Eighteen of the thirty-one below share the top rating, which is unusual and says something about how these films reach an English-speaking audience. Almost nothing crosses the language barrier by accident. What arrives has already been selected several times over, so the baseline is higher than it is in any domestic list.
The other pattern is technical. A disproportionate number of these did not just tell a story well, they invented something. Montage, neorealism, jump cuts, the heroic bloodshed grammar that American action films have been borrowing for thirty years.
Every rating is the one carried by the review it links to. Ties are broken by year.
1. Battleship Potemkin (1925)
► Read the full review of Battleship Potemkin (1925)
"Eisenstein invented montage here and every film you have seen uses it."
Potemkin is first because almost every film on this list and off it is using a grammar this one formalised. Eisenstein’s position was that meaning is produced by the collision between two shots rather than by either shot, and he built the film to prove it.
The Odessa Steps sequence is the most analysed five minutes in cinema and the massacre it depicts did not happen. Eisenstein invented it, and it has been cited as history so often that the invention is now the popular memory of 1905.
The technique is the legacy. Cutting for emotional collision rather than for spatial continuity is something no filmmaker since has worked without, and the pram on the steps has been restaged by De Palma, Gilliam and a hundred others.
The Odessa Steps massacre did not happen. Eisenstein invented it, and it has been cited as history so often that the invention is now the popular memory of 1905.
The pram on the steps has been restaged by De Palma, Gilliam and a hundred others, usually without the montage theory that produced it.
It was commissioned for the twentieth anniversary of the revolution and Eisenstein was twenty-seven when he made it.
2. Metropolis (1927)
► Read the full review of Metropolis (1927)
"The visual template for a century of science fiction, made before anybody had seen one."
Metropolis supplied the architecture of almost every cinematic future since, and it did so with no precedent to draw on. A city divided vertically between owners above and workers below, and an artificial woman built to incite them.
The production nearly bankrupted UFA. It used around thirty-seven thousand extras, took over a year, and the flooding sequences reportedly left children standing in cold water for days, which Lang later acknowledged with some discomfort.
It was cut heavily after its premiere and a substantial portion was considered lost for eighty years, until a near-complete print was found in a museum in Buenos Aires in 2008 and restored.
The production nearly bankrupted UFA, used around thirty-seven thousand extras and took over a year.
The flooding sequences reportedly left children standing in cold water for days, which Lang later acknowledged with some discomfort.
It was cut heavily after its premiere and a substantial portion was considered lost for eighty years until a near-complete print was found in Buenos Aires in 2008.
3. Bicycle Thieves (1948)
► Read the full review of Bicycle Thieves (1948)
"Non-professional actors, real streets, and a plot about a stolen bicycle."
Bicycle Thieves is the foundation document of neorealism and its power is entirely proportional. A man needs his bicycle to keep the job that feeds his family, it is stolen, and he spends a day searching Rome with his son.
The stakes are small and total at once, which is a combination almost no film manages. A bicycle is worth nothing and is the difference between employment and destitution, so every scene carries weight without any escalation.
Lamberto Maggiorani was a factory worker and Enzo Staiola was found watching the crew in the street. De Sica turned down American financing that was conditional on casting Cary Grant, which would have destroyed the entire premise.
Lamberto Maggiorani was a factory worker and Enzo Staiola was found watching the crew in the street.
De Sica turned down American financing conditional on casting Cary Grant, which would have destroyed the premise entirely.
A bicycle is worth nothing and is the difference between employment and destitution, which means the stakes are at maximum from the first scene.
4. Wild Strawberries (1957)
► Read the full review of Wild Strawberries (1957)
"An old man drives to collect an honorary degree and reviews his life on the way."
Wild Strawberries is the most accessible of Bergman’s major works because the structure is a road trip and the dreams are integrated rather than announced. A professor drives to Lund to receive an honour and confronts his own coldness across a single day.
Bergman cast Victor Sjöström, who had been a founding director of Swedish cinema and was seventy-eight, in what became his final role. Casting the father of the national cinema as a man auditing his own legacy is not subtle and is entirely effective.
The opening dream, with the handless clock and the faceless man and the coffin that contains him, is the most frequently imitated sequence in the director’s output.
Bergman cast Victor Sjöström, a founding director of Swedish cinema, at seventy-eight, in what became his final role.
Casting the father of the national cinema as a man auditing his own legacy is not subtle and is entirely effective.
The opening dream, with the handless clock and the coffin that contains him, is the most imitated sequence in his filmography.
5. La Dolce Vita (1960)
► Read the full review of La Dolce Vita (1960)
"Seven nights in Rome, no plot, and it gave the language the word paparazzi."
La Dolce Vita has no causal structure at all, which was the provocation in 1960 and is the reason it still works. Seven episodes across seven nights with no arc, connected only by a journalist who is present at each.
The photographer character is named Paparazzo and the word entered English, Italian and most European languages from this film, which is a rare case of a work naming the profession it was describing.
It was condemned by the Vatican, which guaranteed its success, and won the Palme d’Or. The Trevi Fountain sequence is the most reproduced image in Italian cinema and the film containing it is three hours of despair.
The photographer character is named Paparazzo and the word entered English, Italian and most European languages from this film.
It was condemned by the Vatican, which guaranteed its success, and won the Palme d’Or.
The Trevi Fountain sequence is the most reproduced image in Italian cinema and the film containing it is three hours of despair.
6. 8½ (1963)
► Read the full review of 8½ (1963)
"A film director cannot make his film, so the film becomes about not making it."
8½ is the foundational document of modernist cinema and the ancestor of every subsequent film about the difficulty of making one. Fellini was blocked, had a production waiting, and made the block itself the subject.
The commitment is what separates it from its imitators. Fellini does not resolve the confusion into a lesson or arrive at a redemptive insight. Guido never makes the film, the set is dismantled, and the ending is a circus procession that means whatever the viewer needs.
The title refers to Fellini’s own filmography, being his eighth and a half work counting collaborations as halves, which is the most Fellini fact available about it.
Fellini was blocked, had a production waiting, and made the block itself the subject rather than cancelling.
The title refers to his own filmography, being his eighth and a half work counting collaborations as halves.
Guido never makes the film, the set is dismantled, and the ending is a circus procession that means whatever the viewer needs.
7. High and Low (1963)
► Read the full review of High and Low (1963)
"Kurosawa’s best contemporary film, and it splits cleanly into two halves."
High and Low is the most structurally confident film on this list. A shoe executive about to stake everything on a takeover learns his chauffeur’s son has been kidnapped in mistake for his own, and must decide whether to pay a ransom that will ruin him for a child not his.
The first hour is a chamber drama in a single room, shot in widescreen with the characters arranged in depth, and the decision is made at the midpoint. The second hour leaves the room entirely and becomes a police procedural through Yokohama.
The transition works because the hinge is a choice. Once Gondo decides, the room has no further function, so the film abandons it. The single spot of colour in a black-and-white film, pink smoke from a chimney, is the only one Kurosawa ever used.
The first hour is a chamber drama in a single room shot in widescreen with characters arranged in depth.
The single spot of colour in a black-and-white film, pink smoke from a chimney, is the only one Kurosawa ever used.
Mifune plays a shoe executive rather than a warrior, which is the most against-type casting of their partnership.
8. Persona (1966)
► Read the full review of Persona (1966)
"An actress stops speaking and her nurse cannot stop, and the film itself breaks."
Persona is Bergman’s most demanding work and the one that admits it is a film. An actress stops speaking mid-performance and is sent to a seaside house with a nurse who talks enough for both, and their identities begin to merge.
The celluloid appears to burn through partway, the projector is shown, and the film restarts. That gesture, declaring that this is an object being run through a machine rather than a window onto anything, predates most of the theory written about it.
Bergman made it after a serious illness while unsure he would work again, and the monologue delivered twice, once on each woman’s face, is the single boldest editing decision in his filmography.
The celluloid appears to burn through partway, the projector is shown, and the film restarts, which predates most of the theory written about it.
Bergman made it after a serious illness while unsure he would work again.
The monologue delivered twice, once on each woman’s face, is the single boldest editing decision in his filmography.
9. Le Samouraï (1967)
► Read the full review of Le Samouraï (1967)
"The founding text of the quiet assassin, and Delon barely speaks."
Le Samouraï established a character type that has been in continuous use for nearly sixty years. Every laconic professional in cinema, from Ghost Dog to Drive to John Wick, is downstream of Melville’s contract killer.
The opening is the lesson. Nine minutes with almost no dialogue in which Jef smokes on a bed, steals a car, tests keys from a ring until one works, and has plates changed by a man who says nothing. The audience learns everything about him from procedure.
Melville drained the colour deliberately toward grey and blue, Delon wears the same trenchcoat and hat throughout, and the film opens with an invented Bushido quotation Melville wrote himself and attributed to a book that does not exist.
Melville opened with an invented Bushido quotation he had written himself and attributed to a book that does not exist.
The first nine minutes contain almost no dialogue, with Jef smoking, stealing a car and testing keys from a ring until one works.
He drained the colour toward grey and blue and kept Delon in the same coat and hat throughout.
10. The Conformist (1970)
► Read the full review of The Conformist (1970)
"Storaro’s photography is the argument, and the film is about wanting to be ordinary."
The Conformist is the most visually influential film of its decade and the influence is documented. Coppola, Scorsese and Schrader have all cited it directly, and Storaro’s camerawork is visible throughout the American cinema of the 1970s.
The subject is a man who joins the fascist secret police out of a desire to be unremarkable, and is assigned to assassinate his old professor. His politics are not convictions; they are camouflage.
The photography carries the argument rather than illustrating it. Marcello is repeatedly shot through bars, blinds and grilles, and the sequence in the wind-blown forest where he watches the killing from inside a car without intervening is the whole character in one shot.
Coppola, Scorsese and Schrader have all cited Storaro’s camerawork directly, and its influence runs through the American seventies.
Marcello is repeatedly shot through bars, blinds and grilles, which does the work a monologue about conformity would have done badly.
The sequence where he watches the killing from inside a car without intervening is the whole character in one unbroken shot.
11. Stalker (1979)
► Read the full review of Stalker (1979)
"Three men walk into a room that grants wishes, and almost nothing happens."
Stalker is the most demanding film on this list and the one that rewards the demand. A guide leads a writer and a scientist through a forbidden Zone toward a room that supposedly grants your deepest desire, and the entire film is walking and talking.
The ending is the achievement. Nobody enters the room, because each of them realises they do not know what their deepest desire actually is and are afraid of learning. A wish-granting device that the characters decline is considerably stranger than one they fight over.
The first version was destroyed in processing and Tarkovsky reshot the entire film. Several of the crew, including Tarkovsky and his wife, later died of causes that have been attributed to the chemical plant they filmed near.
The first version was destroyed in processing and Tarkovsky reshot the entire film.
Several of the crew, including Tarkovsky and his wife, later died of causes that have been attributed to the chemical plant they filmed near.
Nobody enters the room, because each of them realises they do not know what their deepest desire is and are afraid of learning.
12. Fanny and Alexander (1982)
► Read the full review of Fanny and Alexander (1982)
"Bergman’s intended farewell, and it exists in a three-hour cut and a five-hour one."
Fanny and Alexander is the warmest thing Bergman made, which is not a sentence anybody expected to write about him, and he conceived it as the conclusion to his cinema career.
The first hour is an enormous Christmas at the Ekdahl house, generous and chaotic and alive, and it exists so the audience knows exactly what the children lose when their widowed mother remarries a bishop and they are moved into his stripped house.
It exists as a three-hour theatrical cut and a five-hour television version, and the longer one is the film. Bergman considered the television edit definitive and the theatrical release a compromise.
Bergman conceived it as the conclusion to his cinema career and it is the warmest thing he made.
The first hour is an enormous Christmas at the Ekdahl house so the audience knows exactly what the children lose afterward.
It exists as a three-hour theatrical cut and a five-hour television version, and Bergman considered the longer one definitive.
13. Wings of Desire (1987)
► Read the full review of Wings of Desire (1987)
"Angels over a divided Berlin who can hear every thought and touch nothing."
Wings of Desire uses the simplest formal device on this list to the greatest effect. Monochrome for the angels’ perspective and colour for the human one, so the audience feels the difference rather than being told about it.
Bruno Ganz plays an angel who has observed humanity since before there were people and decides he would rather have cold hands and bad coffee. The desire is not for meaning; it is for sensation and for consequences.
Handke wrote the monologues and much of the dialogue was improvised. Peter Falk appears as himself and is revealed to be a former angel, which should not work at all and is the best thing in the film.
Monochrome for the angels’ perspective and colour for the human one means the audience feels the difference rather than being told.
Handke wrote the monologues and much of the dialogue was improvised on location in a Berlin that still had a wall.
Peter Falk appears as himself and is revealed to be a former angel, which should not work and is the best thing in the film.
14. Hard Boiled (1992)
► Read the full review of Hard Boiled (1992)
"Woo’s last Hong Kong film, and the hospital sequence rewrote action cinema."
Hard Boiled is the most influential action film of the last forty years and American cinema has been borrowing from it continuously without the sincerity that made it work.
The hospital siege runs roughly forty minutes and includes a continuous take moving between floors with a cut hidden in a lift, which was technically unprecedented and is still cited as the reference for that kind of staging.
Chow Yun-fat plays a cop who plays jazz clarinet and carries a baby through a firefight, and the film means all of it. Woo’s slow motion and doves are operatic rather than ironic, which is precisely what every imitator gets wrong.
The hospital siege runs roughly forty minutes and includes a continuous take between floors with a cut hidden in a lift.
Chow Yun-fat plays a cop who plays jazz clarinet and carries a baby through a firefight, and the film means all of it.
It was Woo’s last Hong Kong film before Hollywood, and the grammar has been borrowed for thirty years without the sincerity.
15. In the Mood for Love (2000)
► Read the full review of In the Mood for Love (2000)
"Two neighbours discover their spouses are having an affair, and do nothing about it."
In the Mood for Love is a film about restraint that is itself restrained, which is the harder version. Two neighbours in 1962 Hong Kong work out that their spouses are involved with each other, and respond by rehearsing conversations they will never have.
The spouses are never shown. Not once, in the entire film, which means the audience only ever has the betrayed pair’s imagination of them, and the withholding is the subject rather than a technique applied to it.
Wong shot it over fifteen months without a completed script and discarded most of what he filmed. The construction from corridors, doorways, staircases and repeated noodle runs is the residue of that process.
The spouses are never shown, not once, so the audience only ever has the betrayed pair’s imagination of them.
Wong shot over fifteen months without a completed script and discarded most of what he filmed.
The corridors, doorways, staircases and repeated noodle runs are the residue of that process rather than a design.
16. Infernal Affairs (2002)
► Read the full review of Infernal Affairs (2002)
"The source for The Departed, and it is tighter than the remake."
Infernal Affairs runs a hundred minutes against The Departed’s hundred and fifty-one, and the compression is the argument for it. The premise is a machine: a policeman inside a triad and a triad inside the police, each tasked with finding the other.
That situation generates its own scenes without decoration, and the film trusts it completely. The rooftop meetings, the Morse code tapping and the audio surveillance sequence are all produced by the premise rather than invented around it.
Tony Leung and Andy Lau share a single scene together before the final act, which is the discipline the remake did not maintain.
It runs a hundred minutes against The Departed’s hundred and fifty-one, and the compression is the argument for it.
Tony Leung and Andy Lau share a single scene together before the final act, which is the discipline the remake did not keep.
The rooftop meetings, the Morse code tapping and the audio surveillance are all produced by the premise rather than invented around it.
17. A Separation (2011)
► Read the full review of A Separation (2011)
"Nobody in it is lying and nobody is right, which is the hardest thing to write."
A Separation is the best-constructed screenplay on this list. It opens with a couple divorcing and expands into a legal dispute in which every participant has a defensible position and incomplete information, and not one of them is a villain.
The mechanism is that the audience is given more than any character has. The viewer knows what the caregiver was doing, what the husband saw, and what the daughter overheard, so the tension is watching sincere people make reasonable decisions the audience can see are wrong.
Farhadi wrote it under Iranian censorship conditions that forbid a great deal, and the constraints produced a film in which class, religion and gender are all operating without any of them being stated.
The audience is given more than any character has, which is the mechanism, so the tension is watching sincere people make reasonable decisions that are wrong.
Farhadi wrote it under censorship conditions that forbid a great deal, and class, religion and gender all operate without being stated.
It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the ending leaves the daughter’s choice unheard.
18. The Hunt (2012)
► Read the full review of The Hunt (2012)
"A false accusation, and the film never lets the town be simply wrong."
The Hunt is unbearable because it refuses to make the community stupid. A kindergarten teacher is accused by a child who has repeated something she did not understand, and the town’s response is depicted as protective rather than as hysterical.
Every adult behaves the way a responsible adult is supposed to behave when a child says something like that, and the result destroys an innocent man. There is no villain and no point at which anybody could reasonably have acted differently.
Mikkelsen plays a man being erased politely. The final scene, a year later at a deer hunt, is a single gunshot from an unseen shooter, and the film ends without confirming that it is over.
Every adult behaves the way a responsible adult is supposed to behave when a child says something like that, and the result destroys an innocent man.
Mikkelsen won Best Actor at Cannes for playing a man being erased politely.
The final scene, a year later at a deer hunt, is a single gunshot from an unseen shooter, and the film ends without confirming it is over.
19. Breathless (1960)
► Read the full review of Breathless (1960)
"Godard broke continuity editing on purpose and the jump cut became a language."
Breathless is here for one technique that changed the grammar permanently. Godard had an overlong first cut, was told to remove twenty minutes, and rather than cutting scenes he cut inside them, leaving visible jumps.
That is either a solution or a provocation depending on who is telling it, and Godard was happy to let both stand. The refusal to hide the edit is the defining gesture of the New Wave and is now available to every filmmaker as a deliberate choice.
The plot is borrowed wholesale from American crime pictures and Truffaut supplied the story. Belmondo imitating Bogart in front of a cinema poster is the film explaining its own method.
Godard had an overlong first cut, was told to remove twenty minutes, and cut inside scenes rather than removing them.
The refusal to hide the edit is the defining gesture of the New Wave and is now available to every filmmaker as a deliberate choice.
Truffaut supplied the story and the plot is borrowed wholesale from American crime pictures.
20. Le Trou (1960)
► Read the full review of Le Trou (1960)
"A prison escape filmed in real time by a director who died before it opened."
Le Trou is the most patient film on this list. Five inmates dig out of La Santé prison and Becker films the work at close to real duration, including a concrete-breaking sequence that runs several minutes in an unbroken shot.
That decision is why it is more tense than any thriller. The audience experiences how long it takes, how loud it is, and how many times they must stop, rather than being shown a montage of progress.
It is based on José Giovanni’s own escape attempt and Jean Keraudy, one of the actual participants, plays a version of himself and introduces the film to camera. Becker died before the release.
Becker films the concrete-breaking at close to real duration, including a sequence that runs several minutes in an unbroken shot.
It is based on José Giovanni’s own escape attempt, and Jean Keraudy, one of the actual participants, plays a version of himself.
Becker died before the release, which is why the film had no advocate at the time and took decades to be recognised.
21. Police Story (1985)
► Read the full review of Police Story (1985)
"Jackie Chan established his entire template here, and the stunts nearly killed him."
Police Story is the film where Chan worked out what he was for. A Hong Kong officer protecting a witness, a shanty town destroyed by a car chase in the opening, and a shopping mall dismantled in the finale.
The pole slide is the sequence that defines him. He descended several storeys down a lightbulb-wrapped pole with no protection, burned his hands, dislocated his pelvis and injured his spine, and did it in one take because there was no second pole.
The outtakes over the closing credits, showing the failures and the injuries, became his signature and are the most honest thing in any action filmography.
The pole slide was performed with no protection, burning his hands, dislocating his pelvis and injuring his spine, in one take because there was no second pole.
The opening shanty town chase destroyed a set built specifically to be driven through.
The outtakes over the closing credits showing the failures and injuries became his signature and are the most honest thing in any action filmography.
22. Cinema Paradiso (1988)
► Read the full review of Cinema Paradiso (1988)
"A boy and a projectionist, and the censored kisses come back at the end."
Cinema Paradiso is the most commercially successful Italian art film of its decade and the ending is why. A director returns to the Sicilian village where he grew up and is left a reel by the projectionist who raised him.
The reel is every kiss the local priest ordered cut from every film across decades, spliced together and kept. It is a gift, an apology and an argument about censorship delivered without a word of commentary.
The international cut is the better film. Tornatore’s original Italian version runs nearly three hours, includes a reunion with the lost love that explains too much, and failed at home before the shorter edit won the Academy Award.
The reel Alfredo leaves is every kiss the local priest ordered cut from every film across decades, spliced together and kept.
The international cut is the better film, and Tornatore’s original Italian version runs nearly three hours and failed at home.
It won the Academy Award after the shorter edit was assembled, which is a rare case of an edit rescuing a picture.
23. Children of Heaven (1997)
► Read the full review of Children of Heaven (1997)
"A boy loses his sister’s shoes, and the film is about him trying not to win a race."
Children of Heaven builds enormous tension out of nothing at all. A boy loses his sister’s shoes, the family cannot afford replacements, and the two children share his pair by handing them over between school shifts.
The climax inverts every sports film ever made. He enters a race because third prize is a pair of trainers, which means he must place exactly third, and the final sequence is a boy trying desperately not to win.
Majidi shot with children who had not acted, in real neighbourhoods, and the film was the first Iranian production nominated for an Academy Award.
The climax inverts every sports film ever made, since third prize is a pair of trainers and he must place exactly third.
Majidi shot with children who had not acted, in real neighbourhoods, and it was the first Iranian production nominated for an Academy Award.
The shoes float away down a gutter in the opening, which is the entire plot set in motion by an accident nobody could prevent.
24. Taste of Cherry (1997)
► Read the full review of Taste of Cherry (1997)
"A man drives around Tehran looking for someone to bury him, and the ending breaks the film open."
Taste of Cherry is almost entirely conversations in a car. A man drives the hills outside Tehran seeking somebody willing to cover his body with earth after he takes his own life, and the film never explains why.
The refusal to supply a reason is the point. Each passenger responds from their own position, religious or practical or moral, and the film declines to adjudicate between them.
The final sequence switches to grainy video and shows Kiarostami and the crew filming on the same hillside, soldiers relaxing between takes, the actor alive and smoking. It divides viewers completely and it won the Palme d’Or.
The final sequence switches to grainy video and shows Kiarostami and the crew on the same hillside, with the actor alive and smoking.
Each passenger responds from their own position, religious or practical or moral, and the film declines to adjudicate.
It won the Palme d’Or and divides viewers completely, which the ending was designed to do.
25. Battle Royale (2000)
► Read the full review of Battle Royale (2000)
"A school class is put on an island and made to kill each other, and Japan debated banning it."
Battle Royale is not a provocation and the reason is biographical. Fukasaku was fifteen during the war, working in a munitions factory that was bombed, and described diving under the bodies of classmates to survive and then being made to bury them.
He made this at seventy, about adults doing that to children deliberately, and the film’s anger is entirely legible once you know that. It was debated in the Diet and given a restrictive rating rather than the ban some members wanted.
Takeshi Kitano plays the teacher as a man so exhausted by young people that the atrocity is administrative to him, which is more disturbing than any sadism would have been.
Fukasaku was fifteen during the war, working in a munitions factory that was bombed, and described diving under the bodies of classmates.
He made this at seventy, about adults doing that to children deliberately, and the anger is legible once you know that.
It was debated in the Japanese Diet and given a restrictive rating rather than the ban some members wanted.
26. A Bittersweet Life (2005)
► Read the full review of A Bittersweet Life (2005)
"An enforcer makes one small merciful decision and the organisation destroys him for it."
A Bittersweet Life is the most stylish Korean crime film of its decade and the structure is brutally simple. A hotel manager and fixer is told to watch his boss’s girlfriend and report infidelity, declines to report it, and everything follows from that.
The mercy is never explained and Lee Byung-hun plays it as a man who does not understand his own decision either. He is not in love with her and the film refuses to supply a motive.
The violence is punishing rather than choreographed. He is buried alive, escapes, and the final sequence is a man who has lost everything asking why, and being told it was nothing.
The mercy is never explained and Lee Byung-hun plays it as a man who does not understand his own decision either.
He is not in love with her and the film refuses to supply a motive, which is what makes the consequence unbearable.
He is buried alive, escapes, and the final sequence is a man who has lost everything asking why and being told it was nothing.
27. Mesrine (2008)
► Read the full review of Mesrine (2008)
"Two films about a criminal who became famous and then believed it."
Mesrine runs across two films and the subject is self-invention rather than crime. Jacques Mesrine went from Algeria through bank robbery and prison escapes to becoming France’s public enemy number one, and cultivated the persona deliberately.
The second film is about a man performing a character the press wrote for him, giving interviews, publishing a memoir from a cell, and escalating to stay newsworthy.
Cassel gained and lost substantial weight across the shoot and the opening split-screen of the 1979 ambush, shown before the story begins, means the audience watches two films knowing exactly how they end.
Cassel gained and lost substantial weight across the shoot, which ran across two films made back to back.
The opening split-screen of the 1979 ambush is shown before the story begins, so the audience watches two films knowing how they end.
The second film is about a man performing a character the press wrote for him, giving interviews and publishing a memoir from a cell.
28. A Touch of Sin (2013)
► Read the full review of A Touch of Sin (2013)
"Four true stories of violence in contemporary China, told without commentary."
A Touch of Sin is built from four incidents that were reported on Chinese social media before being removed, covering official corruption, migrant labour, a sauna worker and a factory suicide at Foxconn.
The structural decision is to refuse to connect them. Four people in four provinces reach the same point independently, and the film makes no argument about causation because the pattern does the arguing.
Jia had been a state-approved director and the film was never released in China despite approval, which is a more eloquent response than a ban would have been.
The four incidents were reported on Chinese social media before being removed, covering official corruption, migrant labour, a sauna worker and a Foxconn suicide.
Jia refuses to connect them, so four people in four provinces reach the same point independently.
It was never released in China despite approval, which is a more eloquent response than a ban would have been.
29. The Wailing (2016)
► Read the full review of The Wailing (2016)
"A rural Korean horror film that never tells you who was right."
The Wailing is constructed so that a second viewing is a different film. A village policeman investigates an illness and a series of killings, with a Japanese stranger, a shaman and a woman in white all offering incompatible accounts of what is happening.
The film plants evidence for three readings equally and endorses none, which means a viewer’s interpretation depends entirely on which character they decided to trust and when.
The protagonist’s failure is a failure of belief rather than of investigation. He is asked to wait and does not, and the film is explicit that the waiting was the test.
The film plants evidence for three readings equally and endorses none, so a viewer’s interpretation depends on which character they trusted and when.
The protagonist’s failure is a failure of belief rather than of investigation, and the film is explicit that the waiting was the test.
The shaman ritual sequence, cut against an exorcism happening simultaneously, runs nearly ten minutes and is the best staged material in Korean horror.
30. The Mother and the Whore (1973)
► Read the full review of The Mother and the Whore (1973)
"Three and a half hours of talking, and it was the most discussed European film of its moment."
The Mother and the Whore is the definitive document of the hangover after May 1968. A man and two women in Paris talk at enormous length about desire, freedom and the disappointment of having been promised something.
Eustache scripted every word, including what sounds improvised, and the performances were required to deliver it exactly. It runs three hours and thirty-eight minutes and is genuinely demanding rather than difficult for effect.
It was unavailable for decades because of rights disputes following Eustache’s suicide in 1981, which built a reputation the restoration has mostly supported.
Eustache scripted every word, including what sounds improvised, and the performances were required to deliver it exactly.
It runs three hours and thirty-eight minutes and is the definitive document of the hangover after May 1968.
It was unavailable for decades because of rights disputes following Eustache’s suicide in 1981, which built a reputation the restoration has mostly supported.
31. Audition (1999)
► Read the full review of Audition (1999)
"A romantic drama for an hour, and then it is not."
Audition works because the first hour was made sincerely rather than as a runway. A widower stages fake film auditions to find a new wife, which is already an ugly premise, and the film plays it as a gentle character study.
Miike does not signal. There is no ominous score, no foreshadowing beyond one shot, and viewers who walked in unaware have reported the turn as genuinely traumatic. Walkouts at its festival screenings are documented.
The final act is among the most notorious sequences in horror and the film’s actual subject is the casual cruelty of the audition premise itself, which the last twenty minutes answers directly.
Miike does not signal, with no ominous score and no foreshadowing beyond one shot, and walkouts at festival screenings are documented.
The first hour is a gentle character study made sincerely rather than as a runway, which is why the turn registers as a betrayal by the world.
The film’s actual subject is the casual cruelty of the audition premise, which the last twenty minutes answers directly.