Checklist of Greatest Movies

Film, Year, Director, Comment

More than Akira Kurosawa, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, and Federico Fellini? Maybe there are other directors worthy of to be listed, but I’m not sure. Of course, I haven’t seen every movie ever made .

This page is, at the moment, an evolving checklist of films I’ve seen since the beginning of 2009, mostly on DVDs, very often from the excellent Criterion Collection. It’s presented roughly in the order that I viewed them, starting with Kurosawa. Omissions of indisputably great films like “Citizen Kane” or “The Godfather” just means that I haven’t seen them since early 2009.

One minor point about watching movies. Where did we get the idea that we should only see a movie once? That a film should communicate all that it has to say in one viewing? We listen to the same pieces of music over and over again. … “Beethoven’s Fifth? Nah, don’t play that; I’ve already heard it.” Books? I’ve read The Iliad, The Lord of the Rings, and Moby Dick many times. Some people read the Bible endlessly. Plays? Who would not see a good production of Hamlet because they had already seen it? To be sure, there are many movies that I regret spending the time to see even once. But that’s a different matter. There are plenty of films that bear 2nd and 3rd viewings. One critic even said that a film that has nothing more to share after one viewing isn’t a very good movie.