English Language Films

American Films
(I include more American films than I include in other categories, but that reflects production output and familiarity, not preference)

1. Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977). Woody Allen is like a trip home for me. His characters are typical neurotic New Yorkers, who all think too much. This is his best romantic comedy. For a more cynical look at romance, see Husbands and Wives.  I also love Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan, and some Allen's sillier comedies, including Sleeper, Bananas, and Take the Money and Run.
2. Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970).  This film established Jack Nicholson as one of the most important American actors for the next three decades.  Though not as acclaimed as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, this film is more subtle and complex.  Here as elsewhere, Nicholson is both loathsome and endearing. I think this is his best performance.
   
3. Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932).  Made on the heels of his timeless classic Dracula, Browning's 1932 feature about sideshow performers is arguably even better.  Though it might come across as an exploitation film, it is actually a film about exploitation, and the talented cast members are portrayed with far more dignity than they probably received when they were exhibited in county fairs for their physical abnormalities.  The climax is one of the most memorable in cinema history.
   
4. The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972). It's a hard choice between this one and the sequel; both are totally engrossing, enduring, and archetypal.  I picked the first one for the horse in bed. One thing that makes these films impressive is Coppola's ability to handle multiple characters at once--a skill he shares with Robert Altman, who pulls this off masterfully in Nashville and Shortcuts.  The third installment of the Godfather trilogy is better skipped; it's marred by the awkward performance of Sophia Coppola.  She makes up for it as a director.  For a better film about an aging mobster, see Touchez Pas au Grisbi with Jean Gabin.  Coppola's other masterpeice is Apocalypse Now, which may be the best American war film of all time.
   
5. In Cold Blood (Richard Brooks, 1967). Based on Capote's book, this is one of the best true crimes films ever made. The murderers represent two very different faces of evil, and each is depicted with unusual humanity. Chilling yet sympathetic. Brooks knows that showing less can make the audience feel more.  The film is shot in noir style but has vastly greater depth then the typical crime thriller thanks to Capote's extraordinary psychological investigation.  Brooks is also the director who brought us Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Key Largo, The Killers, and Blackboard Jungle, all of which could make a more inclusive favorite film list.
   
6. The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971).  American films are often overly based on narrative structure and two-dimesnional characters with clearly defined goals.  This is an episodic coming of age film set in a small Texas town.  Bogdanovich got extraordinary performances out of his cast.  Cybill Shepard does an exquisite, despite never having acted before.  Ben Johnson and Cloris Leachman won Oscar's for their supporting roles.  Bogdanovich's early effort, Targets, is also highly worthwhile.
   
7. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969). A touching tour of the seedier side. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voigt give stellar performances.  My second favorite Voigt film is the disturbing and atmospheric Deliverance. My favorite Hoffman's are Papillon, Little Big Man, and Lenny . Rain Man is seriously overrated. Hoffman and Schlesinger team up again, effectively, in Marathon Man, but I find Olivier underwhelming--in any case, it's a nice justaposition of character acting and method acting.
   
8. Night of the Living Dead (George Romero, 1968). A damn good movie, and the first American film, as far as I know to have a black protagonist, but no discussion of race. Brilliant opening scene. For the zombie genre, also check of Peter Jackson's over the top Dead Alive (which is much better than his Tolkien adaptations). Some of my favorite horror films are: 2000 Maniacs, The Bad Seed, Basket Case, Evil Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Psycho, Rosemary's Baby, The Shining, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
9. Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). Robert Mitchum is terrifying as a murderous preacher, with Love and Hate emblazoned on his knuckles. Good suspense and oozes with atmosphere.  Mitchim reprises his role as a creepy stalker in Cape Fear, which is also essential viewing for thriller fans.  Director Laughton is better known as an actor; he gives an amazing performance inWitness for the Prosecution. 
   
10. Twelve Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957).  Perhaps the greatest of all courtroom dramas, it tells the story of one juror (Henry Fonda) who courageously resists voting with the majority.  Even if you find the theme hokey, it's impossible not to be impressed by the excellent performances and the taught direction.  Among Lumet's other great films, my favorites are (in order) Dog Day Afternoon, The Pawnbroker, and Network.  My other favorite trial films include Anatomy of a Murder (with its gorgeous Ellington soundtrack), Inherit the Wind, Paths of Glory, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Witness for the Prosecution.
11. Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947).   A definitive noir with plot twists, flashbacks, crime, seediness, dark cinematography and, of course, a femme fatale.  The excellent cast includes Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, and Kirk Douglas.  Hard to beat.   Tourneur also made excellent horror thrillers, including the creepy, campy Cat People.  Other favorite cinema noir films include Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity, Rudolph Maté's D.O.A., Jules Dessin's Night and the City, Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep (which is impossible to follow), Charles Vidor's Gilda, Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, Robert Siodmak's The Killers, Otto Preminger's Laura, Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly, Tay Garnett's The Postman Always Rings Twice, Boris Ingster's Stranger on the Third Floor, Alexander Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success, and John Huston's Asphalt Jungle.  The best noir cinematographer was John Alton (see especially Raw Deal and The Big Combo).
    
12. Shadows (John Cassavetes, 1959).  Shadows is an imperfect film, but a very impressive first effort, and a breakthrough in American cinema.  Raw, gritty, realism--not melodramatic like the Italian neo-realists or some Hollywood social commentary films of similar vintage, but edgy and uncomfortable, with unknown performers adlibbing there lines.  This is cinéma vérité and it brings a new honesty, hardly anticipated and rarely rivaled, in American film.  Shadows is also remarkable for it's subject matter: the racism of a white man who doesn't realize that his girlfriend is black.  The film was released 3 years before To Kill a Mockingbird, and unlike that film and other important films about race, this one is set in the urban north, not the rural south.  It was not, however, the first film to focus on the theme of "passing"--the classic treatment of that phenomenon is The Imitation of Life, made in 1934, and remade in 1959.  Both versions are excellent.  For more Cassavetes, I would recommend Woman Under the Influence, Husbands, and Faces.  These films are difficult to watch because they deal with human ugliness, but they are all very worthwhile.
    
13. Shock Corridor (Samuel Fuller, 1963).  Sam Fuller was rightly called the tabloid poet for his gritty, high impact glorified B-movies, that influenced many other directors including the pioneers of the French New Wave.  Luc Moullet praised Fuller as a director who has nothing to say, but much to do.  Highlights include his seedy cold-war noir, Pickup on South Street, and The Naked Kiss, which has one of the best opening sequences in movie history.  Shock Corridor, my favorite, tells the tale of a journalist who gets himself committed to an insane asylum with the hope that he can write a Pulitzer prize winning story.  Though clearly sensationalizing, the film also offers some sympathetic portraits of the mentally ill.  Other outstanding asylum films include Splendor in the Grass, Suddenly Last Summer, One Flew Over the Cuckcoo's Nest, and The Ninth Configuration.
    
14. A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951). Brando's best performances have never been topped by anyone, and in this adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play, he is at his best: unpredictable, crude, loathsome, and captivating.  My second favorite Brando performance is On the Waterfront.  My second favorite Kazan film is A Face in the Crowd with an imitable and terrifying lead performance by newcomer Andy Griffith.  For close runner's up, I'd include the psychologically harrowing Splendor in the Grass and the sexually charged thriller, Baby Doll.
    
15. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950).  It would be hard to exaggerate Billy Wilder's talent as a director.  He made some of America's best comedies (Some Like it Hot, The Apartment), dramas (Lost Weekend, Ace in the Whole), noirs (Double Indemnity), courtroom pics (Witness for the Prosecution), and genre benders (such as Stalag 17, which straddles comedy, drama, war, a prison escape).  Sunset Boulevard is arguably the best of the lot.  Narrated by a dead man, it is an eviscerating critique of Hollywood, showing the ugly side of flops, flunkies, and megastars.
    
16. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976). The perfect antihero film. De Nero has never been better, Cybill Shepherd gives one of her better performances, and Jodie Foster deconstructs the damsel in distress.  The movie also contains my professional mantra, "One of these days, I'm gonna get organizized."  After Taxi Driver, my favorite Scorcese films are Mean Streets, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas, which all happen to feature De Nero.
    
17. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948).  I think this is Bogart's best performance.  He is absolutely despicable a gold prospector corrupted by greed.  And Sierra Madre also has one of the best misquoted lines of all time: "We don't need no badges.  I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"  For an even better film about desperate expats in Latin America, see Clouzot's explosive thriller, Wages of Fear (below).  For another look at Bogart's dark side, see In a Lonely Place.  But my second favorite Bogart film is Beat the Devil, which is also directed by Huston.   The characters in that film are more interesting than the better known Maltese Falcon (also Huston/Bogart), and I even prefer it to Casablanca, which has a similar ex-pat theme.  Peter Lorre is wonderful in all three.  My second favorite John Huston film is Night of the Iguana with Ava Gardner and Richard Burton (written by Tennessee Williams). 
18. Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962). Bette Davis is unforgettable as a former child star, who must look after a disabled sister (Joan Crawford) whom she despises. The film is frightening and sad, and it also includes some good tips on how to apply make-up.  Bette Davis also plays a past-peak performer in All About Eve, which is a phenomenal movie.  For a third extraordinary film about a fallen Hollywood star, see Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (above).
    
19. White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949). James Cagney preferred to do musicals, but his greatest talent was bringing gangsters to the screen. This is his top performance, and it's also a case study in the Oedipal complex.  Cagney is also incredible in Angels with Dirty Faces, The Public Enemy, which is particularly edgy for the time, and The Roaring Twenties, also directed by Walsh.  If you tire of Cagney (per impossible), you can enjoy Paul Muni the original Scarface, which is better than the Paccino platform, or Edward G. Robinson's Little Caeser.  Many of these films are about two-bit hoods with too much ambition.
    
20. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Mike Nichols, 1966).  This Edward Albee adaptation is not exactly easy to watch.  Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton play the alcoholic couple from hell, and, after watching it, you'll never want to drink with your colleagues again.  Taylor and Burton give astonishingly good performances.  Other good films by Mike Nichols includeThe Graduate, Silkwood, and Carnal Knowledge.   For an equally uplifting film about alcohol, see Billy Wilder's Lost Weekend.  For more fun with Richard Burton, see Night of the Iguana.

British, Canadian, and Australian Films

1. Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1954).  A sensitively handled film about an affair.  Lean is better known for his epics (Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge Over the River Kwai), but this film has a more human touch, and unlike those other films, he attempts to tell this story (based on a Noel Coward play) from a woman's perspective.
   
2. Careful (Guy Maddin, 1992).  A truly strange Canadian film about a Alpine village in which every one avoids making loud noises because they might set off an avalanche.  This in an homage to The Brothers Grim, Freud, and Wagner, and it is shot using a two-color process that makes it look like a hand-colored black and white photograph.  Maddin's Tales from the Gimli Hospital is also worthwhile, as is The Saddest Music in The World, which stars is Isabella Rosselini as a rich, legless entertainment promoter, possessed by grief and greed.  The aesthetic in these films shares something with David Lynch's best work, Eraserhead, but they are more campy than creepy.
   
3. If... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968). Malcolm McDowell is more known for his brilliant performance in A Clockwork Orange, but this portrait of life in an English boarding school is also highly rewarding. It is beautifully shot in a combination of color and black and white, and the soundtrack features the phenomenal Misa Luba, an African mass. If... harks back to Jean Vigo's Zero For Conduct, another boarding school story, produced at a time when there was no clear boundary between film and art. 
   
4. The Lion in Winter (Anthony Harvey, 1968). Ignore the silly outfits in the pseudo-Shakespearean melodrama and listen to the dialog. Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole head up a highly dysfunctional royal family. Anthony Hopkins makes a brilliant debut.  O'Toole is also wonderful in Lawrence of Arabia, but this film is more entertaining and more quotable.  Hepburn delivers one of my favorite lines in movie history during the finale.  It's not my favorite Hepburn role, however.  That prize goes to her creepy portrayal of an overbearing mother who wants her dead son's companion, Elizabeth Taylor, to undergo a lobotomy in Suddenly, Last Summer (a fine Tennessee Williams adaptation).
   
5. Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962). This is not a great adaptation of the Nobakov's extraordinary book, nor is it Kubrick's most accomplished film, but it is extremely entertaining.  James Mason and Peter Sellers are both in top form, and Shelly Winters is magnificently grating.  Sue Lyon is also great as (a post-pubescent) Lolita, but somewhat less effective than Dominique Swain in the 1997 remake.  That version is closer to the book, but far less enduring as a film.
   
6. Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960).  Though essentially a B-movie, this film delights with its creepy protagonist, stylized suspense, and super-saturated technicolor.  Powell is famous for his luscious collaborations with Emeric Pressburger, such as the magical realist dance classic, Red Shoes, and the psychosexual nun drama, Black Narcissus.  Here Powell branches out on his own to tell the story of a murderous, perverted filmmaker.  Released the same year as Psycho, it shocked audiences and lead to Powell's banishment from British film-making.  Though hardly timeless, the film does hold up for it's period aesthetic and for it's sympathetic depiction of a man made monstrous by childhood abuse.
   
7. Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945). It is a cheat to put an American produced film in the British list, but I regard Hitchcock as a quintessentially British director.  Spellbound is Hitchcock's suspenseful tribute to psychoanalysis.  For authenticity, Hitchcock consulted the psychoanalysis of hi his producer, David Selznick (King Kong, Gone with the Wind, The Third Man).  Admittedly, there are better Hitchcock films.  My top votes go to Rear Window, Notorious, Rebecca, and North By Northwest .  And, he made some wonderful films while still in Britain, including The 39 Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and, especially, The Lady Vanishes.  But Spellbound gets my vote here because of the Dali dream sequence.
8. The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949).  This perfect British noir classic set in post-war Vienna features excellent performances by Joseph Cotten and Orsen Welles.  It's also known for its Oscar winning cinematography and mesmerizing zither soundtrack.  Cotton and Welles had teamed up before in both Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons; but on those occasions Welles was in the director's chair.  Some people think Ambersons is better than Kane.  I think Kane is darker, more poetic, and more haunting.  The Third Man is more entertaining than either.  My second favorite Carol Reed film is The Fallen Idol, about a man under suspicion of killing his wife, and a boy who knows what really happened.
9. Videodrome (David Cronenberg, 1983).  Cronenberg is one of the most original directors of recent times, and one of the best directors from Canada.  His work contrasts interestingly with Adam Egoyan, another Canadian, because both make films at the boundary between mainstream and avant garde, with philosophical themes, but Egoyan tends to be pretentious, where Cronenberg is just the opposite. His films often have a B-movie feel, which makes them accessible and cultishly entertaining.  Videodrome is my favorite by far, and not jut because it features Deborah Harrie at her prime and James Wood.  It is a sci fi horror story that explored the boundary between entertainment and reality, flesh and technology, mind and media.
   
10. Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971).  A sister and brother a lost in the Australian outback, and meet an Aborigine teen.  That's the set up for this beautifully shot film about coming of age and cultural differences. .   The protagonists come from different world, and Roeg resists the temptation to preach about which one is better, and he resists some of the usual cliches about cultures clashing.  For another good Roeg pic, see his psychedelic first film, Performance, with Mick Jagger.
    
    

Films in Other Languages:

French Films

1. Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Louis Malle, 1958). Proto New Wave thriller with a brilliant Miles Davis soundtrack.  Need I say more?  The plot is simple (an adulterous couple plot a murder a murder, and everything goes wrong from there), but it's completely riveting.  For other proto New Wave crime films, see Pepe Le Moko, Quai des Brumes, Touchez Pas au Grisbi, Rififi, and Bob le Flambeur. The first three on this list all star the extraordinary Jean Gabin.
   
2. Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960). This is the definitive French new wave film. One one level, it's a just a romantic chase film, but, in style, it parts dramatically from the sound-stage productions of big budget movie studies. It is edgy, playful, and defiantly underproduced. The film succeeds by breaking all the rules: Godard is a champion of jump cuts, awkward acting (Jean Seberg), hand-held cameras, thin story line, narrative ambiguity, un-heroic characters, arbitrary scene length, and flagrant amatuerism.  For similar fare, see Band of Outsiders.  I also like Weekend, which is far more avant garde, Contempt, a subtle feminist film starring Bridgette Bardot, and My Life to Live, in which Anna Karina gives an especially affecting performance. I also like Godard's more polical films, like La Chinoise, which is a sympathetic but also scathing critique of fashionable Marxism, and Les Carabiniers, which deconstructs the war film into an idiotic farce.  For another brilliant example of the same, see Luc Moullet's The Smugglers.
   
3. The Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945).  This fairytale soap opera presents the lives and loves of a group of performing artists.  Carné is something of a magical realist.  Nothing peculiar happens, but somehow Carné infuses his familiar story with a kind of poetic magic that makes it completely captivating.   He creates a similar mood in Le Quai des Brumes and Le Jour se Levé, both with Jean Gabin.  For another magical French film about love, don't miss Jean Vigo's L'Atalante, which one of Truffaut's favorite films.
   
4. Girl at the Monceau Bakery (Eric Rohmer, 1963). This release actually contains two shorts, Monceau Bakery and Susanne's Career, which are the first installments of Rohmer's moral tales. I love the whole film series, especially Claire's Knee and Chloe in the Afternoon. Rohmer has a Sisyphusian view of romance, and his male characters are usually appealingly loathsome.  I am less enthralled by Rohmer's later films, which are often repellently innocuous.
5. Jules and Jim (Francois Truffaut, 1962).  Truffaut was the first Cahiers du Cinema critic to make a feature film, and, in so doing, effectively launched the French New Wave.  That effort was his masterful 400 Blows, which is one of the best films ever made about the frustrations of childhood.  But 400 Blows bears some resemblance to easlier films, including Vigo's surreal Zero for Conduct, and some works of Italian neo-realism, such as De Sica's Shoeshine.  Truffaut did  more to shape the distinctive style of the new wave in writing the screenplay for Godard's Breathless, and the crowning acheivement of his own new wave efforts is this film, Jules and Jim, a subtle, humane, temporally extended, convenion defeying, vaguely existential story of a love triangle.   I am also fond of other Traufaut films, including especially Shoot the Piano Player and The Wild Child.  The former is a quintessential new wave ganster film, and the latter tells the touching true story of the Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, who was discovered in the woods at the dawn of the 19th century. Truffaut plays Itard, the physician who tried to civilize Victor and teach him language.  For another wild boy film, see Herzog's The Enigma of Kasper Hauser.
6. Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, 1961). This film isn't for everyone, because it is short on plot and heavy on narration. It's based on a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the guiding force behind the nouveau roman movement in French literature. Like Robbe-Grillet's novels, this film manages to be intensely psychological while focusing narrative attention of architectural details and other minutia. Another great writer, Marguerite Dumas, wrote the screenplay for Resnais's Hiroshima Mon Amour, which is a gripping study of impossible love and the tragedy of war.  For something a little less experimental, I also like Resnais La Guerre et Finie, which examines the futility of leftist efforts in fascist Spain.
   
7. Les Bonnes Femmes (Claude Chabrol, 1960). Chabrol is considered the French Hitchcock, and, though apt, that title does not do justice the originality of his films. This is my favorite. Every character and every scene is memorable. Totally ordinary people, yet completely bizarre; the subtle weirdness of the commonplace. I also like other Chabrol films including The Butcher and This Man Must Die, but Les Bonnes Femme is my favorite.
8. The Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959). Bresson may be my favorite director. His characters (usually played by non-actors) speak without affect and engage in extreme, seemingly gratuitous acts. Despite all this, or perhaps because of it, his characters seem deeply human.  They wrestle with fundamental existential problems: freedom, faith, morality. The Pickpocket is the story of a thief whose motives for stealing are inscrutible.  In a related film, L'Argent, Bresson follows the descent from petty crime into extreme criminality. My second favorite Bresson, Au Hasard Balthazar, is about the mundane cruelties of everyday life as seen through the eyes of an donkey. I am also fond of Une Femme Douce, which is about a woman led to suicide by the stifling banality of her life, and Mouchette, which is a devastating portrait of a girl who is victimized but refuses to be a victim.  For another great existential film about suicide, see Kiarostami's The Taste of Cherry.  For another great film about a pickpocket, see Sam Fuller's Pickup on Southstreet, which may have inspired Bresson's masterful opening scene.
   
9. Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939). On the surface, this film is somewhere between a screwball comedy and a trite melodrama about love triangles among the gentry. But, it is also a piece of scathing social criticism. The protagonists are contemptible, trifling, and self-possessed. They are preoccupied with rules of decorum, but profoundly lacking in common decency.  Renoir's The Grand Illusion is another exquisite piece of social criticism, but there Renoir balances cynicism with a more glimpses of human decency.  Rules of the Game was banned by the French and burned by the Germans during the occupation. 
   
10. Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953).  Clouzot is a master of suspense, and this is his masterpiece.  Diaboloque was more popular,  but this is a more original film and it manages to illicit almost unbearable tension without and monsters or murderers.  Set in South America, it tells the story of men who must drive two trucks of highly explosive nitroglycerene across miles of badly paved roads.  My second favorite Clouzot iss Le Courbeau, a chillingly cynical portrait of persecution and paranoia in a small town.  Like Rules of the Game, that film was banned in France, and might have ended Clouzot's career prematurely.

Italian and Spanish Films (or directors)

1. 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963). Fellini's films are amazing. He resides in a world of clowns and prostitutes that is sometimes unsettling, but always warmly human.  La Dolce Vita and Amacord are all almost as good as this subtly surreal biographical film.  I also love the sumptuous excesses of Satyricon.  For Fellini in a more realist mood, I like Nights of Cabiria, I Vitelloni, and La Strada.  An even earlier film, The White Sheik, anticipates many tropes that define Fellini's mature work.  It is not in league with the others, but it is utterly charming.
   
2. All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar, 1999). I like most of Almodovar's films, but I think this is the best one to date. Many of his films deal with the tragedy of desire, but this one manages to do that a bit more poignantly. His lead character, mostly women, have depth and dimension, and, through allusion, Almodovar plays tributes to other great films, including All About Eve, which is the inspiration for his title.
3. The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966).  This film about the Algerian independence movement is essential viewing for anyone who wants deeper insight into terrorism.  Rather than portraying terrorist bombers as homicidal maniacs, Pontecorvo examines how ordinary people can resort to violence under conditions of occupation.  For another classic about occupation, see Melville's Army of Shadows--a true strory about the French resistance.  Together, these films show both sides of the French experience with imperialism.
   
4. The Bicyce Theif (Vittorio De Sica, 1948). It is almost a cliché to praise this film, but it really is a work of cinematic genius.  The story of a poor father who is trying to recover a stolen bicyle is simple enough, but almost every scene is memorable and moving.  It is a moral tale, in some ways, but it never sermonizes.  De Sica's Shoeshine, about poor children, is also essential viewing, as isUmberto D., the touching story of an old man and his dog.  Though quintessentially Neo-Realist, there is something otherworldly about all of these films.  The characters take on an etherial quality, because the real world has no place for them.  For a later De Sica film, see The Garden of the Finzi-Continis about a wealthy Jewish family during the war.
5. The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz  (Luis Bunuel, 1955).  I like all stages of Bunuel's career, from his avant garde early works, like Un Chien Andalou to his mature surrealist masterpieces, such as The Exterminating Angel, The Discrete Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and Phantom of Liberty.  The Criminal Like of Archibaldo de la Cruz was done during Bunuel's Mexican period, and it tells the tale of an artistocrat who thinks he has the power to kill by act of will.  It covers many classic Bunuel themes: the upper classes, the Church, machismo culture, and a sexual fetishes.  The film is low budget and full of wooden performances, but all the deficits in prodcution quality are fully compensated for by its perverse originality and comic, surrealistic charm.  The film contrasts sharply with my second favorite of Bunuel's Mexican films, Los Olvidados, which (minus a disturbing surrealistic dream sequence) is a darkly realist portrait of street kids and their violent world.  My favorite of Bunuel's late films is That Obscure Obect of Desire, for which he ended up casting two women in the lead role when he fired the troublesome Maria Schneider (Last Tango in Paris) from the set during production.  The best starting place for Bunuel may be Belle de Jour, which is an accessible and entertaining surrealist classic.
6. Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellocchio, 1965).  Talk about dysfunctional families, imagine worrying about whether your psychotic brother might decide to kill your mother or your other siblings.  This is an edgy and entertaining film was classified as neo-real on its release, but it has a new wave sensibility.  The volatile lead is at war with social conventions and traditional values.  The film also has a fine soundtrack by Ennio Morricone (my favorite Morricone sountracks are The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and The Mission).
   
7. L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960). L'Avventura begins as a mystery, but it transforms into a film about alientation.  Antonioni's films confound viewers because their stories are incidental and characters are treated as props.  Departing radically from Italian neo-realism, his films are abstract, existential, moddle-class mood studies, rather than narrative melodramas about the tribulations of working class life.  L'Avventura is the first film in an excellent trilogy, with The Eclipse and Red Desert. The latter is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen, despite its minimalist palette.  For two more accessible films with a similar mood, see La Notte, which is about alienation within a relationship, or The Passenger, with Jack Nicholson, which deals with alienation from one's own identity.  Antonioni's hit, Blow Up, is much accessible than any of these, and highly entertaining (dig the Herbie Handcock soundtrack), but like the others, it leaves many riddles unanswered.  I also like Antonioni's earlier films, when he was still working with in a neo-realist mould, especially Il Grido and Story of a Love Affair--both involve the hopeless longing for a relationship, but in one the lead character wanders, and in the other the lead waits.
   
8. Love and Anarchy (Lina Wertmüller, 1973).  A touching story set in a brothel.  The success of the film owes much to Giancarlo Giannini who also appears in other Wertmüller hits.  Here he plays a hapless peasant who has been recruited to assassinate Mussolini.  His expressive face harks back to the heyday of silent films and has few cinematic rivals.
9. Mamma Roma (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1962). A harrowing example of Italian Neo-Realism.  Mamma Roma is a mother and former prostitute who just can't seem to gain respect and straighten out her life.  The performances are incredible, and you will be left in tears.  Pasolini's Accattone is also outstanding.  If you are in the mood for something bizarre (talking birds and time travel!), you might try The Hawks and the Sparows.
   
10. Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960). Visconti's masterful film is a Neo-Realist saga about a group of struggling brothers who have moved up to the big city from the impoverished south.  The brothers range from sympathetic to sick, and their story is told with a kind of journalistic objectivity, typical of this period.  The film's influence on the Godfather trilogy is unmistakable.  For Visconti in a historical mood,  see The Leopard, with Alain Dillon, and Claudia Cardinale (quite an attractive couple).
    

Japanese Films

1. Branded To Kill (Seijun Suzuki, 1967).  Suzuki made a series of gangster films in the 1960s that become increasing abstract.  By the time he made this film, he had essentially given up on plot.  The film is a series of amazingly photographed vignettes involving a mobster (the Number 3 Killer), who has sexual obsession with the scent of boiling rice.  Susuki was promptly fired and almost lost his career for crafting this rarified masterpiece.  Other great Susuki films include Gate of Flesh, about a gang of post WWII prostitutes, Youth of the Beast, about sadistic mobsters and a vengeful cop, and Tokyo Drifter, about a gangster who tries to get out of the business.  The last of these films, with its stylized Technicolor photography and  funky jazz soundtrack, is regarded as an important work of a pop art.
2. The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa, 1956).  American WWII films tend to glorify the war.  Things looked different from the Japanese side.  This poetic film tells the story of Japanese soldiers in Burma at the end of the war.  It advertises the dignity of peace and compassion over the honor of victory and conquest.  To see a less sympathetic perspective on the Japanese, see Wen Jiang's Devil's on The Doorstep, which tells the story of Chinese villagers who are trusted to hide a captured Japanese soldier and his translator in a town that has been occupied by the Japanese army.
   
3. The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigihara, 1966) This is the stunningly photographed story of a man who loses his face in a chemical accident and is given a replacement by a deranged plastic surgeon.  The new face changes the protagonist's personality, raising interesting questions about identity and character.  I also love Teshigaha's haunting and beautiful allegorical film, Woman in the Dunes, as well as his genre-blending first feature, Pitfall (a murder mystery, leftist social critique, and ghost story all in one).  All three of these are adaptations of Kobo Abe novels.  If you want a good double feature, watch The Face of Another with Georges Franju's brilliant French horror-noir, Eyes Without A Face.  For other films that deal with identity, I'd strongly recommend Antonioni's The Passenger , Bergman's Persona, and Kiarostrami's Close-Up (below).
   
4. The Pornographers (Shohei Imamura, 1966). A quirky and entertaining film about the family life of a pornographer who becomes obsessed with making a perfect sex doll.  Need I say more?
   
5. Onibaba (Kaneto Shindô, 1964).  A stunningly beautiful and nightmarish film, about feudal Japan.  Two women survive by killing samurai and selling their armor.  The film is based on an old fable, and it includes the most beautiful footage of grass fields that I have ever seen.
   
6. Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa). There is no way to select a favorite Kurosawa film. Few directors have created as many masterpieces. Rashomon is not the most sumptuous (that honor goes to Ran), nor the most moving (Ikuru is the obvious choice), nor the most entertaining (for that see Yojimbo, The Seven Samurai, or High and Low), but it may be the most innovative. The film involves a trial in which we are shown multiple perspectives on the same event. It reminds us that film, even when factual, can present only a version of reality.
7. Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mozoguchi, 1954). A heart-wrenching epic set in medieval Japan. It tells the story of a family torn apart when the father is exiled, the mother is sold as a courtesan, and the children are forced into slavery. Almost every scene is poignant, and each shot is exquisitely framed like a wood block print.  Mozoguchi's Ugetsu  and Life of Oharu are equally rewarding.  Ugetsu focuses on the consequences of greed and the horrors of war; Oharu tells the almost unbearable story of a women who is sold by her family intro prostitution. These films are unmistakably Japanese in their focus on family, duty, status, and tradition.
   
8. Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953).  Ozu's masterpeice is a movie story about aging and the clash between old Japan and new.  Executed with charactersitc subtlety  and understatement, no film better captures the style of this master director.  Also not the frequent use of low camera angles, which give this film a distinctively Japanese aesthetic.  The camera, like the performers, is often sitting on the floor.  My second favorite Ozu is Late Spring and perhaps, after that, Floating Weeds.   Though, really, the whole corpus is great, and, like a painter, many of the films are thematically and stylistically related.
   

(To be finished soon)

Northern European Films

1. The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930).  The ultimate Weimar Period film, The Blue Angels tells the story of a professor, Emil Jannings, who falls in love with a night club singer, Marlene Dietrich, who leads him on a path to destruction.  Should we blame the singer, the professor, or the social system that makes status lines impenetratble?  The film is morally ambiguous, but it deilvers a subtle jab at the status norms of high society.  Both stars do a superb job; it's probably Dietrich's best role, and Janning's second best (his best is in Murnau's extraordinarily well-shot silent classic, The Last Laugh).  Jannings ended his distinghuished carreer in dishonor, becaue he was an active supporter of Hitler during the war.  Dietrich moved to the United States just before the release of The Blue Angel, and became a staunch critic of Hitler, receiving a Medal of Honor for her efforts to denouce Nazis through entertainment.  She and von Sternberg made other great films in the States, including Shanghai Express and Morocco.
   
2. Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996).  With emotionally raw scripts, provocative themes, and glitz-free cinematic style, the Dogma 9 group is producing some of the most innovative films these days.  Lars von Trier is arguably the best in the group.  Breaking the Waves (set in Scottland and acted in Eglish, rather than von Trier's native Danish) tells the devestating story of a woman whose husband urges her to find lovers after he is injured in an industrial accident.  Von Trier's other evocative films include Dogville and Dancer in the Dark (with a gut-wrenching lead performance by Bjork, who also composed the stirring sountrack).
   
3. Coup de Grâce (Volker Schlöndorff, 1976).  Based on a Marguerite Yourcenar novel, this is a subtly handled film about a love triangle between a Prussian officer, a countess, and her brother.  Margarethe von Trotta gives an extraordianry performance as the countess, and one of the side characters is played, quite memorably, by Valeska Gert (a silent film actress who appears 40 years earlier in Diary of a Lost Girl, with Louise Brooks).  This film is also an essay on the futility of war and a critque of the upper classes.  Schlöndorff's other superb literary adaptations includeThe Young Törless (Musil), The Tin Drum (Grass), and The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Böll), which is co-directed by von Trotta.
   
4. Day of Wrath (Carl Dreyer, 1943).  Set in the 17th century, a young woman falls in love with the son of her own husband, an aging minester, and is suspected of being a witch.  The film is spiritually ambiguous (are there really supernaturally powers at work?) and morally ambiguous (do we pity the yong woman or dispise her?).  Dreyer is Denmarks greatest director and his films acheive a high degree of dramatic tension despite their careful pacing, and, as a former silent film maker, he knows how to use visuals--often the stern faces of his actors--to engage our emotions.
   
5. Fitzcaraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982). So many Herzog films tell the same story: an obsessed man, taking on an incredible challenge, for no good reason.  This is perhaps his greatest work.  Klaus Kinski wants to bring opera to a remote part of the Amazon, and to fulfill his ambition, he needs to move a ship over a stretch of land to get from one river to another.  A documentary about the making of this film, Burden of Dreams, is almost as good.  My second-favorite Herzog-Kinski collaboration is Aguirre, Wrath of God, based, like Apocalypse Now, on Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
6. The Goalie's Anxiety After the Penalty Kick (Wim Wenders, 1972).  A goalie  goes off wandering after poor performance on the field.  He commits an arbitrary murder and then continues on his aimless journey.  Like Antonioni, Wenders is  interested in alienation, and he trades in plot for mood.  My other favorite Wenders films include  Paris,Texas (in English),The  Wrong Move (with a young Nastassja Kinski), and The American Friend (with Denis Hopper in Wender's rendition of the book that inspired The Talented Mr. Ripley and Plein Soleil).  Many people love Wings of Desire, which, like The Goalie's Anxiety, is based on a Peter Handke story, but I find it a bit pretentious in comparison to Wenders's earlier films.
   
7. Hour of the Wolf (Ingmar Bergman, 1968).  My favorite Bergman film, it took me years to find on video. An artist seeks isolation on an island, but is instead tormented by his very peculiar neighbors. Dig the Mozart puppet show.  I also love Wild Strawberries, Persona, Shame, Scenes from a Marriage and The Seventh Seal (though it's a bit heavy-handed).  If you want to move from Sweden to Denmark, see Carl Dreyer's Ordet (perhaps the best film ever about religion).
8. M (Fritz Lang, 1931). Perhaps my favorite film of all time. Peter Lorre is magnificent a child killer, who gains our sympathy when he is hunted by all walks of society: parents, police, mobsters, and beggars. Lange uses sound brilliantly from the opening nursery rhyme to the terrifying whistle of the Peer Gynt suite.  I also recommend Fury, Fritz Lang's first American film, for another look at how ordinary people can become possessed by a thirst for retribution.  Scarlet Street is also terrific, with Edward G. Robinson as an amature painter who gets snookered by a femme fatale.
9. Pandora's Box (George Wilhem Pabst, 1930).  Germany had two great period's for film: the Weimar years and 1970s with the young guns, Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders.  Many of the best Weimar films are silent and hold up to the best talkies.  Some are overtly expressionist fables, like Wiene's Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or Murnau's Nosferatu.  Pandora's Box has some expressionist flourishes, but it is essential a darkly realist film, based on Frank Wedekind plays, that deals with the seedier sides of urban life (gambling, prostitution, poverty, murder).  It's most famous for the extraordinary perfomance of its lead, Louis Brooks, who manages to remain strong and charmingly resiliant, despite many bad events and a cast of unpleasant characters who want to control her.  Pabst avoids moralizing, or rather, he suggests presents the Brooks' classless and open sexual persona as a kind of moral icon. 
   
10. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1970).  Fassbinder was the enfant terrible of German cinema, and is his short career he produced an astonishing number of good films.  He is better known for The Marriage of Maria Braun and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.  Those films are masterful, but a bit overwrought.  Herr R. is a subtler film about the pointless inanity of middle-class life.  In scene after scene, shot in an unadorned documentary style, Fassbinder exposes the trivial agonies of modern existence (striving for a promotion, gossiping neighbors, outings with in-laws, etc.).  I also recommend Fassbinder's Fox and His Friends, which eerily anticipates aspects of the director's own life and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, which manages to be profoundly touching without a trace of sentimentality.

Eastern European Films 

1. Ashes and Diamonds (Andzej Wajda, 1958). A entertaining, wartime, anti-hero film, which might be watched along side The Wild One for an interesting comparison.  Ashes is part of a series of war films, that includes Wajda's spine tingling Kanal, about a group of resistence fighters who must hide in the sewers in order to escape the encroaching Germans.
2. Closely Watched Trains (Jirí Menzel, 1966).  This Oscar-winning film is a classic of the Czech new wave.  It is the amusing, and ultimately moving, story of a young railway dispatcher who is trying to lose his virginity, set against the backdrop of the German occupation.  It is interesting to compare this film and those of Wajda to earlier depictions of the war in Eastern European cinema, which are often feel more like artistically elevated propaganda.  The crowning acheivement in this genre may be Grigori Chukhrai's unabashedly sentimental Ballad of a Soldier from 1959.  Chukhrai's story is morally black and white, and its protagonist, a young farmer turned soldier, is the personification of decency.  Menzel's protagonists are bumblingly human, in comparison, and Wajda is a master of the anti-hero.
3. The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1968).  Perhaps the most aesthetically  gratifying film ever made.  Every frame  is almost overwhelmingly beautiful.  The film is a biography of the great Armenian troubadour, Sayat Nova, thought it would be difficult to decipher his life-story from the series of cryptic and haunting images that fill the screen.  The Color of Pomegranates is innovative is almost every respect: the camera is still in each shot, there is no dialog, and one actor plays many different parts (male and female).  Parajanov's genius was too much for the Soviets: after this film was made, he was sentenced to the gulag on trumped up charges.
   
4. Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985). One of the most disturbing war films I have seen, about a Belarussian boy who tries to join a makeshift army of Partisans, as Germans lay seige on villages of farmers. Hundreds of Belarussian farming villages were burnt to the ground during the war, and this film serves as a horrifying memorial.  For other films that depict WWII from a child's perspective, see Clément Forbidden Games and Rosellini's Germania: Anno Zero, which contains extensive footage of the devestation post-war Berlin.
   
5. Knife in the Water (Roman Polanski, 1962).  Great Polish period Polanski--a psychological drama set in a small boat on the open sea.  The jazz sountrack  by Krzysztof Komeda is also worth the price of admission.   Polanski's made some great films after leaving Poland, including The Tenant and, of course, Rosemary's Baby, but this early effort, and his short films of the same period are less corny and more appealing.
   
6. Loves of a Blond (Milos Foreman, 1965).  A sensitive portrait of a young factory worker (the sister of Foreman's first wife) and the vile men that she encounters.  A landmark of Czech new wave.  Loathsome, lusty men are also a theme in Foreman's Fireman's Ball and in the psychedelic romp, Daisies, by Vera Chytilová.  There was clearly a feminist streak in Czech cinema at the time.
   
7. Man is Not a Bird (Dusan Makavejev, 1965).  Sylistical original Yugoslavian film about a worker who falls for his landlord's young daughter.  The camera work is occasionally stunning, the sub-plots are engrossing, and the performances are compellingly understated.  But the great strength of this film comes from its less conventional elements, including the performance of a hypnotist and the orchistration of Beethoven in the lead protagonist's factory.
   
8. Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975).  If you can endure plotless films, this is my favorite.  Tarkovsky's father was a famous Russian poet, and this film is like a piece of poetry (in also features poems by Tarkovsky's father and a cameo from his mother).  Mirror manages to have vastly more narrative depth than most films despite the fact that it doesn't have a linear plot.  Instead, it is a loose assembly of memories.  Tarkovsky is an amazing director, and this is his most personal film.  I am also fond Nostalghia, Solaris, and Andrey Rublyov.  These are slow-paced films, but they are completely absorbing and highly rewarding.  The most accessible Tarkovsky may be Ivan's Childhood, an early film about the horrors and heroics of war.
   
9. Soy Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964).  This Russian/Cuban co-production was a total failure when it was released.  Too Russian for Cuban audiences, and too artistic for the Russians, in fell into obscurity for many years.  But it is one of the greatest movies ever made: a visual poem about the Cuban revolition that has some of the most innovative editting and stunning camerawork that I have ever seen.  Kalatozov's other great movie is The Cranes are Flying;  it is a stunning and tragic love story set during the Second World War.  Though less ground-breaking than Soy Cuba, it offers another opportunity to revel in Sergei Urusevsky's incredible cinematography.
   
10. Werkmeister Harmonies (Bela Tar, 2000). An odd and oddly enthralling film by one of Hungary's greatest directors.  A simple town collapses into paranoia and chaos when a giant wale is trucked in as a traveling public spectacle.  The beautiful long shots in high contrast black and white will stay with you forever.
    

Other Countries  

1. Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha).  The crowning achievement of Brazil's Cinema Novo movement, Rocha blends the realism of Italian filmmaking, the freshness of the French, the theatrical qualities of the Japanese, and the lyricism of local folk music.  Shot in arid Bahia, this sparsely scripted masterpiece captures the complexity and contradictions of Brazilian culture.  It tells the story of a poor herder turned outlaw, who encounters cult leaders and bandits, while hunted by rich land owners and the church.  The influence on Sergio Leone in aesthetic, theme, and sound design is unmistakable.
   
2. The Housemaid (Ki-Young Kim, 1960).  In this perfect psychosexual thriller, a middle class family hires a maid who proceeds to seduce the husband.   Will the wife try to kill her?  Or will she kill the wife? Ki-Young Kim uses sound, situation, sordid characters, and striking imagery to keep viewers at the edge of their seats.  The film came out the same year as Psycho and Peeping Tom, and it belongs in the same league.
   
3. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000). This is an exquisite essay on unfulfilled love. Wong ingeniously frustrates the viewer by shooting scenes from behind barriers and keeping central characters concealed from the camera. Watching it, you feel like a voyeur, which captures both the eroticism of the relationship portrayed and the impossibility of its consummation. The film is visually stunning and the soundtrack is superb.  The sequal, 2046 is almost as pleasing aesthetically, but it's not nearly as haunting emotionally. For a better choice, see Wong Kar-Wai's masterful early effort, Days of Being Wild, which forecasts the style of In the Mood For Love, or see his neo-new wave hit, Chun King Express.
4. Last Life in the Universe (Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 2003).  A Japanese man with OCD get involved with an untidy Thai woman in Bangkok in this carefully paced, surreally inflected, imaginatively conceived film.  There are also some dramatic subplots here, having to do with suicide, mobsters, and car crashes, but these twists take backstage to the unlikely and somewhat ambiguous relationship in the foreground. 
   
5. A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996).  An a young political activist Makhmalbaf stabbed a policeman.  In this film, he re-enacts that event.  The film moved between re-enactment and the director's interactions with the cast members, whose lives echo his own past.  An innovate film from one of Iran's best current directors.  I also recommend Makhmalbaf's The Cyclist, a moving and mythic story about a poor man who agrees to cycle for days without stopping in order to pay hospital bills for his dying wife.
   
6. Orfeo Negro (Marcel Camus, 1959). Magical realism in the favelas of Rio.  One of cinema's great soundtracks adds an added pleasure to this contemporary retelling of the Orfeus myth, which captures the exuberant spirit of Carnival.  Orfeo Negro triumphantly rejects the prevailing approach of Italian neo-realism, because it explores rich sources of joy and meaning in the lives of poor people, rather than melodramatically glorifying hardship in a pseudo-documentary style.
   
7. Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, 1955).  For Indian cinema outside of Bollywood, the obvious top pick is the Bengali masterpiece, Pather Panchali. This is the first film in Ray's Apu trilogy, and the most moving.  Ray manages to avoid facile sentimentality while breaking your heart.  The third film in the trilogy is my second favorite, and the second ranks third.
8. Pyaasa (Guru Dutt, 1957).  My favorite Bollywood film, this is a poignant story about a struggling poet, who is shunned by his family.  Dutt directs and plays the lead, giving a haunting performance. Dutt's Kaagaz Ke Phool is also extraordianry, and he is an excellent leading man  in Abrar Alvi's Sahib Bibi Aur Ghula, which is an interesting study in gender and caste.  All these films are from the Golden Age of Bollywood cinema.  Like current films from Mumbai, they are musicals, but this should not be off-putting.  They are not at all corny; the music is gorgeous, and they give the films a magical realist quality. 
9. Raise the Red Lantern (Yimou Zhang, 1991). Gong Li is extraordinary as the fourth wife on a wealthy landowner. She must compete with other wives to gain favors from him, the small rewards in a life of servitude. Few films are more beautifully photographed. Yimou Zhang casts Gong Li again in his, To Live, which is a classic reveral of fortune tale and a powerful lesson in 20th century Chinese history. From feudal corruption to Communist kitsch.
10. The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostrami, 1999).  Essentially a visual poem, this film follows the mundane routines of a man who has come to a remote village to photograph a mourning ritual.  Though virtually plotless, the film explores the protagonist's changing attitude toward death against the background of a place that is frozen in time.  This may be Kiarostrami's masterpiece but other films come close.  In Taste of Cherry, he follows a man who is looking for someone to help him commit suicide.  Close-Up is a semi-documentary re-enactment of an incident in which a poor man impersonated the director Makhmalbaf in order to win the affection of a wealthy family.  All are brilliant.