100 Movies 1990-2014 (10-1)

10. La Belle Noisseuse (1991) d: Jacques Rivette
The most perceptive look into the creation of art ever put on celluloid. A four hour look into the interaction between artist and model, the most exciting sequences are the minutes-long shots of a sketch book as the artist turns a blank page into a drawing.

9. Inception (2010) d: Christopher Nolan
I am a huge Nolan fan, but he really topped himself with a dream inside a dream inside a dream.

8. Gravity (2013) d: Alfonso Cuaron
My favorite use of 3D ever, with an immersive experience in space and an amazing story of survival.

7. Short Cuts (1993) d: Robert Altman
I remember being so immersed in these multiple interweaving stories that I could not believe when the film ended because the three hours had seemed much shorter. Not quite Altman's best (that would be Nashville) but this is Altman working at the top of his game.

6. Beauty and the Beast (1991) d: Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise
I maintain the ballroom dance to the title song is the most romantic scene ever. I don't care that it is animated.

5. Les Miserables (1995) d: Claude Lelouch
No, not the musical. This is a French epic about a truck driver during World War II whose life has unique similarities to the classic novel. As the truck driver, Jean-Paul Belmondo proves why he is a legend of French cinema. This is filmmaking as true art.

4. 35 Up (1991) d: Michael Apted
The one film series where I am choosing one chapter to represent the series, even though my favorite moment comes at the end of the most recent chapter, 56 Up. Apted has interviewed the same group of people every 7 years since they were 7 years old. It is fascinating to see how people change and how they stay the same. I choose this chapter as it best shows how the children became adults.

3. Boyhood (2014) d: Richard Linklater
The act of shooting over 12 years to show a boy growing up sounds like a gimmick, but in the hands of Linklater it is the opportunity for a fresh look at childhood as a whole and a unique experience unlike any other fiction film (Truffaut's Antoine Doinel series comes close).

2. Magnolia (1999) d: Paul Thomas Anderson
It's rambling and overstuffed, with maybe too much going on. That's a virtue with this film. A film that opens with a prologue that warns you that anything can happen and then proves it by climaxing the film with a plague of frogs. I said then it is one of the few modern films inspired by the great silent epic Intolerance (Cloud Atlas has done it since). a film for those who are tired of all films that feel alike.

1. Schindler's List (1993) d: Steven Spielberg
One of the first things I had to do in film school is to write down at least 10 shots that caught my eye in Citizen Kane. This is one of the few films where that would be almost as easy to do as Kane. Also, the power of the film for me was that clearly Schindler was not a great man, but he was human, and that opened him up to feel and perform a great act.