sacred (1937) – Wellman’s classic, savvy comedy; the themes of public manipulation and rigged identification haven’t aged a bit

 

I’m Going Home (2001) – de Oliveira’s film has its own entrancing sense of ethicism and elegance, and some unexpectedly funny contrivances

 

Designing Woman (1957) – Minnelli’s romantic comedy is most alluring when the mostly mundane plotting gives way to cinematic exuberance

 

The Blue Room (2014) – Amalric’s intricately structured exercise in erotic, ominous fatalism, just about perfectly judged throughout

 

Best Friends (1982) – Jewison’s smoothly dawdling, star-caressing vehicle hardly registers as a comedy, or as anything at all really

 

Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge (1924) – for all its spectacle, Lang’s sequel is singularly governed by all-consuming obsession

 

Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) – Linklater in his most gracefully unforced mode, observing the tumble of competitiveness and camarderie

 

Black Lizard (1968) – Fukasaku’s crime/desire romp leaps through its knowingly outlandish narrative with gleeful, stylish self-awareness

 

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015) – Nelson’s linear approach sacrifices some fire and texture, but still vital viewing

 

A Lesson in Love (1954) – only an intermittently profound one though, in this fanciful, pleasantly over-stuffed early Bergman comedy

 

The Inner Life of Martin Frost (2007) – Auster’s ultra-Austerian journey through the mysteries of creativity, to no clear destination

 

Ro.Pa.Go.G (1963) – one of the best anthology films, leaving few aspects of consumerism unkicked; Pasolini’s segment is especially strong

 

Bringing out the Dead (1999) – Scorsese’s morally anguished drama is superbly rendered of course, but its darkness houses familiar ghosts

 

Je t’aime moi non plus (1976) – Gainsbourg’s amazing, desperate vision; a confused but unashamed psyche yelling from the world’s asshole

 

Miss Julie (2014) – Ullmann’s increasingly intense version of the play is more wrenching but less cinematically engaging than Sjoberg’s

 

The New Babylon (1929) – Kozintsev/Trauberg’s deeply immersed, full-to-bursting drama, an absolute highlight of the Soviet silent cinema

 

Chi-Raq (2015) – as vital as ever, Lee crafts an unflaggingly rich, angry engagement with violence, community and cinematic convention

 

Lola Montes (1955) – Ophuls’ gorgeous last film, limitless and liberated even as it places Lola in the most elegant of cinematic prisons

 

The American Dreamer (1971) – befitting its title, the portrait stamps Hopper as a gloriously messy amalgam, and a wondrous bullshitter

 

Documenteur (1981) – Varda’s typically frank portrayal of adaptation, suffused with quiet melancholy and ceaseless, deconstructive curiosity

 

An American Tragedy (1931) – Sternberg’s drama is best when immersed in shifty desire, and in the complexity of moral and social calculation

 

The Mysteries of Paris (2015) – a valuable stab, if haunted by absences, at the daunting task of supplementing Rivette’s masterpiece Out 1

 

“M” (1951) – Losey’s remake, less viscerally dazzling than the original, just as gripping for cinematic fluidity & steely social awareness

 

Max mon amour (1986) – Oshima’s woman-loves-chimp satire has a subversive premise and largely placid execution, which may be the main joke

 

Portrait of Jason (1967) – it’s impossible in Clarke’s amazing “portrait” to disentangle revelation from performance, form from content

 

Saint Laurent (2014) – Bonello’s consistently fascinating, highly multi-faceted exercise in the complexities of representation & appearance

 

Little Darlings (1980) – Maxwell’s film engages in some interesting ways with teen female attitudes, for all its simplification & silliness

 

Love One Another (1922) – Dreyer’s early, rather cluttered drama is entirely of this world, in all its frequent prejudice-stained ugliness

 

The Overnight (2015) – Brice jumps into his premise, enjoyably hits some safely naughty marks and quickly gets out, mission accomplished

 

Les carabiniers (1963) – Godard’s contempt for war’s squalid fantasies rings through every step of the film’s sparse, desperate inventions

 

Angel Heart (1987) – Parker’s lurid supernatural thriller, too silly and overdone to engage disciples either of the light or the dark

 

Okoto and Sasuke (1935) – a lovingly-told tale of devotion, more gentle in its social awareness than Shimazu’s more contemporary stories

 

Manglehorn (2014) – Green’s beguiling amalgam of conventional core narrative and eccentrically subjective, digressive, allusive elaboration

 

Black and White in Color (1976) – Annaud’s modest colonial satire, most memorable for the background authenticity of its Ivory Coast setting

 

The Revenant (2015) – Inarritu’s achievement is primarily a logistical and technical one, in a film of limited artistic texture otherwise

 

Entr’acte (1924) – the images in Clair’s short debut may carry limited bite, but his joy in cinematic play and movement is undiminished

 

The Graduate (1967) – Nichols’ classic has iconic moments to burn, but they barely seem now to cohere into a lastingly resonant whole

 

Diplomacy (2014) – Schlondorff’s old-fashioned but well-told elevation of dialogue and reflection over unquestioned military momentum

 

Divine Madness (1980) – Ritchie’s strong if straightforward showcase for an indelible, if inherently somewhat unknowable performer

 

2046 (2004) – Wong’s alluring extension of In the Mood for Love suggests a filmic universe & directorial mythology of infinite possibility

 

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) – aesthetic judgments hardly apply, when Ford’s drama of poverty and relocation still feels so achingly relevant

 

The Ugly One (2013) – Baudelaire’s poised reflection on war’s challenge to representation & reality, less fruitful than his documentaries

 

The Kid (1921) – Chaplin’s film is more calculation than cinematic dream, but the graceful sweetness at its centre remains captivating

 

The Sacrifice (1986) – despite some genuine marvels, Tarkovsky’s stately last film lacks the glorious stimulations of his greatest work

 

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) – the premise of Forbes’ low-key thriller carries it along, despite a rather journeyman quality overall

 

Far from the Madding Crowd (2015) – it’s hard to identify any significant respect in which Vinterberg’s version improves on Schlesinger’s

 

Out One: Spectre (1974) – Rivette’s edited down, more narratively propulsive version interrogates reality and meaning no less brilliantly

 

Ex Machina (2015) – Garland’s pristine, isolating cinematic design perfectly reflects his ominous theme, explored with probing articulacy

 

Une vie (1958) – Astruc’s tale of a woman, deeply immersed in its characters’ ill-fated instincts and in their unsheltering surroundings

 

The Guest (2014) – Wingard’s entertaining if not too illuminating parable plays rather like a Schwarzeneggerized version of Teorema

 

The Trio’s Engagements (1937) – not a major Shimazu film, but with some pleasantly whimsical observation of male and organizational idiocies

 

Slow West (2015) – one admires the imaginative precision of Maclean’s engagement with genre, without really getting all that much out of it

 

Mon oncle d’Amerique (1980) – Resnais’ film often feels overly schematic, but is that what I really feel, or is it a conditioned response..?

 

The Russia House (1990) – Schepisi’s underpowered, underrevealing and under-romantic (although often over-written) le Carre adaptation

 

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924) – Lang’s epic becomes gradually more Langian, as dragons and magic yield to conspiracy and moral weakness

 

Hungry Hearts (2014) – Costanzo’s would-be unsettling drama doesn’t exactly engage progressively with the complexities of motherhood

 

Le revelateur (1968) – Garrel’s astonishing cinema has always seemed to occupy its own quite unnerving narrative, psychic & thematic space

 

Nailed (2015) – Russell’s abandoned film feels like a lost cause from the start, lacking even the meagre virtues of his other recent work

 

Smiles of a Summer Night (1955) – one of Bergman’s many peaks, a grand piece of comedy styling, yet rigorous & morally intriguing throughout

 

It Follows (2014) – a metaphorical horror concept for the ages, fully realized through Mitchell’s terrific observation and tonal control

 

Morning for the Osone Family (1946) – despite its faults, Kinoshita’s study of home during war retains all the power of its moment in time

 

Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013) – Abrams lurches from one ill-conceived notion to another, salvaging little of the original’s richness

 

Loulou (1980) – Pialat’s magnificently turbulent, never merely messy behavioral study has a naturalism that often feels virtually unmediated

 

Noah (2014) – Aronofsky’s stubbornly eccentric telling (why so few kick-ass animal shots!?) is overall more dour and dogged than visionary

 

Kino Eye (1924) – some of what Vertov’s eye sees is a bit tedious now, but his assertion of cinematic & social possibility remains gripping

 

Go Go Tales (2007) – a night in a strip joint, teeming with incident, perhaps (surprisingly?) Ferrara’s most tolerantly indulgent work

 

Tokyo Story (1953) – often plausibly cited as Ozu’s greatest work; certainly one of his most perfectly structured and complexly affecting

 

Interstellar (2014) – a very unbombastic space epic, defined as much by absence as engagement; perhaps Nolan’s most quietly satisfying film

 

Lancelot du lac (1974) – Bresson deploys extreme narrative & cinematic coding & reduction here; not his most transporting work, by design

 

Aloha (2015) – just about holds together, but whatever modest idiosyncrasy and emotional insight Crowe once possessed seems calcified by now

 

El (1953) – Bunuel’s wondrously controlled and expressive dissection of male passion and entitlement is among his (many many) finest films

 

Dying of the Light (2014) – for all the interesting frailty and moral fatigue at its centre, hardly the film one wishes for from Schrader

 

Our Neighbour, Miss Yae (1934) – Shimazu’s fine, surprisingly sexually aware film, demonstrating his great alertness & progressive curiosity

 

The Decline of Western Civilization Part III (1998) – a largely grim end to Spheeris’ trilogy, its choppy nature impeding its authenticity

 

Pauline at the Beach (1983) – one of Rohmer’s lighter works, although the narrative and psychological intricacy is as stunning as ever

 

The Crimson Kimono (1959) – a thriller that delves fascinatingly into cultural attitudes, with some prime examples of the Fuller cinema-fist

 

Letters to Max (2014) – a beautiful little film, in which Baudelaire’s teasing structure perfectly supports the complexities of his subject

 

It’s Alive (1974) – Cohen’s storytelling is frequently spasmodic and ragged, but the movie always retains its anxious, pained undercurrent

 

You, the Living (2007) – or the barely living, in Andersson’s uniquely indicting vision of an inwardly and outwardly drained existence

 

The Marriage Circle (1924) – Lubitsch’s fine comedy of mismatched desires, notable for a landmark portrayal of unashamed female horniness!

 

Battle Royale (2000) – Fukasaku’s teen slaughter epic provides some easy points of nihilistic identification, but not really too much else

 

Welcome to L.A. (1976) – Rudolph’s debut is overly posed and narrow in its preoccupations, even allowing that’s largely the point of it

 

Masques (1987) – Chabrol seems to be having an unambitious, genre-friendly good time here, which the audience can more or less buy into

 

In a Lonely Place (1950) – Ray’s spellbinding study of emotional instability pushes Bogart into a rawly confessional, deeply-affecting vein

 

Tomboy (2011) – Sciamma’s delicately captivating study is alert to every nuance of her protagonist’s psychology and environment

 

Over the Edge (1979) – Kaplan packs the film with piercing identification & pleasure points, all the way to the damn-the-consequences climax

 

In the Mood for Love (2000) – Wong weaves together countless structural audacities and aesthetic marvels with seductively intuitive mastery

 

Experiment in Terror (1962) – it’s intriguing to search for Edwards’ sensibility within such low-key (hardly experimental) early projects

 

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (1988) – Hara’s rough-edged but galvanizing, morally probing study of a uniquely possessed individual

 

The Exorcist (1973) – compared to the most penetrating horror films, an absorbing spectacle that stays safely at arm’s (or puke’s) length

 

The Anabasis of May and Fusako… (2011) – Baudelaire’s film is riveting both as modern history and as a reflection on identity & experience

 

Day of the Fight (1951) – even in its brevity and narrow focus, Kubrick’s early short seems heavy with existential emptiness and exhaustion

 

Son of Saul (2015) – for me, Nemes’ hyperactive narrative momentum constitutes a problematic artistic and ethical approach to the Holocaust

 

Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976) – Kopple’s moving reality poem encompasses an entire fraught history of weary steps forward, and others back

 

Juliet of the Spirits (1965) – all-out Fellini, maintaining an extraordinary level of invention, and yet feeling largely tedious and inert

 

Youth (2015) – hard to see Sorrentino’s film as much more than a beautiful, lugubrious idiocy, with vague glimpses of some greater design

 

What? (1972) – Polanski’s startlingly unpredictable vision of confinement shrouds its meticulous control under multi-faceted weirdness

 

What we Do in the Shadows (2014) – Clement and Waititi’s deadpan, idea-spurting vampire “documentary” is dead-on scrupulous to the end

 

Pather Panchali (1955) – the status of Ray’s film as a “human document” remains its great strength & to some extent its cinematic limitation

 

The Hateful Eight (2015) – Tarantino’s high-entertainment genre-hugging work drinks deeply from America’s bloody pools of trauma

 

No End (1985) – Kieslowski’s supernaturally-tinged drama of pragmatism and idealism lacks the composed equilibrium of his greater works

 

Laggies (2014) – Shelton’s lightweight comedy is all tedious plot mechanics and predictable insights, with disappointingly little complexity

 

A Brother and his Sister (1939) – Shimazu’s unusually articulate & observant film casts a quietly keen eye on workplace & family structures

 

The Big Short (2015) – McKay’s shouldn’t be the only version of this daunting history, but he presents it with terrific energy and skill

 

Augustine of Hippo (1972) – a perfectly-sustained work of investigation and evocation from Rossellini’s reflectively pedagogic late period

 

The Duke of Burgundy (2014) – Strickland’s minute control is structurally fascinating, but less viscerally galvanizing than hoped for

 

Blow-Up (1966) – Antonioni’s beautiful, unfaded enigma, overflowing with astonishing expressions of the interplay of experience and meaning

 

Story of my Death (2013) – Serra’s strange but masterfully sustained project, in part a meditation on cultural decay and metamorphosis

 

Ulzana’s Raid (1972) – Aldrich’s unnerving Western, an absorbing crucible for the era’s political and moral ambiguities and failings

 

The Puppetmaster (1993) – a rich, winding chronicle of personal and national vicissitudes, one of the central pillars of Hou study/worship

 

Of Human Bondage (1934) – still a gripping clash of acting styles, from Francis’ quiet naturalism to Davis’ all-conquering artificiality

 

The New Girlfriend (2014) – Ozon has a fresh and supple way with concepts of gender and identity, less so with visual and tonal convention

 

Girlfriends (1978) – Weill’s film, as fresh as ever, is still an unforced, beautifully intuitive compendium of female dilemmas and desires

 

Tom at the Farm (2013) – consistently contrived and unpleasant material, which Dolan does very little to elevate, or even make tolerable

 

Come Back, Africa (1959) – over fifty years on, Rogosin’s record of apartheid makes you feel as stirred and ashamed as it surely did then

 

The Makes (2009) – Baudelaire’s graceful little tribute to Antonioni, reflecting on the master’s almost limitless evocative power

 

My Ain Folk (1973) – the second part of Douglas’ miraculous trilogy, a film of austere but unforgettable social and cinematic revelations

 

The Congress (2013) – Folman’s impressively bewilderingly wild ride through identity & freedom spins somewhere between great vision & folly

 

Magnet of Doom (1963) – Melville’s very interesting, digressive semi-noir, a film with an odd air of simultaneous expansion and contraction

 

The Babadook (2014) – Kent’s instantly classic horror film, a terrifically well-considered expression of unresolved sadness and trauma

 

Levres de sang (1975) – one of Rollin’s most unified and sustained meditative narratives, somewhat more psychologically charged than usual

 

Smithereens (1982) – an enjoyable film, only partly successful at capturing its environment & culture, given Seidelman’s narrative tidiness

 

Happiness (1935) – Medvedkin’s distinctly eccentric, surrealistically flavoured parable of collectivism’s (& life’s) bumpy relative virtues

 

Big Eyes (2014) – Burton’s dismally zest-free film provides little hint of why we should care about Keane’s pleasantly minor achievements

 

Love and Anarchy (1973) – Wertmuller’s cinema of exclamation marks, although not without impact, is overall more grating than galvanizing

 

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) – superb spectacle, but I don’t really understand the value judgment by which this would be the year’s best film

 

Il Grido (1957) – Antonioni’s masterpiece, highly specific about and yet transcending time and place, tracing a man’s doomed, futile freedom

 

Gallivant (1997) – Kotting’s warmly idiosyncratic road trip, finding in Britain an inexhaustible behavioural and cinematic playground

 

The Decline of Western Civilization Part II (1988) – Spheeris’ entertaining but overly superficial, context-light and freak-showish survey

 

Laila (1929) – Schneevoigt’s epic love story remains terrific viewing, more notable for scenic wonders than for stylistic or thematic ones

 

Losing Ground (1982) – Collins’ remarkable study overflows with fresh, original perspectives on its central relationship, on race & identity

 

The Land (1969) – a morally-charged film of historical and cultural interest, but Chahine too often feels like a messy, leaden director

 

The Captive (2014) – another unpleasant Egoyan failure, applying his woefully tired, self-important bag of tricks to a nasty core premise

 

Les liaisons dangereuses (1959) – even without hindsight, one could have guessed such stylish nastiness wouldn’t ultimately be Vadim’s bag

 

Spotlight (2015) – McCarthy’s process-oriented drama carries little lasting impact either as cinema or as a window on a poisoned institution

 

Planet of the Vampires (1965) - Bava’s sci-fi film is mostly just OK, lifted though by often striking, groovy-meets-haunting design & color

 

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter (2014) – the Zellners maintain a pleasant eccentricity, which is as big a pot of gold as the premise can deliver

 

By the Bluest of Seas (1936) – Barnet and Mardanin’s quasi-fairy tale, at once both a paean to and deconstruction of the collectivist dream

 

Moonlighting (1982) – Skolimowski’s modest but vastly resonant and observant docu-fable, teeming with moral challenges both small and vast

 

Daughters of the Dust (1991) – plunging us deeply into a distinct culture and ideology, Dash all but invents a new film language and rhythm

 

Araya (1959) – Benacerraf’s beautiful cultural record, gorgeously composed in all respects, although not without aspects of over-insistence

 

Tusk (2014) – perhaps the best man-into-walrus movie imaginable, given Smith’s new burst of “auteurist” life, and full-blubber acting

 

House (1977) – Obayashi’s is indeed a staggering creative barrage; is it a success measure if you mostly want to hide from it in a cellar? 

 

Listen to me Marlon (2015) – Riley’s overly prettified and fragmented approach to the most complexly reflection-worthy of screen actors

 

Mamma Roma (1962) – Pasolini’s stunning film, relishing both rough-hewn naturalism and theatricality, inevitably yielding profound suffering

 

Dear White People (2014) – Simien’s wonderfully alert, thought-provoking, multi-faceted case study, surely one of the year’s best films

 

Fascination (1979) – Rollin’s initially intriguing vampire tale ends up feeling a bit thin, and relatively restrained erotica-wise (darn!)

 

The Decline of Western Civilization (1981) – Spheeris’ indelible punk record thrills and repels, often (as the scene warrants) both at once

 

Enthusiasm (1931) – Vertov’s record of industrial achievement, generally less cinematically engaging now than his Man with a Movie Camera

 

Unbroken (2014) – Jolie’s chronicle of suffering and survival is highly polished, such that you mostly just squint helplessly before it

 

The Passenger (1975) – Antonioni’s inexhaustibly reflection-worthy triumph might actually be, if I had to choose, my favourite of all films

 

Jacquot de Nantes (1991) – a perfect gift from Varda for Demy-philes, a memoir/scrap book you absorb with constant delight, wanting no more

 

The Swarm (1978) – as if to illustrate the result of placing substantial resources & legendary actors in the hands of a bumbling simpleton

 

Noriko’s Dinner Table (2005) – Sono’s delicately mysterious exploration of teenage girl restlessness and the multiplicity of resolutions

 

Foreign Correspondent (1940) – Hitchcock’s thriller is more about can-do breeziness than complexity, but with several memorable set-pieces

 

Phoenix (2014) – Petzold intriguingly deploys his highly artificial, noir-ish premise to interrogate Germany’s post-war moral desolation

 

Westworld (1973) – typical Crichton concoction of an engaging governing concept neutered by mostly disappointing detailed execution

 

The Wind Rises (2013) – Miyazaki’s wonderful, perpetually graceful but gravely serious meditation on flight, dreams, fragility and death

 

Outrage (1950) – Lupino’s wide-ranging, highly alert study of assault & its aftermath, with one of Hollywood’s more ambiguous happy endings

 

Alice and Martin (1998) – very distinctively Techine’s in its narrative shifts and substitutions, and overriding sense of composed purpose

 

China 9, Liberty 37 (1978) – Hellman injects a few inventive flashes, but it’s mostly a disappointingly plain, straightforward western

 

The Assassin (2015) – beneath beautiful genre trappings, entirely recognizable as an application of Hou’s scintillating methodologies

 

Louisiana Story (1948) – Flaherty’s engaging, all-but-Disneyfied slice of southern life doesn’t carry much insight or significance now

 

The Sleeping Beauty (2010) – Breillat brilliantly springboards from Demy territory, into a complex representation of awakening and maturity

 

Vanishing Point (1971) – the “mythic” aspects of Sarafian’s classic road picture are strained, but it’s satisfyingly atmospheric & handsome

 

Taxi (2015) – Panahi navigates charmingly within Iran’s human & technological possibilities, in a work of gently subversive form & content

 

Cul-de-sac (1966) – Polanski’s unique comedy, a wickedly finely-dug hole at the literal, symbolic and psychological end of the road 

 

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) – Amirpour’s interesting, if not that impactful, exercise in minimalist expectation-subversion

 

The Confession (1970) – Costa-Gavras’ informatively multi-faceted scream from the self-loathing heart of an ideologically righteous regime

 

Experimenter (2015) – the supple form of Almereyda’s sublimely stimulating film perfectly fits its protagonist’s restless investigations

 

Vengeance is Mine (1979) – an Imamura masterpiece, its directorial scope and control almost as terrifying as its unknowable protagonist

 

20,000 Days on Earth (2014) – holding “truth” and myth in perfect equilibrium, Forsyth and Pollard give the great Cave the film he deserves

 

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) – Paradjanov’s high-conviction, colour-saturated imagery is among cinema’s most hauntingly distinctive

 

Foxfire (2012) – unexpected choice of project for Cantet, sometimes feeling largely conventional, but quietly disruptive in various ways

 

The Nude Vampire (1970) – Rollin’s startling brand of visionary kink can be rather mesmerizing on its own terms, if not on anyone else’s

 

The Martian (2015) – Scott’s feels like a patchwork of earlier movies in too many respects, but one appreciates its unpretentious nimbleness

 

The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) – less notable for the “crime” than, as always, for Renoir’s spellbinding human and moral orchestration

 

St. Vincent (2014) – Melfi’s ritualistic visit to cinema’s venerable odd-couple altar, the honoured sentimentality quotient well intact

 

The Seventh Seal (1957) – Bergman’s classic vision of life at its earthly limit, a lesson perhaps in the virtues of engaged equanimity

 

Junun (2015) – Anderson’s pleasant, resourceful but unforced observance of musical fusion occupies its own graceful space within the genre

 

The Two of Them (1978) – it’s rather sad that Meszaros’ astute study of women and their environment still seems so relatively unusual

 

Predestination (2014) – a seriously impressive feat of plotting by the Spierigs, and a one-of-a-kind manipulation of gender boundaries

 

Princess Yang Kwei Fei (1955) – Mizoguchi’s beautiful, deeply empathetic tale of the tragic constraints at the centre of opulent power

 

Cobain: Montage of Heck (2015) – for all Morgen’s strenuous efforts, Cobain’s is the archetypal narrative that mostly resists illumination

 

Old and New (1929) – Eisenstein’s hymn to agricultural modernization conveys virtually boundless belief in imagery and industry alike

 

Lucy (2014) – Besson’s fantasy of supercharged human capacity, a film so enjoyably unleashed that it actually does feel kind of liberating

 

The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972) – Fassbinder’s piercing, subversive study of death by small capitalistic steps, wretched 70’s-style

 

Just Tell me what you Want (1980) – perhaps Lumet was drawn to the idea of a “romantic comedy” containing almost nothing you’d call “sweet”

 

Je t’aime je t’aime (1968) – Resnais transforms a familiar sci-fi premise into a mesmerizing fabric of loss, regret and helpless experience

 

Kill the Messenger (2014) – Cuesta provides plenty to chew on, even if his storytelling frequently seems too straightforwardly seasoned

 

Sansho Dayu (1954) – Mizoguchi’s gorgeous, tragic masterpiece encompasses immense narrative scope and great emotional and moral delicacy

 

The Walk (2015) – expected 3-D spatial high-points aside, Zemeckis delivers disappointingly little high-wire-level cinematic poetry here

 

Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) – Rosi’s quietly charged chronicle of exile and assimilation, impressive despite overly calculated elements

 

The Homesman (2014) – Jones again shows himself a darkly fascinating, alert director, crafting a very full and distinctively haunting tale

 

Elsa la rose (1966) – a charming Varda miniature, perhaps expressing a gentle wish for her own creative and personal partnership to endure?

 

You’re Next (2011) – Wingard slashes through the familiar set-up with skill and intelligence, although hardly to a genre-transforming extent

 

A Page of Madness (1926) – Kinugasa’s deeply disorienting onslaught of expressionistic images still leaves you ravished, and reeling

 

Magic in the Moonlight (2014) – Allen muses pleasantly again on the meaning of existence, tapping Rex Harrison more than Ingmar Bergman

 

Bad Luck (1960) – Munk’s well-sustained sad-sack comedy, in which the hero’s misfortunes reflect Poland’s ever-evolving traps and pitfalls

 

Going Clear (2015) – as pristine and well-organized as all Gibney’s work, which as usual constitutes both a strength and a limitation

 

That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) – Bunuel’s final masterpiece is both elemental & cosmic, a gracefully pointed undermining of everything

 

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) – Reeves’ sequel loses most of the first film’s pleasures, for a lot of standard-issue dystopian gloom

 

Tokyo Twilight (1957) – one of Ozu’s saddest, most desolate works, filled with indelible brief studies of loneliness and thwarted hope

 

The Misfits (1960) – Huston/Miller’s doom-ridden drama blends wrenching emotional observation and uncomfortable writerly/actorly excess 

 

Le garcu (1995) – Pialat’s last film explores familiar territory, but with all his brilliant feeling for turbulent, contradictory experience

 

Klute (1971) – Pakula’s investigation of sexual identities and narratives sometimes seems forced, but still a fascinating mesh of elements

 

Mommy (2014) – for a “natural filmmaker” of Dolan’s energy and panache, it’s a shame how substantively unrewarding his films ultimately feel

 

To Be or Not to Be (1942) – Lubitsch’s legendary wartime comedy is a masterpiece of structure, magically navigating moral darkness and light

 

Dreams (1990) – over time, it’s easier to tolerate Kurosawa’s visual & thematic didacticism here, to succumb to what’s beautiful in the film

 

Rio Lobo (1970) – Hawks’ last film is highly enjoyable, but it doesn’t have the emotional and behavioural coherence of its predecessors 

 

Love (2015) – Noe’s erotic meditation, shimmering with sometimes naïve conviction, at least doesn’t lack for intriguing moods and constructs

 

Night of the Living Dead (1968) – the brilliantly stark beginning to it all, with Romero’s chilling concept already rich in implication

 

Cure: the Life of Another (2014) – Staka’s politically-charged ghost story of sorts engages imaginatively & hauntingly with Europe’s traumas

 

Psychomania (1973) – certainly a nutballish concoction, but a more gleefully unhinged director would probably have helped (or “helped”)

 

Pirates (1986) – or, way too many knives in the water, given the strain of appreciating Polanski’s sensibility within this handsome oddity

 

Death of a President (1977) – Kawalerowicz’s deeply-immersed exploration of the complexity of political calculation, influence & consequence

 

Get on Up (2014) – Taylor’s approaches Brown’s life as a structurally audacious hall of memories, with overly academic, passionless results

 

The Bad Sleep Well (1960) – high-end pulp revenge drama, steered by Kurosawa into a gripping exploration of power in all its manifestations

 

Jimi: all is by my side (2013) – Ridley’s reflectiveness, alert to racial politics & cultural ambiguities, intriguingly rejects biopic norms

 

Les hautes solitudes (1974) – Garrel’s singular viewing experience, both liberating and troubling, permeated by Seberg’s sad resonances

 

Rosewater (2014) – Stewart’s mostly forgettable debut, too weighed down with artificialities to yield much emotion or sense of discovery

 

Days of Youth (1929) – Ozu’s silent film is largely driven by delightful goofiness, but you already feel greater reflectiveness percolating

 

The Color Wheel (2011) – Perry’s uneasy comedy is always smart and stimulating, then in its closing scenes becomes quietly remarkable

 

The Tin Drum (1979) – as filmed by Schlondorff, a conceptual carnival that seldom feels like a very illuminating engagement with history

 

Citizenfour (2014) – perhaps the rather muted impact of Poitras’ Snowden documentary fits the shadowy nature of the threat, I don’t know

 

The Last Day of Summer (1958) – …or maybe of anything at all, in Konwicki’s starkly beautiful, ultimately rather slight two-person encounter

 

S.O.B. (1981) – a festering evisceration of Hollywood from Edwards’ most fascinating period, bleakly seeped in the attitudes it disparages

 

Noroit (1976) – Rivette’s “pirate movie” is perhaps his most intensely strange; a complex dance with genre, narrative and performance

 

Love is Strange (2014) – it’s strange and often sad, and so is the way the world intrudes on it, in Sachs’ beautifully judged reverie

 

Macario (1960) – Gavaldon’s wonderful fable of death and illusion, full of magical elements, but with a properly stark sense of suffering

 

Mistress America (2015) – another Baumbach high-water mark in contemporary comedy, with wonderful, fully-loaded pace and unforced complexity

 

Helle (1972) – a quiet period study of small-town dysfunction; helps somewhat to broaden the usual view of Vadim, albeit not that memorably

 

The Skeleton Twins (2014) – Johnson’s film is often quite distinctively morose, but then settles for flimsy, uninteresting images of repair

 

Partner (1968) – another compelling early Bertolucci masterwork – a deeply strange embrace of untapped otherness, of unrealized revolution

 

Results (2015) – Bujalski’s most conventional, least interesting film overall, despite its engaging riffing on life-philosophy cliches

 

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972) – Fassbinder’s landmark power study, told through startling visual and psychological compositions

 

Grace of Monaco (2014) – quite striking for Dahan’s explorations of artifice and performance, although a lot of the rest is pretty mundane

 

The Ipcress File (1965) – the first Harry Palmer movie is solid nuts-and-bolts entertainment, driven by unsubtle class-based discomfort

 

Tournee (2010) – Amalric’s directing, like his acting, distinctively blends provocation and desolation, the mercurial and the rueful

 

Bell Book and Candle (1958) – Quine’s ponderous Novak/Stewart bewitchment comedy gains some unwarranted interest from its odd Vertigo echoes

 

The Night of the Hunted (1980) – Rollin’s haunting premise spawns a lot of poignantly creepy image making, despite some narrative jerkiness

 

The Rose (1979) – Rydell’s ever-fascinating interplay of a somewhat unremarkable narrative and the mesmerizing presence at its centre

 

Le petit lieutenant (2005) – Beauvois’ extremely engrossing, surprising police drama encompasses a vast amount of low-key, fluid complexity

 

Journey into Fear (1943) – Foster’s tight little drama, dense with threat and behavioural eccentricity, and more than a trace of Welles

 

Level Five (1997) – a lesser-known Marker masterpiece, fascinated with new technologies, deeply aware of their capacity for obscuring truth

 

MASH (1970) – now seems not so much irreverent as merely crude and chaotic, despite the many points of Altmanesque interest

 

Triple Agent (2004) – Rohmer’s late masterpiece, a stunning reflection on the interplay of personal and political positioning and action

 

I Know Where I’m Going! (1945) – a wonderful spell of culture and community, woven by Powell’s lovely imagery and compelling interactions

 

Calvary (2014) – McDonagh serves up cracking lines and scenes like free drinks at a bar, so you hardly bother about the big picture, if any

 

Le baby sitter (1975) – an enjoyable, unsurprising thriller, Clement’s last; somewhat distinguished by his empathy for his lead actresses

 

Palo Alto (2013) – Coppola delves hauntingly into teenage experience; maybe the absence of much that feels new is largely the point of it

 

Young Torless (1966) – Schlondorff’s tale of evolving self-awareness doesn’t engage much as a film, for all its underlying complexities

 

Irrational Man (2015) – Allen’s bleak central concept often seems imperfectly articulated, and yet the film has a stark confessional force

 

Travelling Actors (1940) – one of Naruse’s quirkier explorations is pleasant but mostly slight, up until its whimsically liberating ending

 

Fury (2014) – Ayer’s exploration of war’s unfathomable psychological complexities evokes great respect, but little real sense of discovery

 

More (1969) – Schroeder’s sensually eventful dive into the period’s freedoms and risks; more striking now for the highs than for the lows

 

Jinxed! (1982) – Siegel’s last film, potentially an effectively peculiar little thriller, lacks his usual artful shaping and control of tone

 

Faraon (1966) – Kawalerowicz’s politically charged Egyptian epic increasingly turns inward, absorbingly exploring the limitations of power

 

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014) – Lee repositions Ganja and Hess as an apparent cautionary parable on the draining of purpose and engagement

 

Scandal (1950) – Kurosawa’s libel yarn is enjoyable viewing, its real heart increasingly coming to lie in a mini-Ikiru-like character study

 

Savage Messiah (1972) – an energetic account of a difficult relationship, but one of the more monotonous works of Russell’s peak period

 

The Dreamers (2003) – Bertolucci’s erotic piece of nostalgia/denial all but wallows (quite mesmerizingly, to me) in its gorgeous irrelevancy

 

And God Created Woman (1956) – Vadim’s notorious breakthrough has a surprisingly desultory quality, punctuated by flashes of Bardot delirium

 

Kiss me, Stupid (1964) – Wilder’s nasty comedy of small-town moral hypocrisy leaves you little left to believe in (under God or otherwise)

 

Jeune & jolie (2013) – Ozon both titillates us with & deconstructs a teenage whore story, but would have done better with less of the former

 

Juggernaut (1974) – an enjoyably rollicking creation, with Lester bringing a distinct wryness to the impressively assembled disaster cliches

 

Lore (2012) – Shortland’s affecting journey through end-of-war Germany, quietly resonant about the breakdown of morality and certainty

 

The Boat (1921) – another master class in Keaton’s gorgeously multi-faceted imagination; Buster’s uniqueness transforms the world itself

 

The Second Game (2014) – with no visuals except dreary old soccer footage, Porumboiu whips up a stimulating personal & philosophical dynamic

 

Some Call it Loving (1973) – Harris’ entirely unique meditation, fanciful but utterly serious, on fantasy & play & their tragic limitations

 

The Territory (1981) – Ruiz transforms a relatively accessible core narrative into something wondrously, startlingly strange & implicating 

 

Othello (1952) – Welles’ highly stripped down version of the play, a brilliantly visualized and sustained study of manipulation and weakness

 

Eden (2014) – the thrill of the scene, the emptiness at its centre; Hansen-Love holds it all in terrific, minutely observant equilibrium

 

The House that Dripped Blood (1971) – Duffell’s solid anthology, from a time when everyone involved knew exactly how seriously to play it

 

Absolute Beginners (1986) – Temple’s ambitious period musical remains a disappointment, most everything about it seeming forced & affectless

 

Mother (1926) – Pudovkin’s drama of coalescing revolution remains stirring of course, but more narrowly so than his great Storm over Asia

 

Maps to the Stars (2014) – a Hollywood of disturbing rituals, excesses and breakdowns; fascinating, if not Cronenberg’s most vital work

 

Tout le monde il en a deux (1974) – rampantly porny Rollin work, built on a ritualistically dressed-up tussle between free and coerced sex

 

Boogie Nights (1997) – Anderson’s tremendously entertaining breakthrough, one of cinema’s more unique explorations of family structures

 

Eroica (1958) – two wartime stories from the astonishing Munk, fully demonstrating his great range of cinematic fluidity and human awareness

 

A Most Wanted Man (2014) – Corbijn’s defiantly generic Le Carre adaptation, perhaps great for connoisseurs of comparative movie spycraft

 

Rashomon (1950) – gripping for Kurosawa’s narrative cleverness & bold visualization, more than for its often-cited philosophical reflections

 

Blackhat (2015) – in a necessarily uneasy fusion, Mann applies his shimmering, tangible classicism to a new world of power and threat

 

All these Women (1964) – Bergman’s arch, male-effacing comedy is pitched very differently from his usual work, but it mostly just irritates

 

The Jersey Boys (2014) – Eastwood embraces the material’s artificiality, playing with ideas of memory, of the slipperiness of experience

 

The Spider’s Stratagem (1970) – an endlessly alluring early Bertolucci work, forged from his intuitive mastery of analytical, probing cinema

 

Belle (2013) – Asante’s historical drama is aesthetically conventional and overly glib, but skillfully sets out its complexities and ironies

 

Rape (1969) – Lennon/Ono’s unsettling tracking of a woman, implicitly questioning our collective complicity in multiple forms of violation

 

A Pigeon sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence (2014) – and did it damn well, thanks to Andersson’s mind-boggling exactitude and scope

 

The Fortune (1975) – an extremely minor interlude for Nichols and all involved; striking ending, but feels like you wait a long time for it

 

The Face you Deserve (2004) – one’s interest in Gomes’ unique, super-creative exploration of male anxiety ultimately dwindles a bit, sadly

 

Too Much Johnson (1938) – restoration of lost Welles footage, seemingly showcasing modest early inventiveness, and a youthful playfulness!

 

The Wonders (2014) – Rohrwacher’s family study is most fascinating at its Erice-like simplest; its grander inventions are a little puzzling

 

Gimme Shelter (1970) – the Maysles’ Rolling Stones film, justly famous for some of the most scarily vivid concert footage ever recorded

 

Warsaw Bridge (1989) – Portabella’s typically ravishing, challenging meditation on the generation of meaning and beauty in art and life

 

Johnny Guitar (1954) – Ray’s legendary Western, endlessly and gleefully analyzable for its intensely realized psychological maneuvering

 

Up the Yangtze (2007) – Chang’s film is a great eye-opener, even if it’s somewhat burdened with clichéd “great documentary” trappings

 

Play it as it Lays (1972) – Perry’s rather stunning exploration of existential despair, artfully hyped-up and yet chillingly naturalistic

 

No Man’s Land (1985) – another fascinating meditation by Tanner on inner and outer states of exile, if perhaps not his most fully-developed

 

The Awful Truth (1937) – McCarey’s joyous, wonderfully transgressive comedy; the very epitome of the kind of film they don’t make any more

 

From what is before (2014) – Diaz’s very long but immensely rewarding, unsettling, morally anguished study of utter induced destruction

 

Vault of Horror (1973) – Baker punches home the formula as if he, rather than the central storytellers, had been living it for eternity

 

The Mill and the Cross (2011) – Majewski’s deep exploration of a painting spawns an often ravishing dialogue between worlds and forms 

 

Daguerrotypes (1976) – Varda’s lovely, nostalgia-provoking record of her neighbourhood finds poignant magic in life’s mundane repetitions

 

Computer Chess (2013) – Bujalski’s super-smart comedy comes to suggest a weird, troubling synthesis; chess’s infinite possibility unleashed!

 

The Quiet Duel (1949) – Kurosawa’s stark, somewhat overdone drama of disease and sacrifice; moving for Mifune’s repressed pain and desire

 

American Sniper (2014) – Eastwood’s huge hit compels for its pared-away qualities, supporting multiple political/cultural interpretations

 

The Conformist (1970) – Bertolucci’s dark masterpiece is a stunning mesh of thematic and psychological richness, and compositional mastery

 

Keep the Lights On (2012) – Sachs’ modest but quietly impressive film, on how the weight of time and hurt gradually blocks out the flame

 

A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966) – Nemec’s fable of influence and coercion, allowing as much absurdist parallelism as one wishes

 

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) – Gunn’s well-calibrated nuttiness and oddball intimacy provide a nice trail through the digital overkill

 

The Bride wore Black (1968) – an intriguing blend of well-sustained “Hitchcockian” surface and milder-mannered Truffaut-ian subtext 

 

Third Person (2013) – it’s clear from the start this will be another Haggis waste of time; the only surprise is in finding out just how much

 

Strike (1925) - if not the “best” of Eisenstein’s films, the easiest to succumb to as pure narrative and (sometimes crude) visceral assault

 

Top Five (2014) – given an overly busy set-up, it’s a surprise Rock’s movie breathes as much as it does; no surprise about the laughs though

 

Le gai savoir (1969) – Godard’s almost spiritually austere work of cinematic divestment, reexamining the nature of knowledge and meaning

 

ABBA the Movie (1977) – by Hallstrom’s later standards, almost a gritty, cinematically fearless, no-holds-barred expose (well, almost)

 

Oil City Confidential (2009) – Temple can’t resist overly revving up his Dr. Feelgood documentary, but a grounded portrait still emerges

 

Three Faces of a Woman (1965) – Antonioni’s introduction has a recognizably desolate quality, contrasting oddly with the other two segments

 

Beyond the Lights (2014) – mostly conventional material, highly elevated by Prince-Bythewood’s awareness & empathy, & by the fine Mbatha-Raw

 

L’opera mouffe (1958) – Varda’s early short already illustrates her very distinctive brand of cinematic joy and wondrous fearlessness

 

Trash Humpers (2009) – well, Korine’s trash humpers aren’t really my type, but as visions of America go, I’ll take it over Ted Cruz’s

 

Bed and Sofa (1927) – Room’s Stalin-era Jules et Jim, vibrant with the pulse of new times, increasingly interesting for its sexual politics

 

Words and Pictures (2013) – Schepisi’s comedy does full justice to neither, but builds reasonable goodwill through its fluency and sincerity

 

Pearls of the Deep (1966) – a five-part Czech New Wave anthology, overflowing with creative energy, although periodically rather grating

 

Still Alice (2014) – Glatzer/Westmoreland demand little more of the viewer than reverent sympathy, which Moore of course makes easy to give

 

A Geisha (1953) – one of Mizoguchi’s finest, most quietly devastating films, chillingly frank about the reality of the geisha’s existence

 

Tales from the Crypt (1972) – Francis’ horror anthology delivers reliably no-nonsense, if often somewhat elderly-feeling squeamishness

 

A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) – Greenaway’s gorgeously rich intellectual frolic, dense with intertwining concepts of organization and decay

 

Master of the House (1925) – lacks the intense depths of Dreyer’s later works, but it’s notable for its detailed examination of domesticity

 

While we’re Young (2014) – Baumbach’s become virtually a brand for reliable mature pleasure, but this particular entry is a bit mechanical

 

Shoot First, Die Later (1974) – no-nonsense Di Leo drama ends by asserting crime doesn’t pay, but doesn’t make honesty look so hot either

 

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) – Kubrick’s final film is a grippingly strange deep dive into the convolutions of desire, repression and power

 

Street Without End (1934) – Naruse’s highly engaged, socially aware slice of life, focusing ultimately on a woman’s strength, and its cost

 

Afternoon Delight (2013) – Soloway’s comedy has much of the frankness and emotional acuity of her major subsequent achivement, Transparent

 

La notte (1961) – maybe Antonioni’s most exacting work of his great period, befitting its exploration of spiritual contortment & maroonment

 

Selma (2014) – DuVernay’s sombrely elegant, anguishingly ever-relevant investigation, far outpacing conventional historical reconstruction

 

Que viva Mexico! (1932) – reconstruction of Eisenstein’s unfinished work conveys its vast ambition, grappling with both beauty and cruelty

 

Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) – Schlesinger’s adaptation, although amply watchable, might be viewed as overly passive in various ways

 

Le Week-End (2013) – the film’s bittersweet character dance always feels too tidy and compressed; if only Cassavetes had gotten hold of it..

 

Miss Julie (1951) – Sjoberg elegantly and resourcefully “opens up” the play, while preserving its charged, fascinating shifts and shadings

 

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) – still effective as an upper-class weepy, but Benton’s reticence and tidiness resist real pain and discovery

 

Epidemic (1987) – early expectation-confounding von Trier film is most appealing at its lightest; overall, it’s a bit academic & distancing

 

Intolerance (1916) – one can enjoy Griffith’s epic melodrama (often a bit bewilderingly) as spectacle, but little in it resonates deeply now

 

Persepolis (2007) – an effective rendering of Satrapi’s autobiographical material, although impacting mostly as an accomplished curio

 

Pretty Baby (1978) – Shields is still fascinating, but Malle’s then-controversial provocations and ambiguities seem overly studied now

 

Hard to be a God (2013) – German’s “science-fiction” epic like no other, astoundingly well-realized, knowingly oppressive and exhausting

 

Meet Marlon Brando (1966) – Brando’s gleeful waywardness with interviewers makes for as great & evasive a show as many of his actual roles

 

Slumming (2006) – Glawogger’s comedy is initially rather grating, but intriguingly works its way to an unexpectedly reflective final stretch

 

The Sailor who fell from Grace with the Sea (1976) – Carlino’s diverting but pretty silly blend of romanticism, erotica, and creepy kids

 

Clouds of Sils Maria (2014) – Assayas crafts some classic art-movie pleasures and complexities, while musing seductively on changing times

 

Un chien andalou (1929) – in Bunuel’s hands, aggressive incoherence becomes a form of grace, measured by unforgettably potent images

 

Videodrome (1983) – still an amazing Cronenberg vision, even if his fleshy fusions are some way from our sterile screen-induced reality

 

The Cat o’ Nine Tails (1971) – one of Argento’s more mundane works, seldom very striking either as a narrative or as a cinematic rush

 

Fading Gigolo (2013) – Turturro’s reticent approach, and the film’s gentle acting, emphasize the fading rather more than anything else

 

Torment (1944) – Sjoberg’s ungainly drama is most compelling for the sense of scriptwriter Bergman developing his inclinations and concerns

 

Wild (2014) – Vallee vividly weaves together experience, emotion and memory; but the film never seems particularly important or compelling

 

Army in the Shadows (1969) – Melville’s Resistance drama charts the war’s brutal spiritual toll; the loneliness behind each act of heroism

 

Upstream Color (2013) – Carruth’s consistently wondrous, very high-concept but intimately grounded flow of heightened moments and mysteries

 

By the Law (1926) – Kuleshov’s intense drama of crime & punishment; fascinating as cinema, a bit less so as moral/psychological exploration

 

A Most Violent Year (2014) – Chandor’s somewhat underwhelming drama, most intriguing for how it undercuts the apparent promise in its title

 

The Demoniacs (1974) – Rollin’s disjointed mumbo-jumbo is more striking than it deserves to be, if only for its rather plaintive weirdness

 

The Double (2013) – Ayoade’s fable rapidly becomes thin and aesthetically limited, granted that it hardly seems intended as anything else

 

Libel (1959) – Asquith’s actor-friendly but largely staid, contrived courtroom drama, modestly enhanced by its subtext of class envy

 

Winter Sleep (2014) – Ceylan’s long study of character & conscience is very fine, although the work of a careful builder more than of a poet

 

Killer’s Kiss (1955) – a tight little crime/chase narrative, transformed throughout by Kubrick’s fascinated eye and simmering ambition

 

Ushpizin (2004) – Dar’s film sometimes feels headed toward stuffiness, but is truly deeply felt, and more subtle than it initially appears

 

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) – the film’s beauty & confidence surely indicated Cimino would go places; could never have guessed where…

 

Hurlevent (1985) – Bronte as a spatial and thematic labyrinth; the result is entirely Rivette, but less rewarding than his other works

 

Regeneration (1915) – Walsh’s early gangster film has relatively epic ambition, and a strong affinity for social deprivation and division

 

White God (2014) – Mundruczo’s dog epic is pretty interesting as a logistical exercise, not so much thematically, or in any other way

 

Confessions of a Driving Instructor (1976) – a formulaic crowd-pleaser, rather weirdly interesting for its air of class-driven joylessness

 

The Theory of Everything (2014) – actually, it’s mostly the same old theories of tastefully life-affirming, conventionally well-acted cinema

 

Les dames du bois du Boulogne (1945) – Bresson’s piercing study of desire & manipulation, more tolerant of conventions than his later work

 

Carrie (2013) – hopes of a distinct perspective from Peirce are mostly unrealized, perhaps constrained by the material’s inherent hysteria

 

The Language of Love (1969) – odd, often stilted Swedish amalgam of sober instruction and flagrant titillation; “dated” hardly captures it…

 

Beyond Rangoon (1995) – Boorman’s drama maintains strong momentum and humanitarian outrage, but many aspects seem simplistic and untextured

 

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) – Herzog’s chronicle of difference explains little, but it’s a memorable exercise in multi-faceted oddity

 

Edge of Tomorrow (2014) – Liman’s live/die/repeat opus, imaginative enough in some ways to make you regret all the ways in which it isn’t

 

Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier (1959) – Renoir’s compassion for human desire and weakness elevates otherwise hokey Jekyll/Hyde material

 

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Bad Words (2013) – Bateman’s debut is drearily tidy and smooth - too conventionally “good” for all the “bad” stuff to make it worthwhile

 

Bay of Angels (1963) – Demy’s drama is finely attuned both to gambling’s idiocy & its intoxication, as he surely was to those of film itself

 

The Fall of the Louse of Usher (2002) – Russell’s deliriously silly home movie at least has an age-defying, semi-infectious joy about it

 

Ryan’s Daughter (1970) – Lean’s epic is far less passionate than a plot summary might seem to demand, yielding a rather beautiful enigma

 

The Silence before Bach (2007) – the graceful, fun complexity of Portabella’s methods meshes into an evocative, nicely contemporary tribute

 

The Three Caballeros (1944) – odd Disney patchwork; trivially pleasant, tediously dated and weirdly trippy in more or less equal measure

 

The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (2010) – Ujica’s brilliant assembly of imposing official truths and simultaneously chilling falsehood

 

The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) – mostly conventional piece of anxiety-ridden Simon shtick, somewhat interesting as a time capsule

 

Wild Tales (2014) – of course, wildness alone only takes you so far; most interesting for Szifron’s intermittent shards of social commentary

 

The Professionals (1966) – none more professional than Brooks himself, as compared to Peckinpah’s feverish genius with similar material

 

Fallen Angels (1995) – a near-peak in Wong’s shimmering cinema of connection & memory, thrillingly intertwining the fleeting & the enduring

 

Theatre of Blood (1973) – what a mix – imaginatively nasty lowbrow thrills, and an actual relish for hammy Shakespearean declaiming!

 

Robinson in Ruins (2010) – Keiller’s meditation on landscape and consciousness, charting a unique intersection of serenity and ominousness

 

Storm over Asia (1928) – Pudovkin’s Mongolian epic is a brilliantly cinematic dissection of exploitation, with an unforgettable finale

 

Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013) – Pavich’s lively telling of the “visionary” failed project likely goes down easier than the work itself would have

 

Eden and After (1970) – Robbe-Grillet’s fragmented (even for him), beautifully chilly enigma navigates between the confined and the unbound

 

Tattoo (1981) – the skin art is lovely, but the stuff with three-dimensional people is mostly a silly puddle of lurid black ink

 

Loin du Vietnam (1967) – furious multi-director tapestry; functions now as an amalgam of historical record and ambiguous aesthetic mirage

 

Blood Ties (2013) – Canet’s attempt at an American movie of classic sweep and impact never acquires much power, conviction or atmosphere

 

Madame de…(1953) – Ophuls’ apparent beautiful frivolity reveals itself as a highly serious expression of society’s restrictions on women

 

Whiplash (2014) – Chazelle’s overpraised, no more than superficially gripping film is highly artificial on matters of life and art alike

 

Company Limited (1971) – Ray’s study of the price of success has all his piercing subtlety, even if the overall trajectory is a bit forced

 

Perfect Sense (2011) – Mackenzie’s high-concept film is a highly intriguing, observant expression of humanity’s fragility and resilience

 

Black Panthers (1968) – Varda’s fascinated brief portrait of the movement may temporarily stir you into forgetting our despairing present

 

Force majeure (2014) – Ostlund’s handsome study of relationship complexities doesn’t ring very true, for all its well-crafted ambiguities

 

Detour (1945) – Ulmer’s fascinating drama reeks of poverty, loathing, grievance; with Savage as an outright scary agent of destruction

 

Favourites of the Moon (1984) – Iosseliani’s notable transition to the West, observing humanity’s densely intertwined freedoms & limitations

 

The Front Page (1974) – Wilder’s late remake has old-fashioned expertise all over, but a lot about it now seems coarse and mechanical

 

Blancanieves (2012) – Berger’s silent version of Snow White inevitably evokes The Artist, but generates a fuller (if still limited) response

 

Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) – must-see Keaton, especially for its triumphant finale, a gorgeous, graceful communion of man, chance & destiny

 

Timbuktu (2014) – Sissako’s starkly, chillingly beautiful expression of mankind’s self-destructive tangle of ideology, instinct and fate

 

Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1973) – a bumpy voyage through trivial Sellers/Milligan goonery: inspires a kind of respect at its very existence

 

Castaway (1986) – not perfect Roeg material, but an intriguing, fairly complex examination of mythic ambition yielding to human limits

 

The End of Summer (1961) – a fine late Ozu film, somewhat ominously exploring a complex opposition of self-determination and predestination

 

Exit through the Gift Shop (2010) – Banksy’s irresistible light provocation, very nicely embodying modern art’s perception/value paradoxes

 

The Middle of the World (1974) – Tanner’s mesmerizing, intimate but coolly analytical exploration of a time, a place and a love affair

 

Gone Girl (2014) – Fincher, for the second film in a row, applies a golden polish to mostly tedious, read-into-it-what-you-like melodrama

 

Les godelureaux (1961) – an early, often strangely gripping example of Chabrol’s forensic sensibility applied to odd, even anarchic material

 

Nothing Lasts Forever (1984) – Schiller’s odd comedic mashup gets by on threadbare charm, although a bit more substance wouldn’t have hurt

 

Madchen in Uniform (1931) – Sagan’s pioneeringly empathetic drama of female bonding and desire hardly seems dated, in the ways that matter

 

Captain America: the Winter Soldier (2014) – the Russos give it an appealingly no-nonsense, disillusioned quality, but it only goes so far

 

Stay as you are (1978) – content just to be working, Lattuada barely bothers pretending there’s any more to this than Kinski’s nude scenes

 

The Invisible Woman (2013) – Fiennes excels here as both actor and director, highly alert to emotional and social nuance and complexity

 

Uncle Yanco (1967) – Varda’s encounter with an American relative; a concise cinematic kiss to the joys of family, discovery, eccentricity…

 

Birdsong (2008) – Serra digs into the human experience of the Biblical three wise men; not a major film, but one composed with quiet power

 

Forbidden Planet (1956) – still a lovely piece of visual & aural design, but the narrative is a jarring tussle of the silly & sophisticated

 

Leviathan (2014) – Zvyagintsev’s film feels overly underlined, but maybe such a bleak vision of all-encompassing corruption demands no less

 

Chapter Two (1979) – low-energy Simon script isn’t very emotionally convincing as presented here, whatever its real-life underpinnings

 

The Quince Tree Sun (1992) – Erice’s detailed study of an artist attains a rare sense of privileged communion between observer and observed

 

Queen Kelly (1929) – what remains of von Stroheim’s abandoned epic is mostly a romantic romp, with delicious darker streaks (whips! whores!)

 

Two Days, One Night (2014) – a Dardenne fable, compassionately dramatizing the hopeless choices and “freedoms” of the working class now

 

The Blockhouse (1973) – Rees’ claustrophobic drama, perhaps aptly, is like taking a long squint at the murky shapes within a stagnant pool

 

The Draughtsman’s Contract (1982) – Greenaway’s breakthrough is almost chilling in its biting erudition and immense formal intelligence

 

The Boss (1973) – tightly plotted and executed Di Leo thriller doesn’t find too many points of spiritual light, on either side of the law

 

The Immigrant (2013) – Gray’s fine, luminous drama explores the profound contradictions of the American “dream”, its romance and corruption

 

Dreams (1955) – lesser-known Bergman examination of life’s poses and delusions has some piercing passages, but is rather limited as a whole

 

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (2011) – formidably ingenious at times, but was it worth saving a world of such polished abstraction?

 

The Clowns (1970) – engrossing Fellini semi-documentary celebrates/parallels the clown’s art while drawing out its unsettling undertones 

 

Oldboy (2013) – most interesting, if at all, for Lee’s lack of conventional polish, making the film seem removed to the point of abstraction

 

Outskirts (1933) – Barnet’s multi-faceted WW1 drama overflows with such variety and incident, it might take you half the film to catch up

 

The Humbling (2014) – Levinson’s close thematic cousin to Birdman is to me a more steadily insinuating film, and Pacino is mesmerizing

 

Playing with Fire (1975) – a lesser but still almost elementally enveloping Robbe-Grillet oddity, with his work’s customary pleasures (!)

 

Snowpiercer (2013) – Bong’s drama, despite its flourishes, never seems like more than a wackier variation on the same tired dystopian moves

 

My Childhood (1972) – Douglas’ classic short work is painfully, ethically stark, without any sense of contrivance, pathos or imposed meaning

 

Mood Indigo (2013) – Gondry in creative overdrive even by his standards – massively accomplished, and all cringingly painful to sit through

 

Too Late Blues (1961) – despite limitations, the hard-edged behavioral choreography here is at least halfway to fully-fledged Cassavetes

 

Chloe (1996) – without the spell of Karina/Cotillard, Berry’s fallen teenager drama would probably seem merely dull & sleazily calculating

 

A Star is Born (1937) – Wellman’s version is still pretty sharp, but most interesting now as the skeleton for Cukor’s richer rendition

 

Gloria (2013) – Lelio’s distinctively intimate character study is well-observed and satisfying, despite various points of excessive tidiness

 

The Out of Towners (1970) – Simon’s hysterical if not outright reactionary urban chronicle; interesting enough but hard to really enjoy

 

I Love Beijing (2001) – it’s highly interesting, but Ning’s character study doesn’t say much new on modern China, nor on existential drift

 

The Three Ages (1923) – not the best vehicle for Keaton’s sublime inventions - the high-concept structure limits as much as it liberates

 

Mur murs (1981) – Varda’s lively, socially aware study of murals makes the form, despite its impermanence, seem all but indispensable

 

The Vampire Lovers (1970) – pretty nimble narrative keeps shifting and renewing itself (in vampire-like fashion!) to very enjoyable effect

 

The Imitation Game (2014) – Tyldum’s comprehensively undistinguished slab of prestige cinema, a sterile parody of the film Turing deserves

 

The Kidnap Syndicate (1975) – fast-moving, anguished Di Leo thriller, emanating disgust at the decrepitude of corporate/rich person morality

 

Tim’s Vermeer (2013) – feels like Penn/Teller’s persuasive but overly breezy anecdote should be a more important film than it actually is

 

The Holy Mountain (1926) – Fanck’s grandly-visualized paean to physical and moral robustness is often physically gripping, otherwise turgid

 

Listen up Philip (2014) – overflowing with exquisite observations and ideas, but Perry’s ultimate arrival point is a bit disappointing

 

5 Dolls for an August Moon (1970) – forget the plot, just go with Bava’s super-charged fragments of beautiful decadence and moral emptiness

 

Into the Woods (2014) – Marshall does a stronger job with individual songs than with the overall shape and tone; still, better than nothing

 

La luxure (1962) – given the limited driving concept, it’s rather remarkable how much variety and incident Demy packs into this short work

 

Inherent Vice (2014) – Anderson sustains the sense of an intimately textured cinematic refuge against rampant, exhausting complexity  

 

The Italian Connection (1972) – Di Leo basically delivers one long pursuit, with all participants heading grimly toward complete wipe-out

 

Mr. Turner (2014) – Leigh’s entirely marvelous, staggeringly detailed exploration of existential vision and its surrounding infrastructure

 

Twins of Evil (1971) – Hough keeps this teeming grabbag of Hammer horror elements moving at a cracking pace, which is basically good enough

 

The Free Will (2006) – Glassner’s lengthy, often disturbing drama is consistently rewarding, despite various points of artistic coarseness

 

Angel Face (1952) – Preminger’s very interesting, genre-transcending drama, built around unusually multi-faceted characters and desires

 

Adieu, plancher des vaches! (1999) – at its best, Iosseliani’s elegantly wry observation evokes a graceful blend of Tati and late Bunuel

 

The Reluctant Dragon (1941) – one part dream factory to one part shameless Disney corporate promo; easy to surrender to it for 75 minutes

 

Treasure Island (1985) – Ruiz’s inventiveness sometimes evokes a malady, but more often a deeply ethical process of intellectual husbandry

 

Straight Time (1978) – Grosbard’s character study/crime drama is always interesting, even as formula moves push out sociological observation

 

Glass Lips (2007) – Majewski’s audacious exploration of family myth, trauma, madness; “difficult,” but at least fitfully beautiful   

 

The Barkleys of Broadway (1949) – Astaire/Rogers reunion never transcends a sense of going through the motions, albeit pretty good ones

 

El sur (1983) – Erice’s fascinating jewel of a film - extremely specific as to period, place and incident, and yet boundless, timeless….

 

The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) – a disappointingly straightforward Preminger melodrama in many ways, but its core is still affecting

 

Lea (2011) – Rolland’s study of a student/stripper is often well-observed, but covers familiar ground with ultimately unenlightening relish

 

Tess (1979) – in Polanski’s hands, the world’s wondrous beauty constitutes a cruel denial of the tragic structures and experiences within it

 

Life is Sweet (1990) – Leigh may have used his “laugh and just keep going” template a bit too often, but seldom more effectively than here

 

The Hands of Orlac (1924) – Wiene’s effectively if forcibly creepy drama doesn’t have the broader resonance of the great horror films

 

Non-Stop (2014) – Collet-Serra’s superficially clever (substantively dumb), enjoyably cast action flick; if nothing else, I’ve seen worse

 

Caliber 9 (1972) – Di Leo’s crisp, impactful drama, in a city where the law exists only to be subverted, evokes a more grounded Melville

 

The Sheltering Sky (1990) – Bertolucci’s beautiful, wayward African odyssey almost comes to evoke the refined traveler’s Apocalypse Now

 

Pastorali (1975) – Iosseliani’s mild anecdote is as restrained and quiet as a film could be, which makes it hard not to drift off from it…

 

Foxcatcher (2014) – Miller labors glacially over this unimportant anecdote of the uselessly screwed-up mega-rich, as if it actually mattered

 

The Passion of Anna (1969) – Bergman’s challenging but rewarding reflection, precise yet mysterious, on the creation of identity and truth

 

I Origins (2013) – Cahill’s film has a lot of smart thinking and writing, but doesn’t finally amount to much more than an ethereal “what if”

 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) – so many moments and concepts from Wiene’s pioneering nightmare still shudder with madness and trauma

 

Regarding Susan Sontag (2014) – more in the line of popular than critical biography, rendering Sontag’s life into a tempestuous page-turner

 

Le bel indifferent (1957) – Demy’s early filming of Cocteau; effective, but inevitably limited by the piece’s deliberately severe parameters

 

Youth without Youth (2007) – Coppola’s over-deliberate, oppressively intricate weirdo concoction, lacking cinematic youth to say the least

 

Santa Claus has Blue Eyes (1967) – fine early work, both concise and sprawling, by Eustache, one of cinema’s most tragic curtailed masters

 

Altman (2014) – Mann’s survey of Altman’s life and work is a pleasant memory-jogger, but barely engages with the substance of his films

 

Baron Blood (1972) – even for the genre, Bava seems excessively tolerant here of dumb exposition & arbitrary narrative, between grisly peaks

 

Fruitvale Station (2013) – Coogler’s film has an unforced feeling for the strengths & limits of community, with a powerful cumulative impact

 

Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920) – in a time of rising anti-Semitism, Wegener’s myth remains a complex, troubling reference point

 

A Hard Day’s Night (1964) – even with no Beatles, this would be a smart, wide-ranging Lester satire/temperature taking; with them, well….

 

Meantime (1984) – one of the fascinating Leigh films where the abrasive bleakness pushes past realism, into a kind of stylistic dance

 

Le mepris (1963) – a Godard masterpiece that ceaselessly questions love & cinema, while yet evoking an imposing, almost timeless certainty

 

The Drop (2014) – on the whole a minor variation on extremely well-trodden ground, although Roskam & Hardy give it a warily watchful quality

 

Les horizons morts (1951) – Demy’s strenuous early short shows little hint of his future greatness; no less interesting for that of course

 

Out of the Furnace (2013) – Cooper’s sadly only semi-palatable amalgam of blue collar integrity and hackneyed, tedious cartoon thuggery

 

Lived Once a Song-Thrush (1972) – Iosseliani’s study of a life in constant motion, teeming with beguiling, somewhat cautionary observation

 

My Old Lady (2014) – Horovitz doesn’t fully realize the material’s darker aspects, relying on a lot of rather flat, sub-Avanti machinations

 

Winter Light (1962) – Bergman’s study of utter spiritual isolation, so sparse and withholding that the priest’s loneliness becomes our own

 

The Two Faces of January (2014) – Amini’s Highsmith adaptation is a solidly old-fashioned pleasure, but could use a dose of malicious glee

 

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) – Reineger’s beautifully expressive silhouetted images make much subsequent animation seem gauche

 

Dementia 13 (1963) – mainly of interest as Coppola’s debut, but that aside, a modestly moody and eccentric piece of concentrated mayhem

 

Vanishing Waves (2012) – whatever the intentions, Buozyte doesn’t deliver much more than a Lithuanian Altered States, and it’s less fun too

 

Oklahoma Crude (1973) – Kramer’s unpretentious comedy-drama might go down easier now than some of his more obviously “important” pictures

 

Nostalgia (1983) – Tarkovsky’s Italian film draws heavily on ideas of exile and mispurpose, ultimately crafting a grand vision of redemption

 

Moonfleet (1955) – perhaps unlikely Lang material, but much elevated by his hard-edged, astute depiction of dark, lusty human motives

 

Adieu au langage (2014) – Godard’s superbly disruptive film, deploying 3-D to extend his magnificent lifelong critique of human conventions

 

David Holzman’s Diary (1967) – McBride’s classic experiment seems a bit strained now, but still expresses the elemental joy & pain of cinema

 

Paganini (1989) – Kinski’s defiant, self-directed last film seems dragged up from some narrow corner of his distinctively turbulent psyche

 

Black Sunday (1977) – pretty solid, although of course Frankenheimer emphasizes exposition and set-pieces over politics and character

 

Venus in Fur (2013) – Polanski’s astute film of the play, both an affirmation of creation & an implied confessional on his own tangled past

 

Up the Junction (1968) – Collinson’s breezy chronicle of a rich girl’s working class adventures, kind of like a starter version of Ken Loach

 

Philomena (2013) – if only Coogan had livened things up a bit by goading Dench into the occasional Michael Caine or Al Pacino impression

 

Der verlorene (1951) – Lorre’s fascinatingly anguished post-war story has elements of “M”, but the madness now has eaten the nation’s soul

 

Lars and the Real Girl (2007) – Gillespie brings some finesse to the fable, but it’s still useless codswallop, nonsensical on every level

 

Trans-Europ Express (1967) – Robbe-Grillet loosens the narrative bondage, tightens the sexual kind; almost seems like light viewing now!

 

The Monuments Men (2014) – Clooney’s film could hardly be more ponderous and shallow, making its pontificating on culture merely eye-rolling

 

La drolesse (1979) – Doillon’s very distinctive study of a transgressive relationship, evoking the broader strangeness of social structures

 

Poison (1991) – one of Haynes’ best films, superbly appropriating/blending diverse styles for three radical, searching character studies

 

Il sorpasso (1962) – Risi’s largely captivating study of the joys, limits, tragedies of unrestrained momentum, amazingly embodied by Gassman

 

Birdman (2014) – Inarritu’s cleverly ambiguous extravaganza constantly recalibrates between intimacy & grandeur, to mostly interesting ends

 

Duet for Cannibals (1969) – Sontag’s Swedish film embodies a happy, hyper-engaged era when art cinema was the finest of causes, and of games

 

The Cat and the Canary (1927) – a prototype of the fine Hollywood tradition of presenting silly material with ultimately pointless panache

 

Our Beloved Month of August (2008) - Gomes’ playful, extremely smart film; a banquet that leaves you happily full and yet eager to eat again

 

Night Tide (1961) – far more gripping than a plot summary suggests, reflecting Harrington’s quietly rigorous attention to mood and character

 

Les Demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (1993) – for me anyway, Varda’s commemoration of Demy is one of the lovelier projects in recent cinema

 

Beat the Devil (1953) – an enjoyable off-kilter Huston yarn, even if nothing in it echoes as loudly as Bogart’s final rueful laughter

 

The Last of the Unjust (2013) – yet another towering moral & historical investigation from Lanzmann, with elements of aging self-reflection

 

The Terror (1963) – Corman puts an impressive unity on it despite its ragged nature, but “The Mild Interest” would still be a truer label…

 

Happy Together (1997) – an emblematic example of Wong’s very distinctive (potentially rather repetitive?) cinematic and emotional geography

 

Blind Husbands (1919) – less fully realized than Stroheim’s later films, but with a climax almost as rawly emotional & elementally physical

 

Promised Lands (1974) – Sontag’s interesting, not hugely prophetic film on Israel/Palestine privileges myth and trauma over specificity

 

Night Train to Lisbon (2013) – August’s multi-layered drama is intriguing for about ten minutes, but soon becomes a slow ride to nowhere

 

A Place for Lovers (1968) – De Sica’s turgid tragic-love-affair-against-beautiful-backdrops exercise seldom feels like anyone was trying

 

Metropolitan (1990) – Stillman’s first film instantly defines the Stillmanesque, deftly exploring an extremely precisely drawn social group

 

Donkey Skin (1970) - entirely satisfying as a children’s tale, but Demy also fills it with more complex, even rather disquieting resonances

 

Grudge Match (2013) – Segal’s glossily feeble concept movie, not worth wasting the most lightweight of critical punches on it

 

Hands over the City (1963) – Rosi’s incisive, ever-relevant dissection of how power relentlessly buys & bends social & political discourse

 

Flesh + Blood (1985) – the title accurately evokes the texture of Verhoeven’s melodrama, as if it were built from sheer visceral appetite

 

Sunflower (1970) – De Sica’s enjoyably episodic, old-fashioned wallow in wartime loss and noble suffering, broadly drawn to say the least

 

Kill Your Darlings (2013) – Krokidas largely overcomes the film’s familiar aspects with tightly structured, emotionally searching direction

 

The Doll (1919) – Lubitsch’s beautiful little comedy has a Melies-like happy inventiveness, and a more adult undertone of sexual anxiety

 

The Offence (1972) – Lumet’s examination of a cop at the end of his tether is technically well-executed, but ultimately distinctly hollow

 

The Wicked Lady (1983) – Winner’s instincts are consistently terrible, but at least you can sort of feel his enjoyment as he indulges them

 

Le joli mai (1963) – Marker and Lhomme’s ever-meaningful study of the social and psychic prisons that underlie the grand Parisian myth

 

Tabloid (2010) – Morris digs up an enjoyable old yarn and gives it his usual pizzazz, but it’s hard to pull any big insight from any of it

 

Le sabotier du Val de Loire (1956) – Demy’s beautiful early short study hints at the darker preoccupations that would underlie his own craft

 

Dream Lover (1986) – through escalating visual and thematic complexity, Pakula almost transcends the weaknesses of his central concept 

 

C’era una volta (1967) – if they gave a Nobel Prize for cinema, and Rosi won it, this tiresome fable sure as hell wouldn’t be the reason

 

Tracks (2013) – Curran makes the quest interesting enough, but what might peak-period Herzog and a female Klaus Kinski have unearthed in it?

 

Mes petites amoureuses (1974) – Eustache’s film, beneath a deceptively quiet surface, is exemplary in its navigating of formative memories

 

At Any Price (2012) – Bahrani’s eventful farming drama is too broadly drawn to be persuasive, with a disappointing lack of broader resonance

 

The House on Trubnaya Square (1928) – Barnet’s highly lively and varied comedy, one of the most delightful of the period’s Soviet classics

 

Old Joy (2006) – Reichardt’s perfectly observed, very gently ominous vignette of a friendship that’s seemingly inevitably run its course

 

Elevator to the Gallows (1958) – Malle’s classic thriller offsets its brilliantly contrived structure with a vein of melancholy fatalism

 

The Counselor (2013) – Scott and McCarthy’s interminable, head-shaking trash in deep thinker clothing; disgustingly full of itself

 

Marriage Italian Style (1964) – De Sica’s farce is more melancholy & fraught than its reputation may suggest, but not too demanding about it

 

School Daze (1988) – an early example of Lee’s dazzling strategic chaos, laying out faults & tensions beyond any easy narrative containment

 

Arsenal (1929) – Dovzhenko’s anguished symphony of loss and triumph, always galvanizing for its fragments, even when the whole is evasive

 

Rush (2013) – Howard’s perfectly-named boys with toys extravaganza does indeed deliver on its title (good thing it wasn’t called “Insight”)

 

Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974) – Robbe-Grillet strangifies (but only so far) some reliably disreputable cinematic pleasures

 

Loving Memory (1971) – Tony Scott’s peculiar early study of quiet derangement, painstakingly designed and composed, but of limited impact

 

The Trip to Italy (2014) – a beautiful, funny sequel, making you realize the paucity of mature fun and cultural engagement in movies now

 

Les amants (1958) – the film often feels overly calculated, like much of Malle’s work, but the final rush of passion and escape is indelible

 

The Act of Killing (2012) –Oppenheimer’s moral ambiguity & formal inventions left me mostly cold, and I don’t think that’s me being limited

 

Walk on the Wild Side (1962) – Dmytryk’s mostly ludicrous, overcrowded melodrama doesn’t evidence much actual grasp of any kind of wild side

 

The Fourth Man (1983) – Verhoeven’s almost unhealthily entertaining drama, teeming with lusty, happily scandalous images and concepts

 

Who’ll Stop the Rain (1978) – Reisz’s solidly textured drama draws on the catalogue of post-Vietnam dysfunction, personal and institutional

 

Head-On (2004) – Akin’s easily absorbing high-energy tale ultimately seems like too much momentum and provocation, too little inner truth

 

The Pajama Game (1957) – Donen and Abbott’s gorgeous, varied musical, one of the decade’s best, and a positive portrayal of union power!

 

The World of Jacques Demy (1995) – Varda’s cinematic scrap book is so enthrallingly, lovingly assembled, potential quibbles hardly matter

 

Foolish Wives (1922) – the restored version of Stroheim’s grand dissection of posturing venality, built around his own hypnotic performance

 

Vert paradis (2003) – Bourdieu’s somber drama on the enduring influence of roots and home soil lacks any great defining energy or character

 

The Long Goodbye (1973) – one of Altman’s most perfectly realized films, wittily repositioning the classically abstracted film noir hero

 

Renoir (2012) – Bourdos’ dawdling study of the painter’s declining years is prettily useless, in the way you’ve seen a thousand times

 

The Immortal Story (1968) – Welles’ wonderful, haunting miniature of the limits of power, each strange frame brilliantly suffused with myth

 

Smash Palace (1981) – marital breakdown drama connects pretty well, despite some overly heavy writing & directorial underlining by Donaldson

 

Ars (1959) – Demy’s eloquent early short film on priestly devotion, implicitly expressing the director’s own profound sense of purpose

 

The Zero Theorem (2013) – Gilliam’s colourful fantasy is never dull, but doesn’t ultimately yield much revelation or allegorical weight

 

Pourquoi Israel (1973) – Lanzmann’s study of Israel’s complex, imperfect necessity - no less valuable now, much as you long for an update

 

The Big Lebowski (1998) – a one of a kind Coen invention; perhaps amounting to almost nothing, but almost mythically masterful about it

 

Le feu follet (1963) – Malle’s painstaking but forced study of an alcoholic’s final days only elicits a strained, frosty form of sympathy

 

Exit Elena (2012) – Silver’s deft, often cleverly excruciating portrayal of a hemmed-in young woman, a rare film that feels much too short

 

The Saga of Gosta Berling (1924) – Stiller’s long chronicle has many interesting social and gender dynamics; still somewhat stodgy though

 

The Best Man Holiday (2013) – no point resisting, Lee makes a near-perfect, super- aspirational, ideologically unthreatening modern weepy

 

Fox and his Friends (1975) – Fassbinder’s class-sensitive tale of systematic exploitation is somewhat schematic, but still nastily potent

 

True Confessions (1981) – Grosbard’s solid tale has interesting moral shadings, but still feels in the end like a mostly familiar sermon

 

Viaggio in Italia (1954) – Rossellini’s piercingly desolate investigation of marital decay, inner and external excavation, glimpsed renewal

 

Thanks for Sharing (2012) – Blumberg’s sex addiction comedy/drama is best at its darkest, but a lot of it is unthreateningly soft stroking

 

Les rendezvous d’Anna (1978) – Akerman’s hypnotic, highly formal study of the elusiveness of meaning and connection in (then) modern Europe

 

The Armstrong Lie (2013) – customarily smooth documentary off the Gibney assembly line: is the ultimate hollowness a conclusion or a flaw?

 

The Oyster Princess (1919) – sumptuously fleet-footed Lubitsch comedy is delightfully silly, even if its only target is the uselessly rich

 

Gospel According to Harry (1994) – highly artificial Majewski parody of all things American, maybe too clever for its own good, as they say

 

Black Moon (1975) – very peculiar adult fantasy, on a bedrock of strange, primal sexuality, and yep, that really is the same Louis Malle

 

Purple Noon (1960) – Clement’s irresistible if limited Ripley adaptation remains the elegant epitome of tanned, inscrutable scheming

 

The Formula (1980) – Avildsen’s high-concept drama is dull and poorly executed in all respects; watch Pakula’s masterful Rollover instead

 

El bruto (1953) – Bunuel is entirely immersed in the hard-edged human dynamics, powerfully built on pervasive struggle and social injustice

 

Night Moves (2013) – despite (possible) flaws, confirms Reichardt as a major stylistically gripping, thematically relevant American director

 

The Salamander (1971) – Tanner’s absorbing, socially-grounded but playful tale of the capacities and limitations of engaged storytelling

 

Deathtrap (1982) – Lumet’s film of the play is of little specific interest, but you might feel nostalgic for such old-time Hollywood filler

 

Fellini Satyricon (1969) – grandly visualized of course, and not without thematic/political interest, but often a tough slog nevertheless

 

In a World…(2013) – for all the fluidity and intelligence of Bell’s film, it leaves little more impression than a fleeting voice over

 

The Wildcat (1921) – weird and often quite wonderful comedy, not so much an example of the Lubitsch “touch” as of the Lubitsch happy slap

 

Boyhood (2014) – the escalatingly graceful power of Linklater’s core concept more than outweighs some missteps and over-idealization

 

Calcutta (1969) – Malle’s footage is barely less relevant now, defeating all easy platitudes about India, or about our shared humanity…

 

The Garden of Earthly Delights (2004) – Majewski’s very fine study, both intimate and vast, of love and death, deconstruction and connection

 

The Pied Piper (1972) – Demy’s fascinating version of the tale is surprisingly dark and socially pointed, immersed in ruling-class venality

 

Stranger by the Lake (2013) – Guiraudie’s compelling network of desire, both painstakingly detailed and a classic cinematic abstraction

 

Period of Adjustment (1962) – Hill makes Williams’ insecurity-strewn material mostly grating; how much yelling/shrieking can anyone take…?

 

Toute une nuit (1982) – Akerman’s often ravishing string of incidents moves toward something elemental about cinema, about experience itself

 

The Chapman Report (1962) – two breezy Cukor hours of cautiously titillating “racy” material, most revealing (if at all) in its limitations

 

Like Father, Like Son (2013) – Kore-eda’s often schematic & obvious tearjerker, still highly palatable for his practiced lightness of touch

 

The Visitor (1979) – epically misbegotten supernatural mishmash prompts just one key question: what the hell did Huston & Peckinpah think?

 

La commune (2000) – a near-magisterial (apparent) ending to Watkins’ astounding career; who else will even try to occupy such a place?

 

Destination Moon (1950) – Pichel and Heinlein’s now somewhat doddery but still highly worthy uncle to 2001, and to a myriad of others

 

Vic + Flo Saw a Bear (2013) – Cote’s quietly but deeply observant little drama admirably cuts its own path through the narrative forest

 

WUSA (1970) – Rosenberg ventures into the confused heart of America, but rapidly gets weighed down and overwhelmed, accomplishing little

 

The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990) – Schlingensief’s scabrous, semi-interesting expression of the psychic mess underlying reunification

 

Scarface (1932) – quintessentially nailed down by Hawks, with a still astonishingly expressive high-stakes blend of relish and disgust

 

The Roe’s Room (1997) – Majewski’s powerful if sometimes rather stifling spell reclaims mundane domestic space for both nature and culture

 

Electra Glide in Blue (1973) – like many a 70’s album cover, Guercio’s grandeur-deluded cop movie is both silly and quasi-magnificent

 

They all Lie (2009) – it may indeed be there’s nothing true in Pineiro’s film, beyond its inexhaustible delight in invention and interaction

 

Frenzy (1972) – Hitchcock’s penultimate movie is colorful & structurally interesting, but ultimately seems mainly like a nasty artificiality

 

Contraband (1940) – Powell in semi-Hitchcock vein, paying due tribute to the war effort while weaving in some stylishly improbable melodrama

 

The Attack (2012) – Doueiri’s focus on the personal enigma doesn’t ultimately serve the wrenching underlying politics particularly well

 

Sorcerer (1977) – despite its fine sequences, not really a Friedkin masterpiece, falling short as both spectacle and as existential odyssey

 

Korczak (1990) – Wajda’s tale of heroism in the ghetto surely miscalculates the balance of light and dark, however noble its intentions

 

$ (1971) – Beatty (doing lots of closing-stretch running) and Hawn serve as happy cogs in Brooks’ well-cranked if impersonal caper machine

 

Klown (2010) – a big comedy hit in Denmark – does this mean it’s a country consumed by deadly sexual and psychic malaise?...can’t decide…

 

Lost and Found (1979) – Frank’s weirdly underdeveloped, bleakly lurching attempt to make a second “Touch of Class” falls wretchedly short

 

Almayer’s Folly (2011) – Akerman’s visually stunning, deeply troubled drama, a meditation on the abidingly hurtful legacy of colonialism

 

The Pawnbroker (1965) – Lumet’s often moving drama retains its power, but its highly-strung manipulations are surely ethically questionable

 

Ariel (1988) – prime example of Kaurismaki’s mesmerizing, socially conscious if not ultimately that impactful fatalistic low-rent coolness

 

Semi-Tough (1977) – seems now like a rather odd grabbag of targets and notions, but Ritchie coaxes it into at least semi-satisfying shape

 

I’m So Excited (2013) – Almodovar’s oddly strenuous artificiality accumulates some minor resonance as a nutty modern-day melting pot

 

Camelot (1967) – Logan’s filming of the second-tier Lerner/Loewe musical doesn’t accomplish much more than a minimally acceptable record

 

Zombi 3 (1988) – poorly executed Walking-Dead-in-the-Philippines effort, bearing Fulci’s name but with little trace of his earlier signature

 

Performance (1970) – the core of Cammell/Roeg’s classic is less striking now, but the accumulation of style and detail remains mesmerizing

 

Enemy (2013) – Villeneuve sustains the tone of his modern-day enigma well, with finely-judged Lynchian touches, but even so it’s a bit thin

 

Cries and Whispers (1972) – a masterful, unsparing peak of Bergman’s mid-period, but less stimulating than many of the preceding works

 

Someone to Love (1987) – Jaglom’s rambling self-extrapolation would wear out its welcome pretty fast, if not for Welles, and Dave Frishberg!

 

Phantom (1922) – restored Murnau drama of human fallibility and pain is emotionally gripping throughout, often stunningly expressed

 

Buddy Buddy (1981) – a sad end to Wilder’s career, trying to disguise its lack of panache and energy with ill-judged bits of “raciness”

 

Black Sunday (1960) – briskly assembled but unremarkable basic material, made semi-classic by Bava’s sleek style and Steele’s iconic oddness

 

Still of the Night (1982) – Benton’s icy threading of Hitchcockian references is interesting enough, in a barren, academic kind of way

 

Informe general…(1977) – Portabella’s teeming information dossier for post-Franco Spain; exhilarated but also clear-sighted, even anxious

 

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013) – unsurprisingly, worth little as history, but generally successful as sentimental evocation & commemoration

 

Nine Days of One Year (1962) – Romm dramatizes an intertwined scientific & personal quest; interesting in theory - in actuality mostly dull

 

Daniel (1983) – Lumet’s quiet approach to Doctorow’s gripping material emphasizes chilling loss and incomprehension over righteous anger

 

Jonah who will be 25 in the year 2000 (1976) – Tanner’s good-spirited but sharp-eyed portrait of a Europe drowning in sociological sludge

 

Escape Plan (2013) – meaningless action concoction doesn’t even deliver the trivial narrative pleasures one might have minimally expected

 

Viridiana (1961) – one of Bunuel’s most stunning films, an unprecedented, multi-faceted overturning of order, tradition and virtue

 

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970) – Sasdy turns in an efficiently solid, although seldom very stylistically striking, entry in the series

 

On the Road (2012) – easy to watch for Salles’ handsome image-making and the sheer volume of incident, but leaves sadly little impression

 

The Streetwalker (1976) – Borowczyk’s erotic mystery (of sorts) perhaps maintains its psychological and causal enigmas a bit too well?

 

Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) – Edwards’ weird patchwork might have been conceptually intriguing if it wasn’t so shoddy & self-satisfied

 

Viva Maria! (1965) – Malle’s ambitious, would-be rousing comedy is certainly beautiful to look at, but feels strangely inert to me

 

Promised Land (2012) – Van Sant in well-behaved message mode, sticking strictly to drilling pretty wells with nicely landscaped dirt

 

Face to Face (1976) – Bergman’s rather narrowly strained breakdown drama increasingly seems to be mainly about observing pure performance

 

The Normal Heart (2014) – Murphy’s adaptation is largely unremarkable as filmmaking, but still grippingly conveys Kramer’s powerful anger

 

Pigsty (1969) – Pasolini’s endlessly fascinating, biting, one-of-a-kind film bursts with great dialectical power and creative perversity

 

Shadow Dancer (2012) – Marsh’s worried Irish drama becomes increasingly consumed by spycraft mechanics, shedding much of its interest

 

A Flame in my Heart (1987) – Tanner’s gripping study of a passionate woman maneuvers rather too strenuously toward ambiguous desolation

 

Rollercoaster (1977) – Goldstone’s solidly-built drama has no depth, but is satisfying enough in an unshowy middle-aged kind of way 

 

Post Tenebras Lux (2012) – Reygadas’ beautifully imagined and visualized fusion of piercing localized detail and vast, ungraspable mystery

 

Railroaded! (1947) – Mann’s tight little film noir is no great shakes, but the thematic and visual play of light and dark is irresistible

 

We are the Best! (2013) – Moodysson’s perfectly judged expression of the (old-fashioned?) virtues of grabbing your own space & making noise

 

Kelly’s Heroes (1970) – Hutton’s logistically impressive but cold-blooded caper feels like it should/could have been a much richer satire

 

On the Beat (1995) – Ning’s intimate, revealing study of a Beijing police precinct sets out deep wells of personal and ideological fatigue

 

The Amorous Misadventures of Casanova (1977) – a sluggish Curtis blithely trashes what’s left of his image, propped up by rows of breasts

 

A King in New York (1957) – Chaplin’s generally dignified late summation, a sometimes sorrowful catalogue of American excesses and errors

 

City of Life and Death (2009) – Lu’s powerful, often harrowing drama of the Nanking horror, somewhat limited by its narrative calculations

 

Family Plot (1976) – notable as Hitchcock’s last, this pleasantly rambling, psychologically shallow creation isn’t so important otherwise

 

The Idiots (1998) – von Trier’s study of therapeutic cleansing (or is it?) is a perfect receptable for the likewise ambiguous Dogme virtues

 

Run of the Arrow (1957) – through a fascinatingly anguished protagonist, Fuller memorably expresses ongoing American errors and torments

 

Workingman’s Death (2005) – Glawogger’s remarkable, charged record of community and perseverance, more ambiguous than the title may suggest

 

The Wilby Conspiracy (1974) – turns out pretty mechanical in Nelson’s hands, only intermittently providing a meaningful window on apartheid

 

The Match Factory Girl (1990) – Kaurismaki’s exactingly composed, compact tale of suffering, almost has a touch of Bresson at times

 

The Quiet Man (1952) – Ford’s grandly romantic dream of Irish community, rich with intertwining simplifications and complexities

 

The Hunt (2012) – Vinterberg’s narrative has an inherent queasy power, but it’s the kind of film where you always know the dog won’t make it

 

Alice, Sweet Alice (1976) – Sole’s quite interesting amalgamation of procedural 70’s flatness and of visually striking grotesquerie

 

Rendezvous in Paris (1995) – wonderful three-part Rohmer illustration of the complexities & missteps of youthful self-examination & desire

 

In the Year of the Pig (1968) – De Antonio’s impeccable dissection of America’s moral self-destruction in Vietnam still leaves you chilled

 

Betty Blue (1986) – Beineix’s three-hour version often feels arbitrary and shallow, but the sex and nudity work OK as connective glue

 

So Young So Bad (1950) – Vorhaus/Ulmer’s ragged, sometimes oddly touching institution drama, forged from sincere but compromised liberalism

 

Ida (2013) – in classic art film manner, Pawlikowski’s human exploration rivetingly evokes post-war Poland’s personal and political traumas

 

A Star is Born (1976) – Pierson’s update is mostly a mess, but somehow shambles its way to an iconic kind of diverting goofiness

 

The Magician (1958) – Bergman’s film ultimately seems like a rather hollow trick, but it’s enthrallingly odd and intriguing throughout

 

Under the Skin (2013) – Glazer creates an instantly classic filmic myth that’s also an unsettling reflection on acting, being and desire

 

The Last Wave (1977) – despite much anthropological interest and Weir’s strong imagery, it ends up an unpersuasive mythological grab-bag

 

Many Wars Ago (1970) – Rosi’s powerful depiction of war as moral wasteland, gripping even if occupying mostly familiar cinematic territory

 

What Maisie Knew (2013) – McGehee/Siegel’s somewhat over-sculptured but still sad, quietly chilling study of monied parenting uselessness

 

Hotel des Ameriques (1981) – certainly recognizable but rather distant early Techine work, his sensibility perhaps not yet fully channeled

 

The World’s End (2013) – Wright’s snappy handling & feeling for personal crisis only makes it seem more colossally dumb than it already is

 

Statues Also Die (1953) – Resnais/Marker eloquently reflect on black art, seeming overly fascinated though by elements of black otherness

 

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013) – Jarmusch’s “vampire movie” is a magnificent reverie on our zombie-like immersion in a deadening present

 

Brink of Life (1958) – a relatively small, sociologically curious Bergman film, with some strikingly humane moments, and some chilling ones

 

Valentino (1977) – Russell feels strangely neutered here, yielding a mostly flat & unrevealing film, although with some closing poignancy

 

London (1994) – Keiller’s multi-layered charting of the city’s eroding identity, very poignantly prophetic given subsequent developments

 

Dragnet Girl (1933) – one feels Ozu moving past the gangster melodramatics, burying into the story’s universal, deeply melancholy centre

 

Don Jon (2013) - Scarlett Johansson gets to be in a dull, mechanical movie; later on, Julianne Moore scores a relatively somewhat richer one

 

Evening Land (1977) – Watkins’ rare, densely-packed Danish work on the destruction of democracy, single-minded but still as grimly relevant

 

Blue Ruin (2013) – Saulnier’s intelligent genre exercise has its distinctive aspects, but not enough to warrant the general high praise

 

Adieu Philippine (1962) – Rozier’s sort-of-love triangle, depicting denial through constant motion, makes for pleasantly loose viewing

 

The Tempest (1979) – Jarman’s fascinating interpretation seems like a displaced meditation on the artist, alternatively preoccupied & joyous

 

Adore (2013) – feels like Fontaine should have gotten much more out of the potentially transgressive material than just a golden-hued ramble

 

Ichijo’s Wet Lust (1972) – Kumashiro’s odd erotic trifle has some fairly interesting psychology, but probably works better for specialists

 

Into the Night (1985) – Landis’ shiny comedy-thriller works as a fable of self-invention through storytelling, or something like that

 

The Blue Angel (1930) – Sternberg’s classic of self-destruction remains entirely riveting, a collision of artificiality and seedy modernity

 

August: Osage County (2013) – I remember a bit more to the play than shouting matches and tedious revelations, but you can’t tell that here

 

Private Vices, Public Virtues (1976) – Jancso’s increasingly interesting study of self-destructive decadence, a cousin to late Pasolini

 

That Championship Season (1982) – being charitable, maybe the movie’s creaky decrepitude helps seal the sense of a vanishing American male

 

Nocturne 29 (1968) – Portabella’s experimental film evokes Bunuel, Antonioni and others, while achieving its own gracefully mysterious unity

 

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) – surprisingly effective end to the series, way less cheesy than its immediate predecessor anyway

 

Jimmy P (2013) – Desplechin’s most even-toned film in many ways inverts his usual expansive methods, creating a fascinating counterpoint

 

The Italian Straw Hat (1928) – Clair’s famous but distant farce is now more just interesting than it is funny or cinematically engaging

 

The Cannibals (1970) – Cavani’s beautifully weird provocation, a time capsule from when images of revolution seemed as necessary as sex

 

Pacific Rim (2013) – del Toro’s relentless epic is always powerfully realized, but disappointingly conventional, juvenile and affectless

 

Twenty-Four Eyes (1954) – if not the most complex Japanese film of the period, Kinoshita’s may at least evoke the most sustained sadness

 

The Shining (1980) – Kubrick’s study of (among other things) an overwhelmed man’s obliteration, a masterpiece of unease & strangeness

 

Mississippi Mermaid (1969) – Truffaut travels compellingly from classic, clue-strewn genre artificiality to bleak, gripping intimacy

 

Elysium (2013) – Blonkamp’s tiresomely hypocritical elite-toppling fantasy, with a conventionally overcooked grabbag of a narrative

 

Anita (Swedish Nymphet) (1973) – looks now like a chronicle of how the crappy drab 70s even screwed up the whole virgin/whore distinction

 

The Unknown Known (2013) – Morris’ prettily presented philosophically-tinged sorrow seems a poor substitute for the anger Rumsfeld deserves

 

Dr. Mabuse: the Gambler (1922) – Lang’s extended drama of societal and psychological manipulation, still amazingly potent and gripping

 

Women in Love (1970) – after forty years, Russell’s strongly-articulated film still seems almost radical in its no-nonsense frankness

 

The White Diamond (2004) – Herzog pushes into yet another interesting situation, but this time doesn’t really hit great thematic heights

 

Without Pity (1948) – Lattuada’s hell-on-earth neo-realist drama seems rather too tightly wound now, blurring the truth of its observations

 

Terminal Island (1973) – it’s true! – Rothman’s energetic film remains interesting both as a feminist statement & a broader progressive one

 

Daytime Drinking (2008) – Noh’s bleakly comic anecdote of bad luck aided by over-consumption; not revelatory, but intriguingly observed

 

The Great Race (1965) – Edwards presumably gets the extended triviality the way he wanted it, but it’s hardly his most enduring mode

 

Daughter of the Nile (1987) – Hou’s loss-heavy drama shares elements with many of his other films, but to a more minor effect than usual

 

The Laughing Policeman (1973) – Rosenberg’s solid but not Lumet-level police drama, as interested in process & wrong turns as in revelations

 

Jar City (2006) – whereby Iceland gets the cleverly grotesque drama that every land deserves, and Kormakur rightly arises to Hollywood

 

Touch of Evil (1958) – Welles’ masterpiece is rich with expressions of moral & physical decay, of the transition to a new politics & culture

 

5 Broken Cameras (2011) – deliberately incomplete as analysis or history, but remarkable and disturbing as personal testimony and witness

 

Across 110^th Street (1972) – Shear’s busy, often sociologically astute drama, seems to have been aspiring to multi-faceted grandeur

 

Prenom Carmen (1983) – Godard’s beautiful, sexy (if arguably limited) concoction illustrates the immense adaptive richness of his methods

 

The Spy who Came in from the Cold (1965) – Ritt’s desolate drama, properly if strenuously chilly, and heavy with Burton’s self-disgust

 

Nymphomaniac, Vol. 2 (2014) – von Trier pulls back on the giddier inventions of part one, evolving into occasionally piercing bleakness

 

The Messiah (1975) – Rossellini’s evenly controlled, worthy last film emphasizes the sociological and cultural over the supernatural

 

The Purge (2013) – DeMonaco has a reasonably promising pulp premise, but plays it out in shallow, ideologically unthreatening monotony

 

Umbracle (1970) – Portabella’s unique film, at times alluring or ominous or both, taking a brave step toward a radically reconfigured cinema

 

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) – one of Anderson’s best, refining his cinematic language even further, & allowing darker themes & portents

 

Love Meetings (1964) – Pasolini’s lively survey of sexual attitudes, in a nation of repressive conventions and largely unexamined instincts

 

The Thief who Came to Dinner (1973) – Yorkin’s undemanding fluff piece still has more adult contours than a modern-day equivalent would have

 

Wadjda (2012) – Al-Mansour’s film is largely conventional in tone & form, still riveting for what it depicts, & foresees for its protagonist

 

The Blue Gardenia (1953) – Lang’s generally atmospheric picture builds effectively, but is ultimately a bit underdeveloped in most respects

 

The Consequences of Love (2004) – Sorrentino impeccably delivers just about the least likely film one might expect from that title

 

The Paper Chase (1973) – Bridges’ briskly amiable, TV-spin-off-ready drama is pretty flimsy, once you strip off the handsome veneer

 

Nymphomaniac, Vol. 1 (2014) – von Trier artfully weaves provocations, positionings and ambiguities, but little in the film feels really new

 

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983) – Oshima’s sociologically potent POW film, also a Bowie-mystique-propelled, ravishing existential enigma

 

The Eclipse (1962) – Antonioni’s magnificent journey through the heavy puzzle of civilization, its interlocking beauty and order and chaos

 

The East (2013) – Batmanglij’s infiltration drama feels much like watching Costa-Gavras’ Betrayed again, with a slicker modern sheen

 

La collectionneuse (1967) – more academic & stifling than Rohmer’s subsequent wonderful films, even if that suits the characters & themes

 

The Spectacular Now (2013) – Ponsoldt & the actors generate some lovely moments, but the movie as a whole rather disappointingly peters out

 

Good News (1979) – Petri’s scathingly slippery comedy of scorching male inadequacy in a barely functioning, historically poisoned culture

 

The Great Gatsby (2013) – no doubt Luhrmann’s techniques can be justified as creative strategies, but they’re still mostly boring/annoying

 

Operation Thunderbolt (1977) – Golan’s authenticity-hungry Entebbe drama is fast and straightforward, with all the attaching pros and cons

 

20 Feet from Stardom (2013) – not fully developed as cultural history, but a pleasant, fluid essay on chance and pragmatism

 

La ronde (1950) – Ophuls’ beautiful, masterfully sustained artificiality, encompassing wonderful feeling for human frailty and turbulence

 

At Berkeley (2013) – Wiseman’s thoroughly absorbing record of the institution’s wonders, and the worrying practicalities of maintaining them

 

The Golden Thread (1965) – Ghatak’s bleakly powerful chronicle of personal rise & fall, torn from painful societal upheaval & confusion

 

This is the End (2013) – the more the fires burn and the returns diminish, the surer you are the wrong people got knocked off at the start 

 

Cousin cousine (1975) – Tacchella’s mostly plain, often forced little comedy at least has some happy non-conformity at its centre

 

Red Hook Summer (2012) – Lee’s most sustained and interesting movie for a while, not least for its startling sudden change of direction

 

Z (1969) – the emblematic Costa-Gavras film, employing somewhat dated techniques, but still enveloping, provocative and sadly relevant

 

Dallas Buyers Club (2013) – if time is limited, skip Vallee’s surface-scratching narrative and watch How to Survive a Plague instead

 

Mouchette (1967) – a young girl’s defeated negotiation with a largely pitiless world; one of Bresson’s most acute, overwhelming films

 

Oblivion (2013) – Kosinski’s sterile “vision” is laughably short of the humanity that it’s notionally concerned about redeeming

 

The Spiders (1919) – early example of Lang’s epic paranoia mode, at this point just hinting at the visual and thematic glories to come

 

Trance (2013) – Boyle’s aggressively incoherent “thriller” only becomes nastier and more wearying with each jarring forward motion

 

X, Y and Zee (1972) – Hutton’s drab direction is actually pretty well suited to Edna O’Brien’s fraught, emotionally claustrophobic material

 

From the Life of the Marionettes (1980) – Bergman, with clinical savagery, shreds one’s optimism about human structures and possibilities

 

Dead of Night (1972) – Clark’s dubious but never-dull horror expression of the psychopathy of Vietnam, with suitably anguished acting

 

The Broken Circle Breakdown (2012) – von Groeningen’s film is contrived but still surprisingly engrossing, distinctive in joy and pain alike

 

A Woman under the Influence (1974) – Cassavetes’ brilliant behavioural dance, on the wrenching fight between stability and inner truth

 

The Great Beauty (2013) – Sorrentino’s teeming depiction of the circus and the void gorgeously pulls out the stops as you seldom see now

 

Alice’s Restaurant (1969) – as it recedes in time, the bleaker aspects of Penn’s film become more prominent than Guthrie’s mythic wanderings

 

Close-Up (1990) – Kiarostami’s reflective classic, humanely alert to how social injustice might pervert cinematic identification

 

House by the River (1950) – second-tier Lang, but with piercing imagery, and a gripping portrayal of escalating, all-consuming venality

 

Love is all you Need (2012) – Bier tones down her frequent structural artificiality, but replaces it with little more than pretty pictures

 

Wake in Fright (1971) – Kotcheff’s memorably traumatic culture clash, all the more excruciating for being so sociologically convincing

 

Shark (1969) – a famously messed-up Fuller movie, but with plenty of interesting pieces, even if he couldn’t fully punch them into shape

 

The Past (2013) – Farhadi’s conventionally well-crafted film suggests he might end up as (artistically) hemmed in as his characters are

 

The Baby (1973) – a strange but not negligible entry in the annals of, uh, unusual female motivation, executed by Post in poker-faced manner

 

The Counterfeiters (2007) – Ruzowitzky’s over-awarded film is engrossing enough, though drawing on familiar themes and contrasts

 

Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) – a fascinating human mess, but less incisive than either Renoir’s earlier great work or Bunuel’s later remake

 

Gertrud (1964) – near-hypnotic for what we increasingly perceive as the brutal emotional implications beneath Dreyer’s ritualistic surface

 

Stoker (2013) – despite Park’s constant virtuosity, mostly the same old wine (and blood) in a cold-heartedly pretty new bottle

 

State of Siege (1972) – as scrupulous and propulsive as all Costa-Gavras’ peak work, but all seems rather abstract and distant now

 

Mud (2012) – Nichols has a lot (too much) going on plot-wise; most interesting when digging into the worried heart of community & family

 

Two Men in Manhattan (1959) – Melville explores a thicket of moral fractures, beneath his clear pleasure in the scintillating surfaces

 

Lola (1970) – a real oddity in Donner’s and Bronson’s filmographies, and a major undisciplined mess, although seems unlikely they cared

 

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) – smoothly executed, but Cianfrance doesn’t come close to the epic emotional sweep he seems to aim for

 

Heart of Glass (1976) – one of Herzog’s strangest films of the period, allowing us little choice but to be carried to the edge of the abyss

 

To the Wonder (2012) – Malick’s sustained investigation of the connectivity of things, pushing fascinatingly toward a fresh filmic grammar

 

M. Hulot’s Holiday (1953) – most fascinating for the variety of Hulot’s disruptions, the multiplicity of his challenges to regularity

 

Her (2013) – Jonze draws in many of our evolving age’s anxieties & uncertainties, but it’s a pretty drippy, one-note exploration of them

 

The House by the Cemetery (1981) – Fulci traumatically expresses a damaged collective subconscious (embodied by the “Freudstein” monster!)

 

Union Square (2011) – Savoca’s strangely minor ode to family ties seems like a vague starting point for a film rather than the thing itself

 

The Slightly Pregnant Man (1973) – a pleasant satire, maybe because Demy is more interested in the quirks of community than those of science

 

Berberian Sound System (2012) – Strickland’s fascinating cinematic side street, strange and distinctively unsettling at every turn

 

The Ruling Class (1972) – Medak’s satire finds some novel ways to hit at easy targets, although it drags almost as often as it dazzles

 

Me and You (2012) – “small” material no doubt, but hugely enlarged by Bertolucci’s classic capacity for human and cinematic interrogation

 

Silk Stockings (1957) – contains beautiful moments of Charisse and late-period Astaire at their best, so it’s easy to take the other parts

 

Reality (2012) – Garrone’s film delivers some reliable Fellini/De Sica-type diversion, but doesn’t really muster much of a cultural critique

 

The Godfather, Part Two (1974) – still a great example of contemporary myth-making, brilliantly drawing on America’s intertwined hypocrisies

 

Oasis (2002) – Lee sustains a knowingly discomfiting multi-layered challenge to the often self-serving prevailing ideas of behavioral ethics

 

The Last Movie (1971) – Hopper’s cherishably mad, ego-strewn work shudders with love of cinema even as it dreams of obliterating it

 

Whores’ Glory (2011) – Glawogger’s astoundingly comprehensive, achingly humane but unsentimental film breaks through layers of complacency

 

Gun Crazy (1950) – Lewis’ wondrously vivid, cinematically and psychologically compelling classic, justly valued as one of the genre's best

 

L’esquive (2003) – Kechiche’s breakthrough film, highly immersed in its specific subculture, charming at times, but under no illusions

 

Chinatown (1974) – Polanski’s classic is one of the most formally immaculate of modern films, unforgettable for its fluidity and complexity  

 

Beau travail (1999) – for all its strange power and complex engagement with masculinity, surpassed for me by most of Denis’ other films

 

Enter the Dragon (1973) – a shame that the price of admission for watching Bruce Lee had to be all the other turgid sub-Bondian crap

 

Quartet (2012) – making a weirdly late directing debut, Hoffman decides it’s enough just to get some quality old-timers and happily hang out

 

Solaris (1972) – Tarkovsky memorably explores the liberation and the turmoil of seeking escape from personal and bureaucratic heaviness

 

Spring Breakers (2012) – Korine’s strangely beautiful, well-sustained dream of varied turpitude; alive to the raw, malleable hunger of youth

 

La bataille du rail (1946) – not hard to feel one’s way into how stirring Clement’s chronicle of determination must have been at the time

 

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – one of the Coens’ best-judged films, its unforced narrative of failure laced with gentle existential mysteries

 

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) – Herzog’s fine take on the material becomes a poignant meditation on helplessness and decay

 

The Company you Keep (2012) – Redford barely articulates the ongoing relevance of the underground movement, except in cliched terms

 

The Creatures (1966) – Varda’s strange, haunting fantasy of imagination & exploitation; satisfyingly contrived in classic art-house style

 

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) – Scorsese’s savage picture of ethical & moral vacuums in action; often astonishing yet also largely familiar

 

Anatahan (1953) – Sternberg somehow concentrates a whole world of inner churning and invention into this strange, highly-controlled tale

 

White Shadows (1924) – tempting to say one can feel Hitchcock’s presence in the background of this busy melodrama, but it would be a stretch

 

The Cars that ate Paris (1974) – Weir’s early work is an oddly sensitive, wittily Leone-inflected parody of community and its excesses

 

The Angels’ Share (2012) – after this and Looking for Eric, can feel a lot as if Loach’s socially-wired passion has become a form of shtick

 

One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1977) – Varda’s gracefully biology-embracing celebration of women makes its political points lightly

 

American Hustle (2013) – another Russell movie that pretty much just goes by in a chaotic blur, with no great shape, meaning or impact

 

The Night Porter (1974) – Caviani’s study of Nazism’s abiding wreckage hardly constitutes the most significant perspective on the matter

 

Touch (1997) – unfortunately, not much of the Schrader touch comes through in this oddly passionless landscape of lost or incomplete souls

 

Stroszek (1977) – Herzog’s odd (of course) chronicle of America’s false promise; sadly meaningful despite its veins of coarse opportunism

 

Prisoners (2013) – Villeneuve’s ponderous film increasingly reveals itself as a grotesque contrivance, utterly lacking in moral seriousness

 

Une si jolie petite plage (1949) – Allegret’s fine, fatalistic drama, distinguished by an astonishing underbelly of exploitation and disgust

 

Pretty Maids all in a Row (1971) – has its peculiar merits, but Vadim could have made the satire much more biting and politically charged

 

Memories of Murder (2003) – Bong’s darkly ambiguity-laden serial killer piece is certainly a superior genre picture; not really much more

 

The Conversation (1974) – one of Coppola’s best observed movies, even if its examination of character and morality is blunted by contrivance

 

Comedy of Innocence (2000) – Ruiz leaves us elegantly disoriented about the truth & meaning of this peculiar tale, maybe those of all tales

 

Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) – given the attempts at "updating' the material, “Dracula A.D. 1972…maaan” might have been the better title

 

Nebraska (2013) – Payne’s bleakly flavorful, indelibly acted study of American limitations, ultimately as much fairy tale as social document

 

Rider on the Rain (1970) – Clement’s low-key drama has an appealingly melancholy undercurrent, but doesn’t amount to much otherwise

 

Private Benjamin (1980) – seems pretty thin now, but maybe audiences of the time were just desperate for any female self-discovery angle

 

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) – from Herzog’s most astonishingly fertile period, a bizarre but strangely meaningful vision of revolution

 

Magic Magic (2013) – Silva’s quite effective and distinctive appropriation of the “terrorized young woman” template (well-disguised though)

 

Xala (1975) – Sembene’s wonderful tale of corruption & impotence seems to encompass the pains, needs & rhythms of an entire time & place

 

Road to Nowhere (2010) – Hellman’s wildly self-referencing, somewhat over-extended cinematic maze is at least more compelling than not

 

Les cousins (1959) – Chabrol’s early film remains one of his best, ruthlessly laying out the cruel machinations of class and sex and fate

 

Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) – the opening & closing credits remain the most striking parts of Kershner’s overdone, not very sensible thriller

 

Days of Being Wild (1990) – for me, this early Wong film remains one of his best, eerily weaving emotion, denial, myth, clarity and loss

 

Loving (1970) – essentially familiar, overly male-centric material, but within those limits, Kershner does better than fine by it

 

US Go Home (1994) – by design slighter and plainer than most of Denis’ work, but still a lovely study of young emotions and desires

 

Demon Seed (1977) – Cammell’s film is careful and well-imagined in some respects, somewhat goofily, trippily over-reaching in others

 

La guerre est finie (1966) – fully satisfying on every level, and more gravely gripping now than Resnais’ better known earlier work

 

Twelve Years a Slave (2013) – always powerful and stimulating, but subject to many (albeit maybe inevitable) compromises and limitations

 

Yeelen (1987) – Cisse’s film stares into a densely mythic past; the absence of Africa’s present & future is both its strength & limitation

 

The Entertainer (1960) – off-stage as on-, too much in Richardson’s melodrama feels over-calculated now, but the pieces are flavorful

 

Zardoz (1974) – hard to know exactly how to react to Boorman’s multi-dimensional oddity; at best, the vision is arbitrary and sputtering

 

Sandra (1965) – an unusual Visconti film; a study of barely buried anguish that’s almost as chilling as any tale of actual ghosts

 

Killing them Softly (2012) – Dominik’s cinematic fluidity only makes the thudding mediocrity of his “big ideas” all the more insufferable

 

Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970) – Bava’s intense but not quite fully charged, somewhat ragged expression of the ultimate wedding bell blues

 

Upstream (1927) – newly rediscovered Ford film in an atypical setting, narratively a bit thin but brimming with great zest and affection

 

The Battle of Chile, Part 3 (1975) – in a brilliant decision, Guzman circles back to tragically illuminate the underlying human commitment

 

Bullet to the Head (2013) – incredibly violent and absurd material, but you can tell there’s a conscientious old pro like Hill in charge

 

The Battle of Chile, Part 2 (1975) – Guzman builds impeccably on Part 1, crafting an unforgettable indictment of “nationalist” malignancy

 

42^nd Street (1933) – Bacon keeps it snappy and colourful and business-like until Berkeley’s nuttily fascinating fantasias take over

 

The Wicker Man (1973) – still as gorgeously odd as ever; drawing with eerie flavour on a tangle of myths, repressions and human weirdness

 

Blue is the Warmest Color (2013) – Kechiche’s greatest hits album of pretty lesbianism, kept aloft by spellbinding observational dexterity

 

Spider Baby (1968) – is this a more weirdly touching depiction of familial unity than many more high-minded films, or am I just losing it..?

 

The Battle of Chile, Part 1 (1975) – Guzman’s precisely rendered, chillingly relevant essay ought to give Tea Partiers something to consider

 

God Bless America (2011) – Goldthwait’s justly angry opus often spellbinds with its furious eloquence, although less so with its body count

 

The House is Black (1963) – Farrozhzad’s stark record of leprosy sufferers all but dares a purportedly benevolent God to explain himself

 

Romantic Comedy (1983) – even though the generic quality is (presumably) deliberate, the intertwining of art & life couldn’t be much flatter

 

I am Cuba (1963) – Kalaztozov’s classic provocation has such constant virtuosic energy, the film rather overruns its own analytical capacity

 

All is Lost (2013) – might almost be Redford’s fascinating atonement for past vanities, facilitated by Chandor’s painstaking stripping down

 

La faute de l’abbe Mouret (1970) – Franju’s gripping if incompletely realized negotiation between Catholic guilt and flower child freedom

 

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) – Coppola ultimately pushes the film toward pure mood, design, encounter, without much enhancing its relevance

 

Cairo Station (1958) – Chahine’s heated potboiler remains surprisingly raw, stark and sexually charged, of great anthropological interest

 

Casting By (2012) – Donahue’s documentary, like so many others, shows little of the distinctive attitude it purports to explore & celebrate

 

Lisa and the Devil (1973) – Bava’s singular mix of old dark house slasher, romantically tinged dream logic, & Telly Savalas (with lollipop)!

 

The Paperboy (2012) – Daniels’ valiantly pathetic, expectations-dodging attempt to rule the “so bad it’s good” category

 

Black Girl (1966) – Sembene’s indelibly sensitive case history of colonialism's false promise, an apt stylistic anomaly in his body of work

 

Seduced and Abandoned (2013) – Toback and Baldwin’s highly engaging, though somewhat ramshackle, things-used-to-be-better ramble

 

Quadrophenia (1979) – Roddam’s film is really all about the attitude & the scrapes; doesn’t dig so deep as a social document, but no matter

 

Boy (1969) – one of Oshima’s most bitingly immaculate films, consistently evading all conventional expectations and interpretations

 

Sisters (1973) – still as enveloping a creation as almost any other De Palma, with Hitchcock yielding to something almost pre-Cronenbergian

 

Un Coeur en hiver (1992) – for all the limitations of such icy precision, Sautet does steer his protagonist to a certain perverse grandeur

 

That’s Life (1986) – unfortunately, it’s not clear anything about Edwards’ film actually is life, outside a purely movieland concept of it

 

Thomas the Impostor (1965) – one of Franju’s more austerely strange, multi-faceted works, with some unsettlingly beautiful images

 

Captain Phillips (2013) – Greengrass remains a master low-bullshit orchestrator, although it ends up mainly another hymn to American might

 

The Stranger (1967) – Visconti presents a dutifully handsome transcription of the book, rather than a productive filmic dialogue with it

 

A Touch of Class (1973) – Frank’s comedy, slack as it generally is, remains a productive discussion topic re cinema’s treatment of women

 

Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 pm (2001) – a more concentrated illustration of Lanzmann’s methods, narratively gripping but superbly weighted

 

Betrayed (1988) – deeply unconvincing liberal-thrill melodrama, where Costa-Gavras’ energy seems spent on keeping up with the contrivances

 

Emak-Bakia (1927) – Man Ray luxuriates playfully in the possibilities of cinema, ultimately daring us to surrender to a sensual dream state

 

Save the Tiger (1973) – still a solid if over-extended drama; not quite the intended all-encompassing summation of its challenged times

 

A Touch of Sin (2013) – Jia’s provocatively bleak narrative, visual mastery and analytical precision makes this one of the year’s best films

 

Quick Change (1990) – given that Murray co-directed this amiable meander, it’s a bit strange and sad he kept himself on such a tight leash

 

King, Queen, Knave (1972) – Skolimowski’s odd little film, both classical and jitterily modern, sliding between caresses and knife-twists

 

Les maudits (1947) – Clement’s fascinatingly atmospheric dramatization of the perverse, malignant existential vacuum underlying Nazism

 

A Boy and his Dog (1975) – very strange, wayward material, which gets somewhat more striking as a distorted prophecy of American derangement

 

The Karski Report (2010) – a piercing annex to Lanzmann’s core achievement, on the Shoah's challenge to human capacity to believe & respond

 

Mean Streets (1973) – Scorsese likely never equaled this for raw empathetic conviction; much of what followed is (inevitably?) more mannered

 

Bastards (2013) - only for Denis could a film as richly controlled and allusive as this one seem like a relatively second-level work

 

Hell Drivers (1957) – Endfield’s socially-wired drama, with a once in a lifetime cast, is a pioneer of hurtling heavy-machine momentum

 

The Wicker Tree (2011) – Hardy’s late sequel doesn’t add much to the mythology, but has moments of intriguing (if rather diluted) flavour

 

The Working Class Goes to Heaven (1971) – Petri’s scathing analysis of industrialized labour, as a choice between capitulation and madness

 

Hitchcock (2012) – even less relevant to appreciating Hitchcock’s achievements than The Girl was, although somewhat more goofily enjoyable

 

Le notte bianchi (1957) – Visconti crafts a lovely artificiality, but Bresson’s later version of the same material would be truly remarkable

 

Gravity (2013) – Cuaron’s visual achievement is remarkable; in other respects, it’s either less impressive, or at best harder to assess

 

A Visitor from the Living (1999) – a quietly devastating work, as Lanzmann meticulously exposes past errors and continuing complacency

 

Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (1974) – Hough’s no-bullshit, happily nihilistic chase movie; no great shakes, but pretty smart by today's standards

 

A Royal Affair (2012) – Arcel’s stuffy reliance on standard history-film vocabulary only squanders the material’s political resonance

 

Bullitt (1968) – Yates’ sparsely matter-of-fact styling holds up pretty well, & McQueen’s awesomely-controlled iconic presence even more so

 

Trouble Every Day (2001) – Denis applies her immense skill and fluidity to material with a unknowably dark heart, to remarkable effect

 

Airport ’77 (1977) – Jameson shows little passion for the dutiful melodrama, but perks up big-time when the mighty Navy rescue shows up

 

The Goddess (1934) – Wu’s silent Chinese classic is as fluidly complex and moving and as indelibly acted as any Hollywood film of the period

 

Enough Said (2013) – as smoothly insightful as all Holofcener’s work, but to more minor effect: could have said/shown/explored so much more

 

Eva (1962) – a fascinating entry in the ‘dangerous woman’ genre, marked by Losey’s masterfully heightened strangifying of every element 

 

Bay of Blood (1971) – Bava’s vividly enjoyable, gruesome parable on, I suppose, the unenjoyably gruesome toll of unchecked avarice

 

Excalibur (1981) – Boorman just about masterminds the nutty mythological mishmash into a moodily coherent, earthy vision

 

Shoah (1985) – Lanzmann far transcends the limitations of conventional documentary with mesmerizing, often startling authorial choices

 

World War Z (2013) – Forster delivers some striking sequences & jagged storytelling, but it’s been done before with much more sentient kick

 

Summer with Monika (1953) – the summer idyll aside, as close as Bergman ever made to a stripped-down, patriarchy-conscious kitchen-sinker

 

Stand Up Guys (2012) – Stevens’ modern-day Wild Bunch variation squanders all its potential gravity with endless cheap shots & contrivances

 

L'etoile de mer (1928) - Man Ray's early expression of the play of desire, fetishization and denial that fuels so much subsequent cinema

 

Town & Country (2001) – Beatty’s grievously unfocused return to Shampoo territory (with creakier bones) misses nearly every opportunity

 

A River Called Titash (1973) – Ghatak’s film often feels shaped out of pure pain, its confusions flowing directly from India’s injustices

 

Passion (2012) – De Palma persuasively creates a sustained state of waking dream, where nothing carries true weight or earthly consequence

 

Salon Kitty (1976) – Brass’ exploitation classic is more than just that – a real high-low hybrid like they truly don’t/can’t make any more

 

Goldfinger (1964) – rather like perusing an album of isolated iconic moments, with the reasons for that iconic-ness hard to remember now

 

Antiviral (2012) – Cronenberg Jr.’s boring, starkly imagined speculation is all premise, with little in the way of interesting elaboration

 

Parking (1985) – largely forgotten late Demy illustrates all his complexities – lovely, transgressive, piercing, banal, often all at once

 

The Impossible (2012) – the recreation is certainly impressive, but Bayona has little more in mind, the usual “human spirit” stuff aside

 

Le retour a la raison (1923) – Man Ray’s short film vividly (and, briefly, erotically) suggests how montage might encompass all things

 

This is 40 (2012) – Apatow no doubt effectively conveys the contours of his own life, but it’s not clear what that does for the rest of us

 

Cuadecuc vampire (1971) – Portabella’s intriguing repositioning of familiar material, reflecting on filmmaking’s rituals, its strange beauty

 

Drinking Buddies (2013) – higher-end casting gives Swanberg’s movie a finer sheen, but it doesn't really expand his artistic limits

 

Kanto Wanderer (1963) – Suzuki navigates to an endpoint of loneliness and displacement, setting out the stubborn toll of the yakuza code

 

Ishtar (1987) – May’s famous flop is actually pretty astute and clear-sighted on several levels, although still not her strongest film

 

Welcome (2009) – Lioret’s solidly multi-faceted film has lots of sociological interest, although the romantic fatalism is a mixed blessing

 

Linda Lovelace for President (1975) – an amiable softcore mess; Linda's satirical capacity starts off thin & only gets thinner as it goes on

 

Day for Night (1973) – among Truffaut’s most enjoyable creations, even if (or because) it downplays any possibility for directorial vision

 

Gambit (2012) – surely the plainest, most dispensable movie involving the Coen Brothers; seldom puts up more than the usual genre stakes

 

The Night of the Shooting Stars (1982) – an absorbing Taviani testimony, seemingly true to the texture of history, but quirkily seasoned

 

The Towering Inferno (1974) – as the 70’s disaster cycle goes, it’s no Airport; and hard to watch it now without thinking of 9/11 parallels

 

The Grandmaster (2013) – Wong doesn’t greatly expand his universe here, but still creates a meditative space of great, beautiful capacity

 

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) – would have been so much richer and thematically eloquent in the hands of Sirk or Ray or Minnelli

 

Come Play With Me (1977) – only in a pretty sad time and place could this weird, titillating hybrid have been the (albeit minor) hit it was

 

In the House (2012) – Ozon’s fable on personal and artistic ethics and boundaries is poised and engaging, although without his earlier bite

 

Only When I Laugh (1981) – Simon’s customarily polished fragments don’t compensate this time for the lack of overall substance and bite

 

Death in Venice (1971) – Visconti embodies here what was once perceived (some places) as cinematic art, but it’s not so galvanizing now

 

Red Lights (2012) – Cortes seemingly seeks to become progressively dark and disorienting, but manages only silliness and incoherence

 

Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972) – Truffaut pulls off his apparent ambition of making himself seem aggressively dumber than he really was

 

Clear History (2013) – length aside, David doesn’t stray too far here from the Curb Your Enthusiasm formula, but then, who needs him to?

 

La fiancee du pirate (1969) – Kaplan’s provocative, mud-throwing sex comedy is still enjoyably transgressive (in a museum piece kind of way)

 

Papillon (1973) – Schaffner’s approach is stylistically interesting at times, but no real reason to watch this over Bresson’s Man Escaped

 

Feeling Good (2010) – Etaix’s vision of imposed mediocrity is well-executed as always, but covers much the same ground as his other work

 

The Quiller Memorandum (1966) – hardly the genre’s high water mark, but draws with sparse precision on Cold War-era existential adriftness

 

Laurence Anyways (2012) – Dolan’s creative instincts, although rich and generous, are already starting to seem a bit over-stretched

 

Altered States (1980) – Russell’s fiercely committed Chayefsky//monster movie melting pot - too crazily compelling to worry about critiquing

 

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001) – Imamura’s late work, a pleasant, scenic grabbag of oddities, ultimately seems only vaguely meaningful

 

Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) – Arzner’s sociologically penetrating masterpiece; both delicately executed and thematically tough-minded

 

The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle (1980) – Temple’s one of a kind time capsule, crazy and fascinating and at least as coherent as it needs

 

Pas sur la bouche (2003) – the title maladie sums up Resnais’ enchanting musical exploration of cinematic delight’s proximity to disquiet

 

Airport (1970) – Seaton's legendary, still quite fascinating hymn to the American machine that holds its fractured human components together

 

Bed and Board (1970) – showing Truffaut’s rare gift of making largely indifferent material unnaturally captivating; often quite funny too

 

Lovelace (2013) – a flat disappointment, with dubious narrative strategies, misplaced emphases and little feeling for emotional complexity 

 

Salvatore Giuliano (1962) – Rosi’s powerful, multi-faceted debut shows his style, sensibility and forceful clarity already fully formed

 

The Man with the Iron Fists (2012) – seemed unlikely that such a collection of elements could turn out so murky and dull, but there you go

 

Une femme est une femme (1961) – one of the most joyous films (a dazzlingly rigorous, political, creative, only-from-Godard joy) of its era

 

The Canyons (2013) – hardly a train wreck; Schrader’s dead-eyed execution is depressingly well attuned to the fuck-everything material

 

Le deuxieme souffle (1966) – Melville’s bleakly spellbinding piece of cinematic, moral, thematic architecture is among his very best works

 

Blue Jasmine (2013) – one of Allen’s late career peaks, with the usual strengths and limitations, but rather more social bite than usual

 

Ten Days Wonder (1972) – Chabrol’s strange but assured exercise in unreliable narration, drawing on rich and varied actorly resonances

 

Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) – has plenty of low-key, oddball charm, but doesn’t ultimately amount to a hill of non-metaphysical beans

 

Stolen Kisses (1968) – hardly Truffaut’s most consequential film, but warmly illustrating his great capacity for interaction and nuance

 

American Gigolo (1980) – Schrader’s film is as compelling as ever, as shimmeringly absurd as America's decadence dictates it must be

 

The Intouchables (2011) – smoothly/shamelessly deploying some of the oldest formulae in the book, for some actual laugh-out-loud moments

 

The Twelve Chairs (1970) – interesting as a contrast to Brooks’ other work, although in truth he was probably right to go on by aiming lower

 

Le capital (2012) – Costa-Gavras’ handsome examination of global finance is ultimately too simplistic to yield much analytical power

 

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968) – like nibbling forlornly on a mere hash brownie crumb, and wondering where the whole plate went

 

The Burglars (1971) – Verneuil’s caper movie is mostly plain and workmanlike at best, but with some striking extended action set-pieces

 

Only God Forgives (2013) – Refn’s mostly derided film is increasingly, troublingly fascinating for its formal embodiment of moral absence

 

Benjamin ou Les memories d’un puceau (1968) – Deville’s deft anecdote of hedonistic paradise fades as rapidly as most casual provocations

 

Blood and Wine (1996) – Rafelson’s unremarkable but pleasingly solid thriller, with some of Nicholson & (especially) Caine’s best late work

 

Antoine et Colette (1962) – very pleasant bite-sized piece (half an hour) of Truffaut-lite, with a nicely ironic but unforced arrival point

 

Smashed (2012) – Ponsoldt’s well-acted film has many sadly compelling moments, but perhaps moves too speedily from darkness to redemption

 

As Long as You’ve Got Your Health (1966) – Etaix’s mixed-bag anthology is at its best when elegantly skewering contemporary foolishness

 

Rumble Fish (1983) – Coppola’s aestheticized style creates an overly distanced viewing experience, even allowing that’s largely the point

 

Rebelle (2012) – Nguyen’s film is inevitably interesting, but dissipates its power and evocative force with trite storytelling decisions

 

Point Blank (1967) – still as tightly plotted & allusive as any thriller you can think of; Marvin pushes abstracted acting into a new realm

 

The Players (2012) – variable but mostly weak sex-themed comedy anthology provides ample time to muse on the oddity of Jean Dujardin’s Oscar

 

Badlands (1973) – if only the wonderfully allusive but grounded, character-attuned Malick had persisted for more than, well, one movie

 

Oslo, August 31st (2011) – Trier’s aesthetic calculations rather undermine the central devastation, for an oddly indifferent overall effect

 

Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) – Minnelli's expertly piercing account of exile and displacement, straddling the exotic and the downbeat

 

Vous n’avez encore rien vu (2012) – Resnais’ remarkable reflection on the inexhaustible glory of artistic creation shows him undiminished

 

Wild at Heart (1990) – kinetic and diverting, but among the more dispensable of Lynch’s major works, carrying something of a grabbag quality

 

Rendezvous at Bray (1971) – Delvaux’s immaculately-crafted period miniature, both painstakingly specific and emblematically enigmatic

 

Juno (2007) – Reitman maintains the film’s mega-distinctive tone very well, but it’s more technically than emotionally engaging

 

Happy Anniversary (1962) – Etaix/Carriere’s perfectly executed Oscar-winning short, a close cousin to Tati’s observer of modern problems

 

The Bling Ring (2013) – Coppola is mining a narrow vein of material lately, but it's a meaningful commentary on degraded values and morality

 

Le combat dans l’ile (1962) – Cavalier’s strangely structured but compelling thriller travels from political turbulence to romantic idealism

 

Killer Joe (2011) – beneath pretty much everyone involved, but at least they follow the golden rule: in for a penny, in for a pound

 

The Bear and the Doll (1970) – Deville’s rather stretched comedy works pretty well in showcasing Bardot’s beautiful pain in the ass quality

 

Sinister (2012) – Derrickson’s nastily inventive silliness might evoke various adjectives but strangely, “sinister” isn’t really one of them

 

French Cancan (1955) – Renoir’s matchless, tireless whirl of dance and colour and of the joy (and sometimes the cost) of the creative life

 

Frances Ha (2013) – by far Baumbach’s most wonderful film, marked by enchanting shifts, repositionings, heartbreaks and Gerwigian delights

 

The Ceremony (1971) – straining what can be absorbed on a first viewing, Oshima’s darkly handsome film is rigid with contempt and disgust

 

There Will Be Blood (2007) - Anderson takes classic raw materials, lays them like blood-spattered implements to bake under a murderous sun

 

The Suitor (1962) – wonderfully conceived, controlled and nuanced, but it’s still remarkable how rapidly Etaix would evolve from this start

 

People will Talk (1951) – a strange, unique, discursive movie, maybe the best evidence for Mankiewicz as a really distinctive director

 

Polisse (2011) – Maiwenn’s police drama is most piercing in its feeling for the children; otherwise often problematic (not unprodictively)

 

Another Woman (1988) – Allen’s meticulous but not particularly inspired box of regret doesn’t give Rowlands much space to unleash her power

 

Alexandra (2007) – one of Sokurov’s more easily accessible films, on the tough-minded persistence of human connection amid imposed bleakness

 

The Stranger (1946) – minor but with much interest, in particular when Welles’ sensibility emerges in the cracks in the polished surface

 

Raavanan (2010) – Ratnam keeps it revved up, but the persistent dramatic & emotional over-emphasis is wearying unless it’s really your thing

 

Separate Tables (1958)  - the tables surely seemed creaky even at the time, let alone now, despite the variable star power dining at them

 

Rupture (1961) – Etaix/Carriere’s funny, mordantly-subtexted debut short film is deftly handled, although evidently a set of training wheels

 

Starting Out in the Evening (2008) - Wagner's subtly crafted study is most uncommonly satisfying for such a knowingly "small" film

 

The Mattei Affair (1972) – one of Rosi’s most provocative, jam-packed investigations; a key film in cinema’s consideration of corporatism

 

Before Midnight (2013) - more hampered by contrivance & over-compression than its predecessors, even if dissatisfaction is part of the point

 

L’insoumis (1965) – Cavalier tersely takes Delon, in a classic fraught role, from political specificity to an existential vanishing point

 

Becket (1964) – powerful in a mainstream “great drama” kind of tradition; it’s often a joy to the ear, maybe not as much to the other senses

 

Three Times (2005) – Hou’s wonderfully poised, culturally specific trilogy about the abiding fragility and unreliability of human connection

 

The Arrangement (1969) – for all Kazan’s fascinating, raw neediness and experimentation, often seems naïve and forced next to his best work

 

Therese Desqueyroux (1962) – Franju’s masterly grasp of the complex constraints operating on Therese makes this perhaps his strongest film

 

Stories we tell (2012) – Polley’s family excavation is interesting enough, but the intimations of greater significance are mostly a stretch

 

There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) – Sirk’s starkly melancholy, typically visually eloquent slice of Eisenhower-era loneliness and compromise

 

Land of Milk and Honey (1971) – Etaix's mixed-bag documentary experiment, rather prophetic re Europe’s failure to reflect its aspirations

 

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) – Nolan’s would-be “vision” is ultimately a mere grab-bag, puffed up with trivial patches of topical reference

 

Elle a passé tant d’heures sous les sunlights (1985) – Garrel’s difficult, unpandering, but rewarding reflection on memory & representation

 

Mulholland Drive (2001) – one of Lynch’s most astoundingly charged films, nothing short of masterly in its layerings and repositionings

 

The Cranes are Flying (1957) – Kalatozov’s classic; too sculptured to be fashionable now, but still a moving chronicle of war’s dislocation

 

Behind the Candelabra (2013) – for lack of a better term, would be more historically and psychologically piercing if it were, well, gayer

 

Monsieur Ripois (1954) – Clement’s tale of a Frenchman working through London women; much more unpredictable than that summary suggests

 

The Invisible War (2012) – Dick’s important, efficient and highly informative briefing document, on yet another sleazy institutional outrage

 

Le grand amour (1969) – just about perfectly paced, conceived and executed Etaix comedy, with a darker subtext about stifling of the spirit

 

Your Sister’s Sister (2011) – Shelton’s pleasantly crafted slice of emotional messiness, ultimately more aspirational than observational

 

Good Morning (1959) – one of Ozu’s lighter, more minor films overall, but still full of piercing insights, and glimpses of darker currents

 

The Outfit (1973) – Flynn’s lean-and-mean, no-nonsense action movie; their move against the system becomes an unforced existential quest

 

The Raid: Redemption (2011) – Evans executes the violent physicality with such detail and commitment, it becomes almost revelatory at times

 

They Live by Night (1949) – Ray’s achingly beautifully-crafted, socially conscious debut, with its wonderfully tender central performances

 

Something in the Air (2012) – Assayas’ romantic but thrillingly rigorous recreation of a time and place rich in possibility and engagement

 

The Osterman Weekend (1983) – the paranoid rot goes deep in Peckinpah’s intriguing, deeply disenchanted but overly mechanical thriller

 

Happy New Year (1973) – Lelouch demonstrates an enjoyably varied palate here, making this an unusually well-rounded, reflective caper flick

 

The Loneliest Planet (2011) – no doubt “slow cinema,” but superbly well-handled by Loktev and the actors, around a brilliant central concept

 

Marat/Sade (1967) – Brook’s film of his unique stage production; valuable for sure, but in truth hard to imagine watching it more than once

 

Trishna (2011) – pictorial quality aside, Winterbottom’s transition of Tess to contemporary India is a bit flat & politically under-charged

 

Thief (1981) – Mann’s early film, a fully achieved, shimmering vision of isolation, is already more than halfway to his highpoint of Heat

 

Yoyo (1965) – Etaix’s one-of-a-kind comedy reinvents and renews itself so often you lose count, but keeps you oddly, happily transfixed

 

The We and the I (2012) – Gondry’s workshop piece is interesting enough, “life-affirming” and somewhat horrifying in roughly equal measure

 

Landru (1963) – one of Chabrol’s more cluttered, if not overwhelmed, films, but crammed with stylistic, political and thematic interest

 

Mighty Aphrodite (1995) – one of post-peak Allen’s funniest films; fanciful and hardly relevant to anything, but well-controlled and -played

 

Pleins feux sur l’assassin (1961) – far from Franju’s strongest film; even a master can lapse into little more than moving pieces around

 

Prometheus (2012) – at least halfway to an intriguing thematic & mythic mix, but Scott’s instincts are too earthbound to cover the last half

 

Quadrille (1938) – Guitry extracts quite surprising mileage from his narrow situation, though some might just view it as a one-note talkfest

 

Room 237 (2012) – Ascher enjoyably & affectionately indulges the benign follies and occasional breakthroughs of cinematic preoccupation

 

Beyond the Clouds (1995) – Antonioni’s ravishing late reflection on creation, possibility, the inexhaustible mysteries of human structures

 

The Central Park Five (2012) – a well-made but conventional operation, on material which needed to feel like a furious untreated wound

 

A Man and a Woman (1966) – thin stuff, which in Lelouch’s hands actually does come to seem iconic (is “iconic” always a compliment though?)

 

Hope Springs (2012) – Streep & especially Jones give real, often moving performances, which the film as a whole only intermittently deserves

 

Underworld Beauty (1958) – pretty damn entertaining, powered by its relentless narrative and by any number of striking Suzuki “touches”

 

Premium Rush (2012) – Koepp’s bicycle courier thriller pretty much only does the one thing, but does it with a lot of imagination and zip

 

The Railroad Man (1956) – Germi’s family drama ultimately seems largely conventional next to the strongest work of his contemporaries

 

Lawless (2012) – given Hillcoat’s and Cave’s participation, an inexplicably flat, unatmospheric and uninvolving viewing experience

 

The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque (1993) – maybe Rohmer’s reflection on the burden of empathetically grasping an issue's complexity?

 

Total Recall (2012) – Wiseman's visually and narratively cluttered, massively undistinguished, boring (and instantly recall-defying) remake

 

Socrates (1971) – Rossellini’s patient, precise examination constitutes an eternally relevant reference point for our own deranged culture

 

The Queen of Versailles (2011) – has its scraps of relevance and insight, but for the most part a somewhat random, grotesque spectacle

 

Les bonnes femmes (1960) – one of Chabrol’s most disquieting films, for its unforced observation and its astute, escalating sense of threat

 

Pariah (2011) – Rees’ film has a largely conventional frame, but with much that feels new, earning its ultimate sense of the light coming in

 

The Murderer Lives at Number 21 (1942) – a witty and literate early expression of Clouzot’s layered sense of scheming and malignity

 

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take 2 ½ (2005) – an old man’s indulgence, pleasantly playful and wide-eyed, even if with minimal ultimate impact

 

Touch of Death (1988) – creaky and fatigued next to Fulci’s greatest works, but still enjoyable for its grimly stunned sense of black comedy

 

Dark Horse (2011) – Solondz’ worldview remains limited, but the movie captures something poignant about the mental toll of being ordinary

 

Le quai des brumes (1938) - the sense of predestination limits Carne’s film as a human exploration, but it remains a pristine, charged dream

 

Phil Spector (2013) – Mamet’s expectation-confounding, only sporadically satisfying conception of the story as a darkly meditative “fable”

 

India: Matri Bhumi (1959) – Rossellini’s fictionalized documentary, extraordinarily poised between wonder & informed, premonitionary sadness

 

Blue Velvet (1986) – Lynch’s spellbinding, eternally rewarding meditation on the trauma and disquiet within the collective American psyche

 

Before I Forget (2007) – Nolot’s fine autobiographical reverie, excavating his very specific subculture in unsentimental, surprising detail

 

The China Syndrome (1979) – pushes familiar buttons of liberal indignation, but 34 years later, they're still such damn pushable buttons

 

This Must be the Place (2011) – Sorrentino’s distinctly, beautifully unprecedented cultural, geographical, historical, tonal, moral fusion

 

Blonde Venus (1932) – Sternberg puts through Dietrich through a breathless odyssey of submission, defiance, degradation, transcendence…

 

Like someone in love (2012) – Kiarostami’s luminous, endlessly compelling creation, far less problematically “enigmatic” than some have it

 

The Deer Hunter (1978) – Cimino’s messily powerful, flawed grapple with American community and incoherence remains as fascinating as ever

 

Les femmes (1969) – a dawdling, gauzy time capsule, not without interest, but unimaginative in its use of Bardot and in its sexual politics

 

Neil Young Journeys (2011) – Demme’s sideline in making moderately adorned Neil Young concert flicks beats stamp-collecting, as hobbies go

 

The Machine that Kills Bad People (1952) – Rossellini’s oddball fantasy appeals for its deep grounding in real people and real injustices

 

Breathless (1983) – McBride never puts together a meaningful critique of Gere’s character, and never draws productively on his kineticism

 

360 (2011) – Meirelles’ glacial deployment of the La Ronde structure isn't much of a gateway into character, meaning or globalization

 

The Big Sleep (1946) – Hawks’ classic investigation: famously confusing as detective story; utterly coherent in mood, attitude and character

 

Beyond the Hills (2012) – Mongiu’s painstaking attention to physical, psychological and social detail yields a riveting, provocative work

 

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) – Lynch compellingly (and weirdly, naturally) illuminates the darkness at the TV series’ tragic core

 

Culloden (1964) – Watkins’ debut is still savagely astonishing, laying out with painful vividness the human cost of imperial calculations

 

Post Mortem (2010) – Larrain’s creepily troubling illustration of how national atrocities perversely enable and spawn individual actions

 

Heaven’s Gate (1980) – the sad saga of Cimino’s fine film grimly resonates against its rich examination of America’s beautiful corruption

 

Bestiaire (2012) – Cote’s essay on watching animals is inherently interesting, even if the ethical space it occupies is largely familiar

 

The Wiz (1978) – at least Lumet makes it more fluent and coherent than the same era’s Sgt. Pepper musical; I know, faintest praise ever…

 

Ginger & Rosa (2012) – Potter gracefully and satisfyingly explores the interplay in charged times of radicalization and biological destiny

 

Fear (1954) – intriguing if largely conventional psychological thriller, made more disquieting by Rossellini’s observational exactitude

 

The Amazing Spider-Man (2012) – Webb’s version is pleasant & resists being utterly deluged by digital artificiality, so I guess that’s fine

 

The War Game (1965) – Watkins’ indelible evocation of a nuclear attack on Britain almost seems more real than the reality we lived through

 

The Whole Family Works (1939) – Naruse’s sad, ultimately at best only conditionally optimistic tale of youth hemmed in by economic hardship

 

Life of Pi (2012) – Lee paints the prettiest of pictures, but the "story that’ll make you believe in God" stuff makes you roll your eyes

 

The Serpent’s Egg (1977) – unusual Bergman film – its disquieting preoccupation with loss of self acquires a new kind of resonance with time

 

Searching for Sugar Man (2012) – pleasant little anecdote from the margins of fame; hardly amounts to the year’s best documentary though

 

Germany Year Zero (1948) – chillingly gripping, illustrating how Rossellini’s neo-realism enhanced rather than rejected narrative models

 

Pennies from Heaven (1981) – Ross squanders Potter’s incredible source material with bland, unatmospheric handling and mostly poor casting

 

Les temoins (2007) – one of Techine’s most eloquent recent reveries, so poised that it’s easy to undervalue its complexity and breadth

 

Naked (1993) – a film of often dazzling, unsettlingly well-executed passages & concepts, even if not Leigh’s most perfectly conceived whole

 

The Fortune Cookie (1966) – expertly paced & structured (if disenchanted) Wilder comedy, with Matthau in peak form; couldn’t go down easier

 

Bullhead (2011) – the crime drama elements gradually recede, to reveal a rather unique study in masculinity and its turbulent sense of self

 

The Godfather (1972) – like a pilgrimage to the well from which all our subsequent ideas about powerful American adult storytelling flow

 

No (2012) – very skillful and engrossing, maybe too much so, as it slides away afterwards much faster than Larrain’s preceding two films

 

Caravaggio (1986) – Jarman’s deeply personal approach to the artist, crafting an aesthetically complex, emotionally dense filmic space

 

Suspicion (1941) – Hitchcock’s seductive, flawed film is perhaps most compelling for Grant’s fascinatingly, darkly ambiguous performance

 

Headhunters (2011) – a Norwegian entry in the global fight for supremacy in high-concept plotting – good fun, if limited otherwise

 

Beyond Therapy (1987) – the mismatch in Altman & Durang’s sensibilities increasingly yields something rather productively strange & lovely

 

Vincere (2009) – Bellocchio’s accomplished, visually muscular meditation on Fascism’s bizarre, distorting detritus and its cruel human cost

 

The Driver (1978) – Hill’s eternally fascinating genre distillation, a stylistic universe away from the tiresome excesses of such films now

 

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (2002) – stretching Varda’s gleaning metaphor to the limit, but hey, by now she can do what she likes!

 

Black Caesar (1973) – a great Cohen genre picture, with a smart, committed blend of strut and despair, and that startling, charged climax

 

Poppy (1935) – a finely realized, melancholy-tinged reflection on doing the “right” thing, if a little below Mizoguchi's greatest work

 

Wittgenstein (1993) – despite the film’s brevity and limitations, Jarman conveys both the torture and bliss of Wittgenstein’s life and work

 

2 Days in New York (2012) – compared to say Friends with Kids, Delpy at least generates some engaging silliness (Rock, Gallo, wacky French)

 

Santa Sangre (1989) – Jodorowsky gloriously sustains his intricate vision, you willingly surrender…but then at the end it means so little

 

Mea Maxima Culpa (2011) – Gibney tells the story chillingly well, but the sick rationalizations at its heart remain beyond comprehension

 

Zvenigora (1928) – despite Dovzhenko’s forceful expressive power, a bit taxing to succumb to across this span of time, distance and ideology

 

Nobody Walks (2012) – mostly successful study of a young woman’s complicated impact, even if its preoccupations are ultimately rather narrow

 

Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) – yet another uniquely poised, desire-ridden, politically charged Bunuel film, beyond anyone else’s imagining

 

Agency (1980) – tired Canadian paranoia thriller might have had a vague chance if Alan Pakula directed it, but he sure as hell didn't...

 

The Pilgrim (1923) – late Chaplin short film perfectly embodies the legend, moving smoothly between tightly executed, laugh-out-loud set-ups

 

Brighton Rock (2010) – one of those movies where you feel the filmmaking mechanics turn, never really creating a compelling cinematic space

 

Where Now are the Dreams of Youth? (1932) – Ozu’s fluid, funny silent film is as emotionally rich and eloquent as most garrulous talkies

 

Hysteria (2011) – Wexler chooses the most sterile possible approach – not enough hysteria, sex, dirt, anger, deprivation, anything

 

The Terrorizers (1986) – with great finesse, Yang builds to a finale privileging human sadness over our mechanistic narrative expectations

 

The Hunger Games (2012) – sadly under-nourishing, under-imagined, flatly realized; from the kiddie cookbook of dystopian fantasies

 

Days and Nights in the Forest (1970) – Ray’s film is increasingly, bleakly frank about the depth of India’s dysfunctionality and sadness

 

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) – hardly as stimulating a genre meta-rewrite as some suggested, although what about that monster purge scene!

 

The Organizer (1963) – compelling social justice filmmaking by Monicelli, even if it might seem a bit square next to the period’s key works

 

Arbitrage (2012) – squandered by gross simplifications & unhelpful contrivances, Jarecki’s artistic investment flames out, Madoff-style

 

Deux hommes dans la ville (1973) – striking if stolid exercise in misdirection; promises a standard Delon thriller, turns out much grimmer

 

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011) – rather surprisingly lovely, if only for its odd premise, scenic qualities & old-fashioned performances

 

Hiroshima, mon amour (1959) – Resnais’ narrative landmark, interrogating almost every aspect of itself, & of the world that made it possible

 

Marley (2012) – feels like Macdonald might almost have had too great a wealth of material to work with, ending up all but overwhelmed by it

 

The Beast (1975) – strange tale of erotic displacement, whereby Borowczyk conclusively seals his place in the history of the cinematic penis

 

Side Effects (2013) – Soderbergh intriguingly explores how our ethically hollowed-out culture easily spirals into total moral bankruptcy

 

This Man Must Die (1969) – one of Chabrol’s most impeccably sustained, quietly despairing studies in displaced human motivations and guilt

 

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) – just as the legend has it, remarkably foolish, wrong-headed, cheesy, misconceived, etc. etc.

 

Farewell my Queen (2012) – Jacquot’s vivid, elegantly charged humanization of an often-told story, dense with intermeshing perspectives

 

Trouble in Paradise (1932) – what they say about the “Lubitsch touch”, it’s all true! – it’s extraordinarily, tenderly elegant and deft

 

Monsieur Lazhar (2011) – Falardeau’s intentions for this elegant fable of recovery and catalysis are too modest to place much value on it

 

Gloria (1980) – flatly conventional by Cassavetes’ standards, enlivened throughout by his alertness to behavior, interaction, possibility

 

Where Do We Go Now? (2011) – well, Labaki seems to ask, why shouldn’t Middle Eastern conflicts also be fair game for an airheaded movie?

 

House Calls (1978) – I’m a bit of a sucker for such low-ambition, mature-skewing 70's comedies; this is a pretty low-wattage example though

 

The Day I Became a Woman (2000) – wonderful reflection on Iranian womanhood, built on Makhmalbaf’s starkly powerful images and concepts

 

Our Hospitality (1923) – Keaton’s conceptual precision and grace are still delightfully modern; his larger inventions remain astounding

 

The Woman in the Fifth (2011) – Pawlikowski sustains it pretty well, but sadly, if a thing’s not worth doing, it’s not worth doing well

 

Tomorrow Never Comes (1978) – standard siege drama with weird co-production trappings; Collinson can do little more than direct traffic

 

Amour (2012) – Haneke’s highly accomplished proposition that the primary horror of death lies in our fuzzy denials of its specificity

 

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) – this late, discursive Ford drama never completely satisfies, but maybe that’s what this grim history demands

 

Seven Beauties (1975) – hard to understand now how Wertmuller’s artful grotesqueries and unsophisticated morality ever caught such a wave

 

Friends with Kids (2011) – straining impotently to capture some kind of zeitgeist, Westfeldt’s film all but dissipates before your eyes

 

Jour de fete (1949) – Tati’s wonderfully sustained, often exhilaratingly paced debut, powered by a very sweet take on modern threats

 

Bernie (2011) – another finely entertaining example of Linklater’s prowess as the most easy-to-take of experimental American filmmakers

 

Fellini Roma (1972) – Fellini has never seemed that major to me, yet his committed situation-making here is surprisingly enveloping

 

Darling Companion (2012) – could Kasdan’s weirdly minor lost-dog chronicle possibly be meant as deadpan parody?...sadly, probably not…

 

Accattone (1961) – Pasolini’s stunning debut, anticipating all the turmoil, interrogation, profound social awareness of his subsequent work

 

Being Flynn (2012) – Weitz’s conventionally scrubbed notions of craft generally squander the actors’ willing waywardness and ferocity

 

Conversation Piece (1974) – Visconti’s claustrophobic study in politically-charged decadence; maybe more provocative in theory than practice

 

We Bought a Zoo (2011) – you know kids, they do say that once upon a time, some considered Cameron Crowe a significant American filmmaker

 

Woman in the Moon (1929) – Lang’s lumpy, only sporadically visionary amalgam of paranoid thriller and romantic reverie; enjoyable but weird

 

Inventing David Geffen (2012) – pleasantly crammed with good stories, but doesn’t get far on examining the nature and perils of such power

 

Vivement Dimanche (1983) – Truffaut’s handsome but low-stakes final film is hard to dislike, despite the mainly cursory storytelling

 

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) – accomplished and gripping, but plainly a selected narrative: Bigelow’s “just the facts” claims are disingenuous

 

Il posto (1961) – Olmi’s insinuating premonition, bearing a watchmaker’s detail and a sad prophet's reach, of the terrifying road ahead

 

Savages (2012) – despite the perverse romantic streak and practiced gleaming kineticism, as disposable a movie as Stone has ever made

 

La femme aux bottes rouges (1974) – Bunuel junior’s surreal-flavored film lacks his father’s elegant precision, mostly seeming just messy

 

All Night Long (1981) – mostly minor stuff, but with an appealingly offhand, understated quality, and maybe Streisand’s oddest performance

 

Rust and Bone (2012) – Audiard knowingly courts near-absurdity, but transcends it throughout with his superb feeling for human possibilities

 

The American Friend (1977) – one of Wenders’ most enduring works, a well-maintained thriller-fable on America’s cultural seepage into Europe

 

Keyhole (2011) – Maddin’s film noir version of The Shining perhaps; strangely tangible & persuasive even as it evades any easy assimilation

 

Black Narcissus (1947) – dramatizing a culture of rectitude at the tragic end of its tether, through Powell’s most intensely charged images

 

The Lady (2011) – Besson couldn’t have followed the standard biopic playbook much more dutifully, nor achieved much more negligible results

 

Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) – the heavy-heartedness would be intriguing if Edwards did it deliberately, but he probably didn't...

 

Boudu sauve des eaux (1932) – Renoir is unparalleled in unforcedly evoking social fragility, the allure of so-called “creative destruction”

 

Django Unchained (2012) – a disappointment overall; this time round Tarantino’s tactics prove more stimulating in theory than practice

 

Weekend (1967) – Godard’s beautiful nightmare of a vision on the horror of the bourgeoisie and the further horror of overcoming it

 

Everybody Wins (1990) – just about the least a Reisz/Miller pairing could have yielded – ambitious but heavy-footed, with poor instincts

 

Barbara (2012) – with superb, almost subliminal precision, Petzold conveys the complex toll of lives lived under perverse constraints

 

The Yakuza (1975) – gets by on Pollack’s solid unforced genre mechanics, but its sense of Japan is superficial & unprobing to say the least

 

The Decameron (1970) – Pasolini’s utterly engrossing, highly diverse meditation on the earthly machinations that stifle our higher selves

 

A Late Quartet (2012) – a bit short on the transcendent moments Walken’s character talks about, although his final scene comes close to one

 

Desire (1937) – Guitry’s film stands far below the somewhat related (much more ambitious) Regle du jeu, but has its own pleasant contours

 

Breaking the Waves (1996) – almost absolute codswallop, no matter how much conviction von Trier and Watson bring to stirring up the pot

 

56 Up (2012) – Apted’s enduring project is severely limited as social history, but fascinating as a kind of serendipitous art installation

 

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) – amiable, ultimately limited ramble of discovery; shows Scorsese’s resourcefulness if nothing else

 

The Leopard (1963) – Visconti’s absorbing, vastly pictorial but painstakingly subtle study of figures in a complexly eroding landscape

 

The Tempest (2010) – Taymor’s digital paintbox stifles almost as much as it liberates, yielding a fluid but distinctly non-tempestuous film

 

Les amants du Pont-Neuf (1991) – not hard to see why Carax paid such a sad price for this; even what’s beautiful about it often feels forced

 

Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) – incomprehensible choice for Schlesinger (he thought it was Altmanesque?) – treats its woman especially shabbily

 

A Talking Picture (2003) – de Oliveira’s wonderful, slyly courtly reflection on our collective cultural heritage, and hey, what an ending!

 

The Iron Petticoat (1956) – incredibly heavy-footed, laughless long-lost comedy, with Katharine Hepburn as bad as you’ll ever see her

 

Girl Model (2011) – a documentary on young girls lost in translation, commerce and hypocrisy; interesting, but lacking full analytical force

 

Gate of Flesh (1964) – Suzuki’s often luridly erotic and yet deeply felt tale, a true vision of post-war hell, turns morality on its head

 

Into the Abyss (2011) – Herzog has never before applied his sense of the absurd to such a stark case study, nor with such steely discipline

 

L’amore (1948) – Rossellini’s transfixing meditation on female desire in two extreme situations, and on the nature of cinematic performance

 

The Girl (2012) – trivial “study’ of Hitchcock/Hedren relationship has little apparent point, certainly won't aid one’s sense of his films

 

I Can’t Sleep (1994) – somewhat cruder than Denis’ greatest works, but with all her mastery of connection, implication and impermanence

 

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) – despite Russell’s facility for nervily wound-up interactions, overall it’s a sort of poor man’s Desplechin

 

The Canterbury Tales (1971) – my favourite of the trilogy, for Pasolini’s brilliant formal experimentation and eye-popping earthiness

 

Sherlock Jr. (1924) – beautifully structured Keaton film, still belongs near the centre of any essay on cinematic dreaming and inspiration

 

Miral (2010) – well-meaning Palestinian chronicle does little to advance Schnabel’s standing as a film artist, even less that as a thinker

 

Britannia Hospital (1982) – what hope was folded into Anderson’s O Lucky Man has largely congealed (although fascinatingly) by this point

 

A Fistful of Dollars (1964) – still entirely fascinating and striking, although Leone's work would acquire much more layering subsequently

 

Skyfall (2012) – Mendes ably restores something of Bond’s classic essence, but it mainly shows how meaningless that essence has become now

 

Feu Mathias Pascal (1926) – L’Herbier fluidly crafts an engrossing psychological & existential space, built around the compelling Mozzhukhin

 

Lincoln (2012) – an engrossing, stimulating study of political process, limited by Spielberg’s adherence to Great Man filmmaking conventions

 

Pola X (1999) – takes on the sense of a deeply troubled personal testimony by Carax, powered by thrilling edge-of-darkness performances

 

Lola Versus (2012) – Gerwig’s best efforts notwithstanding, not quite a fair fight, given the movie’s low ammunition re laughs and insights

 

 “M” (1931) – still an amazing example of Lang’s control and reach; just slightly less powerful in its breadth than his very greatest work

 

Autoerotic (2011) – Swanberg/Wingard’s offbeat sex anthology is mostly, what’s the word, flaccid...has trouble performing for the 72 minutes

 

Detective (1985) – Godard plays with notions of detection while luxuriating in star power – not his most important movie, but very seductive

 

Tabu (1931) – initially a bit tedious, then escalatingly dazzling and tragic as Murnau’s play of shadow, desire and loss comes to the fore

 

Marina Abramovic: the Artist is Present (2012) – fascinating, but the movie’s conventional seductiveness doesn’t particularly serve the work

 

Ivan the Terrible, Part Two (1958) – continues the sense of escalating aesthetic & psychological siege, with a remarkable colour sequence

 

Mysterious Skin (2004) – Araki’s brave, unforseeable chronicle of abuse & loss of self, ultimately marked by great seriousness of purpose

 

Ivan the Terrible, Part One (1943) – Eisenstein’s intense filmic sculpture on power's inner & outer architecture; still elementally powerful

 

An Almost Perfect Affair (1979) – seemingly the sad no-return point where Ritchie’s satirical and analytical instincts largely deserted him

 

Millennium Mambo (2001) – its impact is perhaps more fleeting than most of Hou’s films, but then that’s fundamental to its portrait of youth

 

Games (1967) – Harrington’s drama of manipulation twists out in largely predictable manner; most intriguing when it’s at its freakiest

 

Holy Motors (2012) – perhaps the year’s most necessary movie; Carax stares the death of film in the mouth and extracts inexhaustible life

 

The Super Cops (1974) – pleasantly loose Serpico-lite, hardly major, but with an unforced colour almost absent from Hollywood movies now

 

Norwegian Wood (2010) – adaptation of Murakami’s novel drifts around in finely-crafted wistfulness and bewilderment, to no great end

 

Bye Bye Braverman (1968) – one of the many oddities dotting Lumet’s career, with good local flavor, and a sense of lives beyond the frame

 

Import/Export (2007) – Seidl’s single-minded immersion in Euro-grimness is almost hypnotically thought-provoking, both to his credit and not

 

Dial M for Murder (1954) – Hitchcock’s drama is highly artificial but compelling, meshing us in a complex network of cruel intentions

 

Sans soleil (1983) – astounding expression of Marker's soaring consciousness; might almost prompt depression at one’s relative limitations

 

Flight (2012) – a strong central character study & meditation on relative morality, although significantly limited by Hollywood conventions

 

Once Upon a Time in America (1984) – Leone’s engrossing, sometimes odd epic – musing on the unreliability of memory and of experience itself

 

Sebastiane (1976) – Jarman/Humfress’s gorgeous poetic/political appropriation for gay cinema of previously underexplored space and language

 

The Hunger (1983) – Tony Scott’s meaninglessly stylish debut falls unproductively between various stools, despite amazingly iconic casting

 

The Sword of Doom (1966) – Okomoto’s samurai film is almost unbearably bottled-up at times, and then the bottle breaks, and goes on breaking

 

Terri (2011) – Jacobs delivers on "troubled teen" genre pleasures, while keeping his eye consistently on larger spiritual & societal issues

 

Trois couleurs: rouge (1994) – might it ultimately all be a fiction imagined (eavesdropped on?) by the judge, or a tangled, longing memory?

 

The Sessions (2012) – certainly engaging viewing; does sufficient justice to O’Brien that you tolerate the overly conventional pill-sugaring

 

La main du diable (1943) – Tourneur’s effectively creepy piece of mythological yarn-spinning; a great ride, with Occupation-era echoes

 

War Horse (2011) – Spielberg largely destroys the play's stark impact; the focus on the horse here does nothing to deepen our sense of war

 

Judex (1963) – Franju’s stylish version of the silent-era serial is enormously entertaining, knowingly emphasizing intrigue over implication

 

Sing your Song (2011) – an unwavering tribute to Belafonte rather than any sort of examination of him, but then, man, he's easily earned it

 

Death Watch (1980) – Tavernier’s rather weirdly conceived and visualized speculative fiction is always interesting but seldom impactful

 

Cloud Atlas (2012) – the time goes by handsomely enough, but I can’t for the life of me see any meaning, much less "vision," to the thing

 

Kagamijishi (1936) – Ozu’s short, respectful documentary on kabuki; encourages a reflection on how its conventions helped shape his own work

 

Dust Devil (1992) (final cut) – Stanley’s troubled vision is indeed often very striking and charged, although hardly 4 DVD’s worth of it

 

The Iron Lady (2011) – flaunting one lousy artistic judgment after another, as if cinema had learned nothing about engaging with history

 

The Model Couple (1977) – Klein’s diverting, eye-filling meditation on the demented wrong turns and existential drift of the modern method

 

The Swell Season (2011) – monumentally unimportant documentary on the post-Once Hansard/Irglova relationship – mainly for fans I guess

 

Salo (1975) – Pasolini’s intellect, cinematic architecture and moral courage are so vast here, he all but defeats your powers of reaction

 

In Time (2011) – Niccoll’s movie is all convoluted Occupy-type metaphor, little or no actual content, beyond the usual bewildering momentum

 

Eyes Without a Face (1959) – Franju’s hypnotically perverse, strangely meditative horror, elevated by amazingly haunting, iconic images

 

Mystery Train (1989) – one of Jarmusch’s less necessary films, but a very engaging meditation on America’s tangled cultural influence

 

The Portuguese Nun (2009) – Green’s film feels like Bresson exhaled and then merged with a Lisbon travel agent, which wouldn’t be all bad

 

A New Leaf (1971) – Matthau's entirely awesome in May’s at least quasi-awesome comedy, edited down from legendarily even greater awesomeness

 

Route Irish (2010) – a bit schematic overall, but Loach’s severely pessimistic ending makes its point effectively (albeit not a new one)

 

Masculin feminin (1966) – an inexhaustible film - Godard brilliantly intertwines provocation and beguilement, possibility and melancholy

 

Argo (2012) – occasionally evocative, and always well-paced, but inherently no more worthy or serious than the sci-fi crap it mocks

 

Secret Defense (1998) – Rivette’s masterly deployment of thriller-genre concepts, full of ambiguities, doublings, and productive oddities

 

Lord Love a Duck (1966) – once the dated college trappings get scratched away, Axelrod creates a surprisingly wide-ranging and morose satire

 

We Have a Pope (2011) – Moretti keeps it all shambling along, and it looks good, but it's ultimately hard to muster much more than a shrug

 

Vertigo (1958) – if not the “greatest” film, perhaps the most moving illustration of an impact cascading beyond the mere sum of the parts

 

Montenegro (1981) – can’t help but seem relatively conventional, even timid next to Makaveyev’s remarkable works of the previous decade

 

The Experiment (2010) – pretensions notwithstanding, useless as any kind of window on human behavior, but passable as a B-movie timewaster

 

La truite (1982) – Losey's film is intermittently stimulating; lacks the glistening slipperiness its central metaphor might seem to demand

 

Looper (2012) – impressively structured and paced; despite its mindbending concepts, has a very grimly practical sense of earthly limits

 

Story of Women (1988) – one of Chabrol’s finest later films - a painstaking, sensitive case study of twisted morality in wretched times

 

Down the Road Again (2011) – 40 years of nostalgia gives the movie a big head start, which Shebib’s heavy-handedness doesn’t quite squander

 

Goin Down the Road (1970) – still a landmark although, in hindsight, Shebib sacrifices some social impact & grit for narrative efficiency

 

Baby Doll (1956) – the hungry underbelly of sexual frustration is still fairly compelling; as a whole though, one of Kazan’s plainer works

 

Audition (1999) – Miike’s very gripping and pristinely disorienting classic, makes the best possible case for transparency in relationships…

 

The Master (2012) – Anderson’s mesmerizingly intense contemplation of the fractured, incoherent, lie-ridden post-WW2 American landscape

 

Sweet Movie (1974) – maybe only someone supremely rigorous in his passion for freedom could transgress as stunningly as Makavejev does here

 

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011) – Durkin’s minutely judged, very effective, existentially creepy study of a young woman’s disorientation

 

Don Juan ’73 (1973) – Bardot is seldom even titillating in her last film; Vadim all but submerges her with portentous glossy mythmaking

 

Jeff Who Lives At Home (2011) – surprisingly pleasant and beguiling, but any movie that keeps referencing Signs is gonna be meaning-lite

 

Wind from the East (1970) – Godard et al’s provocation seems mostly lost in time, but still underlines the paucity of political dialogue now

 

Sleeping Beauty (2011) – Leigh’s icily crafted movie raises some familiar issues re female sexuality, not least by being so damn watchable

 

Bamboozled (2000) – for me, Lee’s most fascinating film, dense with ambiguities and as mysteriously, darkly complex as its subject requires

 

Nuit et brouillard (1955) – Resnais’ unsparing, undiminished essay on the evil of the camps and the venal seductiveness of forgetting

 

Trouble with the Curve (2012) – old-time bread-and-butter star vehicle throws nothing but softballs, and even then doesn’t always connect

 

Ivan’s Childhood (1962) – can see why some might value the sparser beauty of Tarkovsky’s debut over his later works (even if I myself don’t)

 

Margaret (2011) – crammed with fascinating behavior & debate, but (at least in the shorter version) rather lacks true complexity and mystery

 

Credo (1997) – early Bier work is a weirdly overstuffed cult drama, probably best seen as capturing an artistic personality in formation

 

The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) – yep, she must really have been a goddess, to be this magnetic amid such unbroken, joyless stiffness

 

The Future Is Now! (2011) – inexplicably peculiar meditation on it all; kind of The Trail of the Pink Panther of philosophical investigation

 

The Young One (1960) – raw, sweaty, transgression-laden island drama, not easily recognizable as Bunuel’s work (at least superficially)

 

In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011) – Jolie’s engaged debut is mostly proficient, but undermined by overly conventional instincts

 

Sweetie (1989) – Campion’s openness to varying structures is quietly & funnily radical, without diluting the feeling at the film's center

 

British Sounds (1970) – Godard/Roger’s manifesto for revolutionary cinema, built on a Britain at its drabbest – strangely romantic now..

 

Weekend (2011) – a politically charged repositioning of romantic conventions, deftly exploring the continuing compromises forced on gayness

 

Duck, you Sucker (1971) – Leone’s sort of displaced cartoon of modern America’s melting-pot origins; a great spectacle, even when overcooked

 

Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) – a neatly executed fantasy of middle-aged reinvigoration through paranoia, but still a step to lesser Allen

 

Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Suess (2008) – the flood of family testimony often seems to obscure Veit Harlan more than it illuminates him

 

Seven Days in May (1964) – Frankenheimer’s political drama is rather arid at times, distinctly dated; still, good page-turner kind of stuff

 

Empty Nest (2008) – Argentinean Burman's increasingly impressive meditation on the shifting equilibrium between inner and outer lives

 

Scarecrow (1973) – Schatzberg’s bleak road movie (of sorts) is unusually attuned to underlying loss and pain, eschewing easy pictorialism

 

L’avventura (1960) – Antonioni’s legendary film is still overwhelming for its portrayal of modernity’s hopeless gaps and contradictions

 

Vito: A Man for all Seasons (2011) – a moving portrait of Russo, perhaps ironically more conventional in form than he deserves

 

Man with a Movie Camera (1929) – Vertov remains thrillingly provocative re the creative process (and for that matter, re everything else)

 

The Future (2011) – sure, July has things to say about the beauty and fragility of our moment in time,  but honestly, life’s just too short

 

The Cloud-capped Star (1960) – Ghatak's devastating study of a young woman's quiet destruction; the celluloid almost crumbles with shame

 

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) – for all its oddly mythic qualities, polished to a dark gleam, surely Fincher’s least crucial film

 

Les enfants du paradis (1945) – still dazzling & surprising, even if its cinematic & thematic power ranks slightly below the greatest films

 

Another Earth (2011) – hard to imagine a wetter, fuzzier and less productive use of the parallel world premise; watch Melancholia instead

 

Yol (1982) – its greatest vindication lies in its very existence – sociologically and politically heartbreaking even when flagging as cinema

 

Compliance (2012) – terrifically executed by Zobel, capable of bearing almost as much metaphorical weight as you want to place on it

 

Death of a Cyclist (1955) – Bardem's bleakly precise examination of the Spanish bourgeoisie's degraded morality and desperate ruthlessness

 

Repulsion (1965) – early instance of Polanski’s mastery of trauma & claustrophobia – still formally impressive, although inherently limited

 

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (2010) – entertaining Ian Dury biography hits the rhythm stick real fast, still rather fails to illuminate his art

 

Red Beard (1965) – I prefer Kurosawa in this lower-key vein, although the film doesn’t ultimately yield much moral or thematic revelation

 

The Debt (2010) – dramatically and visually well-crafted by Madden, but at the cost of attaining the appropriate moral weight and complexity

 

Belle de jour (1967) – Bunuel’s astonishingly iconic reverie on fantasy and transgression; even the smallest moment feels indelibly rich

 

Buck and the Preacher (1972) – inherently interesting, but Poitier is too ordinary a director to exploit the historical & genre complexities

 

The Princess of Montpensier (2010) – Tavernier’s fascinating examination of a closed system, within which withdrawal is the only victory

 

The Doom Generation (1995) – wonderfully and sparsely iconic, as Araki comprehensively reshapes the meaning of a ‘heterosexual’ movie

 

Night and Day (2008) – ultimately seems like an endless series of evasions, although Hong almost makes this feel like an actual subject

 

The Best Years of our Lives (1946) – prime if largely conventional example of Hollywood’s classic fluidity, punctuated with piercing moments

 

House of Tolerance (2011) – Bonello’s painstaking recreation of a high-end Paris brothel; I’m torn on its merits, which is likely the point

 

The Private Files of J Edgar Hoover (1977) – Cohen makes Eastwood’s later version, for all its own strengths, seem unfocused & heavy-footed

 

Alps (2011) – in its own way (which sure isn’t anyone else’s) rather glacially magnificent, conveying Greece’s extreme existential turmoil

 

The Sunshine Boys (1975) – we all have our quirky tastes I guess - I find this cantankerous Matthau/Burns showdown just mesmerizing (sorry!)

 

Cold Water (1994) – early Assayas film already demonstrates his sensitivity and facility, although the overall trajectory is a bit forced

 

Restless (2011) – you might say it’s delicate and impressionistic; to me it’s ridiculously fey and dreary; a wanton denial of pain and death

 

Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) – riveting early-ish Bergman; a brutally unsparing depiction of the pain and resignation underlying the cavalcade

 

London Boulevard (2010) – quirky (if strained) characterizations provide the main entertaiment; the rest is mostly just the same old trudge

 

The Man who fell to Earth (1976) – almost always dazzling, unprecedented; although some other Roeg films achieve a greater cumulative impact

 

Alphaville (1965) - as we watch Godard’s sparse, feisty vision, we feel more deeply and creepily how much of ourselves has become imperiled

 

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) – Zeitlin's rather remarkable modern myth, sometimes ungainly, but crammed with odd, memorable fragments

 

Les biches (1968) – one of Chabrol’s great intuitive, unforced enigmas of the period, perpetually but subtly shifting to keep us off balance

 

The Rum Diary (2011) – strangely muted , tired-seeming fictionalization of Hunter Thompson’s origins; not enough rum, not enough anything

 

The Damned (1969) – one of Visconti’s sludgier films, pounding simplistically away at Nazism’s malleable ideology and inherent decadence

 

A Face in the Crowd (1957) – helplessly watchable, but one of Kazan’s more mechanical films, its ‘prophetic’ aspects heavily underlined

 

The Lemon Tree (2008) – pleasant enough as a fable and intermittent postcard; negligible as an engagement with Palestinian complexities

 

Night and the City (1950) – Dassin's gripping expression of post-war dislocation & frustration, propelled by Widmark’s terrific needy energy

 

Tales of Ordinary Madness (1981) – Ferreri’s seems like the wrong kind of madness though, yielding a disappointingly ordinary provocation

 

Page One: Inside the New York Times (2011) – solid stuff, but often feels like it focuses more on the page B6 than on the page A1 material

 

L’Age d’or (1930) – still astonishing for the scorpion-like precision of Bunuel’s transgressions, for the rawness and outrage at its center

 

Sex and the Single Girl (1964) – hard to imagine by what process the source material led to this flat movie, but also not worth dwelling on

 

Le gamin au velo (2011) – more handsomely conventional than other Dardenne films perhaps, but its existential core is entirely as compelling

 

Homicide (1991) – Mamet smartly (a bit too airlessly?) baits us with melodrama before implicitly chiding us for thinking it’s ever so simple

 

A Man Escaped (1956) – Bresson illustrates how in war even the slightest of gestures and moral determinations becomes more deeply charged

 

Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011) – if only the movie’s devices were calibrated with the same mysterious care as the punctuation of its title

 

Le cercle rouge (1970) – mesmerizingly, almost transcendentally poised; ultimately still a simpler creation than Melville’s greatest works

 

Red State (2011) – at least demonstrates that Smith can operate in a different register, although not ultimately one with much more depth

 

Cleo de 5 a 7 (1961) – Varda's beautiful, timeless artificiality – you lose yourself completely in the film’s graceful glides and pivots

 

The Devils (1971) – one of Russell’s must-see films; eccentric and no doubt “excessive,” but remarkably powerful, stirring and sustained

 

Trigger (2010) – a predictable narrative contrivance (rock-chick Sunshine Boys), but gracefully and affectionately executed in all respects

 

La Strada (1954) – like much (not all) Fellini, to me a rather grotesque, unrevealing creation, far from the true heights of Italian cinema

 

To Rome with Love (2012) – happily confirming Allen’s late, unfussy serenity; his gentle transcendence of temporal and sexual boundaries

 

Empire of Passion (1978) – a handsome enough yarn, precisely told; but ironically or not, one of Oshima’s least impactfully passionate

 

Bigger than Life (1956) – one of the finest of 50’s monster movies (in effect); spellbinding when Ray’s expressive energy hits its peak

 

Impardonnables (2011) – Techine’s work remains perpetually underrated, but this one, although very smooth, adds relatively little overall

 

Alice (1990) – however pleasant, one of Allen’s more dispensable movies up to that point - a thin, rarified chronicle of self-awareness

 

Westfront 1918 (1930) – Pabst’s recreations of battle have remarkable verisimilitude and texture, but the film as a whole is a bit too dour

 

Magic Mike (2012) – pretty much emblematic Soderbergh – a virtuoso performance, but never really letting you see the size of his junk

 

Tout va bien (1972) – Godard/Gorin’s terrific provocation, alert to modernization’s perverse beauty, but fundamentally near-despairing

 

Finian’s Rainbow (1968) – passable record of lovely and provocative material; could only ever have been made by Coppola (no, I’m joking)

 

The Guard (2011) - fills out its conventional outlines with good colour, sometimes too much of it (philosophy-quoting drug smugglers?!)

 

Le boucher (1969) – one of Chabrol’s most gripping forensic examinations, charting a sick knot of pain and lack beneath a bucolic surface

 

Body Heat (1981) – repeated viewings make the pastiche seem a bit over-calculated, but it remains probably Kasdan’s best-realized film

 

Mad Detective (2007) – a worthwhile dip into Hong Kong genre cinema, energized by inspired plottings of inner states (whether mad or not)

 

Spartacus (1960) – a magnificent spectacle, yielding amply satisfying (if incompletely realized) Kubrickian complexities and intertwinings

 

Take this Waltz (2011) – Polley’s film is full of wonder, but almost overly alive to possibilities, denying us any ultimate specificity

 

The Milky Way (1969) – another extraordinary Bunuel film, rendering Catholic dogma the fount of immense narrative dexterity and visual grace

 

Dream House (2011) - continuing the mystery of why these garish, unrewarding meta-reality concepts are so appealing even to mature directors

 

The Innocent (1976) – Visconti’s last film, built on familiar entanglements, increasingly reveals itself as a satisfyingly dark moral tale

 

Absence of Malice (1981) – very little rings true in Pollack’s contrived, largely passionless consideration of media’s valueless "truths"

 

Partie de champagne (1936) – only 45 minutes, unfinished by Renoir, but perfectly calibrated, almost seeming to contain the whole world

 

Higher Ground (2011) – Farmiga is as sensitive a director as an actor, although the film’s equanimity limits its power and political clout

 

Floating Weeds (1959) – Ozu’s masterly late exploring of chance, fate, compromise, inevitability; blissfully full, even if not his very best

 

The Help (2011) – quite moving in its moments of hard truth, but it’s unduly difficult to figure out which moments those actually are

 

Persona (1966) – Bergman’s indispensable marvel of a film, intimate and vast, containing (yet evading) everything from Brakhage to Kubrick

 

The End (1978) – well cast, and interestingly deadpan at times, but Reynolds too often delivers mere blankness in lieu of real darkness

 

Even the Rain (2010) – ultimately has too conventional a sensibility to fully realize its intertwining of cinematic & real-world engagement

 

Mad Love (1935) – an arresting if tenuous assembly of images and concepts, with Lorre’s hypnotic presence almost making it seem coherent

 

My Week with Marilyn (2011) – a nice little anecdote, mostly well-evoked, but not very revealing, hardly ever approaching a heat wave

 

The Idiot (1951) – Kurosawa pounds tediously away at his notion of a good man destroyed by a faithless world; only minimally rewarding

 

Harry and Tonto (1974) – far from Mazursky’s most resonant film, limited by its episodic nature, but still a pleasant chronicle of renewal

 

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2011) – a deeply resonant assembly, alert to history’s inevitable conflicting truths & to overriding ones

 

The King of Comedy (1983) – my favorite Scorsese film: still his most rigorously analytical work, and crammed with incidental pleasures

 

Tuesday, after Christmas (2010) – an observant Romanian relationship drama; familiar cinematic territory, but often remarkably well-mapped

 

The Steel Helmet (1951) – the film where Fuller became Fuller; extraordinarily concentrated & expressive, but also with an unsettling purity

 

Cosmopolis (2012) – for all its provocations and intelligence, feels like a staid establishment movie dreamed up from a position of comfort

 

The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) – another gorgeously rich, politically resonant Fassbinder film, not quite the equal of Lola in my mind

 

The Myth of the American Sleepover (2010) – a piercingly poised and grave (if ultimately limited) study, remarkably free of "teen" clichés

 

The Flesh (1991) – Ferreri’s more garish, much less challenging or politically-charged variation on the central situation of his Last Woman

 

Cracking Up (1983) – bizarre by any measure, but at the risk of being pretentious, sort of holds together as a quasi-despairing Lewis vision

 

Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble (1972) – more schematic than Pialat’s greatest works, but no one better captured the shifting human mess

 

Haywire (2011) – Soderbergh's "take it or leave it" statement; completely watchable, seemingly designed to solicit only lukewarm reactions

 

City of the Living Dead (1980) – not as fully realized a vision as Fulci’s The Beyond, but compellingly direct, unsparing and transgressive

 

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) – a beautifully crafted aesthetic object, rendering dreamily irrelevant the question of whether Anderson's “limited”

 

Autumn Sonata (1978) – engrossing reverie on the pained incompatibility of art (if not life) & family, but far from Bergman’s fullest work

 

The Bed Sitting Room (1969) – if nothing else, maybe one of the preeminent statements on the sheer desolate weirdness of the British psyche

 

Hemingway and Gellhorn (2012) – sporadically interesting for its craft, but lacking in much texture, or even in a real sense of character

 

Le plus vieux métier du monde (1967) – compilation of prostitution sketches is mostly dire, until Godard massively redeems the whole thing

 

Dark Shadows (2012) – not much reason to have woken up this material, but it's fluent and precise enough that it actually almost feels alive

 

The Last Woman (1976) – Ferreri’s amazingly primal, intense, committed, justly notorious meditation on sexual and structural breakdown

 

Riff-Raff (1991) – well-observed like all Loach’s work, but it's too transient to satisfy (even if this reflects its characters' plight)

 

Hollywood Dreams (2006) – Jaglom generally strikes a distinctive, sometimes beguilingly weird perspective on familiar tensions and tinsel

 

Boccaccio ’70 (1962) – a 4-part anthology: Monicelli’s episode is the most socially resonant; Fellini’s the most cinematically irresistible

 

Mammoth (2009) – facile and handsome, but doesn’t amount to too much, beyond an obvious meditation on the vast inequities of existence

 

Lightning over Water (1980) – fascinating by any measure, and moving for what appears real in it; sometimes a bit grotesque for what doesn’t

 

Logan’s Run (1976) – mostly silly, plasticky and perfunctory, running past thirty years’ worth of contrivances and unaddressed plot issues

 

Miss Bala (2011) – consistently and artfully disorienting, with provocative undercurrents, but doesn’t accumulate to as much as you hope for

 

Pretty Poison (1968) – more pretty than truly poisonous perhaps, but a wickedly easy pleasure; Weld and Perkins are mesmerizingly perfect

 

The Iron Rose (1973) – a very well-sustained, unforced Rollin mood piece, largely set in one of cinema's most lovingly filmed cemeteries

 

Midnight Run (1988) – one of my favorite mainstream entertainments, so finely structured, written and acted it seems mysteriously profound

 

Rocco and his Brothers (1960) – Visconti’s epically sad tale of the city’s toll, forcing a painful reckoning of familial gains and losses

 

Detachment (2011) – a diverting mix: two parts the fiery, committed, resourceful "Lake of Fire" Tony Kaye, to one part the notorious nutball

 

Ginger and Fred (1986) – a resigned, unforced evocation of Fellini’s circus of life; the transience of it all is a large part of the point

 

And Everything is Going Fine (2010) – Soderbergh’s perfectly judged commemoration of Spalding Gray, entirely in Gray's own recorded words

 

Carry on Camping (1969) – has the core cast at their most comfortable and emblematic; flies by as rapidly and classily as a propelled bikini

 

Bob le Flambeur (1957) – less stylized than most of Melville’s later films, but entirely as magnificently calibrated, both mythic and humane

 

Carnage (2011) – highly engrossing for Polanski’s drolly painstaking control of the elements and of its constantly shifting equilibrium

 

The House of Mirth (2000) – a quietly devastating study in cruelty & sociological complexity, poignant for Davies’ lost decade in its wake

 

The Herd (1979) – a film that feels torn from Turkey’s land and heart, an increasingly powerful portrait of its fractures and corruptions

 

The Baron of Arizona (1950) – a great yarn, although Fuller’s cinematic fist had yet to fully clench (take the soft ending in particular)

 

A Complete History of my Sexual Failures (2008) – fills time well enough, but as filmic essays go, not exactly in Chris Marker territory

 

Le dejeuner sur l’herbe (1959) – Renoir’s fantasia on France’s (and Europe’s) soul in an age of “progress” – odd, and oddly prophetic

 

Straw Dogs (2011) – the original’s mesmerizing strangeness is smoothed down throughout. leaving just another efficiently repulsive mutt

 

Lola (1961) – Demy’s beautiful reverie on love and chance; places one foot in the limitations of reality, the other in dreams, never tumbles

 

The Long Day Closes (1992) – superbly clear-eyed cinematic poetry, true to memory's odd contours without ever seeming remotely indulgent

 

Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest (2011) – peppy, but without much perspective; sticks mostly inside the beat box

 

Leaves from Satan’s Book (1921) – early Dreyer meditation on the complexity of evil, full of interest, but lacks his later expressive power

 

The Sterile Cuckoo (1969) – Minnelli is sometimes touching, but the movie (unrecognizable as Pakula’s) too often turns away from the dark

 

Zidane: a 21st Century Portrait (2006) – intriguingly captures a loneliness within the hubbub, while strenuously aiming for the gallery wall

 

Sunrise (1927) – it’s still miraculous how Murnau intertwines the specific & the transcendent; at times the film’s capacity feels limitless

 

Gambit (1966) – a pleasant, modestly inventive dawdle, but with the rather stodgy affect typical of secondary star vehicles of the time

 

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) – an increasingly impressive reflection on the eternal multiplicity of human fictions and fallibilities

 

I Shot Jesse James (1948) – terrifically paced, concentrated Fuller version of the Bob Ford tale, its tone cast in anguish and self-loathing

 

Death Line (1973) – not a big deal, but a witty, well-considered injection of gruesome urban mythology into mundane, unadorned Britishness

 

The Red and the White (1967) – Jancso’s starkly beautiful, immense vision of turmoil, capturing both mankind’s magnificence and its futility

 

Damsels in Distress (2011) – a quietly intense project in deconstruction & strangifying; its hermeticism at times both a strength & weakness

 

I vinti (1953) – relatively early, episodic Antonioni, with more of a sense of rolled-up sleeves, but filled with his intelligent precision

 

Warrior (2011) – well, you didn’t come here to find something new; ridiculous in the usual ways, but well-grounded and moving in others

 

Carry on Loving (1970) – funny by its own standards (which rely a lot on repression & drabness) - thank God if those standards aren’t yours

 

JCVD (2008) – has its moments, quite deftly handled, but doesn't amount to much given Van Damme's inherent limitations and insignificance

 

Pulp (1972) – surprisingly pleasurable in its knowing incoherence, radiating laid-back imagination and delight in invention and storytelling

 

The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966) – very peculiar, funny but despairing, deliberately largely ungraspable in its fable of inherent confusion

 

The Deep Blue Sea (2011) – spellbinding for its delicacy and control; in Davies’ hands the smallest of films can feel like the largest

 

Barcelona (1994) – very interesting, funny reflection on the necessity and limitations of sex, family, country, structures, theories, etc.

 

Story of a Prostitute (1965) – for all its frequent despairing expressive power, most of the thematic and emotional space is familiar

 

Cold Weather (2010) – a generation where established meaning no longer holds; being Sherlock Holmes is as plausible as having a real career

 

Days of 36 (1972) – seems to me to verge at times on very bleak deadpan comedy, to reveal the odd kinship between Angelopoulous and Tati

 

Outrage (2009) – a bit inconsistent & possibly opportunistic in its thesis, despite one’s sympathy for the examination of extreme hypocrisy

 

Le diable par la queue (1969) – seemingly intended as a madcap send-up of the useless, venal nobility; mostly feels like watching old drapes

 

Singles (1992) – pleasantly loose, unforced and flavorful, although Crowe’s observations are mostly either contrived or else unremarkable

 

Jericho (1937) – a crammed portrayal of a black man’s ascendancy; progressive and compromised in ways that can hardly be disentangled

 

Conte d’automne (1998) – another beautiful precisely calibrated Rohmer examination of relationships, musing on what’s innate versus imposed

 

Friends with Benefits (2011) – cheekily parodies some Hollywood clichés while chewing lustily on others, but at least everyone looks great

 

Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933) – stunning vision of crime and madness; the pessimism easily outweighs the notional victory of the good

 

Jesus Camp (2006) – anthropologically interesting for sure; some of the kids seem pretty happy, but I came out the same heathen I was before

 

Diary of a Country Priest (1950) – other Bresson films speak to me more directly, but this may be his most quietly complex and deeply felt

 

Beginners (2011) – ooh, isn’t life big and tough and scary and yet kind of, uh, sweet, and look how nicely and quirkily I captured all that

 

The Coward (1965) – an appealing Satyajit Ray miniature, illuminating both personal missteps and the stranglehold of societal expectations

 

Some Like it Hot (1959) – a terrifically maintained, if knowingly rather grotesque comic machine, by no means Wilder’s most resonant work..

 

Little White Lies (2010) – a French Big Chill of sorts; for all the glossiness and superficial skill, wearily over-calculated and artificial

 

The Last Hurrah (1958) – mostly warm-hearted dawdling & remembrance - it's a bit poignant its class-sensitive politics are still so relevant

 

Carry on England (1976) – lamentably old, tired and joyless; everyone seems too disengaged even ever to think of sex, let alone have any

 

Footnote (2011) – not ultimately such a major film, but enjoyably different, like taking time off to attend an enjoyably peppy seminar

 

The Man who would be King (1975) – perhaps Huston’s finest film, an adventure story with immense pictorial grandeur and behavioral relish

 

From the East (1993) – with great quiet intelligence, forces us to question our reading of the images & our sense of the underlying culture

 

Night Nurse (1931) – terrifically crisp, sexy, often cold-blooded illustration of the pre-Code sensibility, and of Stanwyck’s magnificence

 

Made in Dagenham (2010) – sacrifices grit and heart for easy formula; the movie might have trundled off the same assembly line it depicts

 

Padre Padrone (1977) – an interesting personal journey to enlightenment, quirkier and more lightly experimental than one might remember

 

Exposed (1983) – completely fascinating, odd and provocative; an artistic stream of consciousness barely possible in American cinema now

 

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) – the loveliest and most perfect (although not most complex) film by one of the directors I most cherish

 

Game Change (2012) – the movie is largely efficiently glossy, even amiable, assembly and memory-jogging - you supply your own revulsion

 

Pleasures of the Flesh (1965) – a lesser Oshima, ultimately mainly an exercise in bitter irony, but still startlingly well-articulated

 

Take Shelter (2011) – a horror movie of the most productive, resonant kind, calibrating modern American insecurities to the nearest dollar

 

Ordet (1955) – beautifully strange meditation on faith and knowledge, and how our dogma and culture may only obscure our sense of them

 

The Last Detail (1973) – grimly suggests the dehumanizing distortions of military culture; so darkly unadorned it seems almost radical now

 

Barbarella (1968) – generates some nostalgia for a time when a movie could be so confidently shabby and shoddy, but that’s about it

 

A Better Life (2011) – engages more from one’s preexisting sympathy for the immigrant experience than from any inherent skill or insight

 

Where is Liberty? (1954) – easy to imagine this as a standard star-driven comedy, but Rossellini makes it surprisingly socially resonant

 

Only Angels Have Wings (1939) – maybe Hawks’ most perfect self-expression, told with breathtaking behavioral and existential momentum

 

Heartbreaker (2010) – prime example of France beating Hollywood at its own game: utterly weightless, but the calculations mostly don't grate

 

Magnum Force (1973) – easy nostalgic diversion, despite a pervasive lack of subtlety and style and of any kind of analytical sensibility

 

The Crucified Lovers (1954) – so extraordinarily calibrated and well-told, the immense underlying social complexity might almost evade you

 

Filming ‘Othello’ (1978) – a wonderful late expression of Welles’ personality & creative force, if rather poignant for its modesty of means

 

The Beekeeper (1986) – much as if Angelopoulous was aspiring for the prototypical European “art house” picture (Mastroianni, young nudity..)

 

Rampart (2011) – hardly entirely successful, but constantly fascinating, bursting at the seams with incoherencies, implications and oddities

 

Sanders of the River (1935) – barely watchable as drama, but a grimly informative illustration of colonial attitudes and insecurities

 

Lacombe Lucien (1974) – extremely skillfully, sensitively controlled by Malle, but less cinematically exciting than Black Moon for instance

 

If a Tree Falls (2011) – a bit short of broader analysis, but maybe we’re so hopeless at this point that any analysis could only be a sham

 

The Nun (1966) – atypical for Rivette, but evidencing his interest in incoherent earthly structures and their toll, on women in particular

 

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) – fascinating, though Cassavetes is less focused here on expression than suppression & displacement

 

Seraphine (2008) – although interesting enough on its own terms, dwarfed by Pialat’s Van Gogh as an evocation of time, place and artistry

 

Under the Volcano (1984) – rather heavy-going chronicle, usually interesting for Finney’s showiness, but ultimately not very meaningful

 

Ceddo (1977) – gorgeous Senegalese film about a village jihad, stylistically almost unprecedented, but also still startlingly relevant

 

50/50 (2011) – constantly pleasant, but calibrates the pain and messiness too carefully, becoming  meaninglessly arbitrary and forgettable

 

Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980) – constantly satisfying, even weirdly beguiling, as it deconstructs art, commerce...well, almost everything

 

Four Lions (2010) – a foul-mouthed suicide bomber comedy, often funny, quietly scary for its take on the "existential threat"'s mundanity

 

The Exile (1947) – nonsensical as history, and certainly thinner than Ophuls’ greatest works, but still captivatingly beautiful at times

 

In Darkness (2011) – largely undistinguished presentation of important material, obscuring truth and meaning with constantly lame choices

 

The Anderson Tapes (1971) – a secondary Lumet movie, but still with more substance & individuality than most American films can harness now

 

Van Gogh (1991) – a fascinating evocation of the man, but highly attuned to how the man will ultimately be subsumed by myth and commerce

 

Island of Lost Souls (1932) – terrifically grotesque, the early-Hollywood limitations actually weirdly nurturing the twisted creation theme

 

Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010) – quite a bit less rewarding than its Australian predecessor, but with the same underlying giddy romance

 

The Mirror (1975) – a precursor of sorts to Tree of Life, but even less compromising, envisaging a memory-cinema as unrestricted as a poem

 

Passion Play (2010) – not quite as unwatchable as some claimed, but everything about the movie squeaks heavily of training wheels (or wings)

 

Circle of Deceit (1981) – gripping evocation of Beirut, but increasingly weighed down by writerly notions that ultimately illuminate little

 

We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011) – powerfully visualizes all-consuming trauma and bewilderment, easily transcending echoes of (say) Orphan

 

Under Capricorn (1949) – a deliberately paced but rich study in psychological trauma, drawing on the sense of a land still in formation

 

Flowers of Shanghai (1998) – a rigorously unerotic, mesmerizing film about brothels, meshing desire, calculation, convention, oppression..

 

Starting Over (1979) – Pakula tries to do for romantic comedy what he already did for urban paranoia, with intriguingly peculiar results

 

Leon Morin, pretre (1961) – one of the most galvanizing of films "about" religion, astoundingly rich in (tightly-controlled) implication

 

The Whistleblower (2010) – a very well-maintained expose of institutional evil, somewhat limited by its conventional narrative strategies

 

L'amour en fuite (1979) – pleasantly nostalgic, seemingly reflecting Truffaut’s contentment with (or resignation to) the state of things

 

Celebrity (1998) – pretty diverting overall, not least for Branagh's car wreck performance, but with an unusually inert center for Allen

 

A nos amours (1983) – a vital text on female sexuality and self-definition; few movies match Pialat’s scintillating emotional contours  

 

Bad Teacher (2011) – if she was bad like the Keitel bad lieutenant was bad, and with real sick laughs, then it might be on to something...

 

Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952) – rarely for Ozu, the conciliatory ending is less persuasive than the earlier portrayal of fractures

 

Night Moves (1975) – one of the best 70's genre films - a detective investigation that illuminates a whole clueless country and culture 

 

Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968) – almost bewilderingly loopy at times, but deadly serious about the grim price of imperialist folly

 

The Interrupters (2011) – a vivid, moving documentary, about an America almost incalculably far removed from the deranged political debate

 

La vie est un roman (1983) – a strategically absurd fantasia on the tussle between imagination and education, our capacities and limitations

 

Mr. Arkadin (1955) – Welles reconfigures Citizen Kane’s brilliant investigation (almost as brilliantly) for a time of paranoia & confusion

 

Tyrannosaur (2011) – a volatile, mesmerizingly well-acted (if ultimately a bit thematically limited) treatment of broadly familiar territory

 

L’amour braque (1985) – perhaps the film where diminishing returns seriously start to set in on Zulawski’s stylish exercises in extremity

 

City Lights (1931) – a lot of it is conventional Chaplin, not to say that’s peanuts, but the ending really is transcendent (I cried again…)

 

Black Venus (2010) – an unsparing, chillingly fascinating examination of exploitation, indicting culture & science (& our viewership) alike

 

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) – gorgeously articulates the limitations of Englishness, while also embodying its abiding virtues

 

Mikey and Nicky (1976) – feels much like a Cassavetes movie, but somewhat tougher-minded, more preoccupied by an underlying malignancy

 

A Separation (2011) – the ambiguity has its contrived aspects, but still compelling for how it explores the complexities of Iranian culture

 

Super (2010) – a home-made superhero yarn that often plays like an anguished, violent character study; bemusing, but weirdly good in parts

 

Orphee (1950) – a wonderful reverie on poetic inspiration and identity, with an entirely unique blend of fancifulness and practicality

 

I Spit on Your Grave (2010) – you hate how unflinchingly effective this is; feels classier (but perhaps not truer) to view it as a metaphor

 

The Moon in the Gutter (1983) – many glorious moments, especially when pushing to the extreme, but overall an incompletely realized vision

 

Fear and Desire (1953) – despite its poverty of means, has a powerful Kubrickian sense of war as a moral labyrinth born in human inadequacy

 

Attack the Block (2011) – a pretty cool deal - a tight, accomplished monster movie and a credible piece of social observation, all in one!

 

Chinese Roulette (1976) – bourgeois Germany's poisonous loose ends shaken up and bottled; the kind of film Fassbinder could do in his sleep

 

A Dangerous Method (2011) – brilliantly rigorous, seeped in implication, quivering with the sense of modern ideology painfully taking shape

 

Le lieu du crime (1986) – a strong example of Techine’s evasive complexity; easy to overlook the quiet radicalism of its rejection of norms

 

Margin Call (2011) – plays flashily, often grippingly with the cream of a fiendishly complex situation; leaves what's below mostly untouched

 

Playtime (1967) – my favorite Tati, dense with details, patterns, cross-references, alive to both modernity's possibilities and its lacks

 

Forever Mine (1999) – unrecognizable as Schrader’s, except for a wan obsession theme; lacks the energy to make a virtue of the absurdity

 

Secret Sunshine (2007) – a film of great humanity and awareness, subtly but firmly critiquing the easy blather about closure and coping

 

Ganja & Hess (1973) – revolutionary, genre-transcending vampire movie is also a rich meditation on black identity, provocative at every turn

 

Pina (2011) – a near-miracle after two decades of unproductive, grating Wenders gyrations; made me engage with dance as I never have before

 

Source Code (2011) – one of those concept-dense movies that’s glossily clever but not very intelligent, ending up merely fancifully loopy

 

Landscape after Battle (1970) – effective at evoking the depth of trauma and confusion, but the calculated artistry sits rather heavily now

 

The Adjustment Bureau (2011) – dubious theology (oh sure, belief is all about free will), but great star chemistry, and good use of hats

 

L’amour a mort (1984) – an elegantly devastating reflection on the limitations of conventional discourse, and a key text about suicide

 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) – admirably controlled, but this moral labyrinth is so well-explored already, hardly a new turn remains

 

The Housemaid (2010) – very interesting, if a bit limited; the evolution from the 1960 version eloquently indicts the widening social chasm

 

Shame (2011) – fascinating but utterly overwrought, a Spielberg movie for artisans; the hectoring title (why not, uh, "Glee"?!) says a lot

 

Roselyne et les lions (1989) – stunning lion taming sequences: the rest is variable and surprisingly conventional, but I can’t say I minded!

 

Bananas (1971) – funny enough of course, but feels more now like leafing through a formative notebook than like watching a realized movie

 

The Lost Son (1999) – doesn’t dishonor its terrifying subject, but the genre clutter is especially hard to take in the circumstances

 

The Artist (2011) – a pristinely engaging, even endearing oddity, especially when it uses silence as a strategy, not just a condition

 

Inferno (1980) – a diverting, tactile vision of all-consuming malignancy, although Argento’s visions never seem as potent as, say, Fulci’s

 

The Muppets (2011) - a happy enough Christmas compromise, especially if you enjoy old photos of the likes of Rich Little (and don’t you?)

 

The Devil (1972) – a scabrous, politically-charged vision of degradation, where the only hope of avoiding hell lies in man lacking a soul

 

Young Adult (2011) – lots of terrific observation and a striking cruel streak; suggests an even more fascinating, bleaker road not taken

 

The Illusionist (2010) – evokes Tati’s screen persona, but doesn’t otherwise feel like a Tati film, rendering the point a bit mysterious

 

Funny Face (1957) – a beautiful and joyous musical; for me it's perhaps the film best capturing Audrey Hepburn’s ethereally fragile appeal

 

L’Amour l’apres-midi (1972) – one of Rohmer’s most alluring films, a wonderful study in bourgeois diminishment of the capacity for action

 

The Ward (2010) – draws solidly and creepily on a long iconography of women oppressed by medicine, but the ending is woefully generic

 

Spies (1928) – Lang creates a sense of magnificent unreliability, of capitalistic advancement scheming absurdly, helplessly against itself

 

Hugo (2011) – Scorsese’s most cherishable picture in years; a dazzling feast of cinema, in generous commemoration of its origins

 

La femme publique (1984) – never achieves the alchemy of Zulawski’s best, feeling mostly rather sterile and distant, for all its provocation

 

Hanna (2011) – a fairy-tale for dehumanized, violent times; stylish and polished until it gleams, but essentially utterly silly and useless

 

I Only Want You to Love Me (1976) – more grimly resonant than ever in depicting how the math of a working man’s life just doesn’t add up

 

The Descendants (2011) – full of intriguing variations on familial parameters and responsibilities, but limited in its range and insights

 

Coup de torchon (1981) – a great little drama, laconically depicting escalating madness as a mirror for the perversions of colonialism

 

Unstoppable (2010) – an impressive exercise in physicality, raw industrial power, human limits, although with mostly conventional intentions

 

Le beau Serge (1958) – fascinating early Chabrol, with much terrific observation and flavour; less successful in its climactic spirituality

 

Family Diary (1962) – unusually somber and quietly anguished, defined by death and lost possibilities, and so knowingly embracing monotony

 

Limitless (2011) – entertaining in riffing on the material possibilities of enhanced capacity, but the inner life goes mostly unexamined

 

Violence at Noon (1966) –as fluidly bleak as any of Oshima’s movies, daring to posit double suicide as the only viable reward of love..

 

Possession (1981) – weirdly compelling parable of stagnation & renewal (sort of), built around fabulously outrageous scenes from a marriage

 

J. Edgar (2011) – an unusually quiet, oddly moving meditation on history, reflecting on the human frailty that drives the exercise of power

 

Sous le soleil de Satan (1987) – the film tempts us to read it too easily, reflecting our fallible tracing of God’s hand, and the devil’s..

 

Beeswax (2009) – engaging and well-observed, quite distinctive, but still a bit of a flyweight, lacking much thematic or existential impact

 

Fear of Fear (1975) – Fassbinder’s eerily well-controlled study of “mental illness” and its rationality as a coping strategy for a drab life

 

Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) – a piercing Minnelli melodrama of exile and displacement, cunningly straddling the exotic and the downbeat

 

L’important c’est d’aimer (1975) – like a Cassavetes film with bruised lipstick, on the necessity of extremity and pain in locking down love

 

Bill Cunningham New York (2010) – a pleasant chronicle of a decent man, but with no critical edge; about as important as last year's fashion

 

Blood Relatives (1978) – Chabrol in Montreal, seeming too preoccupied by logistics to make this much more than a perfunctory investigation

 

Melancholia (2011) – audacious by any measure, often stunning; I could imagine some restless soul responding to it as to nothing before

 

The Blacksmith (1922) – vivacious (if scattershot and fanciful) Keaton short, with enormous inventiveness and a terrific sense of pace

 

Equinox Flower (1958) – Ozu’s beautifully observed study of the inevitable capitulation of old men to the gentle strength of young women

 

Down by Law (1986) – a deadpan parable of existential repositioning, perfectly attuned to its raw ingredients (maybe Benigni in particular)

 

The Pearls of the Crown (1937) – quite the narrative banquet, full of inventive charm, but its impact is ultimately somewhat superficial

 

A Letter to Three Wives (1949) – irresistibly witty and poised, and sharp-eyed about the compromises entailed by the plush American Dream

 

SS Experiment Love Camp (1976) - bastardizing the moral decay of the Nazis to no good end, much of the time the film seems barely conscious

 

Submarine (2010) – a transplanted Annie Hall of sorts, crammed with minutely observed subtleties, flights of fancy, unconventional beauty..

 

The Third Part of the Night (1971) – strange, dislocating film on the degradation of war, both gruesomely intimate and wrenchingly visionary

 

Starting out in the Evening (2007) – very engrossing, surprisingly thematically and psychologically intricate, with a radiant Lauren Ambrose

 

Love Affair…the Missing Switchboard Operator (1967) – note Makavejev’s considerable sensitivity, often undervalued relative to his daring

 

One Night Stand (1997) – Figgis sure knows how to polish and jazzify conventional material, but falls short of working miracles with it

 

Attenberg (2010) – interesting if limited study of identity & the finding of one’s self, drawing much resonance from its bleak Greek setting

 

We Can’t Go Home Again (1976?) – a vital component of Ray’s overall artistic legend, by design almost impossible to anchor oneself within

 

Bitter Rice (1949) – perhaps crude if compared to Rossellini’s work of the period, but immensely pictorial, powerful, sexy and evocative

 

Love and other Drugs (2010) – uses up all its relative daring on the raunchy stuff, leaving everything else too often unfocused and bland

 

The Round Up (1966) – often feels like Kafka on the plains; masterfully done, although you respond as much to its theory as its practice

 

Page Eight (2011) – engrossing for its laconic articulacy, until its essential narrative thinness and familiar morality become inescapable

 

The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1979) – Ruiz is the most brilliant, if difficult, antidote to an easy, complacent mainstream cinema

 

Lost in America (1985) – very nicely and concisely exploring the compromise and existential sacrifice at the heart of what we call “success”

 

Le Havre (2011) – a very pleasant, elevating tale of community and everyday miracles, emphasizing the weight of every moment and connection

 

Bridesmaids (2011) – some nice invention & observation; certainly capable of being more biting & affecting, but then doesn't want to be

 

The Profession of Arms (2001) – a heavy-going study in the bygone processes and ethics of war; more interesting in theory than actuality

 

Night on Earth (1991) – so cool and easy to take, you could overlook the existential precision, how death increasingly occupies the fabric..

 

Barbe Bleu (2009) – gorgeously distinctive reverie on sexual destiny and  ideology; beautifully intuitive and complex, often surprising

 

Hot Blood (1956) – overflowing with hokiness and dubious storytelling, and yet compelling for Ray’s often savagely dynamic compositions

 

Everyone Else (2009) – another exquisite illustration that the shifting mysteries and pained edges of relationships will never be exhausted

 

The Electric House (1922) – reconstructed early Keaton with missing scenes; a bit too breezy and conceptual to deploy his greatness ideally

 

The Skin I Live In (2011) – lovingly and lovably absurd; Almodovar’s sumptuous conviction overrides just about all potential reservations

 

Insidious (2010) – impressively handled throughout, demonstrating the “haunted house” genre’s eternal capacity for renewal and embellishment

 

Merry-go-Round (1981) – not Rivette’s strongest, but still a wonderful, playful reverie on family trauma, narrative, creation and fantasy

 

Never Let Me Go (2010) – not a major film, but achingly sad almost throughout, and delicately seeded with thematic and ethical implication

 

Machine Gun McCain (1969) – appealingly terse, but the real pleasure is in the trace of a phantom Cassavetes/Rowlands movie buried within

 

Barney’s Version (2010) – bland, mechanical concoction is just one thing after another, lacking flavor, intimacy, sense of time or place...

 

Japanese Summer: Double Suicide (1967) – a remarkable distillation of lost, violent times and twisted instincts; never remotely predictable

 

The Way Back (2010) – depicting extreme human endeavor and myth as inseparable, marked by Weir's surprising but unshowy creative choices

 

Age of Consent (1969) – appealing for its wacky primitivism, but very ragged, seldom approaching Powell’s major works (albeit, what could?)

 

Alice ou la derniere fugue (1977) - stylish, under-appreciated Chabrol, a precursor to later meta-movies, with a diverting feminist slant

 

Sweetwater (2009) – majestically scenic and respectful, but also increasingly troubled, generating an unexpectedly complex after-effect

 

Man is not a Bird (1965) – maybe not, but engaging as this is, you feel Makavejev gearing up to fly onto splashier, wilder canvases

 

All Good Things (2010) – doesn’t achieve the complexity and allusiveness it aims for, merely seeming increasingly messy and mechanical

 

Taris, roi de l’eau  (1931) – a small thing, but its sense of joy and fascination  is delightfully consistent with Vigo’s more major works

 

Punishment Park (1971) – still startlingly provocative & compelling, clearly as relevant as ever post-Guantanamo Bay (as complacency rises)

 

Mysteries of Lisbon (2010) – an enthralling film - it feels capable of extending itself forever without ever sacrificing your devotion to it

 

The Cameraman (1928) – very enjoyable, but creaking from limited resources, seldom exhibiting the gracefulness of Keaton’s greatest films

 

Red Psalm (1972) – stunning for Jancso’s gorgeously fluid staging and filming; at times almost persuades you the revolution might triumph

 

George Harrison..Material World (2011) – mostly effective; best seen as a largely impressionistic seasoning to the overall Harrison myth

 

Shakespeare Wallah (1965) – shows how early on the Merchant Ivory approach was honed; it’s sensitive but strangely bland and affectless

 

Alexander Nevsky (1938) – resembles now an artifact from a worldview of expired grandeur, and strenuous (if still fascinating) artistry

 

The Ides of March (2011) – so lazy and deficient it tends to make you reassess all you supposedly believed about Clooney’s taste and smarts

 

Taxi zum klo (1980) – a significant milestone of gay and human rights cinema; still eye-opening (and informative!) in numerous ways

 

Valhalla Rising (2009) – murky and ponderous mythmaking, only minimally interesting; Refn is much more rewarding in his splashier Drive mode

 

Wild Rovers (1971) – a quietly solid yarn, but the mythic ambitions, and musings on morality and predestination, are never fully realized

 

Before the Revolution (1964) – Bertolucci’s still fascinating amalgam of (perhaps rather strained) societal pessimism and cinematic optimism

 

Vanishing on 7th Street (2010) – not for the first time, Anderson’s proficiency seems largely squandered on thin, unrewarding material

 

The Touch (1971) – has an oddly displaced quality (Elliott Gould?); interesting but thin, adding little to one’s overall sense of Bergman

 

Poetry (2010) – one of the most stunning recent films; a delicately beautiful but unsentimental study of liberation and transcendence

 

Tiny Furniture (2010) – well-considered, resourceful study of a generation pre-wired for status, still floundering on how to make it happen

 

Christiane F (1981) – still kinda makes you want to flirt with degradation, while allowing you to believe YOU wouldn’t be consumed by it

 

Network (1976) – as everyone says, still spookily relevant and prophetic, bracingly mature and literate, full of indelible actorly moments

 

Sing a Song of Sex (1967) – dazzlingly provocative, constantly astounding Oshima reflection on horny Japanese youth in deranged times

 

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010) – mostly successful as a shrewd cartoon of finance’s lost soul: but the home stretch is disappointing

 

Zero de conduite (1933) – among cinema’s most remarkable 45 minutes, and most cherishable expressions of creative and institutional freedom

 

Caligula (1979) – generally enjoyable as a grand folly, often visually striking, but its relative strengths are lost in a morass of genitals

 

Moneyball (2011) – highly enjoyable throughout, but hardly a significant case study, unless you really strain for metaphorical applicability

 

L’enfant sauvage (1970) – fascinatingly quiet and economical, focusing productively on incremental progress and its associated morality

 

The Scarlet Empress (1934) – an astonishing unified vision, although the play of desire grips slightly less than Morocco or Shanghai Express

 

The Keys to the House (2004) – intensely focused on the joy and pain of the unpractised caregiver; narrow in its aims, but very successful

 

Maurice (1987) – succeeds at setting out the stifling intricacy of class structures, somewhat less at conveying the pain embedded in them

 

Smiley Face (2007) – has the inherent appeal of Araki’s worldview, but could have used more ambition, even if its heroine doesn’t need any

 

L’Atalante (1934) – still a unique vision, with one socially conscious foot firmly in this world, the other consumed by fevers and dreams

 

Drive (2011) – the rare mainstream film in which the use of “style” (and silence) is viscerally jolting and even intellectually provocative!

 

Combat d’amour en songe (2000) – a gorgeously elegant challenge to conventional narrative, at once highly rigorous and awesomely unbound

 

The April Fools (1969) – the Deneuve/Lemmon pairing never really makes emotional sense, especially when dropped into such a ramshackle movie

 

Le pont du Nord (1981) – has one of Rivette’s greatest endings, a mystically grand assertion of intuitive self-discovery and connection

 

Machete (2010) – sporadically strikes the right garish iconic retro pulp mix, but Machete himself is a fatally underdeveloped focal point

 

Drole de drama (1937) -  strange plotting indeed; always elegant, but lacking the inspiration to amount to more than the sum of its parts

 

Contagion (2011) – highly engrossing and informative; even its omissions speak to the inherently ungraspable nature of such  mass trauma

 

Revanche (2008) -  makes unusually productive use of outrageous genre contrivance, drawing power from tonal contrasts & social undercurrents

 

Wanda (1970) – remarkably free of vanity and artifice, a quietly militant challenge to conventional portrayals of “fallen” women

 

Innocents with Dirty Hands (1975) – ventilated by Chabrol’s feeling for human perversity,  but nevertheless mostly perfunctory/indifferent

 

Doubt (2008) – never more than a contrived theatrical extravaganza; enjoyable actorly tension at times, but philosophically mostly vacuous

 

Tulse Luper Suitcases, Pt 3: From Sark to the Finish (2003) – likely only for Greenaway completists; even for them, a rather dull work-out

 

The Defector (1966) – interesting but under-powered Cold War dynamics, gaining depth from its steely grey images and Clift’s evident pain

 

The Company Men (2010) – lots of interesting details, but hampered throughout by the simplifying, too-tidy effect of Hollywood conventions

 

A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1985) – gorgeously illustrating Hou’s remarkable capacity for capturing the totality of life experience

 

Mr. Nice (2010) – works well enough as a mildly colourful diversion, but doesn’t inhale the material deeply enough to make a major impact

 

The Spanish Earth (1937) – valuable as a bleak historical record, and for Hemingway’s narration, almost anticipating later neo-realism..

 

Genova (2008) – perhaps one of Winterbottom’s most subtly complex and intuitive works, with an often superb sense of mood and place

 

Tony Manero (2008) – meticulously considered, superbly nuanced Chilean study of a vicious criminal obsessed with Travolta’s iconic character

 

Jew Suss (1934) – still whips up appropriate revulsion, but most interesting now as a (rather stodgy) chronicle of personal redemption

 

Win Win (2011) – blows a potentially productive premise through relentless superficiality, shallow characterization and moral obviousness

 

Peppermint Frappe (1967) – less scintillating than the many films it evokes at times (Vertigo, Blow-Up, Bunuel...) , but well sustained

 

The Arbor (2010) – a film where even the possible weaknesses raise stimulating questions about the nature of representation/interpretation

 

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968) – a movie strenuously in search of itself, ultimately yielding a kind of deadpan existential comedy

 

Les egares (2003) – unusually intimate for Techine, examining how the destruction of war yields some capacity for liberation and reinvention

 

The City of Your Final Destination (2010) – some interesting reflection, but flatly handled; the title is more evocative than the movie

 

The Man who Loved Women (1983) – no "10," but oddly (and often somewhat intriguingly) recessive, as much a study in bemusement as “love”

 

Haut bas fragile (1995) – a great, beautiful Rivette meditation on the attaining of feminine self-determination, with a complex use of music

 

Tamara Drew (2010) – Tamara herself gets increasingly lost among generally odd and/or pointless (if scenic and easy-to-take) conceits

 

Deep End (1970) – a fabulous creation; a perfectly sustained play of repression and desire, brilliantly attentive to time, place, character

 

Toy Story 3 (2010) – has enormous panache, and persuasive moral resonance; sure, it's a calculated commercial machine, but what packaging...

 

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945) – intriguing, but the entire film would be a mere strand in Kurosawa's later, fuller works

 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) – probably just about as sane & smooth an origin story for the Apes mythology as one could ever devise

 

La ville des pirates (1983) – stunning piece of poetic mythology, unbound by normal rules, evoking the dark fluidity of creation & identity

 

Munich (2005) – potent in many ways, but never feels sufficiently complex; a comparison with Assayas’ Carlos underlines the limitations

 

Essential Killing (2010) – often intriguing but somewhat limited in its impact; clinical abstraction isn't Skolimowski’s best register

 

Land of the Pharoahs (1955) – great spectacle; you vaguely detect a Hawksian worldview in the ultimate affinity for pragmatism over grandeur

 

The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures (1975) – moody & wacky; almost convinces you at times it has a viable theological vision & purpose!

 

Stone (2010) – a surprisingly stimulating, but strange, incompletely realized attempt at exploring spiritual/moral purpose and awareness

 

Folies bourgeoisies (1976) – in many ways a weird, ill-handled mess, and yet that's appropriate to the film’s theme of chronic dysfunction

 

The Next Three Days (2010) – mostly diverting, with some handy crime hints, but overall impact is much like the last three Hollywood flicks

 

The Children are Watching Us (1944) –still a delicately provocative examination of social structures and desires in hopeless conflict 

 

Sleeper (1973) – an enduring modest pleasure; the loosely-knit absurdity seems almost radical now at times, compared to most of later Allen

 

Small Town Murder Songs (2010) – demonstrates Gass-Donnelly’s control and discipline, but just too narrow a canvas to warrant major praise

 

Wings of Desire (1987) – often beguiling, but looks now like the start of Wenders’ decline away from relevance, frequently into pure drivel

 

Piranha (2010) – smart exploitation package, as proficient at tits and ass as at mass trauma; a shame Aja isn’t feeding in a bigger tank

 

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) – so alluring you can hardly disentangle the (often staggeringly) radical from the playful

 

Madeleine (1950) – inherently interesting as sexual politics, although Lean's rather passionless craftsmanship doesn't seem ideally applied

 

Project Nim (2011) – the story’s still a useful reference point for considering our hopelessly confused attitudes & morality toward animals

 

Goto, Island of Love (1969) – gorgeously strange, as if from a parallel universe; causing regret for Borowczyk’s later narrower evolution

 

A Prairie Home Companion (2006) – one of the most delightful, magically appropriate (as if prophetic) end-points of any director’s career

 

Red Riding…1983 (2009) – even with a "happy ending" of sorts, horrifyingly extends the endemic corruption & moral decay of the earlier films

 

World on a Wire (1973) – a forerunner to Inception, plopped down in the magnificently grim, tackily existential laboratory of 70’s Germany

 

The Tillman Story (2010) -  another kick-ass exposure of institutional lies  and evasions, in effect of America’s fear of its own richness

 

Red Riding…1980 (2009) – a more claustrophobic, slightly less artful vision than the first film, but masterfully integrating real & imagined

 

Spirit of the Beehive (1973) – comes close to forging an alternative language of childhood, and the quiet darkness underlying its innocence

 

Divorce American Style (1967) – surprisingly biting, instructive and inventive satire at times, although it largely goes soft in the end

 

Red Riding…1974 (2009) – a narratively powerful 1970’s Yorkshire-set Chinatown of sorts; a grim vision of corruption and degradation

 

The Beyond (1981) -  Fulci's astonishing vision of breakdown between worlds, leaving normal horror movie conventions in the bloody beyond

 

The Tourist (2010) – takes itself too seriously in some ways, not seriously enough in others; astute direction & acting take a big vacation

 

Billy Budd (1962) - gripping, but like Ustinov himself, the obviousness of the calculations and emotions evokes respect rather than love

 

La signora di tutti (1934) – a superb investigation of a woman, exploring throughout the fragile dance of truth and illusion, life and death

 

The Trip (2010) – consistently and distinctively entertaining; although satisfying more in the way of a great meal than of a great poem

 

Casino Jack and the United States of Money (2010) – another pristine exposure (there’s a lot of ‘em) of the degradation at America's heart

 

Alice in the Cities (1974) – in some ways a familiar and contrived set-up, but increasingly intriguing for its echoes & lack of affectation

 

Kaboom (2010) – repositions raw materials of gay-friendly sex comedy as apocalyptic markers; softer than early Araki, but still subversive

 

The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968) – strange is the least of it; certainly stamps Marins as an intriguing go-his-own-twisted-way auteur

 

Shoot the Moon (1982) – magnificently angry and agonized at times, but Parker’s heavy approach strangles more often than it nurtures overall

 

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) – Herzog necessarily plays things straighter here than sometimes, but still delivers the “ecstatic truth”..

 

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) – clever and tonally astute, but you get that after ten minutes; ultimately monotonous and unrewarding

 

Vivre sa vie (1962) – for all its structural brilliance and bleakness, has a delicacy and even a relative optimism rare in later Godard

 

Handsome Harry (2010) – a small, maybe overly restrained, but interesting contribution to the cinema of gay identity reaching for the light

 

The Freethinker (1994) – long, deliberately disorienting but rewarding example of Watkins’ radical approach to historical investigation

 

Knight and Day (2010) – most engaging when it escapes the machine and surrenders to happy abstraction, which isn’t almost often enough

 

Les astronautes (1959) – a quirkily sweet 14-minute addition to cinematic dreams of transcendence, gently prophetic in its fragility

 

Macao (1952) – full of echoes of Sternberg’s earlier work, but comparatively mechanical and starved of true desire; easily watchable though

 

Police (1985) – a powerful and insinuating drama; astonishing in the scope of its reflection on the fluidity of morals, structures, emotions

 

The Tree of Life (2011) – Malick’s deployment of cinematic possibility is often stunning, but the film is too intangible to fully satisfy

 

Ashes and Diamonds (1958) – most complex of the trilogy; less rawly powerful than Kanal, but appropriately to its theme of moral bereftness

 

Freakonomics (2010) – much like the book, saturated in misplaced breeziness; even serious implications seem like mere mental masturbation

 

Victim (1961) – limited by the necessity of telling rather than showing, but remains a landmark, and still very moving and provocative

 

Lola (1981) – a scathing fever-dream of post-war Germany, as a new venality and savage self-gratification push rectitude to the sidelines

 

Joan Rivers: a Piece of Work (2010) – surprisingly revealing, informative & serious-minded; feels more important than it objectively should

 

Kings of the Road (1976) – a fascinating, unadorned & unforced amalgam of myth and character study; Wenders’ early stature was well-deserved

 

The Pie-Covered Wagon (1932) – emblematic Western drama enacted in ten minutes by toddlers; every bit as vital to film history as it sounds!

 

Divorce Italian Style (1961) – the title promises a romp, but the undercurrents are rather gloomy; sad characters grabbing at what they can…

 

Howl (2010) – an effective memorial, although I wonder if the animation (however proficient) doesn’t deny the essential nature of poetry

 

Kameradschaft (1931) – still imposing for its grim physicality; the ideology (let’s dissolve European borders!) has a different flavor now…

 

Let Me In (2010) – amazingly successful at evoking the spirit of the original without merely replicating or inadvertently parodying it

 

The Green Room (1978) – strange, almost perversely narrowly-focused film from Truffaut, alluring for its lack of compromise if nothing else

 

Too Big to Fail (2011) – interesting and remarkably efficient, but that’s also a limitation: we need the 6-hour Olivier Assayas version!

 

Kanal (1957) – a  powerful, unsparing  vision of war as the death of all dignity, light and hope; perhaps Wajda’s most enduring film

 

Red (2010) – even with that cast, doesn’t take long until diminishing returns set in; Malkovich hints at a more rewarding road not taken..

 

La Bande des quatre (1989) – one of Rivette’s most vulnerable-seeming works, clinging to art as protection against the chaos and darkness

 

Young Mr Lincoln (1939) – among much else, remarkably contemporary in its focus on Lincoln’s control of what we’d now call his ‘image’

 

Le petit theatre de Jean Renoir (1970) – a beautiful farewell, evoking his classic achievements while still pushing in quirky new directions

 

Midnight in Paris (2011) – Allen at his most easefully assured and pleasantly self-referencing, evoking the comfort level of his heyday

 

Miss Oyu (1951) – another fascinating study in longing suppressed by ideology and culture, twisting lives into perverse, tragic structures

 

Scott Walker : 30 Century Man (2006) – near-revelatory documentary on the musical genius (yes!), superbly explaining his achievement

 

Le doulos (1962) – grimmer than Melville’s later films; painstakingly grows into a near-textbook of existential survival strategies…

 

Catfish (2010) – hard to react to, beyond asking which of the participants in this relationship is really ultimately the sadder case study?

 

Os Canibais (1988) – a rather neat filmic joke, with increasingly tedious high art suddenly giving  way after an  hour to sheer nonsense

 

The Southerner (1945) – Renoir's mesmerizing study of a land still in formation, but already carrying much embedded ideology and enmity

 

Le quattro volte (2010) – a sublime viewing experience, maybe as much cosmic joke as profound meditation (but maybe there’s no difference..)

 

Such Good Friends (1971) – very strange, often remarkably perverse take on the acquiring of consciousness, with Burgess Meredith’s bare ass!

 

N.U. (1948) – a reminder, if it were needed, of the social observation and unforced humanity that nourished the roots of Antonioni’s work

 

Quantum of Solace (2008) – squanders almost every aspect of the Bond formula without injecting anything in return; messy and humorless

 

36 Quai des Orfevres (2004) – yet another movie seemingly inspired by Heat, but more proficient with guns and attitudes than with souls

 

Stage Fright (1950) – structural & tonal oddities & general eccentricities make a pretty interesting counterpoint to Hitchcock’s major work

 

The Maid (2009) – an unusual, sometimes blackly funny, ultimately shrewd and convincing take on a familiar theme of feminine self-discovery

 

The Naked Kiss (1964) - carries a remarkable ideological scope beneath a dazzlingly tight narrative, exposing weakness and corruption galore

 

A Generation (1955) – the film’s effectiveness as character drama and with ‘action’ sequences perhaps limits its resonance as history now…

 

Rabbit Hole (2010) – well-crafted of course, but never much more than a series of devices, lacking any distinct insight on loss or grief

 

L’enfance nue (1968) – magnificent, rigorous, deeply humane examination of an abandoned child, deep in “nature vs. nurture” implications

 

The Informer (1935) – despite Oscar-winning status, a minor Ford work; atmospheric, but forced and overwrought and insufficiently nuanced

 

Alamar (2009) – a beautiful film, often gently but radically apart from almost any other in its storytelling & relationship with the planet

 

I Love You Philip Morris (2009)  - always energetic and proficient, but never really meaningful; one scene feels much the same as the next…

 

Scenes from a Marriage (1973) –  a virtuoso, exhausting behavioral dance; eerily fascinating, even if only intermittently identifiable

 

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) – easy to forget the seriousness (however genial) of Mazursky's underlying sociological investigation

 

Grown Up Movie Star (2009) – ultimately somewhat limited in its family dynamics, but with lots of real colour and provocation along the way

 

The River (1951) – a beautiful, gently complex meditation on maturity and acceptance, albeit deploying a selective portrait of India

 

Giallo (2009) – an oddly flat and mostly uninvolving Argento creation, with barely a trace of The Mother of Tears’ giddy flare and "vision"

 

Not Quite Hollywood (2008) – as happily galvanizing a documentary as you’ll ever see, breezily making the case for Australian genre cinema

 

A Tale of Springtime (1990) – despite the ultimate optimism, has a pervasive, fascinatingly conveyed sense of lives just missing the point..

 

Mother and Child (2009) – impressive, frequently even thrilling acting and characterization wins out over frequent over-calculation

 

Cronaca di un amore (1950) – fascinating early example of Antonioni’s filmic and emotional architecture, paving the way for later heights

 

Meek’s Cutoff  (2010) – a remarkably allusive, restrained, meaningful film; Reichardt is already one of the indispensable American directors

 

Trois couleurs: Bleu (1993) – handsome  and scintillating on its own terms, but in a way that’s ultimately unrevealing of real life I think

 

The Living End (1992) - still gorgeously vivid and provocative, even visionary, in setting out an unapologetic alternative ideology of HIV

 

Il Bidone (1955) – rooted in Fellini’s early grittiness while dropping hints of the greater sprawl ahead; a bit contrived, but engrossing

 

Slap Shot (1977) – hard to begrudge the film its semi-classic status; has a great feel for hockey lore and culture (the good, bad and ugly)

 

Last Train Home (2009) – finds an intimately gripping narrative within a life built on parameters and sacrifices one can hardly process

 

Nowhere Boy (2009) – a bit too polished to evoke the period, but a terrifically charismatic, legend-friendly portrayal of the young Lennon

 

The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004) – a very witty, graceful, dead serious but clear-sightedly optimistic essay on contemporary turbulence

 

Straw Dogs (1971) – still a savagely brilliant quasi-cartoon, but also an extreme, troubling parable on America’s directional crisis

 

Gente del Po (1943) – an 11-minute film that captures an entire grim, unchanging world; you feel Antonioni’s emerging mastery in every shot

 

Salt (2010) – very well-judged and controlled, with Jolie a perfect focal point; consistently seems much less absurd than it actually is

 

Notes toward an African Orestes (1970) - intriguing text on the relevance of our cultural heritage in diagnosing a complex, evolving world

 

The Party (1968) – it’s no Playtime, but still a fascinating fantasy on (relative) purity grinding down the venal (if only for one night)

 

The Adversary (1971) – an eloquent, troubled study of a transitional generation in India, oddly forgotten relative to Ray’s other works

 

Looking for Eric (2009) – much more fanciful than Loach’s usual work, with a significantly diluted impact; sadly, almost boring at times

 

Solutions locales pour un desordre global (2010) - terrifically provocative and informative, with no time for pointless gloss and "balance"

 

The Criminal Code (1931) – a cracking, expertly-paced crime drama, its moral preoccupations pointing the way to Hawks’ greatest works

 

W.R. – Mysteries Of the Organism (1971) – you remember the transgressive highpoints, but may forget the underlying vulnerability (of a kind)

 

Best Worst Movie (2009) – a documentary barely more objectively important than its subject, Troll 2, but no doubt a bit more warm and human

 

Paisan (1946) – perhaps the film that, through its amazing (if bleak) scope & humanity, best embodies the achievement of Italian neo-realism

 

This Movie is Broken (2010) – beguiling love song to Toronto, and to Broken Social Scene as embodying its diverse, romantic if messy heart

 

Proces de Jeanne d'Arc (1962) - perhaps a key counterbalancing statement by Bresson, in holding out the possibility of true transcendence

 

Fair Game (2010) - lacks the moral complexity of the greatest political movies, but still effective in pushing a lot of important buttons

 

The Soft Skin (1964) – a forensic, sociologically astute examination of a love affair; one of Truffaut’s gravest and most gripping films

 

The Great Dictator (1940) – a bizarre, brave amalgam of high and low; maybe its essential incoherence is its most potent statement on war

 

A la conquete du pole (1912) – as with much of Melies, delightful throughout, but also confirms his vision's repetitiveness and odd limits

 

Deep Throat (1972) – occasional goofiness aside, often now feels rather glum and grim, in part no doubt because of Lovelace's ambivalence

 

In a Better World (2010) – gripping throughout and often moving, but its modestly provocative thinking doesn't ultimately go too deep

 

One, Two, Three (1961) - a brilliantly constructed/paced comedic machine; one of Wilder’s most technically stunning  (if maybe not deepest)

 

When We Leave (2010) – engrossing and often moving, but too straightforward to evoke anything more complex than short-lived  blood-boiling

 

Ministry of Fear (1944) – a terrific, compact thriller; expertly & disorientatingly skeptical about allegiance, ideology, reality itself

 

Dr. Jekyll and his Wives (1981) – strangely alluring Borowczyk vision, driven less by eroticism than a dark sense of escalating desperation

 

The Last of Sheila (1973) – superbly conceived & pristinely executed; a nice cruel streak distinguishes  it from mere hermetic game-playing

 

La nostra vita (2010) – rattles glossily along, using up enough plot for two movies, but almost weirdly unprobing and unrevealing

 

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) - seems a bit forced and over-heated now, less subtle than Ray's greatest work, but Dean remains mesmerizing

 

The Seventh Continent (1989) – clinically eerie examination of a family’s utter breakdown; may leave you fearful for your own stability

 

We Live in Public (2009) – perhaps most interesting in contrast to The Social Network, emphasizing the capriciousness of success & “vision”

 

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...