The Life Cinematic Top List (In Progress) Updated Jan. 5

A list compiled from the votes in the Directorial Consensus at The Life Cinematic, it’s in constant flux as the directors are still coming up, and people are still able to vote on previous directors in the general voting thread. An offbeat list, for an offbeat film community. The ones in bold are the films I’ve personally seen.

Ride Lonesome (Boetticher, 1959)

Seven Men from Now (Boetticher, 1956)
Andrei Rublev (Tarkovsky, 1969)
McCabe and Mrs. Miller (Altman, 1971)
El Sur (Erice,1983)
A Brighter Summer Day (Yang, 1991)
The End of Summer (Ozu, 1961)
Lucifer Rising (Anger, 1972)
An Autumn Afternoon (Ozu, 1962)
Christmas in July (Sturges, 1940)

Dersu Uzala (Kurosawa, 1975)
Late Autumn (Ozu, 1960)
Nouvelle Vague (Godard, 1990)
Pastoral: To Die in the Country (Shuki Terayama, 1974)
Raise the Red Lantern (Yimou Zhang, 1991)
Manhattan (Allen, 1979)
Sunset Blvd. (Wilder, 1950)
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Anger, 1954)
The Tall T (Boetticher, 1957)
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

Un homme et une femme (LeLouch, 1966)

The Wild Bunch (Peckinpah, 1969)
The Fog of War (Morris, 2003)
Still Life (Zhang Ke Jia, 2006)
Late Spring (Ozu, 1949)
City Lights (Chaplin, 1931)
Once Upon a Time in the West (Leone, 1968)
Birds, Orphans and Fools (Jakubisko, 1969)
The Double Life of Veronique (Kieslowski, 1991)
Trash (Morrissey, 1970)

Crimes and Misdemeanors (Allen, 1989)
Ivan the Terrible Pt. 2 (Eisenstein, 1958)
Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Herzog, 1972)
Stroszek (Herzog, 1977)
The Sweet Hereafter (Egoyan, 1997)
Yiyi (Yang, 2000)
All About my Mother (Almodovar, 1999)
Behindert (Dwoskin, 1974)
Buchanan Rides Alone (Boetticher, 1958)
Clickety-clack (Kurosawa, 1970) 

Decision at Sundown (Boetticher, 1957)
Dust in the Wind (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 1986)
Equinox Flower (Ozu, 1958)
Kanal (Wajda, 1957)
Scorpio Rising (Anger, 1964)
A Woman Under Influence (Cassavetes, 1974)
Ivan the Terrible Pt 1 (Eisenstein, 1944)
Dekalog (Kieslowki, 1989)
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (Herzog, 1974)
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967)

The Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1975)
8 1/2 (Fellini, 1963)
Faces (Cassavetes, 1968)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Schnabel, 2007)
Cléo de 5 à 7 (Varda, 1962)
Faust (Murnau, 1926)
Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)
High and Low (Kurosawa,1963)
Oedipus Rex (Pasolini, 1967)
Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)

A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989)
Ordet (Dreyer, 1955)
Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)
Culloden (Watkins, 1964)
Good Men, Good Women (Hsai-hsien Hou, 1995)
My Winnipeg (Maddin, 2007)
Three Colours: Red (Kieslowski, 1994 )
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Fassbinder, 1974)
Ran (Kurosawa, 1985)
Early Spring (Ozu, 1956) 

Gates of Heaven (Morris, 1978)
La Ceremonie (Chabrol, 1995)
La Notte (Antoinioni, 1961)
A Matter of Life and Death (Powell & Pressburger, 194)
Peeping Tom (Powell, 1960)
A Short Film About Love (Kieslowski, 1988)
The Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1934)
La Maman Et La Putain (Eustache, 1973)
The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939)
Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi, 1954)

Annie Hall (Allen, 1977)

Early Summer (Ozu, 1951)
Sans Soleil (Marker, 1983)
Umberto D (De Sica, 1952)
Badlands (Malick, 1973)
Possession (Zulawski, 1981)
The Last Laugh (Murnau, 1924)
My Darling Clementine (Ford, 1946)
All About Eve (Mankiewicz, 1950)
Lola (Fassbinder, 1981)

Floating Clouds (Naruse, 1955)
Les demoiselles de Rochefort (Demy & Varda, 1967)
Talk to Her (2002, Almodovar)
Alice in the Cities (Wenders, 1974)
L’Intrus (Denis, 2004)
The War Game (Watkins, 1965)
Love Me Tonight (Mamoulian, 1932)
The Red and the White (Jancsó, 1967)
Comanche Station (Boetticher, 1960)
Eaux d’artifice (Anger, 1953) 

The Last Detail (Ashby, 1973)
One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (Marker, 2000)
Orlando (Potter, 1992)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Parajanov, 1964 )
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1928 ) (
Walkabout (Roeg, 1971)
Do the Right Thing (Lee, 1989)
L’Eclisse (Antonioni, 1962)
Los Olvidados (Bunuel, 1950)
The Extermination Angel (Bunuel, 1962)

Modern Times (Chaplin, 1936)
Satantango (Tarr, 1994)
Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock, 1943)
The Color of Pomegranates(Parajanov, 1968)
Pandora’s Box (Pabst, 1929)
A Story of Floating Weeds (Ozu, 1934)
Nostalghia (Tarkovsky, 1983)
What Time is it There? (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2001)
The Graduate (Nichols, 1967)
Johnny Guitar (Ray, 1954)

The Circus (Chaplin, 1928)

Martha (Fassbinder, 1974)
The Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)
Diary of a Chambermaid (Bunuel, 1964)
Persona (Bergman, 1966)
Rushmore (Anderson, 1998)
Duelle (Rivette, 1976) (4) 8.875
Fists in the Pocket (Bellocchio, 1965)
Throne of Blood (Kurosawa,1957)
Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul, 2004)

Long Day’s Journey into Night (Lumet, 1962)

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Miyazaki, 1984)
Stellar (Brakhage, 1993)
Casablanca (Curtiz,1942)
Vivre sa vie (Godard, 1962)
The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005)
Diary of a Country Priest (Bresson, 1951)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone, 1966)
M (Lang, 1931)
Mamma Roma (Pasolini, 1962)

My Neighbor Totoro (Miyazaki, 1988)
Pepe le Moko (Duvivier, 1937)
Simon of the Desert (Bunuel, 1965)
Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock, 1951)
Teorema (Pasolini, 1968)
The Man with the Movie Camera (Vertov, 1929)
Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong, 2006)
La Jetee (Marker, 1962)
Stalker (Tarkovsky, 1979)
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Fassbinder, 1972)

Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)

 

Unfaithfully Yours (Sturges, 1948)
The Hole (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1998)
Trans-europ-express (Robbe-Grillet , 1966)
Day of Wrath (Dreyer, 1943)
The Straight Story (Lynch, 1999)
Fanny and Alexander (Bergman, 1982)
La Dolce Vita (Fellini, 1960)
Lost in Translation (Coppola, 2003)
Network (Lumet, 1976)

Love Streams (Cassavetes, 1984) 
Monsieur Verdoux (Chaplin, 1947)
The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925)
The Phantom of Liberty (Bunuel, 1974)
Blood for Dracula (Morrissey, 1974)
Sherlock Jr. (Keaton, 1924)
The Kid (Chaplin, 1921)
Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001)
Pierrot le Fou (Godard, 1965)

Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978)
Days of Being Wild (Wong-Kar Wai, 1991)
Hannah and her Sisters (Allen, 1986)
Rebels of the Neon God (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1992)
Milk (Van Sant, 2008)
Volver (Almodovar, 2006)
Baby Face (Green, 1933)
The Beekeeper (Angelopoulos, 1986)
Living (Zwartjes, 1971)
The Merchant of Four Seasons(Fassbinder, 1972) 

A Place in the Sun (Stevens, 1951)

 

The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940)
Young Mr. Lincoln (Ford, 1939)
Broken Flowers (Jarmusch, 2005)
Once upon a time in America (Leone, 1984)
The Third Man (Reed, 1949)
Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1976)
Goodfellas (Scorsese, 1990)
Fallen Angels (Wong Kar-Wai, 1995)
Code Unknown (Haneke, 2000)

Mulholland Dr. (Lynch, 2001)
Diabolique (Clouzot, 1955)
No Country for Old Men (Coen, 2007)
The Sacrifice (Tarkovsky, 1986)
Ugetsu monogatari (Mizoguchi, 1953)
Alien (Scott, 1979)
Three Colours: Blue (Kieslowski, 1993)
Ballad of a Soldier (Chukhrai, 1959)
Reds  (Beatty, 1981)
Stray Dog (Kurosawa, 1949) 

That Obscure Object of Desire (Bunuel, 1977)
Winter Light (Bergman, 1962)
The Night of the Iguana (Huston, 1964)
Psycho (Hitchcock, 1960)
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (Pasolini, 1964)
Metropolis (Lang, 1927)
Werckmeister Harmonies (Tarr, 2000)
Eastern Condors (Hunh, 1986)
Face to Face (Bergman, 1976)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (Miyazaki, 1989)

La Nuit americaine (Truffaut, 1973)
Under the Volcano (Huston, 1984)
Viridiana (Bunuel, 1964)
India Song (Duras, 1975)
Amorres Perros (Inarritu, 2000)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston, 1948)
Au Revoir, les enfants (Malle, 1987)
Fear of Fear (Fassbinder, 1975)
Four Nights of a Dreamer (Bresson, 1971)
Stalag 17 (Wilder, 1953)

The 400 Blows (Truffaut, 1959)
The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)
L’Avventura (Antonioni, 1960)
A nos Amours (Pialat, 1983)
An American in Paris (Minnelli, 1951)
Baby Doll (Kazan, 1956)
Capricious Summer (Menzel, 1968)
Darling (Schlesinger, 1965)
Deep Red (Argento, 1975)
Intolerance:Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (Griffith, 1916)

The Leopard (Visconti, 1963)
Miracle in Milan (De Sica, 1951)
Noirot (Rivette, 1976)
La Salamandre (Tanner, 1971)
The Terrorizer (Yang, 1986)
Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001)
Down by the Law (Jarmusch, 1986)
Gertrud (Dreyer, 1964)
Singin’ in the Rain (Donen & Kelly, 1952)
The Long Goodbye (Altman, 1973)

Chinese Roulette (Fassbinder, 1976)
I Fidanzati (Olmi, 1963)
Kes (Loach, 1969)
The Man Who Planted Trees (Back, 1988)
The Round-Up (Jancos, 1966)
In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, 2001)
The Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
Shoot the Piano Player (Truffaut, 1960)
Carlito’s Way (De Palma, 1993)
Madame de… (Ophuls, 1953)

The Misfits (Huston, 1961)
The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973)
Diamonds in the Night (Nemec, 1964)
Army of Shadows (Melville, 1969)
The Conformist (Bertolucci, 1970)
The Lady Eve (1941)
Muriel (Resnais, 1963)
Punishment Park (Watkins, 1971)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964)
2046 (Wong-Kar Wai, 2004)

Husbands and Wives (Allen, 1992)
Laura (Preminger, 1944)
Millennium Mambo (Hou, 2001)
3 Women (Altman, 1977)
Eden and after (Robbe-Grillet , 1970)
Don’t Look Now (Roeg, 1973)
Seven Samurai (Kurosawa, 1954)
Belle de Jour (Bunuel, 1967)
Hiroshima, mon amour (Resnais, 1959)
Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

I Don’t want to sleep alone (Tsai, 2006)
Fargo (Coen, 1996)
The New World (Malick, 2005)
Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954)
The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1960)
Amadeus (Forman, 1984)
Cul-de-Sac (Polanski, 1966)
Scenes from a Marriage (Bergman, 1973)
Amarcord (Fellini, 1973)
Dead Man (Jarmusch, 1995)

Celine and Julie Go Boating (Rivette, 1974)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell & Pressburger, 1943)
Stranger than Paradise (Jarmusch, 1984)
Vive L’Amour (Liang, 1994)
Bringing Up Baby (Hawks, 1938)
The Milky Way (Bunuel, 1969)
Minnie and Moskowitz (Cassavetes, 1971)
Third Part of Night (Zulawski, 1971)
Zero for Conduct (Vigo, 1933)
After the Thin Man (Van Dyke, 1936)

The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1985)
Commingled Containers (Brakhage, 1997)
My Man Godrey (La Cava, 1936)
Night Music (Brakhage, 1986)
Beau Travail (Denis, 1999)
Cria cuervos (Saura, 1976)
My Nights Are More Beautiful Than Your Days (Zulawski, 1989)
Odd Man Out (Reed, 1947)
On Dangerous Ground (Ray, 1952)
Stolen Kisses (Truffaut, 1968)
Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956)
Sweet Movie (Makavejev, 1974)