The top ten:



"Chapter one. He adored New York City. He idolized it all out of proportion."

10. Manhattan (1979) - Though he is far too prolific to hit a home run each time at bat, the result tends to be extra special when writer/director Woody Allen is engaged, inspired, and on point. A suitable case in point is this film, arguably his magnum opus. It finds him neither in his broadest comic mode nor at his most grim, probing, and imitation Swedish, but instead its free-floating story of the neuroses plagued lives and loves of a group of urban sophisticates sits perfectly at the halfway point where his most amusing and most tender instincts meet. And paired with legendary director of photography Gordon Willis, whose other credits include the three Godfather films, Allen uses nearly every B&W frame to create a dramatic, nostalgic, romantic, and otherwise majestic cinematic vision of the title borough.

"We heard Manhattan before we ever saw it, a thousand strange voices coming from everywhere."

9. In America (2003) - Known best for a trio of celebrated Daniel Day-Lewis vehicles, My Left Foot, In the Name of the Father (featured on my list), and the slightly more quietly received The Boxer, the most personal film by the great Irish director Jim Sheridan is In America, which he wrote alongside his daughters Kirsten and Naomi. (The three shared an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.) Set in the 1980s, the partly autobiographical film focuses on a family in crisis who illegally emigrate from Ireland to the United States via the Canadian border and rent a cramped apartment in an unruly building in Hell's Kitchen. The father is an aspiring actor prone to self-loathing and outbursts of rage. He is estranged from his wife, grieving more openly for their deceased son, and the two are observed with concern and devotion by their two surviving daughters. Through very personal writing and superb performances, including the charming and delicate ones delivered by real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger, the family dynamic (the ways they love and hurt and hide from and discover one another) comes alive in a resonant and vivid way. And as an American, it is interesting and moving to see a film so persuasive in its portrayal, from an outsider's perspective, of the States as a place of danger, magic, potential, and redemption. An old cliché rings true here: you will laugh, you will cry. You will because this often painful, yet also unashamedly hopeful film is exploding with complicated and genuine life.

Outstanding choice, I really wanted to put In America in my top 100, might do so in future, love that film.

I love Woody Allen. Everything he touches, I adore. The only thing is, I haven't seen much of his stuff. I find his stuff isn't too accessible to people like me, therefore I have to seek it out, which I haven't done too often. I really need to see Manhattan. It's one of those classic films that it seems everyone has seen but me. I loved Annie Hall, Bananas and Midnight in Paris so I really should start downloading his films this instant (starting with Manhattan, then probably Match Point, Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Too Afraid to Ask, and To Rome With Love).

"Six hours later, she fell in love with another man."

8. Chungking Express (1994) - The origin of this film is interesting and a tad unusual: exhausted and frustrated during the prolonged production and post-production of the expensive period martial-arts epic Ashes of Time, then up-and-coming Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai decided to direct another, simpler, more straightforward film as a reprieve to ease his mind and cleanse his creative palate. The result, championed in the West by Quentin Tarantino, proved far more popular around the globe, and far more important in the development of Wong's iconoclastic career, than the more ambitious, forever troubled Ashes of Time. Perhaps described best as a high-octane romantic suspense film, the film fuses two stories which only briefly connect. Both center on youthful policemen, one played by Tony Leung, Wong's charismatic go-to leading man, both left forlorn by the end of long-term relationships and the dynamic women they encounter by chance. The two-in-one saga, an electrifying and euphoric pop song of a film with an unbound visual imagination, is an ode to youth, love, heartache, the Mamas and the Papas, and the magic and menace of the city at night.

You should also definitely see Crimes and Misdemeanors and Zelig.

You should see Interiors, September and Another Woman first.

September is a bit undervalued.

"The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you."

7. Lost in Translation (2003) - If she did not achieve it with her very fine directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola more than transcended her father's famous name to establish herself as one of the premiere American directors of her generation with her second film, the subtle and romantic masterpiece Lost in Translation. A profound and unusual love story focused in its entirety on conversation and understanding and never building to the conventional release of a sexual encounter, the film turns on Bob, an aging film star who has come to the Japanese capital to film a television spot for an alcohol company, and Charlotte, a recent university graduate there with her husband, a distracted photographer. Both adrift and uncertain in their lives, a sensation symbolized and compounded by the foreign location, they find each other in a hotel bar and bond over the course of a few special days, days which prove formative for her and revitalizing for him. There are many interesting and worthy films in the world, and it can be hard to specify why a select few touch our hearts and souls. At times, the best explanation one can conjure is to say the film achieves its every goal and just gets every element right, which I believe to be true of Lost in Translation. The amount of sympathy for the characters Coppola draws from the audience through intimate drama laced with spot-on humor is vast, and her casting choices are ace. Bill Murray further solidifies his status as a hero of the art-house here and delivers the performance of his career in a role which demands he both use the dry comic style for which he is iconic and also portray moments of real, often internalized despondency and regret. And before she became a more conventional blonde bombshell, not to mention an Avenger, Scarlett Johansson is a captivating and delicate presence, a beautiful girl next door with certain otherworldly air of elegance. The film builds to a grace note among grace notes, the unheard farewell whisper which sends one's imagination into overdrive as a cathedral sized song by the Jesus and Mary Chain begins to play.

I quite liked Lost in Translation. I'd need to give it another watch, though. And the ending is a bit weird and unneeded.

Noted.

Ironically, I expect that of all the above films you will least like the one which set the plan in motion. Also, keep in mind that if you do like it, people will think you sold your soul.

'Sold soul'... Sounds as if it is meant to happen.

"We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've lived or feel we've had enough time."

6. Never Let Me Go (2010) - The Japanese born British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro (whose earlier hit The Remains of the Day was also adapted into a grade-A film which only just failed to place on my list) is my favorite living author, and his Never Let Me Go is my favorite novel. As this film adaptation came together with a top-flight cast of fresh faces and a promising behind-the-scenes team, I found myself both excited beyond belief and also a bit nervous, the type of contradictory blend a dream project can often arouse in a fan. It, however, more than met my high expectations upon its release in September 2010. Both the novel and the film are set in an alternate vision of Britain in which scientists perfected cloning in the 20th century and established a system in which cloned children are created, raised in seclusion, and then used to harvest organs required by quote-unquote real people. The storyline turns on three such children, tracing their coming-of-age, and the emergence of a love triangle, from boarding school onward until they begin their donations in their twenties and face "completion," the softer word they use to denote death. The science-fiction conceit is interesting on two levels. It reflects the sadly startling capacity of people throughout history to bow their heads in the face of violent subjugation. Whether because of brainwashing or simple fear, there is often only one Spartacus among hundreds or thousands of victimized slaves. The clones' on-a-deadline existence, in which they are forced to act out a lifetime of anger, desire, and regret within a limited amount of time, is a also an intriguing tool with which to contemplate mortality in general and the way our still relatively scarce years slip away, the content of each often determined by tides unknown to us or at least out of our direct control. It is heavy in both senses, but the film, with its host of full-bodied performances (not only by the three leads, but also the estimable Charlotte Rampling) and reserved sophistication, has the required strength in subtlety to realize Ishiguro's melancholy literary vision in a cinematic context. The story and characters are of enormous significance to me, and, to be honest, I felt upset when the film failed to find an audience during its theatrical run. I do my best, though, to share it with as many people as I can, even if not everyone ends up as over the moon for it as I am.

I haven't seen Heat in your list yet. Didn't realise it was Top 5 material for you.

Algrens list is better than this.

Nobody will care when you do your list.

I don't plan on doing a list.

Agree with Magnus on Lost.

Werewolf in London is my next netflix movie, it might even be in the mailbox right now. And I did that before seeing this so don't you go taking all the credit if I really like it.

boooo Joe Wright booooo


I saw Manhattan shortly after Annie Hall blew me away, but have a hard time remembering anything that happened. I gave it 3 stars on flix so it couldn't have been too bad. Sadly those are the only two old Allen's I've seen, up until 2000's Small Time Crooks which I guess could be considered old now.

I think #1 overall will be Jacob's Ladder, which I might boo, might not. It's an OK movie.

I care.










I need some good comedy.

I would probably list a few good comedies in my list.

never let me go is an amazing book. i do want to see the movie...

Although Algren's list (tied with Corpse's) is the one with the least amount of matches with mine (at least until David finishes his), it's not my least favorite. That's because some of the non matches from the other ones I really don't like while a lot of the non matches from Algren I do enjoy, although not enough to place in mine.

My fave so far is Magnus, at least until it's trixster's turn. I have a feeling I will enjoy his too.

Sofia Coppola is like Joe Wright, first movie is the best and all others diminish in quality.
Virgin Suicides>Lost in Translation>Marie Antoinette>Somewhere
Pride and Prejudice>Atonement>The Soloist>Hannah>Anna Karenina

You would enjoy mine.

Well, I also have a crush on Zooey Deschanel, so maybe I will, as it seems we have some things in common.

Like we both are men. Who like women. Yay!

You can become my new Mr. X.