My Top 27 Films

Here's a list of the 27 films that have had the biggest impact on me and the art/music/stuff that I make (listed in chronological order)

1929-Un Chien Adalu  (Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí)

1961 - Dog Star Man (Stan Brakhage)

1963 - 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini) 

1966-Persona (Ingmar Bergman)

1968-2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick) 

1970-El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky) 

1973-Holy Mountain (Alejandro Jodorowsky) 

1975-The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky)

If someone had a gun to my head and asked me to name what the greatest film that was ever made was - this would be my answer.   If you're new to Tarkovsky - this isn't a good starting point - check out "Solaris" or "Stalker" first - but yeah...this is as good as it gets.  

1977-1983 Star Wars (original trilogy - George Lucas)
...I want to say this is on the list for nostalgic reasons as I am aware that this is nowhere near on the same level as the other films on this list - but nonetheless they were my religion growing up and changed my life and I still geek out over this shit. 

1979-Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky)

1979Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)

1980 - The Shining (Stanley Kubrick)

 

1982-Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio)

full film on vimeo

(not the greatest quality)

1985-Come and See (Elem Klimov) 

1988 - Alice (Jan Švankmajer)

(amazing stop animation version of "Alice in Wonderland)"

1996-Crash (David Cronenberg)

(not to be confused with the super shitty 2004 film about race and such - this film explores a sexual fetish of car crashes)  

1998-Big Lebowski (The Cohen Brothers) 

1998 - Thin  Red Line (Terrence Malick)

(I don't know if this is the best Malick film...but it's definitely my favorite and the one I connected to the most)

1999-Being John Malkovich 

2001-Mulholland Drive (David Lynch) 

For the longest time this was my favorite film.  This movie changed my life and shaped who I wanted to be as an artist.  I didn't realize what film could be until I saw this film...and then I watched it again...and again...and again...

2002-Cremaster 3 (Matthew Barney) 
full film streaming on youtube: 

Part I:

Part II:

2002 - Russian Ark (Alexander Sokurov)

This whole film is one single 96-minute Steadicam sequence shot - Easily one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen.  

2006 - The Fountain (Daron Aronofsky) 

I can't tell if this film isn't as good as I thought it was when I first saw it or if I've just seen it too many times where I've seen all there is to see in it...probably both.  But either way - this film had a huge impact on the way I looked at film as well as life / death.  It's visually mind blowing (only 1 CGI shot in the entire film - a lot of the space stuff was done with micro-organisms and looks amazing) and definitely my favorite Aronofsky film.

2006-Inland Empire (David Lynch) 

 

2008-Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman) 

2010 - Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) 

2012-Holy Motors (Leos Carax)

I promise this isn't a spoiler - and it's not a good representation of what this film is like by any means...but if you want to watch an awesome accordion scene from this: 

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
1928-The Passion of Joan of Ark
1943 - Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren)

1953-Tokyo Story

1968-The Color of Polmogranets

1976 - Taxi Driver
1989-The Decalogue