best film:  Ewan McGregor has three (3) films that already seem to have true staying power - films that hold up well to close study, scrutiny and age.  1996’s Trainspotting from Danny Boyle hits like a bolt of lighting. It has Boyle’s trademark energy – it was Boyle and McGregor’s breakthrough film – and it may still be their best. Moulin Rouge! (2001) from Baz Luhrmann flies out fast and furious in a glorious concoction of montage and color. Boyle and Luhrmann are not first ballot hall of fame auteurs (both are outside the top 100 of all-time)

  best film:  Timothée Chalamet is in two of the best films of the 2020s thus far with The French Dispatch and Dune – both from 2021. But even before that, Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me by Your Name (2017) and Little Women (2019) surfaced among their respective year’s best films. The fact that Chalamet has nine (9) total films in the archives with 4 (four) of them here in serious contention here is undoubtedly evidence that he knows how to carefully select his projects and collaborators – even at a younger age. Nothing is promised, of course, but this

  best film:  The French New Wave helped bring notoriety to Vincente Minnelli’s Some Came Running (1958) and that is a very worthy finalist here – but Otto Preminger’s fluid camera work in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) is tough to ignore, as is The Manchurian Candidate. In Manchurian, Laurence Harvey is no better than okay – but Angela Lansbury and Frank Sinatra truly shine. Sinatra plays combat stress to perfection. Sinatra is so good it as Major Bennett Marco – it is jarring in the film going back to poor Laurence Harvey and his Raymond Shaw

  best film:  For a short window of time - from 1995 to 1999 -  Kevin Spacey was as good as it gets. That run starts with both Se7en and The Usual Suspects in 1995. This means that in one single year, Kevin Spacey brought both John Doe and Verbal Kint to life. L.A. Confidential, a towering crime saga – followed just a few years later, and then Spacey’s run ended in 1999 with Sam Mendes’ impressive debut, American Beauty. It is Fincher’s film that is the best. The entire film is leading up to Spacey as John Doe

  best film:  Ken Ogata may be missing that all-time top 100 film – but Vengeance is Mine (1979), The Ballad of Narayama (1983) – both with Shōhei Imamura – are just a step or half-step below that masterpiece level. This leaves Paul Schrader’s highly ambitious Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985) as Ogata’s single best film. The three (3) films combine to make this a very decent category for Ogata. Unfortunately, by the time Ogata connected with genius auteur Peter Greenaway (The Pillow Book – 1996) – the director’s best work was behind him so this film

  best film:  JFK (1991) emerges from a crowded category with M*A*S*H (1970) and Don’t Look Now (1973) as the closest competition. Oliver Stone’s film is a miracle of film editing – but it also features one of the best collections of acting talent in cinema history. Even amongst all that talent, Sutherland still stands out as just “X” – he has crucial scenes with Kevin Costner’s character propelling the narrative. Sutherland has three (3) more films that have to be mentioned in this category as well. Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 (1976) is not far behind the aforementioned films from

  best film:  Pulp Fiction has a very healthy lead on the other usual suspects here for Bruce Willis. The short list includes Die Hard (1988), 12 Monkeys (1995) with the The Player (1992) in reserve.  However, the single closest film in competition with Pulp Fiction  is 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom from Wes Anderson. The casting of Bruce Willis in a Wes Anderson film did not really make sense on paper – but Willis is sublime as the melancholic, sort of lovelorn Captain Sharp. But again, there is no topping Pulp Fiction here and for just about any actor of

  best film:  Rudolf Klein-Rogge is standout presence in nearly all of Fritz Lang films from 1921’s Destiny to 1933’s The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. 1931’s M is the big one that got away and does not have even a minor role for Klein-Rogge (and as good as Klein-Rogge is, nobody but Peter Lorre should play Hans Beckert). This is very fertile artistic period for Lang so this category is loaded – including supreme artistic achievements like the aforementioned Destiny (a smaller role for Klein-Rogge), Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, and Spies. As if this was not

  best film:  Gael Garcia Bernal starred in Amores Perros (2000) and Y tu mamá también (2001) in back-to-back years (these are actually consecutive roles in his career). These are two seminal films in the Nuevo Cine Mexicano movement. Bernal plays Octavio in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film and Julio in Alfonso Cuarón’s film. Bernal seized the moment here in the early 2000s and landed the lead role in Pedro Almodóvar’s Bad Education (2004). Almodóvar’s film is highly underrated – it was largely viewed as a bit of a disappointment upon its initial release in 2004 coming off of two