Fifteen Favorite Films

Starting this month, Riverwest Film & Video (826 E Locust St., 265-7420) is asking various Milwaukeeans to “curate” a display each month in the shop’s front window, focusing on their 15 favorite films of all time. I was honored to be the curator to launch the series, which opens Jan. 3 with a 7 p.m. reception.

Picking 15 favorites was no easy task. Before beginning to compile my list, which endured many additions and scratch-offs before completion, I made a simple rule: one film per director. This eliminates many favorites, including Chinatown and The Shining, but helps keep the list broadly focused. Some of these films are widely acknowledged as classics, at least within their genres. One or two are obscure. All of them are movies I’m happy to watch repeatedly and remain entertaining as well as stimulating to the imagination.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Director: Stanley Kubrick

The future didn’t turn out as planned but Stanley Kubrick’s vision of the past and the cosmos is still thought provoking and breathtaking.

Apocalypse Now (1979) Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Apocalypse Now is the classic Vietnam movie and one of the most unforgettable depictions of the madness that can result from any war.

Casablanca (1943) Director: Michael Curtiz

You must remember this: Casablanca was a series of happy accidents that added up to one of Hollywood’s most unforgettable pictures.

Cat People (1942) Director: Jacques Tourneur

Sexual arousal turns deadly in a psychological horror tale filmed with great taste, dark shadows and a tiny budget.

Fanny and Alexander (1983) Director: Ingmar Bergman

Magic and realism converge in this semi-autobiographical and profound reflection on art, family and the meaning of everything.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) Director: Robert Aldrich

A literate, hard-edged detective story about trafficking in nuclear weapons (in 1955!) and the vast emptiness at the heart of modern life.

Lady From Shanghai (1948) Director: Orson Welles

Citizen Kane was one of cinema’s great breakthroughs but Welles took his ideas even further with

Lost in Translation (2003) Director: Sophia Coppola

Two travelers fall together and nothing happens according to Hollywood conventions in this classic of ennui and emotional uncertainty.

M (1931) Director: Fritz Lang

A serial killer movie focused on psychology, not gore, and a meditation on justice featuring Peter Lorre in one of the greatest performances ever committed to film.

Nosferatu (1922) Director: F.W. Murnau

Still the most uncanny vampire film ever, Nosferatu inspired a superb remake in the ‘80s by Werner Herzog and Willem Dafoe’s eerie performance as Count Orlok in Shadow of the Vampire.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968) Director: Roman Polanski

Horror can be a great way to investigate social as well as metaphysical anxiety. Polanski found horror in the heart of contemporary New York.

Saboteur (1942) Director: Alfred Hitchcock

An under-acknowledged Hitchcock thriller, Saboteur follows an innocent man chased by all sides as democracy and fascism struggled for control of the world.

Sunset Boulevard (1950) Director: Billy Wilder

The madness of stardom and the machinery of Hollywood have seldom been examined with such mordant humor as in Sunset Boulevard.

The Third Man (1949) Director: Carol Reed

Set in the ruins of postwar Europe, The Third Man is a thriller more concerned with moral twilight than the mystery at hand.

Twentieth Century (1934) Director: Howard Hawks

Twentieth Century was one of the first “screwball comedies” and one of the funniest. It’s fast, furious and often looks improvised on the spot.

Also Rans: If Riverwest Film & Video had asked me for my 20 favorites, I would have included these additional five films:

All About Eve

The Asphalt Jungle

Russian Ark

The Russians are Coming

Sons of the Desert