20 - THE WIZARD OF OZ (Victor Fleming, 1939)
The central scandal of The Wizard of Oz, the primal conceit, and the
reason that it remains so resonant and so heart-breaking, is that the
movie’s beloved mantra, “There’s no place like home”, is revealed to be a
lie. For Judy Garland’s Dorothy leaves the grim grey drabness of Kansas for
the musical multicoloured pleasure of Oz and there forges relationships,
defeats her nemesis, and becomes a woman. Her return to Kansas in the film’s
finale may have us weeping with delight, but in it lies the sad recognition
that this return to childhood and to the myth of home is perhaps the
greatest fantasy of all. Kevin Maher
19 - THE EXORCIST (William Friedkin, 1973)
Friedkin’s controversial masterpiece about the exorcism of a 13-year-old girl
is the most toxic and disturbing horror movie yet made. Never mind the
pea-soup vomit, Linda Blair’s revolving head, or the famous refrigerated
bedroom set. It is the sickening feeling of invasion, and the ceding of
psychological control to a malevolent other, that freaked out an entire
generation. There were ambulances outside cinemas in Dublin when the film
opened, and spiritually there still are. Paul Schrader, the director who
filmed Dominion, the prequel to The Exorcist, put it thus:
“The metaphor is extraordinary: God and the Devil in the same room arguing
over the body of a 13-year-old girl. It doesn’t come much purer than that.” James
Christopher
18 - DON'T LOOK NOW (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
It is impossible to pin down exactly why Roeg’s masterpiece is so effective.
Every viewing of this seminal ghost story, adapted from a Daphne du Maurier
novella, yields some new and troubling thought. After their daughter drowns,
John and Laura Baxter (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) take a working
trip to Venice in an attempt to glue back their marriage. There’s an
extraordinary conflation of contrary images and emotions: the drab beauty of
a wintry Venice; the inexplicable sense of loss; the intense and lonely sex;
and the dribble of blood across a cracked photographic slide. One of the
most haunting and enigmatic riddles in the history of cinema. James
Christopher
17 - ANNIE HALL (Woody Allen, 1977)
Seven movies in, and Woody Allen finally hits his stride in a witty,
intellectual and hugely cinematic comedy of near perfection. The multiple
Oscar-winning Annie Hall revealed the tragic romantic in Allen,
detailing the demise of his fictional relationship with the titular kooky
soul-mate, played by Diane Keaton (then Allen’s real-life partner). It also
showed Allen the auteur at his most audacious, boldly intercutting the
romantic action with direct addresses to camera, animated sequences, split
screen, comedy subtitles and a game cameo from Marshall McLuhan, who
helpfully silences a pontificating Fellini fan in a downtown cinema queue —
Allen then turns to camera and shrugs, “Boy, if only life were like this!”
If only indeed. Kevin Maher
16 - METROPOLIS (Fritz Lang, 1927)
For its scale and ambition alone, this silent film has earned its place on any
list of classic movies. Lang’s dystopian science-fiction picture employed
more than 37,000 extras, took two years to shoot and nearly bankrupted its
production company. The tragedy is that, despite meticulous restoration,
modern audiences will never get to see the film as Lang intended as a
quarter of it is lost for ever. The design of the film is exceptional. The
towering art deco skyscrapers — inspired, it is said, by Lang’s first view
of Manhattan — became the blueprint for futuristic cityscapes for decades to
come. Wendy Ide
15 - APOCALYPSE NOW (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
The making of this astonishing movie — recorded in the documentary Hearts
of Darkness — was almost as insane as the war itself. The result is the
greatest war movie yet made. Martin Sheen’s unlisted mission “to terminate
with extreme prejudice” a mythic American colonel (Marlon Brando), who has
turned psycho in Cambodia, owes as much to Dante and the Doors as it does to
Joseph Conrad. The film is defined by its surreal set-pieces, most memorably
the dawn helicopter attack on a Vietcong village so Robert Duvall’s nutty
Texan can go surfing. The terrific power of the scene lies in its absurd
contradictions, and the fact that Sheen can barely believe what’s happening
in front of his eyes. James Christopher
14 - THE JUNGLE BOOK (Wolfgang Reitherman, 1967)
Disney’s classic cartoon uses the character names, but otherwise bears little
resemblance to the 1894 collection of Rudyard Kipling stories that inspired
it. Kipling’s widow was reportedly aghast at the pronunciation of Mowgli
used in the film; her late husband had always pronounced it as Mau-glee. The
star is undoubtedly Baloo the bear, voiced by Phil Harris, a big-band leader
turned comedian whose voice would appear in Disney’s later films The
Aristocats and Robin Hood. The song The Bare Necessities
was nominated for an Oscar, but lost out to Talk to the Animals from Doctor
Dolittle. Nigel Kendall
13 - 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
The greatest piece of quasimystical Art House sci-fi pop philosophy, 2001
is Kubrick’s Promethean attempt to solve the riddle of man’s place in the
cosmos. Naturally, given the ambitious remit, this involves an epic, oblique
journey from pre-Neanderthal crazy apes to a modern moon-base to the outer
orbit of Jupiter and beyond, to a trippy multicoloured wormhole sequence
that ends in a space-bedroom at the end of the universe. And all along the
movie asks such questions as: “What is the nature of the black slab? Is man
primarily destructive? Will technology set us free?” That Kubrick avoids
answering these questions explicitly is part of the movie’s provocative
project and, ultimately, its genius. Kevin Maher
12 - ALIEN (Ridley Scott, 1979)
It’s impossible to exaggerate the influence Ridley Scott’s movie has had on
the science fiction genre. Dan O’Bannon’s script, about an industrial mining
ship that lands on a blasted planet, is the most spare and perfect tin-can
horror ever written. The crew discover the ghostly skeletal shell of a
spaceship, and a few weird pods, but think little of it until a screaming
sausage erupts out of John Hurt’s chest during supper. The downbeat pleasure
of the film is the palpable lack of love or sophistication among this
blue-collar crew. Their view of space travel is just another grubby means of
getting paid. James Christopher
11 - THE SOUND OF MUSIC (Robert Wise, 1965)
If it’s true that, according to legendary essayist Walter Pater, “All art
aspires towards the condition of music” then it follows that all movies
aspire towards the condition of The Sound of Music. All emotional
movies, that is. For despite the hipster cynicism that sees the film as
extreme kitsch, this transparent tale of a guileless governess (Julie
Andrews) who melts the heart of a martinet widower (Christopher Plummer),
still commands a guttural draw. Whether it’s Plummer’s withdrawn Captain Von
Trapp unexpectedly serenading his seven children with the title track, or
his moist-eyed performance of Edelweiss in the finale, this is a film
of simple yet big ideas — chiefly the need for forgiveness and the
transformative power of, well, love. Kevin Maher
