I was 16 when I set out on a mission to watch all of the great films. I began to have an obsession with works of art that joined the discussion for their medium's "greatest of all time" honor. Blood on the Tracks for music, The Wire for television, The Sound and the Fury for literature, & Las Meninas for painting just to name a few. I was set on finding the greatest film of all time.
I love how film dares to take us to places where we cannot go ourselves. I love when film transcends space and time to create an eternal moment. I love when films teach us valuable lessons about ourselves and the world we live in. I love when a film creates visual poetry. There’s nothing else like a great movie.
After 10 years, I've watched hundreds of critically acclaimed films and, after many hours of inner debate, I've landed on what I believe to be the 10 greatest films of all time. These are not my "favorite" movies ever, but if I were to release that list there would be a ton of overlap. If this was a list of my favorite movie then Swingers, Reservoir Dogs and Blue Velvet would have all made the cut. There Will Be Blood would crack the top 5. That list will be for another day. The following films are what I believe to be the greatest cinematic achievements of all time. As of this moment in 2020, this list stands, but as I grow, new films will be special to my heart and the list will change.
Honorable Mentions:
Tokyo Story (1953) - Yasujirō Ozu
No Country for Old Men (2007) - Joel & Ethan Coen
Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1972) - Werner Herzog
Schindler’s List (1993) - Steven Spielberg
Taxi Driver (1976) - Martin Scorsese
In The Mood For Love (2000) - Wong Kar-wai
Vertigo (1958) - Alfred Hitchcock
Pulp fiction (1994) - Quinten Tarantino
Ugetsu (1953) - Kenji Mizoguchi
Parasite (2019) - Bong Joon-ho
Breathless (1960) - Jean-Luc Godard
Seven Samauri (1954) - Akira Kurosawa
Hoop Dreams (1994) - Steve James
City of God (2002) - Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund
Mulholland Drive (2001) - David Lynch
After Hours (1985) - Martin Scorsese
Sideways (2004) - Alexander Payne
The Top 10
10. There Will Be Blood (2007) - Paul Thomas Anderson
Of all the great acting performances on this list, Daniel Day-Lewis gives us the strongest of the bunch in PT Anderson's 2007 epic There Will Be Blood. The film is adapted from an early 20th century by Sinclair Lewis titled Oil! about an oil magnate whose power appears limitless. The film differs from the book and turns into a Chester study of a man with blind ambition. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, a man with a mysterious past, motivated by nothing but money. He doesn't care about the communities he hurts or the step-son he alienates while on his way to the top. He's a ruthless businessman, always on the lookout for his next big oil score. The film is filled with beautiful shots of the desert. Like Kane, the film is about the destructive nature of pure ambition and greed. Both films touch on the devastating effects of what happens when a man behaves as a god. I saw it for the first time when I was a teenager and it made a huge impression on me. I remember wanting to achieve Palinview’s level of success while being able to keep my soul and my sanity. I guess time will tell.
9. Citizen Kane (1941) - Orson Wells
Kane usually ranks in the first or second spot on the majority of lists attempting to name the best films. Orson Wells rightfully deserves all of the praise he gets and then some. Citizen Kane was the first film to incorporate several of the film techniques that it uses, most of which too technical get into here. Those asides, the film is deeply thematic, showing the rise and fall (at least spiritually) of a great man. It shows him in all of his highest triumphs, lowest trenches, and all of the micro wins and losses along the way. It teaches that the good and bad moments of childhood follow us for the rest of our lives. It teaches about success and the virtue of obsession. Ultimately it displays the dark side of ambition and success, serving as a cautionary tale for generations of moviegoers. It's a hell of a movie, even in 2020.
8. Spirited Away (2001) - Hayao Miyazaki
The only animated film on this list, Spirited Away deserves an endless amount of praise. What makes it so impressive is the fruits of its creativity. Not a single corner is cut. In every inch of the frame, there is action. The film requires multiple viewings to truly capture the magic of Spirited Away and rewards its most attentive viewers. It's difficult to look past the beautiful animation, but once you do, you find the gold standard for fantasy and adventure.
Chihiro is a 10-year-old girl who is reluctant to move to a new city when her parents arrive at an abandoned monument. There's free food, which they begin to feast on, but Chihiro denies it, claiming it to be wrong to eat food that isn't there's. Her parents turn to pigs and Chihiro is trapped in the spirit world. Over the next two hours, we embark on a quest for Chihiro to escape the spirit world and get her parents back.
The film comments on the mundaneness of adult life, environmental pollution, the virtue of selflessness, the difference between right and wrong, and the hero’s journey. Above all else, it's about being pure of heart. There's a scene on a train where Chihiro is surrounded by ghost-like figures resembling commuters from corporate jobs. It struck a chord with me because it made me realize that all adults are just shells of their childhood selves. It is possible to not let that inner child within you die. This film fills me that hope.
7. Casablanca (1942) Michael Curtiz
Casablanca is the perfect film. There is action, romance, laughs, and tears. You should all be familiar with the storyline by now, so I won't dive into what it is all about. I will tell you how the film makes the audience feel. The characters are realistic enough for you to be able to trade places with, making their struggles your struggles. They are vulnerable, reserved, confident, insecure. They're sad about what is going on in the world at the time, but it doesn't stop them from loving passionately. It fills us with pride and hopes that man will always end up doing the right thing.
I must have seen this film for the first time 15 or so years ago and it has only gotten better with age. For a film that is pushing 80, it doesn't feel outdated in norms or conducts. In fact, many of the film's famous quotes have been canonized as common colloquial speech. Casablanca is the gift that keeps on giving. I promise.
6. Apocalypse Now (1979) - Francis Ford Coppola
Many moviegoers would scoff at this pick, citing either The Godfather or The Godfather Part 2 as Coppola's finest film. There is a difference between what is better and what is more popular. The Godfather and it's successor are both great films - slightly overrated as time passes- but fine films nonetheless. Apocalypse Now on the other hand was snubbed for Best Picture at the Academy Awards and has long flown under the radar compared to Coppola's more well-known films to the average viewer.
Let's make no mistake here, Apocalypse Now is a horror film. It's about a war captain's mission to locate and disarm an American captain that has seized a tribe in the Vietnam jungle and is controlling it like a god. Martin Sheen plays the captain tasked with finding captain Kurtz, played by Marlon Brando. It's a horror film about the effects of war. It's a horror film about the dark side of obsession. It's a horror film about the darkness of the human soul.
The film is very close in plot and style to another great film mentioned in this piece, Werner Herzog's Aguirre, The Wrath of God (1971). Both films could have been placed on this list but since they're so similar, I figured having only one would make sense. After watching both films multiple times, I ultimately decided that Apocalypse Now is indeed, the stronger of the two films.
Francis Ford Coppola adapted the screenplay from Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, which takes place along the Congo River. Adapted for the war in Vietnam, the cast and crew spent months with the pressures of the river and the jungle crashing in on them. Coppola suffered a heart attack and nearly lost his life to make this movie happen. I'm glad he survived because this would have been the biggest movie question mark of all time.
5. La Règle du Jeu (The Rules of the Game) (1939) - Jean Renoir
I watched The Rules of the Game very early in quarantine. I had just subscribed to the Criterion Channel and it was the first film I chose to watch. I was blown away by how advanced the camera work was for a film made 81 years ago. The characters are all vain, adulterous, and greedy. Despite how unlikable they may be and how terrible their behavior is, I never wanted it to end. The camera gripped me and pulled me into the world of high society France right before World War II. What we see is a comedy of errors of characters lusting after married men and women, deception, and decadence in this humerus critique of the French aristocracy. I felt like I was dancing with the camera, weaving in and out of the lives of these sinners. It's a funny film that comes with a sweet message: "nothing is that serious." This is simply the greatest film to come out of France.
4. Raging Bull (1980) Martin Scorsese
I bought a DVD copy of Raging Bull for $6 from a video store that was going out of business in 2011. I was with my best friend and we were eating at the food court before going to a friend’s house to play basketball. When we got back to my house it was already 1 AM, but we stayed up until the very end of the film and fell asleep in my living room once the credits rolled. I knew that I had just watched something great, but I didn't know how great it was until I watched it a handful of times. Robert De Niro gives a tour-de-force performance as the brutish middle-weight boxer Jake La Motta. He's an insecure, abusive, jealous boxer who takes punishment in the ring as a reconciliation for his sins outside of it. He alienates everyone in his life and makes a complete mess of himself, just to be able to find retribution at the end. Scorsese's boxing scenes look as realistic as a real prizefight. He incorporates animal noises in some of the fight scenes. The film is a marvel down to the technical detail. It's a film that saved Scorsese's life (he was struggling with drug addiction after a couple of bad films and did a stint in the hospital) because he and De Niro were making it for themselves. More often than not, true art comes from a deep pain within its creators. While we wish for the beauty in life to be seen by all who live it, we are grateful for the artists who transcended their pain to propel them to make something great. Examples of this are all over this list, but none more poignant than Scorsese's masterpiece, Raging Bull.
3. Moonlight (2016) - Barry Jenkins
The most recent film on this list is Barry Jenkins's Best picture Winner, Moonlight. The movie was originally supposed to be a play titled In The Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue, and is now synonymous with the infamous envelope mix-up at the 2017 Academy Awards. It's a beautiful film about growing up poor, gay, and black in America, following its protagonist through 3 distinctive periods in his life including childhood where he finds himself under the wing of a local drug dealer, played by Mahershala Ali. Ali's Juan defies the traditional heteronormative masculine norms of a black drug dealer. We find him conflicted, passionate, and caring despite his harsh environment. His performance earned him his first statue. Like most films on this list, it's innovative and detailed down to the granular level. It's a challenging film that strives to make the viewers see a marginalized group of people in a completely new light. It's one of the most humanizing films that I've ever seen with genuine human emotion in every close-up. I understand that this is the most controversial pick on the list because it's only four years old, but I believe this will stand the test of time. Some great films get lost in time, but this will not be one of them.
2. La Dolce Vita (1960)- Federico Fellini
This is somewhat of a personal pick for me, as many film historians would point to 8 1/2 as Fellini's best film. I've always opted for La Dolce Vita, as it has become very important to my life. Roger Ebert echoed a similar sentiment "I was an adolescent for whom 'the sweet life'' represented everything I dreamed of: sin, exotic European glamour, the weary romance of the cynical newspaperman." La Dolce Vita taught me important lessons at a young age about happiness and vanity. It's the first film I saw that displayed the "all that glitters isn't gold" creed that you hear about so often. Above all else, it's a beautiful movie where our hero embarks on a doomed mission, looking for the things that are impossible to find. The fountain scene is its most famous, one that I’ve tried to recreate in my own life. I must have watched the three-hour picture over 50 times by now. Read my analysis of La Dolce Vita here.
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - Stanley Kubrick
What can you say about Kubrick's opus that already hasn't already been said? Many people think that Kubrick filmed a fake moon landing for the United States government because of how realistic the lunar surface appears in this film. Very few films are as grand in scope and vision as 2001 is. Kubrick wasn't as occupied with dialogue (there's only a bit over 40 minutes of dialogue in the film’s 2 hours and 28-minute runtime) as he was with the transcendent themes of the picture. The film at its core is about man's quest for knowledge and advancement. It's a character study of all of us seeking to explain where we came from, why we are the way that we are, and where we're going next. The film is 52 years old and it still feels decades ahead of its time. The ending has perplexed film lovers since the film's release. It's one that I thought about for weeks after I first saw it in 2014. I must have come up with half a dozen different interpretations of what Kubrick was trying to tell us, but I'm sure I'm still missing the bullseye. That's the genius of Kubrick, cinema's all-time most accomplished director, at work. It's simply the greatest film I have ever seen, the greatest I’ll ever.
Peace and Love