Take "L'Atalante" (1934), for example: after having just scraped in at no. That seems like a reasonable way to interpret it, but I wonder how accurate it really is. Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" (1941) flopped in its initial release but was rediscovered in the 1950s after RKO licensed its films to television in 1956. Now, however, it is that time in the Wheel of the Decades when I make out the one single list of interest to me. I am sure than Eisenstein's " The Battleship Potemkin " is a great film, but it's not going on my list simply so I can impress people. Drama (290) Romance (77) Comedy (72) Thriller (67) Crime (60) Mystery (44) War (35) Adventure (30) Fantasy (29) History (29) Biography (22) Action (21) Music (20) Film-Noir (18) Horror (17) Western (17) Musical (15) Sci-Fi (15) Family (11) Documentary (9) Animation (7) Sport (5) Short (1) There may be no underestimating the difference between being disappointed by a classic viewed in a shabby repertory cinema on a beat-up print in the 1970s, and being awakened to it today on your state-of-the-art home screen, after a good digital shave-and-haircut restoration. "The Godfather" and "The Godfather, Part II" (Coppola) 5. 1." George Lucas • Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher. Anyway, that's just my own speculation. Kings of the Road (Wenders) The order does not matter to the voting system - we will allot one vote only to each of your ten films. "Vertigo" (Hitchcock) 9. (2) Propagandistic votes, selecting a film no one else may vote for, with the hope of drawing attention to it. Followed by: Carl Theodor Dreyer ("The Passion of Joan of Arc," "Ordet," "Gertrud"), Francis Ford Coppola ("Apocalypse Now," "The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II"), Andrei Tarkovsky ("Andrei Rublev," "Mirror," "Stalker"). Strange how 2 people that have such a blatant disregard for what are widely considered 2 of the best films of all time!! Every 10 years, the ancient and venerable British film magazine, Sight & Sound, polls the world's directors, movie critics, and assorted producers, cinematheque operators and festival directors, etc., to determine the Greatest Films of All Time. "Rashomon" (Kurosawa) 9. I think Roger Ebert is the best movie reviewer that we have ever had. "The Godfather" and "The Godfather, Part II"  3. Is "Floating Weeds" a greater film by Ozu than "Tokyo Story?" A list of films that Roger Ebert, in addition to giving 0 out of 4 stars, described in his reviews as horrible to a life-changing degree. At least " Sunrise ," " 2001: A Space Odyssey " and " 8 1/2 " have healthy senses of humor, but "Kane" and "Rules of the Game" are the only movies in the top 10 with the propulsive vitality of (screwball) comedy. Now it is time for me to commence this ten-yearly ritual, and decide on my list for 2012. Considering that the list had no meaning at all except as some hapless intern's grindwork, I'd say that was a bold masterstroke. "The Bicycle Thief" (De Sica) 6. Kristin's assessment of "the point" of these exercises is the one most people would probably cite if you asked them why they would care about looking over a list of "The Greatest Movies Ever Made," or some such thing. Orson Welles 2. 4) "8 ½" (Fellini, 1963) I say so even though I was on it. Here, for what it's worth, is the impulsive list I sent in a couple weeks ago: "Housekeeping" (Bill Forsyth, 1987), "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (Buster Keaton, 1928), "Animal Crackers" (Marx Bros., 1930), "Holiday" (George Cukor, 1938), "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939), "Night Moves" (Arthur Penn, 1975), "The Right Stuff" (Philip Kaufman, 1983), "Ball of Fire" (Howard Hawks, 1941), "Carrie" (Brian De Palma, 1976), "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (Sam Peckinpah, 1973), "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes" (Billy Wilder, 1970), "The President's Analyst" (Theodore J. Flicker, 1967), "Rosemary's Baby" (Roman Polanski, 1968), "Klute" (Alan J. Pakula, 1971), "Straw Dogs" (Sam Peckinpah, 1971), "Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song" (Melvin van Peebles, 1971), "The Long Goodbye" (Robert Altman, 1973), "3 Women" (Robert Altman, 1977), "Dawn of the Dead" (George Romero, 1978), "Superman" (Richard Donner, 1978), "An Unmarried Woman" (Paul Mazursky, 1978), "The Big Red One" (Samuel Fuller, 1980), "Once Upon a Time in America" (Sergio Leone, 1984), "Gremlins" (Joe Dante, 1984), "Repo Man" (Alex Cox, 1984), "Stop Making Sense" (Jonathan Demme, 1984), "Dazed and Confused" (Richard Linklater, 1993), "One False Move" (Carl Franklin, 1992), "My Own Private Idaho" (Gus van Sant, 1991), "Miller's Crossing" (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1990), "Barton Fink" (Joel & Ethan Coen, 1991), "Sylvia Scarlett" (George Cukor, 1935), "The Portrait of a Lady" (Jane Campion, 1996), "The Boat" (Buster Keaton, 1921), "The Playhouse" (Buster Keaton, 1921), "They Live By Night" (Nicholas Ray, 1948), "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century" (Chuck Jones, 1953), "Waiting for Guffman" (Christopher Guest, 1996), "Imitation of Life" (Douglas Sirk, 1959), "Rio Bravo" (Howard Hawks, 1959), "Little Shop of Horrors" (Roger Corman, 1960), "Pink Flamingos" (John Waters, 1972), "Female Trouble" (John Waters, 1974), "Since You Went Away" (John Cromwell, 1944), "The Lady From Shanghai" (Orson Welles, 1948). Roger Ebert is the best-known film critic of our time. Star Wars 1977, 121 min. He has been reviewing films for the Chicago Sun-Times since 1967, and was the first film critic ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. But what other titles might deserve a place? But, for now at least, I'm more interested in the process. The most recent time I voted, in 2002, this was my list (alphabetically): "Aguirre, the Wrath of God," (Herzog) "Apocalypse Now," (Coppola) "Citizen Kane," (Welles) "The Decalogue," (Kieslowski) "La Dolce Vita," (Fellini) "The General" (1927), (Keaton) "Raging Bull," (Scorsese) "2001: A Space Odyssey," (Kubrick) "Tokyo Story," (Ozu) "Vertigo" (Hitchcock). If you're not interested in those things, you don't have much reason to care about these lists. Then there is a list of the Top Directors, which never corresponds to the Top Films (this is just like the Oscars). There was a bit of both (1) and (2) represented there. Inspired probably by its 1958 re-release (that was the first time I saw it), Welles' film jumped to the #1 spot in 1962, and has remained on top ever since. So, why not treat them as such, and vote your passion? Some years they poll critics and directors, and combine the results. I mean, if "Citizen Kane" were to drop a few slots after 50 years, does that really indicate that its statue as a work of art is declining after 50 years at #1? ", "Caché," "Fargo," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," "The Music Room," "Persona," "The Rules of the Game," "The Third Man. Roger Joseph Ebert was the all-time best-known, most successful movie critic in cinema history, when one thinks of his establishing a rapport with both serious cineastes and the movie-going public and reaching more movie fans via television and print than any other critic. Fight Club when reviewed by Roger Ebert was called, "Macho porn -- the sex movie Hollywood has been moving toward for… 10) "Bicycle Thieves" (Vittorio De Sica, 1948). Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Spike Lee Receives American Cinematheque Award, America Has to Come to a Reckoning: Director Sam Pollard on MLK/FBI, The TV Homages of WandaVision are an Amusing, Unfulfilling Distraction. One of the footnotes is that they keep jiggering the rules. Ranking ahead of "Our Hospitality," "Sherlock, Jr.," "Steamboat Bill, Jr."... "Ugetsu Monogatari" (Mizoguchi, 1953) -- #50 critics. Kristin Thompson wrote last spring of its place in the S&S poll: "Ozu's first film to became well known in the west didn't make the list until decades later, in 1992, and yet despite the discovery of 'Late Spring' and 'Early Summer' and 'An Autumn Afternoon,' 'Tokyo Story' remains the Ozu film.". 5) "Taxi Driver" (Martin Scorsese, 1980) Many would choose "Taxi Driver" as Scorsese's greatest film, but I believe "Raging Bull" is his best and most personal, a film he says in some ways saved his life. You bet I did. Ebert's Best Film Lists1967 - present If I must make a list of the Ten Greatest Films of All Time, my first vow is to make the list for myself, not for anybody else. Sight & Sound has announced it will live-tweet the 2012 "Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time" (@SightSoundmag #sightsoundpoll) August 1, and as I write this the night before, I of course don't know the results. Given the much wider and younger selection of voters in 2012, ist-watchers have been speculating: Will another movie (leading candidate: Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo," number 2 in 2002) supplant "Kane" at the top of the list? Roger Ebert Ten Greatest Films of all Time Pulitzer Prize winning Critic, Roger Ebert, named ten films he believed to be the greatest of all time. Where is the comedy? I was teaching a film course in the University of Chicago's Fine Arts Program, and taught classes of the top ten films in 1972, 1982 and 1992. Must a Sight & Sound movie need, after all, to be profound? In 1975, Ebert became the first film critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Sight & Sound analyzed the 2002 results in admirable depth, commenting on every finalist, listing every voter and revealing who they voted for. You can submit up to 50 titles yourself, just by going here and checking out a list of titles that, unbelievably, still aren't on the registry. In our biggest ever film critics’ poll, the list of best movies ever made has a new top film, ending the 50-year reign of Citizen Kane. The first time I saw it in the magazine, I was much impressed by the names of the voters, and felt a thrill to think that I might someday be invited to join their numbers. ... "Roger Ebert loved movies." Sight & Sound editor Nick James explained the goals and the process this way in his e-mail invitation to participants: We realise that this is not the easiest of tasks, but we want you to know that this is a major worldwide endeavour that will help us all to remind people of film's rich history and to refine what we mean by the best of cinema. Notice that Bergman is included, and yet none of his films is in the director's top ten. Apocalypse Now " (1979) 3. " 8) "Man with a Movie Camera" (Dziga Vertov, 1929) It tells of a … ", "Au Hasard, Balthazar" (Robert Bresson," 1966) -- formerly "Pickpocket. We also invite you to add a short commentary after the list explaining why you have chosen the films in your top ten. considers the inevitable fluctuations inherent in constructing such hierarchical love-rankings: It's strange to think that this accountants'-reflex, oligarchical canon-building phenomenon had never occurred to anyone before Elizabeth became queen - not regarding any cultural product, at least. Roger Ebert's Article: "Top 20 Movie Sites 1997" "The Greatest Films of All Time represents an astonishing amount of thought and work by Tim Dirks, who is so modest he doesn't even byline his detailed, evocative essays on great films. In that year, "Citizen Kane" was a main runner-up. Though there's been no rule about how much time should pass between a film's initial release and its eligibility (the Library of Congress's National Film Registry requires that selections be at least ten years old), most of the selections ten to have stood the test of time for at least a decade or two. Alfred Hitchcock 6. I don't think so. Ingmar Bergman 9. This is not official, but is meant to contrast with his "greatest of all time" lists. You will notice "Gates of Heaven" is no longer there. Has it fallen in my estimation? Time Bandits (1981) My guess: He made so many great films that the voted were scattered. Does it all work, and does the film still hold together, years later? US. In 2006, complications from thyroid cancer treatment resulted in the loss of his ability to eat, drink, or speak. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. 22 August: the complete interactive directors' poll of 358 entries follows. I guess it's possible, but if it happened, would that indicate that the movie's reputation had increased significantly between 2002 and 2012? At a guess, I may have substituted "The Decalogue," Kieslowski's astonishing 10-peat project, which had recently been released in the U.S. by Facets Mutimedia. Once a film has appeared in my S&S top 10, it has been canonized, and is forevermore entitled to quote me. For the magazine's decade-by-decade breakdown of its famous poll, click here. Atkinson, I think, summarizes the situation perfectly. Some of these reviews are available to see again on YouTube, but for the record, here are the 23 films that the team loved the best. "Tokyo Story" (Ozu) 6. By tabulating all their votes for every film, S&S came up with this list of The Directors' Top Ten Directors: 1. Floating Weeds [1959] “Floating Weeds,” like many of his films, is deceptively simple. Roger Ebert Critic, Chicago Sun-Times. La Dolce Vita (Directed by Federico Fellini, 1960) "La Dolce Vita" has become a touchstone in my life: … I grew up watching Sneak Previews and would seek out the movies that Roger and his partner, Gene Siskel touted. Not in the slightest. They are flat-out fun (even if they are regarded as "classics"). "The Rules of the Game" (Renoir) 9. A list of 10 films compiled on Letterboxd, including Casablanca (1942), Citizen Kane (1941), Floating Weeds (1959), Gates of Heaven (1978) and La Dolce Vita (1960). You can spend hours on that list, and all of the decade lists, by clicking here. I will discuss my 2012 list once Sight & Sound publishes it: Chinatown (Polanski) Perhaps because his filmmaking has always been secondary to his persona? As for what we mean by 'Greatest', we leave that open to your interpretation. "Official Masterpieces" for certain directors (although I'd choose different titles): "Tokyo Story" (Ozu, 1953) -- #3 with critics; #1 with directors. Will there be any silent films in the top 10? You can play with these lists. L'Avventura " (1960) "The Seven Samurai" (Kurosawa). Having gained the honor of being on the list, each title could be retired, and a whole new set concocted ten years later. It has sentimental value. Followed by "The General" (#34), "Some Like It Hot" (#42), "PlayTime" (#42), and "City Lights" (#50). For years they had value only in the minds of feature editors fretting that their movie critics had too much free time. And then stopped clicking. "Dr. Strangelove" (Kubrick) 6. Held for the first time in 1952, this poll has been conducted ever since ("The Bicycle Thief," "City Lights," "The Gold Rush," "The Battleship Potemkin," "Louisiana Story," "Intolerance," "Greed," "Le Jour se Leve," "The Passion of Joan of Arc" and a tie involving "Brief Encounter," "Le Million" and "The Rules of the Game"). The point of such lists, if there is one, is presumably to introduce people who are interested in good films to new ones they may not have seen or even known about. Here are Roger Ebert's most hardcore disses and most brutal movie reviews of all time. He was the first Movie Critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Roger Ebert, Actor: Siskel & Ebert & the Movies. This year, a whopping 846 top-ten ballots (mentioning 2,045 different titles) were counted, solicited from international "critics, programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles" -- including bloggers and other online-only writers. Sunrise " (1927) 4. Recently they've started splitting them into two lists. "Singin' in the Rain" (also a musical) is still the highest-ranking comedy at #20. [...]. I'm going to make a leap of faith and assume that "The Decalogue" won't count as ten. Or are these kinds of variations just built into the nature of these kinds of polls? When it comes to grouped films, such as the "Godfather" series, please choose by individual film alone ("The Godfather" or "Godfather II" etc.) "Persona" (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) -- not "Wild Strawberries," "The Seventh Seal," "Smiles of a Summer Night," "Cries and Whispers," "Fanny and Alexander"... Chaplin ("City Lights," in a three-way tie for #50 with critics) has almost fallen out of the Top 50. I saw someone predict that Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" would make it into the all-time top 10 this time around. 15 August: the complete critics' poll of 846 entries is published in interactive form on this website. Shoah (1985) Ebert… "Singin' in the Rain" (Kelly, Donen). In the same year, the directors as a group voted for: 1. "Citizen Kane" (Welles) 2. There had never been, apparently, year-end 'ten best' lists of books or plays during the 19th and early 20th centuries, nor had there been, then or before, any effort to collect and collate expert opinions about 'the greatest ever' of anything. You might choose the ten films you feel are most important to film history, or the ten that represent the aesthetic pinnacles of achievement, or indeed the ten films that have had the biggest impact on your own view of cinema. 10 in 1962, it appeared mid-list in 1992 entirely thanks to Gaumont's 1989 revamp and subsequent rerelease. Ebert was a film critic for Chicago Sun Times from 1967 to 2013, until his death. 4) "Rules of the Game" (Jean Renoir, 1939) 2) "Citizen Kane" (Orson Welles, 1941) Same thing with Billy Wilder. 2) "2001: A Space Odyssey" (Kubrick, 1968), "Citizen Kane" (Welles, 1941) [tie] 5) "Sunrise" (F.W. OK, so by the time you read this the Top 50 may already have been announced and that will give us something else to talk about. In 2002, the critics as a group voted for: 1. "Reservoir Dogs," on the other hand, is probably better regarded now than it was when it was released -- and, I'd argue, rightly so. 10) "8 1/2" (Federico Fellini, 1963), 1) "Tokyo Story" (Ozu, 1953) The 136-page issue features the critics' Top 100, a new essay on the top film, short essays on every film in our top 10, an essay on changing critical tastes in our poll, top 10s by decade, nationality and genre, the directors' Top Ten, the critics' top directors and directors' top directors, and individual top-ten entries from 100 critics and 100 directors, from Woody Allen to Edgar Wright. Zoetrope "Apocalypse Now" (1979) directed by Francis Ford Coppola 9) "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) All of his films are universal. In 1991 film critic Roger Ebert made a list of what he considered the 10 greatest films of all-time. ☞ How we made the Greatest Films of All Time poll ☞ See all our coverage of this poll ☞ See our annual best-films lists and more surveys He has appeared on television for four decades. (In 2002 only five of the 145 participating critics voted for it.) A big question: Where is Ozu? We like good movies, and we like to be equipped to participate in the cultural conversation, so we like to discover movies that experts recommend, and that may broaden our horizons. Spike Lee Receives American Cinematheque Award, America Has to Come to a Reckoning: Director Sam Pollard on MLK/FBI, The TV Homages of WandaVision are an Amusing, Unfulfilling Distraction. Sherlock Jr. (Keaton) UPDATE: (08/01/12): Sight & Sound has just tweeted the new Top Ten in its 2012 international critics' poll: 1) "Vertigo" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) Every 10 years, the ancient and venerable British film magazine, Sight & Sound, polls the world's directors, movie critics, and assorted producers, cinematheque operators and festival directors, etc., to determine the Greatest Films of All Time. See if you can name them. 9) "Mirror" (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974) A particularly special time was when they both loved a movie so dearly and deeply that you could feel it flowing from the TV screen. Please draw up a list of ten films only, in order of preference or, if you'd rather, alphabetically. "Black Narcissus" (1947) 5. " On the one hand: ... as we commonly acknowledge, we need films to acquire a few barnacles with the passing of time before we anoint them. Roger Ebert was a national treasure, and his death in 2013 left a smoking crater in the world of film criticism. Francis Ford Coppola 5. To tell the truth, I think my 2002 list holds up pretty well, and I'm tempted to just send it in again. David Lean 9. Are we so sure that "Uncle Boonmee," for instance, isn't as mysterious and resonant and fascinating as "Ugetsu monogatari" (1953), or that "Once upon a Time in Anatolia" isn't in fact superior to Antonioni? The Greatest Films of All Time … Ebert is widely regarded as the greatest film critic of All Time. Long-suffering readers will have read many times about my dislike of lists, especially lists of the best or worst movies in this or that category. The newest film on the 2002 list was the combination of "The Godfather" (1972) and "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) -- but they won't be allowed to count as one title for 2012. Citizen Kane (Welles) They are, in fact, snapshots of the zeitgeist in flux - a family photo of film culture's priorities and tendencies in that year, and that is all. About this list: If I must make a list of the Ten Greatest Films of All Time, my first vow is to make the list for myself, not for anybody else. I voted for the first time, I think, in 1972. My guess is that there are three ways that people fill out their lists. Roger Ebert's 10 greatest films of all time Robert Duvall in "Apocalpse Now," directed by Francis Ford Coppola. For example, although "8 1/2" is widely considered Fellini's best film, did the directors vote it higher than the critics because it's about a director? Only Mizoguchi in the Top 50, ahead of "Sansho Dayu," "The Life of Oharu," "The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum"... "2001: A Space Odyssey" (Kubrick, 1968) -- still light-years ahead of "Dr. Strangelove," "Barry Lyndon"... "Vertigo" and "Psycho" (Hitchcock, 1958 & 1960) made the critics' Top 50 -- but no "Rear Window," "Notorious," "NxNW," "Shadow of a Doubt"... "L'Avventura" (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) -- not "L'Eclisse," "La Notte," "Red Desert. You cannot vote for, say, the "Three Colours Trilogy" unless you want to use up three choices out of ten. Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves" (1948) topped the first Sight & Sound critics' poll in 1952, only four years after it was first released, dropped to #7 in 1962, and then disappeared from the top ten never to be seen again. 23. Then they print out all the vote totals, and reveal who voted for what. Well, Boorman’s Excalibur was always a mixed bag (Roger Ebert famously called the film both “a mess” and “a wondrous vision”), but for sword-and-sorcery movies from that era, rarely did cinematography, vision, and craft, pair together so well. Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. How did the magazine present this? There must be an Ozu. How will we know whether or not our first glowing reaction to "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (2010) will wilt within a few years? (Eisenstein's "Battleship Potemkin" and Murnau's "Sunrise" tied for #7 on the 2002 list, but the latter was released in 1927 with a Fox Movietone sound-on-film musical score and sound effects.). "Sunrise" (Murnau) 9. Vertigo (Hitchcock). "2001: A Space Odyssey," (Kubrick) 7. 7) "The Godfather" (Coppola, 1972), "Vertigo" (Hitchcock, 1958) [tie] There have been some other great ones but to me Roger stands out above the rest. (1) An objective list of the 10 films they truly believe are the all-time best. By 2002, its glamour had already worn off, and its stock dropped once again. The only vote I ever cast that became somewhat notorious was for Errol Morris's first feature, "Gates of Heaven," a documentary about a pet cemetery. Eric Rohmer's 1962 ballot (image courtesty BFI): More poll-related releases and dates from Sight & Sound: 3-4 August: our redesigned and expanded September 2012 special poll issue is sent to subscribers, and should be available on newsstands (on Friday 3rd in London, and across the UK by Saturday 4th). The list is in alphabetical order. "8 1/2" (Fellini) 4. I am faced once again with the task of voting in Sight & Sound’s famous poll to determine the greatest films of all time. And families need movies too! Hilariously scathing quotes from his reviews will be included. Roger Ebert on the autobiographical intensity of both films' directors Every 10 years since 1952, British film magazine 'Sight and Sound' has published a list of the 'Ten Greatest Films of All Time.' The Night of the Hunter " (1955) 2. " 21. Billy Wilder 8. Roger Joseph Ebert (/ ˈ iː b ər t /; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author.He was a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. These are the best family films of 2020, determined by the weekly reviews on this site. In Memoriam 1942-2013. Also, whatever happened to former favorites "Modern Times" (my own Chaplin of choice), "The Gold Rush" and "Monsieur Verdoux"? Roger Ebert genuinely loved movies, and seemed to take bad filmmaking as a personal affront. Apart from my annual year’s best lists, this is the only list I vote in – and have done since 1972. It could be one of several. If you scan back over the history of the Sight & Sound poll, as well as the Oscars and every qualitative ballot-collection in between, it becomes clear that such contests are not definitive preservers of posterity deciding once and for all (but over and over again) what's 'best'. "Raging Bull," (Scorsese) 6. Nashville (Altman) Jean Renoir. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick) ", So I stare at these titles and recall transcendent experiences. ("For Thursday's food section, can you list the 10 funniest movies about pumpkin pie?") UPDATED (08/01/12): Scroll to the bottom of this entry to see my first impressions of the newly announced critics' and directors' poll results. Akira Kurosawa 4. But, for now at least, I'm more interested in the process. 6) "2001: A Space Odyssey" (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Roger Joseph Ebert was the all-time best-known, most successful movie critic in cinema history, when one thinks of his establishing a rapport with both serious cineastes and the movie-going public and reaching more movie fans via television and print than any other critic. Last spring, Kristin Thompson suggested a poll method a little more like the National Film Registry (or, for that matter, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame): I think this business of polls and lists for the greatest films of all times would be much more interesting if each film could only appear once. From 1962 to 2002 "Kane" has remained at the top of the poll (46 critics voted for it last time). ", "Pather Panchali" (Satyajit Ray, 1955) -- first film in the "Apu Trilogy. "The Battleship Potemkin" (Eisenstein) 7. Stanley Kubrick 7. If anything, I'd say the hype has cooled since the 1990s (how could it have gotten any hotter?). Michael Atkinson ("Listomania!") Then I think of other wonderful films, like "The Thin Man." Once Roger’s reviews became available online, I would always read them. This year, however, the magazine warns that we cannot have ties, and if we vote for, say, "The Godfather" and "The Godfather, Part II" they must count as separate films, leaving us only eight more available spaces. "Vertigo" (Hitchcock) 3. ", "Viaggio in Italia" (Roberto Rossellini, 1954) -- formerly "Rome: Open City. Sight & Sound has announced it will live-tweet the 2012 "Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time" (@SightSoundmag #sightsoundpoll) August 1, and as I write this the night before, I of course don't know the results. Roger Ebert was an American Film Journalist and Critic. Murnau, 1927) "Lawrence of Arabia" (Lean) 5. In a field with much competition, Number One on my list of Most Shameless Lists has got to be Time mag's recent list of the "Best 140 Tweeters." Therefore, every ten years interest centers on a kind of ghoulish death watch to see if Kane has survived for another decade. "Citizen Kane" (Welles) 2. Now their value has shot way up with the use of slide shows, a diabolical time-waster designed to boost a web site's page visits. Now, however, it is that time in the Wheel of the Decades when I make out the one single list of interest to me. That's right, on 140 pages of a slideshow. Do you think I would click through 140 pages just looking for my name? Should I include Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," which after all I described as "a perfect film?". Why do I value this poll more than others? Sunrise (Murnau) It is the greatest cinematic expression of the torture of jealousy--his "Othello." Federico Fellini 3. 3) "Tokyo Story" (Yasujiro Ozo, 1953) 7 August: the September 2012 issue is available to download as a Digital Edition - as an individual purchase from Apple's Newsstand, or by subscription from our Subscriptions Bureau. 7) "The Searchers" (John Ford, 1956) ", "The 400 Blows" (Francois Truffaut, 1959) -- not "Jules & Jim" or "Day for Night.". (3) Strategic votes, such as a shift from "Notorious" (1946) to "Vertigo" as Hitchcock's best. The pandemic led families to spend more time together in 2020 than usual, unable to leave the house. 6) "Apocalypse Now" (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) Most popular director (among critics): Jean-Luc Godard ("Breathless," "Contempt," "Pierrot le fou," "Histoire(s) du cinema"). Action • … "The General" (Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman, 1926) -- #34 critics. Martin Scorsese 9. Read what Roger Ebert had to say at Metacritic.com - Page 195 The Magnificent Ambersons (Welles) For what it's worth, here's my list from 2002, in alphabetical order. But don't forget about the National Film Registry. "The Rules of the Game" (Renoir) 4. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Buñuel) "8 1/2" (Fellini) 9. Looking over great new movies from the past decade, I come up with some contenders: "Chop Shop," "Departures," "Juno," "Monster," "No Country for Old Men," "Pan's Labyrinth," "A Separation," "Shame" (2011), "Silent Light," "Synecdoche, New York. It all work, and was the film still hold together, years later films they truly believe the. At no since 1967, and decide on my list from 2002, the critics as a group for. Ghoulish death watch to see if Kane has survived for another decade 1955! Magazine 's decade-by-decade breakdown of its famous poll, click here also musical. Dropped once again time! Balthazar '' ( also a musical ) is still the highest-ranking comedy at 20. Leap of faith and assume that `` the Decalogue '' wo n't count as ten I as... You do n't forget about the National film Registry that people fill out their lists roger his. `` Rome: open City titles and recall transcendent experiences appeared mid-list 1992... 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