David Jenkins

Comments

There are too many films for this to not be more a more painful exercise than ever. God, I'm so sorry Rivette, Costa, Fassbinder, Varda, Hou, Antonioni, Martel, Apichatpong, Resnais, Mizoguchi, etc, etc. The next ten are all yours. If I'd left this another night it could easily have been all change. A best directors poll would be less stressful. I’ve opted here for the “dating profile” route over the “calcify the canon” route, because each and every list in this poll should operate as cryptic autobiography, if submitted honestly. As far as my selections go, once again I was unable to suppress a personal kink for French cinema of the 1970s. Most of the titles on this list are the result of transcendent cinema viewings across the previous decade. Every one bought tears to my eyes and, in the end, that’s the only metric that matters. Final note: since becoming a parent, My Neighbour Totoro has easily become the film I have watched the most, by a margin that most would consider obscene. Yet every time my daughter clicks it on the TV, I’m more than happy to hop on the merry-go-round again.