...and although Breathless is one of my favorite movies ever, it's not making it on to my list today. It could tomorrow, it might have yesterday, but today, here's how I'm feeling.

Ran directed by Akira Kurosawa: He's made a good half a dozen films that I consider to be masterpieces, and a couple dozen more that are great (with a few that are slight but noble fun, i.e., The Hidden Fortress, which is Star Wars' grandfather). It's an impossible choice really, but in deciding to adhere to my arbitrary criterion of the day--only one film by any given director--this is the one I'm picking. As I suggested on the blog, I also consider this to be the single most successful adaptation of King Lear (set of course in feudal Japan!). A completely staggering film.

The Seventh Seal directed by Ingmar Bergman: a poignant, meditative film that covers a lot of philosophical ground. It's at once brooding and playful, rich in mythological and historical allusion, inhabiting a world in which J.L. Borges, G.G. Marquez, Milan Kundera as well as Shakespeare and Goethe would be right at home. It's probably Max von Sydow's greatest part. I even once named my now-gone cat after his character. Sadly my cat was not a chess-player (yes, this is the film in which the protagonist plays chess with Death). It was also parodied to fine effect by Woody Allen in Love and Death.

Apocalypse Now directed by Francis Ford Coppola: I wrote a bit about this a few days ago. I was happy to see (via Eric Olsen on this site) that the British Film Institute voted it the best film of the last 25 years. I agree. Any of the qualifications that lingered around this film have finally been banished I think, and it's claimed its rightful place as one of cinema's great films.

The Rules of the Game directed by Jean Renoir: Another director of whose work it's painfully difficult to pick a clear favorite, The Rules of the Game is a fantastically rich film, deeply nuanced and at the same time utterly accessible and engaging. It manages to fearlessly address weighty social and moral issues while never unravelling into self-indulgent didacticism (Oliver Stone take note). It's a humane and sympathetic film, that is as subtly dark as it is comical.

Chungking Express directed by Wong Kar-Wai: From the director of the more widely-seen and beautiful In the Mood for Love, this film--set amongst disaffected Hong Kong residents in the 90s--launched Wong Kar-Wai into the directorial limelight. Upon it's release, Tony Rayns of Sight and Sound declared that seeing Chungking Express for the first time was akin to seeing Godard's Breathless for the first time in 1961. The effect is indeed breathtaking. The narrative is loose but that isn't where this film finds its greatest strengths. Watching this film is akin to learning to see anew, almost as if the medium of film had been reinvented. This, while remaining completely engrossing and accessible. A contemporary masterpiece.