best film:   On the last update of the top 500 films of all-time, Cary Grant had three (3) films in the top 109 slots (including two Alfred Hitchcock collaborations) – and they were all cluttered together. North by Northwest leads the way at #103, Notorious at #105 and Bringing Up Baby and #109. The next tier down includes His Girl Friday, The Philadelphia Story and To Catch a Thief.   from the finale Mount Rushmore set piece to the justifiably iconic crop-duster sequence - Cary Grant is the perfect vehicle for Alfred Hitchcock's wrong man scenario in

  best film:   Casablanca reigns supreme here but The Big Sleep and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre are not far behind. Casablanca is often touted as the high-water mark of the Hollywood studio system. Michael Curtiz is at the helm and those trademark slow dolly shots to open a scene are abound in Casablanca. Curtiiz does a fantastic job overall behind the camera – and the screenplay is certainly one of the greatest of all-time. In front of the camera, the performances are sublime from Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the lead – and that talented ensemble

  best film:   There Will Be Blood is the answer here, but The Age of Innocence is closer than many think. There Will Be Blood is meditation on greed and monomania. Everyone is going to agree on There Will Be Blood and they should – best not to get too cute here – but The Age of Innocence is simply spectacular. So, to recap, Daniel Day-Lewis is in a heavyweight masterpiece from Paul Thomas Anderson and one from Martin Scorsese as well – not bad. That next tier down includes The Last of the Mohicans (seems always to get

  best film:   Chinatown, The Passenger, and The Shining, are the blue-chip films for Jack Nicholson - but the depth here is beyond belief.  There are nine (9) films here with a must-see or masterpiece grade. Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece is Jack’s best film. Kubrick’s audacious visuals and dedication to the Steadicam tracking shot aesthetic ever so slightly trumps Chinatown’s retro polish and genius screenplay  (it is truly one of the all-time finest) with The Passenger and that jaw-dropping, penultimate long-take shot right there as well.   writer's block, cabin fever, and alcoholism from Jack in The Shining. "I’d

  best film:   The Godfather is Al Pacino’s best film with Part II close behind and Heat not far in the rearview either. The next tier down includes Dog Day Afternoon and then Pacino’s big 2019 with both Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (where his contribution is very minor) and The Irishman (where his contribution is substantial). Of these six films, Dog Day Afternoon is far and away the film most dependent on Pacino to carry it. Pacino is the story arc in The Godfather and though it is the story of the entire family, Marlon Brando spends

  best film:   There is room for discussion here between Rashomon, Seven Samurai and High and Low. All three prime candidates are from Akira Kurosawa of course – it is hard to mention Toshirô Mifune or Kurosawa without mentioning the other. If Seven Samurai is the strongest, it is not by much - and these three films are all towering masterpieces. For Seven Samurai, the narrative structure is broken into pretty clear thirds, the gathering up of the samurai, the training and time at the village, and the epic battle. The film has thirty (30) stunning compositions at least,

  best film:   Marlon Brando has Francis Ford Coppola to thank (and certainly more than a little to thank the other way around) for this category with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now as clearly Brando’s top two films. Brando was already a living legend and acting icon in the 1970s (from his string of work in the 1950s) but undoubtedly in a long career tailspin when he and Coppola collaborated. Brando is electric in Apocalypse Now as Colonel Walter Kurtz – perhaps the greatest of all the Harry Lime-like roles (from Orson Welles in The Third Man - a

  best film:   Vertigo. There are four James Stewart masterpiece films to choose from including It’s a Wonderful Life, Rear Window, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and Vertigo. Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo is one of the top ten films of all-time, so this is obviously a category of considerable strength for Stewart. The real story with Stewart though may not be the four masterpieces (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington stands in for Liberty Valance as far as performances go when making a Mount Rushmore) - it may in fact be the sheer volume of high quality films (and his

  best film:   Raging Bull. Martin Scorsese’s single best film (and there is certainly some debate here as he made one of the best films of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s) is one of the best films of all-time, and also Robert De Niro’s single finest film. From the onset of the film with the Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo from Mascagni and slow-motion photography, one knows they are witnessing a masterpiece.  The in-ring battles (particularly with Sugar Ray) are textbook examples of the highest achievement in film lighting and editing – frankly they are some of the most outstanding sequences