Neil Mitchell
Freelance writer and editor
UK
Voted for
| Film | Year | Director |
|---|---|---|
| Wake in Fright | 1971 | Ted Kotcheff |
| The Battle of Algiers | 1966 | Gillo Pontecorvo |
| El Topo | 1970 | Alejandro Jodorowsky |
| KANAL | 1956 | Andrzej Wajda |
| Planet of the Apes | 1967 | Franklin J. Schaffner |
| The Texas Chain Saw Massacre | 1974 | Tobe Hooper |
| Berlin Alexanderplatz | ||
| BARA NO SORETSU | 1970 | Toshio Matsumoto |
| EDVARD MUNCH | 1976 | Peter Watkins |
| Do the Right Thing | 1989 | Spike Lee |
Comments
Wake in Fright
A movie that reeks of beer, sweat and alienation in the Australian outback. Visiting director Kotcheff has delivered a horribly gripping vision of small-town isolationism and one man's descent into alcohol-fuelled psychosis.
The Battle of Algiers
An absolutely ferocious war film with a quasi-documentary shooting style that compounds the urgency of the events portrayed onscreen. Uncompromising and influential.
El Topo
Like anything Jodorowsky touches, this 'Acid Western' is a wild ride through the imagination of its creator. Blurring the lines between overt symbolism and base exploitation, El Topo's imagery is memorably bizarre.
KANAL
The second part of Wajda's War Trilogy, and the first to be made about the Warsaw Uprising, Kanal dispenses with romanticism, instead presenting a Dantean vision of desperation as resistance fighters take to the city's sewers to try and escape the Nazis.
Planet of the Apes
A classic of the science fiction genre, topped off with one of cinema's most memorable endings. I'll never tire of watching Planet of the Apes.
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Tobe Hooper's low-budget shocker is everything I want from a horror movie – the squalor is palpable, it's deeply unpleasant and does everything it needs to in under 90 minutes. Fantastic.
Berlin Alexanderplatz
I could have chosen a number of Fassbinder's films, but this towering mini-series, running almost 16 hours in total, is a quite extraordinary achievement.
BARA NO SORETSU
A superior entry in the Japanese New Wave, Funeral Parade of Roses is provocative, challenging and a viewing experience that expands the boundaries of what films and their central protagonists can be.
EDVARD MUNCH
This three-and-a-half-hour biographical portrayal of the Norwegian Expressionist, shot in Watkins's idiosyncratic docu-drama style, is the director's finest work. Utterly engrossing and entirely uninterested in commercial sensibilities.
Do the Right Thing
Nothing short of incendiary in terms of both style and content. Lee's vision of racial tensions in a Brooklyn neighbourhood is as vital now as it was on general release.
Further remarks
Ask me again in a week, let alone ten years, and I would probably submit an entirely different list of films. The ones chosen, however, are all representative of my tastes and strike me as being up there with anything else cinema has yet given us.