What a Time It Was, Huh?
In this edition of The Martell 100, we’re talking Francis Ford Coppola’s other 1974 masterpiece, Devil in a Blue Dress, Reds and more!
Hello everyone and welcome to the The Martell 100 newsletter. I had initially planned to send out my latest top 100 movie rankings last Monday, the first day of the month, but between work and other obligations, I couldn’t finish writing it until today. Sorry about that! We’ll be back on the typical schedule for the May rankings.
For the first time since I started publishing this newsletter back in December, we have a shakeup in the top 10! The addition of that film, which I won’t reveal this high up in the newsletter, created a ripple throughout the top 25, with several other movies trading places and leapfrogging one another. (And no, the language I’m using here is not a hint; Eddie Murphy’s Trading Places is not on the list, nor is the 1950 animated short Why Play Leap Frog? — a movie that I totally knew existed five minutes ago.)
As you may recall, I did not send out an updated top 100 list in March because I was cramming to see as many feature films as possible from 2023 to write my previous newsletter before the Academy Awards. That means this edition is packed with two month’s worth of top 100 jockeying, which also might have led to all the movement, as I’ve had more time to watch, rewatch and think about the movies.
You might think I would make more additions and subtractions as I see more movies for the first time, but at least for the moment, the opposite seems to be true: There is only one new member of the top 100 in this edition of the rankings. This is because I try to wait until I see a movie twice before putting it in the top 100, though that doesn’t always happen (see: The Night of the Hunter, Past Lives, The Insider, among a few others). That said, there are three new honorable mentions from my recent first watches that might make this list after a second viewing: All That Jazz, Bob Fosse’s 1979 fictional account of his near death experience from five years earlier; Rebecca, the only Alfred Hitchcock film to win Best Picture; and, yes, Ishtar. As I see more great movies, the more crowded this list gets, so I’m becoming more reluctant to knock out a film that’s already in the 100 for one that I’ve seen only once.
During February and March, I rewatched 11 films, eight of which were already among the top 100. All eight of them — Gangs of New York, Malcolm X, Devil in a Blue Dress, Thief, Killers of the Flower Moon, In a Lonely Place, Reds and Taxi Driver — moved up in these rankings. One of the other rewatches was Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, from 1946, an excellent noir and romantic thriller starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. The 10th rewatch is making its top 100 debut, at no. 89. The final one, The Adventures of Robin Hood, is technically a rewatch but one I hadn’t seen in roughly 20 years. It’s a technicolor extravaganza from 1938 with incredible sets and fun performances, but it falls well short of the top 100 — and the Disney animated Robin Hood is still the superior movie.
Anyway, let’s get to the list:
100. Witness (1985)
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas
99. Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
Director: Justine Triet
Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Granerv
98. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Director: Charles Laughton
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish
97. Yojimbo (1961)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshirô Mifune, Eijirô Tôno, Tatsuya Nakadai
96. On the Waterfront (1954)
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint
95. No Country for Old Men (2007)
Director: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Cast: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones
94. Little Women (2019)
Director: Greta Gerwig
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh
93. Django Unchained (2012)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio
92. Spirited Away (2001)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Cast (English Voices): Daveigh Chase, Suzanne Pleshette, Jason Marsden
91. Michael Clayton (2007)
Director: Tony Gilroy
Cast: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson
90. Past Lives (2023)
Director: Celine Song
Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro
89. The Conversation (1974)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Allen Garfield
Francis Ford Coppola’s other masterpiece from 1974 is a smaller, tighter film than his trio of epics from the 1970s: The Godfather (no. 3), The Godfather Part II (no. 8) and Apocalypse Now (no. 33), and because of this, it tends to be overlooked. I think The Conversation’s relatively muted legacy is why I put off watching it until the second week of January, though I realized immediately that the film is anything but muted. Sound plays a crucial role in the story — it is about surveillance expert Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) who, after recording a conversation of a young couple he’s been hired to spy on, starts to fear that his client may be trying to kill them — and the opening scene of the movie, while Caul and his crew are recording the titular conversation, is pure cacophony, so much so that I thought at first that something was wrong with our home speakers. It’s disorienting, but purposefully so, and it sets the tone for the rest of the film, as Caul — despite his reputation as the best surveillance man in the business — is always at least a step or two behind the more powerful, sinister forces at work.
This, of course, is the formula for many a classic paranoid thriller, but what makes The Conversation so special is that we feel the effects of Caul’s heightening, desperate madness as he plunges deeper into the conspiracy, which unlike the ones in The Parallax View, All the President’s Men (no. 14) and some of the other great paranoid thrillers of the 70s, is comparatively low stakes. The first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and the future of the country, to flip Ben Bradlee’s famous final lines in All the President’s Men, are not riding on whether Caul can get to the bottom of the conspiracy in time. For this reason, The Conversation captures the mood of the country circa 1974 — that pretty much every level of society is corrupt — better than most other movies.
88. Mikey and Nicky (1976)
Director: Elaine May
Cast: Peter Falk, John Cassavetes, Ned Beatty
87. Silence (2016)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Liam Neeson
86. Frances Ha (2012)
Director: Noah Baumbach
Cast: Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner, Adam Driver
85. The Right Stuff (1983)
Director: Philip Kaufman
Cast: Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris
84. Out of the Past (1947)
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Freer, Kirk Douglas
83. Seven Samurai (1954)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima
82. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern
81. Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
Director: Carl Franklin
Cast: Denzel Washington, Tom Sizemore, Jennifer Beals
I am a sucker for any halfway decent neo-noir film, and this is a great one. This movie is perhaps best remember for Don Cheadle’s breakout performance as Mouse — and he is worthy of all the praise he receives. He injects an energy into the second half of the movie that pushes its pace to a higher velocity, creating a buzz that matches the adrenaline rush that is fueling Denzel’s Easy Rollins as he gets deeper into the conspiracy at the core of the story. Tom Sizemore is deliciously off his rocker as Albright. And Jennifer Beals, playing Daphne Monet, is the MacGuffin, a subversion of the femme fatale and the emotional core of the movie.
Also, I laugh every single time Easy’s neighbor tries to cut down other people’s trees.
80. Toy Story 3 (2010)
Director: Lee Unkrich
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack
79. City of God (2002)
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Cast: Alexandre Rodrigues, Leandro Firmino, Douglas Silva
78. A Few Good Men (1992)
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore
77. Star Wars: Episode VI — Return of the Jedi
Director: Richard Marquand
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher
76. Babylon (2022)
Director: Damien Chazelle
Cast: Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Brad Pitt
75. Road to Perdition (2002)
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Tyler Hoechlin
74. To Live and Die in L.A (1985)
Director: William Friedkin
Cast: William Petersen, Willem Dafoe, John Turturro
73. The Insider (1999)
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer
72. North By Northwest (1959)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason
71. There’s Something About Mary (1998)
Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly
Cast: Cameron Diaz, Ben Stiller, Matt Dillon
70. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Director: Martin McDonagh
Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon
69. Boogie Nights (1997)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds
68. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
Director: Frank Capra
Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
67. High Noon (1952)
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Cast: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Thomas Mitchell
66. 12 Angry Men (1957)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam
65. JFK (1991)
Director: Oliver Stone
Cast: Kevin Costner, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones
64. Moneyball (2011)
Director: Bennett Miller
Cast: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman
63. Licorice Pizza (2021)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Bradley Cooper
62. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Director: Rawson Marshall Thurber
Cast: Vince Vaughn, Christine Taylor, Ben Stiller
61. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Director: Peter Weir
Cast: Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, James D’Arcy
60. Bull Durham (1988)
Director: Ron Shelton
Cast: Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins
59. The Irishman (2019)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci
58. Tár (2022)
Director: Todd Field
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss
57. The Social Network (2010)
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake
56. Thief (1981)
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: James Caan, Tuesday Weld, Robert Prosky
55. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns
54. Back to the Future (1985)
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson
53. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Chris Sarandon
52. Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Director: Irvin Kershner
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher
51. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
Director: Sergio Leone
Cast: Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards
50. Phantom Thread (2017)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Lesley Manville
49. Oppenheimer (2023)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr.
48. The Third Man (1949)
Director: Carol Reed
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles
47. Good Will Hunting (1997)
Director: Gus Van Sant
Cast: Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck
46. After Hours (1985)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Verna Bloom
45. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds
44. That Thing You Do! (1996)
Director: Tom Hanks
Cast: Tom Everett Scott, Liv Tyler, Tom Hanks
43. Lincoln (2012)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones
42. Rear Window (1954)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey
41. The Big Short (2015)
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling
I feel like I need to defend my decision to drop The Big Short to here from no. 27, because it is such a steep fall. The best explanation I can give is that compared with, say, Spotlight, another issues-based film that I love from the same year, The Big Short felt more lecture-y and less like a movie the last time I watched it, back in September. On my previous rewatches, the cocktail of entertainment. information and indictment held up; the humor still worked and the ending still hit hard. This time, though, for whatever reason, I didn’t respond to it as strongly.
40. Do the Right Thing (1989)
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Spike Lee, Ossie Davis, Danny Aiello
39. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
38. Goodfellas (1990)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci
37. When Harry Met Sally (1989)
Director: Rob Reiner
Cast: Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, Carrie Fisher
36. Get Out (2017)
Director: Jordan Peele
Cast: Daniel Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Bradley Whitford
35. The Other Guys (2010)
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Eva Mendes
Contrary to what you may have heard, the Michael Keaton Renaissance did not begin in 2014, when he starred as Riggan Thomson in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and for which Keaton was nominated for his only Oscar. Instead, his comeback started four years earlier, as Captain Gene — or Captain, or Gene — in Adam McKay’s The Other Guys.
Released two years after the housing market collapsed and The Great Recession began — a subject that McKay would later cover in The Big Short (No. 41) — The Other Guys captures the chaotic, wounded spirit of the moment. Running on ambition and testosterone, Detective Terry Hoitz (Mark Wahlberg) uses bluster to mask a deep insecurity that becomes more apparent as he realizes his powerlessness. Meanwhile, as is often the case in buddy cop movies, Detective Allen Gamble (Will Ferrell) serves as the inverse of his partner. He wants nothing more than to do his desk job competently and go home to his “cute, not hot” wife (Eva Mendes) because he is so afraid of his past. But it is Keaton who grounds the movie. He is demonstrative but never a caricature. He hams it up but is also restrained, which works perfectly in contrast to the off-the-walls performances that Ferrell and Wahlberg are giving.
34. Malcolm X (1992)
Director: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, Angela Bassett, Albert Hall
In a previous newsletter, I wrote about what makes a great biopic. Spike Lee’s 3-hour, 22-minute epic checks all the boxes. The filmmaking is dazzling, the performances are magnificent — most notably Denzel Washington as Malcolm X, but also Angela Bassett as his wife Betty, Albert Hall as Baines, Al Freeman Jr. as Elijah Muhammad, Delroy Lindo as West Indian Archie, and Lee himself as Shorty — and the ideas are rich. Spike and Denzel present Malcolm X not as the controversial foil to Martin Luther King, Jr., nor as an infallible civil rights leader who could do no wrong, but as a man who is consistently trying to figure out his place in the world.
What elevates Malcolm X to the upper echelon of movies is its final act, beginning with Malcolm’s disillusionment with the Nation of Islam. He does not come to his decision to leave the organization easily; he wants to desperately to believe that Elijah Muhammad did not father children with young women, or that his fellow leaders of the movement are not using their positions of power for profit. This is the organization and these are the people who saved him while he was in prison, who altered the course of his life, who gave him a purpose. It’s not until he makes his pilgrimage to Mecca that he learns that there is more to the religion of Islam than the Nation of Islam. He returns to the U.S. with a new perspective on his role in the civil rights movement, too. This is also a story of evolution, of how humans are both vehicles for change and vehicles who change.
33. Apocalypse Now (1979)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall
32. Zodiac (2007)
Director: David Fincher
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo
31. Almost Famous (2000)
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Billy Crudup, Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson
30. The Nice Guys (2016)
Director: Shane Black
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice
29. Parasite (2019)
Director: Bong Joon Ho
Cast: Song Kang-ho, Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong
28. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Director: Jonathan Demme
Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Ted Levine
27. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden
26. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Alison Doody
25. The Hateful Eight (2015)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh
24. Heat (1995)
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer
23. Spotlight (2015)
Director: Tom McCarthy
Cast: Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams
22. Network (1976)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch
21. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie
20. In a Lonely Place (1950)
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy
Raw, captivating and devastating, In a Lonely Place is ostensibly a murder mystery, but when it comes to who committed the murder, as Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) says at the end, it doesn’t matter.
On this rewatch, I paid close attention to the shift in perspective, when it goes from his to her point of view. Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) — which remains a top five movie name — has always been erratic and on the verge of exploding, but he never acts emotionally or physically abusive toward Laurel until she begins to doubt his innocence. This switch happens when he is cutting up the grapefruit and then asks her to marry him. How much of what we see is her fear that the man she loves might be a killer? How much of this is how Dixon is actually behaving? Does it even matter?
19. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro
18. Magnolia (1999)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Tom Cruise, Jason Robards, Julianne Moore
17. Rio Bravo (1959)
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson
16. Taxi Driver (1976)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Robert De Niro, Jodie Foster, Cybill Shepherd
15. All the President’s Men (1976)
Director: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards
At some point, I’ll need to do a newsletter on the movies of 1976, one of my favorite film years. But I want to acknowledge here that I really don’t know which movie I like better: Taxi Driver, which I rewatched a few weeks ago with my roommates, or All the President’s Men. It probably depends on the day. For now, I’ll keep the journalism classic just ahead of Scorsese’s first true masterpiece, but every time I watch and think about Taxi Driver, the gap narrows.
14. Casablanca (1942)
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains
13. Chinatown (1974)
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston
12. The Fugitive (1993)
Director: Andrew Davis
Stars: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward
11. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent
10. A League of Their Own (1992)
Director: Penny Marshall
Cast: Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Lori Petty
9. Reds (1981)
Director: Warren Beatty
Cast: Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson
Most of the movies in my top 10 have been part of my life for so long that I don’t remember the first time I saw them. That is not the case with Reds, the first addition to the top 10 since I started publishing my 100 favorite movie rankings in this newsletter back in December.
It was Tuesday, September 14, 2021, four days after my 26th birthday, and I was back home in Hopewell Junction. I’d come up on Sunday the 12th to celebrate my birthday with my parents and watch the Rams’ season opener with my dad that night. I had moved to Brooklyn less than two weeks earlier, so I was still playing in the local softball league; we had a game Monday night, and the plan was to play in that game and then leave for Brooklyn after work on Tuesday. Meanwhile, during the day on Monday, my parents left to visit my Uncle Ernie and Aunt Carol (who are subscribers to this newsletter. Hi guys!) for a few days, so they weren’t home Tuesday night when the weather turned rough and I decided not to drive back to Brooklyn until Wednesday. With nothing to do, I did what every other young man would do when his parents are out of town and he has the house to himself: I turned off all the lights and fired up a 3-hour, 15-minute biopic about a radical American journalist and the Russian Revolution. Reds was one of those films that overwhelmed me to the point of obsession in the days and weeks after that first viewing.
I was still thinking about it in early November, when I texted my friend Emily (who is another loyal reader and whom many of you know) to ask if she’d ever seen it. She double majored in journalism and Russian at Penn State, so I figured it was the perfect movie for her. Clearly, I caught her at a weirdly stressful moment. Her response, which I naturally tweeted out as soon as I received it, has become one of our favorite exchanges between us:
She had not, in fact, seen it. That is, until about a month ago, when she and I went and saw it at 1 p.m. on Oscars Sunday at Metrograph.
It was my third time watching it, but unlike the second viewing — which came one night in November 2022 when I decided to watch it on one of those free streaming services with ads; it took at least four hours to get through and every 15 minutes the same three annoying commercials interrupted the movie — this was the perfect environment in which to see it.
At its most basic level, Reds is about the lives of the aforementioned radical journalist Jack Reed (Warren Beatty) and his friend, lover and colleague, the journalist and feminist activist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). But, as must be the case with any biopic, this film is about so much more than just Jack and Louise.
The first part is a screwball comedy and romantic drama set mainly in the Bohemian communities of Greenwich Village, New York, and Provincetown, Massachusetts, at the tip of Cape Cod, where Reed and Bryant live and work with a group of writers, artists and activists of the era, including Max Eastman (Edward Herrmann), Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton) and Eugene O’Neill (Jack Nicholson).
The second section of the film is a historical epic about the Russian Revolution, which Reed and Bryant are covering as correspondents, and the third deconstructs the myth of the great man. Reed becomes more involved with the Communist Party as he tries to bring a worker’s revolution to the United States, and as he gets caught up in the throes of the cause, he loses sight of himself, the woman he loves and what he truly believes. The lines from the movie that best demonstrate its central conflict come late, when Reed is arguing with Grigory Zinoviev and realizing what the revolution has become:
Reed: Zinoviev, you don’t think a man can be an individual and be true to the collective, or speak for his own country and speak for the International at the same time, or love his wife and still be faithful to the revolution. You don’t have a “self” to give.
Zinoviev: Would you be willing to give yourself to this revolution?
Reed: You separate a man from what he loves most. What you do is purge what’s unique in him. And when you purge what’s unique in him, you purge dissent. And when you purge dissent, you kill the revolution! Dissent is revolution!
With its sweeping scope, rich characters, and complicated ideas about idealism, Reds is an utterly absorbing epic. There’s also Paul Sorvino playing an Italian-American communist leader and a Gene Hackman two-scene heater! Quite simply, this is one of the greatest movies ever made.
8. The Godfather Part II (1974)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Robert Duvall
7. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie
Man, dropping Inglourious Basterds (no. 11) out of the top 10 was an agonizing decision, and I still don’t know if it’s the right one. For the longest time, I’ve said Basterds is Tarantino’s best movie, the one that is the perfectly representation of everything he does so well. And yet, after my most recent rewatch of it, back in January, I started thinking that maybe I liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood just a little bit better. But why? I think some of it has to do with time. We’re more than four years removed from Hollywood’s release, and as I’ve had time to rewatch and reconsider it, it continues to grow in my estimation. I also think Rick Dalton might just be Leonardo DiCaprio’s best performance, and one of the best examples of acting I’ve seen in my whole life. And I know for sure that I’d rather spend time in 1969 Los Angeles than Nazi Occupied France. Ultimately, I think it comes down to the fact that Hollywood is a more pleasant movie, while Basterds is a cathartic one. In many ways, Hollywood is a hangout flick and a love story. Sure, it’s also a revisionist history film about the loss of innocence and the moral corruption lurking in the shadows of society, but Rick’s friendship with Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) is the emotional heart of the story.
6. Gangs of New York (2002)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz
5. L.A. Confidential (1997)
Director: Curtis Hanson
Cast: Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kim Basinger
4. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman
3. The Godfather (1972)
Director: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Director: Frank Darabont
Cast: Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, Bob Gunton
1. The Departed (2006)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson
Additions:
The Conversation (no. 89)
Subtractions:
Inside Man (no. 96)
Highest Risers:
Malcolm X (+29), In a Lonely Place +13, Devil in a Blue Dress (+12), Reds (+10)
Farthest Fallers:
The Big Short (-14), On the Waterfront (-6), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (-6), The Wolf of Wall Street (-6), Once Upon a Time in the West (-5), Inglourious Basterds (-5)
Honorable Mentions (Non-Cuts):
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, All That Jazz, Bridge of Spies, Citizen Kane, Ishtar, Jackie Brown, Lady Bird, Rebecca, The Age of Innocence, The Dark Knight