I came across the Sight and Sound Top 100 Movies list in the Sunday 2/19/23 NY Times. It’s based on a Critics Poll and associated with the British Film Institute. I’m not going to include a link here because there are several different ones you can search on yourself.
Anyway, I’ve been slowly chipping away at watching them all. For Blog purposes I am going to break the list into “10’s” – and, so far, I’ve only watched movies that are free on whatever streaming platforms I have (Prime, HBOMax, Netflix). HBOMax has been particularly fruitful because apparently they recently purchased the Criterion Collection (from TCM??) and a lot of the movies are part of that. But, I’ll include all 10 in each section, how long the movie is, whether I watched it yet, and what my thoughts are about them. Here goes!
- Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), 3 hrs 21 min. HBOMax. This movie is in French, although there are probably no more than 200 words spoken for its entirety. There is no musical soundtrack. The camera doesn’t move much, if at all, in each shot. The movie spends 3 days in the life of Jeanne Dielman. It is not a movie for everybody, but I really appreciated it. Not having a soundtrack meant that every sound in the movie was exacerbated, and for me, every sound I made for the next few days after watching the movie were also kind of jarring! Just to give you a hint, there is a scene where she is making meatloaf in the kitchen, alone. The camera doesn’t move. She doesn’t speak. And it is 3 minutes long. Now you know why the movie is 3 hrs and 21 mins long! If that type of thing appeals to you then by all means watch the movie. It was directed by a woman and is a bit of a feminist piece. The ending will wake you up. I give it a thumbs up!
- Vertigo. I’ve watched this multiple times and love it and it is probably very familiar to you so I’m not going to say much. But, if you haven’t seen it yet, then watch it! Fun to see scenes from old San Francisco.
- Citizen Kane. I first saw this in a Film Studies class in college, and I’ve watched it multiple times since then. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch it!
- Tokyo Story (1953), 2 hrs 16 min, HBOMax. This was a tender story, filmed during what I would call the Westernization of Japan. I found it interesting that the men wore suits but the women still wore kimono. Thumbs up.
- In the Mood for Love (2000), 1 hr 38 mins, HBOMax. I watched this a long time ago, or so I thought – I didn’t remember much of it at all. Very atmospheric, very ironic, very melancholic. I thought it was really good – thumbs up!
- 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just watch it if you haven’t seen it before.
- Beau Travail (1999), 1 hr 32 min, HBOMax. WOW what a movie. I almost didn’t watch it because I read a synopsis and didn’t feel particularly interested but it was really good. Great acting, the locale was amazing (Djibouti). It will not disappoint! Thumbs up!
- Mulholland Drive. I watched this a while ago. I love David Lynch. What I remember from watching was a lot of twists and turns (big surprise), but I liked it. Watch it!
- *** Man with a Movie Camera (1929). Haven’t watched this one yet – need to find it on some streaming platform still.
- Singin’ In the Rain. One of my favorite movies of all time. Watch it!!!!
Okay, that was the first 10. I’ve skipped around in the order of the Top 100 and I have a few left to watch from the 10-20 range. I’ll write another post when I get a few more under my belt.
Talk to you then!