6. Paris, Texas (1984)
To borrow a line from another transcendent piece of humanist cinema (Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia”): ‘We might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us’. This rings true for Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton), the amnesiac, guilt-riddled shell of a man who takes center stage in Wim Wenders’ road trip movie and resurfaces from the heart of the Texas desert after walking out on his wife and seven-year-old son four years prior with little recollection of his memories or sense of self.
What follows is a journey of self-discovery through the American west that puts the viewer in the exact same wavelength of its lapsed protagonist, grasping at clues and slowly peeling off the layers of Travis’ past and dysfunctional marriage, as we watch him summon all his courage to steer his life back in the right direction and make amends with his estranged family. At its core, “Paris, Texas” is about owning up to your mistakes and confronting your inner demons, as scary and painful as that may sound. Every single scene from start to finish seems to carry an enormous emotional weight and only improves upon reflection, though don’t be too surprised if the climactic phone booth monologue leaves you sobbing and wanting to crawl into a hole.
7. Amadeus (1984)
Though referred to in some quarters as cinema’s most coveted honor, the vast majority of Best Picture winners feel, in retrospect, like questionable choices to put it lightly. Fortunately, there’s little doubt in our minds that the right Oscar hopeful prevailed when Miloš Forman took home the big prize for this irreverent, note-perfect take on the life and times of Europe’s most celebrated composer.
Much fuss has been made about the glaring historical inaccuracies in “Amadeus”, which admittedly takes considerable artistic license to reimagine the alleged rivalry between Mozart (Tom Hulce) and his lesser-known contemporary Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham) into an ideological battleground that traces the pitfalls of creative genius, celebrity, and professional jealousy.
But to all the naysayers — who cares? In a genre as bland, risk-averse, and inherently formulaic as the prestige biopic (made even more toothless these days by the frequent involvement of family estates with script approval privileges), such gripes are easily brushed off when they give way to something as singular, delightful, and exhilarating as “Amadeus”. There’s also the fact that this is, by a wide margin, the funniest movie to ever sweep the Oscars, which certainly doesn’t hurt its case either.
8. Yi Yi (2000)
Some movies start slow but gradually sneak up on you and end up shattering your heart into a million pieces. That much can be said for Taiwanese master Edward Yang’s swan song, a deceptively simple film with small stakes but a big heart that compresses an entire world of human emotions and valuable life lessons into a three-hour domestic drama.
Epic in scale yet intimate in detail, “Yi Yi” carefully observes the intergenerational dynamics of an average Taipei family, from a 10-year-old boy brimming with curiosity, a teenage girl navigating the highs and lows of falling in love for the first time, to the patriarch; a melancholy office drone saddled with regret and the overwhelming pressures of adulthood. It’s a gentle, unassuming movie that encompasses all stages of life and forces you to pause and reflect on every little fleeting moment in our everyday existence we so often take for granted. Naturally, we couldn’t find a single thing we’d change about it.
9. In the Mood for Love (2000)
The sting of betrayal and gnawing regret of letting an opportunity slip by is captured with heart-stopping clarity in this swooning tale of romantic longing by Wong Kar-wai, led by the megawatt star duo of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung as next-door neighbors and would-be lovers who fall for one another in mid-century Hong Kong while their respective partners are having an affair together.
A poignant study of connections made and lost, “In the Mood for Love” is, above all other things, one of the most elegant and jaw-droppingly beautiful movies ever made. Go ahead and pause the film at any random moment, and we guarantee you’ll be staring in awe at an impeccable frame shot by DOP Christopher Doyle, who captures every little texture, wisp of cigarette smoke, subtle glance, and unspoken word with so much aesthetic beauty and underlying passion that your heart aches long after the credits roll. Believe me, you’ll be humming ‘Yumeji’s Theme’ for the rest of your days.
10. There Will Be Blood (2007)
We love Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel for the same purposes as everyone else: It’s the creative peak of one of the most singular artists working today operating at the absolute height of his powers; the most important film made about America and the corrupting influence of greed in the human spirit in the past 50 years; a juicy showcase for one of the finest, most scenery-chewing thespians of our time in Daniel Day-Lewis; a fertile ground for internet memes; and so much more.
From the second the misanthropic turn-of-the-century prospector Daniel Plainview enters the frame during the opening scene and gets his hands dirty while extracting black gold from the New Mexico ground and inching closer towards his goal of establishing his oil empire — he immediately emerges as a larger-than-life figure and a force to be reckoned with.
Like Charles Foster Kane or Michael Corleone, Plainview is the living, breathing embodiment of greed and narcissism, a man who will stop at absolutely nothing — from abandoning his only child to brutally murdering his arch-nemesis in cold blood — in his ruthless pursuit of wealth and power. We hate to see him succeed, yet we can’t look away from the screen as he fulfills the American Dream before our eyes.
Honorable mentions (in chronological order): Casablanca (1942), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Seven Samurai (1954), The Apartment (1960), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Godfather (1972), Chinatown (1974), Alien (1979), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), The Thing (1982), The Princess Bride (1987), Do The Right Thing (1989), GoodFellas (1990), Terminator 2 (1991), Chungking Express (1994), The Big Lebowski (1998), Spirited Away (2001), Mulholland Dr. (2001).