Sean Hogan
Author/filmmaker
UK
Voted for
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Barry Lyndon | 1975 | Stanley Kubrick |
| Don't Look Now | 1973 | Nicolas Roeg |
| The Godfather Part II | 1974 | Francis Ford Coppola |
| In the Mood for Love | 2000 | Wong Kar Wai |
| Mulholland Dr. | 2001 | David Lynch |
| Night Moves | 1975 | Arthur Penn |
| Persona | 1966 | Ingmar Bergman |
| Raging Bull | 1980 | Martin Scorsese |
| The Third Man | 1949 | Carol Reed |
| Le Locataire | 1976 | Roman Polanski |
Comments
Barry Lyndon
Mournful, funny, and exquisitely beautiful, the film that puts the lie to the notion of Kubrick being cold and unfeeling.
Don't Look Now
The manner in which Roeg uses his technical mastery to evoke a mood of eerie disquiet and almost unbearable sadness suggests at possible avenues for the horror film that remain largely unexplored even now, some five decades later.
The Godfather Part II
For all of the talk of Peak TV giving us work that is novelistic in scope and complexity, has any TV series ever matched the sheer mastery and ambition of Coppola's examination of the corruption festering at the heart of the American Dream?
In the Mood for Love
A film of aching absences: the unseen spouses, the artfully elided leaps in time between scenes, and most of all the yawning gap between the two star-crossed lovers.
Mulholland Dr.
No explanation needed, which I'm sure is the way Lynch would prefer it.
Night Moves
Another story of American rot; a pulp paperback counterpart to Coppola's Great American Novel, but sometimes pulp is all you need.
Persona
A vampire story with no vampires, and all the more nightmarish for it.
Raging Bull
Over forty years after Raging Bull provided all the evidence needed to the contrary, I don't know why some people still insist a film must have sympathetic characters.
The Third Man
Graham Greene considered this one of his "entertainments", but as another famous author once pointed out, all good art is entertainment.
Le Locataire
Watching it today, feeling the distrust, paranoia and terror that seeps from every frame, it seems to be a film that is as uncomfortably relevant now as it undoubtedly was to Polanski and Roland Topor in their day. It's also horribly, unspeakably funny.