Top 100 Films: 10-6

OK... we've finally made it to the top ten, here's the first installment.

10. Blue Velvet (1986, dir. David Lynch)
David Lynch's beguiling film is one of those rare artistic feats that provokes extreme and profoundly felt reactions from nearly everyone who sees it. And for good reason... it's one of the most jarring cinematic experiences one will ever have. Both lyrically dream-like and viscerally, captivatingly real, Lynch's film is a masterpiece about the darkness lurking beneath even purest things.

9. In the Name of the Father (1993, dir. Jim Sheridan)
As I've said before, I'm someone who has a deep amount of respect for Jim Sheridan. When he operates at the peak of his artistic abilities, he is simply one of the most forceful storytellers there is, and his most potently expressed film yet has been In the Name of the Father, a stirring account of the false imprisonment and later release of the "Guilford 4". Daniel Day Lewis gives the most blisteringly vulnerable performance of his career as Conlon, a wayward Irishmen who along with his father is wrongfully convicted of participating in an IRA bombing. I've watched this film several times and the ending always brings me to tears.

8. Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972, dir. Werner Herzog)
Mesmerizing... Haunting... Soul-scorchingly beautiful... All accurately describe Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Werner Herzog's singular vision of a doomed conquistador mission in South America. Quite simply, this film may be one of the most expressive and hypnotic visual achievements in cinema.

7. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001, dir. Peter Jackson)
So many superlatives have-rightly-been throw at this film that it's almost become fashionable to underrate it. I won't make that mistake, as I happen to believe that Jackson's masterful epic is one of the few indisputable modern classics. 50 years from now, Fellowship will most likely be remembered as one of the most important films in the history of recent cinema (here I go, addding to the superlatives). Despite my feelings about the other two films--strangely, I tend to think they are unusually flawed, particularly the Two Towers--this first installment in the trilogy is the best. Its structure is nearly perfect, its direction flawlessly inspired, and almost of the performances are memorable.

6. The Verdict (1982, dir. Sidney Lumet)
Conventional wisdom surrounding the 1982 Academy Awards, in which Richard Attenborough's Gandhi won Best Picture, is that the more beloved E.T. should have taken the top prize (hell, even Attenborough himself said that). I'm here to say there was yet another film that should have won: Sidney Lumet's The Verdict, an under-the-radar courtroom drama about a washed-up alcoholic attorney who takes one last stab at redemption. Admittedly, this film does not possess the flash or epic scope of either Gandhi or E.T., but it just may be the best film of the 1980s. Paul Newman's towering turn as the feeble but searching Frank Galvin is in my opinion the best acting performance of all time.