Joshua Rothkopf
Senior Editor, Movies, Entertainment Weekly
USA
Voted for
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Au hasard Balthazar | 1966 | Robert Bresson |
| Barry Lyndon | 1975 | Stanley Kubrick |
| Chinatown | 1974 | Roman Polanski |
| City Lights | 1931 | Charles Chaplin |
| Le Mépris | 1963 | Jean-Luc Godard |
| M | 1931 | Fritz Lang |
| Once upon a Time in the West | 1968 | Sergio Leone |
| Sansho the Bailiff | 1954 | Kenji Mizoguchi |
| The Texas Chain Saw Massacre | 1974 | Tobe Hooper |
| The Thing | 1982 | John Carpenter |
Comments
Not easy. And I'm sure it will change in 10 minutes. (Send any hate mail to the special Fellini jail I've constructed for myself, where I will live in shame for the next decade.) But there was clarification in doing this, as the metric kept evolving – devolving? – into something increasingly personal. Let's not pretend criticism is anything but. So: not merely films with profound insights into the human condition. Not merely films that perfected entire genres, or invented them. Not merely films of breathtaking style. All of these things, plus a special frisson that reminds me of who I am, who I was, who I always will be.