Top 100 Films (Readers)
(in four parts)

from Time Out Film Guide


Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Time Out Film Guide
Top 100 Films (Readers)

from Time Out Film Guide

(part 4, ranked)

(76) The Sound of Music (1965), d. Robert Wise, US
The cloud of fascism and the singing nanny.

-- The Thing from Another World (1951), d. Christian Nyby, US
A lonely group of scientists in the Arctic, a flying saucer, and the ...Forget the X Files, this is the real thing.

-- Battleship Potemkin (1925), d. Sergei Eisenstein, USSR
Eisenstein raises the Red Flag and determines the future of film montage.

(79) Amadeus (1984), d. Milos Forman, US
Worra lorra ("What a lot of") Mozza while Hulce composes himself for Shaffer's portrait of genius.

-- The Age of Innocence (1993), d. Martin Scorsese, US
Scorsese and Edith Wharton: a surprising, bravura marriage.

-- The Seventh Seal (1956), d. Ingmar Bergman, Swe
Death and knight von Sydow play chess in a portentous medieval fable.

(82) Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), d. Robert Hamer, GB
The English art of murder: Guinness snuffs it eight times in Ealing's blackest comedy.

-- The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989), d. Peter Greenaway, GB/Fr
Tasty cannibal drama, for those with the stomach.

-- The General (1927), d. Buster Keaton/Clyde Bruckman, US
Buster right on track in the finest silent comedy of them all.

(85) La Dolce Vita (The Sweet Life) (1960), d. Federico Fellini, It
Fellini's magnum opus begins with the ascension of Christ - by helicopter - and then dives straight into the gutter press, as Mastroianni's paparazzo hack gets a taste for the 'sweet life'.

-- Miller's Crossing (1990), d. Joel Coen, US
Convoluted Prohibition-era thriller with all the trimmings. The Coens' tribute to the genre, with Finney as the spider at the center of the web.

-- The Battle of Algiers (1965), d. Gillo Pontecorvo, It/Alg
Unflinching near-documentary chronicle of a guerilla campaign, too true to ignore.

-- Top Hat (1935), d. Mark Sandrich, US
Fred and Ginger; who could ask for anything more?

(89) My Life as a Dog (1985), d. Lasse Hallstrom, Swe
A bitter-sweet evocation of a boy's experiences in the rural Sweden of the '50s.

-- The Full Monty (1997), d. Peter Cattaneo, US/GB
The Sheffield strippers take it away.

(91) Black Narcissus (1947), d. Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, GB
The Archers get themselves to a nunnery in a tense, erotic, Himalayan pressure-cooker.

-- Halloween (1978), d. John Carpenter, US
The corpse won't lie down, of course.

-- Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948), d. Max Ophuls, US
Unrequited Joan Fontaine suffers exquisitely in this glittering, irresistible fable of doomed love.

-- M (1931), d. Fritz Lang, Ger
Based on a real life manhunt for a childkiller; Lorre chills to the bone.

-- Ran (1985), d. Akira Kurosawa, Fr/Jap
A samurai King Lear: film-making on a huge, color-coded canvas.

-- Secrets & Lies (1995), d. Mike Leigh, GB
Successful middle-class black optometrist finds her long-lost natural mother, a boozy white woman with a particularly trying family. Then the fireworks.

(97) A Bout de Souffle (Breathless) (1959), d. Jean-Luc Godard, Fr
Godard's breathless reinvention of the cinema; the flagship of the nouvelle vague.

-- Andrei Rublev (1966), d. Andrei Tarkovsky, USSR
Tarkovsky, never less than enigmatic, and a 15th century Russian icon painter.

-- L'Avventura (The Adventure) (1960), d. Michelangelo Antonioni, It
An unsolved disappearance sparks this modernist monument to bourgeois malaise.

-- Delicatessen (1991), d. Jean-Pierre Jeunet/Marc Caro, Fr
An ex-clown falls for the daughter of a butcher who trades in human flesh. Can a group of subterranean vegetarian fantatics save him?

-- Great Expectations (1946), d. David Lean, GB
The gold standard of Dickens' adaptations.

-- The Remains of the Day (1993), d. James Ivory, US
The butler, the stately home, the housekeeper - and a failure to connect.


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