Since I’m not really a paid Film critic by any associations or whatever organization, I wouldn’t refuse any offer by the way, I haven’t been asked to submit a list of ten films that are categorized as the greatest films of all time. However, just like any other film buff out there, well most of us, I love making lists of any kind.
The first time I ever made a list of the ten best films of all time it was back in 2005 for Kevyn Knox’s Top 10 project at his now almost defunct website The Cinematheque (now replaced by his cinephile niche The Most Beautiful Fraud in the World). This list included; 1. Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick) 2. Taxi Driver (Scorsese) 3. Apocalypse Now (Coppola) 4. Pulp Fiction (Tarantino) 5. Modern Time (Chaplin) 6. Seven Samurai (Kurosawa) 7. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone) 8. Blade Runner (Scott) 9. Sunset Blvd. (Wilder) 10. Mystic River (Eastwood).
This list reflected my knowledge of movies at the time, which was more classics of the fresh cinephile that I was. It was a time when I was discovering, as I am still, classics and the big directors’ names and their greatest films. Remember the first time you were impressed by a movie that left an indelible mark in your appreciation of films. To me there were many that changed the way I saw films forever. Since my first list I’ve made some changes like crowning Taxi Driver, adding and changing a film by a director for another one because at the time I thought that Ran was better than Seven Samurai. Thinking about the task of narrowing only one film has been a real head scratcher. Then one must induce some basic rules to trim the cream from the milk first then we have to face some difficult choices. Read the excellent article written by Kevin B. Lee, David Jenkins, Radim Rizov, Bill Georgaris for IndieWire.
