Posts Tagged ‘Citizen Kane’

Two More Movie Lists

Tuesday, June 8th, 2010

Andrew “Armed and Dangerous” Wimsatt sent me a list of Empire’s 500 Greatest Films of All Time. Since that list is broken up into lots of sub-pages, here it is in a more convenient “all on one page” format. (It also avoids the annoying smart quote artifacts that infest every page of the main Empire listings; are these people incapable of downloading a copy of Firefox?)

In many ways this is the mirror image of the Sight and Sound poll I had previously mentioned: Long on crowd-pleasers and cult films and short on European art house fair. While it’s hard to take seriously any “Best of” list that includes Transformers, it was gratifying to see under-rated gems like Hot Fuzz and The Prestige there. And you have to give a list that ranks Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back higher than Citizen Kane props for having the courage of its convictions.

Also, here’s Roger Ebert’s 250 Great Movies, which is sort of in-between the two.

Sight and Sound Critics and Director Polls

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

And speaking of movie polls, here’s the 2002 Sight and Sound Top Ten Critics poll, with many of the usual suspects (Citizen Kane, The Godfather, The Rules of the Game, etc.) on display in the top ten. It (and the longer list of films receiving votes) is long on French art films and short on crowd-pleasers, even those (like The Shawshank Redemption) with a fair amount of critical acclaim.

I’m somewhat surprised to find Vertigo ranked second, as (IMHO) it’s not even Hitchcock’s best film (I’d put Rear Window, and possibly one or two others, above it).

There’s also a Top Ten List compiled by directors (and another longer list), which is slightly different.