Paris, Texas
Loneliness, distance and redemption.
03 / CULTURE
Cinema.
Around 200 films a year. A few that keep surviving the churn.
01 / Films I return to
Around 200 films a year. These ten are a reasonable starting point.
Barry Lyndon
Beautiful images. Terrible decisions.
Too Old to Die Young
Neon, dread and violence slowed down until it becomes almost hypnotic.
The Straight Story
Kindness without sentimentality.
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Melancholy in widescreen.
Metropolis
Machines, crowds and a future that never stopped looking modern.
Los santos inocentes
Cruel, humane and almost unbearably Spanish.
Дерсу Узала
Friendship, wilderness and the sadness of a world changing.
The Thing
Paranoia, isolation and practical effects that still look wrong in exactly the right way.
Irréversible
Form as assault. Time running backwards does not make anything better.
Showgirls›everything else
La pianiste›Funny Games
Salò / Irréversible›Srpski film
Unknown film›sequel to a favourite
I have had enough time to reconsider these. I haven't.
Not a guilty pleasure. Comfort media. Draw your own conclusions.
WHY THESE FILMS
Not a ranking. More like permanent coordinates.
The films here are not meant to form a canon. They are the ones that keep returning for different reasons: loneliness and distance, formal control, dread, landscape, cruelty, tenderness, or simply an image that refuses to leave.
The mix matters more than consistency. Paris, Texas can sit beside Showgirls; Dersu Uzala beside Irréversible. That is closer to how I actually watch films than a tidy list of “the greatest”.