Jan Svankmajer
1. Dimensions of Dialogue
2. Darkness/Light/Darkness
3. Alice
4. Faust
5. Food
6. Little Otik
7. Lunacy
8. Conspirators of Pleasure
9. The Flat
10. The Pit, the Pendulum and Hope

Maurice Pialat
1. À nos amours
2. Naked Childhood
3. Van Gogh
4. Loulou
5. La maison des bois
6. We Won't Grow Old Together
7. Under the Sun of Satan
8. The Mouth Agape
9. L'amour existe
10. Graduate First

Sergei Parajanov
1. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
2. The Color of Pomegranates
3. The Legend of Suram Fortress
4. Ashik Kerib
5. The Confession
6. Kivski Freski
7. Hakob Hovnatanyan
8. Arabesques on the Pirosmani Theme
9. Ukrainian Rhapsody
10. Andriesh

Richard Lester
1. A Hard Day's Night
2. Superman II
3. Help!
4. The Three Musketeers
5. The Knack …and How to Get It
6. Petulia
7. The Four Musketeers
8. Robin and Marian
9. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
10. Juggernaut

Barry Levinson
1. Rain Man
2. Diner
3. Good Morning, Vietnam
4. Wag the Dog
5. Bugsy
6. Sleepers
7. Avalon
8. The Natural
9. Bandits
10. You Don't Know Jack

Stanley Kramer
1. Judgment at Nuremberg
2. The Defiant Ones
3. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
4. Inherit the Wind
5. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
6. On the Beach
7. Ship of Fools
8. The Secret of Santa Vittoria
9. Not as a Stranger
10. The Pride and the Passion

First of all I'd move "Alice" up to #1. It's his most popular feature and probably his most widely acclaimed as well. Then I'd swap CoP and Little Otik mainly for reasons of acclaim. I'm ok with the rest of the top 8.

The last two are difficult but while one could probably make a case for "The Male Game", "Jabberwocky" or a few others belonging there, I think your choices are fine.

Also people can start thinking about the accurate spot for "Gravity". I guess top three is a given but where exactly shuld be up for debate.

It may be too recent, but I feel it could go at #1. It is already one of the most significant releases this year.

Any other opinions? So far its critical reception and box office success are pretty awesome so that it beats the current top 2 in both initial popularity and acclaim. Of course it can't have much lasting acclaim/popularity or influence yet, which is why I'm a little reluctant to move it to #1 this early, but a case could certainly be made for it.

Following lists sent to lew: Anderson, Bakshi, Brooks, Feuillade, Greenaway, Hill, Kramer, Lester, Levinson, McTiernan, Parajanov, Park, Pialat, Švankmajer, Wiseman. Four new lists from me plus a revived one:


I'd suggest reverse order for the top three. It's TH > MoM > Mother in terms of popularity and TSPDT's 21st century list suggests the same order for acclaim. #5 should obviously be replaced by "Snowpiercer".

Kenneth Branagh
1. Henry V
2. Hamlet
3. Much Ado About Nothing
4. Thor
5. Dead Again
6. Peter's Friends
7. In the Bleak Midwinter
8. Frankenstein
9. Sleuth
10. As You Like It

James Ivory
1. The Remains of the Day
2. A Room with a View
3. Howards End
4. Maurice
5. Mr. & Mrs. Bridge
6. A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries
7. The Europeans
8. Heat and Dust
9. Shakespeare Wallah
10. The White Countess

Mark Sandrich
1. Top Hat
2. The Gay Divorcee
3. Holiday Inn
4. Shall We Dance
5. Follow the Fleet
6. So Proudly We Hail!
7. Carefree
8. Skylark
9. Hips, Hips, Hooray!
10. Buck Benny Rides Again

Abel Gance
1. Napoléon
2. La roue
3. J'accuse [1919]
4. Beethoven's Great Love
5. Vénus aveugle
6. J'accuse [1938]
7. The Torture of Silence
8. Au secours
9. La folie du Docteur Tube
10. Austerlitz

I'll also add an updated Cuarón list to the first post with "Gravity" at #1 for now.

Jules Dassin
1. Rififi
2. Night and the City
3. The Naked City
4. Brute Force
5. Thieves' Highway
6. Topkapi
7. Never on Sunday
8. The Canterville Ghost
9. He Who Must Die
10. The Law

Vsevolod Pudovkin
1. Mother
2. Storm over Asia
3. The End of St. Petersburg [with Mikhail Doller]
4. Chess Fever [with Nikolai Shpikovsky]
5. Deserter
6. Suvorov [with Mikhail Doller]
7. Admiral Nakhimov
8. Mechanics of the Brain
9. Minin and Pozharsky [with Mikhail Doller]
10. Zhukovsky [with Dmitri Vasilyev]

Franklin J. Schaffner
1. Patton
2. Planet of the Apes
3. Papillon
4. The Boys from Brazil
5. Nicholas and Alexandra
6. The Best Man
7. The War Lord
8. Islands in the Stream
9. The Stripper
10. Twelve Angry Men [Studio One]

John Sturges
1. The Great Escape
2. Bad Day at Black Rock
3. The Magnificent Seven
4. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
5. Last Train from Gun Hill
6. The Eagle Has Landed
7. The Old Man and the Sea
8. The Law and Jake Wade
9. Ice Station Zebra
10. Backlash

Richard Fleischer
1. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
2. Soylent Green
3. Fantastic Voyage
4. The Narrow Margin
5. Tora! Tora! Tora!
6. Compulsion
7. The Vikings
8. The Boston Strangler
9. 10 Rillington Place
10. Barabbas

I've sent the following lists to lew: Bluth, Bong, Branagh, Corbucci, Dassin, Farrellys, Fleischer, Gance, Ivory, Liu, Pudovkin, Sandrich, Schaffner, Spheeris, Sturges and the Cuarón update.

No new lists for now as I've decided to take a break from this.

Maurice Pialat ranking seems pretty whack... What are reasons for that order?

Basically the usual mix of TSPDT/Films101 rankings, RT ratings, popularity/acclaim on IMDb/RYM.

Could you maybe tell me what exactly you disagree with so that I don't have to break down like everything for all of his films? That'd be awesome.

Well, I would have thought that Under Satan's Sun would be locked for number one, as it is probably his most famous film, most people's first Pialat viewing and it won the Golden Palm at Cannes, to some great controversy. Also Loulou and Police are pretty famous and I assumed they would all be Top 5. They were also instrumental in gathering fame for people like Gerard Depardieu and Sophie Marceau. My suggested list would have been:

Under Satan's Sun
Naked Childhood
Loulou
A nos amours
Police
Van Gogh
We Won't Grow Old Together
Graduate First
The Mouth Agape
La maison des bois

Satan's Sun is fifth in popularity on both IMDb and RYM so I kinda doubt it's his most famous film. It also doesn't appear in TSPDT's starting list at all, which means that it wasn't included in any of the critics' lists they used for compiling their ranking. Its user rating on IMDb/RYM also suggests mid-tier Pialat. I think it probably could move up a little.

Police probably is top 5 in popularity and popularity alone. It doesn't appear on TSPDT either and its user ratings on IMDb/RYM suggest mid-tier Pialat at best. It could maybe make the lower ranks of the list.

I think the top 4 should definitely be À nos amours, Naked Childhood, Van Gogh and Loulou. À nos amours probably is Pialat's most acclaimed film and it's also his most popular on IMDb/RYM, Naked Childhood is similarly acclaimed, slightly less popular but probably also slightly more influential so I could see those two in either order. For Loulou vs. Van Gogh I'd say they're pretty close in each of the criteria so I could also see them in either order. Then I could see Satan sneaking in at #5.

I'm ok with Police kicking off L'amour existe, with La maison des bois moving down (very acclaimed but not as popular) and with Graduate First > The Mouth Agape. So as a compromise between our lists I'd suggest the following:

1. Naked Childhood
2. À nos amours
3. Loulou
4. Van Gogh
5. Under the Sun of Satan
6. We Won't Grow Old Together
7. Graduate First
8. The Mouth Agape
9. La maison des bois
10. Police

If you still disagree, please give me further arguments.

Could somebody else with some knowledge on Pialat maybe comment on this as well? I'm extremely unsure about what the top of the list should look like now.

Henry Selick
1. Nightmare Before Christmas
2. Coraline
3. James and the Giant Peach
4. Seepage
5. Monkeybone

Steve McQueen
1. 12 Years A Slave
2. Hunger
3. Shame
4. Bear
5. Static

I know McQueen has many more short films, but it's tough doing a list for him, because I can only base it on IMDB ratings, and none of his shorts have gotten any awards or nominations. It's probably a bit premature to do a list on him, but any thoughts?