It's interesting to see that these are the consensus titles now and just as interesting to compare them to previous lists (taken every ten years) and to see the overall individual lists provided by critics and directors.

Making such lists is actually a very hard exercize and it's taken me a long time to formulate my own list which is very eclectic.

For what it's worth I provide it here (in no particular order):

1) Tokyo Olympiad (1965) Kon Ichikawa
2) Rebel Without A Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray
3) Only Angels Have Wings (1939) Howard Hawks
4) To Have And Have Not (1944) Howard Hawks
5) Marnie (1964) Alfred Hitchcock
6) A Time To Love And A Time To Die (1958) Douglas Sirk
7) The End Of Summer (1961) Yasujiro Ozu
8) Pierrot Le Fou (1965) Jean-Luc Godard
9) The Red Shoes (1948) Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
10) A Day In The Country (1936) Jean Renoir

It may seem like a very odd list to many of you. It has very few if any of the big classics. Even when I select a noted director, I don't select the films they are best loved for. And a lot of directors I admire aren't represented on the list.

Ichikawa's view of the 1964 Olympics is an epic & strong technical achievement in every sense. It's an impressionistic view of the Olympics that isn't a straight-forward documentary. It contains odd shots and ideas but the end result is thrilling & overwhelming.

Rebel is like a very physical piece of music. It's not a real or plausible look at people or its subject, it's more like a Modern Art version of a Greek tragedy. For something so stylized, it nevertheless has one honest moment after another. Sure the hoods are way polite by our standards, but even if the film looks dated, its emotions are eternal.

Howard Hawks is America's finest director. I could go into all the reasons why these two by Hawks are sublime but in the end what counts is this: these aren't just films I want to watch, these are worlds I want to live in!

Marnie is a flawed mess. And yet, despite all the things which look wrong or make people laugh, when I spend time with this film I'm just floored by it. Why? Because a deep love & emotion gets through regardless. I've watched a lot of perfect films and they don't make this list, but this "imperfect" film has the power to move me time and again. I just feel so much for the poor main character. That visual gimmick of the screen going red is amazing: a mental state of internal uncontrollable anxiety translated externally. And it's just one of the ways in which Hitch gets you inside this girl's head. I care & root for & sympathize with her more than for any character in all movies. I feel everything she goes through and that just doesn't happen to me watching most films. I know the film well and the reaction happens whenever I see the film anyway. I don't even understand it myself. It's uncanny.

The people who love Sirk usually love him for his campy, melodramtic style. I like those films too but they don't move me like this one does, the one where he played it more straight than usual. Just as it's difficult to explain to people why Marnie works for me, it's tough to articulate why this film is one of the greatest ever made. I'll try anyhow. I like the pattern of something good happening and then something bad happening to contrast against it. I like the vast number of characters you meet, sometimes for one or two lines, and how each is a completely-rounded character you can love or hate. I think Lisolette Pulver is amazing, the fantasy of the girlfriend every man wishes to marry. I think this is a great love story, a great war story, and beyond both of those a strong reminder that we'll all die and should consider what's important, both personally and politically. And because it deals with death, it's also a film that makes you aware of time and the importance of the moment.

And speaking of Zen brings us to Ozu. Most critics point to Tokyo Story as the masterpiece but Ozu himself considered it melodramatic. Of all the Ozu films, I think End of Summer is the one which catches best Ozu's total philosophy on life. Hara & Nakamura are the Zen masters, the rest of the family, the workers, and acquaintances aren't quite there, and the film is simply a contrast between the two types, as simple as that. There is absolutely no story, nothing to become emotional about, but nearly every scene makes an amazing point. Nakamura's daughter in law is offended that the old man is seeing a mistress and is cold to him. Then, sensing he's old, sick, and having a last fling, she warms up and apologizes. His answer is brilliant: "I've been rejected so many times, your behavior made no difference." In other words, he's a free person who can't be intimidated, brow-beaten, or manipulated. He doesn't care if you like him or not and so he'll just do as he pleases. And yet, he's incredibly helpful and mostly unselfish throughout the film. The ending is amazing: you see 7 or 8 gravestones and Ozu cuts to the 7 or 8 family members walking away into the distance, making his analogy. It's not just that these characters will die at some point in the future of the story, it's that the actors playing them will die, and all of us in the audience will die too. Like Sirk, Ozu reminds us there's no escape from dying, a blow to the ego that keeps us humble and bound to the present.

Like Rebel, the next two films are just big, colorful, musical paintings, all form over substance, and filled with the joy of creating that form. Not that the films don't have messages, points they wish to make, but it's the how and not the what that's the real pleasure in watching them. Once again, I could go on and on and list all the ideas and moments that make these films great, but it would all just add up to the same thing: that there is truth in beauty.

Everybodys tastes varies on things like this. I have many favorites besides some on this list. There are a few on there I would put on mine also though. Listing just that few number is a tough task. I have so many.

I love Welles. I love Kane. There are so many great things in this film, but I can't list it on my top 10 even though many, many people think this is the #1 film let alone something for a top 10 list. I think the reason why this film & many other films don't make my list is that I find myself thrilled by the technique but unmoved by the content. A bad film like Marnie that always makes me cry even when I'm familar with it and am trying not to has to beat out a film like Kane that I think is neat but nothing transcendent. Another problem with Kane is that it calls attention to itself in arty ways. Welles made it at 26 and everytime I watched it after the age of 26 I felt I was watching a student movie. A big budget student movie for sure but it still had this quality of trying things out for effect or trying them to see how they'd work. And while I can watch it and love it, I can't put it on my top 10.

Vertigo is great to look at and it has that great Herrmann score. I've run into some people who found it boring but I can't agree that it's dull. Still, I just don't see why it's a top 10 film. I prefer so many other Hitchcock films to this one: Lifeboat, Strangers on a Train, The Trouble With Harry, North By Northwest. Of course, none of those made my top 10 list either. Vertigo belongs in the same rank, but it just doesn't have the heart or content to boost it to a very special place.

Rules of the Game is great as is Grand Illusion, The River, The Southerner, and many other Renoir films. A Renoir film makes my top 10 but it isn't this one, even though this is very entertaining and shows how hard it is for most people to make their lives work. I don't mind a good tragedy. A Day in the Country is one and so is this. But I just feel pity for all these misbegotten people whereas I feel a much deeper sympathy for the characters of Day in the Country.

The Godfather 1 & 2. I guess it's fun to pretend you're a tough gangster for 4 hours and Brando, DeNiro, and Pacino are acting up a storm. But I just don't care. Crime, revenge, power, what have you. I just don't get drawn into it the way its fans do. I prefer other Coppola films to these two and even those films don't make the list. I just don't get it.

Tokyo Story is great. I've explained why I didn't put it on my own top 10, because I think End of Summer is even greater. I like most Ozu films however and I'm glad to see the critics are sticking by Ozu.

2001 is neat to look at & think about. I guess the same could be said of nearly all Kubrick films. That doesn't make them top 10 movies just because there's more thought behind them than most films. I like 2001 and I like Dr. Strangelove even more but I don't share Kubrick's view of things. Nevertheless, there is nothing mundane about it, it's not boy meets girl or cops & robbers but a film trying to make a larger statement about people & technology. That still doesn't make it a top 10 film but it does make it an interestingly different one.

Eisenstein is a formalist. He sets up very neat shots that always call attention to their composition and he plays with his theory of montage. And there are neat results in all of his films but oddly I find Potemkin weaker than most of Eisenstein and all of Eisenstein as secondary.

Sunrise is wonderful. In younger years it might have made my top 10 list. I was certainly blown away by it when I saw it the very first time and still think highly of it. I'm not sure that now I share Murnau's love of the quaint, pure, and rustic. I don't buy his country vs city dichotomy. There's a shot of the farmer's wife sitting outside nursing the baby while the farmer is working the plow that I think Murnau believes is the right life in all caps, bold, and italics, but which I find laughable and then pretentious. But what makes Sunrise work is the love between the man & woman, they nearly lose it and they find it again. Great stuff but not quite top 10.

I like a number of Fellini films (I Vitelloni, Juliet of the Spirits, La Dolce Vita, Satyricon, Roma, Amarcord) but 8 1/2 isn't one of them. I think this is the absence of a film. You've got a director who's in over his head, he has a wife, a mistress, sexy fantasies of the past, fantasies of some pure ideal woman, etc. and at the same time he wants or has to make a film but he thinks it's empty, he doesn't know what to say that will be important to people, finally he realizes that as crazy as he and everyone he knows is, somehow if he sees the world as one big crazy circus he can either love the strangeness or write it off & deal with it. What masturbation. A film about not being able to make a film, about not having anything to say, about wishing he could control women so as to get the maximum pleasure out of them. Wish is the key word. It's a mess that wishes it were something and people get fooled by this and rank it in the top 10. Sorry, it's junk.

Singin' in the Rain is a fun musical. I'm not even sure it's the best musical though it's entertaining enough. But it's light fluff and nothing more. How this even got near the list is beyond me.

Of the Sight & Sound top 10, I would endorse Kane, Rules of the Game, Tokyo Story, and Sunrise. I teeter on 2001. The other 5 definitely not.