Peckinpah. Peckinpah’s strength is his top 2 films and the massive amounts of style he packed into his short career as director. He was a fierce alcoholic, not unlike another great western auteur- John Ford,
Sirk. Sirk is another great auteur who was completely overlooked at the time (and laughed at a little) in Hollywood for his soapy melodramas mostly “made for women” (aka “women weepies”) starring rock Hudson (who
Kenneth Lonergan cements himself as one of the great screenwriters of the 21st centuryAn achievement for Casey Affleck in his Oscar-winning role (his “I can’t beat it” is devastating). With the flashback structure it’s sort
A varied work from Varda—has elements that touches her documentary/realism roots (we have abortion and suicide in the first half hour), her photography background (some great montages of women in b/w photography in the opening),
Mizoguchi. Mizoguchi’s strength is that every film of his I’ve seen is in its year’s top 10 and I still have some work to do on his filmography. He’s the only director left this far
Ridley Scott. Sir Ridley is certainly still working adding films to his archives like The Martian from 2015 and All the Money in the World in 2017. Scott probably isn’t in the top 100 at all without Blade
Visconti. His strengths here are the big two films: The Leopard and Rocco and His Brothers. Also, Visconti, oddly enough, touches many of the major artistic movements in the art forms young history. Ossessione is
Strong writing (from a John Cheever short story—the “Chekov of the suburbs”) and a big-time lead performance from Burt Lancaster help a hit and miss Frank Perry behind the cameraA meditation on mid-life crisis and
A subtle character study—a story of first love and additionThe final shot sticks with you—it’s a giant door opening—sounds simple- but given the context of the film, her awakening, naivety (not just sexual, but about
3.0 (two in theater in January 2013 and once May 2017) It’s a brilliant and very entertaining film Robert Richardson as the DP does some fantastic work here- and I certainly wish this, not hateful
1.0 -- March 2017 Both a fully Jarmusch minimalist film and detailed character study (military background of driver’s paterson character) Easily Adam Driver’s best role/film/performance to date and a very charming performance from Golshifteh Farahani
Michael Mann. Fact, all eight of Mann’s archiveable films below would show up on their respective years’ top 10 if I had to update all my yearly top 10’s today. That’s remarkable. Now with another
