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Lucifer Sam

  1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
  2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
  3. Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)
  4. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
  5. Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958)
  6. Band of Outsiders (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
  7. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
  8. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
  9. Barton Fink (Joel Coen, 1991)
  10. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2000)


Top 10 Directors:
  1. Luis Buñuel
  2. Akira Kurosawa
  3. Alfred Hitchcock
  4. Martin Scorsese
  5. Jean-Luc Godard
  6. Wong Kar-wai
  7. Orson Welles
  8. Wernor Herzog
  9. Jean-Pierre Melville
  10. David Lynch


Lucifer Sam describes himself as "a social outcast with a passion for fine cinema."

tally after this list / February 18, 2007


Nicholas de Jong

  1. Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)
  2. La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)
  3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
  4. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
  5. Picinc At Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)
  6. In A Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
  7. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972)
  8. Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982)
  9. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)
  10. My Life To Live (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)


Nicholas de Jong describes himself as "unemployed, living in Sydney, Australia."

tally after this list / February 7, 2007


Matt Severson (revised list)

[Top 10, in order of preference; one film per director...]

  1. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
  2. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939)
  3. 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)
  4. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955)
  5. One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
  6. Au hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
  7. La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)
  8. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
  9. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
  10. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Runners up: PSYCHO (1960, USA) Alfred Hitchcock; ANNIE HALL (1977, USA) Woody Allen; THE 400 BLOWS (1959, France) Francois Truffaut; BLUE VELVET (1986, USA) David Lynch; ALI -- FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974, West Germany); THE THIRD MAN (1949, UK) Carol Reed; SEVEN SAMURAI (1954, Japan); SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954, Japan) Kenji Mizoguchi; THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937, USA) Leo McCarey; UN CHIEN ANDALOU (1929, France) Luis Bunuel; THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER (1989, UK) Peter Greenaway; CASABLANCA (1942, USA) Michael Curtiz; MEAN STREETS (1973, USA) Martin Scorsese; IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000, Hong Kong) Wong Kar-Wai; and THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946, USA) William Wyler.

Rounding out my Top 100 in alphabetical order: Adaptation, Aguirre the Wrath of God, All About Eve, Andrei Rublev, Battleship Potemkin, Bicycle Thieves, Bonjour Tristesse, Bonnie and Clyde, Born Yesterday, Bringing Up Baby, Carrie, City Lights, Claire’s Knee, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Conformist, Cops, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Days of Heaven, Dead Ringers, The Devils, Distant Voices Still Lives, Double Indemnity, Faces, Fargo, Gates of Heaven, The Gleaners and I, The Godfather, The Heart of the World, High School, In a Lonely Place, The Innocents, King Kong (2005), The Lady Eve, Late Marriage, M, Madame de..., A Matter of Life and Death, Meet Me in St. Louis, Menilmontant, Million Dollar Baby, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Night and Fog, Night of the Living Dead, Oliver Twist (1948), On the Waterfront, Open City, The Painted Lady, Pandora’s Box, Paris Texas, The Piano, Pinocchio, Playtime, Pulp Fiction, Raise the Red Lantern, Red Desert, A Room with a View, Rosemary’s Baby, Shanghai Express, Singin’ in the Rain, The Spirit of the Beehive, Stagecoach, Sunrise, Swing Time, 3 Women, Talk to Her, Topsy-Turvy, Vivre sa Vie, The Wages of Fear, The War Game, What’s Opera Doc?, The Wild Bunch, Winchester ‘73, The Wizard of Oz, Yi Yi, and Zero for Conduct.

See also Matt's previous list: Nov. 11, 2005

Matt Severson is as a photograph curator for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library and writes a film blog entitled Notes in the Dark..., and is "greatly dismayed that The Rules of the Game has been knocked off the Top 10 Project's current Top 10 List!~"

tally after this list / January 21, 2007


Burt Gold

  1. A Scene at the Sea (Takeshi Kitano, 1991)
  2. M. Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)
  3. Bambi (David Hand, 1942)
  4. Criss Cross (Robert Siodmak, 1949)
  5. Gate of Flesh (Seijun Suzuki, 1964)
  6. A Better Tomorrow (John Woo, 1986)
  7. High School (Fredrick Wiseman, 1968)
  8. Mon Oncle (Jacques Tati, 1958)
  9. My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
  10. Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano, 1990)


Top 10 Directors:
  1. Takeshi Kitano
  2. Jacques Tati
  3. John Woo
  4. Seijun Suzuki
  5. Frederick Wiseman
  6. The Maysles Brothers
  7. Hayao Miyazaki
  8. Andrei Tarkovsky
  9. Charlie Chaplin
  10. Chantal Ackerman


Burt Gold is a short documentary filmmaker working in Richmond, VA. He just completed a new short called "Haberdashery".

tally after this list / January 20, 2007


Matthew G. Anderson (revised list)

  1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

    I know, I know... what can I say. Every time I watch it I fall in love all over again.

  2. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

    I first saw this on Public TV in Minnesota when I was about 10 years old and it captivated me for its entire runtime. I had no idea what the hell I was watching... but I couldn't stop. Twenty years later... same effect.

  3. Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)

    The most recent film on my list by a wide margin, even I'm surprised how confident I feel citing this as one of the all-time greats. The film that perhaps best epitomizes what I feel great art should do: resonate deeply and (most importantly) distinctly with anyone who sees it. It's not an exaggeration to say it's a different film for every viewer. One's own personally-held beliefs regarding God, sex, love, marriage, organized religion, mental illness... all come into play when watching BREAKING THE WAVES. A film that resists a passive audience with every frame of its running time.

  4. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)

    Every filmmaker has one -- this is the movie that made me want to make movies. So "conventional", so "Hollywood"... but so perfect. If only all conventional, Hollywood films were this good.

  5. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)

    Maybe the perfect synthesis of film entertainment and film art (just visually, you could hang any frame of this movie on your wall). Sexy, scary, mysterious, very darkly funny... Can you imagine a major Hollywood actor and director making something this subversively unredeemed these days?

  6. Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1985)

    Woody's great films are about the human heart -- why it's a joy, why it's awful, why it's all right to be stuck with one. I don't think he ever made a film with as much depth or insight as HANNAH. In less than two hours time, he creates the kind of experience one is lucky to get out of a great novel. As a bonus, it's laugh out loud funny every time. A unique film masterpiece.

  7. Chinatown (Howard Hawks, 1938)

    After seeing this on the big screen again this year, I'm ready to pit it up against not just any neo-noir, but any noir film ever. Like THE GODFATHER, it's a perfect Hollywood film with a surprisingly dark heart.

  8. It's a Wonderful Life (Billy Wilder, 1959)

    For a film that gets as dark, sweaty and desperate as this one does, the fact that it earns its happy ending honestly and actually manages to deserve the label "life-affirming" seems like a true miracle.

  9. Mirror (John Ford, 1956)

    Film as poetry. Subjective, sometimes opaque but uniquely pure and indescribably moving when you find yourself on its wavelength.

  10. 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963)

    Maybe the greatest film about the artistic personality ever made. And when one considers how many films are about that subject, this is no small achievement. Sad and joyful and very alive.




Top 10 Directors

  1. Stanley Kubrick
  2. Alfred Hitchcock
  3. Jean-Luc Godard
  4. Andrei Tarkovsky
  5. Federico Fellini
  6. Ingmar Bergman
  7. Howard Hawks
  8. Woody Allen
  9. Lars von Trier
  10. David Lynch


See also Matthew's previous list: Nov. 11, 2005

Matthew G. Anderson is a screenwriter and independent filmmaker from Minnesota, now living in Los Angeles. For ten years he taught film and video classes for children -- baffling, delighting and irritating 12 year-olds (in about equal measure) with the likes of CITIZEN KANE, CASABLANCA, NORTH BY NORTHWEST and A HARD DAY'S NIGHT.

tally after this list / January 20, 2007


J.L. Carrozza

  1. A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971)
  2. Once Upon A Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984)
  3. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
  4. Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (Kazuya Tsurumaki and Hideaki Anno, 1997)
  5. Once Upon A Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)
  6. The Killer (John Woo, 1989)
  7. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
  8. Battle Royale (Kinji Fukasaku, 2000)
  9. Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004)
  10. Pat Garret and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1974)

Some runners up: Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (1972, Chu Yuan), The Wicker Man (1973, Robin Hardy), Graveyard of Honor (1975, Kinji Fukasaku), Godzilla (1954, Ishiro Honda), Heavenly Creatures (1994, Peter Jackson), Carrie (1976, Brian DePalma), Reservoir Dogs (1992, Quentin Tarantino), Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott), Fitzcarraldo (1982, Werner Herzog), Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)

Top 10 Directors:

  1. Stanley Kubrick
  2. Sergio Leone
  3. Kinji Fukasaku
  4. Martin Scorsese
  5. Akira Kurosawa
  6. Sam Peckinpah
  7. Werner Herzog
  8. Quentin Tarantino
  9. Brian DePalma
  10. John Woo


J.L. Carrozza has directed several short films and has done some freelance writing for magazines.

tally after this list / December 1, 2006


Jerry Johnson

  1. La Règle du jeu (Jean Renoir, 1939)
  2. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
  3. Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
  4. Casino (Martin Scorsese, 1995)
  5. L'Argent (Robert Bresson, 1983)
  6. My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
  7. That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977)
  8. The Golden Coach (Jean Renoir, 1953)
  9. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Peckinpah, 1974)
  10. Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitch, 1932)


Top 10 Directors:
  1. Jean-Luc Godard
  2. Jean Renoir
  3. Howard Hawks
  4. Luis Buñuel
  5. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  6. Robert Bresson
  7. John Ford
  8. Alfred Hitchcock
  9. Carl Th. Dreyer
  10. Roberto Rossellini


Jerry Johnson is former Programming Director of the Austin Film Society and has written for the Austin Chronicle.

tally after this list / December 1, 2006


Wes Anderson

  1. The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974)
  2. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
  3. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969)
  4. Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966)
  5. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson, 1956)
  6. L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960)
  7. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
  8. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
  9. Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925)
  10. La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)

other: Sherlock Jr., La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, La Règle du jeu, Vertigo, Breathless, Ugetsu, The Searchers, Lawrence of Arabia, M, Dekalogue, Aguirre: The Wrath of God...and so on

Top 10 Directors:

  1. Andrei Tarkovsky
  2. Akira Kurosawa
  3. Ingmar Bergman
  4. Robert Bresson
  5. Michelangelo Antonioni
  6. Stanley Kubrick
  7. Federico Fellini
  8. Orson Welles
  9. Yasujiro Ozu
  10. John Ford

note:I also like Francois Truffaut, Jean Luc-Godard, Buster Keaton, Carl Theodore Dreyer, Jean Renoir, Alfred Hitchcock, Kenji Mizoguchi, Sergei Eisenstein, David Lean, Fritz Lang, Krystof Kielsowski, Werner Herzog, and Robert Altman a great deal as well.

Wes Anderson is an aspiring filmmaker, going to Portland State University (in Oregon), who started getting into film at the late age of 17 (he is now 21).

tally after this list / November 27, 2006


Noel Vera

(alphabetical order)

  • Chimes of Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965)
  • The Cloud-Capped Star (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960)
  • Faust (F.W. Murnau, 1926)
  • Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)
  • Late Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1949)
  • M (Fritz Lang, 1931)
  • Nausicaa, of the Valley of the Wind (Miyazaki, 1984)
  • Paper Blossoms (Guru Dutt, 1959)
  • La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
  • Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
  • Shoeshine (Vittorio de Sica, 1946)
  • Three Years Without God (Mario O'Hara, 1977)
  • Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
Top 25 Directors (in alphabetical order):
  • Robert Altman
  • Robert Bresson
  • Lino Brocka
  • Charles Burnett
  • Larry Cohen
  • David Cronenberg
  • Gerardo de Leon
  • Vittorio de Sica
  • Carl Theodor Dreyer
  • Guru Dutt
  • Federico Fellini
  • Ritwik Ghatak
  • Jean-Luc Godard
  • Alfred Hitchcock
  • Buster Keaton
  • Akira Kurosawa
  • Fritz Lang
  • Chris Marker
  • Hayao Miyazaki
  • F.W. Murnau
  • Mario O'Hara
  • Yasujiro Ozu
  • Jean Renoir
  • Isao Takahata
  • Orson Welles


Noel Vera is the regular film critic for Businessworld, and he is the author of "Critic After Dark: A Review of Philippine Cinema".

tally after this list / November 10, 2006


Hans Lucas (revised list)

  1. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
  2. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
  3. Greed (Erich von Stroheim, 1924)
  4. Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
  5. Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1966)
  6. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
  7. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
  8. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
  9. Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
  10. Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese, 1980)

Runners-up: Breathless, Chimes at Midnight, The Conformist, Contempt, The 400 Blows, The Rules of the Game, The Searchers, Sunrise, Tokyo Story, Touch of Evil, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Ugetsu, The Wizard of Oz

Top 10 Directors:

  1. Orson Welles
  2. Jean-Luc Godard
  3. Andrei Tarkovsky
  4. Carl Theodor Dreyer
  5. Stanley Kubrick
  6. Kenji Mizoguchi
  7. John Cassavetes
  8. Buster Keaton
  9. Jean Renoir
  10. Luis Buñuel

runners-up: Michelangelo Antonioni, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Max Ophuls, Yasujiro Ozu, Roberto Rosselini, Francois Truffaut

See also Han's previous list: Nov. 6, 2005

Hans Lucas is a film student at Savannah College of Art and Design.

tally after this list / November 9, 2006


Michael Parent (revised list)

  1. Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
  2. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)
  3. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
  4. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
  5. The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
  6. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
  7. Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936)
  8. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)
  9. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
  10. Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950)

My rule for my Top 10 is to only put one movie by director. This list could have been really longer and here are my runners-up: Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, 1954) The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957) Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1978) M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970) Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972) The Producers (Mel Brooks, 1968) Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie (Luis Bunuel, 1972) The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978) Fargo (Ethan & Joel Coen, 1995) Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991) Carrie (Brian DePalma, 1976) Grapes Of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) À Bout de Souffle (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960) The General (Buster Keaton, 1927) M (Fritz Lang, 1931) Dog Day Afternoon (Sydney Lumet, 1975) Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986) The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998) Nosferatu & Sunrise (F.W. Murnau, 1922 & 1927) Lola Montes (Max Öphuls, 1955) Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969) Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg, 1998) Andreï Rublev (Andreï Tarkovsky, 1966) Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1961) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1986) High Noon (Fred Zinneman, 1952).

Top 10 Directors:

  1. Stanley Kubrick
  2. Akira Kurosawa
  3. Alfred Hitchcock
  4. Martin Scorsese
  5. F.W. Murnau
  6. Ingmar Bergman
  7. François Truffaut
  8. Charles Chaplin
  9. Luis Buñuel
  10. Federico Fellini

See also Michael's previous list: Nov. 15, 2005

Michael Parent is a film enthusiast from Quebec City, Canada. He studies XXth Century History at University Laval. On his day job he works in archives (publications and records).

tally after this list / November 1, 2006


Jeffrey M. Anderson (revised list)

  1. La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928)
  2. Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
  3. Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965)
  4. Modern Times (Charles Chaplin, 1936)
  5. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
  6. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
  7. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1972)
  8. Close Up (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)
  9. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)
  10. Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991)

Top 10 Directors
  1. Orson Welles
  2. Alfred Hitchcock
  3. Buster Keaton
  4. Luis Buñuel
  5. Yasujiro Ozu
  6. Robert Bresson
  7. Charles Chaplin
  8. Howard Hawks
  9. Abbas Kiarostami
  10. David Cronenberg

See also Jeff's previous list: Oct. 19, 2005

Jeffrey Anderson's work as a film critic, interviewer and film historian has appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, the Oakland Tribune, the Silicon Valley Metro, the Las Vegas Weekly, on the web at www.combustiblecelluloid.com and www.bayinsider.com, as well as on National Public Radio. He is currently at work on his first book and became a new father in 2006.

tally after this list / October 28, 2006


Jesse Richards

(in no particular order)

  • Bande à part (Jean-Luc Godard, 1964)
  • L'Atalante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
  • L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
  • Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
  • Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
  • Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959)
  • The Foreigner (Amos Poe, 1978)
  • Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)
  • Ordet (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1955)
  • They Live By Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948)

These ten movies were really the ones that punched me in the guts and woke me up in some ways and made me understand the world and myself as a person even more than I could've expected. In the case of Dreyer it was a hard call between "Ordet" and "The Passion of Joan of Arc", as I think they are equally amazing. I had the same difficult choice for Nicholas Ray between "They Live By Night", "On Dangerous Ground" and "The Lusty Men" as those are all amazing as well. I also feel a bit guilty for not including Edgar G. Ulmer's "Detour", Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia", anything by Bresson, Orson Welles, Jules Dassin, Jean-Pierre Melville, Vittorio De Sica, Carol Reed or David Lynch- but I could only pick ten films....

Top 10 Directors (in no particular order):

  • Jean-Luc Godard
  • F.W. Murnau
  • Wong Kar-wai
  • Carl Th. Dreyer
  • Nicholas Ray
  • Jules Dassin
  • Yasujiro Ozu
  • Orson Welles
  • Robert Bresson
  • Jean-Pierre Melville

10 Directors I Dislike Immensely or Who Bore the Hell Out of Me:
  • Stanley Kubrick
  • Quentin Tarantino
  • Lars Von Trier
  • Ingmar Bergman
  • Federico Fellini
  • Vincent Gallo
  • Harmony Korine
  • Darren Aronofsky
  • Robert Towne (for ruining the film of my favorite novel "Ask the Dust")
  • Mel Gibson

Jesse Richards is a punk filmmaker, photographer and painter currently in western Massachusetts. He is the co-founder of Remodernist Film and Photography and was a member of the British art movement Stuckism for five years.

tally after this list / Oct 24, 2006


Andrew Horbal

  1. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
  2. La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)
  3. Early Summer (Yasujiro Ozu, 1951)
  4. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956)
  5. Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
  6. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
  7. The Apu Trilogy (Satyajit Ray, 1955-59)
  8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Sergio Leone, 1966)
  9. Masculine-Feminine (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966)
  10. Bob le flambeur (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1955)


Top 10 Directors:
  1. Michael Powell
  2. Jean-Luc Godard
  3. Yasujiro Ozu
  4. Woody Allen
  5. Preston Sturges
  6. Jean Cocteau
  7. Hayao Miyazaki
  8. Federico Fellini
  9. D.W. Griffith
  10. Ousmane Sembene

Andrew Horbal blogs about film criticism at No More Marriages! and contributes reviews and articles to a number of internet film sites, including the PopMatters and Lucid Screening.

tally after this list / July 31, 2006


Evan Mather

My list is as follows. Listed in chronological order that I first watched them, thereby impacting my film style and aesthetic:

  1. King Kong (Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)
  2. Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
  3. Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David & Jerry Zucker, 1980)
  4. Bananas (Woody Allen, 1971)
  5. Pee-wee's Big Adventure (Tim Burton, 1985)
  6. Blue Velvet (David Lynch, 1986)
  7. Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
  8. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)
  9. South Park: Bigger, Longer, & Uncut (Trey Parker, 1999)
  10. Singin' In The Rain (Stanley Donan & Gene Kelly, 1952)


Evan Mather is an independent filmmaker and animator based in Los Angeles. His eclectic body of work has screened at the Sundance Film Festival, South by Southwest, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Seoul Net Festival, and the One Reel Film Festival – as well as profiled in RES, Sight & Sound, Wired, Newsweek, Senses of Cinema, and The New York Times. He has been a guest lecturer at UCLA and MIT and the subject of a retrospective at the Seattle Art Museum.

tally after this list / July 30, 2006


Chris Cathcart

  1. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
  2. Nostalghia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983)
  3. Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
  4. The Trial (Orson Welles, 1962)
  5. Schizopolis (Steven Soderbergh, 1996)
  6. Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)
  7. Bad Company (Robert Benton, 1972)
  8. The Big Lebowski (Joel and Ethan Coen, 1998)
  9. Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)
  10. Picnic at Hanging Rock (Peter Weir, 1975)

Top 10 Directors:
  1. Jan Svankmajer
  2. Hal Ashby
  3. Hal Hartley
  4. Todd Haynes
  5. Alexander Payne
  6. Peter Weir
  7. Nicolas Roeg
  8. Joel and Ethan Coen
  9. David Lynch
  10. Werner Herzog

For these lists I engaged in a mix of voting for real high-up personal likes and voting strategically. There is a true convergence between these for the #1 film, which I really thinks belongs closer to the top ten in the overall ranking, and I just didn't feel right voting anything else above it. (I really like this film a lot.) Many of the others in my top ten films didn't even show up at all in the overall ranking, some of them rather inexplicably ( e.g., Come and See). Others I have great personal liking for and appeared in the overall rankings, but still much too low. I see that other true way-high-up personal likes (The Godfather, Persona, Taxi Driver, etc.) weren't badly in need of a boost in voting numbers. Other criteria: Major reluctance to include anything made within the past five years was a big part of my keeping Team America (Trey Stone and Matt Parker, 2004) and Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002) off the list. Also, my tastes tend strongly toward eye-candy visual masterpieces with substance behind them. I am in desperate search for more thoroughly neglected gems like Bad Company, which I encountered nearly by accident, having seen it only because I was on a Jeff Bridges viewing marathon.

I see that for the directors, many of my true high-up favorites (e.g. Kubrick, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Welles, Scorsese, etc.) were in little need of any numbers boosts or increased recognition. Several in my listing either didn't show up in the listings at all (something about underrated directors named Hal) or were high-up personal favorites but still low enough to deserve a boost. The closest convergence between way-underrated and personal favorite was #1, Svankmajer, the mad genius, who certainly merits much better than a #106 ranking (where it was prior to my voting).

Chris Cathcart has no official film-critic credentials; he's just a film buff with over 2,500 movie viewings logged so far. On the web, he maintains and regularly updates a compilation of favorite movies and resources.

tally after this list / July 7, 2006


John Young

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
  2. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
  3. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
  4. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
  5. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
  6. Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)
  7. City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
  8. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (Terry Gilliam & Terry Jones, 1975)
  9. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
  10. Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata, 1988)


Top 10 Directors:
  1. Stanley Kubrick
  2. Martin Scorsese
  3. Francis Ford Coppola
  4. Alfred Hitchcock
  5. Billy Wilder
  6. Federico Fellini
  7. Steven Spielberg
  8. Hayao Miyazaki
  9. Yasujiro Ozu
  10. Jean Renoir


See also John's revised list: Sept. 8, 2007

John Young is a cinema studies and print journalism major at the University of Southern California. He currently serves as the Film Editor for the USC Daily Trojan, and has also worked for The Orange County Register, OC Weekly, and Movieline's Hollywood Life magazine.

tally after this list / June 16, 2006


Kevin Cassidy

  1. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
  2. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964)
  3. Spring In a Small Town (Fei Mu, 1948)
  4. Heavens Gate (Michael Cimino, 1980)
  5. The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963)
  6. Gun Crazy (Joseph H Lewis, 1949)
  7. There was a Father (Yasujiro Ozu, 1942)
  8. The Night of the Shooting Stars (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1982)
  9. The Cloud-Capped Star (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960)
  10. Humanity and Paper Balloons (Sadao Yamanaka, 1937)


Top 5 Directors:
  1. Yasujiro Ozu
  2. Kenji Mizoguchi
  3. Hayao Miyazaki
  4. Douglas Sirk
  5. Robert Bresson

tally after this list / June 15, 2006


Colin McEvoy

  1. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)
  2. The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont, 1994)
  3. The Godfather (FRancis Ford Coppola, 1972)
  4. American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999)
  5. Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
  6. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)
  7. Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955)
  8. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
  9. The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kirshner, 1980)
  10. L.A. Confidential (Curtis Hanson, 1997)




tally after this list / June 14, 2006


Michael Sicinski

  1. Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)
  2. Unsere Afrikareise (Peter Kubelka, 1966)
  3. Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)
  4. Earth (Aleksander Dovzhenko, 1930)
  5. Weekend (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
  6. Gertrud (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1964)
  7. Still (Ernie Gehr, 1971)
  8. Bread and Flower / A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996)
  9. Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
  10. The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)


Excruciating to omit: Death By Hanging (Nagisa Oshima, 1968); In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950); Louisiana Story (Robert Flaherty, 1948); Not Reconciled (Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet, 1965); Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967); Report (Bruce Conner, 1967); Terre em Transe (Glauber Rocha, 1967); Titicut Follies (Frederick Wiseman, 1967); Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1959). Would probably be on the list above if I were more honest with myself: Airplane! (Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker, 1980).

Top 10 Directors:
  1. Stan Brakhage
  2. Michael Snow
  3. Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  4. Jean-Luc Godard
  5. Robert Bresson
  6. Claire Denis
  7. Ernie Gehr (NOTE: the single most underrated filmmaker in the history of the medium)
  8. Carl Th. Dreyer
  9. Josef von Sternberg
  10. Yasujiro Ozu

Michael Sicinski is a frequent contributor to Cinema Scope and Cineaste magazines, and maintains The Academic Hack, a film review website.

tally after this list / June 11, 2006

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