Decade Top Tens

Features, Mid-Lengths, Shorts

Ten Favorite Moving-Image Works

  1. A One and a Two… (Edward Yang)
  2. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
  3. Sunless (Chris Marker)
  4. A Touch of Zen (King Hu)
  5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
  6. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
  7. Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
  8. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
  9. Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo)
  10. Out 1: Noli me tangere (Jacques Rivette)

Ten Favorite Directors

  1. Edward Yang
  2. David Lynch
  3. Wong Kar-wai
  4. Hong Sang-soo
  5. Jacques Rivette
  6. Tsai Ming-liang
  7. King Hu
  8. Alain Resnais
  9. Éric Rohmer
  10. Johnnie To

2020s

  1. Drive My Car (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
  2. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
  3. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
  4. Walk Up (Hong Sang-soo)
  5. Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
  6. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
  7. Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
  8. The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo)
  9. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
  10. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)

2010s

  1. Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo)
  2. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)
  3. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
  4. Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch)
  5. La Flor (Mariano Llinás)
  6. The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo)
  7. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
  8. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz)
  9. Asako I & II (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
  10. The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

2000s

  1. A One and a Two… (Edward Yang)
  2. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
  3. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
  4. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
  5. Platform (Jia Zhangke)
  6. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
  7. Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin)
  8. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)
  9. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
  10. Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

1990s

  1. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
  2. Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai)
  3. Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan)
  4. Trust (Hal Hartley)
  5. Heat (Michael Mann)
  6. Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai)
  7. La Cérémonie (Chabrol)
  8. Mahjong (Edward Yang)
  9. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch)
  10. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami)

1980s

  1. Sunless (Chris Marker)
  2. L’Argent (Robert Bresson)
  3. A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
  4. The Killer (John Woo)
  5. Beijing Watermelon (Obayashi Nobuhiko)
  6. Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark)
  7. My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki Hayao)
  8. Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark)
  9. Pedicab Driver (Sammo Hung)
  10. Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme)

1970s

  1. A Touch of Zen (King Hu)
  2. Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
  3. Out 1: Noli me tangere (Jacques Rivette)
  4. (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton)
  5. Perceval le Gallois (Éric Rohmer)
  6. The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
  7. India Song (Marguerite Duras)
  8. Femmes Femmes (Paul Vecchiali)
  9. Dirty Ho (Lau Kar-leung)
  10. Eraserhead (David Lynch)

1960s

  1. The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy)
  2. Muriel, or the Time of Return (Alain Resnais)
  3. La Jetée (Chris Marker)
  4. Dragon Inn (King Hu)
  5. Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
  6. Wavelength (Michael Snow)
  7. All My Life (Bruce Baillie)
  8. Gertrud (Carl Th. Dreyer)
  9. The Love Eterne (Li Han-hsiang)
  10. Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)

1950s

  1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
  2. Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones)
  3. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa Akira)
  4. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
  5. Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi Kenji)
  6. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
  7. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks)
  8. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)
  9. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
  10. Tokyo Story (Ozu Yasujiro)

1940s

  1. Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli)
  2. Late Spring (Ozu Yasujiro)
  3. The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
  4. Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
  5. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)
  6. Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu)
  7. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
  8. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
  9. The Heiress (William Wyler)
  10. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks)

1930s

  1. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
  2. Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks)
  3. Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey)
  4. Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell)
  5. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
  6. Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg)
  7. The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey)
  8. M (Fritz Lang)
  9. A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir)
  10. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg)

1920s

  1. Napoléon (Abel Gance)
  2. Spione (Fritz Lang)
  3. The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman)
  4. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F. W. Murnau)
  5. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer)
  6. Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
  7. The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg)
  8. Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (Fritz Lang)
  9. Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
  10. Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)

Pre-1920s

  1. Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade)
  2. Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  3. Tih-Minh (Louis Feuillade)
  4. Fantômas (Louis Feuillade)
  5. The Musketeers of Pig Alley (D. W. Griffith)
  6. The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  7. The Sprinkler Sprinkled (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  8. Tunneling the English Channel (Georges Méliès)
  9. The Black Imp (Georges Méliès)
  10. A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès)

Features Only

Ten Favorite Feature Films

  1. A One and a Two… (Edward Yang)
  2. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
  3. Sunless (Chris Marker)
  4. A Touch of Zen (King Hu)
  5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
  6. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
  7. Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
  8. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
  9. Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo)
  10. Out 1: Noli me tangere (Jacques Rivette)

2020s

  1. Drive My Car (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
  2. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
  3. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
  4. Walk Up (Hong Sang-soo)
  5. Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
  6. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
  7. Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
  8. The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo)
  9. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
  10. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)

2010s

  1. Yourself and Yours (Hong Sang-soo)
  2. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)
  3. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang)
  4. Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch)
  5. La Flor (Mariano Llinás)
  6. The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo)
  7. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
  8. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz)
  9. Asako I & II (Hamaguchi Ryusuke)
  10. The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

2000s

  1. A One and a Two… (Edward Yang)
  2. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
  3. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
  4. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
  5. Platform (Jia Zhangke)
  6. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
  7. Oxhide II (Liu Jiayin)
  8. Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)
  9. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
  10. Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

1990s

  1. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
  2. Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai)
  3. Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan)
  4. Trust (Hal Hartley)
  5. Heat (Michael Mann)
  6. Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai)
  7. La Cérémonie (Chabrol)
  8. Mahjong (Edward Yang)
  9. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (David Lynch)
  10. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami)

1980s

  1. Sunless (Chris Marker)
  2. L’Argent (Robert Bresson)
  3. A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
  4. The Killer (John Woo)
  5. Beijing Watermelon (Obayashi Nobuhiko)
  6. Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark)
  7. My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki Hayao)
  8. Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark)
  9. Pedicab Driver (Sammo Hung)
  10. Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme)

1970s

  1. A Touch of Zen (King Hu)
  2. Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
  3. Out 1: Noli me tangere (Jacques Rivette)
  4. Perceval le Gallois (Éric Rohmer)
  5. The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)
  6. India Song (Marguerite Duras)
  7. Femmes Femmes (Paul Vecchiali)
  8. Dirty Ho (Lau Kar-leung)
  9. Eraserhead (David Lynch)
  10. Two English Girls (François Truffaut)

1960s

  1. The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy)
  2. Muriel, or the Time of Return (Alain Resnais)
  3. Dragon Inn (King Hu)
  4. Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais)
  5. Wavelength (Michael Snow)
  6. Gertrud (Carl Th. Dreyer)
  7. The Love Eterne (Li Han-hsiang)
  8. Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
  9. Yearning (Naruse Mikio)
  10. High and Low (Kurosawa Akira)

1950s

  1. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
  2. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa Akira)
  3. Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks)
  4. Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi Kenji)
  5. The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton)
  6. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks)
  7. Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)
  8. A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson)
  9. Tokyo Story (Ozu Yasujiro)
  10. Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock)

1940s

  1. Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli)
  2. Late Spring (Ozu Yasujiro)
  3. The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)
  4. Letter From an Unknown Woman (Max Ophuls)
  5. Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock)
  6. Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu)
  7. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
  8. His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
  9. The Heiress (William Wyler)
  10. The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks)

1930s

  1. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang)
  2. Only Angels Have Wings (Howard Hawks)
  3. Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey)
  4. The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir)
  5. Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg)
  6. The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey)
  7. M (Fritz Lang)
  8. A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir)
  9. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg)
  10. Fury (Fritz Lang)

1920s

  1. Napoléon (Abel Gance)
  2. Spione (Fritz Lang)
  3. The General (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman)
  4. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F. W. Murnau)
  5. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer)
  6. Greed (Erich von Stroheim)
  7. The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg)
  8. Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (Fritz Lang)
  9. Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
  10. Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)

Pre-1920s

  1. Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade)
  2. Tih-Minh (Louis Feuillade)
  3. Fantômas (Louis Feuillade)
  4. The Birth of a Nation (D. W. Griffith)

Mid-Lengths Only

Ten Favorite Mid-Length Films

  1. (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton)
  2. Wavelength (Michael Snow)
  3. Night and Fog (Alain Resnais)
  4. Zorns Lemma (Hollis Frampton)
  5. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
  6. Grass (Hong Sang-soo)
  7. Hill of Freedom (Hong Sang-soo)
  8. Surviving Desire (Hal Hartley)
  9. Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
  10. That Old Dream That Moves (Alain Guiraudie)

2020s

  1. in water (Hong Sang-soo)
  2. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Wes Anderson)
  3. Section 1 (Jon Bois)
  4. We Don’t Talk Like We Used To (Joshua Gen Solondz)
  5. earthearthearth (Saïto Daïchi)
  6. Man in Black (Wang Bing)
  7. ALLENSWORTH (James Benning)
  8. Rewind & Play (Alain Gomis)
  9. Introduction (Hong Sang-soo)
  10. EVENTIDE (Sharon Lockhart)

2010s

  1. Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard)
  2. Grass (Hong Sang-soo)
  3. Hill of Freedom (Hong Sang-soo)
  4. The Princess of France (Matías Piñeiro)
  5. No No Sleep (Tsai Ming-liang)
  6. Aragane (Oda Kaori)
  7. Claire’s Camera (Hong Sang-soo)
  8. Classical Period (Ted Fendt)
  9. El futuro (Luis López Carrasco)
  10. This Action Lies (James N. Kienitz Wilkins)

2000s

  1. That Old Dream That Moves (Alain Guiraudie)
  2. It Felt Like a Kiss (Adam Curtis)
  3. The Hand (Wong Kar-wai)
  4. Disorder (Huang Weikai)
  5. Through the Forest (Jean-Paul Civeyrac)
  6. L’Idiot (Pierre Léon)
  7. Lost in the Mountains (Hong Sang-soo)
  8. Profit motive and the whispering wind (John Gianvito)
  9. Looking for Tsai (Patrik Eriksson & Erik Hemmendorff)
  10. Petite conversation familiale (Hélène Lapiower)

1990s

  1. Surviving Desire (Hal Hartley)
  2. U.S. Go Home (Claire Denis)
  3. La Vie des morts (Arnaud Desplechin)
  4. Nitrate Kisses (Barbara Hammer)
  5. Xiao Shan Going Home (Jia Zhangke)
  6. The Mammals of Victoria (Stan Brakhage)

1980s

  1. Standard Gauge (Morgan Fisher)
  2. Contact (Alan Clarke)
  3. Les Sièges de l’Alcazar (Luc Moullet)
  4. American Dreams (Lost and Found) (James Benning)

1970s

  1. (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton)
  2. Zorns Lemma (Hollis Frampton)
  3. The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (Raúl Ruiz)
  4. One Way Boogie Woogie (James Benning)
  5. The Bench of Desolation (Claude Chabrol)
  6. Poetic Justice (Hollis Frampton)
  7. Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Joan Micklin Silver)
  8. Italianamerican (Martin Scorsese)
  9. From These Roots (William Greaves)
  10. Liza With a Z (Bob Fosse)

1960s

  1. Wavelength (Michael Snow)
  2. Not Reconciled (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
  3. Black Girl (Ousmane Sembène)
  4. The Immortal Story (Orson Welles)
  5. The War Game (Peter Watkins)
  6. Simon of the Desert (Luis Buñuel)
  7. The Koumiko Mystery (Chris Marker)
  8. The Brig (Jonas Mekas)
  9. The Trial of Joan of Arc (Robert Bresson)
  10. Pasazerka (Andrzej Munk)

1950s

  1. Night and Fog (Alain Resnais)
  2. Statues Also Die (Alain Resnais & Chris Marker & Ghislain Cloquet)
  3. Une simple histoire (Marcel Hanoun)

1940s

  1. I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur)
  2. Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer)
  3. The Leopard Man (Jacques Tourneur)

1930s

  1. A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir)
  2. The Mask of Fu Manchu (Charles Brabin)

1920s

  1. Seven Chances (Buster Keaton)
  2. Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov)
  3. Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton)
  4. The Seashell and the Clergyman (Germaine Dulac)
  5. Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff)

Shorts Only

Ten Favorite Short Films

  1. (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton)
  2. La Jetée (Chris Marker)
  3. Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones)
  4. All My Life (Bruce Baillie)
  5. Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  6. Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell)
  7. Night and Fog (Alain Resnais)
  8. Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky)
  9. Allures (Jordan Belson)
  10. The House Is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad)

2020s

  1. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Wes Anderson)
  2. The Daughters of Fire (Pedro Costa)
  3. earthearthearth (Saïto Daïchi)
  4. Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky)
  5. A Short Story (Bi Gan)
  6. The Sower of Stars (Lois Patiño)
  7. The Potemkinists (Radu Jude)
  8. If you could go back, I would see her. (Joshua R. Troxler)
  9. Labor of Love (Sylvia Schedelbauer)
  10. EVENTIDE (Sharon Lockhart)

2010s

  1. No No Sleep (Tsai Ming-liang)
  2. Engram of Returning (Saïto Daïchi)
  3. Arboretum Cycle (Nathaniel Dorsky)
  4. Les trois désastres (Jean-Luc Godard)
  5. Transformers: The Premake (Kevin B. Lee)
  6. List (Hong Sang-soo)
  7. This Action Lies (James N. Kienitz Wilkins)
  8. Shakti (Martín Rejtman)
  9. The Hedonists (Jia Zhangke)
  10. Redemption (Miguel Gomes)

2000s

  1. The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin)
  2. Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis (Saïto Daïchi)
  3. Origins of the 21st Century (Jean-Luc Godard)
  4. The Follow (Wong Kar-wai)
  5. The Skywalk Is Gone (Tsai Ming-liang)
  6. Lost in the Mountains (Hong Sang-soo)
  7. ( ) (Morgan Fisher)
  8. Cry Me a River (Jia Zhangke)
  9. Textism (Hirabayashi Isamu)
  10. Green Fuse (Saïto Daïchi)

1990s

  1. Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky)
  2. Je vous salue, Sarajevo (Jean-Luc Godard)
  3. Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (David Lynch)
  4. When It Rains (Charles Burnett)
  5. Ambition (Hal Hartley)
  6. Black Ice (Stan Brakhage)
  7. Am Meer (Ute Aurand)
  8. Zone (Ito Takashi)
  9. Theory of Achievement (Hal Hartley)
  10. Joy Street (Suzan Pitt)

1980s

  1. Spacy (Ito Takashi)
  2. Standard Gauge (Morgan Fisher)
  3. Thunder (Ito Takashi)
  4. Night Music (Stan Brakhage)
  5. Expectations (Edward Yang)
  6. Orderly or Disorderly (Abbas Kiarostami)
  7. Cat Listening to Music (Chris Marker)
  8. Ein Bild (Harun Farocki)
  9. Grim (Ito Takashi)
  10. Ghost (Ito Takashi)

1970s

  1. (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton)
  2. Serene Velocity (Ernie Gehr)
  3. Poetic Justice (Hollis Frampton)
  4. Asparagus (Suzan Pitt)
  5. Critical Mass (Hollis Frampton)
  6. Associations (John Smith)
  7. The United States of America (James Benning & Bette Gordon)
  8. Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg’s “Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene” (Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet)
  9. Projection Instructions (Morgan Fisher)
  10. La Soufrière (Werner Herzog)

1960s

  1. La Jetée (Chris Marker)
  2. All My Life (Bruce Baillie)
  3. Allures (Jordan Belson)
  4. The House Is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad)
  5. Mothlight (Stan Brakhage)
  6. Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage)
  7. Arnulf Rainer (Peter Kubelka)
  8. Cosmic Ray (Bruce Conner)
  9. The Nail Clippers (Jean-Claude Carriére)
  10. Castro Street (Bruce Baillie)

1950s

  1. Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones)
  2. Night and Fog (Alain Resnais)
  3. Le chant du Styrène (Alain Resnais)
  4. What’s Opera, Doc? (Chuck Jones)
  5. Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (Chuck Jones)
  6. Rabbit Seasoning (Chuck Jones)
  7. A Movie (Bruce Conner)
  8. Rabbit of Seville (Chuck Jones)
  9. Pescherecci (Vittorio De Seta)
  10. Surfarara (Vittorio De Seta)

1940s

  1. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid)
  2. Fireworks (Kenneth Anger)
  3. Radio Dynamics (Oskar Fischinger)

1930s

  1. Rose Hobart (Joseph Cornell)

1920s

  1. Un chien andalou (Luis Buñuel)
  2. Rain (Joris Ivens & Mannus Franken)
  3. Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff)
  4. Ballet mécanique (Fernand Léger & Dudley Murphy)
  5. The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (Robert Florey & Slavko Vorkapich)
  6. Liberty (Leo McCarey)
  7. Record 957 (Germaine Dulac)
  8. Brumes d’automne (Dimitri Kirsanoff)
  9. Tokyo March (Mizoguchi Kenji)

Pre-1920s

  1. Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in Lyon (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  2. The Musketeers of Pig Alley (D. W. Griffith)
  3. The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  4. The Sprinkler Sprinkled (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  5. Tunneling the English Channel (Georges Méliès)
  6. The Black Imp (Georges Méliès)
  7. A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès)
  8. The Baby’s Meal (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  9. Boat Leaving the Port (Louis & Auguste Lumière)
  10. The Unchanging Sea (D. W. Griffith)

Decision to Leave

Decision to Leave finds Park Chan-wook burrowing into, if not entirely new territory for South Korea’s preeminent crime filmmaker, then the foundations of his strongest aspects. The bifurcated telling of a detective’s (Park Hae-il) continuously shifting relationship with the wife (Tang Wei) of his latest investigation’s decedent, it operates almost polyrhythmically, letting the dead ends and often humorous tangents inherent to a bewildering murder case play out while remaining intently precise in its dealings with the beats from shot to shot. The visual schema constantly dazzles, employing bold diagonals, distorted and unexpected POVs, and superimpositions of digital information that playfully carries the film along its deliberately mirroring halves. But the true heart of the film rests in its potent riff on Vertigo, where identity is shaped along more ambiguous lines, and, above all, Tang’s performance, surely among the greatest by an actor not primarily speaking in their native language. Her capacity for simultaneous seeming total transparency and opacity molds the emotional tenors of the film, rendering it a tentative romance where the words — spoken in Korean or Mandarin — take on so many other unintended resonances. The entirely appropriate ending rings with such force because of the care and confidence placed in the proceedings, an exquisitely enigmatic dance which must end in the only way possible.

Triangle of Sadness

Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or-winning follow-up to his Palme d’Or winning The Square epitomizes a certain contradiction: he is a director who I wish I didn’t like as much as I do. In its tripartite narrative, which follows the disintegration of a relationship over the course of increasingly absurd circumstances, Triangle of Sadness does, all things considered, have little else on its mind aside from the skewering of the nouveau riche as their environments get turned upside down by machinery, unwelcome workers, and eventually the natural world itself. But while Östlund’s aims are fairly pat, aside from a late-breaking development which productively deepens the complexities of otherwise steadily declining relationships, his skill lies in the actual orchestration of his scenes, and in the touches of comedy that arise from carefully placed running gags. As might be expected from such a scattershot approach, the good and the bad (and the ugly) intermix freely throughout, often in the same scene. Östlund’s spare aesthetic, mostly conveyed in long shot, and his facility with actors as anchoring presences — in The Square Claes Bang; here, Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean, with Dolly de Leon coming to the fore in the last, crucially distended third — helps unite many of these sequences. And on some level, I find such devices as a woman who can only speak one German phrase, the elevation of aerosolized water to a necessary part of survival, and the sight of Woody Harrelson (as the Communist captain of the yacht which serves as the setting of the second act) and a Russian manure baron totally soused, reading Marx quotes back at each other over the intercom as the boat is battered by ocean waves irresistibly funny; your mileage will certainly vary.

Three Thousand Years of Longing

George Miller’s return to feature filmmaking after his career’s apotheosis Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) trades that film’s tactility and near-relentless narrative drive for something much more fantastical and circular, with largely mixed results. While Three Thousand Years of Longing takes as its jumping-off point the extended encounter between a narratologist (Tilda Swinton) and the djinn she unwittingly unleashes (Idris Elba), the film moves with uncertainty between their present-day hotel room and the simulacra of ancient times that the genie has experienced. Each of the three stories he tells revolves around the circumstances in which he was imprisoned, feeling free to meander through the massive, beautiful, and uncanny digital structures and the somewhat weaker stories, which vary between the joy of learning and the delight in grotesquerie. It truly is unfortunate that Miller’s worthy but limited effort — by his gleefully maximalist sensibilities that overwhelm the delicate tête-à-tête; by first too little, then too much footage of the present day; by a romance that, while affecting generally and carried out well by the two actors, feels schematic — came out just a year after Memoria. The fear and trembling in the face of the supernatural/extraterrestrial that Swinton conveyed so potently there reappears here in attenuated form; there is even a scene where the djinn acts as a radio receiver for all the noises of the modern world. Three Thousand Years of Longing and Miller himself are best in the moment, in little tricks and teleological progressions, which only inconsistently come to the surface here.