Robert Cashill

Comments

2001: A Space Odyssey

That this "old movie" spoke so strongly to my kids when we watched it recently was qualification enough. Its greatness has broken through the time barrier and generation gaps.

Come and See

Once seen never forgotten. And it staggers you anew when you revisit it.

A Separation

Domestic life as dominoes--one piece topples, the rest follow. Shattering.

King Kong

Surreal, primitive, brutal, erotic, a fever dream that spawned a thousand fantasies, none better.

Madame de...

The glove is velvet; the punch, hard.

Night of the Living Dead

The night that never ends, the terror that finds us wherever we live. Coming on sixty years it's still a potent virus.

The Battle of Algiers

Still the outstanding revolutionary film.

Majo no takkyubin

Ours is very much a Studio Ghibli house and this is the film we treasure the most. Truly enchanting, which is very much a part of greatness.

Ikiru

I'd like to give another Kurosawa a turn but I can't. This will always floor me.

The General

Laughter is universal, and no one was funnier than Keaton in his prime.

Further remarks

2012: "In wrestling with the notion of greatness I focused on the ten films that have had the biggest impact on my own view of cinema – the ten movies that most affected me, that galvanised me, that left me shaken or tearful or unreasonably happy (often all at once). They’re all ‘good’ movies, but they have an extra, almost indefinable quality, almost an aura, that for me separates them from the rest."

2022: Still true… but I did know how to quit one title and a few others, and brought in some new ones for a different group show. In the 'great' hall of cinema you never run out of films to exhibit.