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Friends come to me for movie recommendations often — I’m not sure why, given that I still think the best movie I’ve seen in the past few years is Uncharted 2. But I’ve developed a list that I think encompasses the vast majority of standard movies I think folks really ought to see. One friend is actually going through the whole list, and he’s already found some surprises that he’d never seen before.

Like any list of films, this one’s hardly all-encompassing. It is very light on Kubrick, Fellini, Herzog, Malick and a great many others. It includes several entries from Hitchcock, but not Vertigo. It leaves out a great many of my personal favorite films, which are beautiful but flawed, in favor of more popular and sometimes conventional approaches to filmmaking — popcorn and soda, not brie and chablis.* There’s nothing here with or by Woody Allen. But what this list is really designed to be is a collection of good movies — funny or fascinating, and maybe even thought-provoking — that this amateur film watcher thinks everyone ought to see.

I hope you’ll turn to this list the next time you are looking for something to fill out that queue on Netflix.

150 Movies You Really Ought to See

1. Citizen Kane
2. North by Northwest
3. Miller’s Crossing
4. Patton
5. Charade
6. Chinatown
7. Last of the Mohicans (1992)
8. To Kill a Mockingbird
9. Bullitt
10. The Sting
11. Ben Hur
12. Ronin
13. Blade Runner
14. The Godfather (1 and 2)
15. Lord of the Rings (trilogy)
16. Star Wars (trilogy)
17. Braveheart
18. Apocalypto
19. The Right Stuff
20. City of God
21. Before the Rain
22. Bridge on the River Kwai
23. The Untouchables
24. Sexy Beast
25. Kagemusha
26. Poltergeist
27. Empire of the Sun
28. Thief
29. Heat
30. Rocky
31. Apocalypse Now
32. The Getaway (1972)
33. The Natural
34. The Big Sleep
35. Unforgiven
36. The Searchers
37. The French Connection
38. Gone With the Wind
39. Psycho
40. The Exorcist
41. Taxi Driver
42. The Manchurian Candidate
43. Dr. Strangelove
44. Walk the Line
45. The Killing
46. The Killers (1964)
47. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
48. Anatomy of a Murder
49. The Third Man
50. The Maltese Falcon
51. Casablanca
52. Metropolis (1927)
53. The Great Escape
54. All the Presidents’ Men
55. The Apartment
56. Lethal Weapon 2
57. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
58. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
59. The Magnificent Seven
60. Planet of the Apes (1968)
61. Terminator (1 and 2)
62. Jaws
63. Aliens
64. The Thing (both)
65. Goldfinger
66. Indiana Jones (1 and 3)
67. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
68. The Blues Brothers
69. Groundhog Day
70. Caddyshack
71. Ghostbusters
72. Stand By Me
73. It’s a Wonderful Life
74. Henry V (1989)
75. The Silence of the Lambs
76. Reservoir Dogs
77. Pulp Fiction
78. Kill Bill (1 and 2)
79. Batman (1989)
80. The Dark Knight
81. Die Hard (1 and 3)
82. L.A. Confidential
83. Gladiator
84. 300
85. Schindler’s List
86. Saving Private Ryan
87. Goodfellas
88. The Departed
89. The Usual Suspects
90. The Prestige
91. The Hustler
92. The Wild Bunch
93. Cinderella Man
94. Master and Commander
95. There Will Be Blood
96. Snatch
97. Seven
98. Fight Club
99. Leon (The Professional)
100. The Matrix (1)
101. Memento
102. Heist
103. Touch of Evil
104. The Shawshank Redemption
105. The Incredibles
106. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
107. The Goonies
108. Toy Story
109. Wall-E
110. The Wizard of Oz
111. The Hudsucker Proxy
112. The Big Lebowski
113. O Brother Where Art Thou
114. Rear Window
115. A Very Long Engagement
116. The Last Picture Show
117. The Painted Veil
118. To Catch a Thief
119. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
120. The Life Aquatic
121. His Girl Friday
122. The Princess Bride
123. Sense and Sensibility (1995)
124. Shaun of the Dead
125. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
126. Dazed and Confused
127. Blazing Saddles
128. Predator
129. Cop Land
130. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
131. Tombstone
132. Army of Darkness
133. South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut
134. Team America: World Police
135. Dune
136. Star Trek (2, 6, and whatever the latest one was)
137. Starship Troopers
138. Juno
139. Rushmore
140. Pan’s Labyrinth
141. Nightmare Before Christmas
142. Lost in Translation
143. Double Indemnity
144. No Country for Old Men
145. A History of Violence
146. Michael Clayton
147. Glengarry Glen Ross
148. American Psycho
149. The Orphanage
150. Primer

* Of course, no one actually eats that any more. As Calvin Trillin wrote:

What happened to Brie and Chablis?
Both Brie and Chablis used to be
The sort of thing everyone ate
When goat cheese and Napa Merlot
Weren’t purchased by those in the know
And monkfish was thought of as bait.

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The FilmSchoolRejects guys break down the pros and cons of Mad Men’s Jon Hamm as Superman on the big screen. Should be an easy decision: Cole points out, Jon Hamm already is Superman, what with the whole shooting laser beams out of his eyes thing.

I’m not a Superman fan — I grew up on Batman, Wolverine, and Hellboy — but I think it’s important to have good movies about him, lest the icon slip into dry Captain America territory where he’s only used by the B-grade writers to make clumsy political points. After the disaster of Superman Returns (my little sister was excited to see it, but as we walked out, said “that was a really long movie and nothing happened”, which is really the only review you need) I’m strongly in favor of Superman being an adult again, taking a more serious tone. Hamm certainly fits that bill; if you’re making the Dark Knight equivalent for this character, the dark, brooding approach fits.

The challenge with filming Superman in a cynical age is that we’re no longer impressed by what was once amazing. A man who lifts things and flies around for two hours? Everybody does that. While Hamm is a serious actor who might find it difficult to transition to the realm of fitted bodysuits and red undies (for the ladies), he could prove to be a much better Kent than Kal El, adding a depth to the experience of a man living out of his own world, lonely and unknowable.

The best image I’ve ever seen of Superman is the one at the top of this post, by Alex Ross — slumped in the chair, half impossibly powerful otherworldly being, half tired, lonely, bespectacled journalist. Hamm was made to make this scene.

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I suspect it’s rare that Twitter presences change the attitude you have toward a celebrity or politician, but Roger Ebert (@ebertchicago) is an obvious exception to that rule. Plenty of folks on the right really have come to dislike the guy, and the feeling appears mutual.

My own problem with Ebert has never been political, though — it’s been his bizarre dislike for nearly every movie I love.

The first time I can remember watching his reviews and feeling like we had seen two completely different films rant against Gladiator, which he gave an animated and emphatic Thumbs Down. His dislike for the early work of the Coen brothers was another sour note. He gave Raising Arizona and The Usual Suspects 1.5 stars, eviscerated Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and panned Reservoir Dogs, The Professional, Cop Land, and The Untouchables, which I still can’t believe he gave a Thumbs Down. His reviews for these films, like the Gladiator review, come across less like criticism than like dictates from on high — “you cannot like this movie, you will not like this movie, and if you do, you’re an idiot.”

On the other hand, Ebert gave out three stars to movies like Speed 2 and the Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Anaconda three and a half (to put this in perspective, he gave Godfather II three stars).

Sure, Ebert gave four stars to An Inconvenient Truth, Green Zone, Rendition, In the Valley of Elah, W — he’s speaking from his politics there, not a true analysis of the merits of a film (these were all better than Godfather II?), but lots of reviewers do that. But this isn’t about politics — the moment I just stopped reading his material was when I read Ebert’s four star review of Lakeview Terrace, a film which rated 47% at RottenTomatoes and was a deserved box office bomb, with a script that wouldn’t pass muster as an episode of CSI: Bethesda.

Opinions on film are all a matter of perspective and taste, of course, but when someone is so consistently out of sync with movies you love, I think it’s better to just ignore their opinion and find someone else to trust. Someone who gives more stars to The Brown Bunny, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, The Golden Compass and Knowing (both four stars) than he does to The Usual Suspects, O Brother Where Art Thou, Dirty Harry, Miller’s Crossing and Godfather II doesn’t seem like a good choice. But Ebert remains the most widely known movie critic within the wider populace, because he’s an institution, he’s got a fan club, he’s certainly a sympathetic figure now, and he must know best, since he’s on TV and you’re not.

For my part, I yearn for the day when the next era of critics, guys like FilmSchoolRejects who are far less full of themselves — and far less likely to give Cop and a Half a three star review — supplant him. Ebert’s reviews seem drab and desperate, so insistent that you must agree with him and bitter if you don’t, without any of the breezy humor of some of the younger online reviewers.

At some point, if you’re so determined to be the arbiter of conventional wisdom, you risk becoming just plain conventional.

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So if you want to know who’s going to win an Oscar — whether you just love film, or if like me you’re a gambling addict trying to recover from betting the Over on the Super Bowl with desperate prop bets on stars of the screen — you should always turn to an expert. Cole Abaius of Film School Rejects is not just an expert, but a DOCTOR and an expert. He tells us what’s going to happen, and what films he’s excited about for 2010, in our latest podcast, brought to you by The New Ledger’s EDGE.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

You can subscribe to our podcast by following the links above. We hope you enjoy the show. Here’s a list of the Oscar nominees for 2010, since we discuss them at length:

Best motion picture of the year

* Avatar
* The Blind Side
* District 9
* An Education
* The Hurt Locker
* Inglourious Basterds
* Precious
* A Serious Man
* Up
* Up In the Air

Performance by an actress in a leading role

* Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
* Helen Mirren (The Last Station)
* Carey Mulligan (An Education)
* Gabourey Sidibe (Precious)
* Meryl Streep (Julie and Julia)

Performance by an actor in a leading role

* Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
* George Clooney (Up In the Air)
* Colin Firth (A Single Man)
* Morgan Freeman (Invictus)
* Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role

* Matt Damon (Invictus)
* Woody Harrellson (The Messenger)
* Christopher Plummer (The Last Station)
* Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)
* Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)

Performance by an actress in a supporting role

* Penelope Cruz (Nine)
* Vera Farmiga (Up In the Air)
* Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)
* Anna Kendrick (Up In the Air)
* Mo’Nique (Precious)

Best animated feature film of the year

* Coraline
* Fantastic Mr. Fox
* The Princess and the Frog
* The Secret of Kells
* Up

Achievement in directing

* James Cameron (Avatar)
* Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
* Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds)
* Lee Daniels (Precious)
* Jason Reitman (Up In the Air)

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Last week The New Ledger launched a sister site, Edge, edited by Michael Tunison, which focuses on everything we don’t talk about here at TNL. In this first podcast for Edge, it’s my pleasure to chat with Cole Abaius of FilmSchoolRejects.

Cole’s a smart guy, and he’s seen more movies than just about anyone. So he seemed a good voice to respond to this controversy-sparking piece in the Wall Street Journal by David Thomson on the “Death of Method Acting.” I asked Cole: is method acting really dead? Can a style of acting die? What does that even mean? And he answers, with bonus Richard Milhous Nixon references.

We hope you find our first Edgecast interesting. Head on over to Edge for more.

Benjamin Kerstein has an excellent piece at The New Ledger on the much-maligned genius of Michael Bay:

In short, whatever Michael Bay’s sins may be, the sum of his talents definitely adds up to a kind of cinema. This cinema is what Sergio Leone referred to as “cinema cinema,” that is, cinema for its own sake, cinema in and for itself, cinema that exists for no other reason than to be cinema. Cinema as cinema is best expressed by the famous quote from Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou: “A film is like a battleground. It has love, hate, action, violence and death. In one word: emotion.”

Michael Bay’s entire cinematic language consists of nothing but love, hate, action, violence, and death, and every one of his films is self-evidently a battleground. They are pure visual pageantry, possessed of an élan that seems to be nothing less than a cry of love for cinema as cinema. And this is precisely why the critics hate him.

Some of the most eloquent writing is in defense of what some view as indefensible.

>> Some people have the tendency to see politics in everything. It’s often there, yes – I’m sure you could dissect the politics of Dora the Explorer if you wanted to, and without Googling, I’m confident someone has – but it really does detract from just experiencing a work of pop art. [Not everything is politics politics politics - I recall hearing about the director of some piece of horror dreck, perhaps it was The Hills Have Eyes 2, arguing in a plea for relevance that his movie was a response to the Iraq War. Yeah, sure it was buddy.] Such is the case with the lovely Wall-E, which – while not the best thing Pixar has ever created (The Incredibles, Toy Story 2, and Ratatouille are better films – and Nemo is more beautiful) – is a lovely, excellent piece of cinema, and superior to just about anything else you’ll see this year from any studio.

But it seems like a lot of folks are getting stuck on the lecture underneath Wall-E, as opposed to just viewing it as a piece of film art that is incredibly ambitious and challenging. For my own part, I just recommend reading one review – Lileks’:

Pixar’s gift for deft, precise, economical character delineation might have hit its apogee with Eve. It’s all in the tilt of the head and the shape of the eyes – the latter defined by ten blue lines. At first they have two or three shapes; by the end they’ve adopted the shape of Wall-E’s own eyes, indicating her own progression towards awareness and empathy. She is a hard plastic cipher at the beginning; by the end, she is Princess Charming. Literally. (That’s another Disney throwback reference I haven’t seen anyone else note.)

…

Wall-E’s actions when he sits down, knocks his treads together and pats the seat next to him may, I suspect, have been vetted and discussed and considered at great length. (Or not.) It’s the most overtly human action he makes in the entire film – it’s not emulative of humans, it’s instinctive.

Eve’s vocalizations change here, if I recall correctly – there’s nothing in her previous utterances that reveal any emotion that’s not consistent with top-level programming. “No – no” is the moment that makes us see what Wall-E saw in her – and just to underscore the Pixar gift, the moment is understated. Prior to this she’s been an impatient professional.

Just scroll down in the Videos section, and watch the Space Walk.

Update: I noticed that more than a few online critics have taken the opportunity to rank the Pixar films now that there are enough of them to do so. Here’s my own Top Ten, FWIW – it clearly displays my Brad Bird bias:

10. Lifted (I know it’s a short)
9. A Bug’s Life
8. Cars
7. Toy Story
6. Finding Nemo
5. Wall-E
4. Monsters, Inc.
3. Ratatouille
2. Toy Story 2
1. The Incredibles

The internet is flooded with movie lists. Search for virtually any variety, any theme, any mishmash of tags and qualities and plot twists, and you can find a top 10, top 20, or even top 100 list. The best Top Films list, by my measure, can be found over at They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They – but one of the reasons it’s the best is that it can shift and adapt with time, based on the shifting opinions of critics, writers, and the internet populace. Of course, I fully expect that in the ever more wiki-friendly existence of the future, where everyone’s an equal critic, Battlefield Earth will champion all such lists. So here’s one more static one, purely subjective in every way, of what I consider Ten Beautiful Films You May Not Have Seen.

There are plenty of beautiful films that are quite popular and successful – from the old black and white classics to the Technicolor epics to the modern masterpieces. Many of them are found on lists like this one, from the French magazine Cahiers du cinema.

I thought it might be useful, though, to consider a few films that probably won’t make it high on any list like that one – whether it’s because even if they’re visually impressive, they’re flawed in some obvious way, or have a script that can’t match their cinematography, or they’ve got some unforgivably irritating element that overwhelms the good in them. For the record, I think this describes just about every movie Guy Pearce has ever made – he had a good six films that I considered but rejected for this list, none of them because of him.

There are other beautiful movies that I considered and rejected – usually because they’re too popular (see: Godfather, The), too CGI or effects-heavy (see: Lord of the Rings – it’s great, but this is animation, not reality), nothing that’s only noir (I love dark movies, but something like The Third Man or Thief may be intense and powerful, but since that’s all they do, they can’t really qualify as visual beauty for what they don’t show), or so iconic that anyone who’s a student of cinema has already seen them (hence why there’s no Hitchcock on this list, nor any of the other old classics). Films that missed the cut for the aforementioned reasons include Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Ben Hur, Patton, The Natural, Night of the Hunter, The Big Sleep, Charade, Roman Holiday, Manhattan, Bullitt, The Getaway (Ali McGraw never looked better), Mystery of Rampo, Blade Runner, The Sand Pebbles, Chinatown, The Sting, Apocalypto, O Brother Where Art Thou, North by Northwest, Miller’s Crossing, Branagh’s Hamlet, The Abyss, Raging Bull, The Right Stuff, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Fountain, Sexy Beast, The Last Emperor, Empire of the Sun, George Washington, The Rules of the Game, Heat, Unforgiven, Dark City, The Painted Veil, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Breaker Morant, The Battle of Algiers, The Incredibles, The Mission, Layer Cake, La Roue, Napoleon, and Metropolis.

Oh, and of course, Commando.

I had a hard time with The Life Aquatic, this blog’s namesake and perhaps the last good Wes Anderson film we’re going to get now that he’s actively declared war on the concept of plot (here’s hoping that’s not the case), but ultimately decided it was too much of a picture book. Besides, everyone’s seen it.

I struggled with Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America – but ultimately decided it’s too well known, you’d recognize all the people in it, and as wonderful as it is, there are so many other films that capture New York City.

And then there was the hardest one for me to cut of all, Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans – a gorgeous and underrated film which manages to be both the perfect chick flick AND the perfect guy movie all at once – I can see it now, the women walking out of the theater saying, “She threw herself over the edge – so sad, and so romantic!” as the guys say “Did you see that? He chopped that guy in half with that axe thing! It was awesome!” But it will make a prominent appearance on the next list I’m planning, and it was quite popular, so you’ve probably already seen it, too.

So that leaves us with these, in no particular order.

The New World

Just unbroken cinematic beauty, from the first note to the last. When they initially planned to film this movie, Terence Malick and his crew assumed they’d have to find somewhere remote, outside of the United States even – but on a lark, they decided to scout the Tidewater area, and took a trip up the Chickahominy. They ended up realizing that the location near Jamestown was largely unchanged. And so the forests you see are the forests they saw, give or take 300+ years.

Not everyone liked Malick’s film. But the people who liked it seemed to love it, too. I’m glad it has such a strong place in the heart of a few critics, like Jeffrey Overstreet, and I recall Ross Douthat loving it too (but his review, on the old American Scene blog appears lost to the sands of the unsearchable net). It reminds me, as it did him, of the old Robert Frost poem, The Gift Outright.

What’s more, I’ve felt on repeat viewings that the underlying story – the tale behind the gorgeously filmed surface of this movie (all natural light, almost all 65mm stock) – goes much deeper than you might think. The relationship with Pocahontas can be viewed as an allegory for the foundation of America. Bear with me now, it’s not as silly as it sounds: Comparing the personality types of the courageous risk-taking Discoverer in Colin Farrell’s John Smith and the steady, uninspiring, yet tough and reliable Farmer in Christian Bale’s John Rolfe, and you see the two personalities that made the nation possible – the explorer and the maker. Smith, the unreliable rascal whose fear and shady past motivated him to head toward the far reaches of the known sphere, discovers Pocahontas. But you cannot trust this man to build a country, to have the wherewithal to work the land, endure hardship, and make a life worth living in this new world – to be faithful, committed, and make something out of it all. Something like America.

The Searchers

I don’t think it’s all that pretentious to say that if you are an American film buff of any significant level, you’ll have seen The Searchers. Merely a modest commercial success in its time, the respect for this film, its influence and appeal have only grown, chiefly because of a change in understanding of a key relationship and plot point – never spoken of aloud, only implied.

The upshot is: lots of smart people love it. This in itself has sparked a backlash, and a sequence of defenses and analyses, and a weirdly irritating essay by the otherwise wonderful Jonathan Lethem. But the fact that John Milius weeps at John Wayne’s performance should be enough to make you watch it.

Not the perfect western by any means – it plods and halts at points – this is nonetheless a movie of great, epic, expansive beauty. You must see this film, even if you skip all the others on this list.

City of God (Cidade de Deus)

You’ve probably heard of this one. City of God is tragic, ruthless, violent and unforgiving. Only one professional actor is in the whole thing – it’s all on the edge, and there’s no games in this thing. The youngsters that populate this tale are murderous and plotting, and you understand why they have the strength of will to run a profitable drug trade, if only for a few years.

Directed by Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, the tales in this story are continued in City of Men, at least in spirit. But the original film is still the piece of moviemaking that will haunt you for days after you view it.

The Red Violin (Le Violon Rouge)

This is not a particularly successful movie. It tries to do too much – using a violin, its music, and its ownership as the major pieces in an across-the-ages plotline that is a tad ludicrous. The bodice-ripping tendencies of the second act – with the usually superb Greta Scacchi (if you can, dig up her excellent little turn as Lady Macbeth) and the “he’s better as a funny guy” Jason Flemyng – are laugh inducing. And the whole thing seems overwrought and gimmicky, sort of what you’d expect from a director who made his name doing Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould.

That said, the cinematography is flat out gorgeous at points. The use of color is brilliant, particularly in the flow of character-types through the ages, and the seamlessness of some scenes. The soundtrack, played by the brilliant Joshua Bell, will blow you away. Don’t think too hard about the story – just get swept away by the experience of a beautiful piece of modern cinema.

Barry Lyndon

I never really liked this as a movie – I confess, I don’t love post-black & white Kubrick as much as I should, I still feel like The Killing, Lolita, and Dr. Strangelove are just all-around more watchable and engaging films than 2001, Clockwork Orange, and Full Metal Jacket – but I swear, Barry Lyndon is just gorgeous to behold. John Alcott’s work on the film is the stuff of legend (as far as I know, this film still features the use of the biggest aperture in movie history).

It’s still kind of amusing that Ryan O’Neal got this part because he was considered a bigger star at the time than Robert Redford, so it’s the only way Kubrick could get the movie financed. Later, it would turn out that Kubrick offered the part to Redford anyway, only to be turned down. But O’Neal’s not the reason to see this. These beautiful scenes are.

While others may disagree, I truly believe this is the most visually appealing movie Kubrick ever made. And that’s something worth seeing.

Kagemusha

This had to be on here. Yeah, I know that Ran is a better movie – but the first time I saw Kagemusha is still clear as crystal. I’m still torn about which one deserves to be on this list, but I feel like Ran is more popular. Maybe I should just leave it at: see them both, and decide for yourself.

Ronin

Ah, a beautiful car chase movie – and not a stupid one, either. One of the best casts you’ll ever see onscreen at the same time: De Niro, Reno, Skarsgard, McElhone, and a total of three Bond villains – Bean, and Pryce. This movie has characters, yes – but it is all about the cars. Car chases in Bullitt are classic and American, car chases in The French Connection are blunt and urban, but car chases in Ronin are brilliantly varied and elegantly European.

The camera work in this film is excellent stuff, edgy but not overdone. Parisian cinematographer Robert Fraisse, who has a rather odd filmography, makes some excellent choices, elevating this piece far above the realm of the normal shoot-em up. And if this is the last adrenaline rush for De Niro, who hasn’t made a single good action film since (though I’ve got my hopes up about the Michael Mann-helmed Frankie Machine, due out in two years – that is, if he survives what looks like the very flop-worthy Righteous Kill), it’s a classic one.

This is Frankenheimer’s best cinematic work since The Train, and it’s got a pretty good story (albeit MacGuffin centered – but c’mon, even Hitchcock used that) with a great script, though I’m sure all the best parts are from the (uncredited) David Mamet edits. If you’re a guy, you’ve probably seen this already. If you haven’t: grow a pair and do it now.

A Very Long Engagement (Un long dimanche de fiançailles)

So let’s follow the car chase movie with snappy Mamet lines with a French romance war epic. But it absolutely deserves to be on this list. The trailer is here, but there’s a clip below that’s better for not having the “I’m the important voice trying to sell this to American audiences” voiceover.

I can’t say anything about this movie that does justice to it as a work of art. Just – watch a few scenes. You’ll see it. Oh, and: eat your heart out, Atonement.

Road to Perdition

For being the most profitable film on the list, this is not a great movie. Tom Hanks is poorly cast in it, and uncomfortable with the part of father/heavy. The kid is an irritation. Daniel Craig is one dimensional. Sam Mendes’ directing is decent, but not really that imaginative. It’s based on a comic book and feels like it. It is a cold movie, and a wet, wet movie – dripping with rain. If you want an Irish mob movie, see Miller’s Crossing.

But let me tell you – visually, it’s like watching Edward Hopper brought to life. Conrad Hall won the Academy Award for Cinematography – his first came for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). He was a genius. And this is just masterful.

For that fact alone, if this is Paul Newman’s last on-screen part, he can be proud of it. “There are only murderers in this room, Michael. Open your eyes. This is the life we chose. The life we lead. And there is only one guarantee—none of us will see heaven.”

Before the Rain (Pred Dozhdot)

This was the film that started me thinking about this whole concept, when the alert came across my watchlist that Criterion was releasing a newly restored version of Before the Rain on DVD (at last). I saw it years ago in a screenwriting class, and it amazed me at the time. Unlike some of the other films on this list, all aspects of this effort make for a worthy achievement.

It’s hard to make a film about ethnic conflict in the Balkans that speaks to the unending, self-perpetuating, and convoluted nature of these deadly clashes. It seems like so many of the locale-centered movies that you see in America today are in the same places – New York, Los Angeles, the same backgrounds, the same forests, the same hills – to the point where you can go see an average flick like Mission: Impossible 3, and you’ll spot the same bridge setups and Euro backgrounds you’ve seen in a hundred other movies. It’s almost comforting, like seeing the same set week after week on your favorite sitcom, nothing disturbed or out of place, and all the furniture undisturbed.

In a movie like Before the Rain, you may recognize all of one setting or location, and probably only one actor: Rade Serbedzija, the figure at the heart of the sad story. But the performances are complemented by a sense of scale and land that is memorable and striking, and the camera work here – for an inexperienced writer/director in Milcho Manchevski – is just an amazingly well-crafted thing, giving the viewer the impression that they are caught in an ever-swirling trap of time and land and culture. In real life at least, there is always an opportunity to break out of this whirlwind – but not in this film.

>> The great Mike Nelson of MST3K sat down with James Lileks for a special once in a lifetime ripping of Spider Man 3 – a movie in great need of ripping, let me tell you. It gets worse, not better, when you see it on IMAX. Buy it.

>> This is just genius.  Christopher Orr reviews 21: The Trailer, versus Christopher Orr reviews 21: The Movie.  Shorter Orr: The Trailer is staying on 17, The Movie busts.