Years ago I saw and argued in print with a Hong Kong reviewer, who disparaged the film. And now I see how right I was to defend it!
Great performance by Al Pacino, in a deft screenplay, whose power is masked by the film presenting itself more as entertainment than biting satire – a film that puts the New York legal system to the blade.
| The Paper | Ron Howard |
| Delicatessen | Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro |
“When they bleached your hair, they must have bleached your brain too.”
“Does it makes sense that a multi-million dollar income should go untaxed year after year?”
“The Committee’s not an independent operation. Everything is cleared with the White House.”
“Let us fight to free the world to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all people’s happiness.”
| All the President’s Men | Alan J. Pakula |
| Nashville | Robert Altman |
| Salaam Bombay! | Mira Nair |
| The Great Dictator | Charlie Chaplin |
These films are not the best perhaps, or even the best 63 films I have seen, though they would be very close to that.
I simply laid them down without prior thought of ordering or listing them in any kind or categorisation of this or that.
The only change was to add Gosford Park by Robert Altman, and to do that I dropped Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay! which should not be left out, but I kept Monsoon Wedding which I adored when I first saw it and still do.
So the filmmakers and films are all great and in no way am I listing them in order of best – first to worst. There are no second-best or best here. They are simply all magnificent for all their own reasons and appeared as I remembered them and wrote them down.
Tell me what you think – offer suggestions – i.e. if you wish to.
| One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest | Milos Forman |
| Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid | George Roy Hill |
| The Last Picture Show | Peter Bogdanovich |
| Apocalypse Now | Francis Ford Coppola |
| Rear Window | Alfred Hitchcock |
| King of Comedy | Martin Scorsese |
| Raging Bull | Martin Scorsese |
| The Good the Bad and the Ugly | Sergio Leone |
| Little Miss Sunshine | Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton |
| Pulp Fiction | Quentin Tarantino |
| Reservoir Dogs | Quentin Tarantino |
| Casablanca | Michael Curtiz |
| Dog Day Afternoon | Sydney Lumet |
| The Godfather | Francis Ford Coppola |
| Unforgiven | Clint Eastwood |
| 2001 A Space Odyssey | Stanley Kubrick |
| Amadeus | Milos Forman |
| Blade Runner | Ridley Scott |
| The Thing | John Carpenter |
| Ace in the Hole | Billy Wilder |
| The Verdict | Sydney Lumet |
| Network | Sydney Lumet |
| Sideways | Alexander Payne |
| The French Connection | William Friedkin |
| The Godfather II | Francis Ford Coppola |
| A Clockwork Orange | Stanley Kubrick |
| Paths of Glory | Stanley Kubrick |
| Lawrence of Arabia | David Lean |
| Easy Rider | Dennis Hopper |
| Chinatown | Roman Polanski |
| 8 1/2 | Federico Fellini |
| La Dolce Vita | Federico Fellini |
| The Conversation | Francis Ford Coppola |
| Out of Africa | Sydney Pollack |
| Annie Hall | Woody Allen |
| Hannah and Her Sisters | Woody Allen |
| Deconstructing Harry | Woody Allen |
| Broadway Danny Rose | Woody Allen |
| Amarcord | Federico Fellini |
| Day for Night (La Nuit américaine) | Francois Truffaut |
| La règle du jeu | Jean Renoir |
| Crimes and Misdemeanours | Woody Allen |
| The French Connection II | William Friedkin |
| Thelma and Louise | Ridley Scott |
| Gandhi | Richard Attenborough |
| American Graffiti | George Lucas |
| Atlantic City | Louis Malle |
| Das Boot | Wolfgang Petersen |
| Monsoon Wedding | Mira Nair |
| Gosford Park | Robert Altman |
| Witness | Peter Weir |
| Persona | Ingmar Bergman |
| Wild Strawberries | Ingmar Bergman |
| Cries and Whispers | Ingmar Bergman |
| Autumn Sonata | Ingmar Bergman |
| The Truman Show | Peter Weir |
| Fanny and Alexander | Ingmar Bergman |
| War and Peace | Sergei Bondarchuk |
| Yojimbo | Akira Kurosawa |
| Rashomon | Akira Kurosawa |
| Paris Texas | Wim Wenders |
| Schindler’s List | Steven Spielberg |
| Jaws | Steven Spielberg |
From the moment in Annie Hall when he led Marshall McLuhan out from behind a film hoarding in a New York cinema I have been a huge fan of Woody Allen. He is America’s best writer director of ensemble urban comedies – truly a unique filmmaker.
Swimanog 