Monday, November 10, 2008

An Alphabet of Favorite Films (after Ed Howard)

Taking up Ed Howard's challenge in a recent meme (which originated on the Blog Cabins site), inviting readers to construct an alphabetical listing of favorite films (one per letter), I've essayed my own list. As Howard notes, the result of such a project is inevitably "very different than what [one] might pick if simply asked for favorite films without such restrictions". I've paired each film selected with an accompanying review and, just as I've limited my selections to one work per director, so I've restricted the reviews to one piece per critic.

Angels with Dirty Faces (Michael Curtiz, 1938)
Review by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)
Review by Josh Vasquez

Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
Review by David Phelps

Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (Fritz Lang, 1922)
Review by Ian Johnston

Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999)
Review by Michael Koresky

F for Fake (Orson Welles, 1974)
Review by Robert Castle

Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
Review by Eric Henderson

His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940)
Review by David Bordwell

Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)
Review by Keith Uhlich

Judex (Louise Feuillade, 1916)
Review by Ray Young

The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982)
Review by Roger Ebert

Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1952)
Review by Gary Morris

Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
Review by Andrew Schenker

Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1955)
Review by James Leahy

The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932)
Review by Wagstaff

The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1993)
Review by Nick Schager

Quintet (Robert Altman, 1979)
Review by Nick Pinkerton

The River (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1997)
Review by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972)
Review by Acquarello

They Drive by Night (Raoul Walsh, 1940)
Review by Bill Chambers

Unknown Pleasures (Jia Zhang-ke, 2002)
Review by J. Hoberman

Vengeance is Mine (Shohei Imamura, 1979)
Review by Leo Goldsmith

Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, 2000)
Review by Fred Camper

Xala (Ousmane Sembene, 1975)
Review by Fernando F. Croce

Yeelen (Souleymane Cissé, 1987)
Review by Ed Gonzalez

Zero for Conduct (Jean Vigo, 1933)
Review by Jeffrey M. Anderson

***

My review of House of the Sleeping Beauties has been posted at Slant Magazine.

2 comments:

Ed Howard said...

Nice list. One thing I noticed in looking over various people's lists is that Hawks shows up in almost all of them.

Rupert Pupkin said...

I love you list sir! I just a few days ago had a friend suggest this idea, see what you think:
http://rupertpupkinspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/03/cinematic-alphabet.html