Guillermo del Toro’s Top 10
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http://www.criterion.com/explore/125-guillermo-del-toro-s-top-10
http://www.criterion.com/explore/125-guillermo-del-toro-s-top-10
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- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsToshirô MifuneMinoru ChiakiIsuzu YamadaA war-hardened general, egged on by his ambitious wife, works to fulfill a prophecy that he would become lord of Spider's Web Castle.1.
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsToshirô MifuneYutaka SadaTatsuya NakadaiAn executive of a Yokohama shoe company becomes a victim of extortion when his chauffeur's son is kidnapped by mistake and held for ransom.(tie)
- DirectorAkira KurosawaStarsTatsuya NakadaiAkira TeraoJinpachi NezuIn Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.(tie) | Kurosawa’s being one of the essential masters is best represented by these, his most operatic, pessimistic, and visually spectacular films. Try and guess which is which. How he managed to be both exuberant and elegant at the same time will be one of life’s great mysteries.
- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsMax von SydowGunnar BjörnstrandBengt EkerotA knight returning to Sweden after the Crusades seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague.2.
- DirectorIngmar BergmanStarsBertil GuvePernilla AllwinKristina AdolphsonTwo young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls.(tie) | Bergman as a fabulist—my favorite—is absolutely mesmerizing. These two films have the primal pulse of a children’s fable told by an impossibly old and wise narrator. Fanny and Alexander is Dickens, Hans Christian Andersen, and John Calvin rolled into one. Both tales are ripe with fantastical imagery and a sharp sense of the uncanny. Also, I am often surprised at how the humor and comedic elements in The Seventh Seal seem to be overlooked in favor of its reputation as a quintessential “serious” art film.
- DirectorJean CocteauRené ClémentStarsJean MaraisJosette DayMila ParélyA beautiful young woman takes her father's place as the prisoner of a mysterious beast, who wishes to marry her.3.
- DirectorGeorges FranjuStarsPierre BrasseurAlida ValliJuliette MaynielA surgeon causes an accident which leaves his daughter disfigured and goes to extreme lengths to give her a new face.(tie) | Beauty and the Beast may be tenuous and delicate where Eyes Without a Face is overripe and pulpish, but these films are gorgeous, dark poems about fragility and horror. Both fables depend on sublime, almost ethereal, imagery to convey a sense of doom and loss: mad, fragile love clinging for dear life in a maelstrom of darkness. The clash of haunting and enchanting imagery has seldom been more powerful. Eyes Without a Face boasts an extraordinary soundtrack too!
- DirectorDavid LeanStarsJohn MillsValerie HobsonTony WagerA humble orphan boy in 1810s Kent is given the opportunity to go to London and become a gentleman, with the help of an unknown benefactor.4.
- DirectorDavid LeanStarsRobert NewtonAlec GuinnessKay WalshIn Charles Dickens' classic tale, an orphan wends his way from cruel apprenticeship to den of thieves in search of a true home.(tie) | Most people remember David Lean for his big-scale epics, like Doctor Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, or The Bridge on the River Kwai. But here he is at his most precise and poetic. Both movies are epics of the spirit, and both are plagued by grand, utterly magical moments and settings; whether showing Oliver’s mother straining and in pain, by intercutting with a flexing branch of thorns, or by lovingly lingering on Miss Havisham’s decaying splendor, Lean understand the need for hyperbole in order to manage the larger-than-life Dickensian archetypes. Some of the passages in both films skate the fine line between poetry and horror.
- DirectorTerry GilliamStarsSean ConneryShelley DuvallJohn CleeseA young boy accidentally joins a band of time travelling dwarves, as they jump from era to era looking for treasure to steal.5.
- DirectorTerry GilliamStarsJonathan PryceKim GreistRobert De NiroA bureaucrat in a dystopic society becomes an enemy of the state as he pursues the woman of his dreams.(tie) | Terry Gilliam is a living treasure, and we are squandering him foolishly with every film of his that remains unmade. Proof that our world is the poorer for this can be found in two of his masterpieces. Gilliam is a fabulist pregnant with images—exploding with them, actually—and fierce, untamed imagination. He understands that “bad taste” is the ultimate declaration of independence from the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie. He jumps with no safety net and drags us with him into a world made coherent only by his undying faith in the tale he is telling. Brazil remains one of the most important films of my life, and Time Bandits is a Roald Dahl–ian landmark to all fantasy films. Seeing Time Bandits with my youngest daughter just two weeks ago, I was delighted when she laughed and rejoiced at the moment when Kevin’s parents explode into a cloud of smoke.
- DirectorKaneto ShindôStarsNobuko OtowaJitsuko YoshimuraKei SatôTwo women kill samurai and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.6.
- DirectorKaneto ShindôStarsKichiemon NakamuraNobuko OtowaKei SatôTwo women are raped and killed by samurai soldiers. Soon they reappear as vengeful ghosts who seduce and brutally murder the passing samurai.(tie) | Horrors and desire, death and lust go hand in hand in Onibaba and Kuroneko, a perverse, sweaty double bill from Kaneto Shindo. I saw these two films at age ten, and they did some serious damage to my psyche. Both are perfect fables rooted in Japanese folklore but distinctly modern in their approach to violence and sexuality. As exuberant and exquisite as a netsuke carving, these atmospheric jewels show mankind trapped in a cosmically evil world. The tales seem to fit together so perfectly that they fuse into one as time goes by. Onibaba and Kuroneko make a perfect double bill for the second circle of hell.
- DirectorStanley KubrickAnthony MannStarsKirk DouglasLaurence OlivierJean SimmonsThe slave Spartacus survives brutal training as a gladiator and leads a violent revolt against the decadent Roman Republic, as the ambitious Crassus seeks to gain power by crushing the uprising.7.
- DirectorStanley KubrickStarsKirk DouglasRalph MeekerAdolphe MenjouAfter a failed attack on a German position, a general orders three soldiers, chosen at random, court-martialed for cowardice and their commanding officer must defend them.(tie) | Kubrick was a fearsome intellect. His approach to filmmaking and storytelling remains as mysterious at it is compelling. The illusion of control over the medium is total. Both films speak eloquently about the scale of a man against the tide of history, and both raise the bar for every “historical” film to follow. Paths of Glory is a searing indictment of the war machine, as pertinent now as it was in its day. I suspect, however, that Kubrick was also a highly instinctive director, and that he grasped incessantly for his films. An anecdote tells us of him begging Kirk Douglas to stay in bed a few more days after an accident, because Kubrick was using the “downtime” to understand the film they were making.
- DirectorPreston SturgesStarsJoel McCreaVeronica LakeRobert WarwickHollywood director John L. Sullivan sets out to experience life as a homeless person in order to gain relevant life experience for his next movie.8.
- DirectorPreston SturgesStarsRex HarrisonLinda DarnellRudy ValleeA man dreams of revenge when he suspects his wife is unfaithful.(tie) | The candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long, as the saying goes—and Sturges’s films and meteoric, puzzling career confirm this. These are masterful films full of mad energy and fireworks, but Sullivan’s Travels also manages to encapsulate one of the most intimate reflections about the role of the filmmaker as entertainer. Many have attempted to mine the same field as Sturges, and all have failed. A rara avis in the landscape of film.
- DirectorCarl Theodor DreyerStarsJulian WestMaurice SchutzRena MandelA drifter obsessed with the supernatural stumbles upon an inn where a severely ill adolescent girl is slowly becoming a vampire.9.
- DirectorBenjamin ChristensenStarsBenjamin ChristensenElisabeth ChristensenMaren PedersenFictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in Eastern Europe.(tie) | Sheer terror and sheer poetry, but both stem from distinctive medieval traditions. Häxan is the filmic equivalent of a hellish engraving by Bruegel or a painting by Bosch. It’s a strangely titillating record of sin and perversity that is as full of dread as it is of desire and atheistic conviction, and a condemnation of superstition that is morbidly in love with its subject. Vampyr is, strictly speaking, a memento mori, a stern reminder of death as the threshold of spiritual liberation. Like any memento mori, the film enthrones the right morbid imagery (skull, scythe, white limbo) in order to maximize the impact of the beautiful, almost intangible images that conclude it. If only Criterion had acquired my commentary track—sigh—from the UK edition.
- DirectorVíctor EriceStarsFernando Fernán GómezTeresa GimperaAna TorrentIn 1940, after watching and being traumatized by the movie Frankenstein (1931), a sensitive seven year-old girl living in a small Spanish village drifts into her own fantasy world.10.
- DirectorCharles LaughtonStarsRobert MitchumShelley WintersLillian GishA self-proclaimed preacher marries a gullible widow whose young children are reluctant to tell him where their real dad hid the $10,000 he'd stolen in a robbery.(tie) | The two supreme works of childhood/horror. Lamentations of worlds lost and the innocents trapped in them. Sublime fairy tales of despair that depict the adult world as a toxic environment for kids to exist in. Secret treasures kept in the hearts of children must be safeguarded from the corruption of an adult world full of certainty and arrogance. Both films are so beautiful and so dark—they truly make me weep in awe.