Sight and Sound's Greatest Films of All Time (Chronological sort)

There’s a lot of bad, bad movies on their list, but it’s still worth looking at chronologically. Only a handful of these movies make my Top 500 list, let alone the Top 100:

• Sherlock Jr 1924

• Battleship Potemkin 1925

• The General 1926

• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans 1927

• The Passion of Joan of Arc 1927

• Metropolis 1927

• Man with a Movie Camera 1929

• City Lights 1931

• M 1931

• L'atalante 1934

• Modern Times 1936

• La Regle du jeu 1939

• Citizen Kane 1941

• Casablanca 1942

• Meshes of the Afternoon 1943

• A Matter of Life and Death 1946

• Bicycle Thieves 1948

• The Red Shoes 1948

• Late Spring 1949

• The Third Man 1949

• Rashomon 1950

• Singin' in the Rain 1951

• Tokyo Story 1953

• Ugetsu Monogatari 1953

• Madame de 1953

• Seven Samurai 1954

• Rear Window 1954

• Journey to Italy 1954

• The Night of the Hunter 1955

• Pather Panchali 1955

• Ordet 1955

• The Searchers 1956

• A Man Escaped 1956

• Vertigo 1958

• Some Like It Hot 1959

• North by Northwest 1959

• The 400 Blows 1959

• Imitation of Life 1959

• Psycho 1960

• A bout de souffle 1960

• The Apartment 1960

• La dolce vita 1960

• L'avventura 1960

• Cleo from 5 to 7 1962

• La Jetee 1962

• 8 1/2 1963

• Le Mepris 1963

• The Leopard 1963

• Pierrot le fou 1965

• Black Girl 1965

• Persona 1966

• Au hasard Balthazar 1966

• Daisies 1966

• The Battle of Algiers 1966

• Andrei Rublev 1966

• Playtime 1967

• 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968

• Once Upon a Time in the West 1968

• Wanda 1970

• The Godfather 1972

• Touki Bouki 1973

• The Spirit of the Beehive 1973

• Fear Eats the Soul 1974

• Celine and Julie Go Boating 1974

• Jeanne Dielman 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975

• Mirror 1975

• Barry Lyndon 1975

• Taxi Driver 1976

• News from Home 1976

• Killer of Sheep 1977

• Apocalypse Now 1979

• Stalker 1979

• The Shining 1980

• Blade Runner 1982

• Sans Soleil 1982

• Shoah 1985

• Blue Velvet 1986

• My Neighbour Totoro 1988

• Histoire(s) de Cinema 1988

• Close-up 1989

• Do the Right Thing 1989

• GoodFellas 1990

• Daughters of the Dust 1991

• A Brighter Summer Day 1991

• The Piano 1992

• Satantango 1994

• Chungking Express 1994

• Beau Travail 1998

• Yi Yi 1999

• In the Mood for Love 2000

• The Gleaners and I 2000

• Mulholland Drive 2001

• Spirited Away 2001

• Tropical Malady 2004

• Moonlight 2016

• Get Out 2017

• Portrait of a Lady on Fire 2019

• Parasite 2019

TV Watched -- The Sinner S04 E02

Here are my brief stream of consciousness bullet points on episode two (SPOILERS), where the Lam family is fleshed out a little:

• CJ Lam, actor is 39 years old but is playing 20 year old? Doesn’t quite fly

• How many Hong Kong Chinese are working as lobstermen in Maine? I would guess exactly ZERO…

• This whole Chinese angle to the show may be more check box ticking to be more “inclusive” even though it makes no sense

• The Lams do speak Cantonese, but also perfect unaccented English

• CJ is sniffing white powder, cocaine I suppose?

• Bill goes back to visit tiny skinhead zombie, “Diez,” who is local drug dealer

• Jewish hippie chick was screwing CJ Lam, but she’s always high and asks him to hurt her which he thinks is ewwww gross

• Bill runs into naked old witch at backyard barbecue, so it was another old lady, not grandma Muldoon

• CJ pumping iron (10 lb barbells) in his attic, getting ready for next fight with Muldoon boys

• Fails though as Muldoon boys rough him up (not the face, just some artful scratches) and break an arm

• Weird Boomer stuff as Bill and Sonya discuss suicide and Sonya goes and stands on cliff ledge, unfortunately Bill doesn’t push her off

• Shirtless CJ in bed with hippie chick, but she got him hooked on white powder so that’s not good

You used me! (and then stopped, alas)

TV Watched -- The Sinner S04 E01

I loved the first season of The Sinner and tolerated seasons two and three, so I’ve just started on season four and here are my brief stream of consciousness bullet points on episode one (SPOILERS):

• Bill Pullman still squinting and wincing full time, that’s called acting

• PTSD panic attacks from previous seasons

• Sonya has fat black buddy on island in Maine?!? Makes no sense but they’re ticking boxes

• “Greta,” whom we later learn is a lesbian in addition to being fat and black (tick another box), has a million dollar house despite being a “broke artist” … don’t worry, we never see her again

• Chinese invasion angle, threatening Maine lobster operations, again makes no sense

• Bill off his anti-depressant zombie meds so the panic attacks are pretty bad

• Angular faced Jewish hippie chick from Orange is the New Black appears (I couldn’t stand that show), she is 32 years old

• Very awkward old folks sex scene (Bill Pullman is 68 and Jessica Hecht is 57!!) … That Ship Has Sailed, I don’t care that she’s on top, and what’s with the choking, egad

• Going to heavy blue camera filter for anti-depressant withdrawal dream? sequence scenes

• Ineffectual, slouching country sheriff, needs Big City Bill’s help

• Crusty old angular face grandma, “she could get ya back to port in any storm!”

• Why do none of these people have Maine accents?

• Tokens left near suicide jump site, an air of mystery

• Local dive bar has hottie singer with giant mouth (Jessica Marie Brown)

• Neo-Nazi homesteader with neck tats looks like zombie, sort of collapses out of camper trailer but remains standing, an air of danger. “I likes just me and da posums out here in da quiet!”

• NONE of the Muldoons sound like they are from Maine

• Unabomber hoodie captured on CCTV footage

• Bill explores weird wailing and moaning he hears from million dollar porch, Blue Filter alert

• Oh my god, it’s a coven of naked witches! Led by Grandma Muldoon?!?

• Tune in for episode two!

Find me, Bill!

Movies Watched -- Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

108 minute running time … early 1940s Hitchcock … it’s a good one, green-go for sure … Joseph Cotten has some real menace and there’s some fun dialogue. The line “Horrible, faded, fat, greedy women" must have really appealed to Hitch. See this one if you haven’t.

Do you know if you ripped the fronts off houses, Charlie, you'd find swine ?

Movies Watched -- Purple Noon (Plein soleil) (1960)

In French. 118 minute running time so a little overly long, I could probably cut out a few minutes, but this is a great movie, absolutely a must-see, green-go. I’ve seen it before awhile ago so this was a re-watch and it was as good as I remembered it. There was a Hollywood re-make of this movie, which was a terrible thing to do given the greatness of the original, don’t see that one. Class envy and psychopathy a bad combo, I loved every minute of it.

Sunstroke

Movies Watched -- Morocco (1930)

91 minute running time … Marlene Dietrich’s debut in America, Josef von Sternberg directing … I was surprised by the bawdy jokes and risque sexual humor throughout this movie… I guess in 1930 the production codes weren’t really enforced … this was made the same year as The Blue Angel, which is a much better movie, but this was interesting and I didn’t hate it … Gary Cooper plays the Foreign Legionnaire who is screwing all the women in town, including Marlene … I don’t think I’ll give it a green-go, but if you like early talkies, you should check it out.

May I keep this?

Movies Watched -- Nightfall (1957)

79 minute running time … Columbia noir, kind of a dumb story but I liked Aldo Ray’s broad back, blonde hair, and weirdly high voice … best part about this was Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson) who played the femme fatale and she could smoke like a champ … did she die of emphysema? If you’re a noir fan, you should see it, but as I said, it really isn’t very good, though it clearly inspired the Coen Brothers.

Guys have been swarming around you ever since your second teeth came through…

Empty Me Out

Liz Vice sings Empty Me Out … love her voice:

Movies Watched -- Walkabout (1971)

100 minute running time so the right length, but could have been cut a bit more by eliminating extra shots of reptiles consuming one another … this was a weird one, not sure what it was about, modernity versus prehistoric man .. Roeg definitely enjoyed shooting 19-yo (err, 14-yo?!?) naked Jenny Agutter cavorting in a waterhole (she was beautiful for sure) .. I didn’t hate this, it was capital A.R.T. art for sure, but it may have been a little too abstruse for these Neanderthal. “A provocative rumination on time and civilization,” yeah yeah I know.

Bedding down on a boulder

Movies Watched -- Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

118 minute running time so 20 minutes too long … Frank Capra wartime “comedy” … gorgeous Cary Grant making faces … the story was sort of bizarrely funny, but you have to be in the right mood for it, and I wasn’t really. You can give it a miss.

The cook’s son