Matt Zoller Seitz

Comments

All That Jazz

Blending Broadway and filmmaking razzle-dazzle with American New Wave grit, and incorporating nonlinear editing techniques that had begun in early 20th century experimental cinema and blossomed in mid-century art house classics like Hiroshima, Mon Amour, this is one of the most aesthetically sophisticated, morally complex, and sheerly pleasurable films ever made.

Close-up

Everything one can say about cinema, and everything that cinema can say about us, is contained in this film.

A Bread Factory, Parts 1 and 2

A monumental yet intimate work that manages to fold nearly every mode of art and expression into four densely packed hours of character- and community-based storytelling.

Further remarks

The films on this list were selected on the basis of how much the writer has learned about cinema and life by watching them, as well as how often he has thought about them in the last ten years.