Never Mind the AFI... Here's My Top 100

Combustible Celluloid's 100 Great Movies

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

This is an update of the list I made in 1997, though many of the films are the same. I stuck to a few rules: I tried to keep it to one film per director, though I allowed for two in some special cases. The trouble with these lists is that, by next week, I'll want to add another film and I'll have to figure out which one will get deleted to make room for it. Maybe one of these days I'll post a second 100. But in any case, this is what I finsished up with, on March 7, 2008.

1. Les Vampires (1915-16, Louis Feuillade)
2. Broken Blossoms (1919, D.W. Griffith)
3. The Wildcat (1921, Ernst Lubitsch)
4. Foolish Wives (1922, Erich von Stroheim)
5. Sherlock, Jr. (1924, Buster Keaton)
6. Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
7. The Unknown (1927, Tod Browning)
8. Pandora's Box (1928, G.W. Pabst)
9. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
10. Spies (1928, Fritz Lang)
11. The Old Dark House (1932, James Whale)
12. Duck Soup (1933, Leo McCarey)
13. The Thin Man (1934, W.S. Van Dyke II)
14. L'Atalante (1934, Jean Vigo)
15. The Black Cat (1934, Edgar G. Ulmer)
16. Modern Times (1936, Charles Chaplin)
17. Une partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (1936, Jean Renoir)
18. Bringing Up Baby (1938, Howard Hawks)
19. Young Mr. Lincoln (1939, John Ford)
20. Rebecca (1940, Alfred Hitchcock)
21. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
22. Cat People (1942, Jacques Tourneur)
23. Day of Wrath (1943, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
24. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minnelli)
25. Brief Encounter (1945, David Lean)
26. Detour (1945, Edgar G. Ulmer)
27. I Know Where I'm Going! (1945, Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger)
28. Monsieur Verdoux (1947, Charles Chaplin)
29. The Red Shoes (1948, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
30. Gun Crazy (1949, Joseph H. Lewis)
31. Late Spring (1949, Yasujiro Ozu)
32. Diary of a Country Priest (1950, Robert Bresson)
33. Rashomon (1950, Akira Kurosawa)
34. In a Lonely Place (1951, Nicholas Ray)
35. La Ronde (1950, Max Ophuls)
36. Winchester '73 (1950, Anthony Mann)
37. Pickup on South Street (1953, Samuel Fuller)
38. Ugetsu (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi)
39. Seven Men from Now (1956, Budd Boetticher)
40. Wild Strawberries (1957, Ingmar Bergman)
41. Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander Mackendrick)
42. Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)
43. Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)
44. L'Avventura (1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)
45. The Exterminating Angel (1962, Luis Bunuel)
46. Lawrence of Arabia (1962, David Lean)
47. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962, John Ford)
48. Charade (1963, Stanley Donen)
49. Contempt (1963, Jean-Luc Godard)
50. Spider Baby (1964, Jack Hill)
51. Chimes at Midnight (1966, Orson Welles)
52. Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)
53. Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966, Mario Bava)
54. The Shooting (1966, Monte Hellman)
55. Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati)
56. Le Samourai (1967, Jean-Pierre Melville)
57. Night of the Living Dead (1968, George A. Romero)
58. Once Upon a Time in the West (1969, Sergio Leone)
59. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, Robert Altman)
60. Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog)
61. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972, Luis Bunuel)
62. Sisters (1973, Brian De Palma)
63. Chinatown (1974, Roman Polanski)
64. The Conversation (1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
65. Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)
66. The Passenger (1975, Michelangelo Antonioni)
67. Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch)
68. Star Wars (1977, George Lucas)
69. Days of Heaven (1978, Terrence Malick)
70. Stalker (1979, Andrei Tarkovsky)
71. Manhattan (1979, Woody Allen)
72. Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)
73. Videodrome (1983, David Cronenberg)
74. Stranger than Paradise (1984, Jim Jarmusch)
75. Repo Man (1984, Alex Cox)
76. The Dead (1987, John Huston)
77. Evil Dead II (1987, Sam Raimi)
78. The Horse Thief (1987, Tian Zhuangzhuang)
79. Near Dark (1987, Kathryn Bigelow)
80. Dead Ringers (1988, David Cronenberg)
81. The Decalogue (1988, Krzysztof Kieslowski)
82. My Neighbor Totoro (1988, Hayao Miyazaki)
83. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, Robert Zemeckis)
84. Do the Right Thing (1989, Spike Lee)
85. The Killer (1989, John Woo)
86. Close-Up (1990, Abbas Kiarostami)
87. La Belle noiseuse (1991, Jacques Rivette)
88. Unforgiven (1992, Clint Eastwood)
89. Ed Wood (1994, Tim Burton)
90. Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
91. Casino (1995, Martin Scorsese)
92. Crumb (1995, Terry Zwigoff)
93. Fargo (1996, Joel Coen)
94. Mother and Son (1997, Alexander Sokurov)
95. Eyes Wide Shut (1999, Stanley Kubrick)
96. Gohatto (1999, Nagisa Oshima)
97. Yi Yi (2000, Edward Yang)
98. Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Bela Tarr)
99. Lost in Translation (2003, Sofia Coppola)
100. Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch)