The 25 Greatest Films!?

25. RAGING BULL (SCORSESE, 1980)

De Niro's pulverising intensity has unfortunately made most of his efforts since seem half-hearted. Still the peak of his and Scorsese's careers, it's been regularly voted best film of the 80's.

24. MABOROSI (KORE-EDA, 1995)

"Delicate as rice paper", Hirokazu Kore-eda's debut feature is one of a small, precious number of films for which i've felt lovesick.

Affected by the death of her grandmother and her husband's unexplained suicide, a young Tokyo woman starts new married life, along with her son, in a remote seaside fishing village, but finds the past continues to trouble her.

Eschewing close-ups, the narrative draws the viewer in gradually, so that, as Tony Rayns says, intimacy is earned, not frivolously given. Hauntingly enigmatic, the film's controlled mise-en-scene, contemplative pacing, "off-screen space" and quiet investment of objects (a bike, a teapot, a wisp of steam...) with both beauty and meaning, recall Yasujiro Ozu and Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Its lighting is refined, at times, to the point of abstraction, while Masao Nakabori's photography is utterly, immeasurably exquisite. It's a dark pearl from the isles of cinematic wonders.

But "Maborosi" is not best served by hyperbole. It's an unassertive film, too pure and concentrated to seek the limelight. While compelled to tell of its elusive magic, i protectively fear its over-exposure. In publicising, am i breaking faith? It connects in secret. With the heart that is ready.

23. STORY OF THE LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS (MIZOGUCHI, 1939)

Rightly voted in the top 25 in Sight and Sound's latest major international critics' poll, it's taken over 60 years for this rarely seen and no doubt surprising selection to get deserved recognition. Its involving tale- of a young actor whose developing relationship with the family wet nurse causes her to be banished from the household, which he also leaves to perfect his art- is enlarged and transcended by perhaps the most brilliant intimate spatial exploration in cinema.

The complex and extraordinary camera moves, lighting and compositions are the work of both a thoroughly assured artist and a singular genius. As a drama on Mizoguchi's perennial subject, female suffering and self-sacrifice, Story of the Late Chrysanthemums is serenely moving. As a work of formal experimentation, it's also quietly astounding.

22.PATHER PANCHALI (RAY, 1955)

The first part of the renowned Apu trilogy, this is the film that put Indian cinema on the map. Concerning a boy's upbringing in an impoverished village it depicts childhood discoveries, family ties and bereavements with humanity and integrity while avoiding possible sentimental pitfalls.The natural lighting, care with composition and editing are little miracles of clear-eyed craftsmanship.

21. MULHOLLAND DR. (LYNCH, 2001)

In David Lynch's most satisfying feast of bizarre surrealism, an attractive young woman, who has lost her memory after a car crash involving gangsters, is taken in and befriended by an equally pretty aspiring actress in L.A. Metamorphosed from an intended TV series, it's an intriguing noirish mystery that slinks and sidles round dark corners, into shady deals, dead ends, oddballs, red herrings and lurking sinster forces; a shifting, bewildering identity-swap conundrum that revels in themes of illusion, reality, acting and film-making itself.

Angelo Badalamenti's superb score, rumbling, soaring, filled with foreboding, furthers the deeply sensual malaise. Ripe for comparisons with Vertigo, Celine and Julie go Boating and Persona, Mulholland Drive's future status is sealed by Naomi Watts' beguiling performance, and three spine-tingling scenes- her seductive audition, a moment of erotic lesbian intimacy, and a cascading Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison's "Crying". Described by critic David Thomson as "one of the greatest films ever made about the cultural devastation caused by Hollywood", it's a remarkable amalgam of Lynchian pre-occupations and the highlight of the decade so far.

20. APOCALYPSE NOW (COPPOLA, 1979)

A mad, mesmerising, ambitious, ambiguous, giddily glamorous, operatic, hallucinatory, drug-enhanced journey deep into Vietnam's, and warfare's, heart of darkness; little wonder Coppola's monumental "folly" was recently voted by critics the best film of the last 25 years.

19. CASABLANCA (CURTIZ, 1942)
"The beginning of a beautiful friendship."

18. SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (DONEN, KELLY, 1952)

Pipped by Astaire's indebted The Band Wagon as my favourite in the genre, this is still unarguably the peak of screen musicals. It's exuberant, exhilarating, comical, soaring, brimming over with wit and sparkling numbers (Good Mornin', Singin' in the Rain, Make 'em Laugh..). Green and Comden's screenplay parody of the early talkies and Hollywood glamour's a gem, the set design a triumph, Kelly -in the eponymous sequence especially- a knockout, Jean Hagen hilarious and splendid as the archetypal dumb blonde (she actually dubbed Reynolds dubbing her), Cyd Charisse the most elegantly erotic entrancer, while Donald O'Connor nips in to almost steal the show.

17. SOME LIKE IT HOT (WILDER, 1959)

This was the first video i bought, for my birthday in ' 91, the receipt i've kept confirms. Of course it's the most inspired, irrepressible, scintillating and resoundingly popular comedy, even voted best ever film by Time Out readers last Year. Full of wonderful scenes- the train party with Lemmon gasping "Sugar!" as Marilyn clambers into his bunk, before he's squashed by a bevy of beauties; his maracca- shaking engagement announcement; the riotous escapades; Curtis kissing Hitler, and last but not least, Joe. E. Brown's punch-line. Familiarity breeds content.

16. NORTH BY NORTH WEST (HITCHCOCK, 1959)

Simply the most thoroughly entertaining Hitch movie, and the thrilling summation of certain favourite themes; the innocent man on the run, enticing blonde, suave and sinister spies, disguise and false identity, dangers from a height.

I first saw this aged 15 and was bowled over by oh-so-seductive Eva Marie-Saint in her red dress, her smouldering smooching with Grant, the way the train glides into the evening round the corner of a bay, the sparring with Mason, the architecture (the baddies' hillside hide-out!), Robert Burks' photography, Herrmann's score, Grant's set-up wait by the roadside in the middle of nowhere, the famous crop-spraying and Mount Rushmore set-pieces, and the consummate finale. It's as deliciously satisfying as ever.

15. PIERROT LE FOU (GODARD, 1965)

A delight for intellectuals, hedonists and videostore filmgeeks-turned-director alike, here's the quintessential Godard; less famous than the groundbreaking Breathless, less precisely controlled than Contempt, it's a road movie with a tiger in its tank, a romantic gangster film about film, the most joyfully liberated and playful tale of death, despair and betrayal you could imagine.

Dive in! What's to enjoy? The sense of escapist adventure, the sun and sea of the South of France, Coutard's gorgeous cinematography, the primary colours (the blood isn't blood, it's red), the jump cuts, the freewheeling mix of references- Velasquez, comics, pulp fiction, US imperialism, Vietnam, consumer advertising- the audience inclusions (far too warm to call "Brechtian distancing devices"), Sam Fuller's definition of cinema ("...in a word, emotion"), oh, and the fox on the table, and lovely Anna Karina.

14. 8 1/2 (FELLINI, 1963)

Fellini's a director i often find irritatingly flashy and flamboyant, with an increasingly tiresome penchant for big breasts, grotesques and an egotistical circus master routine. But 8 1 /2 overrides such reservations by its sheer panache and the gloriously baroque and dazzling array of black and white images with which it addresses the subject of "director's block", dreams and memories. Along with skilful choreography and imaginative use of music, the lighting effects and overall cinematography (homage to Gianni di Venanzo) are superlative.

In the film, the director's plans and ego come crashing down, like his spaceship, amid public ridicule, but 8 1/2 had a rapturous reception, winning the Foreign Film Oscar and earning an enormous and enduring critical reputation. Cresting a period of tremendous innovation and optimism in cinema as an art form, it's had a major impact on a large number of directors, including Scorsese, Woody Allen and Peter Greenaway.

13. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN (EISENSTEIN, 1925)

This revolutionary red fire-snorting dragon was probably the most important and influential film since the birth of the medium. Depicting the 1905 revolt by a ship's crew and the civilian populace against a brutal tyrannical system, yet much more than mere Soviet propaganda, its acute sense of rhythm, symphonic pacing and structure, eye for composition, and magnificent choreography make for a memorable experience.

Following on from Kuleshov's theories and the director's own radical experiments in Strike (itself a work of unadulterated genius), Potemkin was propelled to lasting international recognition by the landmark dynamic "montage" editing, which peaks in the celebrated and still mightily impressive Odessa Steps sequence. Although Eisenstein's reputation seems to have undeservedly slipped a little, it's hard to imagine Psycho's shower scene or today's pyro-technics without it.

12. PARIS, TEXAS (WENDERS, 1984)

Wim Wenders' reputation may have understandably declined since his last major film Wings of Desire, but 17 years of mainly muddled disappointments shouldn't diminish his earlier work, of which this Cannes Palme d' Or- winning road movie is the finest example. A long-lost, now mute, drifter (Harry Dean Stanton, in a most welcome starring role) comes wandering in from the desert. Returned to the family fold of his married brother and young son, and having regained his speech, he sets out to find his young estranged wife, Nastassia Kinski.

The cultural alliance suggested in the title succeeds beyond all expectation; while paying tribute to The Searchers, and indebted to Sam Sheppard's illuminating screenplay, Wenders and regular cinematographer Robbie Muller bring a fresh eye and distinctly European aesthetic to American landscapes and life. The film's stark beauty and strong emotional undercurrents transport it way beyond a study in alienation and belonging, to arrive at one of cinema's sublime moments- a riveting peepshow scene in which Stanton gropes through a glass darkly to find redemption, and himself.

11. VERTIGO (HITCHCOCK, 1958)

Unloved and misunderstood on its release, Vertigo's reputation has rocketed to astronomic heights- now challenging Kane's crown, and even leading in (the excellent online magazine) Senses of Cinema's ongoing poll. It's undoubtedly Hitch's most daring, disturbing, complex and richest film. Its macabre, sensual, dreamlike, voyeuristic mystery, beguilingly shot in a soft hazy filter, has Stewart's phobic private dick following Novak's icy, ethereal, elusive Madeleine through a range of evocative San Francisco locations, before it audaciously changes tack to probe deeper psycho-sexual recesses, issues of identity and gender, and a veritable vortex of intense emotions.

Revisited by French admirer Chris Marker in Sans Soleil, it's a fascinating treasure trove for modern film-makers- Brian de Palma, Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct), Terry Gilliam (Twelve Monkeys..) and David Lynch (Mulholland Drive), among many others. It rewards countless viewings.

10. TOKYO STORY (OZU, 1953)

Tokyo Story's plot and cinematic effects are simple. An elderly provincial couple go to stay with their adult children in the capital but find only their widowed daughter-in-law, the lovely Setsuko Hara, has time and genuine concern for them. With his trademark restrained technique- still, low camera placed at shoulder height to characters seated on the floor-, subtle sense of events and space off-screen, and quiet observations that invest the locality and everyday objects with a range of meanings, Ozu fashions one of the world's most profoundly wise, compassionate, generous and touching masterpieces.

9. SEVEN SAMURAI (KUROSAWA, 1954)

Fifty years on, Kurosawa's legendary epic about the bunch of warriors hired to defend a village from marauding bandits is probably still the most widely loved and admired "foreign language" film; terrific, compelling entertainment and a cinema masterclass in one. The pacing- extended sequences of breath-takingly edited dynamic action interspersed with quieter, lyrical and playful moments- is superb; the characterisations, with Shimura's wise leader and Kitano's swaggering clown to the fore, vivid and memorable; the choreography and lighting exceptional. Even Kurosawa's command of weather effects befits his title of "emperor".

Influenced by Ford's westerns, it was in turn not only the basis for The Magnificent Seven but has had a huge impact on many inferior Hollywood imitators.

8. SUNRISE (MURNAU, 1927)

This most cherishable of silent films reminds me of Sei Shonagon's "In Spring it is the dawn that is most beautiful". Shamefully missing from The AFI 100 (what do they know?), this millenium alone it's been voted in the all-time Top 10 in at least 4 major international polls- Village Voice, Sight and Sound Critics, Senses of Cinema, and Spain's Editorial Jaguar.

Combining the director's European artistic sensitivity with Hollywood narrative drive, its story of a married man encouraged by a seductive city vamp to kill his sweet wife balances a wholesome Germanic village with the bright exciting lights of a modern very American metropolis across the water. A film of opposites that delights in various means of transport, it's everything one could wish; inventive in its use of models, its set designs and smoothly roving camera, it's stormy, scary, touching, tender, exhilarating, intoxicating, radiant, romantic, lyrical and .. lovely.

Perhaps most famous for the eerie horror classic Nosferatu, Murnau's early death in 1931 was a major loss to cinema.

7. CITIZEN KANE (WELLES, 1941)

After his precocious theatre triumphs and (in)famous radio broadcast of War of the Worlds that had America scurrying for the hills, Welles was ready to make his mark on cinema. Exploiting every aspect of his new magic toybox, his legendary screen debut and now perennial "world's greatest film" demands superlatives.

Kane depicts the rise, then moral and emotional decline to alienated solitude, of a politically ambitious and once idealistic newspaper magnate, whose dying word "Rosebud" is investigated through a complex and subjective jigsaw puzzle narrative. Taken as a thinly veiled portrait of William Randolph Hearst (who tried to destroy the film and Welles' career), its baroque grandeur, ceilinged sets, overlapping dialogue, skilful editing, expressionist lighting and Gregg Toland's all-round cinematography are mightily impressive as ever.

More than merely a stupendous cinematic exercise, Kane shows in its final Rosebud revelation and in a passing remark about a once seen, never forgotten lady crossing a lake, that it also has a beating heart.

6. LA REGLE DU JEU (RENOIR, 1939)

Considered the world's finest director by Orson Welles and later lionised by the French New Wave, Jean Renoir was an international humanist who dominated France's cinematic golden age, the 1930's, with classics such as La Grande Illusion, Boudu Saved from Drowning and A Day in the Country. La Regle du Jeu is surely his pinnacle.

For decades second only to Kane in numerous international polls, it concerns an aviation hero in love with the wife of an aristocrat who invites him with his friend (Renoir himself) to a weekend gathering at their chateau. A terrific mix of drama, tragedy, romantic farce and social satire, its observations of upstairs/ downstairs moral codes proved too rapier-sharp for French audiences on its release at the outbreak of war, and it was promptly banned.

Its magnificent cast of characters, ingenious wit, innovative use of deep focus, liberated camera movement and assured marshalling of the actors are still all too often overlooked by audiences due to the director's undemonstrative modesty. La Regle du Jeu is to be admired, revelled in and trumpeted from the rooftops.

5. L'AVVENTURA (ANTONIONI, 1960)

So here is the seminal Antonioni classic that for many is virtually the definition of intellectual "arthouse", and that brought a torrent of jeers and boos at Cannes, for its length, slow pacing, sense of alienation and disdain for conventional plot. "A Nightmarish masterpiece of tedium" Time called it.

The main apparent storyline, and potentially fascinating mystery- of a woman who goes missing from a small island off the coast of Sicily while on a small group's yachting trip- is left to drift off, while a tentative and hardly joyous relationship develops between her fiancé and best friend who travel together in search of her.

Far from coldly pretentious and self-indulgent nihilism, L'Avventura is a milestone at the very forefront of film achievement. Aldo Scavarda's cinematography is quite outstanding, Eraldo da Roma's editing (though many complain the film should have been clipped) nigh on flawless, and the use of buildings and environment to suggest a range of enigmatic feelings is masterful. Throw in a languorous elegance, enhanced by Monica Vitti, and even a lingering sense of further mystery- this despite the neglect of the original puzzle.

It's wholly cinematic yet feels like a great novel. Third time round- a revelation-, I wanted it to go on and on. From a time of seismic international change and vitality (Les 400 Coups, Hiroshima mon Amour, Breathless, La Dolce Vita, Last Year at Marienbad, 8 1/2...) it towers over the mass of today's shallow, juvenile and overblown efforts like a colossus.

4. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (KUBRICK, 1968)

If ever proof were needed of Oscar idiocy: this most majestic, ambitious and awe-inspiring of big-screen experiences lost out to Oliver! No doubt the Academy were as perplexed as many moviegoers then and now as to its meanings. One couple who had travelled miles to see the film wrote to Kubrick demanding an explanation. Such questions miss the point. Thanks to a celebrated jump cut, the not altogether convincing device of mysterious black monoliths, exceptional set design and a quantum leap in special effects, 2001 tackles nothing less than human evolution from ape to astronaut to "starchild". Daring to conceive the inconceivable, it projects the psychedelic and wondrous destiny- to infinity and beyond- that should await us.

3. ANDREI RUBLEV (TARKOVSKY, 1969)

Delayed by the Russian authorities for 3 years before its premiere at Cannes, Tarkosky's epic, episodic and partly imagined account of the life of the icon-painting monk has justly been chosen by the Vatican as its #1 recommended film.

Beginning with a fearless attempt at flight and filled with staggeringly accomplished set-pieces, "Andrei Rublev" captures a vivid and credible sense of the medieval period and its savage upheavals with imperious authority. The pagan ceremonies, crucifixion, Tatar sack of Vladimir and atrocities witnessed by Rublev lead him to years of self-imposed silence, only broken by the creation of a giant cathedral bell through a youth's simple act of Faith.

The famous finale- embers bursting into glorious colour icons, then horses swishing their tails in a rainy green meadow- seems to suggest that the ultimate triumph of spiritual serenity and artistic freedom over horrific events is as relevant today.

If my description, the subject matter and message seem less than enthralling, don't be deterred. Left reeling for weeks in a daze, i saw nature and even the rain in a new light. I haven't remotely done the film justice. In the words of Nigel Andrews; "action, human spectacle, poetry and thought: the cinema can offer no more" .

2. MIRROR (TARKOVSKY, 1974)

Encompassing dreams, childhood memories, levitation, his father's poetry, Renaissance art, documentary and newsreel footage, 20th century Russian history, as well as events in the lives of his family, Tarkovsky's complex and obscure autobiographical film is one of cinema's great personal statements.

Through images of radiant luminosity (rendered all the more astonishing by heightened sound effects and desaturated colour), mundane elements and objects- rooms, corridors and buildings, wind, water, meadows, rivers, woods and Brueghelesque snowscapes- are made miraculous. Sweeping in scope yet intimate, delving fathomless depths yet soaring, Mirror is a unique poetic and spiritual masterpiece.

1. SANSHO THE BAILIFF (MIZOGUCHI, 1954)

I had to be true to myself. The supreme, most exquisite and poignant masterpiece of the "Shakespeare of film", Kenji Mizoguchi, is the film i carry closest to my heart. Even without the acute personal feelings raised by its engrossing and sometimes harrowing tale- of the cruel misfortune befalling the wife and children of an exiled provincial governor in feudal Japan- it would still have been an overwhelming viewing experience.

With its ravishing landscapes, painterly compositions, Kazuo Miyagawa's radiant silvery cinematography and peerless smooth camerawork (keeping a discreet distance that shames lesser artists' manipulative sentimentality), it aches with humanity, emotion and longing. A few ripples carry more impact than a Hollywood tidal wave. Only the very greatest of masters can deliver without ostentation. The purest distillation of Zen wisdom and over 30 years of expertly honed craftsmanship, "Sansho"'s final shot gently steers us away from its individual story towards the universe beyond.