Poetry – 2010 Chang-dong Lee
Opens, much like perhaps his best (along with Burning) work- Peppermint Candy with a suicide on a bridge. Here Chang-dong Lee distorts the water to his trademark green to open and then it slowly turns
The 6th Best Director of All-Time: Martin Scorsese
Scorsese. He’s the highest rated living (and active) director on the list! In some ways Scorsese is the easiest to discuss (I’ve seen each of his fiction films twice (aside from Silence) and I’ve written about
The 5th Best Director of All-Time: Federico Fellini
Fellini. Perhaps only Coppola has a 1-2 that can match 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita which come out as #2 and #3 film of the 1960’s behind 2001. The 1960’s is the strongest decade
The 4th Best Director of All-Time: Yasujirô Ozu
Ozu. When I did this ranking five years ago I had Ozu ranked as the 55th best director of all-time but acknowledged the lack of study and discrepancy with the critics’ rankings. Well, in 2018
The 3rd Best Director of All-Time: Ingmar Bergman
Bergman. Bergman’s case is incredibly strong. I have him graded out with 6 masterpieces (in 4 separate decades) which is tied for the most of any director all-time, has north of 20 archiveable films and
The 2nd Best Director of All-Time: Stanley Kubrick
Kubrick. Kubrick is a behemoth. By every metric it’s Hitchcock and Kubrick as #1 and #2. Kubrick has the most top 100 all-time film (5) which I think is as good as any metric to
The Color of Pomegranates – 1969 Parajanov
2 of the 14 reviews on RT say “impossible to describe” and I am anything but a good writer—hahaIt is a unique visual experience and exercise—like Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors from Parajanov in 1964 it’s
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge – 2001 Imamura
Mise-en-scene master Imamura gives us a solid B, or B- effort here—constantly messing with the frame in creative ways, he split’s it in half once with an umbrella standMany shots through windows and glassHas the
Documenteur – 1981 Varda
A film to pair with Varda’s Mur Murs (1981 as well) if you do docs-- 64 minutes, non-professional actors (and it hurts in a couple scenes Sabine Mamou who plays the lead here is actually
The Best Director of All-Time: Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock. He has a top 10 film, 10 films in the top 500 (the most) of all-time. Hitchcock is as good a candidate as any for the greatest artist of the 20th century (given cinema
Secret Sunshine – 2007 Chang-dong Lee
Thematically it’s in line with the rest Chang-don Lee’s oeuvre- it’s dark- life being sucked out of its protagonistBest actress win at Cannes for Do-yeon Jeon and she is good- a very emotional performances- multiple
Toy Story 3 – 2010 Unkrich
Opens en medias res with an action set piece (train scene in mock Monument Valley) a la Spielberg or the James Bond formula- this actually resembles The Last Crusade’s River Phoenix opening a bitRandy Newman’s