Amph Filmmakers & Critics' Top Ten Movies: Liv Ullmann

Jackie remade "Pocketful of Miracles" as "Mr Canton & Lady Rose". A gorgeous period piece that tones down the heavy stunts. It is probably his most ambitious directorial effort but was considered a box-office failure. He stars along with the late Anita Mui.

 

Best Capra insult of all time!

I'm not surprised by the Keaton and Chaplin picks, but I'm surprised he doesn't have Harold Lloyd's Safety Last on there too; that one's mix of physical comedy and mortal peril kind of prefigures Chan's whole career.

 

Michel Ciment
(Film Critic: Positif)

Barry Lyndon (1975, Stanley Kubrick)
L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophuls)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
The General (1927, Buster Keaton)
The Travelling Players (1975, Theo Angelopoulos)
Ugetsu (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi)
White Heat (1949, Raoul Walsh)
Salvatore Giuliano (1962, Francesco Rosi)

Barry Lyndon? Seriously? It must be a European thing.

Haven't seen the Rosi nor the Mizoguchi.

 

I will excuse the remark regarding Mr. Kubrick's Barry Lyndon
if you will at least acknowledge that he chose Murnau's Sunrise as one of his picks.

 

Indeed. The 3 French movies and "White Heat" are great picks.

 

Ethan Coen
(Filmmaker: Fargo; O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

Brother's Keeper (1992, Joe Berlinger/Bruce Sinofsky)
Il Bidone (1955, Federico Fellini)
Salesman (1969, Albert & David Maysles)
The Bad News Bears (1976, Michael Ritchie)
The Fortune (1975, Mike Nichols)

Joel Coen
(Filmmaker: Fargo; O Brother, Where Art Thou?)

The Fortune (1975, Mike Nichols)
High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)
Dames (1934, Ray Enright)
Separate Tables (1958, Delbert Mann)
Where Eagles Dare (1968, Brian G. Hutton)


A bit of put-on, I think. "The Fortune" probably *did* inspire "Burn After Reading", though.

A couple of serious choices each: "Il Bidone", Fellini's film about grifters, and "High and Low" Kurosawa's brilliant film about a kidnapping of a child...yeah, I got it. "Salesman" is a documentary about bible salesmen, and I would guess that the attraction of "Separate Tables" has to do with exclusion (at least for Jews from Minnesota). "Where Eagles Dare" was directed by the deathless Brian G. Hutton, who now works as...wait for it...a plumber. That's a symbol or something. (He also committed "Kelly's Heroes", one of my very favorite very bad films, so I should talk.)

Curiously, none of the three films they remade, nor the one they are remaking.

 

Salesman was a fantastic documentary and I can totally see the Coen bros loving it. It's very unsettling and sad. But the Bad News Bears? Granted, I developed one of my first crushes ever on Tatum O' Neal and the use of Carmen was inspired. But a favorite movie ever?

 

Roger Corman
(Filmmaker: A Bucket of Blood, The Masque of the Red Death)

Battleship Potemkin (1925, Sergei Eisenstein)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Seventh Seal (1956, Ingmar Bergman)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, David Lean)
The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
The Grapes of Wrath (1940, John Ford)
Shane (1953, George Stevens)
On the Waterfront (1954, Elia Kazan)
Star Wars (1977, George Lucas)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919, Robert Wiene)


Here we have a list that gives you no guide at all to the film-makers' style or taste. The only unusual choice is the last one, and as a horror picture, it's pretty basic.

 

Someone else recently named Where Eagles Dare as a favorite; I think that was in the other thread, where actors were giving their favorites. I'm baffled by this; it's a mostly rote film. The most memorable thing is the lead actress' cleavage. I mean, that part is memorable, but not memorable to get the movie on a top ten list all by itself (themselves?).

 

That was one of the Coens, and I'm sure it was a put-on.

 

Alex Cox
(Filmmaker: Repo Man, Sid & Nancy)

Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Devils (1971, Ken Russell)
The Exterminating Angel (1962, Luis Bunuel)
King Kong (1933, Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack)
The Mattei Affair (1973, Francesco Rosi)
O Lucky Man! (1973, Lindsay Anderson)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
Throne of Blood (1957, Akira Kurosawa)
The Wages of Fear (1953, H.G. Clouzot)
The War Game (1967, Peter Watkins)

First cite of the feral "Wages of Fear"...

 

the exterminating angel might be the best bunuel.

 

John Dahl
(Filmmaker: Red Rock West, The Last Seduction)

Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)
A Clockwork Orange (1971, Stanley Kubrick)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989, Woody Allen)
Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)
The Godfather (1972, Francis Ford Coppola)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969, Sergio Leone)
Schindler's List (1993, Steven Spielberg)
Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, John Huston)
Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood)

He likes Westerns, and what's not to like?

 

That list makes sense. Red Rock West is not a perfect movie, but it's basically the characters from Treasure of the Sierra Madres doing Chinatown on the Once Upon a Time in the West sets. If that makes any sense.

 

Joe Dante
(Filmmaker: Gremlins, Small Soldiers)

Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
City Lights (1931, Charles Chaplin)
8 1/2 (1963, Federico Fellini)
Children of Paradise (1945, Marcel Carne)
The Dead (1960, Stan Brakhage)
Rashomon (1950, Akira Kurosawa)
Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)
Raging Bull (1980, Martin Scorsese)
The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
Once Upon a Time in the West (1969, Sergio Leone)

 

Manohla Dargis
(Film critic: Los Angeles Times)

Au hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)
Barry Lyndon (1975, Stanley Kubrick)
The Godfather/The Godfather Part II (1972-74, Francis Ford Coppola)
Grand Illusion (1937, Jean Renoir)
Masculin-Feminin (1966, Jean-Luc Godard)
The Puppetmaster (1993, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Scenes from Under Childhood (1967, Stan Brakhage)
Some Like It Hot (1959, Billy Wilder)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujiro Ozu)
Touch of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)

 

I always forget Manohla Dargis is a real person and not a SNL character. But that's a pretty good list; more intellectual than I'd have expected from her, actually. I would have thought they'd all be like Touch of Evil.

 

John Dahl's list that is some solid stuff on there.

 

Terence Davies
(Filmmaker: Distant Voices, Still Lives; The House of Mirth)

Singin' in the Rain (1952, Stanley Donen/Gene Kelly)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949, Robert Hamer)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander Mackendrick)
Cries and Whispers (1972, Ingmar Bergman)
The Age of Innocence (1993, Martin Scorsese)
The Searchers (1956, John Ford)
The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950, Frank Launder)
Apu Trilogy (1955-59, Satyajit Ray)
Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)

Some surprising choices--surprisingly upbeat in some cases.

 

Jonathan Demme
(Filmmaker: The Silence of the Lambs, The Agronomist)

Shoot the Piano Player (1960, Francois Truffaut)
The Conformist (1970, Bernardo Bertolucci)
Yojimbo (1961, Akira Kurosawa)
Nothing But a Man (1964, Michael Roemer)
Antonio das Mortes (1969, Glauber Rocha)
Black Orpheus (1959, Marcel Camus)
Five Easy Pieces (1970, Bob Rafelson)
Muriel (1963, Alain Resnais)
Coming Home (1978, Hal Ashby)
Ceddo (1977, Ousmane Sembene)

"The Conformist" is a great choice, as is "Yojimbo", but the rest are one I haven't seen or questionable.

 

five easy pieces is really good. i'm not familiar at all with about half of the others. interesting list.

 

Surprisingly obscure list of movies. There are a couple there I hadn't heard of.

 

David Denby
(Film critic: New Yorker)

L'Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
The Decalogue (1988, Krzysztof Kieslowski)
The Godfather/The Godfather Part II (1972-74, Francis Ford Coppola)
The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
Seven Samurai (1954, Akira Kurosawa)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
The Third Man (1949, Carol Reed)
Weekend (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

 

Guy doesn't know what an embargo is, but it's good to know that he knows what a good film is.

 

Ernest Dickerson
(Filmmaker: Juice, Bones)

Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)
In the Mood for Love (2001, Wong Kar-wai)
Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
Brazil (1985, Terry Gilliam)
Rashomon (1950, Akira Kurosawa)
The Godfather/The Godfather Part II (1972-74, Francis Ford Coppola)
Malcolm X (1992, Spike Lee)
Ikiru (1952, Akira Kurosawa)
Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)